Observation versus assumption

[John Clark]

On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 3:55 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> If nobody can find a computation that is not realized by some physical object, and nobody can,

> Everybody can do that, in the samùesense that everybody can find a prime number. 

 

Yes, everybody can find prime numbers because everyBODY has a body made if matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

>A computation can be realised physically, but also arithmetically, as shown in all elementary textbook.

Oh god here we go again!! Here we go with elementary textbooks making physically realizable calculations that for some never explained reason INTEL and its competitors have never taken advantage of even though the technique would make them masters of the universe.

> I do not assume the existence of the physical object,

That's OK, physical objects don't care if you assume them or not, they just keep on doing what they do.

 

> that is insisting on your confusion between computation and physical computations. 

When it comes to discerning the difference between a real calculation and ridiculous phantom calculations your confusion is epic.  

 

>> Mathematical language can describe a computation

> Sure. But a computation is not the same as a description of computation,

I know, that was my point. The Mathematical  language can describe a calculation but it can not make a calculation anymore than the English language can produce a flesh and blood cat from the letters C, A and T.

 

> like the fact that 1 + 1 is 2 is different from the sequence of symbols "1 + 1 is 2”.

"1+1=2"  is what a computation produces, and that is the ONLY reason it is a fact. And the ONLY way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics. Actually it's even more restrictive than that, the matter must be organized in certain specific ways to make a calculation, if you organize it in the form of a logic textbook it won't work, if you organize it in the form of a Silicon Microprocessor it will. 

>> just as the English language can describe a cat, but the three letter 

English word "cat" is not an animal and is not alive.  

> Yes, some language used in mathematics can describe a computation, but that does not make a

computation the same as a description of a computation.

 I know, that was my point. 

> You confuse again a model and a theory, semantic and syntax,

You again confuse the fact that the semantic meaning of any language including the Mathematical language ultimately comes from calculation, and the only way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> I think that you are stuck into your idea that mathematics is a language.

A language needs a vocabulary and a grammar, and mathematics has both. I am certainly not the first to say that, neither was Galileo who said:

 "Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe".

>>The type of Turing Machine that can change with time, that is to say

the type that can actually *do* something, the type that is amenable to 

the scientific method, MUST be made of matter that obeys the laws 

of physics. No exceptions.

> Well, I guess, for a believer. I am not.

Well, I guess that's the difference between you and me. I believe in both the value of induction and of the Scientific Method. You do not.

>> Matter may or may not be the ultimate in primitive, but if matter can do 

even one thing that numbers can't (and even you admit that pure numbers 

can't generate power but matter can) then matter must be more primitive 

than numbers. 

> Pure numbers cannot generate primitive energy or primitive matter, …, but who said that such things exist.

As your body temperature skyrockets from megawatts of electrical power milliseconds after you've been hit by a bolt of lightning it will male little difference if you've said such things can exist or not.    

> pure number relations can generate the illusion of primitive energy, 

I have debated philosophy for a long time and I've noticed that nobody uses the word "illusion" in an argument unless they are backed into a corner and are desperate,

>> Maybe our world and even we ourselves are all a simulation, but if so the 

the cosmic virtual reality program MUST be running on a computer made 

of matter that obeys the laws of physics because matter has one key 

attribute that arithmetic lacks, matter can change but arithmetic can't. 

And you can't have computation without change.    

> The change x -> s(x) is quite enough, to explain the psychological illusion of relative change. 

What you need to do now is write "x -> s(x)" on a postcard and mail it to INTEL, I'm sure they will be very grateful to you for revolutionizing their industry. 

> If some “matter” plays a role in computation, then lambda calculus cannot be Turing universal, nor Turing machine, which are equivalent with respect to computations and digital processes to lambda calculus.

Bruno, that statement does not make one bit of sense. If lambda calculus is equivalent to a Turing Machine, and it is, then whatever I say about a Turing Machine is equally true for lambda calculus, and I say the only type of Turing Machine that can actually *do* things like make a calculation is one made of matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

>There is just no physical postulate in the theory of computability.

