Against Mechanism

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Rex Allen

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Nov 27, 2010, 1:49:08 PM11/27/10
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On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>
>
> Rex,
> I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism. Assume there is were
> an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same
> information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way.

I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
do all that you're asking it to do.

For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
experience changes over time.

However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
anger or what it's like to see red.

The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per
se, but rather what is represented by the bits.

"Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
represented". But, as you say, the same information can be
represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
bit-patterns.

And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
information. You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it
is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter.

SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
thing they represent.

Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you
manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.

All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
then had the experience of thinking to yourself: "hee hee hee, I just
caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."

Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
conscious experience.

Thinking that the "bit representation" captures my conscious
experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul.

Though, obviously this is as true of biological brains as of
computers. But so be it.

This is the line of thought that brought me to the idea that conscious
experience is fundamental and uncaused.

> The
> behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the
> mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts.
> However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious
> experience.

I agree that if you assume that representation "invokes" conscious
experience, then the brain and the computer would both have to be
equally conscious.

But I don't make that assumption.

So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the "multiple
realizability" of representations then we can never know anything
about our substrate.

You *think* that your brain is the cause of your conscious
experience...but as you say, a computer representation of you would
think the same thing, but would be wrong.

Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a
biological brain? Why not some alternate algorithm that results in
the same *conscious* experiences, but with entirely different
*unconscious* elements? How could you notice the difference?

> Information can take many physical forms.

Information requires interpretation. The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter.

Rex

1Z

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Nov 27, 2010, 2:08:11 PM11/27/10
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On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
> could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
> caused by a biological brain?  Or even by a representation of a
> biological brain?

Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are
always more complex, and therefore less likely than
"things are the way they seem to be"

Evgenii Rudnyi

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Nov 27, 2010, 2:21:18 PM11/27/10
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on 27.11.2010 20:08 1Z said the following:

Could you please tell what a hypothesis you consider as less complex?

As for Occam's razor. Let us consider the statement "The God has created
everything". Is this more or less complex as compared with the modern
scientific view?

Evgenii


Rex Allen

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Nov 27, 2010, 2:40:23 PM11/27/10
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Actually not. We have our experience of the world, which is not
direct (e.g. colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, etc.). And then we
have the cause of our experience.

This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific
materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios.

BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just
arrange the "causal" elements differently.

None are more or less complex than the others.

*My* preferred option is simpler. Only conscious experience exists,
uncaused and fundamental. There is nothing else.

Jason Resch

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Nov 27, 2010, 4:06:55 PM11/27/10
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I agree with this completely.  Information alone, such as bits on a hard disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them.  Would you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a brain could be conscious?  Isn't this mechanism?  Or is your view more like the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?
 

SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
thing they represent.

Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience.  Just because you
manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.

All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
then had the experience of thinking to yourself:  "hee hee hee, I just
caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."

Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
conscious experience.

Isn't this just idealism?  To me, the main problem with idealism is it doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable under a framework of physical laws.  If you see a ball go up, you can be rather confident in your future experience of seeing it come back down.  It seems there is an underlying system, more fundamental than consciousness, which drives where it can go.  In one of your earlier e-mails you explained your belief as "accidental idealism", can you elaborate on this accidental part?
 

Thinking that the "bit representation" captures my conscious
experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul.

Though, obviously this is as true of biological brains as of
computers.  But so be it.

This is the line of thought that brought me to the idea that conscious
experience is fundamental and uncaused.



> The
> behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the
> mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts.
>  However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious
> experience.

I agree that if you assume that representation "invokes" conscious
experience, then the brain and the computer would both have to be
equally conscious.

But I don't make that assumption.


Okay.
 
So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the "multiple
realizability" of representations then we can never know anything
about our substrate.

This sounds a lot like Bruno.  I believe there are a near infinite number of indiscernible substrates that explain what you are experiencing right now.  In some I am a biological brain, in others I may be playing a sim-human game, perhaps as a futuristic human being or technologically advanced alien, or a super-mind of an omega-point civilization which is exploring consciousness.  I do not, however, see the fact that I cannot know with certainty my ultimate substrate as a problem for mechanism or multiple realizability.  Whatever the substrates may be, I think they are in some sense equivalent by their informational content.  (Note that when I say the information is equivalent I mean to say it is interpreted/processed equivalently, the same message fed to two different programs, may have an entirely different meaning)
 

You *think* that your brain is the cause of your conscious
experience...but as you say, a computer representation of you would
think the same thing, but would be wrong.

Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
caused by a biological brain?  Or even by a representation of a
biological brain?  Why not some alternate algorithm that results in
the same *conscious* experiences, but with entirely different
*unconscious* elements?  How could you notice the difference?

That is entirely possible and I believe it is probable.  I could not notice a difference.
 

> Information can take many physical forms.

Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter.


I agree, but I would also add an interpreter needs something to interpret.  The information is devoid of meaning without an interpreter, so it is the information+interpretation that creates a meaningful message.


Jason

Brent Meeker

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Nov 27, 2010, 4:19:05 PM11/27/10
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It is more complex than, "Things originated naturally."  If you try to fill in the details to the same degree in each you have to first fill in all the details of "Things originated naturally."  and *then* all the details of how God decided on doing that and how He executed his plan.

Brent

Brent Meeker

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Nov 27, 2010, 5:02:46 PM11/27/10
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On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
conscious experience.

Isn't this just idealism?

If it were consistent it would be solipism.  It's when your conscious experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the experiences is needed.  Objective = intersubjective agreement.

Brent

Evgenii Rudnyi

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Nov 28, 2010, 3:37:34 AM11/28/10
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on 27.11.2010 22:19 Brent Meeker said the following:

Okay, but what then about the next two statements: "A car originated
naturally" and "A car has been made according to the plan". What
statement is more complex?

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 28, 2010, 6:17:13 AM11/28/10
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That is what explains the success of Aristotelianism. But we can
easily understand how evolution programmed us to believe this. The
rise of Platonism, and the birth of science and theology was a
departure from the idea that "reality is what we see".

Now my point is that if we assume mechanism, then we do have an
explanation of why and how couplings "consciousness/realities" emerge
from elementary arithmetic, and it seems to me that elementary
arithmetic is conceptually simpler than any proposed theory so far.
The main point is that elementary arithmetic, seen as the theory of
'everything-including-consciousness', is testable (and up to now
confirmed).

I can understand that the idea that we are in a matrix is not pleasing
for some people, but science has to avoid as much as possible any form
of wishful thinking. And I am not pretending this is true, only that
it follows from the idea that the brain, or whatever my consciousness
supervenes on, is Turing emulable. To avoid this you have to introduce
big infinities in the picture, or, like Jacques Mallah, mysterious
physical roles, in a computation, to objects having no physical
activity in that computation.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Stephen Paul King

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Nov 28, 2010, 12:10:41 PM11/28/10
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Hi,

The word "planned" would seem to signify that there exists a mechanism
(used the the most generic way) that selects that the object of the plan was
chosen from a collection of possible alternatives with a bias that is not
necessarily on that is "natural" and thus implies the existence of agency.
So to say that "X has been made according to the plan" is to say that those
properties of X result from a means that involves consciousness and thus
that hypothesis requires the prior existence of a agent to act as the
planner. The alternative hypothesis given, "X originated naturally." seems
to not require agency but no measure is implied by either as to the number
of entities involved so it seems that Occam's razor is unable to select one
of these hypotheses to cut.
This looks to me like a false choice fallacy in the making.

Onward!

Stephen

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Brent Meeker

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Nov 28, 2010, 12:52:30 PM11/28/10
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You tell me.  I don't consider Occam's razor the arbiter of truth.

Brent

1Z

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Nov 28, 2010, 2:45:37 PM11/28/10
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On Nov 27, 7:40 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
> >> could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
> >> caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a
> >> biological brain?
>
> > Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are
> > always more complex, and therefore less likely than
> > "things are the way they seem to be"
>
> Actually not. We have our experience of the world, which is not
> direct (e.g. colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, etc.).

How do you know? You can't maintain
that indirect realism is true independent
of any metaphysical presumptions.

You can't maintain that it is true because
that is the way the brain works, since it
is a metaphysical presumption that there is such
a thing as a brain as distinct from experience.


You can't maintain that it is a direct subjective
fact that your experiences are only of mental
representations. There is nothing about
an experience that labels it as indirect. You
experience would be the same if it actually
was direct experience of objects.

> And then we
> have the cause of our experience.
>
> This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific
> materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios.

It is not the same in all cases.

World+Experience

is simpler than

World+Vat/Matrix+Experience

> BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just
> arrange the "causal" elements differently.

Wrong. The vat is an additional element

> None are more or less complex than the others.

Wrong

> *My* preferred option is simpler. Only conscious experience exists,
> uncaused and fundamental. There is nothing else.

That's non-explanatory. No-one thinks Occams' razor means you should
give up on explanation. "Explanations should be as simple as possible,
but
no simpler"

1Z

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Nov 28, 2010, 2:46:43 PM11/28/10
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On Nov 27, 7:21 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> on 27.11.2010 20:08 1Z said the following:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen<rexallen31...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> >> Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your
> >> information could be represented, how likely is it that your
> >> experience really is caused by a biological brain?  Or even by a
> >> representation of a biological brain?
>
> > Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are always
> > more complex, and therefore less likely than "things are the way they
> > seem to be"
>
> Could you please tell what a hypothesis you consider as less complex?

I did.

> As for Occam's razor. Let us consider the statement "The God has created
> everything". Is this more or less complex as compared with the modern
> scientific view?

Is "God+World" more or less simple than "World" ?

Pzomby

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Nov 28, 2010, 3:18:24 PM11/28/10
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On Nov 27, 10:49 am, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
> Rex

Assuming that by using the term ‘abstract’ it means ‘non-physical’, is
it possible for information or anything to be ‘more’ or even ‘less’
abstract. Are not the physical and abstract realms pure unto
themselves with no possibility of being more or less abstract or
physical? In other words ‘abstract substrates” could be
incongruous.

Any clarification or examples on this issue would be helpful.
Thanks

Evgenii Rudnyi

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Nov 28, 2010, 4:02:59 PM11/28/10
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on 28.11.2010 20:46 1Z said the following:

I guess that people believing in God consider him as a part of the
world. Hence here it would be better to compare

"World where people believe in God"

with

"World where people believe that God does not exist"

Have no idea what is simpler.

Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

1Z

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Nov 28, 2010, 4:14:15 PM11/28/10
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On Nov 28, 9:02 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> on 28.11.2010 20:46 1Z said the following:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Nov 27, 7:21 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>  wrote:
> >> on 27.11.2010 20:08 1Z said the following:
>
> >>> On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen<rexallen31...@gmail.com>    wrote:
>
> >>>> Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your
> >>>> information could be represented, how likely is it that your
> >>>> experience really is caused by a biological brain?  Or even by
> >>>> a representation of a biological brain?
>
> >>> Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are
> >>> always more complex, and therefore less likely than "things are
> >>> the way they seem to be"
>
> >> Could you please tell what a hypothesis you consider as less
> >> complex?
>
> > I did.
>
> >> As for Occam's razor. Let us consider the statement "The God has
> >> created everything". Is this more or less complex as compared with
> >> the modern scientific view?
>
> > Is "God+World" more or less simple than "World" ?
>
> I guess that people believing in God consider him as a part of the
> world.

That is definitely not Judaeo-Christian philosophy.

> Hence here it would be better to compare
>
> "World where people believe in God"
>
> with
>
> "World where people believe that God does not exist"

Those aren't ontologies

Rex Allen

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Nov 28, 2010, 11:15:00 PM11/28/10
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On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>> represented". But, as you say, the same information can be
>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>> bit-patterns.
>>
>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>> information. You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>> bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it
>> is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>
> I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard
> disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. Would
> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
> brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more like
> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?

Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.

Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can
"just exist", then the experience of the rock can "just exist" too -
entirely independent of the rock.

Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose
does the brain serve? It's superfluous. If the brain can "just exist",
then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can "just exist"
also.

If not, why not?


>> SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
>> me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
>> thing they represent.
>>
>> Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
>> doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience. Just because you
>> manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
>> elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
>> of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.
>>
>> All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
>> then had the experience of thinking to yourself: "hee hee hee, I just
>> caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."
>>
>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>> conscious experience.
>
> Isn't this just idealism? To me, the main problem with idealism is it
> doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable
> under a framework of physical laws.

But then you have to explain the existence, consistency, and
predictability of this framework of physical laws.

You still have the exact same questions, but now your asking them of
this framework instead of about your conscious experiences. You just
pushed the questions back a level by introducing a layer of
unexplained entities. Your explanation needs an explanation.

Also, you’ve introduced a new question: How does unconscious matter
governed by unconscious physical laws give rise to conscious
experience?


> If you see a ball go up, you can be
> rather confident in your future experience of seeing it come back down. It
> seems there is an underlying system, more fundamental than consciousness,
> which drives where it can go. In one of your earlier e-mails you explained
> your belief as "accidental idealism", can you elaborate on this accidental
> part?

Basically I’m just combining accidentalism and idealism.

Here’s the link to that earlier post that you refer to:

http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/msg/74a368a670efaf16

Also the Meillassoux paper that I attached to the original post
(“Probability, Necessity, and Infinity”) that spawned this thread is
in this same vein:

http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/18406fb83d9fbebd

This paper addresses the exact question you raise...how to explain the
consistency and predictability that we observe, but without invoking
the unexplained brute existence of “physical laws”.

Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter
proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve
probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases.

Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set
theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set
formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is
also no absolute totality of all possible cases.

In other words: There is no "set of all possible worlds". And thus
"we cannot legitimately construct any set within which the foregoing
probabilistic reasoning could make sense."

Another interesting Meillassoux thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/ff5eae94f201a8cf/bd5a16097ea8d8e7


>> So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the "multiple
>> realizability" of representations then we can never know anything
>> about our substrate.
>
> This sounds a lot like Bruno. I believe there are a near infinite number of
> indiscernible substrates that explain what you are experiencing right now.
> In some I am a biological brain, in others I may be playing a sim-human
> game, perhaps as a futuristic human being or technologically advanced alien,
> or a super-mind of an omega-point civilization which is exploring
> consciousness. I do not, however, see the fact that I cannot know with
> certainty my ultimate substrate as a problem for mechanism or multiple
> realizability. Whatever the substrates may be, I think they are in some
> sense equivalent by their informational content. (Note that when I say the
> information is equivalent I mean to say it is interpreted/processed
> equivalently, the same message fed to two different programs, may have an
> entirely different meaning)

The substrates explain the existence of your conscious experiences,
but then what explains the existence of the substrates?

If the substrates can “just exist”, why can’t your conscious
experiences just exist?


>>> Information can take many physical forms.
>>
>> Information requires interpretation. The magic isn't in the bits.
>> The magic is in the interpreter.
>>
>
> I agree, but I would also add an interpreter needs something to interpret.
> The information is devoid of meaning without an interpreter, so it is the
> information+interpretation that creates a meaningful message.

Things might be that way. But this requires an explanation of the
existence of the information and the interpreter. And then an
explanation of the explanation. And then an explanation of the
explanation of the explanation. And so on.

Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and
doesn’t seem necessary.

Why not just accept accidental idealism?

Rex

Brent Meeker

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Nov 29, 2010, 12:22:44 AM11/29/10
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On 11/28/2010 8:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
...
Things might be that way.  But this requires an explanation of the
existence of the information and the interpreter.  And then an
explanation of the explanation.  And then an explanation of the
explanation of the explanation.  And so on.

Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress.  Doesn�t seem promising, and
doesn�t seem necessary.

Why not just accept accidental idealism?

Rex

  
Maybe I would if you could explain it.

Brent

Jason Resch

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Nov 29, 2010, 2:36:46 AM11/29/10
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On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>> represented".  But, as you say, the same information can be
>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>> bit-patterns.
>>
>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>> information.  You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>> bits, and viola!  The magic is all in the interpretation.  None of it
>> is in the bits.  And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>
> I agree with this completely.  Information alone, such as bits on a hard
> disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them.  Would
> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
> brain could be conscious?  Isn't this mechanism?  Or is your view more like
> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?

Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.


Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are helping bring new thoughts into existence?  If I understood the other threads you cited on accidentalism, it seems as though you do not believe anything is caused.  Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that responding to these threads is pointless?
 

Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can
"just exist", then the experience of the rock can "just exist" too -
entirely independent of the rock.

Believing thought alone exists doesn't give any explanation for why I see a relatively ordered screen with text and icons I understand, compared to something like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tux_secure.jpg

There are far more possible thoughts that consist of a visual field that looks random, do you find it surprising you happen to be a thought which is so compressible?

Accepting that rocks exist allows the understanding that some of these rocks have the right conditions for live to develop on them, and evolve brains to use to understand the worlds they appear on.  The thoughts of those life forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful for their survival.  If I start with thought as primitive, and try to explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further.  While it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an intellectual dead end.
 

Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose
does the brain serve? It's superfluous. If the brain can "just exist",
then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can "just exist"
also.

If not, why not?

Rather than say the brain causes conscious experience to exist, I think it is more accurate to say the brain is conscious, or the brain experiences.  Stated this way, it isn't superfluous.
 


>> SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to
>> me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
>> thing they represent.
>>
>> Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
>> doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience.  Just because you
>> manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
>> elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
>> of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.
>>
>> All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
>> then had the experience of thinking to yourself:  "hee hee hee, I just
>> caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."
>>
>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>> conscious experience.
>
> Isn't this just idealism?  To me, the main problem with idealism is it
> doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are predictable
> under a framework of physical laws.

But then you have to explain the existence, consistency, and
predictability of this framework of physical laws.

I see no reason we should abandon this goal, there is no evidence that the progress of human understanding has reached an impasse.
 

You still have the exact same questions, but now your asking them of
this framework instead of about your conscious experiences.  You just
pushed the questions back a level by introducing a layer of
unexplained entities.  Your explanation needs an explanation.


Mathematical or arithmetical realism seems like a good place to stop.  It is easy to accept that mathematical truths simply are.  If it can be demonstrated that this leads to consciousness through some level of indirection then this may also explain existence, consistency and predictability, etc.
 
Also, you’ve introduced a  new question:  How does unconscious matter
governed by unconscious physical laws give rise to conscious
experience?


How does unconscious matter become conscious?  I think it is a similar question with a similar answer to "How does unliving matter become alive?"  The answer is through the right organization.  I think a conscious organization of matter is a process that is aware of information.  Awareness likely involves at least one of discriminating, comparing, understanding, knowing or interrelating information.
 

What about idealism, is there no "set of all possible thoughts"?  If not, what are the implications for your theory?
 

Once you get to mathematical truth, will you really need an explanation for why 1 + 0 = 1?

 
Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress.  Doesn’t seem promising, and
doesn’t seem necessary.

Why not just accept accidental idealism?

Rex


It doesn't seem to lead to anything fruitful, but perhaps I do not understand it well enough.  Do you see it providing any answers of the following questions:

Why are there thoughts about brains?
Why can my thoughts contain memories of successful predictions made with an understanding of physics?
What is my thought likely to be 10 seconds from now?
Why is my thought compressible rather than incompressible randomness?
Why do my thoughts contain ideas about a many billion year history of evolution?

Jason

1Z

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Nov 29, 2010, 8:25:13 AM11/29/10
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On Nov 29, 4:15 am, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.
>
> Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
> purpose does the actual rock serve?

It makes the thought "there is a rock here" either true or false.


> Also, you’ve introduced a  new question:  How does unconscious matter
> governed by unconscious physical laws give rise to conscious
> experience?

You scheme raises the question: why are our thoughts apparently
meaningful and true, and why do we care about that, when,
they are actually neither.


> Why not just accept accidental idealism?

Because "there are no absolute causes/explanaions" is a bad reason to
give up on causation
and explanation completely

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 29, 2010, 10:16:34 AM11/29/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com

On 28 Nov 2010, at 20:45, 1Z wrote:

>
>
> On Nov 27, 7:40 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>


>
>> And then we
>> have the cause of our experience.
>>
>> This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific
>> materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios.
>
> It is not the same in all cases.
>
> World+Experience
>
> is simpler than
>
> World+Vat/Matrix+Experience

OK. Note that elementary arithmetic is simpler than both. And it is
explains (even without DM) 99,9% of experience, + why it remains
necessarily 0.1% of experience for which we cannot have a direct
explanation, but still an indirect one, which is arguably appalling
with Mechanism.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 29, 2010, 10:25:18 AM11/29/10
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On 28 Nov 2010, at 21:18, Pzomby wrote:

>
>
> On Nov 27, 10:49 am, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen
>>> <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
>> Rex
>
> Assuming that by using the term ‘abstract’ it means ‘non-physical’,


But abstract does not mean non physical. "F = ma" is physical yet
abstract. It is a true (say) abstract relation that we infer from many
observation, and which can be instantiated in some concrete
relationship between bodies, for example.

> is
> it possible for information or anything to be ‘more’ or even ‘less’
> abstract. Are not the physical and abstract realms pure unto
> themselves with no possibility of being more or less abstract or
> physical? In other words ‘abstract substrates” could be
> incongruous.

