Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complex computations ?

[Roger Clough]

Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complex computations ?

 

The short answer is that I am proposing that :

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity.  Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

 

If you would like a more complete discussion, read below.

 

 

 

 

=======================================================
A MORE COMPLETE ANSWER:
Contemporary thinking on consciousness is that it is an "emergent property"
of computational complexity among neurons. This raises some questions:

A. Is the emergence of consciouness simply a another name for Penrose's condition of non-computability ?

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html

"Conventional explanations portray consciousness as an emergent property of classical
computer-like activities in the brain's neural networks.
The prevailing views among scientists in this camp are that

1) patterns of neural network activities correlate with mental states,
2) synchronous network oscillations in thalamus and cerebral cortex temporally bind information,
and
3) consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons."



B. Or is there another way to look at this emergence ?

Now my understanding of "emergent properties" is that they appear or emerge through looking at a phenomenon
at a lower degree of magnification "from above. " Thus sociology is an emergent property of
the behavior of many minds.

IMHO "from above" means looking downward from Platonia. From a wiser position.

Penrose seems to take take two views of Platonia:

http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Yasue.html

One is his belief that there is a realm of non-computability, presumably that of Platonia as experienced.
All art and insight comes from such an experience.

On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, Penrose seems to believe that the universe is made up of
quantum "spin networks", which presumably can model even the most complex entities.
He does not seem to deny that the "non-computational" calculations belong to the realm

of spin networks. 

 

This casts some doubt on his belief in the possibility of non-computability,

and may even allow his spin networks, which are presumably complete,

to escape intact from Godel's incompleteness limitation.

 

Instead, I propose the following:

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity. Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

=================================================================



Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

[Craig Weinberg]

Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.

Craig

[Richard Ruquist]

Roger,
Philosophers such as Lucas, Hofstadter and Chalmers as well as Penrose
and Godel suggest that consciousness may be due to incompleteness
itself allowing for emergence...
See http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf
Richard

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[Richard Ruquist]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
> have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
> Craig
>

Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
have. But I missed it.
Richard

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[Stephen P. King]

Hi Roger,

On 10/16/2012 7:48 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complex computations ?

    No!

 

The short answer is that I am proposing that :

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

    No!

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity.

    No, it puts them beyond the domain of computability. Bruno has already shown this!

 Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

    Look up Bruno's resent cartoon of Löb property. This is also available from http://lesswrong.com/lw/t6/the_cartoon_guide_to_l%C3%B6bs_theorem/

"Löb's Theorem shows that a mathematical system cannot assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent."

A slightly more technical discussion here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox

 

If you would like a more complete discussion, read below.

 

 

    I will!

 

 

=======================================================
A MORE COMPLETE ANSWER:
Contemporary thinking on consciousness is that it is an "emergent property"
of computational complexity among neurons. This raises some questions:

A. Is the emergence of consciouness simply a another name for Penrose's condition of non-computability ?

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html

"Conventional explanations portray consciousness as an emergent property of classical
computer-like activities in the brain's neural networks.
The prevailing views among scientists in this camp are that

1) patterns of neural network activities correlate with mental states,
2) synchronous network oscillations in thalamus and cerebral cortex temporally bind information,
and
3) consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons."

    That is Stuart Hameroff's idea, not Penrose's per se...

B. Or is there another way to look at this emergence ?

Now my understanding of "emergent properties" is that they appear or emerge through looking at a phenomenon
at a lower degree of magnification "from above. " Thus sociology is an emergent property of
the behavior of many minds.

    Sure, but the "integrity" or "wholeness" of an individual mind is only subject to a threshold in the sense of the requirement of closure under consistent self-reference (which is what Löb's Theorem is all about.) But this makes a mind solipsistic unless we can break the symmetry somehow!

IMHO "from above" means looking downward from Platonia. From a wiser position.

Penrose seems to take take two views of Platonia:

http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Yasue.html

One is his belief that there is a realm of non-computability, presumably that of Platonia as experienced.
All art and insight comes from such an experience.

    No, that is what Kunio Yasue thinks that Penrose's position on Platonia! You might read The Emperor's New Mind for yourself and get it straight from the Horse's mouth.

http://www.thiruvarunai.com/eBooks/penrose/The%20Emperors%20New%20Mind.pdf

    This quote might give us a flavor of Penrose's thinking:

"In Plato's view, the objects of pure geometry straight lines,
circles, triangles, planes, etc. --were only approximately
realized in terms of the world of actual physical things. Those
mathematically precise objects of pure geometry inhabited,
instead, a different world Plato's ideal world of
mathematical concepts. Plato's world consists not of tangible
objects, but of 'mathematical things'. This world is
accessible to us not in the ordinary physical way but, instead,
via the intellect. One's mind makes contact with Plato's
world whenever it contemplates a mathematical truth, perceiving
it by the exercise of mathematical reasoning and
insight. This ideal world was regarded as distinct and more perfect
than the material world of our external experiences,
but just as real."

    Exactly how the "contact" is made between the realms remains to be explained! This, BTW, is my one bone of contention with Bruno's COMP program and I am desperately trying to find a solution.

On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, Penrose seems to believe that the universe is made up of
quantum "spin networks", which presumably can model even the most complex entities.
He does not seem to deny that the "non-computational" calculations belong to the realm

of spin networks. 

    The "physical universe" yes, he believes that... He has shown how one can derive a crude version of space-time using spin combinatorials.

 

This casts some doubt on his belief in the possibility of non-computability,

and may even allow his spin networks, which are presumably complete,

to escape intact from Godel's incompleteness limitation.

   

    Not even wrong!

 

Instead, I propose the following:

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

    No!

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity. Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

=================================================================

    We must study the math, there are no short-cuts!

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

--

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you
> could have computation without sense, then there would be no
> consciousness.
>
> Craig

Hi Craig,

I agree, you would have the "zombie" without sense. By definition!

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> Roger,
> Philosophers such as Lucas, Hofstadter and Chalmers as well as Penrose
> and Godel suggest that consciousness may be due to incompleteness
> itself allowing for emergence...
> Seehttp://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf
> Richard

Hi Richard,

I only have one beef with your thesis, you over rely on a "theory"
that has yet to have a single physically testable prediction! IMHO, it
would be better to think of all that super-geometry as nothing more than
beautiful mathematics until that day that we actually find a squark or
photino.

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Roger Clough]

Hi Richard Ruquist

I'm well aware of that, except you don't need
Godel to reach an impossibly complex state of
calculations. My own position is that if you
can't calculate upward any more, you calculate
downward. From Platonia, except that you begin
to use the forms, numbers, reason, all of that
stuff. Consciousness is created from Platonia,
probably more form philosophy than math.
After some study, it turns out that
Leibniz's substances are not based on
physical materials but on their forms.
Just like Plato except that there are an
infinite types of materials.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Richard Ruquist
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 08:33:45
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

Roger,
Philosophers such as Lucas, Hofstadter and Chalmers as well as Penrose
and Godel suggest that consciousness may be due to incompleteness
itself allowing for emergence...
See http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf
Richard

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard

Hi Richard,

Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is. What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

You said,

" Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense.
If you could have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness."

That sounds potent, I'm but not sure what it means.
Could you expand on it a little ?

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 08:29:38
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

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[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that

consciousness, arises at (or above ?)

the level of noncomputability.  He just seems to

say that intuiton does. But that just seems

to be a conjecture of his.

ugh, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 08:55:23
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

Hi Roger,

On 10/16/2012 7:48 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complex computations ?

    No!



The short answer is that I am proposing that :

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position
that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

    No!



2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make
such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the
range of computabilitlity.


    No, it puts them beyond the domain of computability. Bruno has already shown this!


 Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed
calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,
the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough
mathematics to be more specific.

    Look up Bruno's resent cartoon of L? property. This is also available from http://lesswrong.com/lw/t6/the_cartoon_guide_to_l%C3%B6bs_theorem/

"L?'s Theorem shows that a mathematical system cannot assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent."

A slightly more technical discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox



If you would like a more complete discussion, read below.



    I will!




=======================================================
A MORE COMPLETE ANSWER:
Contemporary thinking on consciousness is that it is an "emergent property"
of computational complexity among neurons. This raises some questions:

A. Is the emergence of consciouness simply a another name for Penrose's condition of non-computability ?

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html

"Conventional explanations portray consciousness as an emergent property of classical
computer-like activities in the brain's neural networks.
The prevailing views among scientists in this camp are that

1) patterns of neural network activities correlate with mental states,
2) synchronous network oscillations in thalamus and cerebral cortex temporally bind information,
and
3) consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons."



    That is Stuart Hameroff's idea, not Penrose's per se...




B. Or is there another way to look at this emergence ?

Now my understanding of "emergent properties" is that they appear or emerge through looking at a phenomenon
at a lower degree of magnification "from above. " Thus sociology is an emergent property of
the behavior of many minds.

    Sure, but the "integrity" or "wholeness" of an individual mind is only subject to a threshold in the sense of the requirement of closure under consistent self-reference (which is what L?'s Theorem is all about.) But this makes a mind solipsistic unless we can break the symmetry somehow!

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

This may have little connection to what you said,
but in one of Brain Greene's talks (on time) he
made mention that the subjective state, the
experiential state, always just experiences "now."

Similarly calculations flow in time as they are made,
and the one being made is made "now."

There seems to be a connection but I can't express what it is.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-10-16, 09:08:49
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard
Hi Richard,

Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is. What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

--
Onward!

Stephen

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that

consciousness, arises at (or above ?)

the level of noncomputability.  He just seems to

say that intuiton does. But that just seems

to be a conjecture of his.


ugh, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

Hi Roger,

    IMHO, computability can only capture at most a "simulation" of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ...

 

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Alberto G. Corona]

Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything. Most of the time as an excuse for  not saying "I don´t know", that is the prerequisite for thinking deeper about the problem. I prefer to say I don´t know.

2012/10/16 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

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Alberto.

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 9:36 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything. Most of the time as an excuse for  not saying "I don´t know", that is the prerequisite for thinking deeper about the problem. I prefer to say I don´t know.

Hi Alberto,

    I say " I am not sure", but will not retreat to a "hypothesis non fingo" stance. It is better to guess and possibly be wrong (or right!) than to not guess (or "bet") at all.

2012/10/16 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

Hi Stephen P. King

Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that

consciousness, arises at (or above ?)

the level of noncomputability.  He just seems to

say that intuiton does. But that just seems

to be a conjecture of his.

ugh, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Alberto G. Corona]

I  argued previously about that the most primitive conciousness emerged from predation/prey dynamics and the neural machinery necessary for them. Because in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity, not a gift given by the Gods of computation Turing and Godel, among others ;)

2012/10/16 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

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Alberto.

[Stephen P. King]

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

On 10/16/2012 10:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

I  argued previously about that the most primitive conciousness emerged from predation/prey dynamics and the neural machinery necessary for them. Because in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity, not a gift given by the Gods of computation Turing and Godel, among others ;)

2012/10/16 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

On 10/16/2012 9:36 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything. Most of the time as an excuse for  not saying "I don´t know", that is the prerequisite for thinking deeper about the problem. I prefer to say I don´t know.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Alberto G. Corona]

The difference between "consciousness as an emergence from complexity" and "consciousness is a functionality necessary for, and evolved with xxxx by natural selection" is that the latter is a falsable  theory  (if we  find an observable effect of consciousness) while the former is not even a theory. 

It´s like if  someone say that the accumulation of meat produce consciousness and he claim that because predation produce consciousness and predation need muscle meat, then accumulation of meat produce consciousness..

2012/10/16 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

On 10/16/2012 10:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

I  argued previously about that the most primitive conciousness emerged from predation/prey dynamics and the neural machinery necessary for them. Because in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity, not a gift given by the Gods of computation Turing and Godel, among others ;)

2012/10/16 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

On 10/16/2012 9:36 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything. Most of the time as an excuse for  not saying "I don´t know", that is the prerequisite for thinking deeper about the problem. I prefer to say I don´t know.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

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Alberto.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:54:10 AM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
> have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
> Craig
>
Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
have. But I missed it.

This post http://s33light.org/post/24159233874 talks about why I use the word sense. I am saying that the only thing that the universe can be reduced to which is irreducible is sense, and by that I really mean sense in every sense, but in particular sensation, intuition, subjective feeling, pattern recognition, and categorization or discernment.