And the theory of computability can not compute anything, no theory can. That's why you need physical Turing Machines like microprocessors that use energy and produce heat if you want to mine for Bitcoins, and that's why textbooks on computer theory can't mine a damn thing.

> You come back with the knocking argument, which has been debunked by the Indian and greeks amore than 2000 years ago.

The "knocking argument" is just an insulting name for Induction and the Scientific Method, and if the ancient Greeks had not "debunked" it 2500 years ago Science would not have stagnated for 2000 years. 

> I suggest you reread those old text,

I would rather have my teeth drilled.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 6 Aug 2019, at 15:25, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 3:55 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> If nobody can find a computation that is not realized by some physical object, and nobody can,

> Everybody can do that, in the samùesense that everybody can find a prime number. 

 

Yes, everybody can find prime numbers because everyBODY has a body made if matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

That makes a human body able to find some prime number, but the prime number notion is not transformed into a physical notion through this. 

Same with computation. All the proposition making some computation into arithmetical existence are true, independently of the laws of physics, like the arithmetical proposition making 17 into a prime number, do not depends on human existence.

We need human existence only to assert that some human grasp the notion of prime, but the prime numbers does not need human to be prime. Insects have used the primality of 13 and 17 well before human did mathematics, for example.

>A computation can be realised physically, but also arithmetically, as shown in all elementary textbook.

Oh god here we go again!! Here we go with elementary textbooks making physically realizable calculations

Not at all. The elementary textbook just explain in detail that the notion of computation is available in arithmetic, independently on any physical laws. You will need physical laws only to implement some computation physically; like you need arithmetic to see that they are all emulated in arithmetic.

that for some never explained reason INTEL and its competitors have never taken advantage of even though the technique would make them masters of the universe.

> I do not assume the existence of the physical object,

That's OK, physical objects don't care if you assume them or not, they just keep on doing what they do.

Like the prime numbers do not care about mathematicians studying them. 

 

> that is insisting on your confusion between computation and physical computations. 

When it comes to discerning the difference between a real calculation and ridiculous phantom calculations your confusion is epic.  

Use of “real” is invalid here.

 

>> Mathematical language can describe a computation

> Sure. But a computation is not the same as a description of computation,

I know, that was my point. The Mathematical  language can describe a calculation but it can not make a calculation anymore than the English language can produce a flesh and blood cat from the letters C, A and T.

Yes, but you cannot deduce from this that a mathematical structure cannot emulate a computation. Indeed, all models of the arithmetical theories emulate, in the precise sense of Church, Turing and Co. all computations.

A mathematical structure is not to be confused with the language describing that mathematical structure.

 

> like the fact that 1 + 1 is 2 is different from the sequence of symbols "1 + 1 is 2”.

"1+1=2"  is what a computation produces, and that is the ONLY reason it is a fact.

Since Gödel we know that whatever produces “1+1=2” will be unable to prove some arithmetical statement which is true, showing that truth (of an arithmetical proposition) is not the same as proof of such proposition in some theory.

The arithmetical truth os independent of all theories build to explore it.

And the ONLY way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics.

That is the only way to make a physical computation. But you don’t need to make an arithmetical computation. They are just there in the same sense that the prime numbers are well determined independently of the human existence, or even the physical universe possible existence.

Actually it's even more restrictive than that, the matter must be organized in certain specific ways to make a calculation, if you organize it in the form of a logic textbook it won't work, if you organize it in the form of a Silicon Microprocessor it will. 

But the computation exists in arithmetic, independently of its emulation by a physical processor, like we can be sure that there is a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), independently of the fact that we might perhaps never find it.

>> just as the English language can describe a cat, but the three letter 

English word "cat" is not an animal and is not alive.  

> Yes, some language used in mathematics can describe a computation, but that does not make a

computation the same as a description of a computation.