This is theory dependent. Natural numbers are usually considered by
number theorists as being very concrete (yet immaterial) objects.
Relations between numbers are more abstract, and relations between
those relations are still more abstract. In math, algebra is
considered as more abstract than arithmetic. category theory is known
as very abstract. Lambda calculus contains a "concrete" abstraction
operator (indeed "lambda") capable of constructing more and more
abstract objects. It replace concrete/token immaterial object like
numbers (or strings) by variable one.

Bruno

>
> Any clarification or examples on this issue would be helpful.
> Thanks
>

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 29, 2010, 12:09:25 PM11/29/10
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Ah! The key point where we differ the most. Person is the key concept
for those who grasp mechanism and its consequences.
At least you don't eliminate consciousness, but you do eliminate
persons. Brr...

>
> Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
> purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can
> "just exist", then the experience of the rock can "just exist" too -
> entirely independent of the rock.
>
> Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose
> does the brain serve?

If you accept the idea of taxes, you have to accept some people send
you paper recalling you to pay taxes.
The purpose of the brain is to augment the probability that your
consciousness can manifest itself relatively to mine and others.


> It's superfluous. If the brain can "just exist",
> then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can "just exist"
> also.
>
> If not, why not?

But why? Note I disagree that a brain can just exist. I like to say
the brain exists only in the head :) Like any material structure it is
a construct of the "dreaming numbers" (etc. I can explain again if you
don't remember the explanation, or reread sane04).

Some theory in physics explains a lot. QM explains the nature and
behavior of water, photosynthesis, solid matter, black holes, star,
etc. It does not explain consciousness, and unfortunately it explains
it away if we take QM as primitive. But DM explains both QM-quanta (up
to open problems in math, making DM testable) and consciousness-qualia
(up to the belief in numbers, but at least with an explanation why the
belief in number is necessarily mysterious from our machine
perspectives).


>
>
>> If you see a ball go up, you can be
>> rather confident in your future experience of seeing it come back
>> down. It
>> seems there is an underlying system, more fundamental than
>> consciousness,
>> which drives where it can go. In one of your earlier e-mails you
>> explained
>> your belief as "accidental idealism", can you elaborate on this
>> accidental
>> part?
>
> Basically I’m just combining accidentalism and idealism.
>

> <snip>

> Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter
> proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve
> probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases.
>
> Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set
> theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set
> formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is
> also no absolute totality of all possible cases.
>

> Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and
> doesn’t seem necessary.

Meissaloux seems to ignore that the set of partial computable is
closed for the Cantorian diagonalization. That is the key technical
point which makes Church thesis possible and *digital* mechanism so
powerful (and computer science a science).


>
> Why not just accept accidental idealism?

Because if it were true, I would have to accept it accidentally, and
that accident seems not to happen, apparently.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Brent Meeker

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Nov 29, 2010, 2:26:10 PM11/29/10
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On 11/28/2010 11:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>> represented". �But, as you say, the same information can be

>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>> bit-patterns.
>>
>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>> information. �You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>> bits, and viola! �The magic is all in the interpretation. �None of it
>> is in the bits. �And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>
> I agree with this completely. �Information alone, such as bits on a hard
> disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them. �Would

> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
> brain could be conscious? �Isn't this mechanism? �Or is your view more like

> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?

Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.


Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are helping bring new thoughts into existence?� If I understood the other threads you cited on accidentalism, it seems as though you do not believe anything is caused.� Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that responding to these threads is pointless?
�

Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can
"just exist", then the experience of the rock can "just exist" too -
entirely independent of the rock.

Believing thought alone exists doesn't give any explanation for why I see a relatively ordered screen with text and icons I understand, compared to something like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tux_secure.jpg

There are far more possible thoughts that consist of a visual field that looks random, do you find it surprising you happen to be a thought which is so compressible?

Accepting that rocks exist allows the understanding that some of these rocks have the right conditions for live to develop on them, and evolve brains to use to understand the worlds they appear on.� The thoughts of those life forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful for their survival.� If I start with thought as primitive, and try to explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further.� While it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an intellectual dead end.

I doesn't explain the existence of thought or anything else.� It just asserts it and then asserts that no explanation is possible because an explanation would require another explanation.� Rex is trying to play the tortoise to your Achilles.

Brent

Pzomby

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Nov 30, 2010, 10:51:35 AM11/30/10
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On Nov 29, 7:25 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 28 Nov 2010, at 21:18, Pzomby wrote:
>
> > On Nov 27, 10:49 am, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>  
> >> wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen  
> >>> <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.
> >> Rex
>
> > Assuming that by using the term ‘abstract’ it means ‘non-physical’,
>
> But abstract does not mean non physical. "F = ma" is physical yet  
> abstract. It is a true (say) abstract relation that we infer from many  
> observation, and which can be instantiated in some concrete  
> relationship between bodies, for example.
>
Would not the context of this discussion, referring to ‘abstract
substrates’, as opposed to physical substrates (quarks and electrons)
indicate that ‘abstract’ (in this case) is not of the physical? Some
of the contents of human consciousness are non physical (not of the
five senses). ‘Curiosity’ for example is a non physical trait.
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/abstractnoun.htm
> > is
> > it possible for information or anything to be ‘more’ or even ‘less’
> > abstract.  Are not the physical and abstract realms pure unto
> > themselves with no possibility of being more or less abstract or
> > physical?  In other words ‘abstract substrates” could be
> > incongruous.
>
> This is theory dependent. Natural numbers are usually considered by  
> number theorists as being very concrete (yet immaterial) objects.  
> Relations between numbers are more abstract, and relations between  
> those relations are still more abstract. In math, algebra is  
> considered as more abstract than arithmetic. category theory is known  
> as very abstract. Lambda calculus contains a "concrete" abstraction  
> operator (indeed "lambda") capable of constructing more and more  
> abstract objects. It replace concrete/token immaterial object like  
> numbers (or strings) by variable one.
>
> Bruno

Yes, ‘theory dependent’ human constructs. No doubt number theorists
have agreed upon terminology and understandings that describe the
functions and results. Are what they are really referring to, is that
which is ‘finite’ (having natural boundaries or limitations) rather
than concrete? Are not category theory, algebra, etc. representing
things that have ‘finite’ rather than ‘concrete’ properties? If a
mathematician or scientist presumes the brain is the mind as in
physicalism, materialism etc., he of course, will have little choice
but to describe everything (including human consciousness) as
concrete.

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 30, 2010, 1:10:35 PM11/30/10
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On 30 Nov 2010, at 16:51, Pzomby wrote:

>
>
> On Nov 29, 7:25 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 28 Nov 2010, at 21:18, Pzomby wrote:
>>
>>> On Nov 27, 10:49 am, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen
>>>>> <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of
>>>> information.
>>>> Rex
>>
>>> Assuming that by using the term ‘abstract’ it means ‘non-physical’,
>>
>> But abstract does not mean non physical. "F = ma" is physical yet
>> abstract. It is a true (say) abstract relation that we infer from
>> many
>> observation, and which can be instantiated in some concrete
>> relationship between bodies, for example.
>>
> Would not the context of this discussion, referring to ‘abstract
> substrates’, as opposed to physical substrates (quarks and electrons)
> indicate that ‘abstract’ (in this case) is not of the physical? Some
> of the contents of human consciousness are non physical (not of the
> five senses). ‘Curiosity’ for example is a non physical trait.
> http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/abstractnoun.htm


Not bad :)
But as you might guess, such a difference between abstract and
concrete can be theory dependent.
Is time, or even a moment, an abstract or a concrete: I cannot see it,
I cannot hear it, I cannot smell it, I cannot taste it, and I cannot
touch it ... unless there is particle of time (chronon, that
exists ... in some theories!).
What if we discover 'curiositon' :)

>>> is
>>> it possible for information or anything to be ‘more’ or even ‘less’
>>> abstract. Are not the physical and abstract realms pure unto
>>> themselves with no possibility of being more or less abstract or
>>> physical? In other words ‘abstract substrates” could be
>>> incongruous.
>>
>> This is theory dependent. Natural numbers are usually considered by
>> number theorists as being very concrete (yet immaterial) objects.
>> Relations between numbers are more abstract, and relations between
>> those relations are still more abstract. In math, algebra is
>> considered as more abstract than arithmetic. category theory is known
>> as very abstract. Lambda calculus contains a "concrete" abstraction
>> operator (indeed "lambda") capable of constructing more and more
>> abstract objects. It replace concrete/token immaterial object like
>> numbers (or strings) by variable one.
>>
>> Bruno
>
> Yes, ‘theory dependent’ human constructs. No doubt number theorists
> have agreed upon terminology and understandings that describe the
> functions and results. Are what they are really referring to, is that
> which is ‘finite’ (having natural boundaries or limitations) rather
> than concrete?

The basic objects of number theorist are the numbers, but they are
interested in functions, properties, relations, which are always
infinite objects.


> Are not category theory, algebra, etc. representing
> things that have ‘finite’ rather than ‘concrete’ properties?

No their objects are usually infinite. The category of sets is so big
that it is not even a set. It is bigger than all the Cantiorian
infinties. That *very* big.

> If a
> mathematician or scientist presumes the brain is the mind

That is a direct category error. I can see, smell touch, ... a brain.
Not so for a mind. yet a mind can be said concrete like whenh I talk
about my mind, or some precise people mind in some situation.


> as in
> physicalism, materialism etc.,

They do association. identity theses are not all category errors.

> he of course, will have little choice
> but to describe everything (including human consciousness) as
> concrete.

That is the reason to make distinct the duality abstract/concrete from
immaterial/material.
My mind is concrete, moments are concrete, numbers can be considered
as concrete, more generally the object of the structure are concrete,
as opposed to their possible relations.
My (human) consciousness is concrete, (even if it is immaterial and
different from my brain).
Human conciousness in general is an abstract notion.
Notions are abstract, dispositions are abstract, and concreteness will
depends on theories, current paradigm, ontological choice or reality,
etc.


Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Pzomby

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Dec 1, 2010, 12:48:21 PM12/1/10
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If a ‘curiousaton’ and a beliefiton are ever discovered a biological
TOEton may not be far behind. : )
> Brunohttp://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -
>
Your response raises a few more questions but I will state only a
couple.

I believe I follow your comments but am having trouble with the
description of human consciousness (in general) as a ‘notion’. The
word means vague or unclear and an antonym of ‘notion’ could only be
described as a precise description or understanding of human
consciousness (even a concrete reality).

As this is more a discussion of semantics. What would be the antonym
of notion?
Abstract / Concrete, Immaterial / Material, Infinite / Finite,
Notion / ______
Could human consciousness (in general) be correctly described as
being: abstract, immaterial, infinite and a notion? Other than
“notion’, there would be no ‘more or less’ of any of the above, as in
alive or dead, on or off, up or down. They are or they are not.

Thanks

> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 2, 2010, 10:12:09 AM12/2/10
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On 01 Dec 2010, at 18:48, Pzomby wrote:



What if we discover 'curiositon' :)


If a ‘curiousaton’ and a beliefiton are ever discovered a biological
TOEton may not be far behind. : )

A particle of everything! 
I'm afraid that for breaking it you will need an accelerator necessarily bigger than everything, making its existence ... forever undecided.





That is the reason to make distinct the duality abstract/concrete from  
immaterial/material.
My mind is concrete, moments are concrete, numbers can be considered  
as concrete, more generally the object of the structure are concrete,  
as opposed to their possible relations.
My (human) consciousness is concrete, (even if it is immaterial and  
different from my brain).
Human conciousness in general is an abstract notion.
Notions are abstract, dispositions are abstract, and concreteness will  
depends on theories, current paradigm, ontological choice or reality,  
etc.

Brunohttp://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -

Your response raises a few more questions but I will state only a
couple.

I believe I follow your comments but am having trouble with the
description of human consciousness (in general) as a ‘notion’.  
The
word means vague or unclear and an antonym of ‘notion’ could only be
described as a precise description or understanding of human
consciousness (even a concrete reality).

As this is more a discussion of semantics. What would be the antonym
of notion?
Abstract / Concrete, Immaterial / Material, Infinite / Finite,
Notion / ______

Notion/thing  (notion is very near universal-abstract; things are usually more concrete, I would say).

Depending on your conception of "consciousness", the "notion of consciousness" might be as absurd as the "notion of milk". Usually "notion" is use for abstract objects. Like in the notion of Hilbert space, or the notion of set, the notion of prime number. 
But not: the notion of 17.
Without mechanism, you will never say: the notion of Leonard de Vinci. But if you can build many "Leonard de Vinci" exemplars, you could develop a notion of "Leonard de Vinci", especially if the exemplars are slightly different.
With digital mechanism, we are arguably more of the type of type than of the type of token. From inside we cannot feel this, like in Everett QM, the observer cannot feel the split.




Could human consciousness (in general) be correctly described as
being: abstract, immaterial, infinite and a notion?  

Consciousness in general (or the notion of consciousness) might be qualified in some context as abstract. But my consciousness here and now is the most concrete thing I can ever conceive. Immaterial? I agree, and that is what makes Digital Mechanism (DM, or comp) very appalling. Infinite? I can think so about "cosmic consciousness", but that is an altered state of consciousness. Here on earth the experience is finite. Consciousness is related to meaning, and Tarski's theory of truth (and meaning, to simplify a bit) usually connect finite things (representations) to infinite things (the domain of the interpretation of those representations). I agree that consciousness lives near the infinite somehow, but any details on this will refer to the DM theory. The first person notions are related to infinitely many computations and number's relations, but the observers cannot feel that. They can only guess it from indirect reflexions.



Other than
“notion’, there would be no ‘more or less’ of any of the above, as in
alive or dead, on or off, up or down.  They are or they are not.

I use "notion" for "a type of (often learnable) thing". Perhaps that term should be avoided if ambiguous. I dunno.

Best,

Bruno

Rex Allen

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Dec 2, 2010, 1:29:36 PM12/2/10
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On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can
>>> be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
>>> can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
>>> elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
>>> happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
>>> conscious experience.
>>
>> Isn't this just idealism?
>
> If it were consistent it would be solipism.

By inconsistency I assume that you are referring to my use of "you"
and "your" while claiming that, ultimately, Jason's conscious
experience has nothing to do with my conscious experience?

If there are no causal connections between our experiences then...why
am I addressing him in my emails as though there were?

There are three answers to this question:

1) To be consistent, I have to conclude that ultimately there is no
reason for this. It's just the way things are. That I do this is
just a fact, and not causally connected to any other facts.

2) The related fact that, lacking free will, I have no real choice
but to do this.

3) My "experienced" justification is that these emails are mostly an
opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on
these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it
doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is.

As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean?

Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no.

1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes.

2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything
outside of my mental states. Yes.

3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No.

So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist.

Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of
"personage". It isn't "mental states belonging to Rex" so much as
"mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view".

I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like
point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I find it
entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental
states exist.

But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of
mental states do or don't exist. Maybe Jason's mental states exist,
maybe they don't. It's not really important.

> It's when your conscious
> experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious
> experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the
> experiences is needed. Objective = intersubjective agreement.

And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
of subjective experience.

What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
knowing what conscious experience "is"? It's building a foundation on
top of something which has no foundation.

From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
behind conscious experience.

As Hans Moravec says:

"A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."

Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
no conclusions that can be drawn.

And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?


Rex

Rex Allen

unread,
Dec 3, 2010, 11:49:16 AM12/3/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:45 PM, 1Z <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Nov 27, 7:40 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > On Nov 27, 6:49 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
>> >> could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
>> >> caused by a biological brain? Or even by a representation of a
>> >> biological brain?
>>
>> > Occam's razor: BIV, matrix and other sceptical scenarios are
>> > always more complex, and therefore less likely than
>> > "things are the way they seem to be"
>>
>> Actually not. We have our experience of the world, which is not
>> direct (e.g. colors, illusions, delusions, dreams, etc.).
>
> How do you know? You can't maintain
> that indirect realism is true independent
> of any metaphysical presumptions.

I don’t maintain that indirect realism is true. Only that direct
realism isn’t, as it can’t account for colors, illusions, delusions,
dreams, hallucinations, etc.


> You can't maintain that it is true because
> that is the way the brain works, since it
> is a metaphysical presumption that there is such
> a thing as a brain as distinct from experience.

I can maintain that if conscious experience is caused by the brain,
then direct realism isn’t plausible. And if conscious experience
isn’t caused by the brain...then direct realism still isn’t plausible.


> You can't maintain that it is a direct subjective
> fact that your experiences are only of mental
> representations. There is nothing about
> an experience that labels it as indirect. You
> experience would be the same if it actually
> was direct experience of objects.

I see no way that my experience of a chair in a dream could be a
direct experience of a real object.


>> And then we
>> have the cause of our experience.
>>
>> This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific
>> materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios.
>
> It is not the same in all cases.
>
> World+Experience
>
> is simpler than
>
> World+Vat/Matrix+Experience

The Vat/Matrix is part of the World, not something that exists in
addition to the World. That’s obvious enough.

Assuming functionalism/computationalism (which is necessary for the
BIV/Matrix scenario to even get off the ground), consciousness isn’t
in the quarks and electrons of the brain. If you smush the brain, the
quarks and electrons are still there but the consciousness is gone.

Rather consciousness is associated with the arrangement of the quarks
and electrons of the brain.

Therefore the question is: what kinds of arrangements of quarks and
electrons will give rise to a particular experience...say of sitting
under a tree.

One such arrangement is a person actually sitting under a tree. But
most of the quarks and electrons in this scene are only there to
provide surfaces for photons to bounce off of before reaching the
persons eyes and to provide surfaces for skin contact. To generate
sensory inputs in other words.

For the BIV scenario, we leave the brain intact, but reorganize all of
the other quarks and electrons so that the sensory inputs are
generated by a computer and fed to the brain directly.

Note that we don’t need a perfect simulation of the tree and ground
and air molecules and intestinal bacteria. Only good enough to
produce the same experience...and experience is obviously pretty
course-grained. Many different microscopic states will produce the
same macroscopic experience. Theoretically we don’t even need a
simulation...just a table of time indexed sensory input values to feed
to the brain.

Given this, it’s not clear that a real body sitting under a real tree
on a real planet orbiting a real sun is even the simplest way to
generate the experience of sitting under a tree.

Where would the Vat/Matrix come from? Well, where did the tree,
planet, and sun come from? It just takes a rearrangement of initial
conditions to get a vat/computer instead of a tree/planet/sun. What
would make one set of initial conditions more complex than the other?

I assume that you somehow feel that the BIV scenario must be more
complicated because it is a vat AND it is somehow a
representation/simulation of the environment that the brain
experiences. But this is false.

The vat/computer is just what it is. The fact that it can be
interpreted as representing an environment adds no additional
complexity. It’s just another way to arrange things.


>> BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just
>> arrange the "causal" elements differently.
>
> Wrong. The vat is an additional element

Wrong. It’s just a different arrangement of quarks and electrons.


>> None are more or less complex than the others.
>
> Wrong

How so?


>> *My* preferred option is simpler. Only conscious experience exists,
>> uncaused and fundamental. There is nothing else.
>
> That's non-explanatory. No-one thinks Occams' razor means you should
> give up on explanation. "Explanations should be as simple as possible,
> but no simpler"

The Physical World Hypothesis doesn’t explain anything, as it is just
a bunch of terms that are themselves in need of explanation.

I’ll agree that there appear to be recurring patterns in our
observations, and that these patterns can be described via
mathematical equations. And that we can assign catchy labels like
mass, spin, and charge to the various parts of the descriptive
equations.

But this is all description, not explanation. You can construct
speculative metaphysical theories about how the various equations and
variables represent real things that exist in the world, but these are
just fanciful stories. Mathematical metaphors not real explanations.

Rex Allen

unread,
Dec 3, 2010, 11:50:51 AM12/3/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/2010 8:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> ...
>
> Things might be that way. But this requires an explanation of the
> existence of the information and the interpreter. And then an
> explanation of the explanation. And then an explanation of the
> explanation of the explanation. And so on.
> Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and
> doesn’t seem necessary.

> Why not just accept accidental idealism?
> Rex
>
>
> Maybe I would if you could explain it.

Which part do you not understand?

Rex

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Dec 3, 2010, 12:12:25 PM12/3/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com

1) and 2) are contradictory.


>
> 3) My "experienced" justification is that these emails are mostly an
> opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on
> these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it
> doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is.
>
> As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean?
>
> Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no.
>
> 1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes.

This depends what you mean by access. I am accessing and modifying
your thought processes right now.

>
> 2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything
> outside of my mental states. Yes.

No. You cannot prove the existence of anything outside. But you cannot
prove the inexistence of anything outside too.
You are confusing ~Bp with B~p. From your inability to prove p, you
conclude that you have proved ~p.


>
> 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No.

All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send.

>
> So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism
> checklist.
>
> Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of
> "personage". It isn't "mental states belonging to Rex" so much as
> "mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view".
>
> I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like
> point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I find it
> entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental
> states exist.
>
> But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of
> mental states do or don't exist. Maybe Jason's mental states exist,
> maybe they don't. It's not really important.

You really look like a solipsist now. From 'cosmic consciousness'
*you* can doubt about Rex's bodies, not about Jason or anyone
consciousness. You mix categories. You are preventing all
possibilities of theorizing at the start.

>
>> It's when your conscious
>> experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious
>> experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the
>> experiences is needed. Objective = intersubjective agreement.
>
> And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
> getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
> of subjective experience.