Craig
 

[Craig Weinberg]

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything. The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

Craig

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

    I agree 100%. All 3p related concepts are abstractions constructed from many different 1p's. The idea of "Reality" is a good example of this and it is why I define Reality as "what which is incontrovertible for some collection N (N > 2) of observers that can communicate (or interact) in some meaningful way. Of course the word "meaningful" is a bit ambiguous...

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[meekerdb]

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent

[Craig Weinberg]

I can't find the post where we were talking about simulation, but I was going to lay it out like this.

I'm in the desert and I see a shiny patch in the distance.

I can consider the shimmering patch many things:

A. Under-Signifying Range of Sense:

  1) A perceptually modeled representation of dynamic changing optical conditions based on photon collisions and retinal stimulation.

  2) A correlate for neurological functions evolved to link reflection with the presence of life sustaining H2O.
      a) this condition is either validated by the presence of water of negated by its absence.
      b) the limitations of 2) commonly lead to false positives owing to the similarity of patterns between heat convection and reflection off of the surface of water.

B. Signifying or Personal Range of Sense

  1) maybe a mirage (simulation of water)
  2) maybe water (which could be just as easily called a simulation of a mirage)

C. Over-signifying or Super-personal Range of Sense
  
  1) hope and salvation
  2) punishment from God/trickery from the devil.
  3) a dramatic point in the story

Simulation, to me, arises in the personal range of sensemaking. In the lower ranges, simulation is not applicable (saccharine molecules do not simulate sucrose molecules, polymer resin doesn't simulate the cellulose of a tree, etc) and in the upper ranges, interpretation is already ambiguous and faith based. You can't have a simulated dark night of the soul, it is an experience that already defines itself as unique and genuine (even if it's a genuine experience of being tricked).

Simulation then, is about the level of preference and (drumroll) Free Will. If something satisfies our expectation criteria of what it is intended to substitute for, then we say it is a simulation. The mirage is an example of how ephemeral and relative this really is. The mirage only passes for simulating water to us, at a distance. Probably don't see a lot of insects or plants fooled by convection optics. It's only a simulation in one sense or set of senses. This is why AI simulation will fail to generate human subjectivity, because it only looks like a human if you program it to play Jeopardy or chess or drive a car, etc.

I agree with you that, in this regard, everything only has one best simulation and that is itself. Only one instantiation of something can fulfill all possible expectation criteria for interaction with that thing for an indefinite period. I'm not sold on simulation being especially useful as a cosmological feature, but I think that it has potential within this Personal Range, and the bi-simulation is part of that. The personal range is the primary range anyhow. The loss of voluntary participation in the sub-personal, super-personal, and impersonal ranges coincides with the decrease in the relevance of simulation, as the 'seems like' range of direct relation gives way to the 'simply is' range of indirect (second hand) perceptual inertia.

Craig

 

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

For a person, sensory deprivation typically leads to powerful phenomenological perceptions or unconsciousness. Hard to guess what happens on a subatomic level, but there is no reason to assume that sense is limited to perceptions of the outside. Sense comes from within as well (it's just different than what comes from without).

Craig
 

Brent

[Stephen P. King]

--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content? It seems to me that all talk of "orbital electron scattering a photon" that is an abstract narrative that we talk to each other about and use to make predictions of phenomena that is within our sphere of mutual non-contradiction. Our knowledge of physical laws, like all content of experience is 1p that could be defined as 3p iff possible.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 3:00 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

    I agree 100%. All 3p related concepts are abstractions constructed from many different 1p's. The idea of "Reality" is a good example of this and it is why I define Reality as "what which is incontrovertible for some collection N (N > 2) of observers that can communicate (or interact) in some meaningful way. Of course the word "meaningful" is a bit ambiguous...

I can't find the post where we were talking about simulation, but I was going to lay it out like this.

I'm in the desert and I see a shiny patch in the distance.

I can consider the shimmering patch many things:

A. Under-Signifying Range of Sense:

  1) A perceptually modeled representation of dynamic changing optical conditions based on photon collisions and retinal stimulation.

  2) A correlate for neurological functions evolved to link reflection with the presence of life sustaining H2O.
      a) this condition is either validated by the presence of water of negated by its absence.
      b) the limitations of 2) commonly lead to false positives owing to the similarity of patterns between heat convection and reflection off of the surface of water.

B. Signifying or Personal Range of Sense

  1) maybe a mirage (simulation of water)
  2) maybe water (which could be just as easily called a simulation of a mirage)

C. Over-signifying or Super-personal Range of Sense
  
  1) hope and salvation
  2) punishment from God/trickery from the devil.
  3) a dramatic point in the story

Simulation, to me, arises in the personal range of sensemaking. In the lower ranges, simulation is not applicable (saccharine molecules do not simulate sucrose molecules, polymer resin doesn't simulate the cellulose of a tree, etc) and in the upper ranges, interpretation is already ambiguous and faith based. You can't have a simulated dark night of the soul, it is an experience that already defines itself as unique and genuine (even if it's a genuine experience of being tricked).

Simulation then, is about the level of preference and (drumroll) Free Will. If something satisfies our expectation criteria of what it is intended to substitute for, then we say it is a simulation. The mirage is an example of how ephemeral and relative this really is. The mirage only passes for simulating water to us, at a distance. Probably don't see a lot of insects or plants fooled by convection optics. It's only a simulation in one sense or set of senses. This is why AI simulation will fail to generate human subjectivity, because it only looks like a human if you program it to play Jeopardy or chess or drive a car, etc.

I agree with you that, in this regard, everything only has one best simulation and that is itself. Only one instantiation of something can fulfill all possible expectation criteria for interaction with that thing for an indefinite period. I'm not sold on simulation being especially useful as a cosmological feature, but I think that it has potential within this Personal Range, and the bi-simulation is part of that. The personal range is the primary range anyhow. The loss of voluntary participation in the sub-personal, super-personal, and impersonal ranges coincides with the decrease in the relevance of simulation, as the 'seems like' range of direct relation gives way to the 'simply is' range of indirect (second hand) perceptual inertia.

Craig

 

Hi Craig,

    It occurs to me that we can only gain information from simulations if we (as observers thereof) are within the simulacra itself in some way. For example, the moving playing on my TV screen is a simulation of a jet plane flying through the air and not the "real thing" but I am not the only possible viewer of that "simulated jet plane". There are multiple observers possible and we are all "within" the same "reality".
    It seems that for the bijective identity to hold between object and best possible simulation there can only be one observer of the simulation, the object itself, other wise there is the possibility of a distorted view of the object and thus the bijection fails.... This smells suspiciously like a definition of 1p!

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[meekerdb]

As I recall, what happens is that after about 45min, a person's conscious thoughts tend to enter an loop.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

It seems to me that all talk of "orbital electron scattering a photon" that is an abstract narrative that we talk to each other about and use to make predictions of phenomena that is within our sphere of mutual non-contradiction.

Sure, the 3p story is one we create to explain intersubjective agreement about 1p experience.  But my point is that consciousness is not basic, otherwise it wouldn't need external stimuli to avoid infinite loops.

Brent

Our knowledge of physical laws, like all content of experience is 1p that could be defined as 3p iff possible.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

--

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:19:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Only if electrons actually exist. I think there is a good chance that they are only the shared experience of atoms.
 

It seems to me that all talk of "orbital electron scattering a photon" that is an abstract narrative that we talk to each other about and use to make predictions of phenomena that is within our sphere of mutual non-contradiction.

Sure, the 3p story is one we create to explain intersubjective agreement about 1p experience.  But my point is that consciousness is not basic, otherwise it wouldn't need external stimuli to avoid infinite loops.

I can't find anything about infinite loops associated with sensory deprivation. I have never heard it mentioned and even the author of this article http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/the-nothing-eaters/Content?oid=5539022 spent 90 to 2.5 hours in there with no mention of any such thing.

Craig

[Richard Ruquist]

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

Computation is mentioned 3 time (comp not at all) but does not seem to
be what we refer to as COMP.

> To view this discussion on the web visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/BM2YYqCtqJEJ.

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:41:59 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

I don't see any contradiction. Its no difference than saying that atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies are different levels of the same thing.
 

Computation is mentioned 3 time (comp not at all) but does not seem to
be what we refer to as COMP.

COMP I don't talk about much because I understand it to be false. Computation is an effect of sense, not a cause. COMP is an unsupported assumption about the supremacy of computation.

Craig
 

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 4:19 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Hi Brent,

    So do I, it is very primitive, but present. The reasoning is simple, there must be something that it is like to be an electron. My belief in this follows from my agreement with panprotopsychism and explained in David Chalmers book The Conscious Mind. I don't have time to defend the idea now, but you might read Chalmers book and decide for yourself.

It seems to me that all talk of "orbital electron scattering a photon" that is an abstract narrative that we talk to each other about and use to make predictions of phenomena that is within our sphere of mutual non-contradiction.

Sure, the 3p story is one we create to explain intersubjective agreement about 1p experience.  But my point is that consciousness is not basic, otherwise it wouldn't need external stimuli to avoid infinite loops.

    Who claims that it needs to avoid endless loops? In fact, endless looping is required! At our level, we need external stimuli just to stay coherent with each other. Consciousness is, on its own, solipsistic and thus lost in its "hall of mirrors". Interactions are a break in this symmetry of ME ME ME ME ME ME....

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 4:31 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:19:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Only if electrons actually exist. I think there is a good chance that they are only the shared experience of atoms.

Hi Craig,

    Well, we differ on that point! If we accept atoms, we also have to accept electrons! Best not go there!

 

It seems to me that all talk of "orbital electron scattering a photon" that is an abstract narrative that we talk to each other about and use to make predictions of phenomena that is within our sphere of mutual non-contradiction.

Sure, the 3p story is one we create to explain intersubjective agreement about 1p experience.  But my point is that consciousness is not basic, otherwise it wouldn't need external stimuli to avoid infinite loops.

I can't find anything about infinite loops associated with sensory deprivation. I have never heard it mentioned and even the author of this article http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/the-nothing-eaters/Content?oid=5539022 spent 90 to 2.5 hours in there with no mention of any such thing.

Craig

   

    It follows from the necessary definition of self-representation. As some might say, "it's in the math, man!".

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 5:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:41:59 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

I don't see any contradiction. Its no difference than saying that atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies are different levels of the same thing.

Hi Craig,

    I see a problem here. The concept of levels is too simplistic and one-dimensional. I think it would help us to dig a bit into mereology and discuss different types of organization such that we have a broader and deeper indexing structure to relate the "atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies".

 

Computation is mentioned 3 time (comp not at all) but does not seem to
be what we refer to as COMP.

COMP I don't talk about much because I understand it to be false.

    I understand COMP to be true but only in a very deep, yet narrow, way.

Computation is an effect of sense, not a cause.

    I say neither. Computation is a representation, or better, an "externalization" of sense. We cannot say that "sense is this" or "sense is not that" while pointing outside of 1p. It is the assumption that "sense is ___" that must be understood to be problematic; it cannot be anything other than itself! Sure we can discuss sense in "as if" terms, but we cannot forget that it is not the symbols or the terms we use and cannot be.

COMP is an unsupported assumption about the supremacy of computation.

    Wrong. It is very supported by a broad landscape of mathematical truths, with the small exception that numbers can alone "do the work" that they are required to do. After all, comp only works in Platonia! It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem that is its Achilles heel.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 6:48:51 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 4:31 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:19:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Only if electrons actually exist. I think there is a good chance that they are only the shared experience of atoms.

Hi Craig,

    Well, we differ on that point! If we accept atoms, we also have to accept electrons! Best not go there!

Unfortunately if I doubt photons really the whole Standard Model is potentially up for grabs. The wide variation in the modeling of atoms tells me that it is not a given that electrons are not just an accounting of atomic charge states. It may be that electrons are objective in some senses but subjective in others (photons being subjective in more ways). That seems the most likely.

Do we have a way of isolating electrons which are independent of ions? When I look up the research online, it is always (naturally) a foregone conclusion that they do exist in isolation but I haven't found anything which explains how specifically we know that (or how we could know that).