 I know, that was my point. 

But you restrict that point of the physical reality, and dismiss it on the arithmetical reality.

> You confuse again a model and a theory, semantic and syntax,

You again confuse the fact that the semantic meaning of any language including the Mathematical language ultimately comes from calculation,

That is wrong. On the contrary the semantic of any theory escape the syntactical abilities of that theory. That comes from incompleteness. In fact, no theory at all can even defined its own semantics.

and the only way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> I think that you are stuck into your idea that mathematics is a language.

A language needs a vocabulary and a grammar, and mathematics has both.

And much more than that.

I am certainly not the first to say that, neither was Galileo who said:

 "Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe".

>>The type of Turing Machine that can change with time, that is to say

the type that can actually *do* something, the type that is amenable to 

the scientific method, MUST be made of matter that obeys the laws 

of physics. No exceptions.

> Well, I guess, for a believer. I am not.

Well, I guess that's the difference between you and me. I believe in both the value of induction and of the Scientific Method. You do not.

I do. I would not have consecrated 35 years of my life to show that Mechanism is empirically testable/refutable if that was not the case.

The difference between you and me is that you assume that the physical reality is primary, and I show that this is inconsistent once you assume the digital Mechanist hypothesis.

>> Matter may or may not be the ultimate in primitive, but if matter can do 

even one thing that numbers can't (and even you admit that pure numbers 

can't generate power but matter can) then matter must be more primitive 

than numbers. 

> Pure numbers cannot generate primitive energy or primitive matter, …, but who said that such things exist.

As your body temperature skyrockets from megawatts of electrical power milliseconds after you've been hit by a bolt of lightning it will male little difference if you've said such things can exist or not.    

> pure number relations can generate the illusion of primitive energy, 

I have debated philosophy for a long time and I've noticed that nobody uses the word "illusion" in an argument unless they are backed into a corner and are desperate,

>> Maybe our world and even we ourselves are all a simulation, but if so the 

the cosmic virtual reality program MUST be running on a computer made 

of matter that obeys the laws of physics because matter has one key 

attribute that arithmetic lacks, matter can change but arithmetic can't. 

And you can't have computation without change.    

> The change x -> s(x) is quite enough, to explain the psychological illusion of relative change. 

What you need to do now is write "x -> s(x)" on a postcard and mail it to INTEL, I'm sure they will be very grateful to you for revolutionizing their industry. 

Of course, they already know, and use this all the time. It is a primitive of all assembly language.

> If some “matter” plays a role in computation, then lambda calculus cannot be Turing universal, nor Turing machine, which are equivalent with respect to computations and digital processes to lambda calculus.

Bruno, that statement does not make one bit of sense. If lambda calculus is equivalent to a Turing Machine, and it is, then whatever I say about a Turing Machine is equally true for lambda calculus, and I say the only type of Turing Machine that can actually *do* things like make a calculation is one made of matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

Assuming such matter exists, you can implement a computation with it, but that does not make the computation more real. It makes its output available to you. But you cannot know if you are not also the product of some computation in arithmetic (unless some mysterious mystic power). In that simulation of you in arithmetic, you are still correct when arguing that you need a physical computation (relatively to you) to be able to use the output of that computation. This shows that your invocation of “real” for “physical” is not valid.

>There is just no physical postulate in the theory of computability.

And the theory of computability can not compute anything, no theory can.

The theory of computability is not supposed to be able to compute, here. Incidentally, they can. Sigma_1 provability is equivalent with mlamnda calculus and Turing machine, with respect to computability.

Any machine (arithmetical or physical) which can find a natural number having a decidable property can be shown to be Turing universal. So the theories RA and PA can compute, and all their computations are realised in virtue of some sigma_1 proposition to be true.

That's why you need physical Turing Machines like microprocessors that use energy and produce heat if you want to mine for Bitcoins, and that's why textbooks on computer theory can't mine a damn thing.

