Why I am I?
soulcatcher☠
every time I read about the anthropic reasoning in physics I can't
help asking the more general question:
"Why I am I, not somebody else?"
Why I see through _this_ eyes, am confined to _this_ brain, was born
in _this_ year, etc?
This question seems to me of the same importance as the question "why
we live in _this_ universe, with _this_ physical laws?". Moreover, I
have a deep feeling that both questions ultimately should have the
same answer - I really don't see a difference between "why my universe
is this, not that" and "why me body/brain is this, not that" questions
...
So. what do you think - why you is _you_, not me or Elvis Presley or whatever?
Stathis Papaioannou
to anything?
--
Stathis Papaioannou
Jason Resch
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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.
benjayk
maybe there is no communicable reason for you being you - words and concepts
can only point to the reason, not be the reason. You are you, because you
are free to be you. And freedom is wonderful, isn't it - so why should
anybody ask for a reason that is more graspable (except because of the bad
habit of craving to explanations of the mind/intellect). Can there be a
better, more convincing reason for you than the opportunity for endless
love, fun and development (all of which do not take place in the intellect)?
I thought about a reason for "me" (being me and still changing) really hard
and I found that searching an explanation in the mind will lead you nowhere
(except to deeply depressive thoughts); though i still try it all too often.
Satisfying explanations can only be found in your "heart".
Sorry, if this doesn't satisfy you right now... ;)
Benny
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26620609.html
Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
soulcatcher☠
> If you were Elvis and Elvis were you, what difference would that make
> to anything?
subjective experiences would be very different. And, as these
experiences are by definition "private and ineffable" (is it right?),
that would make no difference for anything but me and Elvis.
Sorry, maybe I just don't understand your question ...
soulcatcher☠
> Hi soulcatcher,
> Good question, it is something I thought about too, then I realized I am me
> because it was this brain in my skull asking that question. I created the
> attached image to help illustrate my point. If each person asks that
> question "why am I me?" another way of phrasing their question is "Why am I
> seeing the universe from this perspective and not someone else's?" If you
> follow the thought bubbles in the picture you see it leads to a head which
> is connected to a specific pair of eyes, it would only be natural that the
> individual isolated brains only remember seeing from one person's
> perspective, and just as natural for them to be curious about that fact.
> However when looked at from this perspective the answer seems quite
> obvious.
If I understand you right, you're trying to answer the question from
3-d person view, but I really don't see how subjective 1-st person
experience could emerge from (or be reduced to) 3-d person description
of this experience. I'm comfortable with the thought that other people
aren't zombies and ask the same questions as I do, but I still don't
understand why I'm having this 1-st person experience but not that.
> Another more interesting question: How do you know you aren't also
> perceiving those other people's perspectives too? Obviously no individual
> brain remembers the thoughts or experiences of the others because there are
> no neural connections between them (like split brain patients who develop
> two egos) but just because you don't remember experiencing something doesn't
> mean you didn't experience it.
experience) is by definition the perspective that I'm not only having
right now but knowing that I'm having it (here I strongly agree with
Damasio that consciousness is not separable from the knowing about the
feeling). Therefore, by definition, I'm not perceiving those other
people's perspectives - because If I perceived them, I would have
known that, these perspectives would be not their but my perspective -
but they are not. Moreover, this is the only thing that I'm sure about
- cause my perspective is the one and the only perspective I know.
Bruno Marchal said (and I really love this quote): "Any content of
consciousness can be an illusion. Consciousness itself
cannot, because without consciousness there is no more illusion at all. "
In the other words, I can say that my 1-st person perspective cannot
be an illusion and, as the other people's perspectives aren't part of
it, I'm sure that I'm not perceiving them...
Bruno Marchal
Another more interesting question: How do you know you aren't also perceiving those other people's perspectives too? Obviously no individual brain remembers the thoughts or experiences of the others because there are no neural connections between them (like split brain patients who develop two egos) but just because you don't remember experiencing something doesn't mean you didn't experience it.
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:55 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:If you were Elvis and Elvis were you, what difference would that maketo anything?
That would make a huge difference for me and Elvis - my (and his)
subjective experiences would be very different.
I always thought that my consciousness (and qualia, 1-st person
experience) is by definition the perspective that I'm not only having
right now but knowing that I'm having it (here I strongly agree with
Damasio that consciousness is not separable from the knowing about the
feeling). Therefore, by definition, I'm not perceiving those other
people's perspectives - because If I perceived them, I would have
known that, these perspectives would be not their but my perspective -
but they are not. Moreover, this is the only thing that I'm sure about
- cause my perspective is the one and the only perspective I know.
Bruno Marchal said (and I really love this quote): "Any content of
consciousness can be an illusion. Consciousness itself
cannot, because without consciousness there is no more illusion at all. "
In the other words, I can say that my 1-st person perspective cannot
be an illusion and, as the other people's perspectives aren't part of
it, I'm sure that I'm not perceiving them...
soulcatcher☠
> reappearing like if we were already duplicated many times, which makes sense
> given that we come from the same amoeba. We are like a god who lost himself
> in his creation.
Anyway, every time i think about the me/others asymmetry, I'm coming
to the same conclusion - maybe there is only one person and asymmetry
becomes a convenient symmetry ...
Ok, thank you all for answers, they definitely gave me some food for
thoughts, and let me rephrase my question more 'rigorously'.
==================================
Lets consider two "hard" questions - "why do we live in THIS
universe?" (1) and "why am I me?" (2).
(1) . Why do we live in THIS universe?
Here we got:
- string theory and anthropic reasoning present us with a landscape of
10^(10^N) universes that we can choose from.
- we've got some strong constraints on the result of the choice. The
choice can be random (or defined by some probability distribution on
the set of all possible universes), but we should live in the universe
compatible with our existence.
Conclusion: we can't answer 'hard' question 'Why physical laws are
described by string (M, F, whatever) theory, but we can at least ask
more 'soft' question - 'Why from the set of all possible universes
described by theory T the chosen one is this one". And this question
sounds scientific and it seems that it should be answered before we
can answer thr hard one.
(2). Why am I me?
Here we got nothing (?):
- what is a "landscape" here, a set of all possible mes? All the
people? All the people that ever lived and will ever live? All the
animals? All the conscious entities? And here we stuck cause we don't
know excatly what entity is conscious and what is not. Or, maybe the
set contains only ONE element (only one 1st person exists ...) and
there is no choice at all?
- what are constraints? What machine can 'host' me (conscious entity) ?
Sorry if my questions are naive, I'm new to all this stuff. Maybe we
should have a FAQ or wiki with naive but popular questions (what is
consciousness? what is information? is computation sufficient for
consciousness? What is the difference between reality and simulation?)
that are asked again and again by everyone who's starting to think
about TOE ...
soulcatcher☠
1. Can we temporarily substitute the 'hard' question "why am I me?" by
the more 'soft' one,
like the question of choice in some 'level 3 tegmarkian multiverse' of
all possible mes ?
2. Can we reduce "why am I me?" to the question of choice on the some set?
3. What is the 'hardest' question that is still scientific? In other
words, that is the most rigorous reformulation of "why I am me?" that
could be asked and maybe even answered by modern science in the
nearest future?
Stathis Papaioannou
switch places. What would change? To find out, I'll just wave my hands
in a special magical way and - poof! - it's done. You now have my mind
and body, while I have your mind and body. So really it isn't the
original me writing this, it is the original you, who only thinks he
is the original me since he has my mind and body; and over there it
isn't the original you reading this, but the original me who only
thinks he is the original you.
Do you see the problem in the above exchange? It assumes there is some
metaphysical "me" and "you" that can be conceptualised as flitting
about from one body and mind to another. But such a notion seems to me
absurd, meaningless, worse than wrong.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
Bruno Marchal
Please swish again!
:)
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
> --
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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
> .
>
>
soulcatcher☠
>
> Please swish again!
>
> :)
> Do you see the problem in the above exchange? It assumes there is some
> metaphysical "me" and "you" that can be conceptualised as flitting
> about from one body and mind to another. But such a notion seems to me
> absurd, meaningless, worse than wrong.
agent that could be somehow "embedded" and reincarnated in different
brains and I accept that this is wrong.
But now I am almost completely lost - what do we mean by "switching",
if we got nothing to switch? Do you trying to make me see that the
question about switching has no sense? Does it implies that "what I am
me?" is incorrect and shouldn't be asked too?
Bruno Marchal
x> This raises the question of how many first person exists. I like the ideathat the answer is one. We may be all "the universal person" appearing andreappearing like if we were already duplicated many times, which makes sensegiven that we come from the same amoeba. We are like a god who lost himselfin his creation.
I like this answer though it kinda scares me)
Anyway, every time i think about the me/others asymmetry, I'm coming
to the same conclusion - maybe there is only one person and asymmetry
becomes a convenient symmetry ...
Ok, thank you all for answers, they definitely gave me some food for
thoughts, and let me rephrase my question more 'rigorously'.
==================================
Lets consider two "hard" questions - "why do we live in THIS
universe?" (1) and "why am I me?" (2).
(1) . Why do we live in THIS universe?
Here we got:
- string theory and anthropic reasoning present us with a landscape of
10^(10^N) universes that we can choose from.
- we've got some strong constraints on the result of the choice. The
choice can be random (or defined by some probability distribution on
the set of all possible universes), but we should live in the universe
compatible with our existence.
Conclusion: we can't answer 'hard' question 'Why physical laws are
described by string (M, F, whatever) theory,
but we can at least ask
more 'soft' question - 'Why from the set of all possible universes
described by theory T the chosen one is this one".
And this question
sounds scientific and it seems that it should be answered before we
can answer thr hard one.
(2). Why am I me?
Here we got nothing (?):
- what is a "landscape" here, a set of all possible mes? All the
people? All the people that ever lived and will ever live? All the
animals? All the conscious entities? And here we stuck cause we don't
know excatly what entity is conscious and what is not. Or, maybe the
set contains only ONE element (only one 1st person exists ...) and
there is no choice at all?
- what are constraints? What machine can 'host' me (conscious entity) ?
Sorry if my questions are naive, I'm new to all this stuff. Maybe we
should have a FAQ or wiki with naive but popular questions (what is
consciousness? what is information? is computation sufficient for
consciousness? What is the difference between reality and simulation?)
that are asked again and again by everyone who's starting to think
about TOE ...
Brent Meeker
Brent
Brent Meeker
Brent
One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it."
--- Carl Ludwig Siegel
Brent Meeker
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> Science advances in small steps that often depend on technology. I think
> the next 'hard' question that has some chance of being answered is, what
> information processes are necessary and sufficient to produce human-like
> conscious behavior.
of how to implement a physical system that can be interpreted as
producing human-like behavior.
And then there is the further question of whether the production of
this behavior is accompanied by "consciousness".
I can configure physical systems in such a way that to me it
represents something. For instance I can write software to run on a
physical computer that produces outputs that to me represent "game
characters" or something. With sufficiently clever software, I may
interpret the outputs of the computer to be "behavior" that is more or
less "human-like".
But my interpretation may be doing all the work here. I may be
deluding myself into believing that there is consciousness associated
with the actions of the physical system I call a computer...when in
fact there is no such thing there. The appearance of "conscious
behavior" in the computer could be an illusion. Probably it would be.
Brent Meeker
Brent
Bruno Marchal
Brent Meeker
, or survive through a digital back-up. Rigt?This mean the notion of "I" still make sense.
Both the 1-I, and the 3-I makes sense, it is the link between them which is "magical", and made harder to figure out than people usually believe, like with the identity thesis, physical supervenience, etc.
Now, when you see that people have some difficulty to understand thought experience without amnesia, thought experience with amnesia are perhaps premature. I am not sure. It depends on your familiarity with such kind of thought.
Brent
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
?? You mean "or brain"?Exactly. It is the magical "I" that is swapped.
That "I" is magical. It is like swapping both the mind (or 1-I) and the body (or 3-I).Eventually this is the reason why absolute sample of the observer moment does not work, and we need relative self self-sampling. Which neither with QM (without collapse) or just digital mechanism is obvious to derive.
The mind can swap its body for brain or another
But it doesn't make sense to swap two minds and their bodies (i.e. perspectives). That's just interchanging positions and isn't generally thought to affect who is who - although read Stanislau Lem's "The Star Diaries". And if you suppose the mind is embodied in the brain or digital machine then swapping minds with Stathis implies swapping the essential aspects of the brain or machine., or survive through a digital back-up. Rigt?This mean the notion of "I" still make sense.
Both the 1-I, and the 3-I makes sense, it is the link between them which is "magical", and made harder to figure out than people usually believe, like with the identity thesis, physical supervenience, etc.
Now, when you see that people have some difficulty to understand thought experience without amnesia, thought experience with amnesia are perhaps premature. I am not sure. It depends on your familiarity with such kind of thought.
I'm not sure what "thought experience with amnesia" is, but taken rigorously it sounds impossible.
Brent Meeker
On 03 Dec 2009, at 23:12, Brent Meeker wrote:?? You mean "or brain"?Exactly. It is the magical "I" that is swapped.
That "I" is magical. It is like swapping both the mind (or 1-I) and the body (or 3-I).Eventually this is the reason why absolute sample of the observer moment does not work, and we need relative self self-sampling. Which neither with QM (without collapse) or just digital mechanism is obvious to derive.
The mind can swap its body for brain or another
Yes, I meant "a mind" (a first person, a soul; or the "(Bp & p) of some Lobian program") can swap its body or brain for another body or brain. Sorry.
But it doesn't make sense to swap two minds and their bodies (i.e. perspectives). That's just interchanging positions and isn't generally thought to affect who is who - although read Stanislau Lem's "The Star Diaries". And if you suppose the mind is embodied in the brain or digital machine then swapping minds with Stathis implies swapping the essential aspects of the brain or machine., or survive through a digital back-up. Rigt?This mean the notion of "I" still make sense.
Yes. As usual with mechanism, you can identify, in a first approximation, the mind with the (running) software. It is the same with a computer. You can swap the physical hard disk, but if you want your "computer" to "keep its mind", you have to reinstall its software, and its initial configuration, with all the data.
Both the 1-I, and the 3-I makes sense, it is the link between them which is "magical", and made harder to figure out than people usually believe, like with the identity thesis, physical supervenience, etc.
Now, when you see that people have some difficulty to understand thought experience without amnesia, thought experience with amnesia are perhaps premature. I am not sure. It depends on your familiarity with such kind of thought.
I'm not sure what "thought experience with amnesia" is, but taken rigorously it sounds impossible.
I was alluding to some discussions we had when discussing the movie "the prestige", or when discussing the Saibal Mitra backtracking.The question is this, and is addressed to the people who already accept an artificial brain in the usual conditions which are supposed to be perfect (right substitution level, competent doctor): would you still say yes to the doctor if he tells you that, after the reconstitution of your brain, you will lose the memory of one day, or of one week, or one year, or of your entire life, etc.
By thought experience with amnesia, I meant a thought experience which involves a partial or a total amnesia. Not only this is possible, but this happens in "real life" rather often, for example in car accidents, or in war head injuries. Some drug (for example salvia divinorum) can generate severe (but temporary) amnesia, and can help to make "real" some of those thought experiences.Those thought experiences are not needed to understand that the physical reality and physical sensations emerge from numbers addition and multiplication, for example, but may be useful to tackle the identity problem "why I am I", "who am I really?", etc. (cf soulcatcher☠ question)
In general I try to avoid them. When we discussed the prestige movie, we talk about this. I said, in a conversation with Quentin Anciaux, that IF you believe that you can survive with a "total amnesia", THEN you are expanding a lot the variety of the possible form of the computationalist immortality.
If you make the experience of remembering having been nothing less and nothing more than a universal (Löbian) machine, you can know (or imagine) that you are already immortal. You can live the experience of being the static consciousness, out of time and space, of the universal (digital) person, and intuit that time and space are a construction of your mind. Some "slow sleep" (non REM) dream state can lead to similar experiences, and I suspect that Plato, Plotinus, Kant and Descartes (and probably many others) lived things like that.
I thought it was impossible to live that and to be able to come back from such an experience, but it happens that with salvia divinorum, some subject can live the experience of quasi-total amnesia, where not only you forget which human you are, but you can forget what a human is, what time is, what space is, and yet, retrospectively, after coming back, you realize that despite having forgot everything, you were still conscious, and you were still considering you as a living entity of some sort.
Brent
Some people are terrified by such experience, other enjoy it or find it interesting. It helps indeed to realize the contingent nature of particular memories and the "illusion" of identity. I don't recommend it, unless it is legal in your state and you are pretty curious on the functioning of the brain, and the nature of your identity. People who don't like metaphysical vertigo should be very cautious (always begin by the leaves, and then increment the concentration with extracts very slowly---do the contrary of what people shows on youtube!). Well, they should be very cautious with UDA too, I guess.
Bruno
Johnathan Corgan
>> I thought it was impossible to live that and to be able to come back from
>> such an experience, but it happens that with salvia divinorum, some subject
>> can live the experience of quasi-total amnesia, where not only you forget
>> which human you are, but you can forget what a human is, what time is, what
>> space is, and yet, retrospectively, after coming back, you realize that
>> despite having forgot everything, you were still conscious, and you were
>> still considering you as a living entity of some sort.
>
> I've not had that experience, but I might try it. I think though that even
> in such a state one must have some short-term (~second) memory to have a
> human kind of consciousness. Obviously you now have memories of what it was
> like. I have known people with severe Alzheimer's disease who seemed merely
> reactive and apparently had no memory, even short term. I don't think they
> were as conscious as my dog or the fish in my pond.
psychoactive compound) use in the literature contain many common
themes related to memory deficits, and represent a fascinating
"uncontrolled study" in the phenomenology of consciousness. There are
of course many concurrent effects (visual and auditory hallucinations,
somatic sensations, distortions of body image, etc.) shared with other
hallucinogens, but the impact on memory seems unique.
At typical dose levels resulting from smoking the plant leaves or
fortified extracts of the plant leaves, many users later report that
they had forgotten they had taken a drug, and were confused (and often
terrified) about why they were experiencing what they were. This is
reported as a sudden onset phenomena, not a gradual one, and is often
compared to the feeling of waking up in a strange place with no memory
of how one got there. This suggests that one action of the drug is to
disrupt the last few minutes of episodic memory formation. However,
these same reports also state that as the effect of the drug began to
peak and then wear off, usually in a matter of a few minutes, the
users suddenly recalled the events leading up to their intoxicated
state. This then suggests that, at these doses, the drug only
disrupts access to recent episodic memory, but the memory is still
formed for later recall. This is different from the form of permanent
memory loss that occurs in head injury cases where the victim cannot
ever recall the moments leading up to, say, a vehicle collision.
At higher doses, a common theme is that (along with the prior episodic
amnestic effects) the user reports having forgotten key fundamental
concepts like "what being human is" or "what space is". This sort of
semantic memory loss is difficult to imagine, but it is fascinating
that even under such extreme conditions, the user is experiencing a
stream-of-consciousness that can later be recalled. Less frequently,
reports at higher doses describe feeling like "all of my prior reality
was a joke being played on me", and "I was experiencing the REAL
reality, and everything that happened before was just a construction
or movie set."
Some users go on to report even more bizarre cases where they report
"having lived another lifetime somewhere else", and are shocked and
dismayed when the drug begins to wear off that it was all a "dream",
and that this reality is the real one. This sounds like a more
extreme version of our normal REM sleep, where when dreaming, one
doesn't usually realize one is dreaming, but sorts things out upon
awakening.
Compounding these impacts on memory are reports of changes in body
image and identity. One recurring theme (that is shared with other
hallucinogens) is the feeling of "merging" with objects in one's
visual field. This is reported as both incorporating the physical
object into one's body image and changing one's perspective to be that
of the object. In one case, a user reported that "I actually KNEW
what it was like to be a swing set, to live every day in the
playground and be happy when children were using me, and sad when the
park was closed."
Another unique aspect of the effects of salvinorin A is its extremely
short-lived activity. Most reports seem to indicate that the smoked
form of the drug wears off in as little as 10-15 minutes, completely
returning the user to "baseline" in less than a half-hour.
All of this indicates that salvinorin A has potent but short-lived
effects on the brain systems involved in memory, identity, body image
and perception of time and space (along with a host of other effects
not discussed here). Regardless of one's view on the use of these
substances to alter one's cognition, it seems there is a great
opportunity to study these effects to zero in on how these brain
systems are related to our subjective experience of reality.
Johnathan Corgan
Bruno Marchal
On 04 Dec 2009, at 19:15, Brent Meeker wrote:
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Those thought experiences are not needed to understand that the
>> physical reality and physical sensations emerge from numbers
>> addition and multiplication, for example, but may be useful to
>> tackle the identity problem "why I am I", "who am I really?", etc.
>> (cf soulcatcher☠ question)
>>
>> In general I try to avoid them. When we discussed the prestige
>> movie, we talk about this. I said, in a conversation with Quentin
>> Anciaux, that IF you believe that you can survive with a "total
>> amnesia", THEN you are expanding a lot the variety of the possible
>> form of the computationalist immortality.
>
> That's what I meant by impossible. If there is no memory at all,
> then I don't see how the construct we refer to as "you" can even be
> identified.
interpreter. Today, unfortunately, when you buy a computer, it is
already full of software which hides its universality. A universal
machine is not a trivial object. Babbage did already see that it can
eat its own tail.
Imagine sort of universal baby. It knows nothing, but can do
everything (doable). It is infinitely intelligent and creative at the
start. The hard things is to keep it that way.
It is not necessary for the reasoning, but there are sequence of
thought experiences which can help you to figure out what is it like
losing all memories. You are still someone because the 8 hypostases
still exists, They hacve a first person point of view, and notions of
observations, and even more, they are unobstructed by the non
monotonical layers of logics that we need to survive when entangled in
deep computational histories. This makes the disentanglement between
laws and contingencies far more complex in practice.
Some believe in a singularity point where machine will be more clever
than man. I think that that event has already occurred.
When you program a computer "its souls may only fall", unless you
manage it to stay universal.
>>
>> If you make the experience of remembering having been nothing less
>> and nothing more than a universal (Löbian) machine, you can know
>> (or imagine) that you are already immortal. You can live the
>> experience of being the static consciousness, out of time and
>> space, of the universal (digital) person, and intuit that time and
>> space are a construction of your mind. Some "slow sleep" (non REM)
>> dream state can lead to similar experiences, and I suspect that
>> Plato, Plotinus, Kant and Descartes (and probably many others)
>> lived things like that.
>>
>> I thought it was impossible to live that and to be able to come
>> back from such an experience, but it happens that with salvia
>> divinorum, some subject can live the experience of quasi-total
>> amnesia, where not only you forget which human you are, but you can
>> forget what a human is, what time is, what space is, and yet,
>> retrospectively, after coming back, you realize that despite having
>> forgot everything, you were still conscious, and you were still
>> considering you as a living entity of some sort.
> I've not had that experience, but I might try it. I think though
> that even in such a state one must have some short-term (~second)
> memory to have a human kind of consciousness.
that human kind of consciousness.
With comp I argue that matter has to be the "border of the mind", but
nobody should take seriously the idea that it is the border of the
human mind. That would be an anthropomorphic error. It is the geometry
of the ignorance of all universal machine. The 'quest of truth' motor.
I interview the Löbian one only because they are more self-aware (they
opinions obeys Bp -> BBp) making them much more chatty.
> Obviously you now have memories of what it was like. I have known
> people with severe Alzheimer's disease who seemed merely reactive
> and apparently had no memory, even short term. I don't think they
> were as conscious as my dog or the fish in my pond.
France, after having been considered as being in a unconscious
comatose state for 23 years, a woman, with the help of her family,
has succeed to convince its doctors that she was as conscious than you
and me. She was just highly paralyzed.
In a injured brain, pathologies can spread on many levels, and it is
wise to say we can't even imagine how some pathologies are lived by
the person. Experimenting with some psycho-active substance can put
some light here, and raise some doubts there.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Brent Meeker
> On 04 Dec 2009, at 19:15, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Those thought experiences are not needed to understand that the
>>> physical reality and physical sensations emerge from numbers
>>> addition and multiplication, for example, but may be useful to
>>> tackle the identity problem "why I am I", "who am I really?", etc.
>>> (cf soulcatcher☠ question)
>>>
>>> In general I try to avoid them. When we discussed the prestige
>>> movie, we talk about this. I said, in a conversation with Quentin
>>> Anciaux, that IF you believe that you can survive with a "total
>>> amnesia", THEN you are expanding a lot the variety of the possible
>>> form of the computationalist immortality.
>>>
>> That's what I meant by impossible. If there is no memory at all,
>> then I don't see how the construct we refer to as "you" can even be
>> identified.
>>
>
> The universal person. The virgin universal purpose computer, any
> interpreter. Today, unfortunately, when you buy a computer, it is
> already full of software which hides its universality. A universal
> machine is not a trivial object. Babbage did already see that it can
> eat its own tail.
>
> Imagine sort of universal baby. It knows nothing, but can do
> everything (doable). It is infinitely intelligent and creative at the
> start. The hard things is to keep it that way.
>
nothing to me. This is just another form of the "everything" universal
acid. Just postulate an everything and then we know the something we're
interested in must be in there somewhere.
> It is not necessary for the reasoning, but there are sequence of
> thought experiences which can help you to figure out what is it like
> losing all memories.
memory, i.e. not only losing old memories, but also not forming any new
memories. A computer without memory can't compute.
> nobody should take seriously the idea that it is the border of the
> human mind. That would be an anthropomorphic error. It is the geometry
> of the ignorance of all universal machine. The 'quest of truth' motor.
> I interview the Löbian one only because they are more self-aware (they
> opinions obeys Bp -> BBp) making them much more chatty.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Obviously you now have memories of what it was like. I have known
>> people with severe Alzheimer's disease who seemed merely reactive
>> and apparently had no memory, even short term. I don't think they
>> were as conscious as my dog or the fish in my pond.
>>
>
> To judge the presence of consciousness is difficult. Recently, in
> France, after having been considered as being in a unconscious
> comatose state for 23 years, a woman, with the help of her family,
> has succeed to convince its doctors that she was as conscious than you
> and me. She was just highly paralyzed.
>
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/11/25/Is_coma_man_Rom_Houben_REALLY_talking_Mystery_as_critics_sla/
"Experts are casting doubt on claims that a man <http://everyman.com/>
who doctors had believed was in a 23-year coma is truly conscious and
communicating on his own. Belgian Rom Houben communicates with the help
<http://aidagencies.com/> of a speech therapist who moves his finger
letter <http://letters.com/> by letter along a touch-screen keyboard.
But yesterday experts slammed the method as 'Ouija board communication',
saying it had been 'completely discredited'. "
Just because there has once been a mistake doesn't prove it is difficult
to get right - only that it is difficult to always be right.
Brent
> In a injured brain, pathologies can spread on many levels, and it is
> wise to say we can't even imagine how some pathologies are lived by
> the person. Experimenting with some psycho-active substance can put
> some light here, and raise some doubts there.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
Rex Allen
things just are the way they are (uniquely), and there's ultimately no
explanation for that. Right?
So we can take our observations of the world around us and construct a
narrative that is consistent with what we see...a narrative that
involves big bangs and electrons. But what caused the big bang? Why
do electrons have the particular properties that they have? If you
propose a particular cause for these things, what caused that cause?
How is that better than a narrative that allows for "everything"?
They would seem to have equal explanatory power. Which is to say:
zero.
Rex Allen
be conscious, but I don't know that they actually are, or if they even
exist outside of my perceptions of them.
But, it seems prudent to act as though they are conscious and do exist.
Brent Meeker
so this happens too." are both equally useless. Progress is only made
when we can explain why this rather than that.
> narrative that is consistent with what we see...a narrative that
> involves big bangs and electrons. But what caused the big bang? Why
> do electrons have the particular properties that they have? If you
> propose a particular cause for these things, what caused that cause?
>
> How is that better than a narrative that allows for "everything"?
> They would seem to have equal explanatory power. Which is to say:
> zero.
may have happened which are testable. Of course any explanation for the
big bang and the origin of the universe will very likely allow that
there are arbitrarily many other universes; otherwise the theory would
have to include some unique constraint. But that doesn't mean we gain
anything by postulating those other universes in advance. The
multiverse, if we are to give it credence, must arise from theories that
are supported by other evidence.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
It is also infinitely ignorant and so long as it remains that way it's
nothing to me.
This is just another form of the "everything" universal
acid. Just postulate an everything and then we know the something we're
interested in must be in there somewhere.
It is not necessary for the reasoning, but there are sequence ofthought experiences which can help you to figure out what is it likelosing all memories.
I wasn't talking about "losing all memories", but about not having
memory, i.e. not only losing old memories, but also not forming any new
memories. A computer without memory can't compute.
Some would say that the point consists in losing, for a short period,that human kind of consciousness.
But without memory how would one know it had been lost or not?
To judge the presence of consciousness is difficult. Recently, inFrance, after having been considered as being in a unconsciouscomatose state for 23 years, a woman, with the help of her family,has succeed to convince its doctors that she was as conscious than youand me. She was just highly paralyzed.
You mean Rom Houben (a man)?
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/11/25/Is_coma_man_Rom_Houben_REALLY_talking_Mystery_as_critics_sla/
"Experts are casting doubt on claims that a man <http://everyman.com/>
who doctors had believed was in a 23-year coma is truly conscious and
communicating on his own. Belgian Rom Houben communicates with the help
<http://aidagencies.com/> of a speech therapist who moves his finger
letter <http://letters.com/> by letter along a touch-screen keyboard.
But yesterday experts slammed the method as 'Ouija board communication',
saying it had been 'completely discredited'. "
Just because there has once been a mistake doesn't prove it is difficult
to get right - only that it is difficult to always be right.
John Mikes
rmiller
From: John Mikes
[mailto:jam...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:00 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why I am I?
I admire this list.
Somebody asks a silly question and 'we' write hourlong wisdom(s) upon it. After my deep liking of Stathis's "what difference does it make?" (or something to that meaning) -
my question went a step deeped:
for: "How do I know I am "I"? - (rather: "How (Why?) do I think I am "I"?)
I ask: "DO I?" (then comes Stathis).
*
Bruno's 'firmly knowable' arithmetic truth is a true exception: WE (=the ways humans think) made up what we call 'arithmetic' - the way that "WE" may accept it as 'truth'.
(I am still with David Bohm's "numbers are human invention" - did not read acceptable (for me) arguments on the numbers-originated everything - in the wider sense. But this is not this thread).
John Mikes
PS now - it seems - I joined the choir. JM
All. . .