I'm not anxious to try to advocate for electron agnosticism on top of photon agnosticism, but if there is nothing convince me otherwise, then there is no reason not to go there as well (other than fear of ridicule, which I only care about if I'm actually wrong).

Craig

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:42:16 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 5:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:41:59 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

I don't see any contradiction. Its no difference than saying that atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies are different levels of the same thing.

Hi Craig,

    I see a problem here. The concept of levels is too simplistic and one-dimensional. I think it would help us to dig a bit into mereology and discuss different types of organization such that we have a broader and deeper indexing structure to relate the "atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies".

I think it is the simplicity which we are after. The reason that we can say 'atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies' and understand a qualitative hierarchy related to physical scale and evolutionary age is because that is how our perception naturally stereotypes it. The deeper structure is a distraction, takes us further into the impersonal 3p view, which tries to reconcile all views of all other views rather than the significant themes that allow us to make sense of it in the first place. To do big picture, I think it has to be broad strokes.

 

Computation is mentioned 3 time (comp not at all) but does not seem to
be what we refer to as COMP.

COMP I don't talk about much because I understand it to be false.

    I understand COMP to be true but only in a very deep, yet narrow, way.

What seems true about COMP?
 

Computation is an effect of sense, not a cause.

    I say neither. Computation is a representation, or better, an "externalization" of sense.

I agree with that. That's pretty much what I meant.

 

We cannot say that "sense is this" or "sense is not that" while pointing outside of 1p.

There is nothing outside of (the totality of) 1p.
 

It is the assumption that "sense is ___" that must be understood to be problematic; it cannot be anything other than itself! Sure we can discuss sense in "as if" terms, but we cannot forget that it is not the symbols or the terms we use and cannot be.

I agree, although part of the nature of sense is it's self-reflection and translucence. We can say things about it, but only because the things we say can remind us of what we experience first hand.
 

COMP is an unsupported assumption about the supremacy of computation.

    Wrong. It is very supported by a broad landscape of mathematical truths, with the small exception that numbers can alone "do the work" that they are required to do. After all, comp only works in Platonia! It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem that is its Achilles heel.

Comp supporting itself isn't a surprise though. Every supreme idealism supports itself. What supports it outside of mathematics?


Craig

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 10:03 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 6:48:51 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 4:31 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:19:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Only if electrons actually exist. I think there is a good chance that they are only the shared experience of atoms.

Hi Craig,

    Well, we differ on that point! If we accept atoms, we also have to accept electrons! Best not go there!

Unfortunately if I doubt photons really the whole Standard Model is potentially up for grabs. The wide variation in the modeling of atoms tells me that it is not a given that electrons are not just an accounting of atomic charge states. It may be that electrons are objective in some senses but subjective in others (photons being subjective in more ways). That seems the most likely.

Hi Craig,

    Interesting challenge! What if we jettison as a confabulation all of physical theory... What is left? Shall we cast aside the nice predictive values that we have gotten? What then? I am willing to go there for the sake of discussion, but to where?

    Let's try something. Consider the Bp&p idea. Belief in a proposition and it is true. Can we reconstruct explanations from this? We would have to have a plurality of entities that would have the beliefs, no? Where do we get that plurality? Let's stipulate that we have a plurality somehow. There should be something that distinguishes them, something other than positions in space and time... or is there anything that would generate distinctions?
    Maybe the beliefs are frames in different languages that require some transformation to translate the propositions of one into something equivalent for all others. My assumption is that we have to have a common reality to recover something like physical theories and we can get that either by imbedding our entities into a single space or by simply having a common set of propositions that form a non-contradictory set, something isomorphic to a Boolean algebra if and only if the propositions are satisfiable such that the total logical formulation is TRUE. I favor the latter idea, but it requires that the physical universe that we observe to be representable as a true Boolean algebra and a repudiation of the idea that "substance" is ontologically priomitive.
 
    How is it determined to be satisfiable becomes an interesting question! Most thinkers seem to assume that its global logical consistency is completely determined ab initio by the combination of "physical laws" and initial conditions. But exactly how did the physical laws come to exist such that they never generate a logical inconsistency (violating satisfiability) and thus "white rabbits"? I think that the physical laws are the result of an underlying process that is, in the ontological sense, eternal and that what we observe as a physical universe is just an intersection of logically true beliefs for some finite collection of entities.

Do we have a way of isolating electrons which are independent of ions? When I look up the research online, it is always (naturally) a foregone conclusion that they do exist in isolation but I haven't found anything which explains how specifically we know that (or how we could know that).

    Are electrons entities that we can capture in a jar? Yes!  http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29675

I'm not anxious to try to advocate for electron agnosticism on top of photon agnosticism, but if there is nothing convince me otherwise, then there is no reason not to go there as well (other than fear of ridicule, which I only care about if I'm actually wrong).

Craig

    Umm, I think that you are wrong on this one, but I am OK with the possibility of being wrong. ;-)  One thing that I should add en passant. In my current thinking an entity has sense or 1p if and only if it can be represented by a separable QM system. When we consider such "monads" as interacting QM systems (and assume decoherence theory) they are no longer separable (as they are entangled) their 'common" observables form a commutative (Abelian) sheaf that maps (somehow) to a Boolean algebra. The "classical world" is just the topological dual of the Boolean Algebra.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/16/2012 10:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:42:16 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 5:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:41:59 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

I don't see any contradiction. Its no difference than saying that atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies are different levels of the same thing.

Hi Craig,

    I see a problem here. The concept of levels is too simplistic and one-dimensional. I think it would help us to dig a bit into mereology and discuss different types of organization such that we have a broader and deeper indexing structure to relate the "atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies".

I think it is the simplicity which we are after. The reason that we can say 'atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies' and understand a qualitative hierarchy related to physical scale and evolutionary age is because that is how our perception naturally stereotypes it. The deeper structure is a distraction, takes us further into the impersonal 3p view, which tries to reconcile all views of all other views rather than the significant themes that allow us to make sense of it in the first place. To do big picture, I think it has to be broad strokes.

 Hi Craig,

    But we sacrifice detail that matters for those broad strokes...

 

Computation is mentioned 3 time (comp not at all) but does not seem to
be what we refer to as COMP.

COMP I don't talk about much because I understand it to be false.

    I understand COMP to be true but only in a very deep, yet narrow, way.

What seems true about COMP?

    The argument as Bruno presents it.

 

Computation is an effect of sense, not a cause.

    I say neither. Computation is a representation, or better, an "externalization" of sense.

I agree with that. That's pretty much what I meant.

    Good!

 

We cannot say that "sense is this" or "sense is not that" while pointing outside of 1p.

There is nothing outside of (the totality of) 1p.

    I agree, but consider what happens in the limit of the totality. Distinguishability itself vanishes and with it 1p. The totality of what exists, the necessarily possible, does not have a single consistent 1p, it has all possible 1p's simultaneously.

 

It is the assumption that "sense is ___" that must be understood to be problematic; it cannot be anything other than itself! Sure we can discuss sense in "as if" terms, but we cannot forget that it is not the symbols or the terms we use and cannot be.

I agree, although part of the nature of sense is it's self-reflection and translucence. We can say things about it, but only because the things we say can remind us of what we experience first hand.
 

    OK, but we can tease detail from this!

COMP is an unsupported assumption about the supremacy of computation.

    Wrong. It is very supported by a broad landscape of mathematical truths, with the small exception that numbers can alone "do the work" that they are required to do. After all, comp only works in Platonia! It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem that is its Achilles heel.

Comp supporting itself isn't a surprise though. Every supreme idealism supports itself. What supports it outside of mathematics?

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/10/17 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

Life may support mathematics. Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

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[Roger Clough]

Hi Craig Weinberg

By sense do you mean Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness?
Or all three as a process ?


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/17/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 14:11:14
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:54:10 AM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/c4XDACUXthAJ.

[Roger Clough]

Hi meekerdb

1p = Firstness
3p = Thirdness


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/17/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: meekerdb
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 16:19:29

Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ?

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

Nothing that is in spacetime can think.
Thinking or reasoning is a property of mind,
or intelligence, which is outside of spacetime.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/17/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 18:45:39

Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ?

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 4:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> Life may support mathematics.
Hi Alberto,

OK, we can think of Life, in a very abstract sense, as the
generator of variety and pattern, so that might work. This makes Life = God!

> Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in
> order to self preserve .

I would say that if the above stipulation is true, then this claim
applies to the individual "life forms" and not Life (the Form), no?

> This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible:

What other kind of computers could there be? Are we not part of the
natural world, Reality and thus Nature and thus what we make is "natural
computers"? I do not understand the word "artificial", I must tell you,
it seems oxymoronic! Why the Man v nature dichotomy? This seems a
vestige of the doctrine of "The Fall" within Abrahamic religions. ...

> in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature.

Kinda redundant, no? If the physical laws are not capable of being
represented by mathematics, what would they be? Patternless chaos in
randomness?

> Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the
> mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

Those two semi-sentences seem equivalent to me...

> So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some)
> mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is,
> observers.

Sure, all universes that have patterns that repeat more than once.
But do we even need to stipulate universes that don't contain observers?
Or are you considering only anthropomorphic observers: observers that
can create elaborate narratives and/or even confabulations to each other?

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 11:57:43 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 10:03 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 6:48:51 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 4:31 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:19:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:41 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 2:42 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

Brent
--

Hi Brent,

    How so? Do we humans have "orbital electron scattering" of photons as actual experiential content?

No, but Craig thinks electrons do.

Only if electrons actually exist. I think there is a good chance that they are only the shared experience of atoms.

Hi Craig,

    Well, we differ on that point! If we accept atoms, we also have to accept electrons! Best not go there!

Unfortunately if I doubt photons really the whole Standard Model is potentially up for grabs. The wide variation in the modeling of atoms tells me that it is not a given that electrons are not just an accounting of atomic charge states. It may be that electrons are objective in some senses but subjective in others (photons being subjective in more ways). That seems the most likely.

Hi Craig,

    Interesting challenge! What if we jettison as a confabulation all of physical theory... What is left? Shall we cast aside the nice predictive values that we have gotten? What then? I am willing to go there for the sake of discussion, but to where?

I don't see any reason to question any other aspects of physics except those which the uncertainty principle apply.  If we can't measure something's position and momentum at the same time, or if we cannot state clearly whether something is a particle or a wave made out of a substance which is independent of matter, then I think we have to assume that it is possibly a subjective experience associated with those things that do seem physically certain and definite to us as objects in space.

    Let's try something. Consider the Bp&p idea. Belief in a proposition and it is true. Can we reconstruct explanations from this? We would have to have a plurality of entities that would have the beliefs, no? Where do we get that plurality? Let's stipulate that we have a plurality somehow. There should be something that distinguishes them, something other than positions in space and time... or is there anything that would generate distinctions?

Perceptual inertia distinguishes them. Every body has unique experiences which shape its sense capacities to the extent that they are unique on some level (on primitive levels it may be that this level is minimized, or at least it is as far as we are concerned). On the cognitive level they are beliefs or preferences, but every sense channel has it's version...harmony, beauty, satisfaction, etc. Whatever refers back to the solitrope (solace of perfect private peace/self identification).

    Maybe the beliefs are frames in different languages that require some transformation to translate the propositions of one into something equivalent for all others. My assumption is that we have to have a common reality to recover something like physical theories and we can get that either by imbedding our entities into a single space or by simply having a common set of propositions that form a non-contradictory set, something isomorphic to a Boolean algebra if and only if the propositions are satisfiable such that the total logical formulation is TRUE. I favor the latter idea, but it requires that the physical universe that we observe to be representable as a true Boolean algebra and a repudiation of the idea that "substance" is ontologically priomitive.

I think it's all sense channels. If you have a microwave oven, the food with water in it cooks while the walls of the microwave remain relatively cool. This says to me that the reality between the chicken cooking and the plastic not cooking can't fully be described as common. Realism is the agreement of sense channels. I agree that the patterns that the sense channels reflect when they overlap and cancel each other out are algebraic-geometric and non-contradictory - or - wait a second...

Just as our 1p experience is a plenum of signal which seeks the proprietary solace of solitropy, the 3p view seeks entropy, which is sort of like public anti-solace. We are happy when we get what we want, but the 3p seems to us a place which is happy where nothing gets to want anything. An equilibrium of static mass and vacuum - heat death.