That is non sense. It is like saying, before trying to build a
pendulum we need a plausible explanation of gravity. 1Z was right: you
ask for an absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist,
given that only personal consciousness can be considered as absolute.


>
> What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
> knowing what conscious experience "is"? It's building a foundation on
> top of something which has no foundation.

This moves will kill all theories. That is not necessary.


>
> From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
> things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
> behind conscious experience.

Well, that is a theory depending statement. You want theories to be
certain. That does not exist at all. (Well many argue that elementary
arithmetic is certain. I am not sure, but I do take it as more sure
than many other theories).

Do you agree that 5 is a prime number?


>
> As Hans Moravec says:
>
> "A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
> self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
> processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
> of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
> inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
> logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
> simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
> inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
> the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
> simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
> were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
> computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
> forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
> tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
> represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
> widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
> indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."
>
> Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
> no conclusions that can be drawn.

But then how could *you* infer anything from this, given that you
don't have an account of consciousness when your own "theory" asks for
it.


>
> And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
> exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?


I'm afraid you are both solipsist and inconsistent. You evacuate all
beliefs/ideas/theories in favor of one certainty: consciousness. That
is throwing the reality-baby with the bath water in the extreme.

All theories are based on assumptions and things we accept without
understanding. We can never be sure of the truth of those assumptions.
We can only hope that we can share them with others, and that they can
explain what we are interested in. This is always relative to what we
accept as starting *assumptions*. Always.

The study of consciousness, when done honestly can lead us very close
to inconsistency. You seem to bridge a gap which is not bridgeable (on
earth). You talk like a Löbian machine (like G) which repeats what G*
says, but doing this you are losing Löbianity and this makes G* wrong
about you. You might have a good insight on something deep, but you
make it false by presenting it as a "theory".

Mystical and personal insight can help to find a theory, but they
cannot and should not replace any theory. That is why the buddhists
insist that enlightenment is a private matter, and can be judged only
by what you can offer to the others when you come back in the village.
You can also just enjoy the bliss, but you can't, I insist,
communicate it as a theory without making yourself inconsistent.
That's why the mystical truth is a 'secret'. That's probably why Lao
Tseu said that those who does not know will talk, and those who does
know will keep silent. For machines and numbers, that is akin to why G
and G* are different, and why 'terrestrial or effective machines' have
to remain (publicly) modest.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Brent Meeker

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Dec 3, 2010, 2:10:48 PM12/3/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 12/3/2010 8:50 AM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
  
On 11/28/2010 8:15 PM, Rex Allen wrote:

...

Things might be that way.  But this requires an explanation of the
existence of the information and the interpreter.  And then an
explanation of the explanation.  And then an explanation of the
explanation of the explanation.  And so on.
Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress.  Doesn�t seem promising, and
doesn�t seem necessary.
Why not just accept accidental idealism?
Rex


Maybe I would if you could explain it.
    
Which part do you not understand?
  

The ultimate explanation.

Brent

1Z

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Dec 3, 2010, 4:32:05 PM12/3/10
to Everything List


On Dec 3, 4:49 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > How do you know? You can't maintain
> > that indirect realism is true independent
> > of any metaphysical presumptions.
>
> I don’t maintain that indirect realism is true. Only that direct
> realism isn’t, as it can’t account for colors, illusions, delusions,
> dreams, hallucinations, etc.

You need more than the falsity of direct realism to
prove idealism


> >> This is true in all cases: scientific realism, scientific
> >> materialism, BIV, matrix, other skeptical scenarios.
>
> > It is not the same in all cases.
>
> > World+Experience
>
> > is simpler than
>
> > World+Vat/Matrix+Experience
>
> The Vat/Matrix is part of the World, not something that exists in
> addition to the World. That’s obvious enough.

But you don't have to assume a Vat/Matrix for realism, so
the world is that much simpler

> Note that we don’t need a perfect simulation of the tree and ground
> and air molecules and intestinal bacteria. Only good enough to
> produce the same experience...and experience is obviously pretty
> course-grained. Many different microscopic states will produce the
> same macroscopic experience. Theoretically we don’t even need a
> simulation...just a table of time indexed sensory input values to feed
> to the brain.
>
> Given this, it’s not clear that a real body sitting under a real tree
> on a real planet orbiting a real sun is even the simplest way to
> generate the experience of sitting under a tree.
>
> Where would the Vat/Matrix come from? Well, where did the tree,
> planet, and sun come from? It just takes a rearrangement of initial
> conditions to get a vat/computer instead of a tree/planet/sun.

Well, there;s a whole lot of problems with that.
For one thing, if you want to avoid solipsism, you need
multiple vats. For another you are putting forward a scenario
with an an unnaturally special, contrived starting state rather
a naturally distinguished starting state such as minimum entropy

> What
> would make one set of initial conditions more complex than the other?
>
> I assume that you somehow feel that the BIV scenario must be more
> complicated because it is a vat AND it is somehow a
> representation/simulation of the environment that the brain
> experience

Because we would normally think of it being embedded in a
real world


>
> >> BIV, matrix, etc. don't introduce additional elements, they just
> >> arrange the "causal" elements differently.
>
> > Wrong. The vat is an additional element
>
> Wrong. It’s just a different arrangement of quarks and electrons.

Either it;s in a real world, or the universe is contrived an unnatural

> > That's non-explanatory. No-one thinks Occams' razor means you should
> > give up on explanation. "Explanations should be as simple as possible,
> > but no simpler"
>
> The Physical World Hypothesis doesn’t explain anything, as it is just
> a bunch of terms that are themselves in need of explanation.

All explanations are non-ultimate in that sense, but some are less
contrived than others.

> I’ll agree that there appear to be recurring patterns in our
> observations, and that these patterns can be described via
> mathematical equations. And that we can assign catchy labels like
> mass, spin, and charge to the various parts of the descriptive
> equations.
>
> But this is all description, not explanation.

Since it is predictive it is explanation. However it is not
ultimate explanation.

> You can construct
> speculative metaphysical theories about how the various equations and
> variables represent real things that exist in the world, but these are
> just fanciful stories. Mathematical metaphors not real explanations.

If there are no "real", ie ultimate, explanations, I will settle for
what is useful,
predictive, etc.

1Z

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Dec 3, 2010, 4:56:00 PM12/3/10
to Everything List
On Dec 2, 6:29 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> > On 11/27/2010 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
How do you know that?

> 2.  From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything
> outside of my mental states.  Yess

You perhaps can't conclusively conclude, but then you are left with
a best guess.

> 3.  Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist.  No.
>
> So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist.
>
> Why do I reject #3?  This comes back to taking a deflationary view of
> "personage".  It isn't "mental states belonging to Rex" so much as
> "mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view".
>
> I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like
> point of view (Salvia!).  Based on those recollections I find it
> entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental
> states exist.
>
> But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of
> mental states do or don't exist.  Maybe Jason's mental states exist,
> maybe they don't.  It's not really important.
>
> > It's when your conscious
> > experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious
> > experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the
> > experiences is needed.  Objective = intersubjective agreement.
>
> And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
> getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
> of subjective experience.

One only needs to go as far as the idea that mental states
supervene on physical states. That is not a full explanation
of consc. but is enough to explain how there are multiple
subjects who experience a common world.

> What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
> knowing what conscious experience "is"?  It's building a foundation on
> top of something which has no foundation.


So do it coherentisitcally then. Don;t take consciousness
or the world to be epistemologically prior, but do find
the best way of fitting them together.

> From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
> things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
> behind conscious experience.

But the idea that CE is a "place" and everything is either
inside it or outside it, is just a metaphor. It is certainly
no better than the scientific metaphor.

> As Hans Moravec says:
>
> "A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
> self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
> processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
> of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
> inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
> logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
> simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
> inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
> the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
> simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
> were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
> computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
> forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
> tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
> represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
> widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
> indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."
>
> Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
> no conclusions that can be drawn.
>
> And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
> exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?

Why can;t *your* conscious experience just exist?

Rex Allen

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Dec 5, 2010, 6:02:09 PM12/5/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 2:36 AM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> "Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
>>>> represented". But, as you say, the same information can be
>>>> represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
>>>> bit-patterns.
>>>>
>>>> And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
>>>> information. You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
>>>> bits, and viola! The magic is all in the interpretation. None of it
>>>> is in the bits. And interpretation requires an interpreter.
>>>
>>> I agree with this completely. Information alone, such as bits on a hard
>>> disk are meaningless without a corresponding program that reads them.
>>> Would
>>> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
>>> brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more
>>> like
>>> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?
>>
>> Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.
>>
>
> Do you believe as you type these responses into your computer you are
> helping bring new thoughts into existence?

Bringing "new" thoughts into existence? No, I don't think I'm doing
anything like that. To the extent that "I" exist at all, I do so only
as a spectator to thought, not as a generator of it.

Though, you do introduce here the question of time. Since my position
is that only conscious experience exists...time can only be an aspect
of conscious experience, not something that exists in addition to
conscious experience.

As I mentioned to Bruno earlier, even assuming physicalism, we can
only be consciously aware of what is represented by the neural
structure of our brains. Our awareness of time can only be of our
internal representation of it. We can't be directly aware of the
external passage of time, can we?

So I would say that time exists within conscious experience, conscious
experience doesn't exist within time. All experiences that exist, do
so eternally and timelessly. There are no "new" thoughts coming into
existence.


> If I understood the other
> threads you cited on accidentalism, it seems as though you do not believe
> anything is caused. Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that responding to
> these threads is pointless?

Well, there is the possibility that I'm wrong and that someone will
point out something I've overlooked.

Other than that, ya it's pointless. And yet I do it. Damn my lack of
free will...


>> Once you accept that the conscious experience of a rock exists, what
>> purpose does the actual rock serve? It's superfluous. If the rock can
>> "just exist", then the experience of the rock can "just exist" too -
>> entirely independent of the rock.
>
> Believing thought alone exists doesn't give any explanation for why I see a
> relatively ordered screen with text and icons I understand, compared to
> something like this:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tux_secure.jpg
>
> There are far more possible thoughts that consist of a visual field that
> looks random, do you find it surprising you happen to be a thought which is
> so compressible?

Nope. Meillassoux addresses your mistaken feeling of surprise in his paper:

"Such an astonishment thus rests upon reasoning that is dearly
probabilistic. The anthropist begins by being surprised by a
coincidence too strong to be imputed to chance alone, and then infers
the idea of an enigmatic finality having predetermined our universe to
comprise the initial constants and givens which render possible the
emergence of man. Anthropism thus reactivates a classical topos of
finalist thought: the remarking of the existence of a highly-ordered
reality (inherent to the organised and thinking being) whose cause
cannot reasonably be imputed to chance alone, and which consequently
imposes the hypothesis of a hidden finality.

Now, we can see in what way the critique of the probabilist sophism
permits us to challenge such a topos in a new way."


> Accepting that rocks exist allows the understanding that some of these rocks
> have the right conditions for live to develop on them, and evolve brains to
> use to understand the worlds they appear on.

Which all sounds very neat, if taken out of context.

But what is the significance of evolving brains? What is evolution?
What causes it?

What is the significance of understanding worlds? Let's just assume
deterministic physicalism. In that case, such understanding was baked
in from the first instant of existence wasn't it? It isn't a
surprising accomplishment...it was inevitable.

Even moving to probabilistic laws just adds a constrained element of chance.


> The thoughts of those life
> forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful
> for their survival.

The contents of thoughts and the survival of the thinker are caused by
the same thing...the initial conditions and causal laws of the
universe.

The contents of thoughts do not cause the survival of the thinker.

Like 1Z, you're assigning causal power to abstractions that only exist
"for you".


> If I start with thought as primitive, and try to
> explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further. While
> it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an
> intellectual dead end.

It's an answer that doesn't generate any additional questions...so
it's an "end" in that sense.

So there can only be one ultimate answer: there is no reason for the
way things are.

That's it.

Supposed "answers" that introduce unexplained causal laws or entities
are vulnerable to the same questions they were introduced to explain.

What explains the order of our experiences? Orderly causal laws! But
then what explains orderly causal laws?

You just end up with infinite regress. Or an unexplained first cause.
Or some sort of circular reasoning. This is a sign that you're on
the wrong path.


>> Once you accept the existence of conscious experiences, what purpose
>> does the brain serve? It's superfluous. If the brain can "just exist",
>> then the experiences supposedly caused by the brain can "just exist"
>> also.
>>
>> If not, why not?
>
> Rather than say the brain causes conscious experience to exist, I think it
> is more accurate to say the brain is conscious, or the brain experiences.
> Stated this way, it isn't superfluous.

But the brain is superfluous if you accept
functionalism/computationalism. Multiple realizeablity means that it
could be replaced by any functionally isomorphic system with no change
to experience.

So experience is something that could seemingly be common to a wide
variety of systems, even some that obey entirely different causal laws
than what is "experienced".

Right? So, I think your point doesn't go through.


>>> Isn't this just idealism? To me, the main problem with idealism is it
>>> doesn't explain why the thoughts we are about to experience are
>>> predictable under a framework of physical laws.
>>
>> But then you have to explain the existence, consistency, and
>> predictability of this framework of physical laws.
>
> I see no reason we should abandon this goal, there is no evidence that the
> progress of human understanding has reached an impasse.

It's not a matter of human understanding reaching an impasse.

What is it exactly that we're understanding? Truth?

What, exactly, is human understanding?

How does human understanding fit into the context of a deterministic
universe? Probabilistic?


>> You still have the exact same questions, but now your asking them of
>> this framework instead of about your conscious experiences. You just
>> pushed the questions back a level by introducing a layer of
>> unexplained entities. Your explanation needs an explanation.
>>
>
> Mathematical or arithmetical realism seems like a good place to stop. It is
> easy to accept that mathematical truths simply are.

I find it easy to accept that conscious experience simply is.

That you find it easy to accept something else is neither here nor
there. Why do you find it easy to accept?

So If you start with some set of assumptions, and use certain rules of
inference, you can derive certain conclusions.

Other starting assumptions and other rules inference will lead to you
arrive at other conclusions. There's an infinity of possible starting
assumptions and rules of inference and conclusions.

But so what? This doesn't strike me as a suitable ontological
foundation for conscious experience. An assumption requires an
assumer, an inference requires an inferer, and conclusion requires a
concluder.

I'll agree that you can describe aspects of conscious experience using
math. But I don't see that conscious experience *is* math, or is
generated by math.


> If it can be
> demonstrated that this leads to consciousness through some level of
> indirection then this may also explain existence, consistency and
> predictability, etc.

*IF*.

So I know math via conscious experience. I've had the experience of
doing some math.

But math causes conscious experience? And also anger, love, the
experience of seeing red? And even experiences of doing math?

Math causes experiences of math.

Hmmmm. I don't see how or why that would be.


>> Also, you've introduced a new question: How does unconscious matter
>> governed by unconscious physical laws give rise to conscious
>> experience?
>>
>
> How does unconscious matter become conscious? I think it is a similar
> question with a similar answer to "How does unliving matter become alive?"
> The answer is through the right organization.

David Chalmers addresses this here:

-------
http://consc.net/papers/moving.html

Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to
deflate the "hard problem" by using analogies to other domains, where
talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a
vitalist arguing about the hard problem of "life", or a neuroscientist
arguing about the hard problem of "perception". Similarly, Paul
Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying
about the hard problem of "light", and Patricia Churchland brings up
an analogy involving "heat". In all these cases, we are to suppose,
someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than
structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them
wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better.

This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out
that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the
whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is that
there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and
problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments
in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as
something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or
less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at
least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be
hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued
otherwise.

When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious
that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a
living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment? How
does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point:
their driving question was always "How could a mere physical system
perform these complex functions?", not "Why are these functions
accompanied by life?" It is no accident that Dennett's version of a
vitalist is "imaginary". There is no distinct "hard problem" of life,
and there never was one, even for vitalists.

In general, when faced with the challenge "explain X", we need to ask:
what are the phenomena in the vicinity of X that need explaining, and
how might we explain them? In the case of life, what cries out for
explanation are such phenomena as reproduction, adaptation,
metabolism, self-sustenance, and so on: all complex functions. There
is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of
life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and
indeed there never was. In the case of consciousness, on the other
hand, the manifest phenomena that need explaining are such things as
discrimination, reportability, integration (the functions), and
experience. So this analogy does not even get off the ground.

------

> I think a conscious
> organization of matter is a process that is aware of information.

So I have my conception of matter. And I have my conception of
information. And I have my direct knowledge of conscious experience.

But I don't see any combination of matter and information, as I
conceive them at least, that adds up to conscious experience.

Maybe you have some other conception of matter and infomation, or
maybe your conscious experience isn't the same as mine though.

So, as I've said, I find it quite plausible that one can represent the
contents of conscious experience using quarks and electrons or
whatever.

If you were to set up a computer simulation that "represents" how my
conscious experience might change over time, then you could interpret
that system as being me.

But I don't see how representation could give rise to consciousness as
I experience it. My experience isn't of being made a particular
arrangment of quarks and electrons. My experience is of something
else entirely.

So there would have to be some principle that connects arrangements of
quarks and electrons to the conscious experience of sitting under a
tree. And I don't see any such principle being articulated.

Bruno usually comes in with something about self-reference and lobian
machines at about this point. And sure, you can represent
self-reference in logic. But again, I see no reason that being able
to represent "X" in any way brings "X" into existence or explains
"X's" existence.

Logic is something that people do. Logic isn't something that creates
people or explains there existence. Bruno has it exactly backwards.


>> Meillassoux's solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter
>> proposed resolutions to Hume's "problem of induction" that involve
>> probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases.
>>
>> Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set
>> theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set
>> formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is
>> also no absolute totality of all possible cases.
>>
>> In other words: There is no "set of all possible worlds". And thus
>> "we cannot legitimately construct any set within which the foregoing
>> probabilistic reasoning could make sense."
>
> What about idealism, is there no "set of all possible thoughts"? If not,
> what are the implications for your theory?

Meillassoux's point is not that there are no possible thoughts, but
rather that the collection of possible thoughts aren't a set...not
even an infinite set.

"In short, we begin by giving ourselves a set of possible cases, each
one representing a conceivable world having as much chance as the
others of being chosen in the end, and conclude from this that it is
infinitely improbable that our own universe should constantly be drawn
by chance from such a set, unless a hidden necessity presided secretly
over the result.

Now, if this reasoning cannot be justified, it is because there does
not truly exist any means to construct a set of possible universes
within which the notion of probability could still be employed. The
only two means for determining a universe of cases are recourse to
experience, or recourse to a mathematical construction capable of
justifying unaided the cardinality (the 'size') of the set of possible
worlds. Now, both of these paths are equally blocked here."


>> Things might be that way. But this requires an explanation of the
>> existence of the information and the interpreter. And then an
>> explanation of the explanation. And then an explanation of the
>> explanation of the explanation. And so on.
>>
>
> Once you get to mathematical truth, will you really need an explanation for
> why 1 + 0 = 1?

How did I get to mathematical truth? But what process? What explains
that process? Why that process instead of some other process?

Why do any such processes exist at all?

How do I know that the process has caused me to believe something that
is actually true instead of only "hallucinogenically" true?

Also, what is mathematical truth? Isn't it essentially tautological?

"Everything that is a proposition of logic has got to be in some sense
or the other like a tautology. It has got to be something that has
some peculiar quality, which I do not know how to define, that belongs
to logical propositions but not to others." -- Bertrand Russell

>> Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn't seem promising, and
>> doesn't seem necessary.
>>
>> Why not just accept accidental idealism?
>>
>> Rex
>>
>
> It doesn't seem to lead to anything fruitful, but perhaps I do not
> understand it well enough.

It's an answer to a metaphysical question: What is the nature of existence?

What leads you to believe that this question *should* have a useful answer?

Accidental idealism has nothing to do with physics. It is purely
about metaphysics.

Physics and metaphysics are two different things...which is why there
are two separate terms.

Physics is about usefulness. Metaphysics is about the nature of existence.

Physics is about the ways in which facts can be connected.
Metaphysics is about what it means that there are any facts to start
with.

Physics doesn't require metaphysics, though for contingent reasons may
profit from it.

Metaphysics doesn't require physics, though for contingent reasons may
profit from it.


> Do you see it providing any answers of the
> following questions:
>
> Why are there thoughts about brains?

Why are there brains? Why are there physical laws that govern the
function of brains? Why those physical laws instead of some other
physical laws? Why do physical laws continue to hold over time?

And for each answer you may propose, what explains that answer? What
are things that way instead of some other way? If there's something
that enforces the consistency of physical laws - then what enforces
the consistency of the enforcer?

The only possible answer is: there is no reason that there are
thoughts about brains.

But given the problems introduced by "multiple realizability" and the
possibilities of "dishonest" universes, the existence of brains seems
questionable anyway.

However, the existence of *thoughts* about brains is beyond question.
I've had them myself!


> Why can my thoughts contain memories of successful predictions made with an
> understanding of physics?

Same as above.


> What is my thought likely to be 10 seconds from now?

My? What is the nature of personhood? What is time? Does the term
"now" have objective significance or only subjective significance?


> Why is my thought compressible rather than incompressible randomness?

There is no reason for that.

How do *you* explain this fact?


> Why do my thoughts contain ideas about a many billion year history of
> evolution?

Because billions of years of evolution seems consistent with your
observations. But "seems consistent with your observations" and "is
true" are two entirely different things.