Good quote on “hourlong wisdoms.” But it’s also starting to look like a lead-in to a documentary on pop songs with a philosophic bent. The “who am I” thing probably applies to a good number of teen songs today, and to a few of them back in the 70’s. Matter of fact, there seems to be a 30-40-year cycle to “who am I?” and philosophycentered songs, with a few of them turning up in the thirties. “What a difference a day makes,” “night and day”, “Days of Future Passed,” etc. and etc.
No WONDER John joined the choir. Heh.
R. Miller
Rex Allen
> Rex Allen wrote:
>> What is your alternative to the "everything" universal acid? That
>> things just are the way they are (uniquely), and there's ultimately no
>> explanation for that. Right?
>>
>
> Exactly so. "It's just happened that way" and "Everything happens and
> so this happens too." are both equally useless. Progress is only made
> when we can explain why this rather than that.
some context to place them in. So we postulate the existence of an
external universe. But then we want to explain what we see in this
external universe, and the only option is to postulate the existence
of a multiverse.
Nothing can be explained in terms of only itself. To explain it, you
have to place it in the context of something larger. Otherwise, no
explanation is possible, you just have to say, "this is the way it is
because that's the way it is."
Right?
Basically there's only two way the process can end. Two possible
answers to the question of "Why is the universe this way instead of
some other way?":
1) Because things just are the way they are, and there's no further
explanation possible.
2) Because EVERYTHING happens, and so this was inevitable in that
larger context of "everything".
What other option is there, do you think?
>> So we can take our observations of the world around us and construct a
>> narrative that is consistent with what we see...a narrative that
>> involves big bangs and electrons. But what caused the big bang? Why
>> do electrons have the particular properties that they have? If you
>> propose a particular cause for these things, what caused that cause?
>>
>> How is that better than a narrative that allows for "everything"?
>> They would seem to have equal explanatory power. Which is to say:
>> zero.
> We have much evidence about the big bang and some theories as to how it
> may have happened which are testable.
our observations. But so does the idea of a Boltzmann style
statistical fluctuation from thermal equilibrium. Or the idea that
this is just the dream of the infinitude of relations between numbers.
We construct narratives that are consistent with our observations, but
these narratives are about our observations, not about what really
exists. You seem to have jumped to some unfounded ontological
conclusions.
You can talk about big bangs if that helps you think about your
observations, helps you identify patterns in what you experience.
But, that's as far as it can reasonably go, right?
At the end of the day, we're always right back at where we
started...with our observations...with our subjective conscious
experience.
Bruno Marchal
To progress we need to make the everything idea more precise. Most
naive "everything idea" are either trivial and non informative, or can
be shown inconsistent.
QM is an amazing everything theory, astoundingly accurate. Yet it is
based on comp (or variety of comp), which means that if you take
serioulsy the first person experiences into consideration, then you
have to derive the Schroedinger waves from a deeper purely
arithmetical derivation.
But with the computable, something happens: the discovery of the
universal machine (accepting Church's thesis).
This makes enough to confront all universal machine, actually the
Löbian one will even understand why", with a "consciousness/reality"
problem, or first-person/third person relation problem, and that the
Löbian machine can develop the means to explore the many gaps which
exists there.
that we know nothing about the consequence of addition and
multiplication, but that we can explore, and that it is divided into
sharable and non sharable parts.
We may correct a widespread error: the sharable part is the objective
and doubtable part, the non sharable part is the subjective and
undoubtable part.
We have a theology. A "greek" one, by which I mean, that is the bad
news for some, we have to do mathematics.
And nobody ask you to believe it, unless you decide to say "yes" to
some doctor and believe that 2 + 2 = 4.
You can call it a toy theology, given that it is the theology of an
ideally relatively self-referentially correct Löbian machine. It
exists as a branch of math, and it applies to us if comp is true and
as far as we are correct ourselves, which we can never known. But we
can bet on levels, like "nature" apparently already did, and prey or
hope or something like that.
The quest of truth will continue. If comp is true reality is beyond
fictions. For the best or the worth, this depends *partially* on us.
Who "us"? "Us" the universal machines.
The motto: be vigilant toward any *form* of authoritative argument,
even those of nature. Eventually it is a matter of personal freedom,
but it is far better to get the personal understanding in those
matter. All universal machine "soon or later" understands this.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Brent Meeker
inflation is taken to be an explanation for the homogeneity of the CMB,
for the flatness of space, for the absence of magnetic monopoles. Why?
First, because it replaces these seemingly disparate observed facts with
a single theory that is consistent with our other theories. Second, and
more importantly, it predicted higher order correlations in the CMB
which were then observed. So we are still faced with explaining the
inflation; which some people might explain as, "That's just the way it
is." and others might explain,"Out of all possible universes some must
inflate", but neither of those predicts anything or leads to any
experiment. A real explanation would be one describing an inflaton
field and predicting its experimental manifestation.
So the option is don't adopt non-explanations and simply admit that
there are things we don't know and that's why we do research. Theories
need to be consilient and specific and testable and predict something we
didn't already know, but turns out to be true. That's the gold standard.
So I agree that in some sense the two options you present above seem to
be the only possible ultimate statements, sort of like the schoolmen
who "proved" that "God did it" was the ultimate answer everything. But,
I don't think ultimate statements are worth much because they are like
junk food explanations - no nutritional value.
Brent
>
>
>>> So we can take our observations of the world around us and construct a
>>> narrative that is consistent with what we see...a narrative that
>>> involves big bangs and electrons. But what caused the big bang? Why
>>> do electrons have the particular properties that they have? If you
>>> propose a particular cause for these things, what caused that cause?
>>>
>>> How is that better than a narrative that allows for "everything"?
>>> They would seem to have equal explanatory power. Which is to say:
>>> zero.
>>>
>> We have much evidence about the big bang and some theories as to how it
>> may have happened which are testable.
>>
>
> So the existence of a big bang event certainly seems consistent with
> our observations. But so does the idea of a Boltzmann style
> statistical fluctuation from thermal equilibrium. Or the idea that
> this is just the dream of the infinitude of relations between numbers.
>
> We construct narratives that are consistent with our observations, but
> these narratives are about our observations, not about what really
> exists. You seem to have jumped to some unfounded ontological
> conclusions.
>
> You can talk about big bangs if that helps you think about your
> observations, helps you identify patterns in what you experience.
> But, that's as far as it can reasonably go, right?
>
> At the end of the day, we're always right back at where we
> started...with our observations...with our subjective conscious
> experience.
>
Bruno Marchal
"game over effect" each time, even with a very small pinch of leaves.
To get the same "teaching" you need less and less and less. Three
times, I get what I call (in my diaries or in some forums) "total
recall" just by smelling the leaves. Most users experiment this.
The plant is also self-regulating. You really have to wait for the
good timing, or you find the "gates closed" there.
>
> Some users go on to report even more bizarre cases where they report
> "having lived another lifetime somewhere else", and are shocked and
> dismayed when the drug begins to wear off that it was all a "dream",
> and that this reality is the real one. This sounds like a more
> extreme version of our normal REM sleep, where when dreaming, one
> doesn't usually realize one is dreaming, but sorts things out upon
> awakening.
But there is a double amnesia, you forget "here" there. And you forget
"there" here.
It is actually an art to find the dosage and the timing so that you
understand better some, well, let us say statements you get there. One
is just impossible to memorize, or you stay there, and a copy is send
here. This is a copy effect experimented by a reasonable proportion of
users.
i am talking of report of experiences, not of the interpretation of
them in some theory.
>
> Compounding these impacts on memory are reports of changes in body
> image and identity. One recurring theme (that is shared with other
> hallucinogens) is the feeling of "merging" with objects in one's
> visual field.
But this means nothing. I did my first "bad trip" at my 554
experiences. Salvia is really hard to predict. Well, in this case I
made some obvious error, and a bad trip with salvia last 4 minutes,
and you feel rather well after.
> This is reported as both incorporating the physical
> object into one's body image and changing one's perspective to be that
> of the object. In one case, a user reported that "I actually KNEW
> what it was like to be a swing set, to live every day in the
> playground and be happy when children were using me, and sad when the
> park was closed."
>
> Another unique aspect of the effects of salvinorin A is its extremely
> short-lived activity. Most reports seem to indicate that the smoked
> form of the drug wears off in as little as 10-15 minutes, completely
> returning the user to "baseline" in less than a half-hour.
>
> All of this indicates that salvinorin A has potent but short-lived
> effects on the brain systems involved in memory, identity, body image
> and perception of time and space (along with a host of other effects
> not discussed here). Regardless of one's view on the use of these
> substances to alter one's cognition, it seems there is a great
> opportunity to study these effects to zero in on how these brain
> systems are related to our subjective experience of reality.
experience/experiments needed to build an artificial brain. There is
another relation between entheogen and comp.. Instead of saying "yes"
to a doctor for a similar brain, you say "yes" to a plant for a
perturbed brain, when you have gather enough evidences that the
effects are reversible. But how could you know you survive that? Of
course a computationalist will tell you it is the same with coffee,
and chocolate.
Well, if we define a drug by something harmful and addictive, then
salvia is not known to be a drug today, because there are no evidence
it is harmful nor evidence it is addictive. On the contrary there are
evidence it is good to cure many physical and psychological problems,
and there are strong evidence it can cure, in particular, many sorts
of addictions and abuses.
I don't know where the very idea of making salvia illegal come from.
The youtube videos are a solid testimony that, despite the experience
can be very impressive, it is really not dangerous. Some people uses
it in the complete contrary of the normal use (in the dark, alone or
with a very good friend, in the silence, in a spirit of self-inquiry,
and starting from vey low dosage). Instead, they take it in the light,
in a noisy environment, in a spirit of being pressure for some show,
and staring with unreasonably strong concentration. yet, the worst
which happen in the worst case, is some bruises and some nightmares,
which happens to sober people all the time.
The illegality of salvia in some countries is just that: another
example that in the applied human science we are really nowhere, and
authoritative arguments prevails.
To make salvia illegal in the USA is just a violation of its
Constitution. I think.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
benjayk
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> It is actually an art to find the dosage and the timing so that you
> understand better some, well, let us say statements you get there. One
> is just impossible to memorize, or you stay there, and a copy is send
> here. This is a copy effect experimented by a reasonable proportion of
> users.
When you say "a copy is send" it sounds like the copy is not "the real
thing". How can you distinguish copy and original? The copy probably won't
say it is just a copy (as opposed to the original).
And what do you mean by "stay there"? Forever? Why should you stay there
(can you choose)? And where is there? Is it forgetfulness oder remembrance?
This "staying there" thought is chasing me on many of my psychedlic
experience. I find it very scary, often it really hinders me to enjoy the
experience, because the thought "but I don't want to leave 'my reality'
forever" comes and makes me unable to relax.
I tried salvia several times, too. I got some weird effects, like thinking
"I die" in every instant because I identified with "a moment" (scary, but
somehow funny in retrospection). Or remembering something exhilarating, but
being unable to express it or store it in my memory completely (I tend to
think it's just the realization that there are no "bad problems", contrary
to what I felt on a N2O trip, that life consists only of problems - not
enjoyable playful ones but rather "endless forced labour"). But I never felt
like being a copy or having a choice of staying in salvia land.
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26662101.html
Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Johnathan Corgan
>> All of this indicates that salvinorin A has potent but short-lived
>> effects on the brain systems involved in memory, identity, body image
>> and perception of time and space (along with a host of other effects
>> not discussed here). Regardless of one's view on the use of these
>> substances to alter one's cognition, it seems there is a great
>> opportunity to study these effects to zero in on how these brain
>> systems are related to our subjective experience of reality.
>
> Very difficult task, but very interesting, and probably parts of the
> experience/experiments needed to build an artificial brain.
difficult to design, no doubt. I don't understand your reference to
the need for an artificial brain.
However, it would still be possible to carry out experimentation to
correlate subjective reports of these altered "1-pov" percepts with
"3-pov" data obtained by FMRI, EEG, etc. Unfortunately, current laws
in the U.S. restrict experimentation of this type to therapeutic
applications. It is possible to test to see whether MDMA is a
successful treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, but not, say
only to find out the dose/response curve for its psychedelic
properties.
Absent those types of studies, it would still be enormously
educational for someone to conduct a meta-analysis of the many
thousands of first-hand written and recorded reports of Salvia
Divinorum use. While far from being a random sample, at least one
would have a better map of the territory to guide further research.
> Well, if we define a drug by something harmful and addictive, then
> salvia is not known to be a drug today, because there are no evidence
> it is harmful nor evidence it is addictive.
administration reduces the levels of dopamine in the portions of the
brain associated with addiction and craving, which is exactly opposite
the effects of strongly addictive and euphoriant drugs like cocaine
and methamphetamine. Whether this is true in human brains remains to
be seen (and difficult to study due to reasons above).
In any case, this discussion is probably more relevant in other
forums. I brought it up only because we frequently discuss
consciousness, memory and identity, and lo and behold there is a drug
which has radical effects on the subjective experience of all three,
and a body of written reports to examine.
Johnathan Corgan
Bruno Marchal
On 06 Dec 2009, at 05:07, benjayk wrote:
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> It is actually an art to find the dosage and the timing so that you
>> understand better some, well, let us say statements you get there.
>> One
>> is just impossible to memorize, or you stay there, and a copy is send
>> here. This is a copy effect experimented by a reasonable proportion
>> of
>> users.
> This is confusing me.
> When you say "a copy is send" it sounds like the copy is not "the real
> thing". How can you distinguish copy and original? The copy probably
> won't
> say it is just a copy (as opposed to the original).
discussed here.
But we do suppose there that the copy are perfect, (a notion which
makes sense with the computationalist hyp.).
>
> And what do you mean by "stay there"? Forever? Why should you stay
> there
> (can you choose)? And where is there? Is it forgetfulness oder
> remembrance?
cannot even describe normal state of consciousness, so it is even
harder to describe "altered state of consciousness".
Roughly speaking, such salvia copy-experiences I am describing, which
occur "clearly" about a hundred times (among about 600 hundred hits)
could be described in the following way, but I know it is quite
paradoxal. I have to separate the first half of the experience from
the second half, because they are strictly disconnected.
First half:
I am "bruno marchal" and I decide to smoke some salvia. After the hit
I find myself in paradise. I am rather happy and, only for that
reason, I want to stay there, and I insist for staying there. Some
entity tells me that I can indeed stay there, and that they will send
back on "earth" some copy to finish my job (but also to keep salvia
legal!). I say "OK", and I am witness of the beginning of the copy
process ...
Second half:
... I am. I am in paradise since infinity. I enjoy the being state,
but "there" there is no past, and no future. I have no memory, but
still a sort of personality. Suddenly I get memories and I think "oh
no, not again", because at that moment I have the feeling that
something happens, which has already happened a lot of times. The
memories get more and more precise, and at some point I accept them,
but does not recognize them as "personal memories", then I got the
last memories which are "I want to stay in paradise", and I understand
that I am "a copy" send to earth to finish "his" job. I find myself on
earth, but during some hours, I have still the memory of having always
lived "there", and almost got the feeling that the smoking of salvia
made me going from paradise to earth.
The first time I did that type of salvia experience, I kept during
three days the strong feeling of being completely refresh or reborn,
like if I was just on earth since some days. Everything looked as
completely new. I did not feel any memory as being personal, and that
has been indeed very useful useful for doing some annoying job, and
taking annoying decisions, I have to make. That feeling faded away the
fourth day after the experience.
>
> This "staying there" thought is chasing me on many of my psychedlic
> experience. I find it very scary, often it really hinders me to
> enjoy the
> experience, because the thought "but I don't want to leave 'my
> reality'
> forever" comes and makes me unable to relax.
or with mushrooms (recently).
In that case you feel a distinctively different sort of consciousness,
and you may panic with the idea of staying in that stage. But with
salvia it is different. You can sometimes feel like if the "normal
state of consciousness' is the altered state you want to avoid.
Some people lives a similar experience except that, instead of feeling
like being in paradise, they feel like being in hell. They live the
"memory retrieval" and the coming back with a huge relief and they got
the feeling they were dead, and got another chance ... Some even
conclude they have to change their life in some way if they want to
avoid ending there.
>
> I tried salvia several times, too. I got some weird effects, like
> thinking
> "I die" in every instant because I identified with "a
> moment" (scary, but
> somehow funny in retrospection).
reports.
> Or remembering something exhilarating, but
> being unable to express it or store it in my memory completely (I
> tend to
> think it's just the realization that there are no "bad problems",
with your own conscience. Apparently the plant is allergic to people
lying to themselves. It is one of the most bizarre aspect of the
salvia experience, it has a moral dimension. The more peaceful you are
with yourself, the more divine you feel the bliss. It is very weird.
It is just impossible to escape the annoying responsibilities you have
in your life. Despite showing you that your life is a tiny illusory
aspect of vaster reality, you have no choice than to accomplish or
honestly try to accomplish "your mission on earth". Salvia actually
seems to confront you with your responsibilities. Life is a dream, but
you have to take it very seriously. But not more. By many aspect it
is the complete opposite of the effect of weed, which can be sued to
escape some painful aspect of life. On the contrary, salvia put your
nose on it.
> contrary
> to what I felt on a N2O trip, that life consists only of problems -
> not
> enjoyable playful ones but rather "endless forced labour"). But I
> never felt
> like being a copy or having a choice of staying in salvia land.
a lot for staying there.
Some people forget the first half, and have the feeling that the
"coming back" is the start of the trip. See for an example this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpk-4eTfS2Q
Some can feel having been always there, and that the salvia smoking
makes them coming back in "reality". see this video for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mzNPT7aAU
Please interpret nothing literally, and put as many grains of salt on
any word in such a context. A salvia report has to be read like a
dream report, then we can build theories explainingthe resemblance of
experiences, but this is something different, and related to what we
usually do in this list.
Yet, as a sitter, I have seen many people getting a better
understanding that the problem of the relation between consciousness
and reality is not obvious. Normally UDA should convince you of this,
at the least, but salvia, like some dream experiences, may be more
efficacious in that respect.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
On 06 Dec 2009, at 05:21, Johnathan Corgan wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>
>>> All of this indicates that salvinorin A has potent but short-lived
>>> effects on the brain systems involved in memory, identity, body
>>> image
>>> and perception of time and space (along with a host of other effects
>>> not discussed here). Regardless of one's view on the use of these
>>> substances to alter one's cognition, it seems there is a great
>>> opportunity to study these effects to zero in on how these brain
>>> systems are related to our subjective experience of reality.
>>
>> Very difficult task, but very interesting, and probably parts of the
>> experience/experiments needed to build an artificial brain.
>
> A double-blind study protocol to test for particular effects would be
> difficult to design, no doubt. I don't understand your reference to
> the need for an artificial brain.
brain, but for a part of the brain.
Taking a drug, or a psycho-active substance is already an act of that
type. Some molecules build by some plants (in general to attract or
manipulate insects by acting on their brains or nervous system) can
already be considered as "artificial subpart" of your brain (at the
molecular level). The use of more and more specific agonist molecules
for the brain molecules, is a way to learn about the brain, and how
good can some new molecules can be to do some job in the brain. People
will not necessarily ever say really "yes" to a doctor, but they will
be propose evolving artificial part of the brain.
Well, what I say, is that the self-brain-study, through entheogen, may
accelerate the development of artificial brain parts.
>
> However, it would still be possible to carry out experimentation to
> correlate subjective reports of these altered "1-pov" percepts with
> "3-pov" data obtained by FMRI, EEG, etc.
find those correlation by self-testing.
> Unfortunately, current laws
> in the U.S. restrict experimentation of this type to therapeutic
> applications. It is possible to test to see whether MDMA is a
> successful treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, but not, say
> only to find out the dose/response curve for its psychedelic
> properties.
I think that studies of that kind have been made on some meditation
technics.
>
> Absent those types of studies, it would still be enormously
> educational for someone to conduct a meta-analysis of the many
> thousands of first-hand written and recorded reports of Salvia
> Divinorum use. While far from being a random sample, at least one
> would have a better map of the territory to guide further research.
too. I have a read a lot also of all the possible diaries of dreams,
and I have written and studied my own dreams. I am no more, because it
asks for work, a good lucid dreamer, but I have practice and develop
technics at times, and the tools (mainly coffee!) to practice lucidity
the night. Nowadays I use calea zacatechichi or salvia, which have
some interesting impact on dreams (also on the "non REM dreams",
hypnagogic images, etc.
"Conscience et mécanisme" contains a chapter on dreams, I tend to
follow Hobson, and Dement, LaBerge, and Jouvet. In the REM dream, we
are awake, hallucinated and paralysed. The cerebral stem plays a key
role.
>
>> Well, if we define a drug by something harmful and addictive, then
>> salvia is not known to be a drug today, because there are no evidence
>> it is harmful nor evidence it is addictive.
>
> Indeed, animal studies to date have shown that salvinorin A
> administration reduces the levels of dopamine in the portions of the
> brain associated with addiction and craving, which is exactly opposite
> the effects of strongly addictive and euphoriant drugs like cocaine
> and methamphetamine. Whether this is true in human brains remains to
> be seen (and difficult to study due to reasons above).
>
> In any case, this discussion is probably more relevant in other
> forums. I brought it up only because we frequently discuss
> consciousness, memory and identity, and lo and behold there is a drug
> which has radical effects on the subjective experience of all three,
> and a body of written reports to examine.
description of the data which we have to take into account if we want
to progress on the everything riddle.
The relation between a Brain and a Reality is akin to
the relation between a Theory/Machine and a Model, in logic, and to
the relation between an equation and its solution, in algebra.
The common point is a "Galois connection" which entails something
like, roughly speaking, that to a self-perburtation of the "brain, or
the theory/machine, or equation" will correspond an exploration of
nearer set of possible "subjective realities" (for the brain), of
models for theories, or solutions for the equations.
Reversible self-perturbations of the brain, may help to progress in
the consciousness, realities, number relation, but has been used by
the brain itself all along its evolution. Some technic in artificial
Intelligence can be described in similar terms. Nature, by which I
mean the natural numbers (grin) allows feedback between high and low
levels.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
soulcatcher☠
I just don't know.
All my everyday experience points towards physicalism: I'm a brain,
embodied in a physical body, embedded in a physical environment and
evolved via several billion year selection process. All the
constituents of my mind could be explained in the evolutionary terms
as "devices" that promoted the survival of my ancestor's genes.
From the other hand, all the scientific knowledge imo points towards
some kind of "digital physics". For example, it's much much easier to
just accept modern high-energy physics as a elaborate pure
mathematical theory than try to understand it in the everyday terms of
"material world".
> Have you read Everett? There are already physicists who describe "reality"
> as a flux of information which differentiate in many histories, sometimes
> recombining by amnesia, etc.
> You may read the book by Russell Standish theory of Nothing.
> The book Mind's I, ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett is a good introduction to
> computationalism.
> Stathis mentioned Parfit's "reasons and persons" recently on the FOR list,
> where we discuss on similar "many-reality" conception of reality. I would
> recommend it too. In particular you may read David Deutsch's book "the
> fabric of Reality".
> Gunther Greindl has put some more advanced references on the web page of the
> list.
> Are you aware of computer science and mathematical logic?
> You could be interested by my own contribution, which I explain on this
> list, see
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
I didn't read Everett and Deutsch but I'm aware of MWI.
I skimmed over Theory of Nothing some time ago and, to be honest, I
didn't like to, partially due to Quantum Immortality thing - it was my
first encounter with the subject and it seemed like a worst kind of
unscientific wishful thinking. But maybe I should give it another,
this time more serious try.
I'll make an attempt to follow your UDA steps and can accept comp as a
_hypothesis_, but now I'm highly skeptical about computationalism as a
valid theory of consciousness.
Every time I think about it I come to the "simulated thunderstorm is
NOT a real thunderstorm" argument (I don't know the other name, for
the first time I read about in some interview with Searle). It's easy
for me to accept the possibility of conscious robot (I'm such a robot)
but it's hard to accept the possibility of conscious "pure" (as in CS
i.e. without side effects) computer program, as computationalism
implies (if I understand it right).
John Mikes
(recoop?) the terms used in the daily efforts. They change by the (ab?)use and re-realizing their original content may push the research effort ahead from a stagnant hole it falls into inevitably during most "routine" thinking. -
Jason Resch
John Mikes
JM:
benjayk
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> And what do you mean by "stay there"? Forever? Why should you stay
>> there
>> (can you choose)? And where is there? Is it forgetfulness oder
>> remembrance?
>
> It is very difficult to describe any first person experience. We
> cannot even describe normal state of consciousness, so it is even
> harder to describe "altered state of consciousness".
link the experience and known experiences. But sometimes even this is
difficult. The difference between looking at a plain wall with my normal
state of consciousness and on shrooms is somehow pretty small, yet very big.
It looks the same, only more clear, crisp, real and incomparably more
beatiful... But many people simply won't get how a wall could look "more
real", especially when you "cloud your mind with drugs" - they will say I
"just imagined" it or I was "too wasted", which is totally ridiculous to me.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Second half:
> ... I am. I am in paradise since infinity. I enjoy the being state,
> but "there" there is no past, and no future.
aren't you?
Or maybe you never really leave this place? So you are still there... After
all, you are always in the present, now matter what happens. And in some way
you are in paradise, since even if you experience something bad, at least
"it admits" that it is bad and wants to go, so it is meaningless compared to
infinite possibilities of constant or growing well-being.
Maybe if you can take this knowledge with you (even though it seems
impossible; maybe it is possible partially?), nirvana (The word seems to fit
what you experienced) and samsara begin to appear as what they really are,
the same (according to Mahāyāna Buddhism). Is this what being (or becoming?)
enlightened is about?
Somehow I can't believe reality could be so dual: That there is this place,
and our totally different place, that are disconnected.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I have no memory, but
> still a sort of personality. Suddenly I get memories and I think "oh
> no, not again", because at that moment I have the feeling that
> something happens, which has already happened a lot of times.
returning, but at the beginning of going to this "place of oneness". Like I
remember that I begin to arrive "at home", at the place I "really" belong.
At first I feel really comforted, but then fear (and/or aversion) starts to
set in. I actually feel like having been there somehow, but not in this
life, or not completely or not yet? It is so familiar, yet I don't think I
"really" was there.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> The
> memories get more and more precise, and at some point I accept them,
> but does not recognize them as "personal memories", then I got the
> last memories which are "I want to stay in paradise", and I understand
> that I am "a copy" send to earth to finish "his" job. I find myself on
> earth, but during some hours, I have still the memory of having always
> lived "there", and almost got the feeling that the smoking of salvia
> made me going from paradise to earth.
paradise.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> The first time I did that type of salvia experience, I kept during
> three days the strong feeling of being completely refresh or reborn,
> like if I was just on earth since some days. Everything looked as
> completely new. I did not feel any memory as being personal, and that
> has been indeed very useful useful for doing some annoying job, and
> taking annoying decisions, I have to make. That feeling faded away the
> fourth day after the experience.
minutes. When I'm on shrooms (and it happened on salvia + weed, too)
sometimes I feel like being able to view the world like being reborn.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Some people lives a similar experience except that, instead of feeling
> like being in paradise, they feel like being in hell.
disintegrate. All I could think about was: "What is the worst experience you
could possibly imagine." As far as I remember I literally repeated this
sentence in my mind over and over (in german though). And I felt ever more
shallow and useless and "imprisoned". There was no path left except the path
of self-destruction. I simply seemed unable to remember anything positve. At
one moment I believed I'm the only person doomed to hell. Probably this was
the worst moment in my life. Sometimes I think or hope it is the worst
moment you can have. At least I can't think of a worse thought than being
the only person going to eternal hell.
But then I realized "I'm am NOT that" and I felt immensely relieved...
Maybe what I realized was: "I am not nobody as I thought before - 'only
nobody' will go to hell!"?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Or remembering something exhilarating, but
>> being unable to express it or store it in my memory completely (I
>> tend to
>> think it's just the realization that there are no "bad problems",
>
> A general message is that there are no problem as far as you are clean
> with your own conscience. Apparently the plant is allergic to people
> lying to themselves. It is one of the most bizarre aspect of the
> salvia experience, it has a moral dimension. The more peaceful you are
> with yourself, the more divine you feel the bliss. It is very weird.
> It is just impossible to escape the annoying responsibilities you have
> in your life. Despite showing you that your life is a tiny illusory
> aspect of vaster reality, you have no choice than to accomplish or
> honestly try to accomplish "your mission on earth". Salvia actually
> seems to confront you with your responsibilities. Life is a dream, but
> you have to take it very seriously.
dream leads to disregarding the constituents of reality and ultimately
reality itself.
If you can choose to stay there, isn't this escaping your responsibilities?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> But not more. By many aspect it
> is the complete opposite of the effect of weed, which can be sued to
> escape some painful aspect of life.
philosophical problems and can let me access thoughts that I see as true
intellectually more deeply, too. But it also can make me quite psychotic
temporarily (once I thought everyone else was just me in the future :D).
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26669361.html
Brent Meeker
> > may have happened which are testable.]
>
> So the existence of a big bang event certainly seems consistent with
> our observations. But so does the idea of a Boltzmann style
> statistical fluctuation from thermal equilibrium. Or the idea that
> this is just the dream of the infinitude of relations between numbers.
>
> We construct narratives that are consistent with our observations, but
> these narratives are about our observations, not about what really
> exists. You seem to have jumped to some unfounded ontological
> conclusions.
>
> You can talk about big bangs if that helps you think about your
> observations, helps you identify patterns in what you experience.
> But, that's as far as it can reasonably go, right?
>
> At the end of the day, we're always right back at where we
> started...with our observations...with our subjective conscious
> experience.
>
>
> JM:
>
> I went one little step further and talked about a 'reversed' logic:
> Conventional science (as it developed over the millennia) constructed
> the 'axioms' as the conditions necessary to make the theoreticals VALID.
axioms. Axioms are statements accepted for purposes of mathematical
inference. They are part of mathematics, not science. Similary, valid
refers to a truth preserving sequence of inferences; a mathematical
rather than scientific term. Of course science uses mathematics because
mathematical description is a way of avoiding self-contradiction. But
economists, surveyors, programmers, and just about everybody else also
use mathematics.
> I did not condone the idea of the Big Bang according to the
> conventionals (including the several variants available) and wrote
> (my) narrative in a different view (no conventionals).
> (For those who have a taste for oddities: Karl Jaspers Forum - TA 62
> (MIK) of 2003. )
> Once we enter the conventional figments of (reductionistic) sciences
> (ontology) we can only devise variants WITHIN.
it's methodology simply because we can't understand everything at once
and we can't experiment on everything at once. But science also
synthesizes so the reduction is only methodological.