 
    How is it determined to be satisfiable becomes an interesting question! Most thinkers seem to assume that its global logical consistency is completely determined ab initio by the combination of "physical laws" and initial conditions. But exactly how did the physical laws come to exist such that they never generate a logical inconsistency (violating satisfiability) and thus "white rabbits"? I think that the physical laws are the result of an underlying process that is, in the ontological sense, eternal and that what we observe as a physical universe is just an intersection of logically true beliefs for some finite collection of entities.

I'm with you until the last sentence. Logical true beliefs are really not something I consider relevant beyond human or animal psychology. The laws of physics are observable to us because we are physical bodies. They are logically consistent because they are all nothing but the Totality-singularity breaking itself up using the first successful diffraction algorithm that it could use. It's non-contradictory because on the physical level, it is all rooted in one sense experience, to which spacetime is a posteriori.

Do we have a way of isolating electrons which are independent of ions? When I look up the research online, it is always (naturally) a foregone conclusion that they do exist in isolation but I haven't found anything which explains how specifically we know that (or how we could know that).

    Are electrons entities that we can capture in a jar? Yes!  http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29675

Oh, I'm aware that we think that we can capture them in a jar, but it isn't clear what specifically is confirming that for us and how we know that what we think is the electron isn't a belief of those atoms (which is only conditionally true). It's sort of like if I have a video of something funny and every audience laughs at it, then I might think that I have trapped laughter in a theater.
 

I'm not anxious to try to advocate for electron agnosticism on top of photon agnosticism, but if there is nothing convince me otherwise, then there is no reason not to go there as well (other than fear of ridicule, which I only care about if I'm actually wrong).

Craig

    Umm, I think that you are wrong on this one, but I am OK with the possibility of being wrong. ;-) 

I agree, I could be wrong on this, but I haven't seen anything to convince me yet that I am. I haven't looked very hard, but in principle, electrons are similar enough to photons which are similar enough to nothing at all that it is worth questioning.
 

One thing that I should add en passant. In my current thinking an entity has sense or 1p if and only if it can be represented by a separable QM system. When we consider such "monads" as interacting QM systems (and assume decoherence theory) they are no longer separable (as they are entangled) their 'common" observables form a commutative (Abelian) sheaf that maps (somehow) to a Boolean algebra. The "classical world" is just the topological dual of the Boolean Algebra.

Sure, yeah. Especially if the QM system is the 3p shadow of the 1p system itself.

Craig

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 12:14:25 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 10:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:42:16 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 5:26 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:41:59 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote:

Sorry Craig but http://s33light.org/SEEES did not make any sense as to
how sense underlies consciousness and comp. In fact you seem to
contradict that claim: I.G., "These experiential phenomena
(telesemantics, sense, perception, awareness, consciousness) are
different levels of same thing".

I don't see any contradiction. Its no difference than saying that atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies are different levels of the same thing.

Hi Craig,

    I see a problem here. The concept of levels is too simplistic and one-dimensional. I think it would help us to dig a bit into mereology and discuss different types of organization such that we have a broader and deeper indexing structure to relate the "atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies".

I think it is the simplicity which we are after. The reason that we can say 'atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and bodies' and understand a qualitative hierarchy related to physical scale and evolutionary age is because that is how our perception naturally stereotypes it. The deeper structure is a distraction, takes us further into the impersonal 3p view, which tries to reconcile all views of all other views rather than the significant themes that allow us to make sense of it in the first place. To do big picture, I think it has to be broad strokes.

 Hi Craig,

    But we sacrifice detail that matters for those broad strokes...

The detail is still there, you just can't look at it at the same time as you look at the big picture. Adjusting to the new big picture could take a long time. Much longer than relativity and QM took - which still only a few people grasp.

Craig
 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 14:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense.

That is a form of idealism. 

It pre"suppose sense, so I find it very poor as I am interested in understanding sense (and matter).

Withc omp we pressuppose only numbers and +, and *, and define computation in that theory, then the coupling consciousness+material-realities emerges naturally in a testable manner.

If you could have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.

Assuming that we are infinite, with an infinity not recoverable by the first person indeterminacy.

Bruno

Craig

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 6:33:15 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:

Hi Craig Weinberg

By sense do you mean Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness?
Or all three as a process ?

Using these as a guide:

(from http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/thirdness.html)
      Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else.
      Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third.
      Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other.

I would say that sense is primordial Sixthness. The meta juxaposition of all three modalities. Sense is the totality within which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are defined and directly experienced. Fourthness could be thought of as the change that thirdness brings to firstness and Fifthness could be perhaps the juxtaposition of that change with it's canonical conjugate in Secondness. There is no Firstness without Sixthness. In quantitative terms, the universe doesn't begin with 0 or 1, it 'begins' with the instantaneous/perpetual division of 1 into infinite fractions. Timespace is only real at the periphery/circumference of that division.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 14:55, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Roger,

On 10/16/2012 7:48 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complex computations ?

    No!

 

The short answer is that I am proposing that :

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

    No!

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity.

    No, it puts them beyond the domain of computability. Bruno has already shown this!

 Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

    Look up Bruno's resent cartoon of Löb property. This is also available from http://lesswrong.com/lw/t6/the_cartoon_guide_to_l%C3%B6bs_theorem/

"Löb's Theorem shows that a mathematical system cannot assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent."

I get only "page not found".

Bruno

A slightly more technical discussion here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox

 

If you would like a more complete discussion, read below.

 

 

    I will!

 

 

=======================================================
A MORE COMPLETE ANSWER:
Contemporary thinking on consciousness is that it is an "emergent property"
of computational complexity among neurons. This raises some questions:

A. Is the emergence of consciouness simply a another name for Penrose's condition of non-computability ?

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/presentations/whatisconsciousness.html

"Conventional explanations portray consciousness as an emergent property of classical
computer-like activities in the brain's neural networks.
The prevailing views among scientists in this camp are that

1) patterns of neural network activities correlate with mental states,
2) synchronous network oscillations in thalamus and cerebral cortex temporally bind information,
and
3) consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons."

    That is Stuart Hameroff's idea, not Penrose's per se...

B. Or is there another way to look at this emergence ?

Now my understanding of "emergent properties" is that they appear or emerge through looking at a phenomenon
at a lower degree of magnification "from above. " Thus sociology is an emergent property of
the behavior of many minds.

    Sure, but the "integrity" or "wholeness" of an individual mind is only subject to a threshold in the sense of the requirement of closure under consistent self-reference (which is what Löb's Theorem is all about.) But this makes a mind solipsistic unless we can break the symmetry somehow!

IMHO "from above" means looking downward from Platonia. From a wiser position.

Penrose seems to take take two views of Platonia:

http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Yasue.html

One is his belief that there is a realm of non-computability, presumably that of Platonia as experienced.
All art and insight comes from such an experience.

    No, that is what Kunio Yasue thinks that Penrose's position on Platonia! You might read The Emperor's New Mind for yourself and get it straight from the Horse's mouth.

http://www.thiruvarunai.com/eBooks/penrose/The%20Emperors%20New%20Mind.pdf

    This quote might give us a flavor of Penrose's thinking:

"In Plato's view, the objects of pure geometry straight lines,
circles, triangles, planes, etc. --were only approximately
realized in terms of the world of actual physical things. Those
mathematically precise objects of pure geometry inhabited,
instead, a different world Plato's ideal world of
mathematical concepts. Plato's world consists not of tangible
objects, but of 'mathematical things'. This world is
accessible to us not in the ordinary physical way but, instead,
via the intellect. One's mind makes contact with Plato's
world whenever it contemplates a mathematical truth, perceiving
it by the exercise of mathematical reasoning and
insight. This ideal world was regarded as distinct and more perfect
than the material world of our external experiences,
but just as real."

    Exactly how the "contact" is made between the realms remains to be explained! This, BTW, is my one bone of contention with Bruno's COMP program and I am desperately trying to find a solution.

On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, Penrose seems to believe that the universe is made up of
quantum "spin networks", which presumably can model even the most complex entities.
He does not seem to deny that the "non-computational" calculations belong to the realm

of spin networks. 

    The "physical universe" yes, he believes that... He has shown how one can derive a crude version of space-time using spin combinatorials.

 

This casts some doubt on his belief in the possibility of non-computability,

and may even allow his spin networks, which are presumably complete,

to escape intact from Godel's incompleteness limitation.

   

    Not even wrong!

 

Instead, I propose the following:

 

1) Penrose's noncomputability position is equivalent to the position

that consciousness emerges at such a level of complexity.

    No!

 

2) In addition, that while Godel's incompleteness theorem may make

such calculations incomplete, it does not make them beyond the

range of computabilitlity. Instead, it exposes these halted upward-directed

calculations to the possibility of continuing downward-directed platonic reason,

the numbers themselves, and plato's geometrical forms. I do not know enough

mathematics to be more specific.

=================================================================

    We must study the math, there are no short-cuts!

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

--

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 8:27:51 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 14:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense.

That is a form of idealism. 

It pre"suppose sense, so I find it very poor as I am interested in understanding sense (and matter).

You already are sense and matter. There is no better way to understand it. Sense is not ideal, it is concretely real - all around us, within us. If I want to compute something, I have to count. If it's a complex computation, I need to enslave an inanimate object - because it's so incredibly antithetical to our nature. Counting is what we do to put ourselves to sleep, to hypnotize. Counting blows out the candle of 1p sense to reveal the shadows cast between 1p experiences.

 

Withc omp we pressuppose only numbers and +, and *, and define computation in that theory, then the coupling consciousness+material-realities emerges naturally in a testable manner.

To quote you - "That is a form of idealism." It pre-supposes arithmetic which I see clearly as a kind of sense - a feeling of augmentation or meta-augmentation in any particular context. It makes it completely circular as you smuggle consciousness in to begin with, but you don't recognize or acknowledge that you do. Instead of + and * just start with the entire canon of mathematics in the last 2000 years - what difference does it make? There is no more explanation for the appearance of * in the universe than there is for primitive matter. What's *? It's a sense-making relationship among concretely experienced ideas. It is a psychological mapping, not a causally efficacious metaphysical principle.

If you could have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.

Assuming that we are infinite, with an infinity not recoverable by the first person indeterminacy.

I don't think I'm assuming anything. I'm saying that if you can drive a bus down the street without a 50 foot tall inflatable flamingo tied to the roof, then producing giant inflatable birds are probably not going to be a priority in a universe made of bus drivers.

Craig
 

Bruno

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/10/17 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>

On 10/17/2012 4:12 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Hi Alberto,

    OK, we can think of Life, in a very abstract sense, as the generator of variety and pattern, so that might work. This makes Life = God!

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve .

    I would say that if the above stipulation is true, then this claim applies to the individual "life forms" and not Life (the Form), no?

yes 

This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible:

    What other kind of computers could there be? Are we not part of the natural world, Reality and thus Nature and thus what we make is "natural computers"? I do not understand the word "artificial", I must tell you, it seems oxymoronic! Why the Man v nature dichotomy? This seems a vestige of the doctrine of "The Fall" within Abrahamic religions. ...

Natural computers are the living beings, that maintain homeostasis (internal entropy) . artificial computers simply help to maintain the entropy/homeostasis of the social being from which we are a part. (by driving a robotic factory that produce car pieces for example). So they are a very concrete part of a concrete natural computer.

 A company can be a  living being considered at some level. Therefore it is a natural computer. 

A PC in the company is a part of it.

in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature.

    Kinda redundant, no? If the physical laws are not capable of being represented by mathematics, what would they be? Patternless chaos in randomness?

A bit redundant, yes. But I can imagine some weird laws. In fact, computability impose restrictions to the macroscopical laws: they have to be continuous, smooth, irreversible (increase entropy) and local (distant objects must affect less to predictions than nearest ones).

Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

    Those two semi-sentences seem equivalent to me...

Not really, from my point of view, natural computers are made of or ordinary matter, which has a mathematical nature. This does not pressupose a computational nature of reality, but a mathematical one But this mathematical nature is a prerequisite for computations, some of which are minds. Bruno postulate that the mind  is a product of computations and reality a product of the mind therefore computation is at the root of everithing. I say that computation mind and math are mutually necessary

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

    Sure, all universes that have patterns that repeat more than once. But do we even need to stipulate universes that don't contain observers? Or are you considering only anthropomorphic observers: observers that can create elaborate narratives and/or even confabulations to each other?