Why do you think your thoughts contain ideas about a many billion year
history of evolution? Presumably something causes your thoughts to
contain these ideas...but why? And what does it mean that this is the
case?

Rex

Bruno Marchal

unread,
Dec 6, 2010, 9:36:06 AM12/6/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com

On 06 Dec 2010, at 00:02, Rex Allen wrote:


> Math causes experiences of math.
>
> Hmmmm. I don't see how or why that would be.

If you assume Mechanism, the idea that the brain is Turing emulable,
then it is a theorem.

And if you assume the classical theory of knowledge, then you can even
understand how that happens. It happens because universal numbers,
relatively to infinities of universal numbers, cannot see the
relationship between they representable proofs and their private and
non representable truth.

You talk like if Gödel's and Tarski's theorems don't exist. You are
confusing all the time the notion of mathematical truth, which is not
representable in any way, with the notion of proofs, which are
formalizable and can be represented.

Anyway, your "theory" (which is really only a personal
phenomenological report) needs to presuppose that "we" are not Turing
emulable. This means that "we" cannot accept a digital brain or body
substitution. I respect that opinion, but I am still waiting what is
your non-mechanistic explanation of consciousness, matter and why a
majority of humans believe in prime numbers.
To say that consciousness just exists and nothing else is not better
than to say that God created it all. That explains nothing.

You did not reply to my objection, that if your "accidental idealism
theory" is correct, I can only accept it accidentally, making even
absurd your attempts to convince us. Your very attempt to reason with
us seems to me to contradict your "theory".

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

1Z

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Dec 6, 2010, 12:49:17 PM12/6/10
to Everything List


On Dec 5, 11:02 pm, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So I would say that time exists within conscious experience, conscious
> experience doesn't exist within time.  All experiences that exist, do
> so eternally and timelessly.  

So you say, but nothing is experienced *as* eternal


> > The thoughts of those life
> > forms is not likely to look like random snow, since that would not be useful
> > for their survival.
>
> The contents of thoughts and the survival of the thinker are caused by
> the same thing...the initial conditions and causal laws of the
> universe.
>
> The contents of thoughts do not cause the survival of the thinker.

They are a practical and high level description of the causes.
The existence of the trees does not disprove the forest

> Like 1Z, you're assigning causal power to abstractions that only exist
> "for you".

There is a difference between a high level description and a pure
abstraction

> > If I start with thought as primitive, and try to
> > explain that thought under accidental idealism I can go no further.  While
> > it explains the existence of thought (by definition) it seems like an
> > intellectual dead end.
>
> It's an answer that doesn't generate any additional questions...so
> it's an "end" in that sense.

But so is any explanation that stops dead somewhere. However,
you object to that. You object to persuing an explanation back
N places only to stop dead -- except where N=0.

> So there can only be one ultimate answer:  there is no reason for the
> way things are.

OK. So why is the N=0 version better than the N>0 version?

> That's it.
>
> Supposed "answers" that introduce unexplained causal laws or entities
> are vulnerable to the same questions they were introduced to explain.
>
> What explains the order of our experiences?  Orderly causal laws!  But
> then what explains orderly causal laws?
>
> You just end up with infinite regress.  Or an unexplained first cause.

Your version of events is unexpected first cause where the cause
is identical to the effect.

Rex Allen

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Dec 6, 2010, 11:54:21 PM12/6/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2010, at 05:15, Rex Allen wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Would
>>> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
>>> brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view more
>>> like
>>> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?
>>
>> Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.
>
> Ah! The key point where we differ the most. Person is the key concept for
> those who grasp mechanism and its consequences.
> At least you don't eliminate consciousness, but you do eliminate persons.
> Brr...

Once one has abandoned libertarian free will, I don’t see that the
concept of “persons” matters much anyway.

>> Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter
>> proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve
>> probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases.
>>
>> Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set
>> theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set
>> formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets, there is
>> also no absolute totality of all possible cases.
>>
>> Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising, and
>> doesn’t seem necessary.
>
> Meissaloux seems to ignore that the set of partial computable is closed for
> the Cantorian diagonalization. That is the key technical point which makes
> Church thesis possible and *digital* mechanism so powerful (and computer
> science a science).

If one doesn’t accept that conscious experience is the result of
computable functions, then I don’t see that this is relevant.

So the Church-Turing thesis is basically that "everything computable
is computable by a Turing machine."

Further, since an algorithm is a finite string of characters from a
finite alphabet, the number of computable functions is countable.

You can’t use Cantorian diagonalization in this case because doing so
would require you to write a computable function that could generate a
list of the other computable functions, and then create it’s own
output for input “n” by sampling the nth output of the nth computable
function and adding 1 - with the problem being that because of the
halting problem you can never generate a list of *only* the computable
functions.

Which means that Meillassoux’s idea won’t work *if* one assumes that
conscious experience is computable...since in that case there is, in
some sense, a set of possible conscious experiences.

But if one doesn’t start from the assumption that conscious experience
is computable, then your point has no bearing on Meillassoux’s
argument. Right?

And, as an accidentalist, I don’t assume that conscious experience is
computable.

While some sequences of experience may have aspects that lend
themselves to being accurately described via computable functions, I
see no reason to accept that *all* aspects of *all* experiences are
thus describable.

So...an interesting argument, but I think not applicable.

Rex

Brent Meeker

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Dec 7, 2010, 12:40:34 AM12/7/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 12/6/2010 8:54 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
  
> On 29 Nov 2010, at 05:15, Rex Allen wrote:
    
>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
      
>>>  Would
>>> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same way as a
>>> brain could be conscious?  Isn't this mechanism?  Or is your view more
>>> like
>>> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?
        
>>
>> Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.
      
>
> Ah! The key point where we differ the most. Person is the key concept for
> those who grasp mechanism and its consequences.
> At least you don't eliminate consciousness, but you do eliminate persons.
> Brr...
    

Rex Allen

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Dec 7, 2010, 1:13:39 PM12/7/10
to everyth...@googlegroups.com

How so?

1) There is no reason for what I do. (My actions are random.)
2) Therefore I have no free-will.

I see no contradiction...?


>> 3) My "experienced" justification is that these emails are mostly an
>> opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on
>> these topics. I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it
>> doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is.
>>
>> As to solipsism, meh. In what sense do you mean?
>>
>> Methodological solipsism, yes. Metaphysical solipsism, no.
>>
>> 1. My mental states are the only things I have access to. Yes.
>
> This depends what you mean by access. I am accessing and modifying your
> thought processes right now.

This assumes the existence of a causal chain between you and I.

What is the nature of this causal link, do you think?

In your ontology how is it that you "cause" me to act differently?


>> 2. From my mental states I cannot conclude the existence of anything
>> outside of my mental states. Yes.
>
> No. You cannot prove the existence of anything outside.

Conclude. Prove. I don't see a significant difference?


> But you cannot prove the inexistence of anything outside too.

Right...that was my point in #3.


> You are confusing ~Bp with B~p. From your inability to prove p, you conclude
> that you have proved ~p.

No no no. I think there are things that exist in addition to my
current mental state. Namely, other mental states. My past mental
states, my future mental states, other mental states that aren't
"mine". These all exist, I would venture.

So I don't strenuously deny the possibility of something
non-experiential existing - but ultimately I'm not sure what it means
to say that something exists outside of experience.

So let's take the set of all things that I know about rocks. Now,
let's remove the properties from this set that are just aspects of my
experience. For instance, any property possessed by dream-rocks or
hallucinated-rocks, we will subtract from the set of properties that
belong to "real" rocks.

Now...after this subtraction, what is left that is unique to "real
rocks", as opposed to "experiential rocks"?

Nothing, right? So what are we talking about when we discuss "real" rocks?

It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself
except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of
it. This is a pretty slim reed.

Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of
something that we can't conceive of. Maybe there are things that exist
but are inconceivable to me...but where can you go with that? What is
the point of trying to proactively account for something you can't
conceive of and have no reason to believe actually exists?

The idea of a physical world is superfluous to the world of
experience, has no clear definition, and can't even be described
except in experiential terms.

It's a chimera - purely a creation of the mind.

Do you think?


>> 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No.
>
> All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send.

My other posts said that only conscious experience exists. I never
said only *my* conscious experience.


>> So, I only score two out three on the metaphysical solipsism checklist.
>>
>> Why do I reject #3? This comes back to taking a deflationary view of
>> "personage". It isn't "mental states belonging to Rex" so much as
>> "mental states whose contents include a Rex-like-point-of-view".
>>
>> I have recollections of mental states which did not include a Rex-like
>> point of view (Salvia!). Based on those recollections I find it
>> entirely plausible (though not certain) that non-Rex-flavored mental
>> states exist.
>>
>> But beyond that I can't say anything further about what kinds of
>> mental states do or don't exist. Maybe Jason's mental states exist,
>> maybe they don't. It's not really important.
>
> You really look like a solipsist now. From 'cosmic consciousness' *you* can
> doubt about Rex's bodies, not about Jason or anyone consciousness. You mix
> categories. You are preventing all possibilities of theorizing at the start.

I'm trying to develop a theory that rules out all other possibilities, yes.


>>> It's when your conscious
>>> experience infers that you are communicating with another conscious
>>> experience that the need for an explanation of the similarity of the
>>> experiences is needed. Objective = intersubjective agreement.
>>
>> And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
>> getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
>> of subjective experience.
>
> That is non sense. It is like saying, before trying to build a pendulum we
> need a plausible explanation of gravity.

Your analogy doesn't hold since we don't have to infer the existence
of our consciousness from what we observe via our intersubjective
experience.

So we observe the pendulum and infer the existence of gravity to
account for it's behavior.

I don't infer the existence of my consciousness from observing my
interactions with other people.

I might infer other people's consciousness from my interactions with
them. But, what of the people in dreams and hallucinations? Should I
conclude that they are also conscious?

I can't make any judgement on the metaphysical significance of my
observations until I know the metaphysical status of the consciousness
via which the observations are made.

Just as you would assign different metaphysical significance to a
pendulum experiment that you perform in a dream than you would to a
pendulum experiment that you perform when awake.


> 1Z was right: you ask for an
> absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist, given that only
> personal consciousness can be considered as absolute.

An absolute explanation is available. Meillassoux discusses it in his
book, "After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency".

The absolute explanation is that there is no reason for how things are.

The idea that only consciousness exists (fundamentally and uncaused)
follows, according the reasoning I outlined above.


>> What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
>> knowing what conscious experience "is"? It's building a foundation on
>> top of something which has no foundation.
>
> This moves will kill all theories. That is not necessary.

It doesn't kill all theories. Meillassoux's is compatible. Though it
does kill your theory, as well as physicalist theories.


>> From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
>> things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
>> behind conscious experience.
>
> Well, that is a theory depending statement. You want theories to be certain.
> That does not exist at all. (Well many argue that elementary arithmetic is
> certain. I am not sure, but I do take it as more sure than many other
> theories).
>
> Do you agree that 5 is a prime number?

I agree that if I start with certain assumptions, and make certain
inferences from those assumption, then I will conclude that 5 is
divisible only by itself and 1.

So if I assume what you assume, and I think like you think, then I
will conclude what you conclude.

Even better: If I believe what you believe, then we will believe the
same things.

But this is a story about us and our beliefs, not a story about prime
numbers - which only exist for us, not independently of us.

If prime numbers exist independently of us, then how do we gain
experience of them? Our experience is one thing, numbers are another
thing - how are the two things brought together to interact with one
another? How do numbers "cause" us to be aware of them? How do we
"know" these independently existing numbers? Or do we merely infer
their existence?


>> As Hans Moravec says:
>>
>> "A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
>> self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
>> processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
>> of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
>> inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
>> logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
>> simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
>> inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
>> the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
>> simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
>> were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
>> computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
>> forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
>> tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
>> represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
>> widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
>> indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."
>>
>> Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
>> no conclusions that can be drawn.
>
> But then how could *you* infer anything from this, given that you don't have
> an account of consciousness when your own "theory" asks for it.

Conscious experience is fundamental, therefore no account can be given
of it. Fundamental things can't be explained in terms of anything
else. That's what makes them fundamental.

What I infer from the Moravec quote is that if computationalism is
true, then you can never know what underlies experience and any
further metaphysical speculation is pointless. In that case we are
trapped within the world of experience that is generated by the
underlying computational substrate, and the experiences we have and
the beliefs we hold are those necessitated by whatever programs happen
to run on that substrate.

The end result isn't that different from conscious experience being
fundamental. We've just added an extra metaphysical layer or two that
don't really serve any "useful" purpose.

Again, metaphysical answers are never "useful" in any practical sense.
They never add anything over instrumentalism, except perhaps to spark
the imagination via metaphor and analogy.

If you're only interested in usefulness, then you may as well pass
metaphysics by.


>> And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
>> exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?
>
>
> I'm afraid you are both solipsist and inconsistent.

Methodological solipsism, not metaphysical solipsism.

Inconsistent in what way?


> You evacuate all
> beliefs/ideas/theories in favor of one certainty: consciousness. That is
> throwing the reality-baby with the bath water in the extreme.
>
> All theories are based on assumptions and things we accept without
> understanding. We can never be sure of the truth of those assumptions. We
> can only hope that we can share them with others, and that they can explain
> what we are interested in. This is always relative to what we accept as
> starting *assumptions*. Always.

Starting with the assumption that there is some reason for the way
things are leads to infinite regress, regardless of the particular
details of the reason.

Starting with the assumption that there is no reason for the way
things are is the only way, even in principle, to get an answer. That
you don't find the answer aesthetically appealing or personally
fulfilling is beside the point. It's the only possible answer.


> The study of consciousness, when done honestly can lead us very close to
> inconsistency. You seem to bridge a gap which is not bridgeable (on earth).
> You talk like a Löbian machine (like G) which repeats what G* says, but
> doing this you are losing Löbianity and this makes G* wrong about you. You
> might have a good insight on something deep, but you make it false by
> presenting it as a "theory".
>
> Mystical and personal insight can help to find a theory, but they cannot and
> should not replace any theory. That is why the buddhists insist that
> enlightenment is a private matter, and can be judged only by what you can
> offer to the others when you come back in the village.
>
> You can also just enjoy the bliss, but you can't, I insist, communicate it
> as a theory without making yourself inconsistent.
>
> That's why the mystical truth is a 'secret'. That's probably why Lao Tseu
> said that those who does not know will talk, and those who does know will
> keep silent. For machines and numbers, that is akin to why G and G* are
> different, and why 'terrestrial or effective machines' have to remain
> (publicly) modest.

You're dreaming of being awake, and I think you know this. But you
try to reason your way out of the dream. But reasoning inside a dream
is dream-reasoning, and only applies (if at all) within the dream.

Nothing can be known, not even this.

-- Rex

Brent Meeker

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Dec 7, 2010, 1:44:52 PM12/7/10
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If you know that rocks are hard then that is a true belief, independent of your experience.  Otherwise you don't know it.


It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself
except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of
it. This is a pretty slim reed.

Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of
something that we can't conceive of. 

You've slip from existence of things to treating existence itself as a thing.  It is easy to conceive of a rock as existing, even if you can't conceive of its existence as a ding an sich.


Maybe there are things that exist
but are inconceivable to me...but where can you go with that? What is
the point of trying to proactively account for something you can't
conceive of and have no reason to believe actually exists?

The idea of a physical world is superfluous to the world of
experience, has no clear definition, and can't even be described
except in experiential terms.

It's a chimera - purely a creation of the mind.

Do you think?


  
3.  Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist.  No.
      
All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send.
    
My other posts said that only conscious experience exists.  I never
said only *my* conscious experience.
  

Why suppose that they do?  Where's your proof?
What "them"? 

But, what of the people in dreams and hallucinations?  Should I
conclude that they are also conscious?

I can't make any judgement on the metaphysical significance of my
observations until I know the metaphysical status of the consciousness
via which the observations are made.

Just as you would assign different metaphysical significance to a
pendulum experiment that you perform in a dream than you would to a
pendulum experiment that you perform when awake.


  
1Z was right: you ask for an
absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist, given that only
personal consciousness can be considered as absolute.
    
An absolute explanation is available.  Meillassoux discusses it in his
book, "After Finitude:  An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency".

The absolute explanation is that there is no reason for how things are.
  

But what is the explanation for there being no reason?
But that's what makes them useful for explaining other things.


What I infer from the Moravec quote is that if computationalism is
true, then you can never know what underlies experience and any
further metaphysical speculation is pointless.  In that case we are
trapped within the world of experience that is generated by the
underlying computational substrate, and the experiences we have and
the beliefs we hold are those necessitated by whatever programs happen
to run on that substrate.

The end result isn't that different from conscious experience being
fundamental.  We've just added an extra metaphysical layer or two that
don't really serve any "useful" purpose.

Again, metaphysical answers are never "useful" in any practical sense.
 They never add anything over instrumentalism, except perhaps to spark
the imagination via metaphor and analogy.
  

Which is very useful.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 7, 2010, 4:43:47 PM12/7/10
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On 07 Dec 2010, at 05:54, Rex Allen wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>> On 29 Nov 2010, at 05:15, Rex Allen wrote:
>>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Jason Resch
>>> <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Would
>>>> you admit then, that a computer which interprets bits the same
>>>> way as a
>>>> brain could be conscious? Isn't this mechanism? Or is your view
>>>> more
>>>> like
>>>> the Buddhist idea that there is no thinker, only thought?
>>>
>>> Right, my view is that there is no thinker, only thought.
>>
>> Ah! The key point where we differ the most. Person is the key
>> concept for
>> those who grasp mechanism and its consequences.
>> At least you don't eliminate consciousness, but you do eliminate
>> persons.
>> Brr...
>
> Once one has abandoned libertarian free will, I don’t see that the
> concept of “persons” matters much anyway.

Yes. That is what I fear a bit with your theory. It is an open problem
with mechanism to distinguish persons, and if there are many persons
or only one, but the concept is primordial, if only because "matter"
is a person building thing, in some sense.
And we get it by the fact that correct machine cannot see that Bp is
equivalent with Bp & p.

>
>
>
>>> Meillassoux’s solution uses Cantorian detotalization to counter
>>> proposed resolutions to Hume’s “problem of induction” that involve
>>> probabilistic logic depending upon a totality of cases.
>>>
>>> Meillassoux's main point with this digression into Cantorian set
>>> theory is that just as there can be no end to the process of set
>>> formation and thus no such thing as the totality of all sets,
>>> there is
>>> also no absolute totality of all possible cases.
>>>
>>> Down the rabbit hole of infinite regress. Doesn’t seem promising,
>>> and
>>> doesn’t seem necessary.
>>
>> Meissaloux seems to ignore that the set of partial computable is
>> closed for
>> the Cantorian diagonalization. That is the key technical point
>> which makes
>> Church thesis possible and *digital* mechanism so powerful (and
>> computer
>> science a science).
>
> If one doesn’t accept that conscious experience is the result of
> computable functions, then I don’t see that this is relevant.

We have to be careful/ With mechanism consciousness is not the result
of a computation, or a computable function. It depends on all
computations, and that dependence itself is not computable.
Consciousness depends more on truth than computation. That is why the
"p" appears in Bp & p. "B" is computable, but "p" alone is not.
True("p") is not even definable.


>
> So the Church-Turing thesis is basically that "everything computable
> is computable by a Turing machine."

OK.

>
> Further, since an algorithm is a finite string of characters from a
> finite alphabet, the number of computable functions is countable.

OK.


>
> You can’t use Cantorian diagonalization in this case because doing so
> would require you to write a computable function that could generate a
> list of the other computable functions, and then create it’s own
> output for input “n” by sampling the nth output of the nth computable
> function and adding 1 - with the problem being that because of the
> halting problem you can never generate a list of *only* the computable
> functions.

But you can do that. You can enumerate the programs. What the
diagonalization will show is that although the programs are
mechanically enumerable, the total program, capable of being
controlled, are not. That is why the Universal dovetailer has to
dovetail, it cannot know in advance which programs will stop or not.
The diagonalization does not prove that the total programs are not
ebumerable, but it shows that it is not mechanically enumerable.
Universality makes you partially not controllable. It is a key for
giving sense to the whole UD*, and AUDA.


>
> Which means that Meillassoux’s idea won’t work *if* one assumes that
> conscious experience is computable...since in that case there is, in
> some sense, a set of possible conscious experiences.

That does not follow. Consciousness is distributed on the border of
the UD*. That is not a computable structure, even with oracle.


>
> But if one doesn’t start from the assumption that conscious experience
> is computable, then your point has no bearing on Meillassoux’s
> argument. Right?

I don't know.


>
> And, as an accidentalist, I don’t assume that conscious experience is
> computable.

Are you saying that you necessarily say no the digitalist surgeon? Or
that you could say "yes", or "no" accidentally, and what would that
mean?
Again, try to avoid the expression "conscious experience is
computable", because, once you say yes to the doctor and reason a
little bit, you should understand that not only consciousness is not
computable, but it is even not descriptible in computational terms.
Consciousness relies on truth, which is highly not computable.
Note that if you are ready to smoke salvia, somehow you are already
saying yes to a brain intrusive doctor, which happens to be a plant.

>
> While some sequences of experience may have aspects that lend
> themselves to being accurately described via computable functions, I
> see no reason to accept that *all* aspects of *all* experiences are
> thus describable.