Brent
> All, where the formulated 'axioms' help.
> And that pertains also to 2 + 2 = 4, where it may be 22 as well. Or:
> in Bruno's longer version: (2,(0),) + (2, (0),) = 2020 as well. Bruno,
> please excuse if I goofed your formula).
> Just in another way of axioms-formulation, while as II + II is
> always IIII . Axiom or not.
> JM
>
Rex Allen
nutritional value, but in fact are also junk food.
It seems to me that your example isn't an explanation, but a narrative
that just describes a plausible scenario consistent with what we
observe. The difference between explanation and description is maybe
a subtle difference, but it seems like an important one when thinking
about metaphysics and ontology.
I think there is a problem when you try to find a place for yourself
inside your own narrative. When you try to explain your experience of
observing, in addition to WHAT you observe.
Assuming physicalism and barring downwards causation, *within that
framework* what does it mean to claim that you understand something,
that you have explained something, or that you have predicted
something?
Within the framework of bottom-up physicalism, what does it even mean
to say that you "exist"...since you are (apparently) not a fundamental
entity and so don't appear on any inventory of the contents of such a
universe. Electrons: check. Quarks: check. Brent Meekers: Nope,
none of those...only electrons and quarks (and other fundamental
entities).
But even if you exist within such a system, and are fully accounted
for by the system, then your experiences are a kind of "epiphenomenal
residue" of the fundamental processes of the system. You don't have a
handle on the universe...the universe has a handle on you. You are
run through your paces by your constituent molecules, experiencing
whatever their configuration entails in each given moment. But why
would this experience necessarily be of what actually exists?
Returning to the earlier point, what are observations? How are they
accounted for in a physicalist ontology? Why do some configurations of
matter and energy have "conscious subjective experiences", when there
is nothing in our conception of matter, energy, OR configurations
which would lead one to conclude (before the fact) that by arranging
them in particular ways one could create experiences of (for instance)
pain.
You can say that "subjective experiences", i.e., qualia, are an
emergent property of certain physical systems, but "emergent
properties" are not real properties...emergent properties exist only
in the mind of an observer. An observer is required to map emergent
properties onto the *real* fundamental entities and their fundamental
causal relationships.
You could say that qualia are "illusory", but in that case my question
would be what kind of illusion are you claiming that consciousness is?
What, precisely, are you proposing? It's easy to say "consciousness
is an illusion", but I think you'll have a harder time unpacking that
into something meaningful.
It seems to me that illusions are revealed by inter-comparing many
observations of the way thing seem, detecting inconsistencies, and
then judging which observation is more consistent with what we have
inferred from previous observations.
For instance, in the case of the "moon illusion", by comparing your
observation of the distant moon to something like a dime that you can
hold at arm's length, you are able to determine that the image of the
moon does not in fact change sizes from the horizon to the zenith,
despite your persistent impression that it is larger at the horizon.
The dime provides a reliable and accessible standard to judge the moon
against.
Illusions deal in inconsistencies in the way that things seem to us.
But this "seeming" of things is itself an aspect of consciousness.
Illusions are basically manifestations of consciousness. You can't be
deluded without being conscious.
It's possible that everything we observe is an illusion. But I don't
believe that it's possible, or even reasonable to propose, that our
experience of observing is an illusion. Instead the experience of
observing is the stuff that illusions are made from.
In other words, as Bruno has said, an illusion of consciousness would
require consciousness.
Okay, try to follow me here: to say that your consciousness is an
illusion is to say that it seems to you that the way things seem to
you is inconsistent with what you have inferred from the way that
OTHER things have seemed to you in the past.
So, again, at the end of the day all we have is our observations, our
experiences...how things "seem" to us. I may not exist, but the
experience of being me definitely does. To deny that denies
everything else as well.
I think that a physicalist framework is a useful way to think about
our observations...it's a good tool, but physicalism goes to far in
making ontological claims.
Rex
Brent Meeker
to this with that.
> It's possible that everything we observe is an illusion. But I don't
> believe that it's possible, or even reasonable to propose, that our
> experience of observing is an illusion. Instead the experience of
> observing is the stuff that illusions are made from.
>
> In other words, as Bruno has said, an illusion of consciousness would
> require consciousness.
>
> Okay, try to follow me here: to say that your consciousness is an
> illusion is to say that it seems to you that the way things seem to
> you is inconsistent with what you have inferred from the way that
> OTHER things have seemed to you in the past.
>
> So, again, at the end of the day all we have is our observations, our
> experiences...how things "seem" to us. I may not exist, but the
> experience of being me definitely does. To deny that denies
> everything else as well.
>
> I think that a physicalist framework is a useful way to think about
> our observations...it's a good tool, but physicalism goes to far in
> making ontological claims.
>
> Rex
consciousness is an illusion. In fact I didn't say anything about
consciousness at all. My post was about what makes an explanation a good
one and that being "ultimate" is historically not one of them.
I was merely pointing out that things we think of as good examples of
explanation have certain characteristics which everythingist
explanations lack. To be sure the good examples are "just"
descriptions. Newton's law of universal gravitation is "just" a
description. When asked what produced the gravitational force Newton
said, "Hypotheses non fingo". He could have said, "All possible fields
exist and gravity is one of them." but that wouldn't have added
anything. That's sort of what differentiated science from the
rationalist natural philosophy of the medieval schoolmen. Science
stopped relying on untestable ultimate explanations and concentrated on
generalized mathematical descriptions that implied predictions that
could be tested.
Science, physical or otherwise, doesn't make ontological *claims*; it
hypothesizes models which include ontologies and dynamics. You
complain that it doesn't explain consciousness. I agree that it
doesn't. It doesn't explain a lot of things, e.g. why there are eight
planets in our solar system, why DNA is right-handed, what is dark
matter? I can live with unanswered questions.
Brent
"I'd rather know some of the questions than all of the answers."
-- Albert Einstein
Rex Allen
> You seem to be reading a lot into my post.
and see if any of it elicited any interesting feedback.
> I never said that
> consciousness is an illusion. In fact I didn't say anything about
> consciousness at all. My post was about what makes an explanation a good
> one and that being "ultimate" is historically not one of them.
physicalist reality with no downwards causation, nothing means
anything. Things only have the "appearance" of meaning.
In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some
explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal
residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves
unconcerned with such things.
In such a reality if you predict an event that comes to pass, both
your prediction AND the event were inevitable from the first instant
of the universe, implicit in it's initial state plus the laws of
physics. Looked at in a block-universe format: the first instant,
you making the prediction, and the predicted event all coexist
simultaneously. In this view, while your prediction was accurate,
there's no reason for that...it's just the way things are in that
block of reality. Scientific theories only describe this fact, they
don't explain it.
So what science deals in is descriptions. Not explanations. The
feeling that something has been explained is an aspect of
consciousness, not an aspect of reality (at least not reality as
posited by physicalism).
I don't think that this is usually made clear. And it seems like a
subtle but important distinction, philosophically.
So I take your point about the schoolmen. There aren't many practical
applications for the idea that "things just are the way they are".
But still it's an interesting piece of information, if true.
But if physicalism is correct, then how useful are your "explanations"
really? You *feel* as though it's useful to know about inflation and
the CMB, but underneath your feelings, your constituent quarks and
electrons are playing out the parts that were set for them by the
initial state of the universe plus the laws that govern it's
evolution.
Maybe that initial state and the particular governing laws were set
according to the rules of some larger multiverse...or maybe they just
are what they are, for no reason.
How about this:
"Science is about observations. Philosophy is about clarity."
I just want to be clear about the implications of the various
narratives that are consistent with what we observe.
Brent Meeker
On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:09 PM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:You seem to be reading a lot into my post.Ha! Ya, once I got going I figured I'd just throw everything in there and see if any of it elicited any interesting feedback.I never said that consciousness is an illusion. In fact I didn't say anything about consciousness at all. My post was about what makes an explanation a good one and that being "ultimate" is historically not one of them.So my point is that: in a reductionist theory which implies a physicalist reality with no downwards causation,
You mean things don't stand as symbols for something else? That reminds me of George Carlin's quip, "If we're here to care for other people, what are those other people here for?"nothing means anything.
Things only have the "appearance" of meaning.
In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves unconcerned with such things.
In such a reality if you predict an event that comes to pass, both your prediction AND the event were inevitable from the first instant of the universe, implicit in it's initial state plus the laws of physics.
Looked at in a block-universe format: the first instant, you making the prediction, and the predicted event all coexist simultaneously. In this view, while your prediction was accurate, there's no reason for that...it's just the way things are in that block of reality. Scientific theories only describe this fact, they don't explain it. So what science deals in is descriptions. Not explanations. The feeling that something has been explained is an aspect of consciousness, not an aspect of reality (at least not reality as posited by physicalism).
I don't think that this is usually made clear. And it seems like a subtle but important distinction, philosophically. So I take your point about the schoolmen. There aren't many practical applications for the idea that "things just are the way they are". But still it's an interesting piece of information, if true. But if physicalism is correct, then how useful are your "explanations" really? You *feel* as though it's useful to know about inflation and the CMB, but underneath your feelings, your constituent quarks and electrons are playing out the parts that were set for them by the initial state of the universe plus the laws that govern it's evolution.
Maybe that initial state and the particular governing laws were set according to the rules of some larger multiverse...or maybe they just are what they are, for no reason. How about this: "Science is about observations. Philosophy is about clarity."
Since you rambled about consciousness I'll share my speculation about it. I think people resort to "philosophical" explanations when they don't have scientific ones and when scientific ones are found they stop worrying about the philosophical questions. At one time people worried about vitality, the life-force, elan vitale, that animated things. But as more and more was learned about molecular biology, DNA, metabolism, evolution, etc, people stopped worrying about "life". They didn't explain it. They only described it and how it worked (in great detail). The DNA isn't alive, none of the molecules are alive and yet there is no elan vitale either. The old questions about life just seem ill posed. Not answered, yet irrelevant. I think the same thing will happen to "consciousness" that happened to "life".
We will learn to describe consciousness by causal models, we'll predict the effect of salvia and mushrooms on different people's consciousness. We'll build robots which appear to be conscious. We'll add electronics to brains based on our predictive models and cure Alzheimer's the same way we build airplanes based on aerodynamics. And if someone asks, "What is consciousnees?" he'll be looked at as if he'd asked "Where is the edge of the Earth?"
Brent
Journalist: What variable is complementary to "truth".
Neils Bohr: Clarity.
I just want to be clear about the implications of the various narratives that are consistent with what we observe. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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.
Bruno Marchal
On 06 Dec 2009, at 20:35, soulcatcher☠ wrote:
>> Are you physicalist?
>
> I just don't know.
> All my everyday experience points towards physicalism: I'm a brain,
> embodied in a physical body, embedded in a physical environment and
> evolved via several billion year selection process.
conscious robot. But then you can understand that you are not your
brain/robot's computer. Indeed, each morning the conscious robot could
change the entirety of its hardware. So you ¨have* a brain. You are
not a brain. If you are a conscious Robot you are already an
immaterial living number (living relatively to a probable
computational histories).
> All the
> constituents of my mind could be explained in the evolutionary terms
> as "devices" that promoted the survival of my ancestor's genes.
with physicalism.
> From the other hand, all the scientific knowledge imo points towards
> some kind of "digital physics".
then I have given a proof that if I am a machine, then physics cannot
be entirely computational. I now that it is a bit amazing and
counterintuitive, but then that is why I explain the UD argument.
> For example, it's much much easier to
> just accept modern high-energy physics as a elaborate pure
> mathematical theory than try to understand it in the everyday terms of
> "material world".
reliability of math in physics.
consciousness.
> But maybe I should give it another,
> this time more serious try.
>
> I'll make an attempt to follow your UDA steps and can accept comp as a
> _hypothesis_, but now I'm highly skeptical about computationalism as a
> valid theory of consciousness.
> Every time I think about it I come to the "simulated thunderstorm is
> NOT a real thunderstorm" argument (I don't know the other name, for
> the first time I read about in some interview with Searle). It's easy
> for me to accept the possibility of conscious robot (I'm such a robot)
> but it's hard to accept the possibility of conscious "pure" (as in CS
> i.e. without side effects) computer program, as computationalism
> implies (if I understand it right).
are a conscious robot/Turing-machine (or just Robot, + Church thesis)
then you know in advance that there is a level of description of [you
+ the thunderstorm] such that you cannot distinguish the "real"
thunderstorm from its simulation. So, from the point of view of the
emulated "you" the simulated thunderstorm will seems as real as a real
one, for at least a time, and the rest of the reasoning depends only
on that.
Comp = "I am a conscious robot". The falsity of physicalism is an
arithmetical consequence of comp.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
Dear Bruno,on diverse lists (I cannot call them 'science-branches' since lately most domains are discussed in considering aspects of several of such on the diverse discussion-lists) -CONCEPTS (I wish I knew a better word) appear by different content.If somebody has the time and feels like (knows how to) do it, a brief reconsiderational ID listing would help us outsiders to reconfirm what "WE" mean byComp - (computing, computer-universal or not,)
The application of (=your relevance of) the Church thesis
Universal machine - BTW: machine, or God, as in (our) theology
White rabbit, (and I don't even dare write:) numbers, -and in not much than 1-2 lines(!!!) ea:
UD, UDA, AUDA, with:hints to "YES" to the doctor, and maybe some more -*
which the 'old listers' apply here with ease (yet maybe(!) in their modified i.e. personalised taste?) - newcomers. however, usually first misinterpret into 'other' vernaculars.(It is my several decade long research experience to sit down once in a while and recap
(recoop?) the terms used in the daily efforts. They change by the (ab?)use and re-realizing their original content may push the research effort ahead from a stagnant hole it falls into inevitably during most "routine" thinking. -In doing so, almost all the time there occurred an "AHA".One cannot do it privately and alone. We cannot slip out from our skin. I did it with someone knowledgeable in the broader field (maybe even a fresh graduate?) or on a public lecture, where questions and opposite opinions could be expected.Best for the hooiday season: this may be a present for Chirstmas.On St. Nicholas Day
Bruno Marchal
On 06 Dec 2009, at 22:40, benjayk wrote:
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> And what do you mean by "stay there"? Forever? Why should you stay
>>> there
>>> (can you choose)? And where is there? Is it forgetfulness oder
>>> remembrance?
>>
>> It is very difficult to describe any first person experience. We
>> cannot even describe normal state of consciousness, so it is even
>> harder to describe "altered state of consciousness".
> That's certainly true. Words can never convery an experience, they
> can only
> link the experience and known experiences. But sometimes even this is
> difficult. The difference between looking at a plain wall with my
> normal
> state of consciousness and on shrooms is somehow pretty small, yet
> very big.
> It looks the same, only more clear, crisp, real and incomparably more
> beatiful... But many people simply won't get how a wall could look
> "more
> real", especially when you "cloud your mind with drugs" - they will
> say I
> "just imagined" it or I was "too wasted", which is totally
> ridiculous to me.
first person account, unless they refer to it to coerce against your
interest (like with Churches, temples, sacred texts and other
authoritative arguments like that).
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Second half:
>> ... I am. I am in paradise since infinity. I enjoy the being state,
>> but "there" there is no past, and no future.
> But in retrospection, isn't this wrong? Because you are in the
> future now,
> aren't you?
I have no clue if that is wrong or true, nor even if words like true
and wrong applies to that. I was reporting a (dreamy) experience. I
guess I felt it true at the moment I lived it, like a dream or any
first person experience.
I am already skeptical about experience in real life, and as far as I
can belief in comp, I definitely do not believe in what I see. I do
believe that I see things, but I do not necessarily believe that what
I see is "real", or "fundamentally real".
>
> Or maybe you never really leave this place? So you are still
> there... After
> all, you are always in the present, now matter what happens. And in
> some way
> you are in paradise, since even if you experience something bad, at
> least
> "it admits" that it is bad and wants to go, so it is meaningless
> compared to
> infinite possibilities of constant or growing well-being.
After, I try not to mix them, unless using precisely this or that
theory.
> Maybe if you can take this knowledge with you (even though it seems
> impossible; maybe it is possible partially?),
would I succeed to come back with a clear memory of the experience, I
think I would have done done it only once. Actually this happens
sometimes. Some rare people seems to do a "complete" (good) salvia
experience, and seems never feel compel to "go there" again. It is not
my case, even if now, just smelling the herb can result in a sort of
total recall.
> nirvana (The word seems to fit
> what you experienced) and samsara begin to appear as what they
> really are,
> the same (according to Mahāyāna Buddhism). Is this what being (or
> becoming?)
> enlightened is about?
>
> Somehow I can't believe reality could be so dual: That there is this
> place,
> and our totally different place, that are disconnected.
forget the connection, I think. What is the Darwinian advantage of
forgetting that connection? I don't know if there is any. It may be
that the human ego is an error, like betting on forces and massive
bodies, instead of temperature regulation, was the dinosaur "errors".
But I am speculating here.
"This place" is just a tiny perspectival facet of the larger
unnameable truth. With comp we can bet (but nothing more) that the
unnameable truth could be the arithmetical truth. It is simpler, and
100% undecidable that there is anything more (assuming comp true,
given that comp is refutable, by its physics).
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> I have no memory, but
>> still a sort of personality. Suddenly I get memories and I think "oh
>> no, not again", because at that moment I have the feeling that
>> something happens, which has already happened a lot of times.
> It's funny, I get that feeling sometimes on shrooms, though not at
> returning, but at the beginning of going to this "place of oneness".
> Like I
> remember that I begin to arrive "at home", at the place I "really"
> belong.
> At first I feel really comforted, but then fear (and/or aversion)
> starts to
> set in.
that. But with shrooms it can last for six hours!
> I actually feel like having been there somehow, but not in this
> life, or not completely or not yet? It is so familiar, yet I don't
> think I
> "really" was there.
my kitchen, but how could I know I have been really there? All I know
is that I am conscious here and now, the rest, be it numbers, physics,
gods, memories, predictions, etc. are useful or less useful, elegant
or less elegant, theories or conjectures.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
On 07 Dec 2009, at 14:25, Bruno Marchal wrote (to John Mikes)
>>
>> Universal machine - BTW: machine, or God, as in (our) theology
>
> A number or machine which through encoding can emulated all possible
> computable relation between numbers. Examples are given by brain,
> the DNA genome, physical universe, programming language interpreter,
> general purpose computer, etc.
> If we accept Church thesis, then the (mathematically existing)
> Turing universal machine, *is* a universal machine.
Usually by God, I mean any entity capable of producing sentences in
some non mechanically reducible way. Arithmetical truth, or the set of
the descriptions of true arithmetical sentences is known to be a god
in that sense, since Gödel proved his incompleteness theorem.
Universal machine are finite entities. Yes, it is true that they are
always dissatisfied, and always look for more memory-time and memory-
space, they can use walls and paper to extend their memory, or
anything available relatively to their most probable history/
computation/environment.
I call them sometimes "baby gods", but this is just a mark of
affection. They are terrible children, and they are know to make life
always more complex and difficult. I guess it is the goal!
A computer is just a tool for solving the problems raised by another
computer. This provides jobs.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Rex Allen
> Rex Allen wrote:
>>So my point is that: in a reductionist theory which implies a
>>physicalist reality with no downwards causation,
>
> What defines "upwards" and "downwards". Why would "downwards"
> causation make any difference?
that are composed of fundamental entities and from "emergent" laws.
So if everything reduces to fundamental entities and their causal
relations, then there is no downwards causation.
To quote*** (see below) Paul Davies, from his paper "The Physics of
Downward Causation":
"As physicists have probed ever deeper into the microscopic realm of
matter so, to use Steven Weinberg’s evocative phrase (Weinberg, 1992),
‘the arrows of explanation point downward.’ That is, we frequently
account for a phenomenon by appealing to the properties of the next
level down. In this way the behaviour of gases are explained by
molecules, the properties of molecules are explained by atoms, which
in turn are explained by nuclei and electrons. This downward path
extends, it is supposed, as far as the bottom-level entities, be they
strings or some other exotica."
If downwards causation IS possible, then behaviors can emerge which
aren't reducible to the fundamental entities and their causal
relations. Consciousness might be an example of this.
So quoting Davies again:
"Whilst the foregoing is not contentious, differences arise concerning
whether the reductionist account of nature is merely a fruitful
methodology, or whether it is the whole story. Many physicists are
self-confessed out-and-out reductionists. They believe that once the
final buildings blocks of matter and the rules that govern them have
been identified, then all of nature will, in effect, have been
explained. Obviously such a final theory would not in practice provide
a very useful account of much that we observe in the world. A final
reductionist theory would not, for instance, explain the origin of
life, or have much to say about the nature of consciousness. But the
committed reductionist believes such inadequacies are mere
technicalities, and that the fundamental core of explanation is
captured – completely - by the reductionist theory."
*** Note that I'm just quoting those passages to save time in
articulating the points myself. I'm not invoking him as an authority,
or necessarily saying I agree with anything else he says in his paper.
>> nothing means anything.
>
>
> You mean things don't stand as symbols for something else? That reminds
> me of George Carlin's quip, "If we're here to care for other people, what
> are those other people here for?"
like quarks and electrons (or fields, or strings, or whatever).
>> Things only have the "appearance" of meaning.
>
> The above words have the appearance of meaning to me - and so they do have
> meaning to me. I don't know what else I could ask for?
to you. You seem to take this for granted. I'm thinking of something
similar to the symbol grounding problem:
"The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words
(symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning
itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the
problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are
meaningful. According to a widely held theory of cognition,
"computationalism," cognition (i.e., thinking) is just a form of
computation. But computation in turn is just formal symbol
manipulation: symbols are manipulated according to rules that are
based on the symbols' shapes, not their meanings. How are those
symbols (e.g., the words in our heads) connected to the things they
refer to?"
>> In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some
>> explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal
>> residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves
>> unconcerned with such things.
>
> Having predictive theories was no doubt selected by evolution - as well as a
> psychological to see meaning in things.
field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
has no causal power.
Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the
universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we
observe in the present. Evolution is just a useful fictional
narrative that helps us think about what we observe. A description of
what we observe, not an explanation for it.
So I think this was a good example of how you muddy the water with
misleading language.
>> In such a reality if you predict an event that comes to pass, both
>> your prediction AND the event were inevitable from the first instant
>> of the universe, implicit in it's initial state plus the laws of
>> physics.
>
> That's one theory, formerly more popular than now.
"inevitable" adjective?
>> Looked at in a block-universe format: the first instant,
>> you making the prediction, and the predicted event all coexist
>> simultaneously. In this view, while your prediction was accurate,
>> there's no reason for that...it's just the way things are in that
>> block of reality. Scientific theories only describe this fact, they
>> don't explain it.
>>
>> So what science deals in is descriptions. Not explanations. The
>> feeling that something has been explained is an aspect of
>> consciousness, not an aspect of reality (at least not reality as
>> posited by physicalism).
>
>
> But then you need to ask yourself what does constitute an explanation? If
> you dismiss scientific models that show you how to make choices and
> manipulate the world and allow you to predict events, what is it you're
> looking for? What's your definition of "explanation"? Can you give an
> example of a good explanation? Does it have to be teleological? ultimate?
> holistic?
experience of making choices? Given either determinism or quantum
randomness, what does "choice" mean?
Do we manipulate the world? Or do we just have the epiphenomenal
experience of manipulating the world, when in fact everything we do is
determined by the initial state of the universe plus the laws of
physics?
As for definition of explanation, I'd go with:
1. A statement identifying the reason for, or cause of, an event or state.
2. A statement which is intended to produce a feeling of comprehension.
3. A statement which produces a feeling of comprehension.
As for "an example of a good explanation"...hmmm. Well I'm leaning
towards the idea that an explanation in the sense of definition 1 is
like "libertarian free will". It sounds plausible initially, but when
you really parse it out you find that it's not a consistent concept.
For the reasons that I gave earlier with the two choices of "things
just are what they are" and "everything exists and so this exists".
Which leaves definitions 2 and 3. In which case a "good explanation"
is one which does a good job of producing a feeling of comprehension.
And I'm not dismissing scientific models per se. I agree that it is
possible to construct models whose "ontologies" are consistent with
what we observe. I just doubt that this tells us anything about what
is ontologically real.
Which is not that radical a claim, I think. Computationalism even in
it's physical (non-Bruno) version implies the same thing. We could be
in a simulation or some sort of virtual reality, and it would be
impossible to detect.
>> I don't think that this is usually made clear. And it seems like a
>> subtle but important distinction, philosophically.
>>
>> So I take your point about the schoolmen. There aren't many practical
>> applications for the idea that "things just are the way they are".
>> But still it's an interesting piece of information, if true.
>>
>> But if physicalism is correct, then how useful are your "explanations"
>> really? You *feel* as though it's useful to know about inflation and
>> the CMB, but underneath your feelings, your constituent quarks and
>> electrons are playing out the parts that were set for them by the
>> initial state of the universe plus the laws that govern it's
>> evolution.
>
> Well I haven't used quark theory, but my "explanations" have helped me
> design a very fast ramjet. I'd feel a little uncertain about flying in an
> airliner designed by people who thought aerodynamics didn't explain
> anything.
universe act though a set of quarks and electrons (whose current is a
direct consequence of the initial state of the universe) in such a way
that something which could be interpreted as a ramjet design was
produced. And as a side effect, you had the conscious experience of
designing a ramjet.
>> "Science is about observations. Philosophy is about clarity."
>
> I'd say science is about making models that predict what is observed and not
> the contrary.
Observations. Though, I take your point.
> Since you rambled about consciousness I'll share my speculation about it. I
> think people resort to "philosophical" explanations when they don't have
> scientific ones and when scientific ones are found they stop worrying about
> the philosophical questions. At one time people worried about vitality, the
> life-force, elan vitale, that animated things. But as more and more was
> learned about molecular biology, DNA, metabolism, evolution, etc, people
> stopped worrying about "life". They didn't explain it. They only described
> it and how it worked (in great detail). The DNA isn't alive, none of the
> molecules are alive and yet there is no elan vitale either. The old
> questions about life just seem ill posed. Not answered, yet irrelevant. I
> think the same thing will happen to "consciousness" that happened to
> "life".
Chalmers' response to Dennett making the same point. You said that
Chalmers was a historical revisionist, but offered no evidence, and
that's where it was left. AND, I imagine that's where we'll leave it
also.
But, for good measure, here part of the Chalmers quote:
====
http://consc.net/papers/moving.html
When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious
that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a
living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment? How
does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point:
their driving question was always "How could a mere physical system
perform these complex functions?", not "Why are these functions
accompanied by life?" It is no accident that Dennett's version of a
vitalist is "imaginary". There is no distinct "hard problem" of life,
and there never was one, even for vitalists.
===
>
> We will learn to describe consciousness by causal models, we'll predict the
> effect of salvia and mushrooms on different people's consciousness. We'll
> build robots which appear to be conscious. We'll add electronics to brains
> based on our predictive models and cure Alzheimer's the same way we build
> airplanes based on aerodynamics. And if someone asks, "What is
> consciousnees?" he'll be looked at as if he'd asked "Where is the edge of
> the Earth?"
example in super realistic fully immersive computer games, that will
incline people to take a more Kantian view. A view in which what is
observed isn't taken to indicate anything at all about what actually
exists or what actually is.
I would especially expect this to be the case if, in this future you
describe, it turns out that the "multiple realizability" aspect of
functionalism actually allows many of the strange scenarios that it
implies are possible in thought experiments.
>
> Brent
> Journalist: What variable is complementary to "truth".
> Neils Bohr: Clarity.
>
grasped it. This change is so great that it may be regarded as an
intellectual rebirth. It is capable of really removing the inborn
realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect. …
the man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he
may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other
words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike
realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every
possible thing except philosophy." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
Brent Meeker
> On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>> Rex Allen wrote:
>>
>>> So my point is that: in a reductionist theory which implies a
>>> physicalist reality with no downwards causation,
>>>
>> What defines "upwards" and "downwards". Why would "downwards"
>> causation make any difference?
>>
>
> Upwards from fundamental entities and laws. Downwards from things
> that are composed of fundamental entities and from "emergent" laws.
>
> So if everything reduces to fundamental entities and their causal
> relations, then there is no downwards causation.
>
> To quote*** (see below) Paul Davies, from his paper "The Physics of
> Downward Causation":
>
> "As physicists have probed ever deeper into the microscopic realm of
> �the arrows of explanation point downward.� That is, we frequently
> level down. In this way the behaviour of gases are explained by
> molecules, the properties of molecules are explained by atoms, which
> in turn are explained by nuclei and electrons. This downward path
> extends, it is supposed, as far as the bottom-level entities, be they
> strings or some other exotica."
>
> If downwards causation IS possible, then behaviors can emerge which
> aren't reducible to the fundamental entities and their causal
> relations. Consciousness might be an example of this.
>
used because it's inconvenient to translate across levels and is usually
not necessary in terms of taking action. But I see no problem with
saying, for example, a scary story caused an increase in his adrenaline.
The same events generally have descriptions at many different levels so
there is a network of relations that can be sliced different ways to
facilitate our limited comprehension.
>
> "Whilst the foregoing is not contentious, differences arise concerning
> whether the reductionist account of nature is merely a fruitful
> methodology, or whether it is the whole story. Many physicists are
> self-confessed out-and-out reductionists. They believe that once the
> final buildings blocks of matter and the rules that govern them have
> been identified, then all of nature will, in effect, have been
> explained. Obviously such a final theory would not in practice provide
> a very useful account of much that we observe in the world. A final
> reductionist theory would not, for instance, explain the origin of
> life, or have much to say about the nature of consciousness. But the
> committed reductionist believes such inadequacies are mere
> technicalities, and that the fundamental core of explanation is
> *** Note that I'm just quoting those passages to save time in
> articulating the points myself. I'm not invoking him as an authority,
> or necessarily saying I agree with anything else he says in his paper.
>
>
>
>>> nothing means anything.
>>>
>> You mean things don't stand as symbols for something else? That reminds
>> me of George Carlin's quip, "If we're here to care for other people, what
>> are those other people here for?"
>>
>
> My point would be, how does meaning reduce to fundamental entities
> like quarks and electrons (or fields, or strings, or whatever).
>
to information in certain ways. A simple example would be my thermostat
which we might describe as wanting to maintain the temperature at
18degC. It would be very difficult but possible to translate this
anthropomorphized description into QFT.
>
>>> Things only have the "appearance" of meaning.
>>>
>> The above words have the appearance of meaning to me - and so they do have
>> meaning to me. I don't know what else I could ask for?