> You come back with the knocking argument, which has been debunked by the Indian and greeks amore than 2000 years ago.

The "knocking argument" is just an insulting name for Induction

It is not an insult, but you can see as an exemple of wrong induction, especially when you are using that argument in a dream, or in arithmetic. Infinitely many John Clark use it in arithmetic to claim that a computation needs matter to be real, and of course, “we” know that those John Clark are wrong.

and the Scientific Method, and if the ancient Greeks had not "debunked" it 2500 years ago Science would not have stagnated for 2000 years. 

?

> I suggest you reread those old text,

I would rather have my teeth drilled.

Stagnation has begun with the interdiction to read those greek text, and partially stopped when we have come back again to them, tanks to the Arab translations of the greek texts (not just Plotinus, but also mathematicians like Diophantus).

Bruno

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 10:19 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Yes, everybody can find prime numbers because everyBODY has a body made if matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

> That makes a human body able to find some prime number, but the prime number notion is not transformed into a physical notion through this. 

Without the notion of multiplication and division "a prime number" would have no meaning, and multiplication and division is something ONLY physics can do. 

 

> Same with computation.

Yep.

 

> All the proposition making some computation into arithmetical existence are true, independently of the laws of physics,

Without physics no statement in arithmetic would be true and none would be false either, they would just be meaningless squiqles.

 

> like the arithmetical proposition making 17 into a prime number, do not depends on human existence.

It doesn't depend on humans but it does depend on matter and the laws of physics as that is the only thing that can perform a calculation, and without computation nothing could be said about 17 being prime, in fact nothing could be said about the number 17 at all because it would be meaningless gibberish. 

  

> Insects have used the primality of 13 and 17 well before human did mathematics, for example.

Insects are made of matter and they obey the laws of physics.

 

>>> A computation can be realised physically, but also arithmetically, as shown in all elementary textbook.

>> Oh god here we go again!! Here we go with elementary textbooks making physically realizable calculations

> Not at all. The elementary textbook just explain in detail that the notion of computation is available in arithmetic,

Explanations are a human invention that benefit only them, explanations can not compute.

 

 > You will need physical laws only to implement some computation physically;

Translation from the original bafflegab: You only need physical laws if you want something more than a pretend toy calculation.  

>>  When it comes to discerning the difference between a real calculation and ridiculous phantom calculations your confusion is epic.  

> Use of “real” is invalid here.

I don't know how to be clearer or more unambiguous. As I've said more than once, a real calculation can be used to buy a Bitcoin but your pretend phantom calculations lack that property. 

>>>    a computation is not the same as a description of computation,

>>  I know, that was my point. The Mathematical  language can describe a calculation but it can not make a calculation anymore than the English language can produce a flesh and blood cat from the letters C, A and T.

> Yes, but you cannot deduce from this that a mathematical structure cannot emulate a computation.

Speak for yourself. Maybe you lack the ability to deduce the fact that a non physical thing can't emulate a computer or emulate anything else but I'm smart enough to have figured it out; and I'm not bragging because it takes very little brain power to figure it out. 

 

> Indeed, all models of the arithmetical theories emulate, in the precise sense of Church, Turing and Co.

Models can't compute and neither can theories, only Physical Turing Machines can compute.

 

> A mathematical structure is not to be confused with the language describing that mathematical structure.

Mathematical structures can't compute, only Physical Turing Machines can compute. 

> The arithmetical truth os independent of all theories build to explore it.

I agree, so stop talking about theories making calculations. 

>>  And the ONLY way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> That is the only way to make a physical computation.

Without physics all you've got is pretend toy calculations, and they're just silly.

>>  the matter must be organized in certain specific ways to make a calculation, if you organize it in the form of a logic textbook it won't work, if you organize it in the form of a Silicon Microprocessor it will. 

> But the computation exists in arithmetic, independently of its emulation by a physical processor, like we can be sure that there is a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), independently of the fact that we might perhaps never find it.