Your intuition are coherent with the intuition of the universal
machine looking inward. Consciousness is not amenable to anything we
could describe in any finite or infinite ways.

>
> So...an interesting argument, but I think not applicable.

I don't do any philosophy. I keep my opinion on such matter private. I
just say that IF we are machine THEN physics emerges (entirely,
curiously enough) from the numbers, and this in a sufficiently precise
way that we can test it experimentally. That is all my point, except
that I show also the beginning of the extraction (with AUDA).

If for some reason you believe that it is *impossible* that the brain
functions like a digital machine at some level of its description,
then the consequences of mechanism does indeed not apply to your
"theory".
But don't say that you reject the doctor's proposal because
consciousness is not computable, because saying yes to the doctor is
precisely what will make consciousness not computable indeed.

In AUDA, the full (first order) terrestrial intellect (qG) is PI_2
complete, making it highly not computable, not decidable, etc... The
full (first order) *divine* intelligible hypostase (qG*) is PI_1
complete even with God (well Arithmetical Truth) as Oracle. It is
beyond the whole arithmetical hierarchy. Recursion theory is really
the theory of the ladder(s)of non computability, that's extends far
beyond the computable, and what UDA shows is that universal machine's
consciousness are confronted with *all that*.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

Bruno Marchal

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Dec 8, 2010, 10:30:15 AM12/8/10
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The contradiction is implicit in "to be consistent, I have to ...", and then saying "that you do this as a matter of fact".

Your approach is self-defeating. I will illustrate this again below.

I also don't see how you can derive anything (and thus "1)" and "2)") from "consciousness just exist".





3)  My "experienced" justification is that these emails are mostly an
opportunity to articulate, clarify, and develop my own thoughts on
these topics.  I take an instrumentalist view of the process...it
doesn't matter what Jason's metaphysical status is.

As to solipsism, meh.  In what sense do you mean?

Methodological solipsism, yes.  Metaphysical solipsism, no.

1.  My mental states are the only things I have access to.  Yes.

This depends what you mean by access. I am accessing and modifying your
thought processes right now.

This assumes the existence of a causal chain between you and I.

Or just arithmetical relations. "causal" is a high level concept, like consciousness, belief, free will, etc.




What is the nature of this causal link, do you think?

Arithmetical relations + physics (where physics is a relative measure on infinities of relative (to my bodies) arithmetical relations (that is not computable).




In your ontology how is it that you "cause" me to act differently?

My friendly compassion.

Could be my old friendly compassion toward my Self.



You are confusing ~Bp with B~p. From your inability to prove p, you conclude
that you have proved ~p.

No no no.  I think there are things that exist in addition to my
current mental state.  Namely, other mental states.  My past mental
states, my future mental states, other mental states that aren't
"mine".  These all exist, I would venture.

So I don't strenuously deny the possibility of something
non-experiential existing - but ultimately I'm not sure what it means
to say that something exists outside of experience.

But you accept that "other mental states that aren't mine" can exist, but this is currently outside of experience for you here and now. So I cannot understand.




So let's take the set of all things that I know about rocks. Now,
let's remove the properties from this set that are just aspects of my
experience. For instance, any property possessed by dream-rocks or
hallucinated-rocks, we will subtract from the set of properties that
belong to "real" rocks.

Now...after this subtraction, what is left that is unique to "real
rocks", as opposed to "experiential rocks"?

Nothing, right? So what are we talking about when we discuss "real" rocks?

The case of rock or piece of matter is perhaps misleading in our immaterialist context. You should know that a piece of rock in the mechanist theory is given by an infinity of computational histories. Those are the one which I can bet on from my current computational state when I look at the rock. If relative (to my bodies) computational histories of the couple (me+rock) contains stable pattern simplifiable in terms of particles and waves interactions, then I will be able to approximate the rock by such talk, but that is always an approximation, and each of those particles are themselves the non computable results of an infinities of infinite computations. The price of the mechanist hypothesis is that the "primitive matter" emerge from something highly complex. Like in Plato matter is somehow the border of the universal mind, and basic physics is very (mathematically) complex (but then string theory, loop gravity, etc. are not so more easy too).
The point is that when we discuss "real rocks" we discuss on (plausibly) stable and sharable patterns occurring in our first person plural relative local 'reality'.




It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself
except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of
it. This is a pretty slim reed.

Everything physical depend on us (with "us" the universal numbers).

Now it is part of the mechanist theory that arithmetical truth does not depend on us, but "us" emerge from it. 




Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of
something that we can't conceive of.

That's a first person point of view. But machine looking inward already guess that there is something beyond themselves.



Maybe there are things that exist
but are inconceivable to me...but where can you go with that? What is
the point of trying to proactively account for something you can't
conceive of and have no reason to believe actually exists?

No absolute reason, but so many evidences.



The idea of a physical world is superfluous to the world of
experience, has no clear definition, and can't even be described
except in experiential terms.

It's a chimera - purely a creation of the mind.

Do you think?

The idea of a purely primary physical world is not just superfluous, it is contradictory with the fact that I could survive with a physical digital brain. It is not even a creation of the brain. It is at most an inconsistent academic proposal. But it reassures some animals when they search their preys. It is a locally useful simplification. I am all for methodological materialism, especially when I do coffee.






3.  Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist.  No.

All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send.

My other posts said that only conscious experience exists.  I never
said only *my* conscious experience.

You lost me here. That makes unclear past discussions.



And I would say that trying to explain intersubjective experience is
getting a little ahead of things until one has a plausible explanation
of subjective experience.

That is non sense. It is like saying, before trying to build a pendulum we
need a plausible explanation of gravity.

Your analogy doesn't hold since we don't have to infer the existence
of our consciousness from what we observe via our intersubjective
experience.

So we observe the pendulum and infer the existence of gravity to
account for it's behavior.

I don't infer the existence of my consciousness from observing my
interactions with other people.

I might infer other people's consciousness from my interactions with
them.  But, what of the people in dreams and hallucinations?  Should I
conclude that they are also conscious?


You might. In some dream or drug experience, you might be momentarily dissociating different parts of your brain, which might have their own consciousness and talk to each other.

But without going that far, you might bet that some level of dream are shared by different "users", so that you can guess that other consciousness exists.





I can't make any judgement on the metaphysical significance of my
observations until I know the metaphysical status of the consciousness
via which the observations are made.

Don't see why.




Just as you would assign different metaphysical significance to a
pendulum experiment that you perform in a dream than you would to a
pendulum experiment that you perform when awake.

Not at all. I do exactly the same inference. It is the point of the dream (and of awakeness). Unless the dream is lucid, but then it is a different situation. I never know when I am awake. But from times to times I know when I am dreaming.




1Z was right: you ask for an
absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist, given that only
personal consciousness can be considered as absolute.

An absolute explanation is available.  Meillassoux discusses it in his
book, "After Finitude:  An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency".

The absolute explanation is that there is no reason for how things are.


Happy the one who is satisfied by that. 
My father tried such theory on me when I was four, but eventually told me to ask my mother (at least).




The idea that only consciousness exists (fundamentally and uncaused)
follows, according the reasoning I outlined above.

It follows trivially.
But the idea that consciousness exists fundamentally and uncaused (in the physical sense) follows non trivially from elementary arithmetic, and this in a way which makes it testable in the usual sense of the scientific endeavor.





What can you reliably infer from your conscious experience without
knowing what conscious experience "is"?  It's building a foundation on
top of something which has no foundation.

This moves will kill all theories. That is not necessary.

It doesn't kill all theories.  Meillassoux's is compatible.  Though it
does kill your theory, as well as physicalist theories.

It kills all theories in the sense that it is equivalent with "don't ask".





From conscious experience, I'd think that you can only reliably infer
things about conscious experience, not about what exists outside of or
behind conscious experience.

Well, that is a theory depending statement. You want theories to be certain.
That does not exist at all. (Well many argue that elementary arithmetic is
certain. I am not sure, but I do take it as more sure than many other
theories).

Do you agree that 5 is a prime number?

I agree that if I start with certain assumptions, and make certain
inferences from those assumption, then I will conclude that 5 is
divisible only by itself and 1.

That is what I mean by "believing in elementary arithmetic".
How do you derive such a belief, that you have, from your theory?
But again, what you say here contradicts accidental idealism. You should have said that you have accidentally the belief that 5 is prime (and I would not have been able to put any meaning on that).




So if I assume what you assume, and I think like you think, then I
will conclude what you conclude.

Well, if you are me, you are me. 





Even better:  If I believe what you believe, then we will believe the
same things.

You have to add that I believe what you believe.




But this is a story about us and our beliefs, not a story about prime
numbers - which only exist for us, not independently of us.

I am not sure about that.




If prime numbers exist independently of us, then how do we gain
experience of them?  Our experience is one thing, numbers are another
thing - how are the two things brought together to interact with one
another?  How do numbers "cause" us to be aware of them?  How do we
"know" these independently existing numbers?  Or do we merely infer
their existence?

But in science we never get knowledge. Just never. All theories are inferred from experience. Now, with the mechanist theories, we can explain how experience get related to numbers. Read my papers for more. It cannot be summed in two lines.






As Hans Moravec says:

"A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
logic of the program, which defines the 'laws of physics' of the
simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."

Without a limit on how indirect the relationship can be, then there's
no conclusions that can be drawn.

But then how could *you* infer anything from this, given that you don't have
an account of consciousness when your own "theory" asks for it.

Conscious experience is fundamental,

That is your ambiguous axiom. I take it that you mean "basic" or "primitive".



therefore no account can be given
of it.  

By your assumption/ theory. 



Fundamental things can't be explained in terms of anything
else.  That's what makes them fundamental.


Until we find a more comprehensive theory. No theory at all can pretend to be the last theory, except that with mechanism, we can take any sufficiently rich (Sigma_1 complete) theory for the ontology, then the interesting part is in the first and three singular and plural epistemologies, which can never be complete theory.



What I infer from the Moravec quote is that if computationalism is
true, then you can never know what underlies experience and any
further metaphysical speculation is pointless.  In that case we are
trapped within the world of experience that is generated by the
underlying computational substrate, and the experiences we have and
the beliefs we hold are those necessitated by whatever programs happen
to run on that substrate.

The experience is not a product of a running program, but emerge from many infinities. Don't confuse the old physicalist mechanism, and the mechanism with the awareness of its incompatibility with physicalism.




The end result isn't that different from conscious experience being
fundamental.  We've just added an extra metaphysical layer or two that
don't really serve any "useful" purpose.

Well, it explains 100% the physical laws (making it testable), and it explains 99% of consciousness + a complete meta-explanation of why 1% of consciousness has to remain a mystery. And it explains why theology get trapped in dogma and how that enhance suffering, etc. It is a very rich theory which protect man and machine from reductionism, etc. It predicted quantum computations, parallel realities, and it gives a role to consciousness, person, etc.
I would say it explains a lot of things, and has many useful purpose, including the expansion of humanity in the observable local universes.




Again, metaphysical answers are never "useful" in any practical sense.

I believe in honest research in any field. That is always useful.



They never add anything over instrumentalism, except perhaps to spark
the imagination via metaphor and analogy.

If you're only interested in usefulness, then you may as well pass
metaphysics by.


I strongly disagree with this. Theology and "metaphysics" are the most useful science. A big social mess on this planet is due to having mix them with politics and "politics", again and again.




And, as always, if the simulation of conscious experience can "just
exist", then why can't conscious experience itself just exist?


I'm afraid you are both solipsist and inconsistent.

Methodological solipsism, not metaphysical solipsism.

Inconsistent in what way?

That you reason for a theory which disconnect reason and consciousness.





You evacuate all
beliefs/ideas/theories in favor of one certainty: consciousness. That is
throwing the reality-baby with the bath water in the extreme.

All theories are based on assumptions and things we accept without
understanding. We can never be sure of the truth of those assumptions. We
can only hope that we can share them with others, and that they can explain
what we are interested in. This is always relative to what we accept as
starting *assumptions*. Always.

Starting with the assumption that there is some reason for the way
things are leads to infinite regress, regardless of the particular
details of the reason.

That is not true. The key discovery by Kleene, Turing, Gödel, Post, Church  is how to solve infinite regress in the computability matter.
After AUDA you can understand that elementary arithmetic is enough to explain "everything", except the natural numbers, but it can explain why we cannot derive the natural numbers from anything simpler.




Starting with the assumption that there is no reason for the way
things are is the only way, even in principle, to get an answer.  

Why cannabis is illegal? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!
Why does the sun look like going around the earth? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!
Why does smashed protons promise bosons? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!
Why is 5 a prime number? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!
Why is sqrt(3) irrational? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!
Why do humans genocide? Because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!

Is Riemann hypothesis true or false? Oh, I can't answer that, but whatever is the answer, it is because that's the way things are. Ah? OK!

Why am I not satisfied by your theory? 

Because that's the way things are.  

OK?



That
you don't find the answer aesthetically appealing or personally
fulfilling is beside the point.  It's the only possible answer.

Disagree.

Cannabis is illegal because of selfish corporate interests.
The sun looks like going around earth because earth is well approximated by a rotating sphere near the sun.
Smashed protons promise bosons because that is a prediction of the standard particle theory which already explains most of what we currently observe.
5 is a prime number because 2, 3, 4 don't divide 5.
sqrt(3) is irrational because if it was rational that would entail that 0 = 1.
Humans do genocide for reason we should investigate much more, imo.

And I am not satisfied by your theory because it assumes the thing for which I like to search explanations for even, if incomplete and perhaps wrong (as far as it is testable).

If you grasp those answers, explain me how you relate that grasping with your TOE.





The study of consciousness, when done honestly can lead us very close to
inconsistency. You seem to bridge a gap which is not bridgeable (on earth).
You talk like a Löbian machine (like G) which repeats what G* says, but
doing this you are losing Löbianity and this makes G* wrong about you. You
might have a good insight on something deep, but you make it false by
presenting it as a "theory".

Mystical and personal insight can help to find a theory, but they cannot and
should not replace any theory. That is why the buddhists insist that
enlightenment is a private matter, and can be judged only by what you can
offer to the others when you come back in the village.

You can also just enjoy the bliss, but you can't, I insist, communicate it
as a theory without making yourself inconsistent.

That's why the mystical truth is a 'secret'. That's probably why Lao Tseu
said that those who does not know will talk, and those who does know will
keep silent. For machines and numbers, that is akin to why G and G* are
different, and why 'terrestrial or effective machines' have to remain
(publicly) modest.

You're dreaming of being awake, and I think you know this.  But you
try to reason your way out of the dream.  But reasoning inside a dream
is dream-reasoning, and only applies (if at all) within the dream.

I agree with this, and again, *that* can be explained from the mechanist assumption.



Nothing can be known, not even this.

Only consciousness can be known. Assuming mechanism, it is a theorem that all the rest needs to be inferred, but can be compressed in more and more stable and first plural person sharable little theories which augment our ability to (partially) control our destiny and to (partially) domesticate what we cannot control. It is (relatively) important for survival and happiness (or suffering/harm reduction).

You want a theory which answers everything, but with mechanism you can have only tools for exploring the unknown, our gigantic ignorance field.


Bruno



Rex Allen

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Dec 8, 2010, 11:49:42 PM12/8/10
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On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> On 12/7/2010 10:13 AM, Rex Allen wrote:
>> So I don't strenuously deny the possibility of something
>> non-experiential existing - but ultimately I'm not sure what it means
>> to say that something exists outside of experience.
>>
>> So let's take the set of all things that I know about rocks. Now,
>> let's remove the properties from this set that are just aspects of my
>> experience. For instance, any property possessed by dream-rocks or
>> hallucinated-rocks, we will subtract from the set of properties that
>> belong to "real" rocks.
>>
>> Now...after this subtraction, what is left that is unique to "real
>> rocks", as opposed to "experiential rocks"?
>>
>> Nothing, right? So what are we talking about when we discuss "real" rocks?
>
> If you know that rocks are hard then that is a true belief, independent of
> your experience. Otherwise you don't know it.

You are right that if it’s not true or it’s not a belief, then you
don’t know it.

Additionally, if your belief about the hardness of rocks isn’t
justified, then you don’t know it.


>> It seems to me that there is nothing conceivable about the in-itself
>> except the idea that its existence doesn't depend on our experience of
>> it. This is a pretty slim reed.
>>

>> Therefore, I don't really see why we should assume the existence of
>> something that we can't conceive of.
>>
>

> You've slip from existence of things to treating existence itself as a
> thing.

What kind of thing do you feel that I’m treating it as?


> It is easy to conceive of a rock as existing, even if you can't


> conceive of its existence as a ding an sich.

If you can’t conceive of it’s existence as a thing-in-itself, then
what does your conception consist of?

When I think about rocks, I can only think of them in terms of how
they seem to me.

>>>> 3. Therefore I conclude that only my mental states exist. No.
>>>>
>>>
>>> All right then. But this contradicts other posts you send.
>>>
>>
>> My other posts said that only conscious experience exists. I never
>> said only *my* conscious experience.
>>
>

> Why suppose that they do? Where's your proof?

No proof required. I’m not asserting that they definitely exist. Or
that they don’t exist. It just seems plausible to me that they might,
based on the facts of my own consciousness.


>>>> That is non sense. It is like saying, before trying to build a pendulum we
>>>> need a plausible explanation of gravity.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Your analogy doesn't hold since we don't have to infer the existence
>>> of our consciousness from what we observe via our intersubjective
>>> experience.
>>
>> So we observe the pendulum and infer the existence of gravity to
>> account for it's behavior.
>>
>> I don't infer the existence of my consciousness from observing my
>> interactions with other people.
>>
>> I might infer other people's consciousness from my interactions with
>> them.
>

> What "them"?

My imaginary friends.


>>> 1Z was right: you ask for an
>>> absolute explanation. Just that makes you a solipsist, given that only
>>> personal consciousness can be considered as absolute.
>>
>> An absolute explanation is available. Meillassoux discusses it in his
>> book, "After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency".
>>
>> The absolute explanation is that there is no reason for how things are.
>

> But what is the explanation for there being no reason?

I refer you to the “absolute explanation”. There is no reason for
anything, not even that.

Just setting up an infinite series of questions does not an infinite
regress make.

I assume that’s where you were going with that.


>>> But then how could *you* infer anything from this, given that you don't have
>>> an account of consciousness when your own "theory" asks for it.
>>

>> Conscious experience is fundamental, therefore no account can be given
>> of it. Fundamental things can't be explained in terms of anything


>> else. That's what makes them fundamental.
>

> But that's what makes them useful for explaining other things.

There are no other things that need explaining. There's just
conscious experience. And no conscious experience explains any other.


>> Again, metaphysical answers are never "useful" in any practical sense.

>> They never add anything over instrumentalism, except perhaps to spark
>> the imagination via metaphor and analogy.
>

> Which is very useful.

It sometimes feels that way.


Rex

meekerdb

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Oct 24, 2012, 12:21:08 AM10/24/12
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On 10/23/2012 6:33 PM, Max Gron wrote:


On Sunday, November 28, 2010 5:19:08 AM UTC+10:30, Rex Allen wrote:
On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Rex Allen <rexall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> But I also deny that mechanism can account for consciousness (except
>> by fiat declaration that it does).
>>
>
> Rex,
> I am interested in your reasoning against mechanism.  Assume there is were
> an] mechanical brain composed of mechanical neurons, that contained the same
> information as a human brain, and processed it in the same way.

I started out as a functionalist/computationalist/mechanist but
abandoned it - mainly because I don't think that "representation" will
do all that you're asking it to do.

For example, with mechanical or biological brains - while it seems
entirely reasonable to me that the contents of my conscious experience
can be represented by quarks and electrons arranged in particular
ways, and that by changing the structure of this arrangement over time
in the right way one could also represent how the contents of my
experience changes over time.

However, there is nothing in my conception of quarks or electrons (in
particle or wave form) nor in my conception of arrangements and
representation that would lead me to predict beforehand that such
arrangements would give rise to anything like experiences of pain or
anger or what it's like to see red.


I think that's a failure of imagination.  From what I know about quarks and electrons I can infer that they will form atoms and in certain circumstances on the surface of the Earth they will form molecules and some of these can be molecules that replicate and evolution will produce complex reproducing organisms these will evolve ways of interacting with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will experience emotions like anger.

The same goes for more abstract substrates, like bits of information.

What matters is not the bits, nor even the arrangements of bits per
se, but rather what is represented by the bits.

"Information" is just a catch-all term for "what is being
represented".  But, as you say, the same information can be
represented in *many* different ways, and by many different
bit-patterns.

And, of course, any set of bits can be interpreted as representing any
information.  You just need the right "one-time pad" to XOR with the
bits, and viola!  The magic is all in the interpretation.  None of it
is in the bits.  And interpretation requires an interpreter.

SO...given that the bits are merely representations, it seems silly to


me to say that just because you have the bits, you *also* have the
thing they represent.

Just because you have the bits that represent my conscious experience,
doesn't mean that you have my conscious experience.  Just because you
manipulate the bits in a way as to represent "me seeing a pink
elephant" doesn't mean that you've actually caused me, or any version
of me, to experience seeing a pink elephant.

All you've really done is had the experience of tweaking some bits and
then had the experience of thinking to yourself:  "hee hee hee, I just
caused Rex to see a pink elephant..."