>>
>
> I would ask for an understanding of how it is that they have meaning
> to you. You seem to take this for granted.
> I'm thinking of something
> similar to the symbol grounding problem:
>
> "The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words
> (symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning
> itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the
> problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are
> meaningful. According to a widely held theory of cognition,
> "computationalism," cognition (i.e., thinking) is just a form of
> computation. But computation in turn is just formal symbol
> manipulation: symbols are manipulated according to rules that are
> based on the symbols' shapes, not their meanings. How are those
> symbols (e.g., the words in our heads) connected to the things they
> refer to?"
>
>
out their context of communication and action and then being surprised
that you can't say what they communicate or what action they will elicit.
>>> In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some
>>> explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal
>>> residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves
>>> unconcerned with such things.
>>>
>> Having predictive theories was no doubt selected by evolution - as well as a
>> psychological to see meaning in things.
>>
>
> Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no "evolution
> field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
> has no causal power.
>
neither do any of the "laws of physics".
> universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
> have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we
> observe in the present.
NOT completely determine the present.
> Evolution is just a useful fictional
> narrative that helps us think about what we observe. A description of
> what we observe, not an explanation for it.
>
requires that it provide comprehension, i.e. grasping together many
otherwise disparate facts. So I think you are like the child who has
discovered he can always ask "Why?" after every explanation. I'd say,
"It's descriptions all the way down."
> misleading language.
>
>
>
>>> In such a reality if you predict an event that comes to pass, both
>>> your prediction AND the event were inevitable from the first instant
>>> of the universe, implicit in it's initial state plus the laws of
>>> physics.
>>>
>> That's one theory, formerly more popular than now.
>>
>
> Hmmm? Are you referring to quantum indeterminism undermining the
> "inevitable" adjective?
>
>
relative to what you already know . And, second, comprehension has the
connotation of grasping together many things previously thought
separate. By this standard Darwin's theory of evolution is a
tremendously successful explanation.
> And I'm not dismissing scientific models per se. I agree that it is
> possible to construct models whose "ontologies" are consistent with
> what we observe. I just doubt that this tells us anything about what
> is ontologically real.
>
should proportion our belief to the evidence. That also means we should
proportion our doubt to the evidence.
> Which is not that radical a claim, I think. Computationalism even in
> it's physical (non-Bruno) version implies the same thing. We could be
> in a simulation or some sort of virtual reality, and it would be
> impossible to detect.
>
example are the continuing problems with getting the Large Hadron
Collider to work. It's initial operation has been stalled by a sequence
of seemingly random errors and events, e.g. most recently a piece of
bread from a workman's lunch was found to have fallen into a magnet.
One wag has put forward the theory that we're all in a simulation and
the simulation of course doesn't go "all the way down" but like
simulations we write just puts stuff in "by hand" at the lowest level.
The programmer of this simulation doesn't want us to discover the
inconsistencies that would be revealed by the LHC and so is contriving
that it won't work - but thereby is indirectly giving evidence for his
existence.
More traditionally, suppose that the various healing by prayer
experiments had succeeded BUT only when the prayers were in Persian and
were to Ahura Mazda. Wouldn't that imply that Ahura Mazda was a creator
god and we were living in a virtual reality of his creation?
>
>
>>> I don't think that this is usually made clear. And it seems like a
>>> subtle but important distinction, philosophically.
>>>
>>> So I take your point about the schoolmen. There aren't many practical
>>> applications for the idea that "things just are the way they are".
>>> But still it's an interesting piece of information, if true.
>>>
>>> But if physicalism is correct, then how useful are your "explanations"
>>> really? You *feel* as though it's useful to know about inflation and
>>> the CMB, but underneath your feelings, your constituent quarks and
>>> electrons are playing out the parts that were set for them by the
>>> initial state of the universe plus the laws that govern it's
>>> evolution.
>>>
>> Well I haven't used quark theory, but my "explanations" have helped me
>> design a very fast ramjet. I'd feel a little uncertain about flying in an
>> airliner designed by people who thought aerodynamics didn't explain
>> anything.
>>
>
> Did "you" design a ramjet? OR did the fundamental causal laws of the
> universe act though a set of quarks and electrons (whose current is a
> direct consequence of the initial state of the universe) in such a way
> that something which could be interpreted as a ramjet design was
> produced. And as a side effect, you had the conscious experience of
> designing a ramjet.
>
>
>
>
>>> "Science is about observations. Philosophy is about clarity."
>>>
>> I'd say science is about making models that predict what is observed and not
>> the contrary.
>>
>
> That's basically what I said, right? Models that predict what?
> Observations. Though, I take your point.
>
>
philosophy and science, I can't buy your assessment of philosophy.
theories indicate what's really real. Bruno even points to the
impossibility of knowing his theory is correct as an essential point in
it's favor.
Thanks for the exchange.
Brent
"The race is not always to the swift. But that's the way to bet."
--- Damon Runyon
> describe, it turns out that the "multiple realizability" aspect of
> functionalism actually allows many of the strange scenarios that it
> implies are possible in thought experiments.
>
>
>
>> Brent
>> Journalist: What variable is complementary to "truth".
>> Neils Bohr: Clarity.
>>
>>
>
> "Kant's teaching produces a fundamental change in every mind that has
> grasped it. This change is so great that it may be regarded as an
> intellectual rebirth. It is capable of really removing the inborn
> may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other
> words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike
> realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every
> possible thing except philosophy." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
>
>
>
>
Bruno Marchal
What is the meaning of exchanging a gluon?
> How are those
> symbols (e.g., the words in our heads) connected to the things they
> refer to?"
between to eat and to be eaten.
>
>
>>> In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some
>>> explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal
>>> residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves
>>> unconcerned with such things.
>>
>> Having predictive theories was no doubt selected by evolution - as
>> well as a
>> psychological to see meaning in things.
>
> Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no "evolution
> field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
> has no causal power.
It is like with the numbers or the combinators, once the initial rule
of the game is above the universal number/machine treshold, you get a
creative bomb. This generates new and new things, none having their
behavior ever completely unifiable in any theory.
>
> Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the
> universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
> have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we
> observe in the present. Evolution is just a useful fictional
> narrative that helps us think about what we observe. A description of
> what we observe, not an explanation for it.
are also convenient fiction for describing what we observe?
Where could the explanation begin?
If computationalism is true its physicalist version entails 0 = 1. I
guess by "non-Bruno" you mean false.
have you some doubt about the validity of the UDA? Let me know, to see
what needs to be still clarified.
And if computationalism is true, then we just cannot be in a
simulation, because we belong to *all* simulations. And this is
testable, and QM confirms some predictable aspects of digital mechanism.
With computationalism there are no bodies. What we take for bodies are
the shape of our ignorance concerning our probable histories. Like an
electronic orbital which is the map of the worlds where you can find
the electron.
mechanist: how to build a self-reproducing machine.
That problem has been solved by molecular biology, but also, more
conceptually, by Kleene second recursion theorem (I may illustrate
this).
And this has solved the problem of representation and self-
representation, etc. And this has lead to a theory of self-references
(Gödel, Löb, Solovay).
>
> ===
>
>>
>> We will learn to describe consciousness by causal models, we'll
>> predict the
>> effect of salvia and mushrooms on different people's
>> consciousness. We'll
>> build robots which appear to be conscious. We'll add electronics
>> to brains
>> based on our predictive models and cure Alzheimer's the same way we
>> build
>> airplanes based on aerodynamics. And if someone asks, "What is
>> consciousnees?" he'll be looked at as if he'd asked "Where is the
>> edge of
>> the Earth?"
>
> Actually I would think that if virtual reality becomes common, for
> example in super realistic fully immersive computer games, that will
> incline people to take a more Kantian view.
Zacatechichi can help for the dream, it is legal everywhere except in
Australia and Belgium!).
Salvia can help too.
> A view in which what is
> observed isn't taken to indicate anything at all about what actually
> exists or what actually is.
the border/shadow/projection/part... of, well, assuming comp it is
the border of the sharable ignorance of the universal machines (it is
*huge*).
>
> I would especially expect this to be the case if, in this future you
> describe, it turns out that the "multiple realizability" aspect of
> functionalism actually allows many of the strange scenarios that it
> implies are possible in thought experiments.
>
>
>>
>> Brent
>> Journalist: What variable is complementary to "truth".
>> Neils Bohr: Clarity.
>>
>
> "Kant's teaching produces a fundamental change in every mind that has
> grasped it. This change is so great that it may be regarded as an
> intellectual rebirth. It is capable of really removing the inborn
> realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect. …
> the man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he
> may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other
> words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike
> realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every
> possible thing except philosophy." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
degree of Kant's objective idealism given that Kant is hard to read,
and contradict himself apparently, or it is just the the bad
translations I found?
In my opinion that departure from "innocence" starts with the greeks
and stopped with the greeks, in Occident, except for notable
resistance like Descartes, and Kant, and many others (of course).
Once we assume mechanism, the incompleteness and insolubility results
prevents the universal machine against ANY complete theory about her.
Despite its finiteness, the little god is already a complete unknown,
even for itself. It shares with some god(s) of some religion than when
you try to give it a name, it acquires quickly many other names (like c
++, modular functor, quantum topologies, programming languages, amoeba
swarm, etc.)
Elementary arithmetical truth is full of life and incredible events
(incredible for most machines in there). No need to introduce "magical
matter", by MGA it just can't work, nor to introduce "magic spirits",
because they are all already there if you can listen).
I know that Derek Parfit call the "yes doctor" view, the reductionist
view. But computer science shows it is antireductionist, and
eventually "antimaterialist".
Universal "machines" have a "theology", and they can discover a
genuine part of it by introspecting themselves, and, if lucky, they
can accelerate even more the process by dialoguing with other
universal machine(s), but the price is that this is risky, and she can
get lost in her creations.
The skeleton of that proper "theology" is roughly given by Tarski-1944
minus Gödel-1931, it is the difference between what it is the case
about the machine minus what the machine can prove or believe it is
the case; it is the difference between truth and belief.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Rex Allen
>
> On 08 Dec 2009, at 09:50, Rex Allen wrote:
>
>>>> In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find some
>>>> explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the epiphenominal
>>>> residue of more fundamental physical processes which are themselves
>>>> unconcerned with such things.
>>>
>>> Having predictive theories was no doubt selected by evolution - as
>>> well as a
>>> psychological to see meaning in things.
>>
>> Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no "evolution
>> field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
>> has no causal power.
>
> Of course it has!
> It is like with the numbers or the combinators, once the initial rule
> of the game is above the universal number/machine treshold, you get a
> creative bomb. This generates new and new things, none having their
> behavior ever completely unifiable in any theory.
emerges out of the local interactions of fundamental entities, and
none of these local interactions have anything to do with "evolution".
But evolution doesn't ADD anything to those local interactions...it
can be completely reduced to them. We "see" evolution...but it only
exists in our minds, as a tool for our understanding. It's not
something that exists "in the world". Again, taking the physicalist
view.
So, to rely on Davies for articulation purposes again:
"Darwinism provides a novel form of causation inasmuch as the causal
chain runs counter to the normal descriptive sequence.
Chronologically, what happens is that first a mutation is caused by a
local physical interaction, e.g. the impact of a cosmic ray at a
specific location with an atom in a DNA molecule. Later, possibly many
years later, the environment ‘selects’ the mutant by permitting the
organism to reproduce more efficiently. In terms of physics, selection
involves vast numbers of local forces acting over long periods of
time, the net result of which is to bring about a long-term change in
the genome of the organism’s lineage. It is the original atomic event
in combination with the subsequent complicated events that together
give a full causative account of the evolutionary story. Yet
biologists would be hard-pressed to tell this story in those local
physical terms. Instead, natural selection is described as having
causal powers, even though it is causatively neutral – a sieve."
>> Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the
>> universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
>> have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we
>> observe in the present. Evolution is just a useful fictional
>> narrative that helps us think about what we observe. A description of
>> what we observe, not an explanation for it.
>
> And why not add, in that case, ... like time, space, universe, laws
> are also convenient fiction for describing what we observe?
and even the appearance of causality, as being aspects of our
experience of the world...and not things that exist outside of our
experience of them.
And since we use our perceptions to build our mental image of the
universe, then this mental image also has nothing to do with what
exists.
> Where could the explanation begin?
said...it's descriptions all the way down.
>> Which is not that radical a claim, I think. Computationalism even in
>> it's physical (non-Bruno) version implies the same thing. We could be
>> in a simulation or some sort of virtual reality, and it would be
>> impossible to detect.
>
>
> ?
>
> If computationalism is true its physicalist version entails 0 = 1. I
> guess by "non-Bruno" you mean false.
version. I do not hold the physicalist position myself. But since it
seems to be the predominant view, I tend to use it as my reference
point, as a base-line.
But, while physicalist computationalism seems to have some strange
implications (movie graph argument/Maudlin/Dust Theory/etc.), it COULD
be the case, right? Matter could be required as a substrate for
consciousness generating computations. Maybe reality just is that
way.
But I think you and Kant are right...there's no way to know. Even in theory.
> have you some doubt about the validity of the UDA? Let me know, to see
> what needs to be still clarified.
as physicalism...that consciousness can't be fundamental. That
something else must underlie it, and "cause" it.
But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
We can see matter as able to represent the contents of our conscious
experience...e.g., "these electrons represent my neural structure".
We can see numbers as representing the same types of things...in fact
we use them an abstraction layer from the electrons.
But since practically anything can represent nearly anything else,
it's ultimately all in the mind of the beholder. So to me
consciousness has as much of a claim to being "fundamental" as numbers
or matter.
The only catch being, "how can something as complex as a conscious
experience be irreducibly fundamental?"
But I think this is confusing two things: conscious experience vs. the
contents of conscious experience.
The fact of my conscious experience itself seems quite simple and
irreducible. However, what I am conscious of (the content of my
experiences) can seem quite complex.
As an analogy, it seems reasonable to me to say: Content is to
consciousness as an electron is to the universe.
In a physicalist ontology, an electron is something that exists within
the universe. An electron can't be "liberated" or taken outside of the
universe, or considered independently of the universe of which it is a
part.
Similarly the things that I am conscious of exist only within the
context of my conscious experience.
Which is not to say that only my conscious experience exists, but
rather that only conscious experiences exist. If physicalists can have
multiple universes, why not multiple consciousnesses?
Why do our conscious experiences exist? Well, why would a physicalist
say that the universe exists? It just does. There's no explanation
for that (at least none that doesn't depend on some other unexplained
event).
Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they
do? Again, I'd ask the same question for any other ontological
theory. Why did the universe have the particular initial conditions
and governing laws that it did, which lead to our present experiences?
It just did. There's no explanation for that (again, at least none
that doesn't depend on some other unexplained event).
But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really*
exists, a la Kant.
>> "Kant's teaching produces a fundamental change in every mind that has
>> grasped it. This change is so great that it may be regarded as an
>> intellectual rebirth. It is capable of really removing the inborn
>> realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect. …
>> the man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he
>> may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other
>> words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike
>> realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every
>> possible thing except philosophy." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
>
> I agree. I am not personally sure, and I cannot really decide the
> degree of Kant's objective idealism given that Kant is hard to read,
> and contradict himself apparently, or it is just the the bad
> translations I found?
trying to parse out the notoriously difficult original material.
Kant may not have gotten everything right, but I think he is correct
on the core issue of perception vs. reality and what can be known.
benjayk
Rex Allen wrote:
>
>> Where could the explanation begin?
>
> I'd say there is no explanation. It just is what it is. As Brent
> said...it's descriptions all the way down.
explanation. In a sense our life and our experiences are explanations of
something, don't you think so?
It is true though, that our lifes (all the content of conciousness and the
way it evolves) itself then can have no complete explanation. So what life
"wants" to explain then?
I think it seeks to explain that it *needs* no explanation beyond itself,
because it is good and nobody *absolutely* needs an explanation for what is
good. If it is good enough, you will except it without explanation - because
this is the ultimate explanation.
Who could ever disagree with "The world is perfect, it is just here to
experience ever increasing joy and learn something exciting about
ourselves?" when it really comes down to it? So how could it be a wrong
explanation for anyone?
I see no way.
Though I certainly see it as "too good to be true" sometimes, but maybe it's
just part of the game? It's the subgame "what is good is likely too be true,
too - there is nothing akward about this even intellectually!".
Rex Allen wrote:
>
>> have you some doubt about the validity of the UDA? Let me know, to see
>> what needs to be still clarified.
>
> My only doubt about UDA is that it seems to make the same assumption
> as physicalism...that consciousness can't be fundamental. That
> something else must underlie it, and "cause" it.
>
> But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
> can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
independent sense for me, while numbers or matter can't.
For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of matter,
too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
So I find it unconvincing that conciousness "arises" out of numbers, since
it is inconceivable for me what numbers mean independent of me or even the
world I perceive.
I think everything becomes much clearer if we postulate "arithmetical truth"
is simply "the" truth, and so in effect numbers are just reflections of
parts of this unnameable and untouchable truth (which comes "before"
numbers), which may be conciousness together with its infinitely infinitely
... ... infinite possible content.
So numbers don't give rise to arithmetical truth, but truth gives rise to
(expresses as) numbers. Though ulitmately this may be a matter of
perspective ;)... It's just that the second perspective is more meaningful
to me.
Rex Allen wrote:
>
> But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really*
> exists, a la Kant.
because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be expressed with
words. So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially with
regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers from
them.
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26721201.html
Brent Meeker
> Rex Allen wrote:
>
>>> Where could the explanation begin?
>>>
>> I'd say there is no explanation. It just is what it is. As Brent
>> said...it's descriptions all the way down.
>>
> I wouldn't neccesarily disagree, though only if you mean verbal or formal
> explanation. In a sense our life and our experiences are explanations of
> something, don't you think so?
>
> It is true though, that our lifes (all the content of conciousness and the
> way it evolves) itself then can have no complete explanation. So what life
> "wants" to explain then?
> I think it seeks to explain that it *needs* no explanation beyond itself,
> because it is good and nobody *absolutely* needs an explanation for what is
> good. If it is good enough, you will except it without explanation - because
> this is the ultimate explanation.
>
> Who could ever disagree with "The world is perfect, it is just here to
> experience ever increasing joy and learn something exciting about
> ourselves?" when it really comes down to it? So how could it be a wrong
> explanation for anyone?
> I see no way.
>
militias, and your child was starving to death you might see a way.
> Though I certainly see it as "too good to be true" sometimes, but maybe it's
> just part of the game? It's the subgame "what is good is likely too be true,
> too - there is nothing akward about this even intellectually!".
>
>
> Rex Allen wrote:
>
>>> have you some doubt about the validity of the UDA? Let me know, to see
>>> what needs to be still clarified.
>>>
>> My only doubt about UDA is that it seems to make the same assumption
>> as physicalism...that consciousness can't be fundamental. That
>> something else must underlie it, and "cause" it.
>>
>> But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
>> can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
>>
>
> I agree here. But I would add that conciousness can conceivably make
> independent sense for me, while numbers or matter can't.
>
> For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of matter,
> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
>
> So I find it unconvincing that conciousness "arises" out of numbers, since
> it is inconceivable for me what numbers mean independent of me or even the
> world I perceive.
> I think everything becomes much clearer if we postulate "arithmetical truth"
> is simply "the" truth, and so in effect numbers are just reflections of
> parts of this unnameable and untouchable truth (which comes "before"
> numbers), which may be conciousness together with its infinitely infinitely
> ... ... infinite possible content.
> So numbers don't give rise to arithmetical truth, but truth gives rise to
> (expresses as) numbers. Though ulitmately this may be a matter of
> perspective ;)... It's just that the second perspective is more meaningful
> to me.
>
>
> Rex Allen wrote:
>
>> But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really*
>> exists, a la Kant.
>>
> Maybe "what really exists" is not a meaningful thing to ask in first place,
> because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be expressed with
> words. So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
>
are reading a computer screen? Of course we can't be sure about this,
but we don't have to give up betting on it.
> Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially with
> regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers from
> them.
>
mathematical words are different and we should take "2" and "successor"
more seriously than "chair" and "dog"?
Brent
Bruno Marchal
On 09 Dec 2009, at 20:51, Rex Allen wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 08 Dec 2009, at 09:50, Rex Allen wrote:
>>
>>>>> In such a reality, things just are what they are. If you find
>>>>> some
>>>>> explanations "good" and others "bad", that's just the
>>>>> epiphenominal
>>>>> residue of more fundamental physical processes which are
>>>>> themselves
>>>>> unconcerned with such things.
>>>>
>>>> Having predictive theories was no doubt selected by evolution - as
>>>> well as a
>>>> psychological to see meaning in things.
>>>
>>> Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no "evolution
>>> field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
>>> has no causal power.
>>
>> Of course it has!
>> It is like with the numbers or the combinators, once the initial rule
>> of the game is above the universal number/machine treshold, you get a
>> creative bomb. This generates new and new things, none having their
>> behavior ever completely unifiable in any theory.
>
> In the physicalist view, evolution is an "emergent" law, right?
evolution as a mathematical phenomenon, described in part by
"genetical algorithmic", and I would distinguish evolution-the math,
and its particular manifestation relatively to us (our computational
histories/history). The second is only a more instantiated version of
the first.
> It
> emerges out of the local interactions of fundamental entities, and
> none of these local interactions have anything to do with "evolution".
physics are not fundamental at all. They are themselves complex object
which have evolved, although in this case the evolution is not at all
a physical process, but a purely arithmetical one.
This is OK. if you want to keep a physicalist stance, just consider
that with the computationalist hypothesis, the elementary particles
are just numbers, and their interaction are given by addition and
multiplication. (You can take the combinators S and K, and the
operations Kxy = y; Sxyz = xz(yz), if you don't like numbers, ...).
> But evolution doesn't ADD anything to those local interactions...it
> can be completely reduced to them.
physical world can be said to have also not add anything too.
> We "see" evolution...but it only
> exists in our minds, as a tool for our understanding. It's not
> something that exists "in the world". Again, taking the physicalist
> view.
Actually, we don't see those things. Physicists share only number
relations, and we lived uncommunicable qualia.
>
> So, to rely on Davies for articulation purposes again:
>
> "Darwinism provides a novel form of causation inasmuch as the causal
> chain runs counter to the normal descriptive sequence.
> Chronologically, what happens is that first a mutation is caused by a
> local physical interaction, e.g. the impact of a cosmic ray at a
> specific location with an atom in a DNA molecule. Later, possibly many
> years later, the environment ‘selects’ the mutant by permitting the
> organism to reproduce more efficiently. In terms of physics, selection
> involves vast numbers of local forces acting over long periods of
> time, the net result of which is to bring about a long-term change in
> the genome of the organism’s lineage. It is the original atomic event
> in combination with the subsequent complicated events that together
> give a full causative account of the evolutionary story. Yet
> biologists would be hard-pressed to tell this story in those local
> physical terms. Instead, natural selection is described as having
> causal powers, even though it is causatively neutral – a sieve."
to the hole physical reality. To say that a proton attracts an
electron is a metaphor to describe interference between infinities of
computations, themselves being metaphor for describing purely number
theoretical relations.
>
>
>>> Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the
>>> universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
>>> have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what
>>> animals we
>>> observe in the present. Evolution is just a useful fictional
>>> narrative that helps us think about what we observe. A
>>> description of
>>> what we observe, not an explanation for it.
>>
>> And why not add, in that case, ... like time, space, universe, laws
>> are also convenient fiction for describing what we observe?
>
> So I'm certainly fine with taking a Kantian view of time and space,
> and even the appearance of causality, as being aspects of our
> experience of the world...and not things that exist outside of our
> experience of them.
>
> And since we use our perceptions to build our mental image of the
> universe, then this mental image also has nothing to do with what
> exists.
prefer to avoid, because people could conclude then that all the
emerging things does not exist, except the numbers. But this, even
staying in pure arithmetic, will be false. For example consciousness
will exist in the sense that it exists some numbers having ----some
peculiar self-referential complex property ----. Prime numbers,
universal numbers, and their "particles" will exist in a sense
describable by number existence. And consciousness, feeling, qualia,
will similarly related to (infinite) number properties, not entirely
accessible by those "conscious number", yet available to other
numbers. No machine can known its own theology, but most machine can
known the theology of a smaller (than itself) machine.
>
>
>> Where could the explanation begin?
>
> I'd say there is no explanation. It just is what it is. As Brent
> said...it's descriptions all the way down.
description ad infinitum, normally.
>
>
>>> Which is not that radical a claim, I think. Computationalism even
>>> in
>>> it's physical (non-Bruno) version implies the same thing. We
>>> could be
>>> in a simulation or some sort of virtual reality, and it would be
>>> impossible to detect.
>>
>>
>> ?
>>
>> If computationalism is true its physicalist version entails 0 = 1. I
>> guess by "non-Bruno" you mean false.
>
> I wasn't saying that the physicalist version is preferable to your
> version. I do not hold the physicalist position myself. But since it
> seems to be the predominant view, I tend to use it as my reference
> point, as a base-line.
systematic error are still possible. But by default, until someone
find what is wrong in UDA, physicalism is impossible, once we assume
the comp hyp and taken it seriously.
It is epistemologically contradictory. You can postulate matter, but
you can't link it to consciousness in any way. With comp, primitive or
fundamental matter is as ridiculous than accepting evolution *and* the
idea that God has made the world in six days. From a strictly logical
point of view, you can do that, but it violated OCCAM. And it is even
more weird, given that no one has ever defined primitive matter, nor
used it in physics, except as a metaphysical background for not being
pressed to address the mind body problem. That is good methodology,
but no more.
>
> But, while physicalist computationalism seems to have some strange
> implications (movie graph argument/Maudlin/Dust Theory/etc.), it COULD
> be the case, right? Matter could be required as a substrate for
> consciousness generating computations. Maybe reality just is that
> way.
>
> But I think you and Kant are right...there's no way to know. Even
> in theory.
comp is false. It is enough to compare the physics which has to be
derived from comp, and the "observed physics".
>
>
>> have you some doubt about the validity of the UDA? Let me know, to
>> see
>> what needs to be still clarified.
>
> My only doubt about UDA is that it seems to make the same assumption
> as physicalism...that consciousness can't be fundamental. That
> something else must underlie it, and "cause" it.
invariant for this or that transformation of my brain.
Then consciousness will be something fundamental in the sense that it
is related to "eternal" true relation between many numbers.
>
> But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
> can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
we can explain (assuming comp) why this mystery is absolutely
unsolvable. It is not possible to explain numbers without assuming
numbers (or combinators, etc.)
Matter cannot exists primitively, but can exist as appearance for some
numbers, and those appearance obeys laws, reducible to the math of
universal numbers.
Consciousness also, but is more fundamental than matter: NUMBER =>
CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER, is the probable "causal" (in some precise
number theoretical sense) relation.
(probably even NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER => HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS => HUMAN NUMBERS). Here the last two steps would explain
why we don't accept easily (intuitively) the origin).
>
> We can see matter as able to represent the contents of our conscious
> experience...e.g., "these electrons represent my neural structure".
Our brain interpret information, and build useful metaphorical links.
>
> We can see numbers as representing the same types of things...in fact
> we use them an abstraction layer from the electrons.
>
> But since practically anything can represent nearly anything else,
> it's ultimately all in the mind of the beholder.
slip into solipsism.
> So to me
> consciousness has as much of a claim to being "fundamental" as numbers
> or matter.
Aristotelian conception of matter. Matter appears to be the border of
the ignorance of the universal machines. Plotinus would say that
matter is where God loses his power. For Plotinus, matter is the last
thing created by God, or emanating from the ONE, and more by
incompetence than by will.
>
> The only catch being, "how can something as complex as a conscious
> experience be irreducibly fundamental?"
>
> But I think this is confusing two things: conscious experience vs. the
> contents of conscious experience.
>
> The fact of my conscious experience itself seems quite simple and
> irreducible. However, what I am conscious of (the content of my
> experiences) can seem quite complex.
abstract virgin universal number, and its many relative manifestations
through possible (consistent) computational histories. There is an
abstract, yet tangible form of universal consciousness (of the
universal person, described by the 8 hypostases), and then it can
differentiate into all our day to day experiences.
>
> As an analogy, it seems reasonable to me to say: Content is to
> consciousness as an electron is to the universe.
>
> In a physicalist ontology, an electron is something that exists within
> the universe. An electron can't be "liberated" or taken outside of the
> universe, or considered independently of the universe of which it is a
> part.
>
> Similarly the things that I am conscious of exist only within the
> context of my conscious experience.
>
> Which is not to say that only my conscious experience exists, but
> rather that only conscious experiences exist. If physicalists can have
> multiple universes, why not multiple consciousnesses?
>
> Why do our conscious experiences exist? Well, why would a physicalist
> say that the universe exists? It just does. There's no explanation
> for that (at least none that doesn't depend on some other unexplained
> event).
+ the laws of addition and multiplication.
From this (and Church thesis) the comp theories explains how, from
inside, matter and consciousness appear, including why this tend to
befuddle us.
>
> Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they
> do?
explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in
Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call
geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the
observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I
thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp
preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for
all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite
close to the unique "one")
> Again, I'd ask the same question for any other ontological
> theory. Why did the universe have the particular initial conditions
> and governing laws that it did, which lead to our present experiences?
> It just did. There's no explanation for that (again, at least none
> that doesn't depend on some other unexplained event).
>
> But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really*
> exists, a la Kant.
you can explain why matter and consciousness is an unavoidable
consequence of + and *.
The explanation is so precise that the theory of matter can be
confronted with what we usually call "matter" (observation).
The whole of physics is made purely mathematical. It remains the
geographical propositions, which are contingent.
If we can show that the mass of the electron is not derivable from
arithmetic, then it means that the mass of the electron is contingent,
and it means that there exists electron with a different mass. Of
course we are far being able to show this.
>
>
>>> "Kant's teaching produces a fundamental change in every mind that
>>> has
>>> grasped it. This change is so great that it may be regarded as an
>>> intellectual rebirth. It is capable of really removing the inborn
>>> realism which arises from the original disposition of the
>>> intellect. …
>>> the man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else
>>> he
>>> may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other
>>> words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike
>>> realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every
>>> possible thing except philosophy." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
>>
>> I agree. I am not personally sure, and I cannot really decide the
>> degree of Kant's objective idealism given that Kant is hard to read,
>> and contradict himself apparently, or it is just the the bad
>> translations I found?
>
> Yeah, I went straight to the commentaries on Kant, as opposed to
> trying to parse out the notoriously difficult original material.