Here a definition of existence is necessary. I don´t know why people take for granted that existence is a predefined world. The definition of existence is at the root of everything  

--
Onward!

Stephen


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[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:05, Stephen P. King wrote:

> On 10/16/2012 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
>> Roger,
>> Philosophers such as Lucas, Hofstadter and Chalmers as well as
>> Penrose
>> and Godel suggest that consciousness may be due to incompleteness
>> itself allowing for emergence...
>> Seehttp://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf
>> Richard
> Hi Richard,
>
> I only have one beef with your thesis, you over rely on a
> "theory" that has yet to have a single physically testable
> prediction! IMHO, it would be better to think of all that super-
> geometry as nothing more than beautiful mathematics until that day
> that we actually find a squark or photino.

Hofstadter is 100% correct on Gödel.
Lucas and Penrose are incorrect on Gödel.

All details are in "conscience and mechanism".

In fact the löbian machine "naturally" refutes the Gödelian argument
against mechanism.

But, I am OK, for obvious reason for those who have studied sane04 or
my older papers that incompleteness plays a major role in both the
explanation of consciousness and its origin, and the explanation where
the laws of physics come from (and are divided into sharable first
person plural quanta, and the non sharable qualia).

I use Solovay theorem, which gives the strongest precision possible on
Gödel's incompleteness possible, as it characterize the logic of the
true and provable self-reference (G) and the true but non provable
self-referential statement (G*).

Bruno




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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that

consciousness, arises at (or above ?)

the level of noncomputability.  He just seems to

say that intuiton does. But that just seems

to be a conjecture of his.

ugh, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

Hi Roger,

    IMHO, computability can only capture at most a "simulation" of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ...

So you do say "no" to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie?

Bruno

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

[Stephen P. King]

Dear Bruno,

    If the Doctor's replacement parts preserve the possibility of quantum entanglement then I would say, Yes to her. No, otherwise. I do not believe that p-zombies can exist.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 20:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:08:49 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could

>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.

>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.

> Richard
Hi Richard,

     Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is.  What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything.

This is equivalent with saying "I will not do science", and coherent with your idea that 2+2=5.

You might be doing poetry, or continental philosophy, but we can hardly appreciate it as such, as you present it as telling a truth, and worst, a truth possibly insulting or degrading for an infinity of possible creatures.

Even a philosopher can only defend the *possibility* of a truth. 

The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

This might be true, but does not makes invalid the existence of theories, and objective 3p hypotheses, (like Arithmetic or String theory, or comp in cognitive sciences, etc.).

Bruno

Craig

--
Onward!

Stephen

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[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:14:01 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 20:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:08:49 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard
Hi Richard,

     Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is.  What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything.

This is equivalent with saying "I will not do science", and coherent with your idea that 2+2=5.

I think that this is doing science. I don't think that 2+2=5, I think that numbers divorced from concrete referents are not real. I don't believe in the universality of computation, but I do believe that where computation applies (rigid objects subject to control by recursive enumeration) that important pseudo 3p views of sense can be modeled. 1p can experience. 3p cannot. All 3p is experienced as a 1p reflection.

You might be doing poetry, or continental philosophy, but we can hardly appreciate it as such, as you present it as telling a truth, and worst, a truth possibly insulting or degrading for an infinity of possible creatures.

Haha. Any infinity of possible creatures who are insulted are cordially invited to auto-sodomize.
 

Even a philosopher can only defend the *possibility* of a truth. 

I don't see the point of constantly inserting disclaimers in my words. What difference would it make? If I say 'I know this is the truth', does that relieve anyone of their duty to contemplate what I have said for themselves? You say all kinds of things as if they were true all of the time. Sometimes you take care to be polite and say that you don't have an opinion about COMP, or that such and such is true 'in the theory', but to me it makes no difference. I am perfectly capable of assessing whether what someone is saying is something that I should accept as fact without a second thought. I expect that treating others as less than that could be considered condescending. In the end it's all personal style and I don't see that it is helpful to spend time on. I could be wrong, but my point is always going to be 'assuming I'm right'. This is about exchanging ideas, no? Why formalize it any more than we need to?
 

The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

This might be true, but does not makes invalid the existence of theories, and objective 3p hypotheses, (like Arithmetic or String theory, or comp in cognitive sciences, etc.).

The can be valid theories in a theoretical universe, but I don't see how they can be valid for this universe in which we actually live. I could be wrong of course, but someone would need to explain to me why.

Craig
 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 21:56, meekerdb wrote:

On 10/16/2012 12:05 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 2:42:26 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/16/2012 7:44 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

Hi Alberto,

    OK, I am officially confused by your statements. You previously wrote: "Magic emergence from magic enough complexity has been advocated for almost anything." and now you suggest that consciousness is contingent on a level of evolution, ala: "... in this stage of evolution a form of consciousness becomes a necessity".
    How is this not an argument for emergence from complexity? What is evolution other than a mechanism in Nature to generate increasing stable complex structures in the physical universe? Either consciousness is an irreducible primitive or it is not?
    I agree that complexity *is* involved when we consider issues such as "reportablity" of consciousness, but the property of "having a subjective experience of being in the world" itself can be strongly argued to flow at the most basic level that allows differences.

If there are no inputs from the world to perceive, e.g. a person in a sensory deprivation tank, or the 'perceptions' are very simple interactions, e.g. an orbital electron scattering a photon what will be the content of this subjective experience?

For a person, sensory deprivation typically leads to powerful phenomenological perceptions or unconsciousness. Hard to guess what happens on a subatomic level, but there is no reason to assume that sense is limited to perceptions of the outside. Sense comes from within as well (it's just different than what comes from without).

As I recall, what happens is that after about 45min, a person's conscious thoughts tend to enter an loop.

That seems to me rather weird. If you have references on the statistics and criteria of loop-detection in human, or the reports of those experience. I find this weird. Of course all finite machine loops after some time, even with inputs. The possible inputs will loop too. As universal being we always need more space, we can only extends ourselves or loop.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 02:42, Stephen P. King wrote:
> It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem
> that is its Achilles heel.

No. It is the strongest point of comp. It does solve it
constructively, so it makes comp testable and/or our simulation level
measurable.

You can see it in another way, comp explains how and where the laws of
physics, and psychology, come from, and with the whole consciousness/
matter coupling. It does not solve the problem because the math are
hard, only. Then the logic of observability, perhaps in a toy case,
are already given and tested.

That there is a body problem is the interesting thing, imo.

The other theories assume the body, and the mind, and some relation
shown incompatible with comp.

Comp, as such, is not an explanation. Just a frame where we can
formulate the problem mathematically, and that is the main reason to
study it, even if false. In fact, you need to study to comp to develop
an authentic non-comp theory.

Comp is not an explanation per se, neither of the mind nor of the
body. The explanation is in the reasoning and the math. Comp itself is
just the bet that we are Turing emulable at *some* level.

Bruno



>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 12:11:00 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 02:42, Stephen P. King wrote:
> It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem  
> that is its Achilles heel.

No. It is the strongest point of comp. It does solve it  
constructively, so it makes comp testable and/or our simulation level  
measurable.

You can see it in another way, comp explains how and where the laws of  
physics, and psychology, come from, and with the whole consciousness/
matter coupling. It does not solve the problem because the math are  
hard, only. Then the logic of observability, perhaps in a toy case,  
are already given and tested.

That there is a body problem is the interesting thing, imo.

The other theories assume the body, and the mind, and some relation  
shown incompatible with comp.

Comp, as such, is not an explanation. Just a frame where we can  
formulate the problem mathematically, and that is the main reason to  
study it, even if false. In fact, you need to study to comp to develop  
an authentic non-comp theory.

Comp is not an explanation per se, neither of the mind nor of the  
body. The explanation is in the reasoning and the math. Comp itself is  
just the bet that we are Turing emulable at *some* level.

This is exactly why Comp is misguided, as awareness is by definition not emulable in any way.

In order to even conceptualize 'emulation' there has to already be an a priori discernment between authenticity and inauthenticity, i.e. emulation requires the existence of something to emulate which is itself ultimately traceable back to something which is genuine and unique.

Comp bets on the Baudrillard simulacra - the copy without an original, beyond even the capacity to recover the deception. A copy through which no trace of an original can be accessed.

This is indeed an interesting and powerful hypothesis, however it is ultimately inside out. You can't claim to be revealing the primacy of unreality while insisting on the same time of the reality of that revelation. In Comp, Comp itself is just another Bp, and the significance of whether it is Bp or Bp + p is really an obscure footnote.

Craig

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig believes about the p-zombie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

"A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being
that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves
exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain)."

My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you,
which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/17/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-17, 08:57:36
Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overlycomplexcomputations ?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

Comp, is a bet involving the physical world, and the first person subject. But by its very nature, it leads to doubt the necessity to bet about something outside of a tiny part of arithmetic, for the ontology, as the "inside view" will already explode in a non mathematically unboundable way. 

You need only the Turing universal reality. It is not important to choose numbers, or lambda terms, or combinators, or the game of life pattern, as they all lead to the same couplings consciousness/realities.

The arithmetical reality escapes the computable reality, but the computed beings are confronted to both the computable and the non computable, and a complete transfinite ladder of surprises.

Bruno

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

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 11:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 20:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:08:49 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard
Hi Richard,

     Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is.  What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything.

This is equivalent with saying "I will not do science", and coherent with your idea that 2+2=5.

    How so? You are requiring that *any* intersection of 1p truths to = a truthful 3p. This is wrong!

You might be doing poetry, or continental philosophy, but we can hardly appreciate it as such, as you present it as telling a truth, and worst, a truth possibly insulting or degrading for an infinity of possible creatures.

    Come on, Bruno, I am trying to "met you halfway" in your comp result!

Even a philosopher can only defend the *possibility* of a truth.

    I am defending truth but must be consistent with the fact that we can only *know* finite approximations of truth.

The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

This might be true, but does not makes invalid the existence of theories, and objective 3p hypotheses, (like Arithmetic or String theory, or comp in cognitive sciences, etc.).

    Sure, I agree but notice that your statement is of "theories". We have to be able to falsify them with reference to multiple 1p content for them to be possible 3p.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 12:10 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 02:42, Stephen P. King wrote:

It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem that is its Achilles heel.

No. It is the strongest point of comp. It does solve it constructively, so it makes comp testable and/or our simulation level measurable.

Dear Bruno,

    Yes, my wording was wrong, exactly the opposite is what I meant to write. I blame my dyslexia. :_(

You can see it in another way, comp explains how and where the laws of physics, and psychology, come from, and with the whole consciousness/matter coupling. It does not solve the problem because the math are hard, only. Then the logic of observability, perhaps in a toy case, are already given and tested.

    Yes, I agree but must point out that the constructable solution is only of a single arithmetic mind due to the strong implication of  Tennenbaum's theorem! There is only a single countable model of arithmetic that is recursive. My suggestion is that we can get a true plurality of arithmetic models if we allow the nonstandard models but make the constant symbol (that designates the particular nonstandard version) invisible to the model, thus the model will have "plausible deniability" that it is not a standard model of arithmetic. This, I suspect, will give us a way to "center" each of an infinite number of observers in a compact and Hausdorff universe and allow the definition of commutative relations between the 1p of these.

That there is a body problem is the interesting thing, imo.

    It is very interesting to me. I want to solve it!

The other theories assume the body, and the mind, and some relation shown incompatible with comp.

    I agree.

Comp, as such, is not an explanation. Just a frame where we can formulate the problem mathematically, and that is the main reason to study it, even if false. In fact, you need to study to comp to develop an authentic non-comp theory.

    Right. I accept comp in this way.

Comp is not an explanation per se, neither of the mind nor of the body. The explanation is in the reasoning and the math. Comp itself is just the bet that we are Turing emulable at *some* level.

    Yes. I want to extend the idea so that we have a way of 'indexing" the levels in a constructable way to recover a local measure.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Richard Ruquist]

In string theory compact dimensions support arithmetic,
which in turn supports the evolution of life and dreams.
Richard

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 12:38 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 12:11:00 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 02:42, Stephen P. King wrote:
> It is the inability of comp to solve the arithmetic body problem  
> that is its Achilles heel.