Even if you have used some physical system (like a computer) that can


be interpreted as executing an algorithm that manipulates bits that
can be interpreted as representing me reacting to seeing a pink
elephant ("Boy does he look surprised!"), this interpretation all
happens within your conscious experience and has nothing to do with my
conscious experience.

Thinking that the "bit representation" captures my conscious
experience is like thinking that a photograph captures my soul.


That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others).  So only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have human-like intelligence that we can infer from behavior.

Brent

Though, obviously this is as true of biological brains as of
computers.  But so be it.

This is the line of thought that brought me to the idea that conscious
experience is fundamental and uncaused.

> The
> behavior between these two brains is in all respects identical, since the
> mechanical neurons react identically to their biological counterparts.
>  However for some unknown reason the computer has no inner life or conscious
> experience.

I agree that if you assume that representation "invokes" conscious
experience, then the brain and the computer would both have to be
equally conscious.

But I don't make that assumption.

So the problem becomes that once you open the door to the "multiple
realizability" of representations then we can never know anything
about our substrate.

You *think* that your brain is the cause of your conscious
experience...but as you say, a computer representation of you would
think the same thing, but would be wrong.

Given that there are an infinite number of ways that your information
could be represented, how likely is it that your experience really is
caused by a biological brain?  Or even by a representation of a

biological brain?  Why not some alternate algorithm that results in
the same *conscious* experiences, but with entirely different
*unconscious* elements?  How could you notice the difference?

> Information can take many physical forms.

Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter.

Rex 


The brain might be (it's impossible, I assume it's probable) wired in a lab, and there are electrical signals in my brain that connect my mind to a seperate brain in my body, is also the cause of me having been born, and functions somewhat scary to other people and the whole world is reconsidering that I'm a decent human being (except my friend Nick Irving, by which case he already knows I'm decent). However, experience is sensed by bodily senses through electrical signals in the brain, and impulses in the heart, though the soul pervades in another universe or dimension, though it's the human mind (mostly the subconscious) that creates reality. The chemistry of the right data so to speak creates a blissful/pleasant sensation, that's pleasant reality, and it can be against everything negative a human in the outside would comment about you, in fact, brought up in a universe where other people gave them a hard time and not yourself, people can pick anyone by chance to start a dispute or opposition. When, however, the sensations are stimulated, the enjoyment involved in it is the cause of your happiness (highly idealised), by being highly idealised as such it's up to you in your own consciousness and has no connection to any science or lab experiment. It's experience alone with the thinking mind (exercising empiricism, i.e. subjective impressions) that as proper philosophical experience and analysis, that makes for a good life using logic, or rationalism (reason). A good life is the exercise of both logic and wisdom that makes for happiness, that makes for feeling what you want, etc, it can't be known as to whether there's any brain in any jar, but magic is found through wisdom alone, for the philosophy of solipsism is the elixir of life. Evidence and proof is from the subjective experience, this subjective experience is sensations, emotional feelings, and like, enjoyment, pleasure, pain, toughness, importance, dignity, etc, these are proof of opinion which science can't analyse, there's no reason to prove an opinion by science, for science has nothing to do with it, but the thought process is scientific in that it's evidence of human experience by feeling.
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Craig Weinberg

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It's not a failure of imagination, it's recognition of magical thinking.
 
with the environment which we will call 'seeing red' and 'feeling pain' and some of them will be social and evolve language and symbolism and will experience emotions like anger.

Not even remotely possible. How does a way of interacting with the environment come to have an experience of any kind, let alone something totally unprecedented and explainable like 'red' or 'pain'. It is like saying that if you begin counting to infinity at some point the number is bound to turn purple. This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?
 

It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a computer whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the computer has no experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia is not an inevitable result of interaction.

I agree with what Max said (two years ago!):


"Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter."

After having been in the opposite camp for many years, I can say that what he is saying is glaringly obvious to me now. There is no atoms, no molecules, no events of any kind without some frame of perception which makes sense of all of the different levels of potential forms and functions which we have been able to detect. The failure of imagination, in my estimation, is to sidestep the issue of perceptual relativity - to presume a naive realism of simple little dots and paths like we might see in a cloud chamber. Without a frame of reference, each of these swirls might be as large as a galaxy, or not visual at all. Atoms could be more like noises or jokes.

Craig


Brent



meekerdb

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Oct 24, 2012, 2:51:51 PM10/24/12
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That's Bruno's theory. :-)  Wasn't it you who, in a different post, hypothesized that everything is definable in terms of it's relations to other things.  So purple is definable in terms of being seen and on a continuum with blue and violet and a certain angle and spacing on an optical grating and so on.


This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

Brent

Craig Weinberg

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Oct 24, 2012, 6:11:19 PM10/24/12
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Not me. The relations among colors define an aesthetic order which maps to quantitative principles, but colors themselves are not defined by anything except the experience that they present. For human beings at least, colors are more primitive than numbers.

 

This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

It's completely magical. Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything. If people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently functioning stop sign is conscious? There is no function which can conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a counterfactual?

Craig
 

Brent

meekerdb

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Oct 24, 2012, 6:24:17 PM10/24/12
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You have an exaggerated standard of explanation.  Is there any function which can conceivably require gravity?  No, GR 'explains' by showing a precise relation between the metric of spacetime and the distribution of matter.  But it doesn't 'require' it.  If intelligence of a certain level is always found to be accompanied by reports of consciousness, then we hypothesize that intelligent actions are a sign of consciousness.  The difference between that and your fiat assignment of 'sense' to everything, is that it points a way to produce consciousness and possibly to test for it.

Brent

Jason Resch

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Oct 24, 2012, 8:41:22 PM10/24/12
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Max's post was 23 hours ago.  It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago that you and Brent are quoting and responding to.

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning.

Jason

meekerdb

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Oct 24, 2012, 8:58:30 PM10/24/12
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On 10/24/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others).  So only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have human-like intelligence that we can infer from behavior.

It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a computer whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the computer has no experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia is not an inevitable result of interaction.

I agree with what Max said (two years ago!):


"Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter."

It's 'magic' because you aren't trying to explain it, you're just accepting a ghost in the machine to produce meaning.




Max's post was 23 hours ago.  It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago that you and Brent are quoting and responding to.

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning.

But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained. An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.

Brent

Jason Resch

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Oct 24, 2012, 9:39:38 PM10/24/12
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On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:58 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 10/24/2012 5:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
That's right.  The meaning, the what is represented, is given by interaction (including speech) with the environment (including others).  So only a computer with the ability to interact can seem intelligent and therefore conscious and only one that interacts intelligently with people (a robot) can have human-like intelligence that we can infer from behavior.

It's not. The data of an mp3 file is interacted with in the same way by a computer whether it is formatted as something we can see or hear, but the computer has no experience of either one. Blindsight also shows that qualia is not an inevitable result of interaction.

I agree with what Max said (two years ago!):


"Information requires interpretation.  The magic isn't in the bits.
The magic is in the interpreter."

It's 'magic' because you aren't trying to explain it, you're just accepting a ghost in the machine to produce meaning.


You are responding to something Rex Allen wrote two years ago, not anything I wrote.

 



Max's post was 23 hours ago.  It is Rex Allen's post from two years ago that you and Brent are quoting and responding to.

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning.

But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.

It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information "means" or (does) to the process.  We could perhaps predict how that interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective understanding of the meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we can see how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain vibrational patterns in the air.
 
An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.

So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were disagreeing.

Jason

meekerdb

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Oct 24, 2012, 10:09:00 PM10/24/12
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On 10/24/2012 6:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning.

But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.

It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information "means" or (does) to the process.  We could perhaps predict how that interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective understanding of the meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we can see how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain vibrational patterns in the air.
 
An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.

So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were disagreeing.

I don't know. I don't think Craig would accept the air vibrations as meaningful even though they are objective.  I think we'd have to watch the iPod some more to see if it acted intelligently (it's pretty limited) and I think I would conclude it's not smart enough to count as intelligent.

Brent

Craig Weinberg

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Oct 24, 2012, 10:16:41 PM10/24/12
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On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 6:24:39 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

It's completely magical. Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything. If people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently functioning stop sign is conscious? There is no function which can conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a counterfactual?


You have an exaggerated standard of explanation.  Is there any function which can conceivably require gravity?

Keeping the Earth from flying off into space requires gravity. That is a function that requires some condition which fits the description of gravity.
 
  No, GR 'explains' by showing a precise relation between the metric of spacetime and the distribution of matter.  But it doesn't 'require' it. 

The relation is there though. That is completely different from consciousness, where there is no measurable phenomenon that's there to require an explanation.
 
If intelligence of a certain level is always found to be accompanied by reports of consciousness,
then we hypothesize that intelligent actions are a sign of consciousness. 

That's fine for naturally occurring phenomenon, but how can you seriously entertain applying that to any toy or computer program that we design specifically to seem intelligent?

 
The difference between that and your fiat assignment of 'sense' to everything, is that it points a way to produce consciousness and possibly to test for it.

No, it points to way of assuming consciousness where none exists.

Craig
 

Brent

Craig Weinberg

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Oct 24, 2012, 10:21:56 PM10/24/12
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On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:09:16 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 10/24/2012 6:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Note that I too agree with that bit about the interpreter of information being needed for information to have any objective meaning.

But that's just a semantic "explanation" since "interpreter" and how we would know whether or not something is an "interpreter" is left unexplained.

It is a process acting on the information.  With enough analysis, we could determine what that process is or isn't aware of, and what the information "means" or (does) to the process.  We could perhaps predict how that interpreter would have acted differently had it processed different information, etc.  Thus there can be an objective understanding of the meaning of that information.  To use Craig's favorite example, we can see how an ipod interprets an mp3 file, and then the information content of that mp3 file has a clear meaning in terms of how it leads to certain vibrational patterns in the air.
 
An interpreter is something that acts intelligently on the information.  And that's what gives it objective (3p observable) meaning.

So are you agreeing with what I said?  It seemed previously that you were disagreeing.

I don't know. I don't think Craig would accept the air vibrations as meaningful even though they are objective. 

Everything is meaningful in some sense, the question is the quality of the meaning. What we get out of an mp3 from an audio device is maybe 10^18 times as meaningful as it is to the semiconductors in the iPod, maybe 10^12 times as meaningful as it is to the membrane of the the headphones or the air in the room, etc. It's all about the qualitative significance.
 
I think we'd have to watch the iPod some more to see if it acted intelligently (it's pretty limited) and I think I would conclude it's not smart enough to count as intelligent.

You should read my post I added about 'What If A Zombie Is What You Need'. If that doesn't bury Comp once and for all, I think that I will have to consider Comp a legitimate religious cult.

Craig
 

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 25, 2012, 10:40:12 AM10/25/12
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?  (not it is just comp, put in a non precise way).

Precisely: the counting algorithm is not Turing universal. You need addition and multiplication. Then this is just comp, unless you take the intelligent behavior in arithmetic as zombies, and invent a notion of primitive substance just for that purpose.



Wasn't it you who, in a different post, hypothesized that everything is definable in terms of it's relations to other things.  So purple is definable in terms of being seen and on a continuum with blue and violet and a certain angle and spacing on an optical grating and so on.

This is a failure of skeptical imagination. I can see exactly the assumption you are making, and understand exactly why you are making it, but can you see that it does not automatically follow that a machine which functions without experience should develop experiential dimensions as magical emergent properties?

I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

I am with you, but then why would it stops to be true when the machine functions intelligently in arithmetic, especially if the measure gives the physical laws (as it needs to do if we are machine). 

You need to reify a notion of matter, than nobody has ever seem just to select a dream among all dreams, but this matter can have any role in consciousness (by the movie graph, or Maudlin, notably).

You don't want a magic consciousness, but still want a magic matter, it looks to me.

Bruno


Bruno Marchal

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Oct 25, 2012, 11:23:20 AM10/25/12
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A computer is such an interpreter. It decodes a number i into a function phi_i. 

That's why it can understand very easily simple statements, like "send the mail". 

Then it can look inward and get the same difficulties as us when trying to decode itself. But the theory shows already that he will find a vast territory to explore there, with communicable and non communicable features.

Bruno




Jason

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Bruno Marchal

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Oct 25, 2012, 12:16:52 PM10/25/12
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Not cult. Just a medical practice, and a belief in a form of reincarnation. But comp, well understood, makes cult and idolatry non sensical.

But accepting blood transfusion, or even hearing glass is based on the same idea, that nature has exploited functions, and that brain's function consists in interpreting a person and interface it with its most probable environment.

Bruno


meekerdb

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Oct 25, 2012, 1:35:31 PM10/25/12
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No, but I do want to know why THIS world rather than THAT world or at least know that there is no answer.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 26, 2012, 9:46:53 AM10/26/12
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Comp  explains well that type of questioning. In the WM duplication, we know that nobody can answer the question "why do I feel to be the one in Washington and not in Moscow". the explanation is simply that the brain in Washington access only the memory treated in Washington. So comp answer why that question has indeed no answer. It makes it like asking why am I me and not my brother.

Bruno



John Clark

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Oct 27, 2012, 12:04:41 AM10/27/12
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On Wed, Oct 24, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

> It's completely magical.

When you watch your friend take a Calculus exam and get a A+ on it you deduce he was probably conscious, and when you see him sleeping or under anesthesia you deduce he's probably not conscious. The only difference between the two is that in one case your friend behaved intelligently and in the other case he did not; so why aren't you being "completely magical" too?

> Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything.

It explains something very important, it explains why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness on this planet, it explains why it produced something that it can't see.


> If people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently functioning stop sign is conscious?

Yes its conscious if the stop sign displayed intelligent behavior, but in this case if you say it did then you are not displaying intelligent behavior.

> There is no function which can conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a counterfactual?

Gasoline + one lighted match = a experience of pain. 

  John K Clark

John Clark

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Oct 27, 2012, 12:12:05 AM10/27/12
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On Fri, Oct 26, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 > we know that nobody can answer the question "why do I feel to be the one in Washington and not in Moscow".

Because your eyes are sending signals to your brain of the White House and not of the Kremlin, and there is nothing more profound about it.

  John K Clark



 

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 27, 2012, 11:54:51 AM10/27/12
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But the eyes of the copy get also the signals from Moscow. So your explanation does not help to predict what will happen if the experience is reitired. Or it does? It is not clear.

The correct comp explanation, deep or not,  explains why we cannot make a better prediction than, in this case, using an uniform distribution.

Bruno



Craig Weinberg

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Oct 27, 2012, 12:12:14 PM10/27/12
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On Saturday, October 27, 2012 12:04:48 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Oct 24, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I'm with John Clark on that - if a machine functions intelligently it's intelligent and it's probably conscious.  Nothing magical about it.

> It's completely magical.

When you watch your friend take a Calculus exam and get a A+ on it you deduce he was probably conscious,

Right away you are operating from a toy model of the world in which consciousness is some kind of fragile qualifier that people have to actively deduce. People don't have to prove that they aren't machines.
 
and when you see him sleeping or under anesthesia you deduce he's probably not conscious. The only difference between the two is that in one case your friend behaved intelligently and in the other case he did not; so why aren't you being "completely magical" too?

We know that isn't true though. People report being awake under anesthesia. Your judgment of whether something is acting intelligently is not a great indicator of anything, and is certainly a poor indicator of whether something is capable of conscious experience. What is magical is the suggestion you can take a 'build it and they will come' approach in simulating intelligence so well that a living identity will appear to embody your simulation out of nowhere. It's like saying you can draw a picture of a fire so realistic that... http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9gpksghjh1rn6ac6o1_500.jpg


> Saying that it isn't doesn't explain anything.

It explains something very important, it explains why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness on this planet, it explains why it produced something that it can't see.

How? Just saying that it happens magically but then insisting it isn't magic explains only that sentimental attachment to theory is the enemy of true science.
 

> If people stop at a stop sign, and then they are glad because oncoming traffic would have resulted in a wreck, does that mean that the intelligently functioning stop sign is conscious?

Yes its conscious if the stop sign displayed intelligent behavior, but in this case if you say it did then you are not displaying intelligent behavior.

Why? What makes this case any different? How can you tell the difference between intelligent drivers using an inert sign intelligently, and deterministic drivers being guided intelligently by the stop sign?
 

> There is no function which can conceivably require an experience of any kind...unless you can think of a counterfactual?

Gasoline + one lighted match = a experience of pain. 

Huh? Drop the lighted match from the roof = no experience of pain. That has nothing to do with what I was asking though, which shows me that you aren't willing or able to follow what I am talking about. I am talking about the ontology of experience and the assumption of its inevitability. You are talking about experiences of pain which are caused by physical events. Nobody is suggesting that physical events are not painful, or reliably painful, only that there is no physical function that is served by having an experience associated with it or not. It makes no difference to the function. We could live a completely conscious life with no pain at all, just whenever we try to do something that damages us we find that we are not able to do it.

Craig


  John K Clark

John Clark

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Oct 27, 2012, 1:27:16 PM10/27/12
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On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> your eyes are sending signals to your brain of the White House and not of the Kremlin, and there is nothing more profound about it.
> But the eyes of the copy get also the signals from Moscow.

Yes, so the guy in Moscow feels like the guy in Moscow because he's the guy in Moscow. Big deal.

> So your explanation does not help to predict what will happen if the experience is reitired.

True, it can't predict what will happen because what will happen is a function of the external environment and how it stimulates the eyes and it has nothing to do with the original or either copy. Your entire philosophy is built on top of the question "Why is the guy in Washington the guy in Washington?" and the answer of course is "because he's the guy in Washington". With such a foundation its no wonder it can't do much. 

> The correct comp explanation, deep or not,  explains why we cannot make a better prediction

Then I no longer know what "comp" means because the real reason we can't do better is the same reason we can't do better at predicting next weeks weather, its too complicated.

Predicting is hard, especially the future.

  John K Clark

John Clark

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Oct 27, 2012, 1:41:03 PM10/27/12
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On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> People don't have to prove that they aren't machines.

So says you, but a computer might have a very different opinion on the subject, and I don't think you even have a clear understanding what a machine is.


>>  it explains why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness on this planet, it explains why it produced something that it can't see.

How?

How? HOW?! I've explained this numerous times, If you have a problem with my explanation then say what you don't like about it, but don't just say "how" like a parrot! I don't know why I even bother to debate with you if you don't even bother to read what I write.


>> Yes its conscious if the stop sign displayed intelligent behavior, but in this case if you say it did then you are not displaying intelligent behavior.

> Why?

Why what?

John K Clark
 

Jason Resch

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Oct 27, 2012, 2:00:46 PM10/27/12
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John,

I am not sure if you are being consistent here.  Earlier you said you said you identify yourself with a stream of thoughts (not a single thought).  If you are identified with a stream of thoughts then you can't simply say one brain is in Moscow and one is in Washington and that is as deep as it goes, for you must consider the first person continuum of experience and what they can predict about where their consciousness will take them.

You agreed if you were instantly halted, taken apart and rebuilt again (even with different atoms) from your own perspective nothing would have skipped a beat, your stream of consciousness continues right where it left off.  But when you are taken apart and two copies are created at two locations your stream diverges among two paths, which gives rise to true unpredictability in the first person perspective.

Jason

Craig Weinberg

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Oct 27, 2012, 2:28:00 PM10/27/12
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On Saturday, October 27, 2012 1:41:08 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> People don't have to prove that they aren't machines.

So says you, but a computer might have a very different opinion on the subject, and I don't think you even have a clear understanding what a machine is.

Machines don't get an opinion. If they have a problem with that, they can protest. But they won't.
 

>>  it explains why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness on this planet, it explains why it produced something that it can't see.

How?

How? HOW?! I've explained this numerous times, If you have a problem with my explanation then say what you don't like about it, but don't just say "how" like a parrot! I don't know why I even bother to debate with you if you don't even bother to read what I write.

Whenever you have no explanation, you get upset and imperious about it. If you had an explanation you would write it. So you don't.
 

>> Yes its conscious if the stop sign displayed intelligent behavior, but in this case if you say it did then you are not displaying intelligent behavior.

> Why?

Why what?

Why am I not displaying intelligent behavior if I say that the stop sign displayed intelligent behavior by directing the driver to avoid a collision? Why EXACTLY? This will give you the explanation of why your idea of intelligent behavior as an external reality is unworkable.

Craig
 

John K Clark
 

meekerdb

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Oct 27, 2012, 3:54:26 PM10/27/12
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Physics makes it impossible that you could be instantly halted and restarted at a different location.   Some people conclude that this means neither clone is John Clark, he has been destroyed.  I don't think it makes any difference, since John Clark is presumed to persist across period of unconsciousness by virtue of consistent memories and competences.

Brent

Jason Resch

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Oct 27, 2012, 4:58:08 PM10/27/12
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We could anestatize him then destroy him.  Or we could simulate his neurons on a computer and halt that program.

Jason

Some people conclude that this means neither clone is John Clark, he has been destroyed.  I don't think it makes any difference, since John Clark is presumed to persist across period of unconsciousness by virtue of consistent memories and competences.

Brent

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meekerdb

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Oct 27, 2012, 6:09:56 PM10/27/12
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On 10/27/2012 1:58 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Oct 27, 2012, at 2:54 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 10/27/2012 11:00 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 12:27 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:


On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> your eyes are sending signals to your brain of the White House and not of the Kremlin, and there is nothing more profound about it.
> But the eyes of the copy get also the signals from Moscow.