>
> Kant may not have gotten everything right, but I think he is correct
> on the core issue of perception vs. reality and what can be known.
Rex, I think you are overlooking the fact that once we assume comp,
physics become *necessarily* a branch of the logic of numbers' (or any
finite entities you like) self-reference. The advantage of comp is
that it explains simultaneously the quanta and the qualia, and it
respects the person and its, most probably very fundamental,
consciousness.
I diagnostic you have still some some trouble grasping completely the
7th and 8th step of UDA, to be frank. It is OK, take it easy.
Few people grasps this quickly, and those who grasped it react
like ... most people react with salvia divinorum. Most want to forget
the lesson. May be the reason is that, like Descartes and Rössler
understood well, it makes consciousness so fundamental that you
understand that there is no way out of consciousness. Comp immortality
is not wishful thinking, it may be terrifying also. But science is not
driven by wishes, even if conscience can and should be.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
On 10 Dec 2009, at 03:23, benjayk wrote:
> For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of
> matter,
> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
theories in physics presuppose arithmetical truth (and even analytical
truth, but this is just to simplify the derivations). I am aware that
Hartree Field pretends otherwise, but he is using the numbers
implicitly.
Of course, the human conception of the numbers depends on the human
conception of his neighborhood and life, but when searching a TOE we
have to agree on the simplest objects (ontology) from which we derive
the others (phenomenology).
> So numbers don't give rise to arithmetical truth,
> but truth gives rise to
> (expresses as) numbers.
> Maybe "what really exists" is not a meaningful thing to ask in first
> place,
> because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be
> expressed with
> words.
elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including its
non definability, and matter, including both its computational and non
computational aspects.
If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study the
existing explanation?
> So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
this you need a theory.
> Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially with
> regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers
> from
> them.
Nevertheless, to invoke a vague theory or philosophy to dismiss
automatically the theories bring by others will not help to progress.
This is what is done by most "confessional religion" since the
scientific attitude has been abandoned in theology/fundamental research.
Bruno Marchal.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
On 10 Dec 2009, at 03:23, benjayk wrote:
> matter,
> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
> So I find it unconvincing that conciousness "arises" out of numbers,
> since
> it is inconceivable for me what numbers mean independent of me or
> even the
> world I perceive.
having not taking into account enough your "(!)" between "appearance"
and "matter".
The game here consists in trying to understand, as far as possible,
the riddle of the "appearance (!) of matter" and the mystery of
consciousness.
Those terms are complex, we can hardly define them, but we may agree
on some proposition, perhaps just for the sake of reasoning.
I think many agrees on the fact that none of us can doubt, here and
now, its own consciousness. It is an example, albeit very personal, of
true statement, even if it seems non expressible and non communicable
(too bad, for that truth?(*))
And then, if only because it will make it possible to reason, some of
us accept the intuitive idea that "my consciousness" could be
preserved though digital encoding, annihilation and digital
reconstruction (comp).
Then, reasoning leads to a fundamental conceptual simplification of
the possible TOE.
In a nutshell, and roughly speaking the intended TOE where
- last century: SWE + Wave-reduction+unintelligible theory of mind.
But in 1957, Everett proposes a better theory which is just SWE +
comp. Known as "Many World interpretation of quantum mechanics". (But
it is not an interpretation of QM, it is simply another theory. The
one you get when you drop the wave collapse in "old QM").
But then your servitor showed, that unless we drop indeed the reality/
notions of first person, and consciousness, and mind, etc. then, in
case the SWE is indeed correct, it has to be derived from only comp.
Like the collapse is derived from SWE.
Note that I am not pretending "having the truth" here. Comp may be
false, and a collapse of the wave is not an entirely crackpot idea, if
only people could develop a clear theory of that.
All what I say, is that taking comp seriously, we can indeed explain
the appearances of the collapse in the memories of the average
machine, like Everett showed, but we have to derive the SWE from comp
alone (UDA). And we get that price: the difference between the
communicable truth and truth, as a root for the subjective undoubtable
qualia.
But comp is not a trivial theory. To make the digitalness precise and
general you need Church thesis, and you get the whole of the
mathematical computer science and its embedding in mathematical logic,
but also number theory, finite set theories, cartesian closed
categories, I mean a vast range of mathematical discoveries which shed
light on something new: *that* universal machine (and sub-universal
little cousins). New, except that we are willing to bet nature already
did it, through the brain, in the "consensual reality" sense. Indeed,
that is comp, with a very large sense for "brain".
If only, the comp hyp makes COMPuter science two times more
interesting, especially through mathematical logic which can describe,
for simple lobian machine, the difference between the many modalities
and their difference between truth, and the machine accessibility to
those truth.
With, or wihout comp, relative numbers (machine) develop rich and
complex theologies.
The soul is a number which moves itself, said Xenocratus (and
Pythagorus). We may have to abandon Aristotelian theology for
neoneoneo phytagorean Platonist like theology (quite transformed
through Gödel, Mandelbrot, Post, Turing, ...).
Here is the (an) ontic part of reality; numbers with addition and
multiplication. All the dreams are there, and coherent dreams cohere.
By numbers I mean 0, and its successors s(0), s(s(0)), etc. The "laws"
are:
For all x: x + 0 = x
For all x and for all y: x + s(y) = s(x + y)
For all x: x * 0 = 0
For all x and for all y: x * s(y) = (x * y) + x
Let me solve the exercise. Proving that 2 + 2 = 4, that is s(s(0)) +
s(s(0)) = s(s(s(s(0)))).
Use repetitively the second axiom "For all x and for all y: x + s(y) =
s(x + y)".
Substituting x by s(s(0)), and y by s(0) in the second axiom gives
s(s(0)) + s(s(0) = s(s(s(0)) + s(0)).
This s(s(s(0)) + s(0)) is really s( s(s(0)) + s(0) ).
We have reduced the problem to to the problem of s(s(0) +s(0).
Keep in mind not to forget the "s ( .... )" above. (***!!!***)
By the second axiom again: s(s(0) + s(0) is, with x = s(s(0)) and y =
0: s( s(s(0)) + 0).
But by the *first* axiom (with x = s(s(0))), s(s(0)) + 0 = s(s(0)).
So s( s(s(0)) + 0) = s(s(s(0))). (substitution of identical).
Keeping in mind the "s" (cf (***!!!***)). , this gives s(s(s(s(0)))).
Et voilà.
If you can find a simpler theory of everything. (given that, like
Everett for QM, it explains how its internal relative interpretations
emerge, once you "add the epistemology" (mainly the induction formula
(A(0) & For all x: A(x) -> A(s(x))) -> For all x: A(x)). This gives
Löbianity and the non trivial 'theologies'.
Bruno
(*) Here I assume you and me are not zombies, if this needs to be
said. Cf Tolerus.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Jason Resch
Numbers can just exist, and this is the last unsolvable mystery. Yet
>
> But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
> can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
we can explain (assuming comp) why this mystery is absolutely
unsolvable. It is not possible to explain numbers without assuming
numbers (or combinators, etc.)
Matter cannot exists primitively, but can exist as appearance for some
numbers, and those appearance obeys laws, reducible to the math of
universal numbers.
Consciousness also, but is more fundamental than matter: NUMBER =>
CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER, is the probable "causal" (in some precise
number theoretical sense) relation.
(probably even NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER => HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS => HUMAN NUMBERS). Here the last two steps would explain
why we don't accept easily (intuitively) the origin).
>Again, here we can explain why we cannot explain this. Like we can
> Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they
> do?
explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in
Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call
geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the
observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I
thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp
preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for
all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite
close to the unique "one")
benjayk
Nevertheless it may be the case that the things I perceive as bad are
ulitmately not bad at all, even to the contrary. Certainly it is very
unpleasant to have AIDS, but both having AIDS and dying may be a good tool
for your own development and thus a tool for the "good".
As I wrote before I had times that I had the thought I was destined to be in
hell (on a N2O trip) and I was quite depressive for a few years in my
life... I certainly didn't believe that the world was very good then.
But in retrospection I have to disagree (even though I still am very far
from feeling this at all times). All the bad feelings passed and were
relatively meaningless, so how could I complain?
Probably "perfect" is the wrong word, because it may suggest that there is
nothing bad about it. Obviously there is. But I really think that there is
nothing *ultimately* bad about it, because every bad things "wants" to get
rid of itself. So I find it plausible bad things are impermanent and thus
are just a tool to get us to the "good". They are bad, but they are good
too. And the good prevails, I think, as it is potentially eternal.
What I really wanted to express, and it probably didn't get across, is that
"reality" could be perfect in the sense it is ultimately better than all
your expectations and imaginations and thus ultimately there is simply no
reason to say: "I don't want 'truth' or reality to exists" and THAT may be
the ultimate reason. It is the argument that swallows all counterarguments
by sheer goodness.
If reality wouldn't be that way all beings would want to try to escape
reality/truth, not only temporarily, but forever. But then how could it be
called reality or "the truth"? If every one tried to escape truth
ultimately, the consensus truth would start to be not the "real" truth...
But then what could define the real truth? How could subjective truth and
objective truth diverge without making truth meaningless?
Brent Meeker-2 wrote:
>
>> I agree here. But I would add that conciousness can conceivably make
>> independent sense for me, while numbers or matter can't.
>>
>> For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of
>> matter,
>> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
>> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
>>
> But can you conceive of a meaning for 10 930 702 499?
many of 'bytes' that I should consider moving the file to my external drive,
in order to save space, except the file is important". It is true that the
number 14 233 744 161 could have the same meaning, so for me this number has
no "special" meaning. But I didn't say every number has to have a special
meaning (for me) in any context.
Brent Meeker-2 wrote:
>
>> Maybe "what really exists" is not a meaningful thing to ask in first
>> place,
>> because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be expressed
>> with
>> words. So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
>>
> But we can ask for true descriptions about it. Isn't it true that you
> are reading a computer screen? Of course we can't be sure about this,
> but we don't have to give up betting on it.
descriptions of something, no matter whether it "REALLY REALLY" exist. I
think my computer screen does really exist, but not in the ultimate sense of
"really really" existing (that is independently of everything else), which I
was referring to. After all I could destroy my screen and than it would not
exist "so much".
Personally I am sure that my computer screen exists, because I see it, I am
just not sure about what that could mean beyond what it means for me (or if
it exists beyond me), I am not sure about its "real" meaning.
I meant that the word "existing" is relative (as becomes clear in our
apparent missunderstanding) and so to ask for "really existing" in the sense
of absolute existance is not meaningful.
That is not to say there is/are no absolute existing "thing(s)", but I don't
now what this absolute could mean "absolutely" and I think it is futile to
want a answer you can put in words.
Brent Meeker-2 wrote:
>
>> Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially with
>> regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers from
>> them.
>>
> What do you propose - that we remain silent as mystics? Or do think
> mathematical words are different and we should take "2" and "successor"
> more seriously than "chair" and "dog"?
questions. They help to find the answers to these questions only in so far
as they show their own deficiency. We can talk about them and it may be
useful to talk about them, but only to find an answer in so far that there
is none to find (in words) . Probably this is a bit of a Zen-position ;).
I think we should take words more serious that have a stable and
intersubjectively concurrent meaning for us and that are practical to use
and we should take words less serious that are fuzzy and theoretic. Words
that we IMO can take quite serious are words like "Window", "T-Shirt",
"Zebra" as opposed to "reality", "succesor", "love"... I think if we use
reality (in a philosophic context) as a serious word we miss the point of
reality: That it is nothing serious and fixed, but something playful and
funny!
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26737504.html
Bruno Marchal
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 4:17 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:Numbers can just exist, and this is the last unsolvable mystery. Yet
>
> But if numbers can "just exist", and matter can "just exist", then why
> can't conscious experiences "just exist"?
we can explain (assuming comp) why this mystery is absolutely
unsolvable. It is not possible to explain numbers without assuming
numbers (or combinators, etc.)
Matter cannot exists primitively, but can exist as appearance for some
numbers, and those appearance obeys laws, reducible to the math of
universal numbers.
Consciousness also, but is more fundamental than matter: NUMBER =>
CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER, is the probable "causal" (in some precise
number theoretical sense) relation.
(probably even NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER => HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS => HUMAN NUMBERS). Here the last two steps would explain
why we don't accept easily (intuitively) the origin).
That is interesting, why would you say NUMBER => CONCIOUSNESS => MATTER is more probable than NUMBER => MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS? Is it related to Boltzmann's theory of independent brains being more probable than whole universes?
To your second point, about NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER => HUMANCONSCIOUSNESS => HUMAN NUMBERS, what is the purpose/role of the consciousness step prior to matter? How does consciousness support matter that supports human consciousness?
>Again, here we can explain why we cannot explain this. Like we can
> Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they
> do?
explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in
Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call
geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the
observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I
thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp
preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for
all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite
close to the unique "one")
That is very interesting, what do you mean by those close to the unique one? Would these be observers which appear early on in the Dovetailer Algorithm?
benjayk
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 10 Dec 2009, at 03:23, benjayk wrote:
>
>> For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of
>> matter,
>> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
>> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
>
>
>
> Then all physical theories are circular, and explains nothing. All
> theories in physics presuppose arithmetical truth (and even analytical
> truth, but this is just to simplify the derivations).
presumed to be true (and meaningful), and in that the theory is just correct
if the reasoning is correct, which can never be proven.
Basically it just comes down to whether you like or accept the reasoning and
the axioms.
Theories and science are just a tool.
You may feel that some "too circular" theories don't explain anything, but
you can only say they don't explain anything to you.
Honestly I think you are a bit dishonest to yourself here, since you already
presume the appearance of matter, unless you can make theories about numbers
without perceiving anything, which I doubt. When you do abstract math you
nevertheless work with matter, that is, word written on paper or on a
computer screen. So either you can indeed make sense of a circular theory or
you have to agree that no theory explains anything (or you manage to
manipulate numbers without having the experience of perceiving matter). Or I
missed your point.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Of course, the human conception of the numbers depends on the human
> conception of his neighborhood and life, but when searching a TOE we
> have to agree on the simplest objects (ontology) from which we derive
> the others (phenomenology).
from the "fundamental" numbers? Basically just that they need to be
phenomena and that they are not expressible in terms of something else. But
this for me has little to do with what the phenomena *are*. It's like a
theory saying: "There is something, but don't aks me what it is."
And I don't see what's especially simple about numbers. For me they are more
complex than many everyday
objects, because they rely on dualistic notions like classical logic and an
absolute inequality of something (1 is absolutely not 2).
Indeed the theory of natural numbers may be the simplest formal system, but
I am reluctant to see formal systems as "real" objects.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> So numbers don't give rise to arithmetical truth,
>
> You need addition, multiplication and classical logic.
that addition and multiplication are meaningful (you presume classical
logic).
So if anything numbers give rise to an expression of truth in terms of your
systematization of it. Not too suprising.
This only works if you like numbers especially much and they help you
understand truth. One could as well deny that addition is meaningful without
context (eg because two rainddrops melt into one: 1+1=1)...
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> but truth gives rise to
>> (expresses as) numbers.
>
> Which truth. What do you mean by 'truth' here?
would probably be impossible). What is arithmetical truth? According to
tarski you can't tell me, either.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Maybe "what really exists" is not a meaningful thing to ask in first
>> place,
>> because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be
>> expressed with
>> words.
>
> Why? This is like asserting there is no TOE, before searching.
for me.
Searching it for me feels like searching something that is not there (it
feels *bad*).
Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything a
theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to
everything, since the more you trascend a theory the "bigger" the
possibilities get):
The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or incomplete (we
have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already made the
quest for the "complete" theory meaningless.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> But
> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including its
> non definability
theory explains something, it needs an definition of it, or it only explains
that it doesn't explain that which it doesn't defines, except *that*.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> , and matter, including both its computational and non
> computational aspects.
forth. Elementary arithmetics cannot do that. So no, it doesn't explain
matter for me.
Maybe it does explain that you cannot reduce experience of matter and maybe
it can explain measurable features about it; I don't know. But it certainly
doesn't explain the (for me) fundamental thing about matter, namely that it
feels how it feels to interact with it.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study the
> existing explanation?
and you need to trascend words in order to get a better explanation. You
could say as well: The best explanation of anything is to experience (and if
you want to, try to understand it or to explain it in terms of another
experience), not to reduce the experience to anything else.
Another try: The only ultimate explanation for everything is that everything
is the ultimate explanation. Or that there is no divorce between explanation
for reality/everything and reality itself - they are the same! After all,
*what could* explain everything, except itself :D? It's acknowledging that
circularity is valid, though not useful in all expressions and contexts.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
>
> It is up to you to show the question cannot answered at all, and for
> this you need a theory.
question (ultimate *for you*) is not to be found in words (since words only
appear *in* your experience, which I take as meaning that experience is more
ultimate than words) so any theory is superfluous in that matter.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially with
>> regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers
>> from
>> them.
>
> This is giving up research. Of course, you can always do that.
words.
Personally I think research always starts in experience and words are for
conveying some part of what you experienced to someone else. But since we
don't know what our words exactly mean to someone else we better don't take
them too serious.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Nevertheless, to invoke a vague theory or philosophy to dismiss
> automatically the theories bring by others will not help to progress.
which I think is better than a vague theory that claims to be precise. And
on fundamental matters, all theories are vague for us, otherwise we would be
able to comprehend everything at once - I have yet to meet a person who
understands everything. COMP is very vague for me, because in order for it
to be clear, you would need to understand what numbers are. But this is
probably impossible, since they are already infinitely complex.
I think your way of thinking (in this paragraph, not neccesarily in general
;-)) is somewhat dangerous, because it leads to pseuodo-precision and
pseudo-control. From wanting to be clearer than you can (or others can
understand), dangerous things like authorative religion and states (in the
form of various repressive systems / ...cracys like democracy) emerge.
I am *not* against making clear theories. I'm against acting like having a
clear theory, when actually the theory makes nothing clear for most people.
And all theories regarding fundamental things make very little clear, which
shows itself in the theory making no realistically testable predictions and
in having no practical application (like string theory).
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26759867.html
Rex Allen
>> it's ultimately all in the mind of the beholder.
>
> The representation must account for the observation.
representation account for the observation? Do you mean that "what is
observed must account for the observation"? If so, virtual realities
and dreams would violate this rule, right?
> If not you can slip into solipsism.
that seems open to the accusation of solipsism, "...and if I exist, it
seems reasonable to assume that others do as well. Why would I be the
only one?"
Viola! Solipsism avoided, right?
I think you're rather too free with the term "solipsism".
So it occurs to me that in physicalism or in your proposal, our
experience of the world is an internal aspect of consciousness.
When I say, "I know my brother," I'm not saying that I know how he
"really is". I'm saying that I know my internal model of my brother.
There are many aspects of my brother's internal life and personality
that I do not know. We build a model of the world, which is updated
for us by our sensory processing apparatus, and this model is what we
know...our own little virtual reality.
We are all "alone in our heads". Certainly if physicalism is correct.
If you're correct, then we might could change this to: "We are all
alone in our algorithms," or something.
>>
>> Why do my conscious experiences have the particular contents that they
>> do?
>
> Again, here we can explain why we cannot explain this. Like we can
> explain that no one can explain why it has been reconstituted in
> Washington and not in Moscow (or vice-versa). This is what we can call
> geography/history, by opposition to physics which studies laws (of the
> observable by universal machine). Laws are universal. In my youth I
> thought that physics was a sort of geography. Now I know that comp
> preserve a big body of physical laws. The multiverse is the same for
> all observers, (machine and non machine, really, except those 'quite
> close to the unique "one")
realities, not to mention dreams and hallucinations, would indicate
that you are mistaken on this point.
If I can dream some of the time, why would there not be a set of
conscious experiences somewhere in the infinity of relations between
the numbers that constitute someone who lives in a dream that never
ends?
If I could write a computer simulation of a brain, and install it in a
virtual reality to live out it's life in a virtual world that operates
by a strange alternate set of laws, why would this set of experiences
not also show up one of the programs generated by the universal
dovetailer?
Note that in either case, what is observed by that consciousness would
probably not be sufficient to allow them to account for their
observations.
>
>
>> Again, I'd ask the same question for any other ontological
>> theory. Why did the universe have the particular initial conditions
>> and governing laws that it did, which lead to our present experiences?
>> It just did. There's no explanation for that (again, at least none
>> that doesn't depend on some other unexplained event).
>>
>> But, again, there seems to be no way to know for certain what *really*
>> exists, a la Kant.
>
> If you believe that the primality of 17 does not depend on you, then
> you can explain why matter and consciousness is an unavoidable
> consequence of + and *.
follows the same rules of inference would conclude that 17 is prime.
But the concepts of 17 and prime do not exist independently of
context. I'll go with Meeker on this one: "Mathematics is just
precise expression and inference to avoid contradiction."
> I diagnostic you have still some some trouble grasping completely the
> 7th and 8th step of UDA, to be frank. It is OK, take it easy.
that they are the source of conscious experience.
Again, it seems very plausible that what I experience can be
represented by physical objects (electrons moving through silicon and
copper) or numbers. And by developing an algorithm that adjusts these
representations in the right way you can ALSO represent how my
experience changes over time.
But I don't see WHY doing so would produce first person conscious
experience. And so I reject it as an explanation for conscious
experience.
Rex Allen
>
> On 09 Dec 2009, at 20:51, Rex Allen wrote:
>
>> We "see" evolution...but it only
>> exists in our minds, as a tool for our understanding. It's not
>> something that exists "in the world". Again, taking the physicalist
>> view.
>
> We see "space, time, and energy", but it only exists in our minds ...
> Actually, we don't see those things. Physicists share only number
> relations, and we lived uncommunicable qualia.
concepts are ineffable, and unless both parties in the conversation
have the same set of fundamental concepts, then nothing that derives
from those building blocks can be discussed.
So it's not the case that there's something special about the
ineffability of qualia. What makes them ineffable is the fact that
they are fundamental. They can't be expressed in terms of anything
else. So, if you don't already have knowledge of them, gained from
experience, then I can't communicate with you about them.
For instance, my brother and I can use the fundamental concept of red
in our conversations because we both know what red is. We both have
experience of red. So when he talks about red sunsets, and red apples,
and red cars, I have a good idea of what he means. We have yet to
encounter difficulties due to a difference of understanding about red.
However, I cannot communicate clearly with my color-blind cousin about
red, because he has no experience of red. So I know that when we
discuss red sunsets, we are not communicating with perfect mutual
understanding.
The limits of language in this regard has nothing to do with the
nature of experience, or consciousness. The problem is that
fundamental concepts can't be described in terms of other things...if
they could be, then by definition they wouldn't be fundamental.
Fundamental things can only be pointed at...and if you can't see what
I'm pointing at, then we can't really talk about it.
Bruno Marchal
On 12 Dec 2009, at 19:11, benjayk wrote:
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 10 Dec 2009, at 03:23, benjayk wrote:
>>
>>> For me numbers don't make independent sense of the appearance (!) of
>>> matter,
>>> too. Since I cannot conceive of any meaning of the number 2 without
>>> reffering to some "real" (in the sense of every day usage) object.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then all physical theories are circular, and explains nothing. All
>> theories in physics presuppose arithmetical truth (and even
>> analytical
>> truth, but this is just to simplify the derivations).
> Well every theory is circular in that there are always axiom(s) that
> are
> presumed to be true (and meaningful), and in that the theory is just
> correct
> if the reasoning is correct, which can never be proven.
>
> Basically it just comes down to whether you like or accept the
> reasoning and
> the axioms.
> Theories and science are just a tool.
managed very well the circularity.
>
> You may feel that some "too circular" theories don't explain
> anything, but
> you can only say they don't explain anything to you.
> Honestly I think you are a bit dishonest to yourself here, since you
> already
> presume the appearance of matter,
If not, I would not post message on a list.
> unless you can make theories about numbers
> without perceiving anything, which I doubt.
concept. All scientists agrees on numbers, and to day we can explain
in a precise sense why numbers is the least we have to assume.
> When you do abstract math you
> nevertheless work with matter, that is, word written on paper or on a
> computer screen. So either you can indeed make sense of a circular
> theory
explain this through the second recursion theorem of Kleene. The whole
AUDA things is based almost exclusively based on that handling of
circularity, which makes the self-reference possible, for machine, and
relatively to universal machine(s).
> or
> you have to agree that no theory explains anything (or you manage to
> manipulate numbers without having the experience of perceiving
> matter). Or I
> missed your point.
have a better understanding.
Also, my point in not a new theory, a new theorem. If we are machine,
then matter becomes a complete mystery which has to be explained from
the numbers (UDA). The theorem is in the "has to". Then it happens to
the derivation has been partially done (AUDA).
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Of course, the human conception of the numbers depends on the human
>> conception of his neighborhood and life, but when searching a TOE we
>> have to agree on the simplest objects (ontology) from which we derive
>> the others (phenomenology).
> For me this is not meaningful. What kind of phenomology could be
> derived
> from the "fundamental" numbers?
phenomenologies corresponds to the hypostases, + intelligible and
sensible matter.
from the numbers (+ comp) we can explain the non communicability of
consciousness, its local undoubtability, how "primitive matter"
emerges and leads to first plural quantum-like indeterminacies, etc.
> Basically just that they need to be
> phenomena and that they are not expressible in terms of something
> else. But
> this for me has little to do with what the phenomena *are*.
> theory saying: "There is something, but don't aks me what it is."
explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it. All this in a
way which is sufficiently detailed as to be tested experimentally.
Strictly speaking it is not my theory, it is the universal machines'
theory.
It is a theology because it makes clear the part of the phenomenology
which is sharable, and the part which is unsharable, except by
projections, betting, hoping, fearing, praying, etc.
The trick is that a Löbian machine can study the theology of the
correct machine without knowing if itself is correct, and so without
knowing if the theology (toy theology if you want) apply to iself.
> And I don't see what's especially simple about numbers. For me they
> are more
> complex than many everyday
> objects, because they rely on dualistic notions like classical logic
> and an
> absolute inequality of something (1 is absolutely not 2).
ability to repeat action, like taking the successor. Empirically, this
is grasped by children, and elementary arithmetic is virtually a
subtheory of all scientific theories, and explictly so for theories
which happens to be Turing universal.
>
> Indeed the theory of natural numbers may be the simplest formal
> system, but
> I am reluctant to see formal systems as "real" objects.
formal theory of elementary arithmetic.
After Gödel, we know that our theories, be it PA or ZF, only scratch
the surface of Arithmetical truth.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> So numbers don't give rise to arithmetical truth,
>>
>> You need addition, multiplication and classical logic.
> But this only works because you presume it leads to some kind of truth
relatively to the universal machine z output r", etc.
> and
> that addition and multiplication are meaningful (you presume classical
> logic).
> So if anything numbers give rise to an expression of truth in terms
> of your
> systematization of it. Not too suprising.
> This only works if you like numbers especially much and they help you
> understand truth.
can be used in the place of elementary arithmetic. I use elementary
arithmetic because it is taught in elementary schools, and no one have
any serious definition problems with them. It belongs also to the
common part of the intuitionists and the classical logicians.
> One could as well deny that addition is meaningful without
> context (eg because two rainddrops melt into one: 1+1=1)...
integers, real numbers, according to the context, but we make this
precise at times). In the comp context, can replace number by "java
program", or "fortran program", or "combinators". It is possible (even
highly plausible) that some universal systems "reappear locally" more
often than others. Numbers seems to be both simplest, and to have rich
extensional properties. No doubt that I like them. But as logicians
interested in what is a computation, combinators are more useful.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> but truth gives rise to
>>> (expresses as) numbers.
>>
>> Which truth. What do you mean by 'truth' here?
> I don't know (well I do know in some ways, but expressing them
> adequatly
> would probably be impossible). What is arithmetical truth? According
> to
> tarski you can't tell me, either.
Tarski theorem does not make sense without logic and elementary
arithmetic. So this is part of your theory too?
But then Tarski theorem just shows this. No theory or machine can
express its truth predicate. But a theory like ZF can easily express
the truth predicate (indeed the whole theology) of a smaller machine
(smaller in term of provability ability) like PA.
Arithmetical truth is the simplest notion of truth in the whole field
of mathematical logic.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe "what really exists" is not a meaningful thing to ask in first
>>> place,
>>> because if something "really" exists, it certainly cannot be
>>> expressed with
>>> words.
>>
>> Why? This is like asserting there is no TOE, before searching.
> I cannot search a theory of everything, because it is a meaningless
> notion
> for me.
"understand everything" makes no sense, but then an hypothesis like
"we are machine" appears to explain in a more precise sense than usual
why indeed the search of a t"theory of everything" leads to
interesting, partially sharable, experience. Universal machine do have
interesting relation with many non effective (non machine entities),
including truth indeed.
Personally, by TOE I mean a theory which unifies all the forces of
nature, if that exists, with an explanation of the subjective data (No
elimination of consciousness). And my point is a logician's point: "if
you belief in mechanism and are a bot rational (or self-honest) , then
you will belief that physics is a branch of computer science/number
theory.
> Searching it for me feels like searching something that is not there
> (it
> feels *bad*).
theory of what universal machines, or numbers, can do and not do.
But that is the reason to become aware that about numbers and machine,
we know nothing, and the hypothesis that we are machine, makes physics
a concrete sum on all computations and this has observable consequences.
We are just trying to understand what happens. don't confuse the
search of a theory of everything, with any normative or authoritative
theology.
If you don't search for a theory of everything, you will adopt the
current one. A brain is already a (failed) attempt toward a theory of
everything. Searching *that* is what universal machines do. There is
no problem with admitting that the word "everything" can have an
evolving meaning in most terrestrial or effective context.
>
> Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything a
> theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to
> everything, since the more you trascend a theory the "bigger" the
> possibilities get):
> The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or
> incomplete (we
> have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already
> made the
> quest for the "complete" theory meaningless.
incomplete.
And it is a direct consequence of Church thesis. Once you grasp the
concept of universal number or machine, you understand that truth,
even on just machines and numbers, is not completely axiomatisable.
But that is a reason to be humble in front of arithmetical truth. Not
a reason to dismiss it. It kicks back a lot.
Also, if you mention Gödel, it means you accept elementary arithmetic.
My logical point is that if you believe you (can) surivive with a
digital *body*, then elementary arithmetic has to be enough. WE have
too extract the SWE, and other appearances from that. It is a point in
(applied) logic, if you want.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> But
>> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including its
>> non definability
> That's funny, because this is little more than empty words for me.
> If your
> theory explains something, it needs an definition of it, or it only
> explains
> that it doesn't explain that which it doesn't defines, except *that*.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> , and matter, including both its computational and non
>> computational aspects.