No. It is the strongest point of comp. It does solve it  
constructively, so it makes comp testable and/or our simulation level  
measurable.

You can see it in another way, comp explains how and where the laws of  
physics, and psychology, come from, and with the whole consciousness/
matter coupling. It does not solve the problem because the math are  
hard, only. Then the logic of observability, perhaps in a toy case,  
are already given and tested.

That there is a body problem is the interesting thing, imo.

The other theories assume the body, and the mind, and some relation  
shown incompatible with comp.

Comp, as such, is not an explanation. Just a frame where we can  
formulate the problem mathematically, and that is the main reason to  
study it, even if false. In fact, you need to study to comp to develop  
an authentic non-comp theory.

Comp is not an explanation per se, neither of the mind nor of the  
body. The explanation is in the reasoning and the math. Comp itself is  
just the bet that we are Turing emulable at *some* level.

This is exactly why Comp is misguided, as awareness is by definition not emulable in any way.

Hi Craig,

    I think that you and Bruno are using different dictionaries of words and are tangled in a web of semantic miscommunication. The 1p demands that it is possible for a conscious entity to have an emulation of its content of awareness if that 1p content is anything more than just a momentary singular coincidence of BP &P - like a Boltzmann brain... What you might not understand is that Bruno is using the Kleene (of Church-Curry) relation between equivalent computations to "collapse into each other" all of the emulations of the same experiential content of the entity.

In order to even conceptualize 'emulation' there has to already be an a priori discernment between authenticity and inauthenticity, i.e. emulation requires the existence of something to emulate which is itself ultimately traceable back to something which is genuine and unique.

Comp bets on the Baudrillard simulacra - the copy without an original, beyond even the capacity to recover the deception. A copy through which no trace of an original can be accessed.

    Nice idea! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation But the concept of a self-erasing copy (a copy without an original) is just a restatement of the Kleene/Church-Curry relation of the application of computable functions to their own descriptions! This idea is interesting to me because this sorta backs up Bruno's claims about quantum aspects implied by comp!

This is indeed an interesting and powerful hypothesis, however it is ultimately inside out.

    So? Why are you kicking against the pricks? All you need to show is that your concept of Sense is just the involution of Bruno's object of bets and thus bridge the gap between your ideas that are mutually exclusive at this point.

You can't claim to be revealing the primacy of unreality while insisting on the same time of the reality of that revelation. In Comp, Comp itself is just another Bp, and the significance of whether it is Bp or Bp + p is really an obscure footnote.

    Wow, reflexivity! Nice, but your going too far, Craig. Your argument does not demolish Bruno's comp, it just shows that it is "different" from yours.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of  computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings   becomes a process with a cost that favour a  low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... ,

 In contrast,  the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates  computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may  be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying...

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

Comp, is a bet involving the physical world, and the first person subject. But by its very nature, it leads to doubt the necessity to bet about something outside of a tiny part of arithmetic, for the ontology, as the "inside view" will already explode in a non mathematically unboundable way. 

You need only the Turing universal reality. It is not important to choose numbers, or lambda terms, or combinators, or the game of life pattern, as they all lead to the same couplings consciousness/realities.

The arithmetical reality escapes the computable reality, but the computed beings are confronted to both the computable and the non computable, and a complete transfinite ladder of surprises.

Bruno

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

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[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/10/17 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>

2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of  computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings   becomes a process with a cost that favour a  low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... ,

 In contrast,  the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates  computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may  be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying...

And still much of your conclussions coming from the first person indeterminacy may hold by considering living beings as ordinary material personal computers.

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

Comp, is a bet involving the physical world, and the first person subject. But by its very nature, it leads to doubt the necessity to bet about something outside of a tiny part of arithmetic, for the ontology, as the "inside view" will already explode in a non mathematically unboundable way. 

You need only the Turing universal reality. It is not important to choose numbers, or lambda terms, or combinators, or the game of life pattern, as they all lead to the same couplings consciousness/realities.

The arithmetical reality escapes the computable reality, but the computed beings are confronted to both the computable and the non computable, and a complete transfinite ladder of surprises.

Bruno

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

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Alberto.

--
Alberto.

[Craig Weinberg]

I meant that awareness is not emulable outside of awareness. You can't make something which pretends to itself that it is experiencing something. Once you have 1p awareness though, sure, you can re-present and meta-represent all kinds of awareness within itself.

In order to even conceptualize 'emulation' there has to already be an a priori discernment between authenticity and inauthenticity, i.e. emulation requires the existence of something to emulate which is itself ultimately traceable back to something which is genuine and unique.

Comp bets on the Baudrillard simulacra - the copy without an original, beyond even the capacity to recover the deception. A copy through which no trace of an original can be accessed.

    Nice idea! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation But the concept of a self-erasing copy (a copy without an original) is just a restatement of the Kleene/Church-Curry relation of the application of computable functions to their own descriptions! This idea is interesting to me because this sorta backs up Bruno's claims about quantum aspects implied by comp!

I wouldn't say that a simulacra is a self-erasing copy, rather it is something that doesn't even pretend to be authentic, like blue popsicles. There isn't even a framework to pose the question of authenticity. Is it 'really' blue flavored?

This is indeed an interesting and powerful hypothesis, however it is ultimately inside out.

    So? Why are you kicking against the pricks? All you need to show is that your concept of Sense is just the involution of Bruno's object of bets and thus bridge the gap between your ideas that are mutually exclusive at this point.

It's an involution, but so is materialism. The reason why Sense has to come first is that neither substance nor function has any plausible path to generate sense if it doesn't need it to begin with. When we turn it around, we can easily see how function and substance are desirable ways of elaborating sense. Bruno is quite enthusiastic about showing how substance can be expected from an arithmetic primitive, but he is evasive when it comes to putting arithmetic itself under the exact same scrutiny regarding a sensorimotor-experiential primitive. It's true, we can build mathematical puppets which remind us of minds, of cells, windmills, whatever, but they don't do anything. They are inert and empty.

Instead of revealing essence and vitality, this approach yields shadow and insignificance. It is seductive because you have to use your actual human sense capacities to appreciate this. The shadow model has no capacity to reveal the limitations of it's own thesis - and this is what Godel showed. If you can look at some whirling, glowing CGI graphic and say, 'yes, this is the beginning of love and death, of genius and heroism', then there is nothing that can be done for you. Nothing can likely be said to awaken you from this trance which elevates cartoon realism above a living, breathing body in a concretely real universe. To bridge the gap all that is necessary is to look at a menu and to realize that it is not a meal. That arithmetic models are relatively insignificant parts of the universe which helps sense get from here to there and back.

You can't claim to be revealing the primacy of unreality while insisting on the same time of the reality of that revelation. In Comp, Comp itself is just another Bp, and the significance of whether it is Bp or Bp + p is really an obscure footnote.

    Wow, reflexivity! Nice, but your going too far, Craig. Your argument does not demolish Bruno's comp, it just shows that it is "different" from yours.

It's different but it's different in that if taken to its logical conclusion invalidates itself. By taking sense as primordial, my approach allows sense to shine through eventually, exposing all isolated solipsisms to their own undoing eventually. Nothing that isn't ultimately sourced back to the root is viable forever. No simulation is good enough. No paradigm of simulation is good enough. The cracks created by the expanding universe become chasms, and the high technology of tomorrow becomes the obsolete trash of yesterday.

Craig

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 4:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I meant that awareness is not emulable outside of awareness. You can't make something which pretends to itself that it is experiencing something. Once you have 1p awareness though, sure, you can re-present and meta-represent all kinds of awareness within itself.

Hi Craig,

    But that is exactly the same thing that both I and Bruno agree on. We call it 1p. The trick is to figure out how to chain together a sequence of 1p's to create a mathematical model of a "flow of conscious awareness". ;-) I have an idea as to how to do this as Pratt explains it.

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Craig Weinberg]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 5:44:40 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/17/2012 4:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I meant that awareness is not emulable outside of awareness. You can't make something which pretends to itself that it is experiencing something. Once you have 1p awareness though, sure, you can re-present and meta-represent all kinds of awareness within itself.

Hi Craig,

    But that is exactly the same thing that both I and Bruno agree on. We call it 1p.

I am saying that it is 1p and 3p both though. Not ideal 3p, but actual 3p as it is a 1p experience which reflects other 1p experiences in a qualitatively flattened way.
 

The trick is to figure out how to chain together a sequence of 1p's to create a mathematical model of a "flow of conscious awareness". ;-) I have an idea as to how to do this as Pratt explains it.

Music is a pretty good model of that already.

Craig
 

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/17/2012 6:08 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 5:44:40 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/17/2012 4:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I meant that awareness is not emulable outside of awareness. You can't make something which pretends to itself that it is experiencing something. Once you have 1p awareness though, sure, you can re-present and meta-represent all kinds of awareness within itself.

Hi Craig,

    But that is exactly the same thing that both I and Bruno agree on. We call it 1p.

I am saying that it is 1p and 3p both though. Not ideal 3p, but actual 3p as it is a 1p experience which reflects other 1p experiences in a qualitatively flattened way.

    I'm OK with that.

 

The trick is to figure out how to chain together a sequence of 1p's to create a mathematical model of a "flow of conscious awareness". ;-) I have an idea as to how to do this as Pratt explains it.

Music is a pretty good model of that already.

    Our hearing and understanding of music.. interesting! Like a model of entrainment. I always notice a sense of anticipating the next note as I listen to music...

Craig

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 18/10/2012, at 4:12 AM, "Roger Clough" <rcl...@verizon.net> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
>
> "A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being
> that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves
> exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain)."
>
> My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you,
> which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in typing the first part of this sentence.

So if you met a computer that behaved in a human-like way you would assume that it had a mind?

-- Stathis Papaioannou

[Roger Clough]

Hi Stathis Papaioannou

If a zombie really has a mind it could converse with you.
If not, not.



Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/18/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Stathis Papaioannou
Receiver: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Time: 2012-10-18, 13:26:16
Subject: Re: A test for solipsism

[Russell Standish]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 01:58:29PM -0400, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Stathis Papaioannou
>
> If a zombie really has a mind it could converse with you.
> If not, not.
>

If true, then you have demonstrated the non-existence of zombies
(zombies, by definition, are indistinguishable from real people).

However, somehow I remain unconvinced by this line of reasoning...

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[William R. Buckley]

Just because the individual holds the position that he/she is the
only living entity in all the universe does not imply that such a
person (the solipsist) is incapable of carrying on a conversation,
even if that conversation is with an illusion.

For instance, I have no logical reason to believe that you, Roger
Clough, exist. You may in fact exist, and you may in fact be a
figment of my imagination; logically, I cannot tell the difference.

Yet, I can exchange written dialog with you, in spite of any belief
I may hold regarding your existence in the physical universe.

wrb

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[Roger Clough]

Hi Russell Standish

Not so. A zombie can't converse with you, a real person can.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/19/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Russell Standish
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-18, 17:48:57
Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism

[Roger Clough]

Hi William R. Buckley

You can speak to a potential test subject,
but it can only reply if it indeed has a mind. This
is the Turing test, the results of which are not certain.
But it is the only test I can think of unless you
want to get into the Chinese room argument, etc.

If it does not reply, it's a zombie. But just to be certain,
if it does, as a Turing test, I would ask a series of questions
a zombie (someone without a mind) would probably not know,
such as

1) what color are your eyes ?
2) What color are my eyes ?
3) What is your mother's name ?
4) How many fingers am I holding up ?
5) What color is a plenget ?
6) Who are you going to vote for in the upcoming election?
7) What is your birth date?
8) Where were you born?
9) How tall am I ?
10) Am I taller than you are ?
10) Do you prefer vanillaberries to Mukle pudding ?

etc.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/19/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: William R. Buckley
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-18, 21:36:39
Subject: RE: A test for solipsism

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

[Alberto G. Corona]

A few discoveries of evolutionary psichology may help. According with EP the mind is composed of many functional modules, each one for a different purpose. many of them are specific of each specie. Each of these modules is the result of the computation of certain areas of the brain. A functional module in the mind has´nt to be an area of the brain. Because the model of the mid in EP assumes comp, and assumes an specific, testable model for mind-brain design (natural selection) it is well suited for issues like this.