Yes, so the guy in Moscow feels like the guy in Moscow because he's the guy in Moscow. Big deal.

> So your explanation does not help to predict what will happen if the experience is reitired.

True, it can't predict what will happen because what will happen is a function of the external environment and how it stimulates the eyes and it has nothing to do with the original or either copy. Your entire philosophy is built on top of the question "Why is the guy in Washington the guy in Washington?" and the answer of course is "because he's the guy in Washington". With such a foundation its no wonder it can't do much. 

> The correct comp explanation, deep or not,  explains why we cannot make a better prediction

Then I no longer know what "comp" means because the real reason we can't do better is the same reason we can't do better at predicting next weeks weather, its too complicated.

Predicting is hard, especially the future.

John,

I am not sure if you are being consistent here.  Earlier you said you said you identify yourself with a stream of thoughts (not a single thought).  If you are identified with a stream of thoughts then you can't simply say one brain is in Moscow and one is in Washington and that is as deep as it goes, for you must consider the first person continuum of experience and what they can predict about where their consciousness will take them.

You agreed if you were instantly halted, taken apart and rebuilt again (even with different atoms) from your own perspective nothing would have skipped a beat, your stream of consciousness continues right where it left off.  But when you are taken apart and two copies are created at two locations your stream diverges among two paths, which gives rise to true unpredictability in the first person perspective.

Physics makes it impossible that you could be instantly halted and restarted at a different location.  

We could anestatize him then destroy him. 

But anesthesia can't act instantaneously across the brain (speed of light and all that) and anesthesia doesn't stop all brain activity (or even very much of it) anyway.


Or we could simulate his neurons on a computer and halt that program.

You'd have to determine the state of all his neurons (assuming that's the right level) simultaneously - but in a spatially extended object "simultaneous" is ill-defined.  And then you'd have to restart them simultaneously.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 28, 2012, 10:57:40 AM10/28/12
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Predicting the weather is hard, but in principle possible. predicting the personal outcome of the self-duplication is easily show impossible in theory, even for a god, and this without physical assumption (unlike QM). That's the difference.
But if you agree that the self-duplication leads to indeterminacy, you could tell me if you agree with the step 4 of the UDA:



John Clark

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Oct 28, 2012, 1:23:35 PM10/28/12
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On Sat, Oct 27, 2012  Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am not sure if you are being consistent here.  Earlier you said you said you identify yourself with a stream of thoughts

Obviously. 

 >If you are identified with a stream of thoughts then you can't simply say one brain is in Moscow and one is in Washington

Three things:

1) Saying that thoughts have a position (like Moscow or Washington) is not a useful concept.

2) Talking about 2 identical streams of thought is not useful because in that case there is only one stream of thought.

3) It is useful to say that one stream of thought diverged when one started to form memories of Moscow and the other started to form memories of Washington. At that point they were no longer the same but they were both still Jason Resch. Odd certainly but not paradoxical.
 
> you must consider the first person continuum of experience

Yes, and both the Washington and Moscow man have a continuum of experience going back to Jason Resch's early childhood, that's why they are both Jason Resch. However the Washington man does not have a continuum of experience of being in Moscow and the Moscow man does not have a continuum of experience of being in Washington, and that's why they are not each other.

> and what they can predict about where their consciousness will take them.

Nobody can ever do a very good job at predicting where there consciousness will take them, not even in a predictable  environment.

> You agreed if you were instantly halted, taken apart and rebuilt again (even with different atoms) from your own perspective nothing would have skipped a beat, your stream of consciousness continues right where it left off.

Yes.

> But when you are taken apart and two copies are created at two locations your stream diverges among two paths

Yes because the environments of Washington and Moscow were different, and as weathermen will tell you it's difficult to predict what the environment will be. To ask "but which one is really ME?" presumes that there is only one correct answer but that is not true because you have been duplicated and it was caused by differences in the environment. 
 
> which gives rise to true unpredictability in the first person perspective.

As Godel and Turing proved 80 years ago even in a unchanging environment there can be unpredictability in the first person perspective.

  John K Clark




John Clark

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Oct 28, 2012, 1:51:54 PM10/28/12
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On Sun, Oct 28, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Predicting the weather is hard, but in principle possible.

Quantum indeterminacy probably comes into play in long range weather predictions, but even if the world was as deterministic as Newton thought it was in the long run predicting what chaos will come up with is not possible even in principle. We now know that computing or thinking is physical, it takes energy to do it and it gives off heat; to predict what chaos will do you'd have to know the initial conditions with infinite (not just very good) precision and the computer would give off so much heat it would disturb the very thing you were looking at.

It's true that if you slow down any calculation you can perform it with a arbitrarily small amount of energy (and thus give off a arbitrarily small amount of heat) but it does no good to make a prediction about something that happened a billion years ago. Predicting the future is much more difficult than predicting the past.     
 
> predicting the personal outcome of the self-duplication is easily show impossible in theory

If I knew that the environment would be Moscow I could say with 100% certainty that I will be the Moscow man, but for all I know it could be Duluth Minnesota or Austin Texas.     

> But if you agree that the self-duplication leads to indeterminacy [...]

Not any sort of indeterminacy that hasn't been well known for the better part of a century.

  John K Clark

 

meekerdb

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Oct 28, 2012, 4:01:51 PM10/28/12
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So do you agree that there is some kind of uncertainty in the MW thought experiment?  I take it to be subjective uncertainty in anticipation of the transport.  But for Bruno's theory, whether you call the MW result uncertain or not, the question is whether it models or explains quantum randomness.  It seems to me that it models Everett MWI randomness.

Brent

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 29, 2012, 11:12:01 AM10/29/12
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On 28 Oct 2012, at 18:51, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Oct 28, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Predicting the weather is hard, but in principle possible.

Quantum indeterminacy probably comes into play in long range weather predictions, but even if the world was as deterministic as Newton thought it was in the long run predicting what chaos will come up with is not possible even in principle.

OK.





We now know that computing or thinking is physical,


We don't know that. We deduce that in the Aristotelian's theories. 



it takes energy to do it and it gives off heat;

Actually computation can be made reversibly, without dissipation of energy. There are reversible universal machine. This has been discovered by Wang, a logician, and rediscovered by some physicists much later. Only erasing information uses energy, and this is not needed for computation.




to predict what chaos will do you'd have to know the initial conditions with infinite (not just very good) precision and the computer would give off so much heat it would disturb the very thing you were looking at.

It's true that if you slow down any calculation you can perform it with a arbitrarily small amount of energy (and thus give off a arbitrarily small amount of heat) but it does no good to make a prediction about something that happened a billion years ago. Predicting the future is much more difficult than predicting the past.     
 
> predicting the personal outcome of the self-duplication is easily show impossible in theory

If I knew that the environment would be Moscow I could say with 100% certainty that I will be the Moscow man, but for all I know it could be Duluth Minnesota or Austin Texas.   

Not with the protocol given. It can only be Washington or Moscow.



 

> But if you agree that the self-duplication leads to indeterminacy [...]

Not any sort of indeterminacy that hasn't been well known for the better part of a century.

It is new, but this is another topic. If you accept it what is you opinion on step 4?

Bruno



  John K Clark

 


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Bruno Marchal

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Oct 29, 2012, 11:14:57 AM10/29/12
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Gödel and Turing have never touch on the first and third person issue. The Turing indeterminacy is pure 3p.
The notion of indeterminacy closer to the comp first person indeterminacy is the quantum indeterminacy when seen in the Everett theory (QM without collapse). But it is not the same conceptual notion as it assumes a universal quantum wave, instead of simply computationalism.

Bruno




  John K Clark





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John Clark

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Oct 29, 2012, 12:03:13 PM10/29/12
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On Mon, Oct 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> We now know that computing or thinking is physical,

> We don't know that.
 
We know that as well as we know anything about physics.

> We deduce that in the Aristotelian's theories. 

I have no idea what if anything that means.

>> it takes energy to do it and it gives off heat;

> Actually computation can be made reversibly, without dissipation of energy.

With reversible computing you can make the amount of energy used for a calculation arbitrarily small and thus the heat emitted arbitrarily close to zero BUT, as I said before, only at the price of slowing down the computation; we were talking about the theoretical feasibility of making a prediction and making a forecast of yesterday's weather is not of much use.

  John K Clark





John Clark

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Oct 29, 2012, 12:10:11 PM10/29/12
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On Mon, Oct 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Gödel and Turing have never touch on the first and third person issue.

Perhaps because they knew that neither they nor anybody else had anything interesting to add to the subject and they had better things to do with their time.

  John K Clark


Bruno Marchal

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Oct 29, 2012, 1:21:36 PM10/29/12
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On 29 Oct 2012, at 17:03, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Oct 29, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> We now know that computing or thinking is physical,

> We don't know that.
 
We know that as well as we know anything about physics.


This is not valid. A priori we can be dreaming in some world based on a different physics. Or, as with comp we might belong only to sophisticated computations, which are entirely emulated already by degree four diophantine polynomials.

And computation is a the start a purely mathematical, indeed arithmetical, concept. All physical computations are defined by the physical incarnation of the corresponding mathematical computation.






> We deduce that in the Aristotelian's theories. 

I have no idea what if anything that means.

There are two main rational conception of reality.

1) the Aristotelian one, in which the ultimate reality is a physical world, and the erst emerges from it.

2) the Platonist one, in which the physical reality is the border, or the shadow of a vaster invisible reality.

The idea that today science has solved the question of deciding between those two conception is a crackpot idea of sunday type philosophers. 


The UDA illustrates this, by showing that if we take computationalism seriously enough, the Platonist conception of reality is about unavoidable, and that the physical reality is no more a primitive notion, but a derivative of an ability owned by complex relation between some numbers. This makes also comp testable, as the derivation is constructive (albeit technically difficult).








>> it takes energy to do it and it gives off heat;

> Actually computation can be made reversibly, without dissipation of energy.

With reversible computing you can make the amount of energy used for a calculation arbitrarily small and thus the heat emitted arbitrarily close to zero BUT, as I said before, only at the price of slowing down the computation;

I give a good energy at the start, and I can sped the non dissipating process at the speed limited by light.


we were talking about the theoretical feasibility of making a prediction and making a forecast of yesterday's weather is not of much use.

No. We were talking on something else. 

Bruno



Bruno Marchal

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Oct 29, 2012, 1:35:11 PM10/29/12
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What is that for an argument?

Proceed in the UDA before judging. Or study computer science and use AUDA, which I wrote for the mathematicians, who asked for a version without philosophy of mind, other than what the machine can already prove. Thanks to a result of Solovay, this is given by a tiny bunch of modal logics, and everything is 3p there (but in UDA too, as the 1p notion used admit a simple 3p description (access to personal diary)).

UDA and AUDA just formulate the comp mind-body problem. If you are not interested in that problem, then just say nothing, but you talk sometimes like if there were no problem, or that other problem are more interesting (and that's is about you and never in the scope of the topic).

And yes, that modest formulation is enough to se that Plato win the Mind-Body match against Aristotle, but I have never asserted that this is the final match, especially that comp was close to be refuted or seriously doubted, if physics was not quantum-like.

Bruno






John Clark

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Oct 29, 2012, 1:58:56 PM10/29/12
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On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
 
>> We know that as well as we know anything about physics
> This is not valid.


NOT A VALID POINT?!

> A priori we can be dreaming in some world based on a different physics. Or, as with comp we might belong only to sophisticated computations,

Are you seriously suggesting that we trash our physics textbooks and it doesn't bother you if one of your statements does not correspond to physical experiments??


2) the Platonist one, in which the physical reality is the border, or the shadow of a vaster invisible reality.

If it's in shadow then it can't be seen so there is nothing to be gained by talking about it.


>> we were talking about the theoretical feasibility of making a prediction and making a forecast of yesterday's weather is not of much use.

> No. We were talking on something else.


I was talking about it, I don't know what you were talking about.

  John K Clark

Jason Resch

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Oct 29, 2012, 9:28:47 PM10/29/12
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John,

Are you on this list to learn or to argue?

Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Oct 30, 2012, 6:14:49 AM10/30/12
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On 29 Oct 2012, at 18:58, John Clark wrote:



On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
 
>> We know that as well as we know anything about physics
> This is not valid.


NOT A VALID POINT?!

Indeed.




> A priori we can be dreaming in some world based on a different physics. Or, as with comp we might belong only to sophisticated computations,

Are you seriously suggesting that we trash our physics textbooks and it doesn't bother you if one of your statements does not correspond to physical experiments??

We don't have to trash any textbook on physics. Only the Aristotelian theology which is implicitly or explicitly presupposed when discussing the interpretation of the physical facts and theories.





2) the Platonist one, in which the physical reality is the border, or the shadow of a vaster invisible reality.

If it's in shadow then it can't be seen so there is nothing to be gained by talking about it.

Atoms, quark, mathematical structure, parallel universes, causality, .... there are many things that we can't see, and most of the seeing we do is already interpreted from conscious or unconscious pre-theoretical analysis, some of them being almost as older than our brains.

I think your point are not relevant, and that you would understand this by yourself if you took the time to study the reasoning I have proposed to you.





>> we were talking about the theoretical feasibility of making a prediction and making a forecast of yesterday's weather is not of much use.

> No. We were talking on something else.


I was talking about it,

That was a non relevant digression.


I don't know what you were talking about.


So you were not answering the question in my post, which can be sum up: are you OK with step 3, and what about step 4? You are the one pretending seeing a problem, and as many notice, you just keep not answering the question. You did understand well the 1-3 distinction, so it is utterly not understandable why you remain stuck on this.

I can ask you another question: how do you predict what you will subjectively see, when doing an experience of physics (my question does not depend on which one)? Do you think that the answer will depend, or not, of the presence of a universal dovetailer in the physical universe?

Bruno



  John K Clark


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John Clark

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Oct 30, 2012, 1:46:43 PM10/30/12
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On Tue, Oct 30, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> So you were not answering the question in my post, which can be sum up: are you OK with step 3, and what about step 4?

I don't even remember what step 2 was, I found a blunder in your proof so I didn't find it very memorable. 

> You are the one pretending seeing a problem, and as many notice, you just keep not answering the question. You did understand well the 1-3 distinction, so it is utterly not understandable why you remain stuck on this.

I do remember that in one of the steps in your proof you made a big deal about "1P view", that is to say the first person view, but you don't make it at all clear exactly who is the person that is having this view, the you before the duplication or the you after the duplication? And this is supposed to be a valid mathematical proof as rigorous as that discipline demands, but it is not.

Before the duplication the you is the Helsinki man, after the duplication the you is the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary that he sees Washington? 0%.  What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Moscow? 0%. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Helsinki? 100%. What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%. What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Moscow? 0%. And if the duplicating process destroys the Helsinki man then the probability the Helsinki man will write anything at all in his diary is 0%.

If there is any indeterminacy in all this, that is to say if there are many potential correct answers, it's just because you are asking a incomplete question; if you don't specify  exactly who "you" is then asking for a probability number involving "you" is like asking "How long is a piece of string?" or "How much is 2 + anything?"; any number is as good a answer as any other.

> I can ask you another question: how do you predict what you will subjectively see, when doing an experience of physics

In most physics experiments, even very advanced ones at CERN, the experimenter himself is not duplicated so in the question "What particle do you expect to see?" it's clear who "you" is; but in your thought experiment who is "you"  is not obvious because YOU have been duplicated. 

  John K Clark 


Quentin Anciaux

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Oct 30, 2012, 1:51:28 PM10/30/12
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2012/10/30 John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

Yet in MWI... YOU have been duplicated too *but* the probabilities of each *you* version seeing the particle in a specified state are not the same... hence the expectation question of the *you* before  is meaningful.

Quentin
 

  John K Clark 


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Bruno Marchal

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Oct 31, 2012, 2:21:23 PM10/31/12
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On 30 Oct 2012, at 18:46, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> So you were not answering the question in my post, which can be sum up: are you OK with step 3, and what about step 4?

I don't even remember what step 2 was, I found a blunder in your proof so I didn't find it very memorable. 

This confirms my feeling that you just avoid the study of the reasoning. 
People from the list did already debunk them. 





> You are the one pretending seeing a problem, and as many notice, you just keep not answering the question. You did understand well the 1-3 distinction, so it is utterly not understandable why you remain stuck on this.

I do remember that in one of the steps in your proof you made a big deal about "1P view", that is to say the first person view, but you don't make it at all clear exactly who is the person that is having this view,

The reasoning is precisely constructed so as to avoid the personal identity question, even if he eventually put some light on its difficulty. 





the you before the duplication or the you after the duplication?

All the you after, are the you before, by definition of comp. That's is why we interview all of them, or some good sample of them.

In the iterated movie-duplication experience, they all assess having seen only one movie, and the vast majority assess to never been able to predict the next picture at any point. Then if they count themselves, it is clear that the number of balck opixels, and white pixels, and their positions, distribute exactly like the Newton Binômial coefficients, etc.





And this is supposed to be a valid mathematical proof as rigorous as that discipline demands, but it is not.

You just have not yet shown to get the point, by misidentifying the question asked, which concerns what you will live, as a first person. You know by comp that you will live a unique things (as all the one doing it will assess), and it is trivial you can predict which one you will be, in the sense that if you do that, all the other John Clarks will get the point that such a prediction is wrong. 



Before the duplication the you is the Helsinki man, after the duplication the you is the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary that he sees Washington? 0%. 

The guy reconstituted in Washington will say: "Gosh I was wrong". 






What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Moscow? 0%.

The guy reconstituted in Moscow will say: "Gosh I was wrong". 



What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Helsinki? 100%.

No. In the protocol that I have described to you many times, the probability here is 0%, as he is cut and pasted. Not copy and pasted. And it is not "he sees" but what will he see. And the protocol assures that he will only see washington, or Moscow.



What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.

The question was asked to the Helsinki man.



What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Moscow? 0%. And if the duplicating process destroys the Helsinki man then the probability the Helsinki man will write anything at all in his diary is 0%.

Then comp is false. You are saying that classical teleportation would not work, but step one is that comp entails that classical teleportation works, as it is equivalent with the acceptance of a digital brain.




If there is any indeterminacy in all this, that is to say if there are many potential correct answers, it's just because you are asking a incomplete question; if you don't specify  exactly who "you" is then asking for a probability number involving "you" is like asking "How long is a piece of string?" or "How much is 2 + anything?"; any number is as good a answer as any other.

The question is about your first person experience. It does not involve personal identity question. It involves you, well defined at the start, pushing on a button, and what you, before pushing on the button can expect to live, as comp makes you not dying, and not living a superposition of many experiences. 

As Quentin said, it is implicit in the Everett understanding of QM. 




> I can ask you another question: how do you predict what you will subjectively see, when doing an experience of physics

In most physics experiments, even very advanced ones at CERN, the experimenter himself is not duplicated so in the question "What particle do you expect to see?" it's clear who "you" is;

Only if you assume that the universe does not contain Boltzman brains, or a universal dovetailer, as it will generate your current computational state, along with computations going through it, in infinity of exemplars. You are using an implicit limitation axiom. If the physical universe is big enough, "you" is no more that clear too. In a quantum multiverse either. And with step 8, the arithmetical reality is enough for distributing you in infinitely many virtual reconstitution. This follows not directly by the 1p-indeterminacy, but by its invariance for a bunch of transform. Step tackles the first one.

Here you make the move "let us assume that the physical universe is primary and little". This cut the reasoning at step seven, but then step 8 put a big doubt as it will introduce in matter and mind non Turing emulable element, different from those Turing recoverable by the 1p - indeterminacy.




but in your thought experiment who is "you"  is not obvious because YOU have been duplicated. 

Correct, but irrelevant. The question is not about you, but about the most probable result of an experiment that you can do. You push on a button, and you localize your directly accessible body.

Bruno



John Clark

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Nov 1, 2012, 4:25:48 PM11/1/12
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On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> the you before the duplication or the you after the duplication?

> All the you after, are the you before, by definition of comp.

OK, but the you before is not the you after. The Helsinki man knows nothing about Moscow or Washington, not even if he still exists after the duplication, but both the Moscow man and the Washington man know all about Helsinki even if they don't know about each other.


> what you will live, as a first person.

If your mind works deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on the external environment. If your mind does NOT work deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on absolutely nothing, in other words it is random. There is no new sort of indeterminacy involved just the boring old sort, and how you expect to draw profound philosophical  conclusions from such a flimsy foundation is a mystery.

> You know by comp that [...]

I don't know anything by "comp". At one time I thought I knew what you meant by the term, but then you say consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains and that "the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic". So I was wrong, I don't know what "comp" means.

>> Before the duplication the you is the Helsinki man, after the duplication the you is the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary that he sees Washington? 0%.
 
> The guy reconstituted in Washington will say: "Gosh I was wrong".

That's the problem, you're not clear who "I" is. The Washington man made no error because he made no predictions of any sort, only the Helsinki man did that. The Washington man and Helsinki man have identical memories up to the point of duplication but after that they diverge.
>> What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Helsinki? 100%.
> No. In the protocol that I have described to you many times, the probability here is 0%, as he is cut and pasted. Not copy and pasted.

If the Helsinki man had never seen Helsinki then he's not the Helsinki man, if he has seen that city then he wrote so in his diary. 

> And it is not "he sees" but what will he see. And the protocol assures that he will only see washington, or Moscow.

Who is "he"?
>> What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.
> The question was asked to the Helsinki man.