It has been proven that the truth or falsehood of the Continuum hypothesis makes no difference to our current set theory; and in a similar way if the entire multiverse lacks the resources to calculate a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), and it probably does, then the existence or nonexistence of that enormous number has nothing to do with reality.

>>  What you need to do now is write "x -> s(x)" on a postcard and mail it to INTEL, I'm sure they will be very grateful to you for revolutionizing their industry. 

> Of course, they already know, and use this all the time. It is a primitive of all assembly language.

There is nothing more useless than an assembly language program and no hardware to run it on.

 

> you cannot know if you are not also the product of some computation in arithmetic

I and my entire world might be a simulation, but if so I am NOT the product of a computation in arithmetic, I am the product of a computation made in a Physical Turing Machine because matter that obeys the laws of physics can change but arithmetic lacks that ability and you can't have computation without change.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 8 Aug 2019, at 15:55, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 10:19 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> Yes, everybody can find prime numbers because everyBODY has a body made if matter that obeys the laws of physics. 

> That makes a human body able to find some prime number, but the prime number notion is not transformed into a physical notion through this. 

Without the notion of multiplication and division "a prime number" would have no meaning, and multiplication and division is something ONLY physics can do. 

First that is false. Any universal digital machine can add and multiply, and they do that in the (sigma_1) arithmetical reality.

Second, the expression “physics can do” is so terribly vague that I can interpret it it many different ways, some true, some false. What is plausible is that some subset of the physical laws can implement some digital machine (including the universal one).

But I explicitly do not postulate physics. Only x + 0 = x, etc. Th reason is that I search of an explanation of where physics come from, and I avoid to postulate anything physical to avoid circularity and infinite regression.

 

> Same with computation.

Yep.

 

> All the proposition making some computation into arithmetical existence are true, independently of the laws of physics,

Without physics no statement in arithmetic would be true

Hmm mathematician disagree with this. It is only a statement in your particular materialist philosophy, and the point is that this cannot be true when we assume the digital mechanist hypothesis.

and none would be false either, they would just be meaningless squiqles.

If that is true, 2+2=4 would be a theorem in some physical theory which would not assume arithmetic. 

Show it.

 

> like the arithmetical proposition making 17 into a prime number, do not depends on human existence.

It doesn't depend on humans but it does depend on matter and the laws of physics as that is the only thing that can perform a calculation,

Relatively to you, but that happens in arithmetic. Or, as I have said already many times, you need to explain how an arithmetical John Clark is not conscious, despite telling me exactly what you tell me now.

How does you God, or Ontological Commitment, distinguish between the same computation, when processed on different Turing universal system. 

Bruce can do that, by invoking a non mechanist theory of mind. 

You can’t, because you assume Mechanism, and I have shown that to be impossible (or meaningless).

and without computation nothing could be said about 17 being prime, in fact nothing could be said about the number 17 at all because it would be meaningless gibberish. 

  

> Insects have used the primality of 13 and 17 well before human did mathematics, for example.

Insects are made of matter and they obey the laws of physics.

 

>>> A computation can be realised physically, but also arithmetically, as shown in all elementary textbook.

>> Oh god here we go again!! Here we go with elementary textbooks making physically realizable calculations

Not making. Just explaining.

> Not at all. The elementary textbook just explain in detail that the notion of computation is available in arithmetic,

Explanations are a human invention that benefit only them, explanations can not compute.

Yes, so look at the explanation. Here you just change the level of discussion by straw man remarks.

 

 > You will need physical laws only to implement some computation physically;

Translation from the original bafflegab: You only need physical laws if you want something more than a pretend toy calculation.  

>>  When it comes to discerning the difference between a real calculation and ridiculous phantom calculations your confusion is epic.  

> Use of “real” is invalid here.

I don't know how to be clearer or more unambiguous. As I've said more than once, a real calculation can be used to buy a Bitcoin but your pretend phantom calculations lack that property. 