Severe autists lack a module called "theory of mind" . this module make you compute the mental states of other people. It gather information about their gestures, acts etc. It makes people interesting object to care about. Autists can learn rationally about the fact that other humans are like him, they can learn to take care of them. But they are not naturally interested in people. They dont care about if you have a mind, because they do not know what means a mind in another being. they just experience their own. For them, yuou are robot that they do not understand. 

We ask ourselves about the existence of the mind in others because we have a innate capacity for perceiving and feeling the mind in other. However, a robot without human gestures, without human reactions would not excite our theory of mind module, and we would not have the intuitive perception of a mind in that cold thing.

However this has nothing to do with the real thing.The theory of mind module evolved because it was very important for social life. But this is compatible with a reality in with each one of us live in an universe of zombies (some of them with postdoc in philosophy, church pastors etc) where we have the only soul. Of course I dont belive that. I have the "normal" belief. But this is one of the most deep and most widespread beliefs, because it is innate and you must fight against it to drop it out. This belief save you from a paralizing solipsism. That´s one of the reasons why I say "I believe, therefore I can act" 

2012/10/17 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

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[Roger Clough]

Hi Stephen P. King

Maybe I'm wrong, but Dennett could be a zombie, because he seems to deny 1p.
He also denies qualia, so you could test his personhood by asking him what color
your eyes are. Or if he is awake or asleep.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/19/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-16, 14:24:07

Subject: Re: Is consciousness just an emergent property of overly complexcomputations ?

On 10/16/2012 2:17 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:08:49 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard
Hi Richard,

Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is. What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything. The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

Craig


I agree 100%. All 3p related concepts are abstractions constructed from many different 1p's. The idea of "Reality" is a good example of this and it is why I define Reality as "what which is incontrovertible for some collection N (N > 2) of observers that can communicate (or interact) in some meaningful way. Of course the word "meaningful" is a bit ambiguous...


--
Onward!

Stephen

[William R. Buckley]

> Hi William R. Buckley
>
> You can speak to a potential test subject,
> but it can only reply if it indeed has a mind.

This is an assumption you make.

> This is the Turing test, the results of which are not
> certain. But it is the only test I can think of unless
> you want to get into the Chinese room argument, etc.
>
> If it does not reply, it's a zombie.

Another assumption. In this case, you can talk to me and
I will refuse to reply. That make me a zombie?

> But just to be certain,
> if it does, as a Turing test, I would ask a series of questions
> a zombie (someone without a mind) would probably not know,
> such as
>
> 1) what color are your eyes ?
> 2) What color are my eyes ?
> 3) What is your mother's name ?
> 4) How many fingers am I holding up ?
> 5) What color is a plenget ?
> 6) Who are you going to vote for in the upcoming election?
> 7) What is your birth date?
> 8) Where were you born?
> 9) How tall am I ?
> 10) Am I taller than you are ?
> 10) Do you prefer vanillaberries to Mukle pudding ?

If one is able to fabricate (lie) with perfect recall (remembering
all the lies), then one need not know anything in order to give you
answer to all questions.

Your thought process is muddled, Mr. Clough.

wrb

> > To post to this group, send email to everything-
> li...@googlegroups.com.

[Stephen P. King]

On 10/19/2012 6:35 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Stephen P. King
>
> Maybe I'm wrong, but Dennett could be a zombie, because he seems to deny 1p.
> He also denies qualia, so you could test his personhood by asking him what color
> your eyes are. Or if he is awake or asleep.

Hi Roger,

We have no way of knowing for sure. Certainty is impossible.

--
Onward!

Stephen

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 20:16, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/17/2012 11:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 20:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:08:49 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 8:54 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Craig Weinberg<whats...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >Computation is an overly simplified emergent property of sense. If you could
>> >have computation without sense, then there would be no consciousness.
>> >Craig
>> >
> Could you provide a link where you more fully explain what sense is
> and how it relates to comp and consciousness? You probably already
> have. But I missed it.
> Richard
Hi Richard,

     Unless you are a zombie, you are experiencing right now exactly
what Sense is. Only you can know exactly what the Sense of Richard
Ruquist and Craig can only experience (and thus know) what his Sense
is.  What you need to understand is that Sense is strictly 1p, it has no
3p aspect. You either experience your own version of it or, like Dennett
and the materialist, try to deny its existence.

Right! At the same time, I would say that there is no truly 3p aspect of anything.

This is equivalent with saying "I will not do science", and coherent with your idea that 2+2=5.

    How so? You are requiring that *any* intersection of 1p truths to = a truthful 3p. This is wrong!

I was not saying that. 

You might be doing poetry, or continental philosophy, but we can hardly appreciate it as such, as you present it as telling a truth, and worst, a truth possibly insulting or degrading for an infinity of possible creatures.

    Come on, Bruno, I am trying to "met you halfway" in your comp result!

I was talking to Craig.

Even a philosopher can only defend the *possibility* of a truth.

    I am defending truth but must be consistent with the fact that we can only *know* finite approximations of truth.

In science we don't defend truth. We develop belief from observation and dialog, deduce new belief and test them until we change them. We don't defend truth but try to agree on some and to derive from there.

I am not saying that defending truth can't be interesting, but it is another activity. 

Some scientist and some philosophers can ignore the difference, and that can be confusing, especially when we tackle on some hot point where many acts as if they knew the truth.

The 3p arises as an internalization of many 1p (private qualitative) experiences within another 1p experience (as quantitative public token views).

This might be true, but does not makes invalid the existence of theories, and objective 3p hypotheses, (like Arithmetic or String theory, or comp in cognitive sciences, etc.).

    Sure, I agree but notice that your statement is of "theories". We have to be able to falsify them with reference to multiple 1p content for them to be possible 3p.

Sure.

Comp makes arithmetic, as a TOE, falsifiable.

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

[Bruno Marchal]

But arithmetic + comp might support string theory, and has too, if
matter is strings.

Also, arithmetic is simpler as it can be taught in high school, and I
think that you need arithmetic to understand string theory.

String theory assume the quantum theory, but the UD Argument shows
that if we want get both quanta and qualia properly, we have to
retrieve them form number or machine self-reference, so that if the
physical is really described by strings, then this will be explained
without assuming the quantum, nor the physical.

For matter, string theory seems promising, but for mind/matter, If
string theory is correct, and if we are Turing emulable at a level,
then string theory has to be a theorem (on universal number dreams
stabilizing, or something).

Bruno

>> To post to this group, send email to everything-
>> li...@googlegroups.com.

>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
>
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>

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 15:15, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/17/2012 8:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:33, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 10/16/2012 9:20 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

Thanks. My mistake was to say that P's position is that

consciousness, arises at (or above ?)

the level of noncomputability.  He just seems to

say that intuiton does. But that just seems

to be a conjecture of his.


ugh, rcl...@verizon.net
10/16/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

Hi Roger,

    IMHO, computability can only capture at most a "simulation" of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ...

So you do say "no" to the doctor? And you do follow Craig on the existence of p-zombie?

Bruno

Dear Bruno,

    If the Doctor's replacement parts preserve the possibility of quantum entanglement then I would say, Yes to her. No, otherwise. I do not believe that p-zombies can exist.

QM does not violate Church thesis, and confirms comp. Arithmetic emulates all quantum computations, with as much entanglement you might need.

So, you are just putting the comp subst. level very low, in this answer. But then why did you say to Roger that "MHO, computability can only capture at most a "simulation" of the content of consciousness, but we can deduce a lot from that ..." ?

That seems contradict comp, isn't it?

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 19:12, Roger Clough wrote:

> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> Sorry, I lost the thread on the doctor, and don't know what Craig
> believes about the p-zombie.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
>
> "A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and
> perception is a hypothetical being
> that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that
> it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a
> zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel
> any pain though it behaves
> exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from
> the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain)."
>
> My guess is that this is the solipsism issue, to which I would say
> that if it has no mind, it cannot converse with you,
> which would be a test for solipsism,-- which I just now found in
> typing the first part of this sentence.

Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you.

But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists,
without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they
might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is
no solipsist.

There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition,
almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p
features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory
which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable,
and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to
some theory.

Bruno

[William R. Buckley]

> Solipsism makes everyone zombie except you.
>
> But in some context some people might conceive that zombie exists,
> without making everyone zombie. Craig believes that computers, if they
> might behave like conscious individuals would be a zombie, but he is
> no solipsist.
>
> There is no test for solipsism, nor for zombieness. BY definition,
> almost. A zombie behaves exactly like a human being. There is no 3p
> features that you could use at all to make a direct test. Now a theory
> which admits zombie, can have other features which might be testable,
> and so some indirect test are logically conceivable, relatively to
> some theory.
>
> Bruno
>

Bingo!

wrb

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter

You postulate matter. All what I say, is that if comp is true (I am Turing emulable), then matter *has to be* recovered as emerging from a sum on an infinity of computations. Theoretical computer science put an infinity of restrictions of what that can be.

from the idea of  computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings   becomes a process with a cost that favour a  low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... ,

 In contrast,  the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates  computations devoid of restrictions by definition,

Without restriction? 

so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may  be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying...

In a manner which can be evaluate, so we can test the hypothesis. But computer science and self-referentially correctness (with respect to those random gaussian, yet computational histories) but, by the first person indeterminacy argument, a very severe restriction of what the physical laws can be. 

Furthermore, theoretical computer science/mathematical logic explains the quanta/qualia separation.

The arithmetical, or combinatorial reality is very rich and non trivial.

The point is that comp explains the origin of matter, in a way that we can test. 

Bruno

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

Comp, is a bet involving the physical world, and the first person subject. But by its very nature, it leads to doubt the necessity to bet about something outside of a tiny part of arithmetic, for the ontology, as the "inside view" will already explode in a non mathematically unboundable way. 

You need only the Turing universal reality. It is not important to choose numbers, or lambda terms, or combinators, or the game of life pattern, as they all lead to the same couplings consciousness/realities.

The arithmetical reality escapes the computable reality, but the computed beings are confronted to both the computable and the non computable, and a complete transfinite ladder of surprises.

Bruno

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

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Oct 2012, at 22:02, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/17 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>

2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of  computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings   becomes a process with a cost that favour a  low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... ,

 In contrast,  the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates  computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may  be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying...

And still much of your conclussions coming from the first person indeterminacy may hold by considering living beings as ordinary material personal computers.

Yes, that's step seven. If the universe is enough "big", to run a *significant* part of the UD. But I think that the white rabbits disappear only on the limit of the whole UD work (UD*).

Bruno

    Mathematics is just a collection of  representations that are internally logically consistent (note that the total mathematical universe is not a single consistent set!), so outside of that what is there? Comp is a mathematical model, its "support" outside of math remains to be seen.

Comp, is a bet involving the physical world, and the first person subject. But by its very nature, it leads to doubt the necessity to bet about something outside of a tiny part of arithmetic, for the ontology, as the "inside view" will already explode in a non mathematically unboundable way. 

You need only the Turing universal reality. It is not important to choose numbers, or lambda terms, or combinators, or the game of life pattern, as they all lead to the same couplings consciousness/realities.

The arithmetical reality escapes the computable reality, but the computed beings are confronted to both the computable and the non computable, and a complete transfinite ladder of surprises.

Bruno

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

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[Stephen P. King]

On 10/19/2012 1:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 17 Oct 2012, at 22:02, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/17 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>

2012/10/17 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 17 Oct 2012, at 10:12, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Life may support mathematics.

Arithmetic may support life. It is full of life and dreams.

Life is a computation devoted to making guesses about the future in order to self preserve . This is only possible in a world where natural computers are possible: in a world where the phisical laws have a mathematical nature. Instead of comp creating a mathematical-phisical reality, is the mathematical reality what creates the computations in which we live.

 

So all kind of arbitrary universes may exist, but only (some) mathematical ones can harbour self preserving computations, that is, observers.

OK. But harboring self-preserving computation is not enough, it must do in a first person measure winning way  on all computations going through our state. That's nice as this explain that your idea of evolution needs to be extended up to the origin of the physical laws. 