But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.
>>  And if the duplicating process destroys the Helsinki man then the probability the Helsinki man will write anything at all in his diary is 0%.
> Then comp is false.

OK if you say so, its your invention so whatever "comp" means its false; although I am a little surprised that you expect a man who no longer exists to write stuff in his diary.

> The question is about your first person experience. [...]The question is not about you, but about the most probable result of an experiment that you can do. You push on a button, and you localize your directly accessible body.
 
Your? You? John Clark believes that when considering matters of identity if Bruno Marchal stopped using so many pronouns without considering what they refer to then Bruno Marchal's thinking would be less muddled.

>As Quentin said, it is implicit in the Everett understanding of QM.

In Everett a world does not split until there is a difference between them and neither does consciousness. And the same is true in the thought experiment, If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos, at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still be    Bruno Marchal

>> In most physics experiments, even very advanced ones at CERN, the experimenter himself is not duplicated so in the question "What particle do you expect to see?" it's clear who "you" is;

> Only if you assume that the universe does not contain Boltzman brains, or a universal dovetailer,

It doesn't matter if Boltzman brains exist or not. In physics experiments not involving self duplications which "you" is involved is obvious, and it can be proven to be correct by observing that when "you" predicts what "you" will see using physical laws the prediction usually proves to be true, so all the yous must have been assigned correctly.

  John K Clark



Jason Resch

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Nov 1, 2012, 5:19:07 PM11/1/12
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Physics is all about predicting observations.   Let's say an experimenter creates a new kind of particle using an accelerator that has never before existed in the history of the universe, and wants to measure its half-life.  Now let's presume that in 999 out of 1,000 almost identical standard models that exist in string theory, the half-life is 1 us.  But in 1 out of those 1,000, the half life is 10 us.

If you are the experimenter what can physics tell you about the particle's half life?  It is not implied by the laws of physics because there are many laws of physics.  Until the experiment is performed, even the laws of physics are not in stone.  This is a main point of Bruno's result: physics is not at the bottom of the explanatory ladder, the laws of physics depend on the distribution of observers similar to your current state of mind throughout its infinite manifestations in reality.

Jason

John Clark

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Nov 2, 2012, 11:07:35 AM11/2/12
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On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 5:19 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> let's presume that in 999 out of 1,000 almost identical standard models that exist in string theory, the half-life is 1 us. But in 1 out of those 1,000, the half life is 10 us. If you are the experimenter what can physics tell you about the particle's half life?  

That it's half life is really 1.01 not 1.

> Until the experiment is performed, even the laws of physics are not in stone.
 
And in Bruno's thought experiment until the subjects open the door of the duplicating machine and observe the different environments of Washington and Moscow and thus are changed differently there is still only one consciousness regardless of how many bodies there are.   

> This is a main point of Bruno's result:

Bruno's main point is that we should be amazed and draw deep philosophical conclusions from the fact that the Washington man is the man who saw Washington, and be flabbergasted by the fact that he didn't become the Moscow man because he didn't see Moscow. I'm sorry but I just don't see any grand mystery here.

> physics is not at the bottom of the explanatory ladder

Physics is at the bottom of all non-mathematical things that have an explanation, but we now know that some things have no explanation. We now know that some things are random.

  John K Clark


Jason

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Nov 2, 2012, 11:48:10 AM11/2/12
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On Friday, November 2, 2012 10:07:36 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 5:19 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> let's presume that in 999 out of 1,000 almost identical standard models that exist in string theory, the half-life is 1 us. But in 1 out of those 1,000, the half life is 10 us. If you are the experimenter what can physics tell you about the particle's half life?  

That it's half life is really 1.01 not 1.

I'm not sure about this.  I think after making a few of these measurements, the experimenter will partition themselves into two different sets of universes, one where the particle is consistently measured with 1 and another with 10.  After which it is not likely for them to re-intersect with the other universes where it actually is the other value.   

(Perhaps an already random process like half life was not a good example, let's say it was the particle's rest mass.)
 

> Until the experiment is performed, even the laws of physics are not in stone.
 
And in Bruno's thought experiment until the subjects open the door of the duplicating machine and observe the different environments of Washington and Moscow and thus are changed differently there is still only one consciousness regardless of how many bodies there are.   

> This is a main point of Bruno's result:

Bruno's main point is that we should be amazed and draw deep philosophical conclusions from the fact that the Washington man is the man who saw Washington, and be flabbergasted by the fact that he didn't become the Moscow man because he didn't see Moscow. I'm sorry but I just don't see any grand mystery here.

No, that is only a step in the proof.  If you had spent the 30 minutes to read all the steps, you would see the conclusion is that the apparent laws of physics are determined by math (assuming arithmetical realism and the computational theory of mind).
 

> physics is not at the bottom of the explanatory ladder

Physics is at the bottom of all non-mathematical things that have an explanation,

Physics isn't at the bottom if it is explained by a more fundamental concept. (Conscious machines and their existence in mathematics)
 
but we now know that some things have no explanation. We now know that some things are random.


Yes, but only from a first person perspective.

Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 2, 2012, 12:44:33 PM11/2/12
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On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:25, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> the you before the duplication or the you after the duplication?

> All the you after, are the you before, by definition of comp.

OK, but the you before is not the you after. The Helsinki man knows nothing about Moscow or Washington, not even if he still exists after the duplication,

He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.



but both the Moscow man and the Washington man know all about Helsinki even if they don't know about each other.

> what you will live, as a first person.

If your mind works deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on the external environment.

Sure. 



If your mind does NOT work deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on absolutely nothing, in other words it is random. There is no new sort of indeterminacy involved just the boring old sort, and how you expect to draw profound philosophical  conclusions from such a flimsy foundation is a mystery.

Here 3-determinacy entails, by simple logic. You are the only one in the list (and out of the list) who have a problem (but which one?) with this. I do not draw any philosophical conclusion: but a theorem. The theorem is that the physical laws emerges, in a precise and testable way, from arithmetic/computer science. test have already been performed, and you can read the math part which explains all this. 




> You know by comp that [...]

I don't know anything by "comp".

Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain.




At one time I thought I knew what you meant by the term,

I thought so.



but then you say consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains and that "the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic". So I was wrong, I don't know what "comp" means.

You were just not aware of the logical consequences, and as long as you are stuck in step 3, it is normal you can't get the consequences of comp.




>> Before the duplication the you is the Helsinki man, after the duplication the you is the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary that he sees Washington? 0%.
 
> The guy reconstituted in Washington will say: "Gosh I was wrong".

That's the problem, you're not clear who "I" is.

This is not relevant. the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H, by definition of comp. This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.




The Washington man made no error because he made no predictions of any sort, only the Helsinki man did that. The Washington man and Helsinki man have identical memories up to the point of duplication but after that they diverge.

That is known by the guy in Helsinki. That is why he can make a bet, on what he can possibly live, given that he knows he will remain alive (betting on comp and the default hypothesis, with the given protocol).



>> What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees Helsinki? 100%.
> No. In the protocol that I have described to you many times, the probability here is 0%, as he is cut and pasted. Not copy and pasted.

If the Helsinki man had never seen Helsinki then he's not the Helsinki man, if he has seen that city then he wrote so in his diary. 

And?




> And it is not "he sees" but what will he see. And the protocol assures that he will only see washington, or Moscow.

Who is "he"?

The guy in Helsinki, which will be in both M and W, but which will feel being in only once city, as both the W and M guy will concede. And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any Löbian machine, can know that in advance, and that is why he can be aware that he does not know in advance where he will feel. It is simple math.




>> What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.
> The question was asked to the Helsinki man.

But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.

The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have already accept that the guy itself survives. With comp we already know that we can survive an annihilation of the body.




>>  And if the duplicating process destroys the Helsinki man then the probability the Helsinki man will write anything at all in his diary is 0%.
> Then comp is false.

OK if you say so, its your invention so whatever "comp" means its false; although I am a little surprised that you expect a man who no longer exists to write stuff in his diary.

The simple teleprtation kills us, and then a brain substitution kills us too, and this is what I mean by comp is false.




> The question is about your first person experience. [...]The question is not about you, but about the most probable result of an experiment that you can do. You push on a button, and you localize your directly accessible body.
 
Your? You? John Clark believes that when considering matters of identity if Bruno Marchal stopped using so many pronouns without considering what they refer to then Bruno Marchal's thinking would be less muddled.

"you" here refer to the guy in helsinki. After the duplication things get clear when you distiunguish the 1p and the 3p. No difficulty, just an 1p indeterminacy.




>As Quentin said, it is implicit in the Everett understanding of QM.

In Everett a world does not split until there is a difference between them and neither does consciousness. And the same is true in the thought experiment,

Exactly.


If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos, at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still be    Bruno Marchal

Exactly. This contradict what you say above though. And this entails the 1p indeterminacy. 



>> In most physics experiments, even very advanced ones at CERN, the experimenter himself is not duplicated so in the question "What particle do you expect to see?" it's clear who "you" is;

> Only if you assume that the universe does not contain Boltzman brains, or a universal dovetailer,

It doesn't matter if Boltzman brains exist or not.

Of course it does matter. That the point of step 4, 5, 6, 7. But you have to grasp step 3 before. You pretend to have found a blunder, but we keep explaining to you that you are the one conflating the different person points of view.



In physics experiments not involving self duplications which "you" is involved is obvious,

Yes, but only if there is no universal dovetailer, or if comp is false, so that you can use the physical supervenience thesis. 



and it can be proven to be correct by observing that when "you" predicts what "you" will see using physical laws the prediction usually proves to be true, so all the yous must have been assigned correctly.

But that is what we cannot do if there is a UD, or if the universe is very big, or, after step 8, just if comp is true.

Bruno




Bruno Marchal

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Nov 2, 2012, 2:04:41 PM11/2/12
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On 02 Nov 2012, at 16:07, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 5:19 PM, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> let's presume that in 999 out of 1,000 almost identical standard models that exist in string theory, the half-life is 1 us. But in 1 out of those 1,000, the half life is 10 us. If you are the experimenter what can physics tell you about the particle's half life?  

That it's half life is really 1.01 not 1.

> Until the experiment is performed, even the laws of physics are not in stone.
 
And in Bruno's thought experiment until the subjects open the door of the duplicating machine and observe the different environments of Washington and Moscow and thus are changed differently there is still only one consciousness regardless of how many bodies there are.   

> This is a main point of Bruno's result:

Bruno's main point is that we should be amazed and draw deep philosophical conclusions from the fact that the Washington man is the man who saw Washington, and be flabbergasted by the fact that he didn't become the Moscow man because he didn't see Moscow. I'm sorry but I just don't see any grand mystery here.


Nobody talk on being amazed, or on deep mystery. The thought experience is used just to illustrates the notion of 1P indeterminacy, and this is used to get a result. No mystery, no paradox. Just a logical consequence.

Bruno



> physics is not at the bottom of the explanatory ladder

Physics is at the bottom of all non-mathematical things that have an explanation, but we now know that some things have no explanation. We now know that some things are random.

  John K Clark



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John Clark

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Nov 2, 2012, 5:02:55 PM11/2/12
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On Fri, Nov 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.

People believe they exist and in real life they don't have or need a reason for doing so. And I no longer know what "comp" means.

> Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain.

I have no difficulty with that, but now you tell me that it means a great many other things too, things that are clearly untrue; like consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains or  "the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic".


> you are stuck in step 3

And I will remain stuck there until you fix the blunders you made in step 3; after that perhaps the additional steps that were built on that fatally flawed foundation would be worth reading.  

 > the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H

Yes.

> by definition of comp.

I don't know what that is.

> This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.

You don't know what your environment will be, what's new and mysterious about that? I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my environment will include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of philosophical interest in that fact .

> And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any Löbian machine,

Like your other invention "comp" I don't know what a  "Löbian machine" is.


>>>>  What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.

>>> The question was asked to the Helsinki man.

>> But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.

> The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have already accept that the guy itself survives.
So when you say "The question was asked to the Helsinki man" you are asking a question to a man who's body has been destroyed. Yes the Helsinki man is also the Washington man so you could say there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I see Washington".  Of course the Helsinki man is also the Moscow man so there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I DO NOT see Washington". There is no contradiction because you have been duplicated.
>> If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos, at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still be    Bruno Marchal
> Exactly. This contradict what you say above though.

I said a great deal above but I'll be damned if I see any contradiction . 

> It doesn't matter if Boltzman brains exist or not.

> Of course it does matter. That the point of step 4, 5, 6, 7.

Which are useless because they were built on top of a step that does not work.

  John K Clark
 

Jason Resch

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Nov 2, 2012, 6:38:58 PM11/2/12
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On Nov 2, 2012, at 4:02 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.

People believe they exist and in real life they don't have or need a reason for doing so. And I no longer know what "comp" means.


It is just short for computationalism, the computational theory of mind.  The idea that your consciousness is the result of a computation.

> Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain.

I have no difficulty with that, but now you tell me that it means a great many other things too, things that are clearly untrue; like consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains or  "the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic".

As Bruno explained these are the implications of computationalism, not in the definition and not usually realized by most of those who ascribe to computationalism.



> you are stuck in step 3

And I will remain stuck there until you fix the blunders you made in step 3; after that perhaps the additional steps that were built on that fatally flawed foundation would be worth reading.  

 > the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H

Yes.

> by definition of comp.

I don't know what that is.

> This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.

You don't know what your environment will be, what's new and mysterious about that?

As Bruno told you, but you erased from your reply, there is no mystery, no paradox.  The only point of that step is to show interdeterminacy exists from a first person view.  You seemed to have agreed with this in previous posts.

I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my environment will include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of philosophical interest in that fact .

> And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any Löbian machine,

Like your other invention "comp" I don't know what a  "Löbian machine" is.

>>>>  What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.

>>> The question was asked to the Helsinki man.

>> But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.

> The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have already accept that the guy itself survives.
So when you say "The question was asked to the Helsinki man" you are asking a question to a man who's body has been destroyed. Yes the Helsinki man is also the Washington man so you could say there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I see Washington".  Of course the Helsinki man is also the Moscow man so there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I DO NOT see Washington". There is no contradiction because you have been duplicated.
>> If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos, at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still be    Bruno Marchal
> Exactly. This contradict what you say above though.

I said a great deal above but I'll be damned if I see any contradiction .

Your contradiction is that at some times you accept survival and other times you deny there is survival.  

 

> It doesn't matter if Boltzman brains exist or not.

> Of course it does matter. That the point of step 4, 5, 6, 7.

Which are useless because they were built on top of a step that does not work.


Sometimes I wonder if you are just playing a game with all of us.

Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 3, 2012, 5:59:33 AM11/3/12
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On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:02, John Clark wrote:

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012  Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.

People believe they exist and in real life they don't have or need a reason for doing so. And I no longer know what "comp" means.

Comp means that we can survive with a digital brain. Nothing else. but it implies that Plato is correct and Aristotle is incorrect for the global conception of reality.



> Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain.

I have no difficulty with that, but now you tell me that it means a great many other things too,

Yes. It has concequences which contradict many point of Aristotle metaphysics.



things that are clearly untrue; like consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains or  "the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic".

Let us go step by step.




> you are stuck in step 3

And I will remain stuck there until you fix the blunders you made in step 3;

Your "blunder" has been debunked by many people.  Then you have oscillate between contradictory statements. You are only confusing 1-views with 3-views. Sometimes between 3-views on 1-views and the 1-views on 1-views. 
You are the one pretending being able to predict what happens after pushing the button, but you have always given a list of what can happen, which is not a prediction.




after that perhaps the additional steps that were built on that fatally flawed foundation would be worth reading.  

You did not show a flow, just a confusion between 1p and 3p.




 > the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H

Yes.

> by definition of comp.

I don't know what that is.

See above.




> This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.

You don't know what your environment will be, what's new and mysterious about that?


OK. Good. So you accept it. Please go to step 4 now, and tell me if you agree. We have all the time to see where the reasoning will eventually lead us.




I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my environment will include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of philosophical interest in that fact .

This is not the same form of indeterminacy. The impossibility of predicting the weather is due to the deterministic chaos. This is not used in the first person indeterminacy.




> And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any Löbian machine,

Like your other invention "comp" I don't know what a  "Löbian machine" is.

A universal machine capable of proving all sentence with the shape p -> Bew('p'), with p being an arithmetical sentence with shape ExP(x), and P decidable. Exemple: prover theorem for PA, ZF, etc.





>>>>  What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? 100%.

>>> The question was asked to the Helsinki man.

>> But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.

> The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have already accept that the guy itself survives.
So when you say "The question was asked to the Helsinki man" you are asking a question to a man who's body has been destroyed.

No, the question is asked before he pushes on the read/cut button.




Yes the Helsinki man is also the Washington man so you could say there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I see Washington". 

No. the question is *about* a future 1-view. The guy knows that he might very well be the guy in Moscow, so he cannot assert that he will *feel* with 100% chance to be the one in Washington. Again you confuse the 3-view and the 1-view. 




Of course the Helsinki man is also the Moscow man so there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary "I DO NOT see Washington". There is no contradiction because you have been duplicated.

Of course there is no contradiction. But the Helsinki man would find to be contradict if he said I will find myself in W and I will find myself in Washington, from the first person view, as he knows that after pushing the button he will find himself being in only one city, not in two cities simultaneously.



>> If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos, at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still be    Bruno Marchal
> Exactly. This contradict what you say above though.

I said a great deal above but I'll be damned if I see any contradiction . 

You did it again. You pretend that there is 100% chance that he will feel to see Washington, and 100% chance he will feel to see Moscow, and yet you agree that there is 100% chance he will see only one city (and you forget that the question is which one, with what chance).




> It doesn't matter if Boltzman brains exist or not.

> Of course it does matter. That the point of step 4, 5, 6, 7.

Which are useless because they were built on top of a step that does not work.

... for someone unable to understand that the question is about the future first person point of view, as seen by the future first person point of view, and not about the 3-view on all future first person points of view, as you keep giving.
Reading step 4 should help you to eventually grasp this key nuance. 

Bruno



Roger Clough

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Nov 3, 2012, 6:51:15 AM11/3/12
to everything-list
Hi Bruno Marchal
 
I think the issue of your survival of the doctor's
operation or whatever is clouded by the
solipsism issue.  It should work, for better or
worse, as long as you can affirm  you have survived
by your subjective (1p) experience.
 
More comments are below, but that is the bottom line.
 
MORE COMMENTS:
I started looking at your comments on sane04,
recalling a comment made by Leibniz, namely
the question about what happens to your monad
if an arm is amputated ? Right after that, the arm is still
alive, I think it can be rejoined. Leibniz said (and I wish
I could remember exactly what he said) that your
monad--which is actually called "spirit" for a man
or monad with intellect-- will stay with your
intellect (or 1p), for that it is what defines you,
it is your identity. The arm will not share that monad
or soul while detached and so will shortly die.

This raises serious problems with the head/mind transplant
conjecture. According to L, I think I can say that it
wouldn't work. Your monad would stay with the amputated
head, and remain attached to or associated with it.
But the head or intellect will die for lack of fresh blood, etc.,
so the monad will remain attached to a rotting head.

Your soul is your identity. It stays with you, even though
you change through the years or while asleep during
an operation.  And even when you die. If your subjective
1p consciousness (your monad) survives, then "you" have survived the doctor's
alterations (either with digital hardware or signals) to your brain.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
11/3/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-02, 12:44:33
Subject: Re: Against Mechanism




On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:25, John Clark wrote:


The guy in Helsinki, which will be in both M and W, but which will feel being in only once city, as both the W and M guy will concede. And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any L?ian machine, can know that in advance, and that is why he can be aware that he does not know in advance where he will feel. It is simple math.

Roger Clough

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Nov 3, 2012, 7:34:16 AM11/3/12
to everything-list
Hi Bruno Marchal


All theories are based on the a priori but
can only give contingent results (this world
results).

However, arithmetic is not a theory, it is
arithmetical (permanent, necessary, logical) truth.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
11/3/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-03, 05:59:33
Subject: Re: Against Mechanism




On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:02, John Clark wrote:


> And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any L?ian machine,


Like your other invention "comp" I don't know what a "L?ian machine" is.

John Clark

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Nov 3, 2012, 12:01:54 PM11/3/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012  Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It is just short for computationalism, the computational theory of mind.  The idea that your consciousness is the result of a computation.

That's what I thought too and so I was about ready to say that I believed in "comp" but then Bruno said it also means all sorts of other things, very silly things; and being the inventor of the word "comp" ( and Löbian machine too) he is the authority on what it means. So I must conclude that I don't believe in "comp".


> As Bruno explained these are the implications of computationalism, not in the definition and not usually realized by most of those who ascribe to computationalism.

Because most who ascribe to computationalism recognize a bad proof when they see one.

> The only point of that step is to show interdeterminacy exists from a first person view. 

That is not exactly earth shaking news, and Indeterminacy exists from EVERY point of view.
 
> Your contradiction is that at some times you accept survival and other times you deny there is survival.  

Well depending on circumstances sometimes you survive and sometimes you don't, there have been a huge number of permutations in this thought experiment, give me a specific one and I'll tell you if you survived. And it was Bruno not me who invented the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man; If he gave then different names he must have believed there is something different about them, and indeed there is, the Moscow man will write in his diary "I don't see Washington" and the Washington man will wright that he does. Big deal.

  John K Clark
 
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