How can the arithmetical John Clark distinguish between an arithmetical bitcoin and a physical bitcoin?

You just repeat your credo, without providing explanations or justifications. You seem to imbue a lot of magic in your notion of matter.

>>>    a computation is not the same as a description of computation,

>>  I know, that was my point. The Mathematical  language can describe a calculation but it can not make a calculation anymore than the English language can produce a flesh and blood cat from the letters C, A and T.

> Yes, but you cannot deduce from this that a mathematical structure cannot emulate a computation.

Speak for yourself. Maybe you lack the ability to deduce the fact that a non physical thing can't emulate a computer or emulate anything else but I'm smart enough to have figured it out; and I'm not bragging because it takes very little brain power to figure it out. 

A point which is simply contradict by the facts. The only problem is that you don’t open the textbook.

 

> Indeed, all models of the arithmetical theories emulate, in the precise sense of Church, Turing and Co.

Models can't compute and neither can theories, only Physical Turing Machines can compute.

 

> A mathematical structure is not to be confused with the language describing that mathematical structure.

Mathematical structures can't compute, only Physical Turing Machines can compute. 

> The arithmetical truth os independent of all theories build to explore it.

I agree, so stop talking about theories making calculations. 

But they do, in the precise sense which has been given. And that is used when we show that the physical reality can also do computation, by implementing those universal numbers, which computes all by themselves in arithmetic, indeed, the appearance of the physical reality is explained through that arithmetical reality (different from a theory of arithmetic, notice).

>>  And the ONLY way to make a calculation is with matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> That is the only way to make a physical computation.

Without physics all you've got is pretend toy calculations, and they're just silly.

Arithmetic implement also the computation with oracle. That is an open problem in the physical reality (and virtually senseless, as if we are machine, we cannot recognise in a finite time a machine with oracle with a sufficiently complex machine without oracle). But it is a theorem in math that many portion of the arithmetical truth computes much more than the universal Turing machine. That invalidate your point that only a physical reality compute.

Besides, I don’t postulate physics. Simply.

>>  the matter must be organized in certain specific ways to make a calculation, if you organize it in the form of a logic textbook it won't work, if you organize it in the form of a Silicon Microprocessor it will. 

> But the computation exists in arithmetic, independently of its emulation by a physical processor, like we can be sure that there is a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), independently of the fact that we might perhaps never find it.

It has been proven that the truth or falsehood of the Continuum hypothesis makes no difference to our current set theory; and in a similar way if the entire multiverse lacks the resources to calculate a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), and it probably does, then the existence or nonexistence of that enormous number has nothing to do with reality.

With your conception of reality, which is inconsistent with mechanism.

>>  What you need to do now is write "x -> s(x)" on a postcard and mail it to INTEL, I'm sure they will be very grateful to you for revolutionizing their industry. 

> Of course, they already know, and use this all the time. It is a primitive of all assembly language.

There is nothing more useless than an assembly language program and no hardware to run it on.

 

> you cannot know if you are not also the product of some computation in arithmetic

I and my entire world might be a simulation, but if so I am NOT the product of a computation in arithmetic,

How do you know?

I am the product of a computation made in a Physical Turing Machine because matter that obeys the laws of physics can change but arithmetic lacks that ability and you can't have computation without change.

Even in many physical theories, like GR, change is relative to the subject. That is of course the case in the arithmetical reality. It is statical, out of the category of time and space, but dynamical from the relative points off view of the person associate to the partial computable number relations. 

I am waiting for your explanation, avoiding terms like "real”,  of why the arithmetical John Clark are zombies. How does matter adds the consciousness, and the brain still be Turing emulable?

Bruno

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 7:54 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Without the notion of multiplication and division "a prime number" would have no meaning, and multiplication and division is something ONLY physics can do. 

> First that is false. Any universal digital machine can add and multiply,

Yes  a universal digital machine can add and multiply, and a universal digital machine just like any machine is made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

 

> Second, the expression “physics can do” is so terribly vague that I can interpret it it many different ways,

The statement "physics can do X" may be vague in the Brunospeak language but it isn't in the English language .