> For me matter is explained by the fact that it is touchable,
> seeable, and so
> forth. Elementary arithmetics cannot do that. So no, it doesn't
> explain
> matter for me.
> Maybe it does explain that you cannot reduce experience of matter
> and maybe
> it can explain measurable features about it; I don't know. But it
> certainly
> doesn't explain the (for me) fundamental thing about matter, namely
> that it
> feels how it feels to interact with it.
matter (physicists) are known to put the "feeling" aspect under the
rug. The rationalist put it under the rug of mechanism, and then I
explain why this does not work.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study the
>> existing explanation?
> My "explanation" is that every explanation in words is suboptimal/
> incomplete
> and you need to trascend words in order to get a better explanation.
are machine). On the five hypostases, three of them are duplicated
into the prouvable/non prouvable but true parts, and two of them
separates the expressible from the non expressible.
This is AUDA, and is part of mathematical logic and computer science.
> You
> could say as well: The best explanation of anything is to experience
> (and if
> you want to, try to understand it or to explain it in terms of another
> experience), not to reduce the experience to anything else.
mind).
> Another try: The only ultimate explanation for everything is that
> everything
> is the ultimate explanation. Or that there is no divorce between
> explanation
> for reality/everything and reality itself - they are the same! After
> all,
> *what could* explain everything, except itself :D? It's
> acknowledging that
> circularity is valid, though not useful in all expressions and
> contexts.
don't like your religion which seems to imply our quest is vain, right
at the start; which is ridiculous compared to what we a have already
discovered.
You are a bit dogmatic. Humans cannot fly, so all attempts to do so is
necessarily ridiculous.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
>>
>> It is up to you to show the question cannot answered at all, and for
>> this you need a theory.
> No I don't. You already see in front of you that the answer to any
> ultimate
> question (ultimate *for you*) is not to be found in words (since
> words only
> appear *in* your experience, which I take as meaning that experience
> is more
> ultimate than words) so any theory is superfluous in that matter.
through words. The nice point with the computational hypothesis is
that itv explains exactly that, why, if we are machine, we are
confronted to the non expressible, the non provable, the non
computable, necessarily. I explain why universal machine get both
mystical and rational at the same time.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> Probably we generally should take words less serious (especially
>>> with
>>> regards to fundamental questions) and expect no satisfying answers
>>> from
>>> them.
>>
>> This is giving up research. Of course, you can always do that.
> It is very unfortunate that you think you can only research in terms
> of
> words.
for the machines.
And my craving for consciousness has made me studying all the possible
consciousness state we can get through medication, sleep and drugs,
which provides perspective on consciousness, but most of the time of
the "beyond words" type. Note that consciousness itself, although not
doubtable, is already "beyond word". I just bet you know what I mean
(that is , that you are not a zombie).
> Personally I think research always starts in experience and words
> are for
> conveying some part of what you experienced to someone else.
some acknowledgment on that fact.
Do you think it is possible that we are machine, (that we can survive
with an artificial brain) and if so, have you understand that it
entails a reversal between physics and number theory (or combinator, C+
+; whatever).
You may, just for he fun, try to find an error. It is a deductive
thought experience (a proof in applied logic).
> But since we
> don't know what our words exactly mean to someone else we better
> don't take
> them too serious.
the most precise as possible. Only then are we able to discover the
inconsistency of our ideas, and progress.
You can also be happy in the contemplation, and each one has some
favorite path. In my job, and on this list I have chosen the
"scientific" path, by which I mean clear hypotheses, clear
consequences, clear testing, and things like that.
The subject matter is difficult and interdisciplinary. And apparently
we may be wrong on the most fundamental theory of everything
"theology" since 1500 years. So, no doubt all this asks for work.
To defend the idea that we cannot proceed with the scientific attitude
in theology or TOE researchs, consists to abandon theology to those
who does not apply the scientific attitude (the non rationalist).
(I define theology as the quest for truth, like Plato. Then science,
in the comp frame, can be shown to be the main tool of theology).
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Nevertheless, to invoke a vague theory or philosophy to dismiss
>> automatically the theories bring by others will not help to progress.
> I disagree. An openly vague theory at least doesn't claim to be
> precise,
> which I think is better than a vague theory that claims to be precise.
mechanism.
> And
> on fundamental matters, all theories are vague for us, otherwise we
> would be
> able to comprehend everything at once -
> I have yet to meet a person who
> understands everything. COMP is very vague for me, because in order
> for it
> to be clear, you would need to understand what numbers are. But this
> is
> probably impossible, since they are already infinitely complex.
That is how physicists succeed in building their theories, they does
not tergiversate on elementary arithmetical truth.
Then numbers theorists and computer scientist, for different but
related reasons, shows that numbers can have very complex behavior,
but that is a quality for explaining new things.
>
> I think your way of thinking (in this paragraph, not neccesarily in
> general
> ;-)) is somewhat dangerous, because it leads to pseuodo-precision and
> pseudo-control.
seems only insulting.
The partialness is guarantied for infinity! It is the key vaccine
against authoritative arguments.
> From wanting to be clearer than you can (or others can
> understand), dangerous things like authorative religion and states
> (in the
> form of various repressive systems / ...cracys like democracy) emerge.
obviously democracies are not immune against many form of "humans
taste of authoritative argument weakness" in many democratic sub-
institution (Democracies can be rotten, like the human body can have
tumors).
I think you have not read well my posts or papers, because I show that
computationalism prevents the authoritative argument everywhere in
science, and this including theology (and that is new, since at least
1500 years).
> I am *not* against making clear theories. I'm against acting like
> having a
> clear theory, when actually the theory makes nothing clear for most
> people.
very new for some Aristotelian, and the theory, which is the clearest
of all theories (and actually believed by most rationalist,
unfortunately in company of a less clearer theory (materialism).
But if you really think that comp is unclear, just ask precision. It
is the usual manner to proceed.
> And all theories regarding fundamental things make very little
> clear, which
> shows itself in the theory making no realistically testable
> predictions and
> in having no practical application (like string theory).
experimental predictions. The case of "String theory" is another topic.
It seems to me you have not yet understood the argument, nor seem
really interested in doing so. Try to be more cautious in the
expressions when you talk about something you have (clearly) not
studied.
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Jason Resch
>> Though in another way I think we already have a theory of everything aGödel showed that all theories on *numbers* are contradictory of
> theory can explain *ultimately* (which is *not even remotely* close to
> everything, since the more you trascend a theory the "bigger" the
> possibilities get):
> The theory is that all theories are either contradictory or
> incomplete (we
> have to go beyond theories to access truth). I think Gödel already
> made the
> quest for the "complete" theory meaningless.
incomplete.
And it is a direct consequence of Church thesis. Once you grasp the
concept of universal number or machine, you understand that truth,
even on just machines and numbers, is not completely axiomatisable.
But that is a reason to be humble in front of arithmetical truth. Not
a reason to dismiss it. It kicks back a lot.
Also, if you mention Gödel, it means you accept elementary arithmetic.
My logical point is that if you believe you (can) surivive with a
digital *body*, then elementary arithmetic has to be enough. WE have
too extract the SWE, and other appearances from that. It is a point in
(applied) logic, if you want.
Bruno Marchal
On 13 Dec 2009, at 16:40, Rex Allen wrote:
>>
>> I diagnostic you have still some some trouble grasping completely the
>> 7th and 8th step of UDA, to be frank. It is OK, take it easy.
>
> Well, I think I grasp those points. I just don't think that they show
> that they are the source of conscious experience.
>
> Again, it seems very plausible that what I experience can be
> represented by physical objects (electrons moving through silicon and
> copper) or numbers. And by developing an algorithm that adjusts these
> representations in the right way you can ALSO represent how my
> experience changes over time.
>
> But I don't see WHY doing so would produce first person conscious
> experience. And so I reject it as an explanation for conscious
> experience.
and quantum physics, and computer science, I would say that there are
some clues that comp is true, but there are many remaining problems,
and even clues that it may be false.
All my point is that if we make the Digital Mechanist hypothesis (DM =
comp), then the mind body problem is two times more difficult than
materialist are thinking. Indeed with DM, we have to explain how
matter arise from numbers, not just mind.
Then computer science gives, by itself, through universal machine self-
reference, a theory of mind, which explains rather well the difference
between qualia and quanta. But this needs AUDA, and, although you
don't need DM, you need an open mindness for the "strong AI " thesis,
for the idea that a machine can think. This may be true, and yet comp
is false.
My goal was in showing that comp, which an hypothesis in philosophy of
mind/theology, is refutable empirically, and thus is amenable to the
scientific study. That's all.
I dunno if comp is true or not. I don't even know if I should hope of
fear it. It is too complex for that.
What I do believe (prove), is that comp + weak materialism is
inconsistent.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Bruno Marchal
Rex Allen
> Rex Allen wrote:
>> I'm thinking of something
>> similar to the symbol grounding problem:
>>
>> "The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words
>> (symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning
>> itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the
>> problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are
>> meaningful. According to a widely held theory of cognition,
>> "computationalism," cognition (i.e., thinking) is just a form of
>> computation. But computation in turn is just formal symbol
>> manipulation: symbols are manipulated according to rules that are
>> based on the symbols' shapes, not their meanings. How are those
>> symbols (e.g., the words in our heads) connected to the things they
>> refer to?"
>>
>
> This question seems like a conundrum generated by abstracting symbols
> out their context of communication and action and then being surprised
> that you can't say what they communicate or what action they will elicit.
the images in my head. Or more generally yet, the thoughts in my head
which are "about things" out in the world.
You make the point that these taking these out of the context of
communication and action is what generates the conundrum.
But with respect to consciousness it's not clear to me that context
should matter.
So let's go to a Boltzmann Brain scenario. In far distant future, the
de Sitter radiation being emitted from the cosmological horizon just
happens to come together in a extremely improbable but not impossible
configuration that is functionally isomorphic to a computer containing
the simulation of a brain, plus a set of lookup tables (keyed by time
slice) storing 70 years worth of sensory data.
The lookup tables don't contain a virtual world, instead (by complete
chance) the tables contain values that match the output that a
computer simulation of a virtual world WOULD produce if such an
environmental simulation were executed in tandem with the simulated
brain.
So. Extremely unlikely. But not obviously impossible. Which means
that given enough time, it's probably inevitable.
So would this physical system experience consciousness? Would the
person being simulated have "meaningful thoughts", even though it
existed outside of any meaningful context?
>> Evolution isn't a fundamental law, right? There is no "evolution
>> field" or particle. Evolution doesn't "select" anything. Evolution
>> has no causal power.
>>
>
> It's true it's a description and as such has no causal power - but
> neither do any of the "laws of physics".
*approximate* something that actually exists out in the world?
In the case of a universe where there really is no reason for the
distribution of matter and events in 4-D space-time, then the laws of
physics are indeed JUST a description of the way things seem to us as
conscious observers. They are not an approximation of anything that
actually exists, and so in that case I agree that they have no causal
power.
>> Again, assuming reductive physicalism, the initial state of the
>> universe and the fundamental laws of physics (which may or may not
>> have some sort of random aspect) completely determines what animals we
>> observe in the present.
>
> If there is some randomness, then the initial state + laws of physics do
> NOT completely determine the present.
>
rolled add to an odd value I will do A, but if they add to even value
I will do B".
In this case, whether I do A or B is completely determined by the
random outcome of the quantum dice, right? Well...that random outcome
plus whatever "caused" me to entrust my fate to those dice in the
first place.
So randomness is fundamental...it doesn't reduce to anything else. So
I don't think that I've gone wrong by saying that if the physical laws
have a random aspect, then they (plus the initial state of the
universe) completely determine what happens.
> More philosophical scientists don't assume their
> theories indicate what's really real.
to me that Kant makes a good argument that we probably can't know
anything about the underlying nature of reality. It seems to hold up
pretty well even after 200+ years. What we know are phenomena, with
knowledge of the underlying noumena being beyond our reach.
Quoting (http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5g.htm):
"Having seen Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories as pure
concepts of the understanding applicable a priori to every possible
experience, we might naturally wish to ask the further question
whether these regulative principles are really true. Are there
substances? Does every event have a cause? Do all things interact?
Given that we must suppose them in order to have any experience, do
they obtain in the world itself? To these further questions, Kant
firmly refused to offer any answer.
According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the
distinct realms of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena are the
appearances, which constitute the our experience; noumena are the
(presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our
synthetic a priori judgments apply only to the phenomenal realm, not
the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can
experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our
concepts onto the objects of our knowledge.) Since the thing in itself
(Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our
experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm.
Thus, on Kant's view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the
truths of mathematics, are knowable precisely because they make no
effort to describe the world as it really is but rather prescribe the
structure of the world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms
of sensible intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding, we
achieve a systematic view of the phenomenal realm but learn nothing of
the noumenal realm. Math and science are certainly true of the
phenomena; only metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena.
[...]
The Psychological Idea is the concept of the soul as a permanent
substance which lives forever. It is entirely natural to reason (as in
Descartes's cogito) from knowledge that "I think" to my real existence
as one and the same thinking thing through all time, but Kant held
that our efforts to reach such conclusions are "Paralogisms," with
only illusory validity. It is true that thought presupposes the unity
of apperception and that every change presupposes an underlying
substance, but these rules apply only to the phenomena we experience.
Since substantial unity and immortality are supposed to be noumenal
features of the soul as a thing in itself, Kant held, legitimate a
priori judgments can never prove them, and the effort to transcend in
this case fails.
The Cosmological Idea is the concept of a complete determination of
the nature of the world as it must be constituted in itself. In this
case, Kant held, the difficulty is not that we can conclude too little
but rather that we can prove too much. From the structure of our
experience of the world, it is easy to deduce contradictory particular
claims about reality: finitude vs. infinity; simplicity vs.
complexity; freedom vs. determinism; necessity vs. contingency. These
"Antinomies" of Pure Reason can be avoided only when we recognize that
one or both of the contradictory proofs in each antinomy holds only
for the phenomenal realm. Once again, it is the effort to achieve
transcendental knowledge of noumena that necessarily fails.
[...]
What is possible—indeed, according to Kant what we are bound by our
very nature as rational beings to do—is to think of the noumenal realm
as if the speculative principles were true (whether or not they are).
By the nature of reason itself, we are required to suppose our own
existence as substantial beings, the possibility of our free action in
a world of causal regularity, and the existence of god. The absence of
any formal justification for these notions makes it impossible for us
to claim that we know them to be true, but it can in no way diminish
the depth of our belief that they are.
According to Kant, then, the rational human faculties lead us to the
very boundaries of what can be known, by clarifying the conditions
under which experience of the world as we know it is possible. But
beyond those boundaries our faculties are useless. The shape of the
boundary itself, as evidenced in the Paralogisms and Antinomies,
naturally impels us to postulate that the unknown does indeed have
certain features, but these further speculations are inherently
unjustifiable.
The only legitimate, "scientific" metaphysics that the future may
hold, Kant therefore held, would be a thoroughly critical,
non-speculative examination of the bounds of pure reason, a careful
description of what we can know accompanied by a clear recognition
that our transcendental concepts (however useful they may seem) are
entirely unreliable as guides to the nature of reality. It is this
task, of course, that Kant himself had pursued in the First Critique."
benjayk
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Honestly I think you are a bit dishonest to yourself here, since you
>> already
>> presume the appearance of matter,
>
> I assume nowhere primitive matter. I do assume "consensual reality".
> If not, I would not post message on a list.
Well, that was my point. So indeed numbers don't make sense independent of
that, because
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> unless you can make theories about numbers
>> without perceiving anything, which I doubt.
>
> Humans cannot do that, but this is independent which are simùpler
> concept. All scientists agrees on numbers, and to day we can explain
> in a precise sense why numbers is the least we have to assume.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> When you do abstract math you
>> nevertheless work with matter, that is, word written on paper or on a
>> computer screen. So either you can indeed make sense of a circular
>> theory
>
> Indeed. That is the case. Circularity is fundamental. I will soon
> explain this through the second recursion theorem of Kleene. The whole
> AUDA things is based almost exclusively based on that handling of
> circularity, which makes the self-reference possible, for machine, and
> relatively to universal machine(s).
So we seem to agree actually.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> Of course, the human conception of the numbers depends on the human
>>> conception of his neighborhood and life, but when searching a TOE we
>>> have to agree on the simplest objects (ontology) from which we derive
>>> the others (phenomenology).
>> For me this is not meaningful. What kind of phenomology could be
>> derived
>> from the "fundamental" numbers?
>
> You may read Plotinus, for having an informal idea. The
> phenomenologies corresponds to the hypostases, + intelligible and
> sensible matter.
> from the numbers (+ comp) we can explain the non communicability of
> consciousness, its local undoubtability, how "primitive matter"
> emerges and leads to first plural quantum-like indeterminacies, etc.
What I find difficult to grasp: If conciousness is non communicable how
could we explai
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Basically just that they need to be
>> phenomena and that they are not expressible in terms of something
>> else. But
>> this for me has little to do with what the phenomena *are*.
>
> I don't understand this.
Well every strictly formal theory will just explain you phenomena formally.
But since phenomena are something that trascends formalities, they fail to
explain that which is fundamental to phenomena.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> It's like a
>> theory saying: "There is something, but don't aks me what it is."
>
> You should study the theory, and makes specific remark.
That would lead nowhere, since I don't have anything specific against the
theory. It's just that I think claiming it to explain something fundamental
is missleading; it makes one search fundamental truth where there is none.
Because what is fundamental to everyone is his own experience.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> The theory
> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it.
But then doesn't the "rest" exist, too? I just see a problem with claiming
to explain what exists, when it is really not clear what existance could
mean apart from the relatively meaningful, but vague, every day use.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Searching it for me feels like searching something that is not there
>> (it
>> feels *bad*).
>
> You are right, in the sense that we already know there is no complete
> theory of what universal machines, or numbers, can do and not do.
> But that is the reason to become aware that about numbers and machine,
> we know nothing, and the hypothesis that we are machine, makes physics
> a concrete sum on all computations and this has observable consequences.
>
> We are just trying to understand what happens. don't confuse the
> search of a theory of everything, with any normative or authoritative
> theology.
>
> If you don't search for a theory of everything, you will adopt the
> current one. A brain is already a (failed) attempt toward a theory of
> everything. Searching *that* is what universal machines do. There is
> no problem with admitting that the word "everything" can have an
> evolving meaning in most terrestrial or effective context.
I see where you coming from, but in effect a "theory of everything" is
really just a theory of "something" then. The word "everything" itself has
sort of a absolute connotation, because it doesn't say everything of *WHAT*?
Relativizing it makes clear that the word "everything" is meaningless
without context, though than it is just confusing to still use the word
without context .
Really we only discuss semantics here... I just find "theory of everything"
sounds authorative, because it seems to claim there is nothing else to
explain. Basically that is my only problem with a "theory of everything" -
it is either a confusing name or disingenious,
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> But
>>> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including its
>>> non definability
>> That's funny, because this is little more than empty words for me.
>
> Read the papers. Or ask questions.
I don't what conciousness really is. So in order to to explain it to me, you
would have to define it... But wait, you just said elementary arithmetics
explains it can't defined... What can't be defined? I don't even know what
exactly your referring to!
You seem to assume I already have a clear view of what conciousness is, so
you don't need to define it in order to be meaningful. Indeed you don't have
to, because I very roughly know what conciousness could refer too. But then
your theory is very vague, because the object it seeks to explain is very
vague. Or the theory is clear, but is says: "This theory does not explain
what is vague in this theory." But then you can't claim to have a theory of
fundamental existance or reality or everything.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> , and matter, including both its computational and non
>>> computational aspects.
>> For me matter is explained by the fact that it is touchable,
>> seeable, and so
>> forth. Elementary arithmetics cannot do that. So no, it doesn't
>> explain
>> matter for me.
>
> Hmm... Not yet read UDA I see.
I did read UDA.It explains why we can't both postulate we are machines and
that physics is independent of us (and thus independent of arithmetics), so
materialism (there exists matter and nothing else) is shown to be
meaningless (if we accept COMP).
But I can't touch anything in it, because it is just a text. This already
proves to me it doesn't explain what matter really is to me.
Probably I do not fully agree with axiom number 3, because it claims numbers
to be independent of me and you, while I don't even understand what me
really is and what the difference between me and you is - and whether it is
an absolute or relative difference. How could I then postulate numbers are
independent of something so vague (yet obviously important)? After all, some
kind of "me" seems to exists everywhere numbers are understood, so it seems
to be unreasonable to postulate their independent existance.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study the
>>> existing explanation?
>> My "explanation" is that every explanation in words is suboptimal/
>> incomplete
>> and you need to trascend words in order to get a better explanation.
>
> But this is a "theorem" in "my theory/conjecture/hypothesis" (that we
> are machine).
But then "your" theory is not a TOE at all, because it itself admits it
doesn't explain everything. :wistle:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Another try: The only ultimate explanation for everything is that
>> everything
>> is the ultimate explanation. Or that there is no divorce between
>> explanation
>> for reality/everything and reality itself - they are the same! After
>> all,
>> *what could* explain everything, except itself :D? It's
>> acknowledging that
>> circularity is valid, though not useful in all expressions and
>> contexts.
>
>
> That's cute, but we are trying to do a bit of science here. And I
> don't like your religion which seems to imply our quest is vain, right
> at the start; which is ridiculous compared to what we a have already
> discovered.
>
> You are a bit dogmatic. Humans cannot fly, so all attempts to do so is
> necessarily ridiculous.
I'm indeed dogmatic on some things. I can't help myself. I *just know*
theories don't explain everything since everytime I try to grasp a theory
the truth "theories explain not everything since the experience you have
right know explains something a theory can't explain" gets transmitted,
too. Althoug sometimes it is so vague, that I don't really remember that
this makes it futile to want a theory to explain everything (I just get a
bad feeling then).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>> So why aks a question that can't be answered with words at all?
>>>
>>> It is up to you to show the question cannot answered at all, and for
>>> this you need a theory.
>> No I don't. You already see in front of you that the answer to any
>> ultimate
>> question (ultimate *for you*) is not to be found in words (since
>> words only
>> appear *in* your experience, which I take as meaning that experience
>> is more
>> ultimate than words) so any theory is superfluous in that matter.
>
> I have no clue what you are saying, and what you mean by explaining
> through words. The nice point with the computational hypothesis is
> that itv explains exactly that, why, if we are machine, we are
> confronted to the non expressible, the non provable, the non
> computable, necessarily. I explain why universal machine get both
> mystical and rational at the same time.
But then you admit arithmetics can not be a theory of everything at all...
Every explanation of everything, necessarily must transcend all theories.
You say I need a theory to show you that some questions cannot be adequately
answered with words and than you say that your theory says we don't need a
theory to know that some questions cannot be adequately answered with words
(because with every sensation, for example the sensation of getting an
answer to a question, we get confronted to the "non communicable", that is,
that which transcends words). A little akward I think.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Personally I think research always starts in experience and words
>> are for
>> conveying some part of what you experienced to someone else.
>
> Sure. The theory I study, and the methodology I am using, is based on
> some acknowledgment on that fact.
>
> Do you think it is possible that we are machine, (that we can survive
> with an artificial brain)
Well, I don't think the question whether we survive something in an absolute
way is pretty meaningless. If I absolutely don't survive something, than
there is no one there to survive or not survive. So as long as I am there, I
will survive *anything*.
So yes, we can survive with an artificial brain and we can survive with no
brain at all, because the question "who has a brain?" is a relative question
already.
So does this mean we are machines? Well, I think we are and we are not... It
depends on what you mean with "are" and "we". Ultimately, though, I prefer
to say we are not machines, because all descriptions fail to describe what
we *really* are. Beauty and freedom cannot be directly described, but only
felt.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> and if so, have you understand that it
> entails a reversal between physics and number theory (or combinator, C+
> +; whatever).
I think I understood your reasoning. I think it's obvious that in so far as
we are machines, the shapes of what we perceive can only be explained by our
inner functioning ("machine psychology"?).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> But since we
>> don't know what our words exactly mean to someone else we better
>> don't take
>> them too serious.
>
> In science we have to take our ideas (words) seriously, and make them
> the most precise as possible. Only then are we able to discover the
> inconsistency of our ideas, and progress.
I agree. But only if you don't take this seriousness to serious. "Serious"
has a connotation of rigidness. But true science is of course not rigid. If
you try to make science completly rigid (axiomitize everything) it simply
becomes inconsistent (it shakes of all rigidness if you want;-)).
Science needs flexibility and playfulness. I just said "too serious", not
"not serious at all". I'm afraid you took me to serious:-D.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> I think your way of thinking (in this paragraph, not neccesarily in
>> general
>> ;-)) is somewhat dangerous, because it leads to pseuodo-precision and
>> pseudo-control.
>
> I would have prefered: partial precision and partial control. "Pseudo"
> seems only insulting.
You're right, I sounds indeed insulting. I didn't want to sound that way. I
don't think you wanted to be authorative, it's just that I think it sounds
authorative to act like a theory is vague or clear independent of your own
perception of it.
I think clear / vague are relative notions. For someone who doesn't
understand a theory it's extremely vague, for someone who does it may be
very clear. Someone may dismiss a work of art as almost meaningless / having
a vague massage, while someone else will find the message it wants to convey
more clear than all "scientific theories" could be.
Honestly I think we even can't seperate science and art totally. Both really
come down to taste, even though science relies more on measurements than on
intuition (though still it is dependent on intuition) and art has (mostly)
no intention being formally rigid.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> From wanting to be clearer than you can (or others can
>> understand), dangerous things like authorative religion and states
>> (in the
>> form of various repressive systems / ...cracys like democracy) emerge.
>
> Well democracy, imo, is the less repressive systems, although
> obviously democracies are not immune against many form of "humans
> taste of authoritative argument weakness" in many democratic sub-
> institution (Democracies can be rotten, like the human body can have
> tumors).
I too think democracy is the least repressive system we have. But I believe
wanting to resolve important and complex matters like healthcare or security
in a rigid system is bound to fail.
Democracy itself is already authorative, because it claims authorative force
to be legitimate as long as it is suppported by the majority (at least in
theory, practically often even this isn't the case). I prefer a society
where force (or the threat thereof),- IMO one of the most destructive form
of authority - is generally seen as not legitimate, unless in situations of
self-defence. This is incompatible with a state, and thus with democracy as
commonly understood.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I think you have not read well my posts or papers, because I show that
> computationalism prevents the authoritative argument everywhere in
> science, and this including theology (and that is new, since at least
> 1500 years).
I already got that. Nevertheless sometimes you seem to use authorative
language. Actually I think everybody does. I just wanted to point it out.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> I am *not* against making clear theories. I'm against acting like
>> having a
>> clear theory, when actually the theory makes nothing clear for most
>> people.
>
> What is unclear? Don't confuse the reasoning, which is long and rather
> very new for some Aristotelian, and the theory, which is the clearest
> of all theories (and actually believed by most rationalist,
> unfortunately in company of a less clearer theory (materialism).
>
> But if you really think that comp is unclear, just ask precision. It
> is the usual manner to proceed.
I think comp is unclear in that it postulates "we" are machines, even though
we do not understand what "we" are. How could we say X is a machine, while X
is totally mysterious to us?
Of course every theory concerning "us" has this problem. This is exactly why
I think every theory concerning us is necessarily vague.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> And all theories regarding fundamental things make very little
>> clear, which
>> shows itself in the theory making no realistically testable
>> predictions and
>> in having no practical application (like string theory).
>
> Comp, including the Theaetetus's definition, makes utterly clear
> experimental predictions.
For example?
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26855769.html
Bruno Marchal
Not at all. In a theory (perhaps formal) you can still attribute
meaning to your terms, and accept that some rule of deduction
preserves that meaning, then you can learn something new by deduction.
You argument here is close to the error of saying that if neurons
(artificial, or not) manipulates only other neurones, the meaning will
escape them. This does not follow.
Anything can be formalise, at some level of description, and indeed
three of the arithmetical hypostases concern non formalizable by the
machine form of knowledge by the machine.
Only formalist philosopher copuld decide to not attribute meaning on
the primitive terms, although he will attributes the usual meaning of
the inference rules (which are at another level).
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> It's like a
>>> theory saying: "There is something, but don't aks me what it is."
>>
>> You should study the theory, and makes specific remark.
> That would lead nowhere, since I don't have anything specific
> against the
> theory. It's just that I think claiming it to explain something
> fundamental
> is missleading; it makes one search fundamental truth where there is
> none.
> Because what is fundamental to everyone is his own experience.
I agree. But then study the theory which explains why machine can
already understand this, but that we have to explain physics from the
number if we want to take the theory seriously.
I have never claim it explains something fundamental, it explains a
"new" problem, the problem of justifying how machine dreams "glue"
enough to stabilize first person plural sharable observation.
I just formulate a problem (and show a solution, which is just to
better illustrate the problem, and also that it would be premature to
used UDA to abandon mechanism.
And then there is that new pal: the universal machine, which is also a
root of many problems.
To understand UDA is really equal to underst(and that we don't and
cannot really understand what numbers and machines are. But that we
can learn think making us doubting some quasi dogma in the fundamental
sciences.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> The theory
>> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it.
> But then doesn't the "rest" exist, too? I just see a problem with
> claiming
> to explain what exists, when it is really not clear what existance
> could
> mean apart from the relatively meaningful, but vague, every day use.
In that context existence is the same as in the expression "it exists
a number having this or that property". Among the property there will
be property like "relatively to that number this number observe this
phenomenon". the rest belongs to the dream of numbers, and they do
those dream because they describe computations. We assume mechanism, I
recall.
And what do you think about "theology". The idea is to unify knowledge
in a coherent realm, which does not eliminate the person nor the
appearances, but help to figure them out.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But
>>>> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including
>>>> its
>>>> non definability
>>> That's funny, because this is little more than empty words for me.
>>
>> Read the papers. Or ask questions.
> I don't what conciousness really is.
I am sure you know very well what it is. Think of what is common in
all subjective experiences.
> So in order to to explain it to me, you
> would have to define it...
Not at all. To make theories we need only to share some statements
about something. We never define really the object of our thought and
theories.
I cannot define two you what is a line, bit we may agree that two
points determines a unique line, for example. And reason from that.
I cannot define to you consciousness, but we may agree on some
statement on it, like conscious people cannot doubt "here and now"
that they are conscious, for example.
> But wait, you just said elementary arithmetics
> explains it can't defined... What can't be defined? I don't even
> know what
> exactly your referring to!
To the fact that you are conscious. You are aware of your sensible
local existence, unlike a doll (probably).