I don´t think so .The difference between computation as an ordinary process of matter from the idea of  computation as the ultimate essence of reality is that the first restrict not only the mathematical laws, but also forces a matemacity of reality because computation in living beings   becomes a process with a cost that favour a  low kolmogorov complexity for the reality. In essence, it forces a discoverable local universe... ,

 In contrast,  the idea of computation as the ultimate nature of realtity postulates  computations devoid of restrictions by definition, so they may not restrict anything in the reality that we perceive. we may be boltzmann brains, we may  be a product not of evolution but a product of random computations. we may perceive elephants flying...

And still much of your conclussions coming from the first person indeterminacy may hold by considering living beings as ordinary material personal computers.

Yes, that's step seven. If the universe is enough "big", to run a *significant* part of the UD. But I think that the white rabbits disappear only on the limit of the whole UD work (UD*).

Bruno

Dear Bruno,

    Tell us more about how White Rabbits can appear if there is any restriction of mutual logical consistency between 1p and in any arbitrary recursion of 1p content?

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Oct 2012, at 11:41, Roger Clough wrote:

> Hi Russell Standish
>
> Not so. A zombie can't converse with you, a real person can.

By definition a (philosophical) zombie can converse with you. A zombie
is en entity assumed not having consciousness, nor any private
subjective life, and which behaves *exactly* like a human being.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Oct 2012, at 12:26, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

A few discoveries of evolutionary psichology may help. According with EP the mind is composed of many functional modules, each one for a different purpose. many of them are specific of each specie. Each of these modules is the result of the computation of certain areas of the brain. A functional module in the mind has´nt to be an area of the brain. Because the model of the mid in EP assumes comp, and assumes an specific, testable model for mind-brain design (natural selection) it is well suited for issues like this.

Severe autists lack a module called "theory of mind" . this module make you compute the mental states of other people. It gather information about their gestures, acts etc. It makes people interesting object to care about. Autists can learn rationally about the fact that other humans are like him, they can learn to take care of them. But they are not naturally interested in people. They dont care about if you have a mind, because they do not know what means a mind in another being. they just experience their own. For them, yuou are robot that they do not understand. 

That is possible, but I would say that "empathy", your module of a "theory of mind" is already present for all universal machine knowing that they are universal. Autist, in your theory, would be a L¨bian entity with some defect in that module, with respect to its local representation/body. Possible.

We ask ourselves about the existence of the mind in others because we have a innate capacity for perceiving and feeling the mind in other. However, a robot without human gestures, without human reactions would not excite our theory of mind module, and we would not have the intuitive perception of a mind in that cold thing.

However this has nothing to do with the real thing.The theory of mind module evolved because it was very important for social life. But this is compatible with a reality in with each one of us live in an universe of zombies (some of them with postdoc in philosophy, church pastors etc) where we have the only soul. Of course I dont belive that. I have the "normal" belief. But this is one of the most deep and most widespread beliefs, because it is innate and you must fight against it to drop it out. This belief save you from a paralizing solipsism. That´s one of the reasons why I say "I believe, therefore I can act" 

I follow you well. I agree. Comp is the inverse of solipsim, as it attributes a soul to a larger class of entity than usually thought: machines, and even relative numbers in arithmetic.

Bruno

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

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/10/19 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 19 Oct 2012, at 12:26, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

A few discoveries of evolutionary psichology may help. According with EP the mind is composed of many functional modules, each one for a different purpose. many of them are specific of each specie. Each of these modules is the result of the computation of certain areas of the brain. A functional module in the mind has´nt to be an area of the brain. Because the model of the mid in EP assumes comp, and assumes an specific, testable model for mind-brain design (natural selection) it is well suited for issues like this.

Severe autists lack a module called "theory of mind" . this module make you compute the mental states of other people. It gather information about their gestures, acts etc. It makes people interesting object to care about. Autists can learn rationally about the fact that other humans are like him, they can learn to take care of them. But they are not naturally interested in people. They dont care about if you have a mind, because they do not know what means a mind in another being. they just experience their own. For them, yuou are robot that they do not understand. 

That is possible, but I would say that "empathy", your module of a "theory of mind" is already present for all universal machine knowing that they are universal. Autist, in your theory, would be a L¨bian entity with some defect in that module, with respect to its local representation/body. Possible.

But the theory of mind in the case of an universal machine conscious of himself lack the  strong perception of another selves that humans have from the visual clues of the gestures and reactions of others.  The human theory of mind is not an abstract theory of mind, but a human theory of mind, which evoques mirror feelings like worry, compassion, anger that we would never have when contemplating a machine. It´s not a philosophical-rational notion, but a instinctive one. And because this, it does not permits to fall into solipsism. Unless a robot mimic an human, he can never trigger this instinctive perception.

In the other side an autist may have the rational theory of mind of an universal machine, but lack the strong perception of "there are others like me around". This is a very important difference for practical matter but also for theoretical ones, since the abstract, rational theory of mind is a rationalization that builds itself from our instinctive perception of a soul-mind in others.

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that
a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia
are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms
what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red
is what the body gives you, the sensation of red
is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind
also can recall past sensations of red to compare
it with and give it a name "red", which a real
person can identify as eg a red traffic light
and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing
the fact that red and green lights are in different
positions).

That would be a test of zombieness.

 

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/20/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-10-19, 03:47:51
Subject: Re: A test for solipsism

[Roger Clough]

Hi Bruno Marchal

This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie
definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind
but it can still behave just as a real person would.

But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind
has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least
to a realist.

Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person
does not need to have a mind. But that's in his
definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic.



Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/20/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-10-19, 14:30:47
Subject: Re: A test for solipsism

[Roger Clough]

Hi William R. Buckley

Thank you for reminding me that materialists
do believe that there is a mind identical to or
in some fashion related to the brain. Since I
see no possibility that one substance (mind)
can act on another substance (brain), I
don't take their concept of mind seriously,
but I have remember that many (most) people
believe in the materialist view of mind.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/20/2012

"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: William R. Buckley
Receiver: everything-list

Time: 2012-10-19, 08:42:36
Subject: RE: RE: A test for solipsism

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

[Alberto G. Corona]

Roger

Different Qualia are a result fo different phisical effect in the senses. So a machine does not need to have qualia to distinguish between phisical effectds. It only need sensors that distinguish between them.

A sensor can detect a red light and the attached computer can stop a car. With no problems. 

http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/

2012/10/20 Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>

--
Alberto.

[Roger Clough]

Hi Alberto G. Corona

I have no problem with that, the problem I have
is that I believe that nonphysical things (things,
like Descartes' "mind", not extended in space)
like spirit, truly exist. But to materialists,
that's nonsense, because being inextended it
can't be measured and so doesn't exist.
And life is just a unique form of matter,
so can be created. And what is man but a
bunch of atoms ?

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
10/20/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----

From: Alberto G. Corona
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-20, 08:48:39
Subject: Re: Re: A test for solipsism

Roger
Different Qualia are a result fo different phisical effect in the senses. So a machine does not need to have qualia to distinguish between phisical effectds. It only need sensors that distinguish between them.

A sensor can detect a red light and the attached computer can stop a car. With no problems.?

http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-smart-stop-system/13122/



2012/10/20 Roger Clough

Hi Bruno Marchal

In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that
a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia
are what the senses tell you. The mind then transforms
what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red
is what the body gives you, the sensation of red
is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind
also can recall past sensations of red to compare
it with and give it a name "red", which a real
person can identify as eg a red traffic light
and stop. A zombie would not stop (I am not allowing
the fact that red and green lights are in different
positions).
That would be a test of zombieness.

?

?
?
?

?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Oct 2012, at 12:38, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal

In that definition of a p-zombie below, it says that
a p-zombie cannot experience qualia, and qualia
are what the senses tell you.

Yes. Qualia are the subjective 1p view, sometimes brought by percepts, and supposed to be treated by the brain.

And yes a zombie as no qualia, as a qualia needs consciousness.

The mind then transforms
what is sensed into a sensation. The sense of red
is what the body gives you, the sensation of red
is what the mind transforms that into. Our mind
also can recall past sensations of red to compare
it with and give it a name "red", which a real
person can identify as eg a red traffic light
and stop. A zombie would not stop

No, a zombie will stop at the red light. By definition it behaves like a human, or like a conscious entity. 

By definition, if you marry a zombie, your will never been aware of that, your whole life. 

(I am not allowing
the fact that red and green lights are in different
positions).

That would be a test of zombieness.

There exists already detector of colors, smells, capable of doing finer discrimination than human.

I have heard about a machine testing old wine better than human experts.

Machines evolve quickly. That is why the non-comp people are confronted with the idea that zombie might be logically possible for them.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Oct 2012, at 14:04, Roger Clough wrote:

> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> This is also where I run into trouble with the p-zombie
> definition of what a zombie is. It has no mind
> but it can still behave just as a real person would.
>
> But that assumes, as the materialists do, that the mind
> has no necessary function. Which is nonsense, at least
> to a realist.
>
> Thus Dennett claims that a real candidate person
> does not need to have a mind. But that's in his
> definition of what a real person is. That's circular logic.

I agree with you on this.
Dennett is always on the verge of eliminativism. That is deeply wrong.

Now, if you want eliminate the zombie, and keep comp, you have to
eventually associate the mind to the logico-arithmetical relations
defining a computation relative to a universal number, and then a
reasoning explains where the laws of physics comes from (the number's
dream statistics).

This leads also to the arithmetical understanding of Plotinus, and of
all those rare people aware of both the importance of staying rational
on those issue, *and* open minded on, if not aware of, the existence
of consciousness and altered consciousness states.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Oct 2012, at 23:41, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2012/10/19 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 19 Oct 2012, at 12:26, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

A few discoveries of evolutionary psichology may help. According with EP the mind is composed of many functional modules, each one for a different purpose. many of them are specific of each specie. Each of these modules is the result of the computation of certain areas of the brain. A functional module in the mind has´nt to be an area of the brain. Because the model of the mid in EP assumes comp, and assumes an specific, testable model for mind-brain design (natural selection) it is well suited for issues like this.

Severe autists lack a module called "theory of mind" . this module make you compute the mental states of other people. It gather information about their gestures, acts etc. It makes people interesting object to care about. Autists can learn rationally about the fact that other humans are like him, they can learn to take care of them. But they are not naturally interested in people. They dont care about if you have a mind, because they do not know what means a mind in another being. they just experience their own. For them, yuou are robot that they do not understand. 

That is possible, but I would say that "empathy", your module of a "theory of mind" is already present for all universal machine knowing that they are universal. Autist, in your theory, would be a L¨bian entity with some defect in that module, with respect to its local representation/body. Possible.

But the theory of mind in the case of an universal machine conscious of himself lack the  strong perception of another selves that humans have from the visual clues of the gestures and reactions of others.  The human theory of mind is not an abstract theory of mind, but a human theory of mind, which evoques mirror feelings like worry, compassion, anger that we would never have when contemplating a machine. It´s not a philosophical-rational notion, but a instinctive one. And because this, it does not permits to fall into solipsism. Unless a robot mimic an human, he can never trigger this instinctive perception.

Yes. It is a general theory of the consciousness and matter of all universal (Löbian) machines. Humans are special case.

In the other side an autist may have the rational theory of mind of an universal machine, but lack the strong perception of "there are others like me around". This is a very important difference for practical matter but also for theoretical ones, since the abstract, rational theory of mind is a rationalization that builds itself from our instinctive perception of a soul-mind in others.

No. The rational and the non rational is part of all Löbian machine. 

In a sense Löbianity requires two universal machines, in front of each others. And one will dominate on the rational part of the truth, and the other will dominate on the not completely rational part.

The lobian machine can recognize another machine, even when alone. Of course nature has exploited this a lot at many levels, and even more so with the mammals, including especially the humans. 

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

Dear Stephen,

We assume comp.  If a digital computer processes the activity of your brain in dream state with white rabbits, it means that such a computation "with that dream" exist in infinitely many local "incarnation" in the arithmetical (tiny, Turing universal) reality.

If you do a physical experience, the hallucination that all goes weird at that moment exists also, in arithmetic. The measure problem consists in justifying from consistency, self-reference, universal numbers, their rarity, that is why apparent special universal (Turing) laws prevails (and this keeping in mind the 1p, the 1p-indeterminacy, the 3p relative distinctions, etc.) 

Bruno

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