>
> You seem to assume I already have a clear view of what conciousness
> is,
I assume only that you know that you are conscious (here and now).
This has nothing to do with the question of having a clear view on
what consciousness could consist in.
> so
> you don't need to define it in order to be meaningful. Indeed you
> don't have
> to, because I very roughly know what conciousness could refer too.
> But then
> your theory is very vague, because the object it seeks to explain is
> very
> vague.
I don't think it vague at all. As I said on the FOR list, it is the
difference between faking to be tortured and being tortured. If you
undersatnd that diffrence, we mau-y already agree on many things about
consciousness.
Then, comp is the hypothesis that my relative consciousness will
remains unchanged for some substitution of my parts (betting on some
level). From this you can already get startling counter-intuitive
result, notably that physicalism doesn't work.
> Or the theory is clear, but is says: "This theory does not explain
> what is vague in this theory." But then you can't claim to have a
> theory of
> fundamental existance or reality or everything.
All what I claim is that IF e are machine, then, in soccer language:
PLATO 1, and ARISTOTLE 0.
And I don't pretend it is the last match.
I am a logician. I am interested in the relations between (human, and
then machine/numbers) beliefs. All what I say is that those who
believe in primitive matter/physicalism, have to abandon mechanism (or
rationalism). Or, equivalently, that those who believe in mechanism,
have to abandon materialism (and indeed have to explain physics from
the numbers: a new problem if you want).
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> , and matter, including both its computational and non
>>>> computational aspects.
>>> For me matter is explained by the fact that it is touchable,
>>> seeable, and so
>>> forth. Elementary arithmetics cannot do that. So no, it doesn't
>>> explain
>>> matter for me.
>>
>> Hmm... Not yet read UDA I see.
> I did read UDA.It explains why we can't both postulate we are
> machines and
> that physics is independent of us (and thus independent of
> arithmetics), so
> materialism (there exists matter and nothing else) is shown to be
> meaningless (if we accept COMP).
> But I can't touch anything in it, because it is just a text. This
> already
> proves to me it doesn't explain what matter really is to me.
It is not a text, it is an argument, using some text to ease the
things. I should do a video!
And it explains a part of what matter is to you, or us, (a sum on an
infinity of computations, not so different from Feynman path
integral). It remains an infinity of open problems of course.
>
> Probably I do not fully agree with axiom number 3, because it claims
> numbers
> to be independent of me and you, while I don't even understand what me
> really is and what the difference between me and you is - and
> whether it is
> an absolute or relative difference. How could I then postulate
> numbers are
> independent of something so vague (yet obviously important)? After
> all, some
> kind of "me" seems to exists everywhere numbers are understood, so
> it seems
> to be unreasonable to postulate their independent existance.
The question is just: do you agree with Robinson or Peano axioms, and
if yes, we can show where you appear in there, and why you ask such
questions, etc.
You have to understand that the proposition 17 is prime is independent
of the fact that you will take a bath now or not. If you undretsand
that, you may undersatnd one day how things like bath and you can
arise from the distribution of the prime numbers.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study
>>>> the
>>>> existing explanation?
>>> My "explanation" is that every explanation in words is suboptimal/
>>> incomplete
>>> and you need to trascend words in order to get a better explanation.
>>
>> But this is a "theorem" in "my theory/conjecture/hypothesis" (that we
>> are machine).
> But then "your" theory is not a TOE at all, because it itself admits
> it
> doesn't explain everything. :wistle:
yes, if you understand the theory, you will understand that we are
infinitely more ignorant. You may intuit that science has not yet
begin (or perhaps it has begun in -500, and stopped in +500).
And yes, a part of that ignorance is intrinsical and fundamental. It
is was makes truth an "eternal attractors". The theory is indeed a
negative theology in the sense of the neoplatonist.
You take the expression "theory of everything" too much seriously.
That expression comes from the physicists, and, due to physicalism,
they believe that if they can unify all the laws of nature, they will
have explain "everything".
But this is reductionism. It is just false. Unifying the laws will not
explain mathematical truth, nor psychology, nor any theological
problem (like what is first person death, etc.). Nor will it explain
where the laws of physics come from, although here *some* physical
theories can give explanations. But if fails on consciousness, and is
based on a very powerful methodological hypothesis, which cannot be
maintained (the identity thesis mind-brain).
Then this list is open to the idea that everything possible, manage to
exist, and that appearance comes from some statistical (relative or
absolute) embedding in it. Then comp, makes arithmetical truth a quasi
obvious receptor for a very well defined notion of everything: all
computations, or just a part of arithmetical truth, etc.
I don't pretend it is easy. You were just confusing two levels of
description.
I cannot explain my consciousness, but then I can explain that all
machines can discover about themselves something which obeys the
statements verified by what I do admit about consciousness, and be
incapable to explain it, except by discovering, like me, that all
machine can understand this indeed.
It is subtle, and that is why I give also a purely arithmetical model
of that "machine theology".
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> Personally I think research always starts in experience and words
>>> are for
>>> conveying some part of what you experienced to someone else.
>>
>> Sure. The theory I study, and the methodology I am using, is based on
>> some acknowledgment on that fact.
>>
>> Do you think it is possible that we are machine, (that we can survive
>> with an artificial brain)
> Well, I don't think the question whether we survive something in an
> absolute
> way is pretty meaningless. If I absolutely don't survive something,
> than
> there is no one there to survive or not survive. So as long as I am
> there, I
> will survive *anything*.
> So yes, we can survive with an artificial brain and we can survive
> with no
> brain at all, because the question "who has a brain?" is a relative
> question
> already.
You are actually right. The question is to justify this in a frame of
a theory. here the hypothesis, and thus the question, was "can you
survive" in the usual clinical sense. Put in another way, would say
yes to a doctor which propose to you a digital brain. THEN we can
explain to thers why indeed this is a relative question, and that if
we can survive with an artificial brain, then we ever survive without
any brain at all, and that we don't really have material brains, etc.
If you have already an answer, you may or not try to communicate it to
some others. But you cannot use that fact to discourage another to try
to communicate his idea.
> So does this mean we are machines? Well, I think we are and we are
> not... It
> depends on what you mean with "are" and "we". Ultimately, though, I
> prefer
> to say we are not machines, because all descriptions fail to
> describe what
> we *really* are. Beauty and freedom cannot be directly described,
> but only
> felt.
The point is that the consciousness of any machine is already not
described by, nor describable by the machine. So this cannot be an
argument, just a statement that *you* feel superior to *any* machine
in the art of feeling beauty and freedom.
But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> and if so, have you understand that it
>> entails a reversal between physics and number theory (or
>> combinator, C+
>> +; whatever).
> I think I understood your reasoning. I think it's obvious that in so
> far as
> we are machines, the shapes of what we perceive can only be
> explained by our
> inner functioning ("machine psychology"?).
OK. But it is not obvious for every one. Nothing is. Then AUDA shows
that, in a precise sense, the universal lobian machine can understand
that argument, and help in the derivation of physics.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> But since we
>>> don't know what our words exactly mean to someone else we better
>>> don't take
>>> them too serious.
>>
>> In science we have to take our ideas (words) seriously, and make them
>> the most precise as possible. Only then are we able to discover the
>> inconsistency of our ideas, and progress.
> I agree. But only if you don't take this seriousness to serious.
> "Serious"
> has a connotation of rigidness. But true science is of course not
> rigid. If
> you try to make science completly rigid (axiomitize everything) it
> simply
> becomes inconsistent (it shakes of all rigidness if you want;-)).
> Science needs flexibility and playfulness. I just said "too
> serious", not
> "not serious at all". I'm afraid you took me to serious:-D.
lol
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I think your way of thinking (in this paragraph, not neccesarily in
>>> general
>>> ;-)) is somewhat dangerous, because it leads to pseuodo-precision
>>> and
>>> pseudo-control.
>>
>> I would have prefered: partial precision and partial control.
>> "Pseudo"
>> seems only insulting.
> You're right, I sounds indeed insulting. I didn't want to sound that
> way. I
> don't think you wanted to be authorative, it's just that I think it
> sounds
> authorative to act like a theory is vague or clear independent of
> your own
> perception of it.
OK. Just that if wa want not to have an infinite conversation before
the meal, it is good to be able to assess to oneself simple truth like
those we can prove in elementary arithmetic. If the result is too much
startling, it is always time to reconsider the initial belief. We have
to start somewhere.
> I think clear / vague are relative notions. For someone who doesn't
> understand a theory it's extremely vague, for someone who does it
> may be
> very clear. Someone may dismiss a work of art as almost
> meaningless / having
> a vague massage, while someone else will find the message it wants
> to convey
> more clear than all "scientific theories" could be.
> Honestly I think we even can't seperate science and art totally.
> Both really
> come down to taste, even though science relies more on measurements
> than on
> intuition (though still it is dependent on intuition) and art has
> (mostly)
> no intention being formally rigid.
UDA just ask question to you. AUDA shows that we can already listen to
the universal machines.
About machines, I may just be a bit more polite.
I know humans does not yet really listen to themselves, and I may have
come a bit too early on this planet.
In "the tao is silent" Raymond Smullyan said something like that:
Some believes that machine are stupid. So they deduce from comp ("I am
a machine") that they are stupid.
Others believe that they am a sensible lover of freedom and beauty"
so from comp they deduce: "Oh, very nice, some machine can be sensible
lover of truth and freedom".
It is very difficult. But democracy is a big, alas fragile, progress.
It does not solve all problems. It is the step 1 of politics, and it
does not a long way without serious separation of power, and other
power regulating rules. The human situation is not really easy too. To
be able to drink when thirsty and eat when hungry is already a lot.
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> I think you have not read well my posts or papers, because I show
>> that
>> computationalism prevents the authoritative argument everywhere in
>> science, and this including theology (and that is new, since at least
>> 1500 years).
> I already got that. Nevertheless sometimes you seem to use authorative
> language. Actually I think everybody does. I just wanted to point it
> out.
>
Don't hesitate to tell me where. If I did, it has to be a typo error!
On the contrary I try hard to put all my carts on the tables. That is
why I repeat ad nauseam "assuming comp (or mech, of digital mech, of
DM, etc.). Then I make a derivation by steps, and I ask "OK?", at any
step, and the sequence is constructed in such a way that if you
succeed in keeping self-honesty, you eventually understand why
"physical reality" is a facet of the universal machine(s) ignorance.
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> I am *not* against making clear theories. I'm against acting like
>>> having a
>>> clear theory, when actually the theory makes nothing clear for most
>>> people.
>>
>> What is unclear? Don't confuse the reasoning, which is long and
>> rather
>> very new for some Aristotelian, and the theory, which is the clearest
>> of all theories (and actually believed by most rationalist,
>> unfortunately in company of a less clearer theory (materialism).
>>
>> But if you really think that comp is unclear, just ask precision. It
>> is the usual manner to proceed.
> I think comp is unclear in that it postulates "we" are machines,
> even though
> we do not understand what "we" are. How could we say X is a machine,
> while X
> is totally mysterious to us?
> Of course every theory concerning "us" has this problem. This is
> exactly why
> I think every theory concerning us is necessarily vague.
It is vague, but not so much. The artificial brain, will be like the
computer. Wait ten years more, and you will get a 10^10 times more
powerful artificial brain, which will emulate you at a much more
refined level. But then you know that your grand-grand-grand-grand-
grand-grand-grand father is already so glad with its "so old fashioned
little universal machine", ...
If we are machine; we cannot know which machine we are nor which
machine we are in relation. But we can bet that there are level of
functionality such that we survive some "artificial" substitution. I
would say that this is already what molecular biology and biochemistry
illustrate. Living organism take a big deal in self-repairing, and
self-multiplying, and it could be natural to think that "nature" has
already betted on comp, many times. It is natural to think that the
brain could be a natural organic universal machine (and even two
universal machines in front of themselves, and themselves made of two
universal machines, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... etc. up to that cabled amoeba
chatty swarm.
I am a theoretician interested in the consequence of the comp
hypothesis on the mind body question.
Comp leads to computer science.
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> And all theories regarding fundamental things make very little
>>> clear, which
>>> shows itself in the theory making no realistically testable
>>> predictions and
>>> in having no practical application (like string theory).
>>
>> Comp, including the Theaetetus's definition, makes utterly clear
>> experimental predictions.
> For example?
All the theorems of the 5 lower hypostases described he logic of
probable appearances. They gives the logic of the "observable", with
the nuance between "sensible" (and undefinable) and
"intelligible" (definable) quanta and qualia, and are symmetric enough
to be compared to quantum logics. A goal: implement the quantum not.
Very difficult.
The incompleteness phenomenon distinguishes all the Theaetetus'
definition of knowledge, from sensation, to opinion, true opinion and
true justified opinion. It adds other nuances. Comp makes a part of
universal number theology completely mathematical, even decidable at
the propositional level.
Bruno Marchal
benjayk
I willl not reply to all parts of your post in detail, because I think we
mainly discuss semantics on some specific issues. I feel we agree on most
things either way, it seems pointless to get
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> It's like a
>>> theory saying: "There is something, but don't aks me what it is."
>>
>> You should study the theory, and makes specific remark.
> That would lead nowhere, since I don't have anything specific
> against the
> theory. It's just that I think claiming it to explain something
> fundamental
> is missleading; it makes one search fundamental truth where there is
> none.
> Because what is fundamental to everyone is his own experience.
I agree. But then study the theory which explains why machine can
already understand this, but that we have to explain physics from the
number if we want to take the theory seriously.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I have never claim it explains something fundamental, it explains a
> "new" problem, the problem of justifying how machine dreams "glue"
> enough to stabilize first person plural sharable observation.
"The theory
explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it."... Sounds pretty
fundamental to me ;). I think your wording was just a bit absolute for me
here, maybe you should be more careful there, maybe I just took you too
serious. After all you're talking in the context of a theory, so I should
take "The theory
explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it." as ""The theory
explains what exists as formalizable in the theory, and explains from it how
there must be more than this, which trascends the formalities of this
theory.".
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> The theory
>>> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it.
>> But then doesn't the "rest" exist, too? I just see a problem with
>> claiming
>> to explain what exists, when it is really not clear what existance
>> could
>> mean apart from the relatively meaningful, but vague, every day use.
>
> In that context existence is the same as in the expression "it exists
> a number having this or that property". Among the property there will
> be property like "relatively to that number this number observe this
> phenomenon". the rest belongs to the dream of numbers, and they do
> those dream because they describe computations. We assume mechanism, I
> recall.
Okay, though I still think it's advisable to not use simply "existence" as a
word a here, because it sounds too exclusive. "What exists" sounds like
"Everything that exists".
And I find "dreams of numbers" sounds as if the dreams where less
fundamental than the numbers. But since you don't only assume mechanism, but
also conciousness (like all theories) and consensual reality (the dreams in
which the representations of numbers appear), I don't see how it makes sense
to put numbers "before" conciousness and (perceived) reality.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Really we only discuss semantics here... I just find "theory of
>> everything"
>> sounds authorative, because it seems to claim there is nothing else to
>> explain. Basically that is my only problem with a "theory of
>> everything" -
>> it is either a confusing name or disingenious,
>
>
> And what do you think about "theology". The idea is to unify knowledge
> in a coherent realm, which does not eliminate the person nor the
> appearances, but help to figure them out.
Not so good. Theology sounds too big. After all, there is no science or any
other practice that does not study spirituality or god in some sense. By
calling it theology it sounds like "your" theory is especially close to
grasping god. But I don't think it's any good to ever invoke closeness to
god in any theory.
I would like "theory of relationship of numbers and that which trascends
them" or something more precise and modest, without using "everything" or
some appeal to god.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> But
>>>>> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including
>>>>> its
>>>>> non definability
>>>> That's funny, because this is little more than empty words for me.
>>>
>>> Read the papers. Or ask questions.
>> I don't what conciousness really is.
>
> I am sure you know very well what it is. Think of what is common in
> all subjective experiences.
What is common in all subjective experience...? I don't really know.
Something is, that is for sure, but I don't know what!
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> So in order to to explain it to me, you
>> would have to define it...
>
> Not at all. To make theories we need only to share some statements
> about something. We never define really the object of our thought and
> theories.
> I cannot define two you what is a line, bit we may agree that two
> points determines a unique line, for example. And reason from that.
> I cannot define to you consciousness, but we may agree on some
> statement on it, like conscious people cannot doubt "here and now"
> that they are conscious, for example.
Okay, but then you don't explain what conciousness is, but rather *that* it
is. But this really exlains nothing, because I knew it already ;). So I
don't get where the explanation is. Maybe you explain that elementary
arithmetics is compatible with conciousness, but this is far from explaining
conciousness itself, I am afraid.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> so
>> you don't need to define it in order to be meaningful. Indeed you
>> don't have
>> to, because I very roughly know what conciousness could refer too.
>> But then
>> your theory is very vague, because the object it seeks to explain is
>> very
>> vague.
>
> I don't think it vague at all. As I said on the FOR list, it is the
> difference between faking to be tortured and being tortured. If you
> undersatnd that diffrence, we mau-y already agree on many things about
> consciousness.
The difference between faking to be tortured and being tortured is not being
concious, in my opinion. Somone faking something is necessarily concious,
too.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Then, comp is the hypothesis that my relative consciousness will
> remains unchanged for some substitution of my parts (betting on some
> level). From this you can already get startling counter-intuitive
> result, notably that physicalism doesn't work.
"my relative consciousness" is so vague for me. In order to make sense of
this I would need to understand more about conciousness than it being here
and now and undoubtable (otherwise I cannot relate it to anything else in an
intellectual way).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Or the theory is clear, but is says: "This theory does not explain
>> what is vague in this theory." But then you can't claim to have a
>> theory of
>> fundamental existance or reality or everything.
>
>
> All what I claim is that IF e are machine, then, in soccer language:
> PLATO 1, and ARISTOTLE 0.
>
> And I don't pretend it is the last match.
>
> I am a logician. I am interested in the relations between (human, and
> then machine/numbers) beliefs. All what I say is that those who
> believe in primitive matter/physicalism, have to abandon mechanism (or
> rationalism). Or, equivalently, that those who believe in mechanism,
> have to abandon materialism (and indeed have to explain physics from
> the numbers: a new problem if you want).
OK, I like this. ;)
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If you have a better explanation, I can listen, but why not study
>>>>> the
>>>>> existing explanation?
>>>> My "explanation" is that every explanation in words is suboptimal/
>>>> incomplete
>>>> and you need to trascend words in order to get a better explanation.
>>>
>>> But this is a "theorem" in "my theory/conjecture/hypothesis" (that we
>>> are machine).
>> But then "your" theory is not a TOE at all, because it itself admits
>> it
>> doesn't explain everything. :wistle:
>
> yes, if you understand the theory, you will understand that we are
> infinitely more ignorant. You may intuit that science has not yet
> begin (or perhaps it has begun in -500, and stopped in +500).
>
> And yes, a part of that ignorance is intrinsical and fundamental. It
> is was makes truth an "eternal attractors". The theory is indeed a
> negative theology in the sense of the neoplatonist.
OK, so we finally agree that there is nothing even close to a theory of
everything... ;)
This was obviously my problem. Maybe I should adhere more to what I write
;).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> If you have already an answer, you may or not try to communicate it to
> some others. But you cannot use that fact to discourage another to try
> to communicate his idea.
This was not my intention. Sorry if I seemed discouraging.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> So does this mean we are machines? Well, I think we are and we are
>> not... It
>> depends on what you mean with "are" and "we". Ultimately, though, I
>> prefer
>> to say we are not machines, because all descriptions fail to
>> describe what
>> we *really* are. Beauty and freedom cannot be directly described,
>> but only
>> felt.
>
>
> The point is that the consciousness of any machine is already not
> described by, nor describable by the machine. So this cannot be an
> argument, just a statement that *you* feel superior to *any* machine
> in the art of feeling beauty and freedom.
>
> But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.
My point is not to insult machines. A machine is identified by what it does,
because feelings can not be uniquely linked with a machine. So it makes more
sense for me to say that we are or have a perspective(s) on (the relations
of) infinitely many machines. Conciousness is already attached to an
infinity of machines and from our perspective we are at least conciousness;
that which is always sure here and now. So every observer, just by virtue of
observing *anything*, already feels the truth about an infinity of machines.
But *are* we machines then? If we always are or "could be" infinitely many
machines, if we always feel some truth about *every machine*, it is not a
bit of an understatement to say we are a machine or even machines?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> and if so, have you understand that it
>>> entails a reversal between physics and number theory (or
>>> combinator, C+
>>> +; whatever).
>> I think I understood your reasoning. I think it's obvious that in so
>> far as
>> we are machines, the shapes of what we perceive can only be
>> explained by our
>> inner functioning ("machine psychology"?).
>
> OK. But it is not obvious for every one. Nothing is.
I agree, I don't claim it is obvious. Really, it only became obvious to me
after reading your proof. I just meant "very clear".
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> I think you have not read well my posts or papers, because I show
>>> that
>>> computationalism prevents the authoritative argument everywhere in
>>> science, and this including theology (and that is new, since at least
>>> 1500 years).
>> I already got that. Nevertheless sometimes you seem to use authorative
>> language. Actually I think everybody does. I just wanted to point it
>> out.
>>
>
> Don't hesitate to tell me where. If I did, it has to be a typo error!
I referred to the use of words like "everything", "existence", _theo_logy
with reference to a theory that claims to explain something...
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26947395.html
Bruno Marchal
On 28 Dec 2009, at 21:22, benjayk wrote:
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> I have never claim it explains something fundamental, it explains a
>> "new" problem, the problem of justifying how machine dreams "glue"
>> enough to stabilize first person plural sharable observation.
> "The theory
> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it."... Sounds
> pretty
> fundamental to me ;). I think your wording was just a bit absolute
> for me
> here, maybe you should be more careful there, maybe I just took you
> too
> serious. After all you're talking in the context of a theory, so I
> should
> take "The theory
> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it." as ""The
> theory
> explains what exists as formalizable in the theory, and explains
> from it how
> there must be more than this, which trascends the formalities of this
> theory.".
OK.
>
>
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The theory
>>>> explains what exists, and how the rest emerges from it.
>>> But then doesn't the "rest" exist, too? I just see a problem with
>>> claiming
>>> to explain what exists, when it is really not clear what existance
>>> could
>>> mean apart from the relatively meaningful, but vague, every day use.
>>
>> In that context existence is the same as in the expression "it exists
>> a number having this or that property". Among the property there will
>> be property like "relatively to that number this number observe this
>> phenomenon". the rest belongs to the dream of numbers, and they do
>> those dream because they describe computations. We assume
>> mechanism, I
>> recall.
> Okay, though I still think it's advisable to not use simply
> "existence" as a
> word a here, because it sounds too exclusive. "What exists" sounds
> like
> "Everything that exists".
> And I find "dreams of numbers" sounds as if the dreams where less
> fundamental than the numbers.
They are. Numbers are primitive. The variable x and y represents
excusively those numbers. Finite pieces of computation are speical
numbers, like prime numbers. To be a (finite piece of a) computation
is a property of number, a relation which has to be defined in term of
addition and multiplication of numbers. To be a computation are
emergent property (emerging from addition and multiplication).
> But since you don't only assume mechanism, but
> also conciousness (like all theories)
Digitam mechanism (comp) assumes consciousness explicitly (cf the
sense of the "yes doctor"). Most theories does not assume
"consciousness". The word does not appear in the description of the
theories.
> and consensual reality (the dreams in
> which the representations of numbers appear), I don't see how it
> makes sense
> to put numbers "before" conciousness and (perceived) reality.
Well, it is a bit like "addition" comes before "being prime". You need
addition in Robinson arithmetic to define what a prime number is. Then
you need addition, and prime, before defining when a number represent
a finite piece of computation. And you need that to eventually attach
consciousness to computations. The "before" is logical, not temporal.
That is a vocabulary problem. I like "theology" for three reasons:
1) comp is a belief in a form of possible technological reincarnation,
leading to notions of afterlife, or after-annihilation.
2) the gap between G and G* provides a gap between science and
theology-proper.
3) It necessitates an unprovable belief in the universal machine (the
little god, Plotinus' man). This is Church thesis.
This is made clear by the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus. God
(the ONE) = arithmetical truth, the NOUS = arithmetical provability,
the third god (universal soul) = provability in company of truth,
matter = ... etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But
>>>>>> elementary arithmetics does explain both consciousness, including
>>>>>> its
>>>>>> non definability
>>>>> That's funny, because this is little more than empty words for me.
>>>>
>>>> Read the papers. Or ask questions.
>>> I don't what conciousness really is.
>>
>> I am sure you know very well what it is. Think of what is common in
>> all subjective experiences.
> What is common in all subjective experience...? I don't really know.
> Something is, that is for sure, but I don't know what!
You need to understand "consciousness" only to say "yes" or "no" to
the doctor, after understanding that he will substitute your part by
functionally equivalent, at some level, digital one.
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> So in order to to explain it to me, you
>>> would have to define it...
>>
>> Not at all. To make theories we need only to share some statements
>> about something. We never define really the object of our thought and
>> theories.
>> I cannot define two you what is a line, bit we may agree that two
>> points determines a unique line, for example. And reason from that.
>> I cannot define to you consciousness, but we may agree on some
>> statement on it, like conscious people cannot doubt "here and now"
>> that they are conscious, for example.
> Okay, but then you don't explain what conciousness is, but rather
> *that* it
> is. But this really exlains nothing, because I knew it already ;).
> So I
> don't get where the explanation is. Maybe you explain that elementary
> arithmetics is compatible with conciousness, but this is far from
> explaining
> conciousness itself, I am afraid.
I explain that if you are willing to believe that you s-will survive
with concrete digital brain, then consciousness is explained by the
addition and multiplication of numbers.
Auda provides more: even a temptative definition of "consciousness"
like "machine belief-in-a-reality state".
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> so
>>> you don't need to define it in order to be meaningful. Indeed you
>>> don't have
>>> to, because I very roughly know what conciousness could refer too.
>>> But then
>>> your theory is very vague, because the object it seeks to explain is
>>> very
>>> vague.
>>
>> I don't think it vague at all. As I said on the FOR list, it is the
>> difference between faking to be tortured and being tortured. If you
>> undersatnd that diffrence, we mau-y already agree on many things
>> about
>> consciousness.
> The difference between faking to be tortured and being tortured is
> not being
> concious, in my opinion. Somone faking something is necessarily
> concious,
> too.
I was alluding the consciousness of some pain. It is the difference
between torturing a doll and a human being, if you prefer.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Then, comp is the hypothesis that my relative consciousness will
>> remains unchanged for some substitution of my parts (betting on some
>> level). From this you can already get startling counter-intuitive
>> result, notably that physicalism doesn't work.
> "my relative consciousness" is so vague for me. In order to make
> sense of
> this I would need to understand more about conciousness than it
> being here
> and now and undoubtable (otherwise I cannot relate it to anything
> else in an
> intellectual way).
I use the axiomatic method. "to be undoubtable" is not an explanation,
but a property we can discuss or use as axioms. We never knows the
sense of the word we are using. We can only agree or disagree on some
use of those words. It is the same for any piece of science.
I think that a negative theology is the closer of a TOE we can hope for.
With comp, everything is a number, so comp makes elementary arithmetic
a TOE, or better a ROE (realm of everything), all the rest can be
justified by the numbers themselves as dream/computations by numbers.
Why? We can, for all practical purpose, attach a mind to a machine.
What we cannot do is to attach a machine to a mind, but "only" an
infinity of machine to a mind.
> So it makes more
> sense for me to say that we are or have a perspective(s) on (the
> relations
> of) infinitely many machines.
OK.
> Conciousness is already attached to an
> infinity of machines and from our perspective we are at least
> conciousness;
> that which is always sure here and now. So every observer, just by
> virtue of
> observing *anything*, already feels the truth about an infinity of
> machines.
> But *are* we machines then? If we always are or "could be"
> infinitely many
> machines, if we always feel some truth about *every machine*, it is
> not a
> bit of an understatement to say we are a machine or even machines?
You are right, and that is why sometimes I sum up the reversal by
saying that
3-we being a 3-machine entails that the 1-we are not machine.
There is a sense to say that first person, from the first person view,
are not machine. This is already true for the third (and seventh and
eigth) hypostases. the machine already tell us that they are not
machine, from their point of view. But G*, the "theologian of the
machine" knows that 1-we = 3-we. The machine cannot know that.
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> and if so, have you understand that it
>>>> entails a reversal between physics and number theory (or
>>>> combinator, C+
>>>> +; whatever).
>>> I think I understood your reasoning. I think it's obvious that in so
>>> far as
>>> we are machines, the shapes of what we perceive can only be
>>> explained by our
>>> inner functioning ("machine psychology"?).
>>
>> OK. But it is not obvious for every one. Nothing is.
> I agree, I don't claim it is obvious. Really, it only became obvious
> to me
> after reading your proof. I just meant "very clear".
Well, thanks.
>
>
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think you have not read well my posts or papers, because I show
>>>> that
>>>> computationalism prevents the authoritative argument everywhere in
>>>> science, and this including theology (and that is new, since at
>>>> least
>>>> 1500 years).
>>> I already got that. Nevertheless sometimes you seem to use
>>> authorative
>>> language. Actually I think everybody does. I just wanted to point it
>>> out.
>>>
>>
>> Don't hesitate to tell me where. If I did, it has to be a typo error!
> I referred to the use of words like "everything", "existence",
> _theo_logy
> with reference to a theory that claims to explain something...
The only thing that the theory does not explain is the sequence 0,
s(0), s(s(0)), etc. and addition and multiplication. Then we get all
discourses, by machine/numbers on X, Y, where X and Y represent things
obeying statements on which we do agree for consciousness, matter,
etc. In a sense everything is reduced to the qualia of infinity. You
need to be conscious of the meaning of "..." in "0, s(0), s(s(0)), ...".
I could, but I haven't, propose elementary arithmetic as a theory of
everything. I do something more modest and more ambitious. I try to
explain that if we believe (like many rationalists, materialists) that
the "brain" is a "machine", then elementary arithmetic has to be the
TOE, and then I explain how to derive the whole of physics from the
numbers, and their consciousness.
The work is not supposed to provide answers to old questions, only to
reformulate precisely those questions. In particular I argue that in
order to solve the mind body problem in the comp frame, we have to
reduce physics to number psychology/theology. We can still postulate a
physical world, but it has no influence at all on our flux of
consciousness, including our "perception of matter", so by Occam, we
can forget about that "primitive" physical world.
You can see it as a generalization of Darwin. We accept the idea that
our biology has evolved, but with comp we have to accept that the
physical laws are not primitive either, they emerge in a concrete and
precise way from the logical arithmetical relations.
benjayk
Sorry, I just don't get it. Your theory necessarily presumes dreams before
numbers, because for you numbers appear just in your dreams. Additionally,
the notion of numbers relies on the notion of truth, which is a notion that
fundamentally can't be defined, only known. Without *experiencing* truth
there is no sense to numbers. So there are numbers without there being
"dreaming"/experiencing first.
It seems to me that you call that "primitive", which relies already on the
truths ("there are dreams/experiences") of which it gives emergence to. Do
you see my problem with that?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> But since you don't only assume mechanism, but
>> also conciousness (like all theories)
>
> Digitam mechanism (comp) assumes consciousness explicitly (cf the
> sense of the "yes doctor"). Most theories does not assume
> "consciousness". The word does not appear in the description of the
> theories.
I don't think it's necessary to write that you assume conciousness. All
theories assume truth and still no one makes this implicit. Because it is
obivous; you simply can't deny there is truth or that you're concious. Well,
actually you can deny it, but then it is clear for me that your use of the
words "conciousness" or "truth" doesn't point to what I mean.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> and consensual reality (the dreams in
>> which the representations of numbers appear), I don't see how it
>> makes sense
>> to put numbers "before" conciousness and (perceived) reality.
>
> Well, it is a bit like "addition" comes before "being prime". You need
> addition in Robinson arithmetic to define what a prime number is. Then
> you need addition, and prime, before defining when a number represent
> a finite piece of computation. And you need that to eventually attach
> consciousness to computations. The "before" is logical, not temporal.
I need someone making sense of "addition in Robinson arithmetic" before I
(logically) can refer to addition in Robinson arithmetic (or if you want it
this way "I need the sense itself in 'addition in Robinson arithmetic'
before I can refer to addition in Robinson arithmetic").
It makes sense for me to say that we need numbers in order to link
conciousness to numbers, but that is already obvious. But you need
conciousness (the mysterious "senser" or "sensing") in order to make sense
of anything, including numbers.
Numbers just come before any *notion* of conciousness that is reflected in
the numbers, but they can't come before conciousness itself. Or at least I
don't get what this could mean.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>> But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.
>> My point is not to insult machines. A machine is identified by what
>> it does,
>> because feelings can not be uniquely linked with a machine.
>
> Why? We can, for all practical purpose, attach a mind to a machine.
> What we cannot do is to attach a machine to a mind, but "only" an
> infinity of machine to a mind.
How can we attach a mind to a machine? If you have the description of a
machine, you know what it feels? You are a machine lover indeed ;).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Conciousness is already attached to an
>> infinity of machines and from our perspective we are at least
>> conciousness;
>> that which is always sure here and now. So every observer, just by
>> virtue of
>> observing *anything*, already feels the truth about an infinity of
>> machines.
>> But *are* we machines then? If we always are or "could be"
>> infinitely many
>> machines, if we always feel some truth about *every machine*, it is
>> not a
>> bit of an understatement to say we are a machine or even machines?
>
> You are right, and that is why sometimes I sum up the reversal by
> saying that
> 3-we being a 3-machine entails that the 1-we are not machine.
> There is a sense to say that first person, from the first person view,
> are not machine. This is already true for the third (and seventh and
> eigth) hypostases. the machine already tell us that they are not
> machine, from their point of view. But G*, the "theologian of the
> machine" knows that 1-we = 3-we. The machine cannot know that.
This is not clear for me. "3-we being a 3-machine entails that the 1-we are
not machine.", but "1-we = 3-we"...? How could this possibly be? It seems to
be possible only if it is wrong that 3-we is a machine, but assuming it
leads to the right conclusion it is not a machine. But this would mean COMP
is self-refuting.
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26969001.html
Bruno Marchal
Bruno Marchal wrote:They are. Numbers are primitive. The variable x and y representsexcusively those numbers. Finite pieces of computation are speicalnumbers, like prime numbers. To be a (finite piece of a) computationis a property of number, a relation which has to be defined in term ofaddition and multiplication of numbers. To be a computation areemergent property (emerging from addition and multiplication).Sorry, I just don't get it. Your theory necessarily presumes dreams before
numbers, because for you numbers appear just in your dreams.
Additionally,
the notion of numbers relies on the notion of truth,
which is a notion that
fundamentally can't be defined, only known.
Without *experiencing* truth
there is no sense to numbers.
So there are numbers without there being
"dreaming"/experiencing first.
It seems to me that you call that "primitive", which relies already on the
truths ("there are dreams/experiences") of which it gives emergence to. Do
you see my problem with that?
Bruno Marchal wrote:But since you don't only assume mechanism, butalso conciousness (like all theories)Digitam mechanism (comp) assumes consciousness explicitly (cf thesense of the "yes doctor"). Most theories does not assume"consciousness". The word does not appear in the description of thetheories.I don't think it's necessary to write that you assume conciousness. All
theories assume truth and still no one makes this implicit.
Because it is
obivous; you simply can't deny there is truth or that you're conscious.
Well,
actually you can deny it, but then it is clear for me that your use of the
words "conciousness" or "truth" doesn't point to what I mean.
Bruno Marchal wrote:and consensual reality (the dreams inwhich the representations of numbers appear), I don't see how itmakes senseto put numbers "before" conciousness and (perceived) reality.Well, it is a bit like "addition" comes before "being prime". You needaddition in Robinson arithmetic to define what a prime number is. Thenyou need addition, and prime, before defining when a number representa finite piece of computation. And you need that to eventually attachconsciousness to computations. The "before" is logical, not temporal.I need someone making sense of "addition in Robinson arithmetic" before I
(logically) can refer to addition in Robinson arithmetic (or if you want it
this way "I need the sense itself in 'addition in Robinson arithmetic'
before I can refer to addition in Robinson arithmetic").
It makes sense for me to say that we need numbers in order to link
conciousness to numbers, but that is already obvious. But you need
conciousness (the mysterious "senser" or "sensing") in order to make sense
of anything, including numbers.
Numbers just come before any *notion* of conciousness that is reflected in
the numbers, but they can't come before conciousness itself.
Bruno Marchal wrote:But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.My point is not to insult machines. A machine is identified by whatit does,because feelings can not be uniquely linked with a machine.Why? We can, for all practical purpose, attach a mind to a machine.What we cannot do is to attach a machine to a mind, but "only" aninfinity of machine to a mind.How can we attach a mind to a machine? If you have the description of a
machine, you know what it feels? You are a machine lover indeed ;).
Bruno Marchal wrote:Conciousness is already attached to aninfinity of machines and from our perspective we are at leastconciousness;that which is always sure here and now. So every observer, just byvirtue ofobserving *anything*, already feels the truth about an infinity ofmachines.But *are* we machines then? If we always are or "could be"infinitely manymachines, if we always feel some truth about *every machine*, it isnot abit of an understatement to say we are a machine or even machines?You are right, and that is why sometimes I sum up the reversal bysaying that3-we being a 3-machine entails that the 1-we are not machine.There is a sense to say that first person, from the first person view,are not machine. This is already true for the third (and seventh andeigth) hypostases. the machine already tell us that they are notmachine, from their point of view. But G*, the "theologian of themachine" knows that 1-we = 3-we. The machine cannot know that.This is not clear for me. "3-we being a 3-machine entails that the 1-we are
not machine.", but "1-we = 3-we"...? How could this possibly be?
It seems to
be possible only if it is wrong that 3-we is a machine, but assuming it
leads to the right conclusion it is not a machine. But this would mean COMP
is self-refuting.
benjayk
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 30 Dec 2009, at 17:07, benjayk wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> They are. Numbers are primitive. The variable x and y represents
>>> excusively those numbers. Finite pieces of computation are speical
>>> numbers, like prime numbers. To be a (finite piece of a) computation
>>> is a property of number, a relation which has to be defined in term
>>> of
>>> addition and multiplication of numbers. To be a computation are
>>> emergent property (emerging from addition and multiplication).
>> Sorry, I just don't get it. Your theory necessarily presumes dreams
>> before
>> numbers, because for you numbers appear just in your dreams.
>
> Not at all. Comp presuppose some understanding of consciousness, but
> then, after the uda reasoning we can understand that for the ontology
> we need no mre than a theory like Robinson arithmetic. It does not
> presuppose dreams. Dreams will be defined in term of number relations
> (computations). I think you are confusing the level and the meta-level.
> Maxwell electromagnetism does not presuppose consciousness. And this
> has nothing to do that Maxwell presuppose consciousness in his
> colleagues when reading his paper, but that is an assumption at some
> metalevel, not in the theory.
OK; but nevertheless your theory becomes wrong, if you try to act like the
meta-level, the level the theory appears in, does not exist (like some
materialists say) or relies on some objects in your theory. But if your
saying "numbers give rise to conciousness" it seems to me your doing that,
even if you don't mean it. Maybe it is just a semantic issue.
For me it is undoubtable that the understanding of what numbers are (and I
obviously can not make sense out of "numbers" without there being an
understanding of it) can only come out of conciousness, so "numbers explain
(or give rise to) conciousness" is simply not graspable for me. It seems
like an empty statement unless you mean with conciousness "conciousness as
referred to in this theory", but this is not conciousness. It is the shadow
of (or the pointer to) conciousness in this theory.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Additionally,
>> the notion of numbers relies on the notion of truth,
>
> Not at all.
OK, I shouldn't have written "notion". I rather meant numbers rely on there
being an understanding of what is *what I mean* with the word "truth" or
"meaning" or "sense".
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> which is a notion that
>> fundamentally can't be defined, only known.
>
> This is not correct. Pean Arithmetic can define a notion of truth for
> any formula with a determinate length.
> Tarski theorem just forbid a
> general notion of truth to be defined in the theory, for formula with
> an finite but not fixed in advance length.
This is why I wrote "fundamentally". You can define truth in some context,
but not truth itself. Every definition presumes that there is truth/meaning
in what it defines.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Without *experiencing* truth
>> there is no sense to numbers.
>
> I think you are confusing third person numbers, and the human first
> person experience of numbers.
I just don't get for "whom" there could be third person numbers? I think
third person objects are just objects shareable by different first person
viewpoints. But it always relies on there being a first person.
You write that you don't want to eliminate the person, but isn't saying
there are third person numbers apart from a first "person" (no human being
but conciousness) exactly this? To whom could you explain it if not to a
person that you already presume? Who could understand it?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Arithmetical realism is the explicit assumption that truth of the form
> "17 is a prime number" is not dependent of the existence of humans, or
> even of a physical universe.
I basically agree. But I don't think that it is even possible to
meaningfully propose that "17 is a prime number" is independent of
conciousness since you can't doubt (what I mean with the word) conciousness
and thus for every concious being (that is, every entity that is capable of
understanding something) everything is dependent on it.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> So there are numbers without there being
>> "dreaming"/experiencing first.
>
> I guess you meant "so there are no numbers ...".
> But this is not the theory I propose. I take Arithmetic as starting
> point. Dreaming/experiencing will be a property of numbers.
> It is really NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER (=> HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
> => HUMAN NUMBER)
Right, I meant "so there are no numbers ...".
The problem for me is that you (in my mind) can't take arithmetics as a
starting point without taking you as a starting point. Of course you
understand that, but then it is confusing (or dishonest, but I absolutely
don't believe that of course;-)) to write "NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS =>
MATTER" because you can only mean "MY UNDOUBTABLE CONCIOUSNSS =>" (since
this is already clear on a meta-level apart from the theory it is, I think,
unecessary to write it) "NUMBERS => POINTER TO CONCIOUSNESS WITHIN THIS
THEORY => POINTER TO MATTER WITHIN THIS THEORY". You rather explain the
place of conciousness within your theory, not conciousness itself. Not
mentioning it is confusing IMO, even though it may be "obvious".
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>> It seems to me that you call that "primitive", which relies already
>> on the
>> truths ("there are dreams/experiences") of which it gives emergence
>> to. Do
>> you see my problem with that?
>
> Not really. And it seems that your remark could apply to any theory.
> We have to agree on some starting point. The starting point I use is
> already used by almost all theories of nature and human.
Of course. But almost all theories of nature and human don't claim to
explain conciousness or matter. Even "fundamental" science like physics do
not (generally) claim to explain conciousness or matter in itself. And when
scientists claim to do, I am very critical, too.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> You are
> confusing, I think, a statement like 2+3 = 5, and "I understand that
> 2+3 = 5". Those are very different. 2+3 = 5 points to what I understand
> about numbers and "I understand that 2+3 = 5" points to *that* I
> understand what it means that 2+3=5. This is indeed an important
> difference, but is it what you meant?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>> But since you don't only assume mechanism, but
>>>> also conciousness (like all theories)
>>>
>>> Digitam mechanism (comp) assumes consciousness explicitly (cf the
>>> sense of the "yes doctor"). Most theories does not assume
>>> "consciousness". The word does not appear in the description of the
>>> theories.
>> I don't think it's necessary to write that you assume conciousness.
>> All
>> theories assume truth and still no one makes this implicit.
>
> By assumption, I mean the assumption present, concretely, in the
> theory. Not the meta-assumption needed to understand that humans can
> understand the theory.
OK, but still we should not forget that any theory is within a meta-level
that assumes certain things, and every theory inherits this assumption from
this meta-level (call it "reality" or even just "what I can't (really)
doubt").
OK, but your theory appears in your conciousness. Simply not stating this in
the theory doesn't remove the assumption from the theory, because the theory
is built upon the assumption (or rather knowledge) of conciousness.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Just open
> any book of math, you will not see any assumption on consciousness.
This would be rather ridiculous, since everybody "assumes" consciousness
either way... But nevertheless there is no sense in math without there being
sense in conciousness, so it is an implicit assumption.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> This makes it possible to a machine to prove elementary addition to be
> correct. If we assume consciousness at that level, then we will not
> explain consciousness.
Does it make a difference whether we assume conciousness or not? After all
we already know conciousness to be true.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Numbers just come before any *notion* of conciousness that is
>> reflected in
>> the numbers, but they can't come before conciousness itself.
>
> They can't come, in any sense. A number does not come. A number is
> even or odd, or little than an other number, etc.
I expressed myself badly. I meant "numbers are logically prior to etc...".
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I use the number like a physicist or any scientist. You will not
> criticize Einstein's relativity, because he use numbers without
> mentioning consciousness. There is no reason to do this here.
But Einstein did not claim to explain conciousness.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>>> But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.
>>>> My point is not to insult machines. A machine is identified by what
>>>> it does,
>>>> because feelings can not be uniquely linked with a machine.
>>>
>>> Why? We can, for all practical purpose, attach a mind to a machine.
>>> What we cannot do is to attach a machine to a mind, but "only" an
>>> infinity of machine to a mind.
>> How can we attach a mind to a machine? If you have the description
>> of a
>> machine, you know what it feels? You are a machine lover indeed ;).
>
>
> If I have a description of the machine, I still cannot *known* if it
> feels. But if the 3-description of the machine and its behavior, is
> enough similar to me, then I can believe, or guess, that it feelms
> something relatrively similar to me. This is what I do with *you*
> right now. Progress in neurophysiology could help to make me better
> guesses, but attributing consciousness to an other is always a sort of
> guess.
OK, did ignore your "for all practical purpose" somewhat. Sorry.
OK, I still do not understand how this could be, but this is probably due
to:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> My feeling is that you lack a bit of mathematical logic, which makes
> you confuse level of theories, and which makes you lack the important
> distinction between syntactical truth and semantical truth.
> Mathematical logic has such distinction as main subject matter,
> including results linking the two notions.
Your feeling is right indeed.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> It seems to
>> be possible only if it is wrong that 3-we is a machine, but assuming
>> it
>> leads to the right conclusion it is not a machine. But this would
>> mean COMP
>> is self-refuting.
>
> Not really. G does not prove 1 = 3. This does NOT mean that G proves
> NOT(1 = 3). You are confusing, I think: G does not prove p, with G
> proves NOT p. (~Bp is not equivalent with B~p)
If G does not prove NOT(1 = 3), why can we say that "3-we being a 3-machine
entails that the 1-we are not machine."?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I really suggest to you to buy the book by Mendelson on logic. It
> would provide you a big help.
Thanks for your tip. I probably won't read it anytime soon, though, because
I am tired of formalisms.;-)
I am more interested in what your words convey to someone interested in
fundamental questions, but not necessarily firm in logic. And I feel that
they may be a bit missleading then.
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Why-I-am-I--tp26616194p26989764.html
Bruno Marchal
For me it is undoubtable that the understanding of what numbers are (and I
obviously can not make sense out of "numbers" without there being an
understanding of it) can only come out of conciousness, so "numbers explain
(or give rise to) conciousness" is simply not graspable for me.
It seems
like an empty statement unless you mean with conciousness "conciousness as
referred to in this theory", but this is not conciousness. It is the shadow
of (or the pointer to) conciousness in this theory.
Bruno Marchal wrote:Additionally,the notion of numbers relies on the notion of truth,Not at all.OK, I shouldn't have written "notion". I rather meant numbers rely on there
being an understanding of what is *what I mean* with the word "truth" or
"meaning" or "sense".
Bruno Marchal wrote:which is a notion thatfundamentally can't be defined, only known.This is not correct. Pean Arithmetic can define a notion of truth forany formula with a determinate length.Tarski theorem just forbid ageneral notion of truth to be defined in the theory, for formula withan finite but not fixed in advance length.This is why I wrote "fundamentally". You can define truth in some context,
but not truth itself. Every definition presumes that there is truth/meaning
in what it defines.
Bruno Marchal wrote:Without *experiencing* truththere is no sense to numbers.I think you are confusing third person numbers, and the human firstperson experience of numbers.I just don't get for "whom" there could be third person numbers? I think
third person objects are just objects shareable by different first person
viewpoints. But it always relies on there being a first person.
You write that you don't want to eliminate the person, but isn't saying
there are third person numbers apart from a first "person" (no human being
but conciousness) exactly this?
To whom could you explain it if not to a
person that you already presume? Who could understand it?
Bruno Marchal wrote:Arithmetical realism is the explicit assumption that truth of the form"17 is a prime number" is not dependent of the existence of humans, oreven of a physical universe.I basically agree.
But I don't think that it is even possible to
meaningfully propose that "17 is a prime number" is independent of
conciousness since you can't doubt (what I mean with the word) conciousness
and thus for every concious being (that is, every entity that is capable of
understanding something) everything is dependent on it.
Bruno Marchal wrote:So there are numbers without there being"dreaming"/experiencing first.I guess you meant "so there are no numbers ...".But this is not the theory I propose. I take Arithmetic as startingpoint. Dreaming/experiencing will be a property of numbers.It is really NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER (=> HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS=> HUMAN NUMBER)Right, I meant "so there are no numbers ...".
The problem for me is that you (in my mind) can't take arithmetics as a
starting point without taking you as a starting point.
Of course you
understand that, but then it is confusing (or dishonest, but I absolutely
don't believe that of course;-)) to write "NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS =>
MATTER" because you can only mean "MY UNDOUBTABLE CONCIOUSNSS =>" (since
this is already clear on a meta-level apart from the theory it is, I think,
unecessary to write it) "NUMBERS => POINTER TO CONCIOUSNESS WITHIN THIS
THEORY => POINTER TO MATTER WITHIN THIS THEORY". You rather explain the
place of conciousness within your theory, not conciousness itself. Not
mentioning it is confusing IMO, even though it may be "obvious".
Bruno Marchal wrote:It seems to me that you call that "primitive", which relies alreadyon thetruths ("there are dreams/experiences") of which it gives emergenceto. Doyou see my problem with that?Not really. And it seems that your remark could apply to any theory.We have to agree on some starting point. The starting point I use isalready used by almost all theories of nature and human.Of course. But almost all theories of nature and human don't claim to
explain conciousness or matter. Even "fundamental" science like physics do
not (generally) claim to explain conciousness or matter in itself. And when
scientists claim to do, I am very critical, too.
Bruno Marchal wrote:You areconfusing, I think, a statement like 2+3 = 5, and "I understand that2+3 = 5". Those are very different. 2+3 = 5 points to what I understandabout numbers and "I understand that 2+3 = 5" points to *that* Iunderstand what it means that 2+3=5. This is indeed an importantdifference, but is it what you meant?
Bruno Marchal wrote:Bruno Marchal wrote:But since you don't only assume mechanism, butalso conciousness (like all theories)Digitam mechanism (comp) assumes consciousness explicitly (cf thesense of the "yes doctor"). Most theories does not assume"consciousness". The word does not appear in the description of thetheories.I don't think it's necessary to write that you assume conciousness.Alltheories assume truth and still no one makes this implicit.By assumption, I mean the assumption present, concretely, in thetheory. Not the meta-assumption needed to understand that humans canunderstand the theory.OK, but still we should not forget that any theory is within a meta-level
that assumes certain things, and every theory inherits this assumption from
this meta-level (call it "reality" or even just "what I can't (really)
doubt").
Bruno Marchal wrote:Just openany book of math, you will not see any assumption on consciousness.This would be rather ridiculous, since everybody "assumes" consciousness
either way... But nevertheless there is no sense in math without there being
sense in conciousness, so it is an implicit assumption.
Bruno Marchal wrote:This makes it possible to a machine to prove elementary addition to becorrect. If we assume consciousness at that level, then we will notexplain consciousness.Does it make a difference whether we assume conciousness or not? After all
we already know conciousness to be true.
Bruno Marchal wrote:Numbers just come before any *notion* of conciousness that isreflected inthe numbers, but they can't come before conciousness itself.They can't come, in any sense. A number does not come. A number iseven or odd, or little than an other number, etc.I expressed myself badly. I meant "numbers are logically prior to etc...".
Bruno Marchal wrote:I use the number like a physicist or any scientist. You will notcriticize Einstein's relativity, because he use numbers withoutmentioning consciousness. There is no reason to do this here.But Einstein did not claim to explain conciousness.
Bruno Marchal wrote:Bruno Marchal wrote:But this is just insulting the machines, and nothing else.My point is not to insult machines. A machine is identified by whatit does,because feelings can not be uniquely linked with a machine.Why? We can, for all practical purpose, attach a mind to a machine.What we cannot do is to attach a machine to a mind, but "only" aninfinity of machine to a mind.How can we attach a mind to a machine? If you have the descriptionof amachine, you know what it feels? You are a machine lover indeed ;).If I have a description of the machine, I still cannot *known* if itfeels. But if the 3-description of the machine and its behavior, isenough similar to me, then I can believe, or guess, that it feelmssomething relatrively similar to me. This is what I do with *you*right now. Progress in neurophysiology could help to make me betterguesses, but attributing consciousness to an other is always a sort ofguess.OK, did ignore your "for all practical purpose" somewhat. Sorry.
Bruno Marchal wrote:I really suggest to you to buy the book by Mendelson on logic. Itwould provide you a big help.Thanks for your tip. I probably won't read it anytime soon, though, because
I am tired of formalisms.;-)
I am more interested in what your words convey to someone interested in
fundamental questions, but not necessarily firm in logic. And I feel that
they may be a bit missleading then.
RMahoney
I've spent the past 35 or so years (i'm now 56) pondering the subject
of "why I am I" and doing thought experiment after thought experiment
with cloning, copies, changing "I" one particle at a time until I am
"you" or someone else, and ultimately came to the conclusion as
someone posted midway thru this thread of the concept of the
universal person or universal soul... consciousness is basically
universal, there is no priority of one bit of consciousness over
the other. Within just my own life, the organism I was 35 years
ago is not the organism I am today, I am only connected to that
former organism by sequential events in time and space, threaded
together. With an advanced technology I could become
"Tom Cruise" by sequential changes particle by particle,
memory by memory, thought by thought, until I became the
currently existing Tom Cruise. Would my "I" which changed
over the course of 35 years from my former "I" be any different
than Tom Cruise's "I" that was changed over time (bit by bit)
from my former "I"? Thought experiments like these made me
realize we're all essentially the same universal concept, we're
all just unique pieces of the whole of the everything. It's just
really cool to find "like" thinking by a string search on the web,
having done all this thinking in isolation and coming to the
same conclusion as other minds have. What brought me to
this site was a string search for "everything possible exists",
something I now believe and was just curious if there was
any text on the web with the same line of thinking. It was my
answer to the other question I've always had as to why does
the universe exist at all? I came to my own conclusion that if
anything exists (which apparently it does), then every possible
event must exist, every possible outcome from one state to
the other must exist, and if it existed once, nothing stops it
from existing again, and actually, every possible event not
only exists but has always existed and will always exist.
Kind of expands the universe quite a bit, virtually infinite.
There's not only me, but every possible outcome of
my life. There's every possible outcome of my mom
& dad's reproduction, some of which produce me but
nearly infinitely conditions that do not produce my starting
organism. My dad wouldn't have existed, if it weren't for the
lightning strike that killed his mom's first husband. So I'm
here because I am just one of nearly infinite possibilities
of consciousness. Disconcerting, at times, where I used
to think, "glad it's them and not me" (like tortured terrorist
victims), well, we're all the same basically, and while the
whole of everything contains terrible things, including
the very worst of possibilities, it also contains the very best
as well. Having figured this much out to my satisfaction
actually gives me a very contented, peaceful and secure
feeling.
RMahoney
Bruno Marchal
Nice thought experiments. But they need amnesia (like in going from
you to Cruise). I tend to think like you that it may be the case that
we are the same person (like those who result from a self-
duplication, both refer as being the same person as the original, yet
acknowledge their respective differentiation.
It is certainly interesting, and it enlarges the spectrum of the
"immortality" notions. May be scary too, when not familiarized with
self-multiplication and self-transformation.
Those notions are studied in theoretical computer science, so that
they can be applied to make such reasoning precise.
And the universal machine is well placed, by Church thesis, to play
the role of the main heroin. I think.
I am sure we will have opportunities to come back on those "more
advanced" thought experiences,
Bruno
> terrorist victims), well, we're all the same basically, and while the
> whole of everything contains terrible things, including the very worst
> of possibilities, it also contains the very best as well. Having
> figured this much out to my satisfaction actually gives me a very
> contented, peaceful and secure feeling.
> - Roy
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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
> .
>
>
russell standish
> And the universal machine is well placed, by Church thesis, to play the
> role of the main heroin. I think.
>
Could be a Freudian slip - do you mean heroine here, as opposed to
heroin the drug?
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
RMahoney
> Welcome RMahoney,
>
> Nice thought experiments. But they need amnesia (like in going from
> you to Cruise). I tend to think like you that it may be the case that
> we are the same person (like those who result from a self-
> duplication, both refer as being the same person as the original, yet
> acknowledge their respective differentiation.
Yes I think I understand what you mean by amnesia, you couldn't
carry any rememberance of your old self when changing to Tom Cruise,
but you would in the intermediary steps and gradually would lose the
concept of your old self that is gradually replaced by Tom's self
concept.
Thing is, it is very similar to the process happening as we age. I
began
a journal when I was in my 20's, capturing my thoughts every time I
visited this subject in my "mind trips". So when I read a page from
that
journal today, I sometimes go "wow, I was thinking that, then?" I've
obviously acquired a bit of amnesia. Yet I feel like I'm the same
person
because I've always had this body (although an aging body). What
would
it be like if everyone had default amnesia such that any thought
older
than 20 years is erased? So you wouldn't remember your earlier years
but you were that person once. I could claim to have originated from
Tom Cruise's childhood and it wouldn't make any difference. Just like
I don't believe it makes any difference to say why I am I? and not
you?,
as we are we, simultaneously, and we are they, all those who lived
past lives, etc.
RMahoney
Bruno Marchal
On 28 Jan 2010, at 20:27, RMahoney wrote:
> On Jan 8, 12:38 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> Welcome RMahoney,
>>
>> Nice thought experiments. But they need amnesia (like in going from
>> you to Cruise). I tend to think like you that it may be the case that
>> we are the same person (like those who result from a self-
>> duplication, both refer as being the same person as the original,
>> yet
>> acknowledge their respective differentiation.
>
> Yes I think I understand what you mean by amnesia, you couldn't
> carry any rememberance of your old self when changing to Tom Cruise,
> but you would in the intermediary steps and gradually would lose the
> concept of your old self that is gradually replaced by Tom's self
> concept.
OK.
I think there is an "agnosologic" path from any "person" to any
"person", for example from you to a bacteria, or Peano Arithmetic,
perhaps even the "empty person". Agnosia is a term used for disease
with deny, like people who become blind and pretend not having
perceive any difference.
> Thing is, it is very similar to the process happening as we age. I
> began
> a journal when I was in my 20's, capturing my thoughts every time I
> visited this subject in my "mind trips". So when I read a page from
> that
> journal today, I sometimes go "wow, I was thinking that, then?" I've
> obviously acquired a bit of amnesia. Yet I feel like I'm the same
> person
> because I've always had this body (although an aging body). What
> would
> it be like if everyone had default amnesia such that any thought
> older
> than 20 years is erased? So you wouldn't remember your earlier years
> but you were that person once. I could claim to have originated from
> Tom Cruise's childhood and it wouldn't make any difference.
Sure. From a third person point of view identity is relative.
But from a first person point of view it is a sort of absolute related
to the way you have build your (current) self through your experiences
and inheritage relatively to a normal set of computations. We are what
we value, I would say, but this makes it a personal question.
Note that the uda reasoning is made in a way which prevents the need
for clarifying those considerations, albeit very interesting.
> Just like
> I don't believe it makes any difference to say why I am I? and not
> you?,
> as we are we, simultaneously, and we are they, all those who lived
> past lives, etc.
... and future lives, alternate lives, and states.
OK, especially if you see that such a view prevent relativism. When
the 'other' makes a mistake, in the past, or the present, (or the
future!) the question is how could *I* be wrong, how could *I* have
been wrong, how could *I* help for being less wrong. Such an attitude
encourages the dialog and the appreciation of the "other(s)", despite
(or thanks to) its relative unknown nature. Eventually this can help
to develop some faith in the unknown, together with the lucidity on
the hellish paths, which can then be seen as mostly the product of
certainty idolatry, and security idolatry. It is a natural price of
consciousness: by knowing they are universal, Lobian machine know that
they can crash. And being never satisfied, they will complain for more
memory space and time to their most probable local universal
neighbors, up, for some, to their universal recognizance, and so quite
happy to dispose of what 'God' (arithmetical truth) can offer them
(and has already offer them).
Knowing you are the other is a reason to embellish the relation with
the many possible and probable universal neighbor(s). The
computationalist good cannot make the bad disappears, but it may be
able to confine it more and more in the phantasms and fantasies, or
second order, virtual, dreamed realities.
Bruno