> But I explicitly do not postulate physics.

I know for a fact that is untrue. You postulate physics every time you wish to get to the outer side but refuse to step off the curb into the street if you judge that a physical car moving at its current physical speed will intersect with your physical body before you have time to get to the other side. And you are not the only one, for the last 500 million years without exception every single one of your ancestors has postulated physics or you wouldn't be here today; I'm sure some animals ignored physics but they left no descendants.   

 

> Without physics no statement in arithmetic would be true and none would be false either, they would just be meaningless squiqles.

> If that is true, 2+2=4 would be a theorem in some physical theory 

No theory was involved. People observed that whenever they added two physical things to two more physical things they always got a invariant quantity, four physical things. People then used inductive reasoning to conclude this would always be true even when they are not observed, and at least until the discovery of quantum mechanics this has all worked out fine. But if you wait long enough induction will always let you down.     

 

> you need to explain how an arithmetical John Clark is not conscious,

I was talking about intelligence, I have not proposed any consciousness theory not because it is hard but because it is easy. A theory must fit the facts and it's easy to do that with consciousness because there are no facts about it to fit except that I John Clark am conscious.

> How does you God, [...]

And that is my cue to skip to the next paragraph because I believe in the value of induction and you've never said anything intelagent after that. 

>>  I don't know how to be clearer or more unambiguous. As I've said more than once, a real calculation can be used to buy a Bitcoin but your pretend phantom calculations lack that property. 

> How can the arithmetical John Clark distinguish between an arithmetical bitcoin and a physical bitcoin?

 Distinguish? The arithmetical John Clark can't *do* any distinguishing, arithmetical John Clark can't *do* anything at all because doing involves change and arithmetic never changes, but matter that obeys the laws of physics does. 

> You just repeat your credo, without providing explanations or justifications. You seem to imbue a lot of magic in your notion of matter.

If the ability to change by interacting with time and space is magic then yes, matter has a certain magic that numbers lack.

>>  Speak for yourself. Maybe you lack the ability to deduce the fact that a non physical thing can't emulate a computer or emulate anything else but I'm smart enough to have figured it out; and I'm not bragging because it takes very little brain power to figure it out. 

> A point which is simply contradict by the facts. The only problem is that you don’t open the textbook.

I don't have to open my computer for it to make a calculation, why do I have to open a textbook for it to make a calculation? 

> Arithmetic implement also the computation with oracle.

It the computations performed by a mathematical oracle are real then so is the magic performed by Harry potter.

 

>> It has been proven that the truth or falsehood of the Continuum hypothesis makes no difference to our current set theory; and in a similar way if the entire multiverse lacks the resources to calculate a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), and it probably does, then the existence or nonexistence of that enormous number has nothing to do with reality.

> With your conception of reality, which is inconsistent with mechanism.

Maybe so but I'm not sure because I don't know what the definition of "mechanism" is in Brunospeak, although I have a feeling it would contain words like "primitive" and "fundamental" which seem pretty irrelevant on a discussion about mind.    

>> . I and my entire world might be a simulation, but if so I am NOT the product of a computation in arithmetic,

> How do you know?

I explained how I know that immediately after the comma: 

"I am the product of a computation made in a Physical Turing Machine because matter that obeys the laws of physics can change but arithmetic lacks that ability and you can't have computation without change."

> Even in many physical theories, like GR, change is relative to the subject.

Well duh, change is always relative to something. In physics 2 object change their orientation in space with time, but the change between 2 and 3 is always one everywhere. Physical stuff changes, mathematical stuff doesn't, And mind needs change.   

> I am waiting for your explanation, avoiding terms like "real”,  of why the arithmetical John Clark are zombies.

There is only one thing I know for certain about zombies, I am not one; other than that my ignorance on that subject is total.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 9 Aug 2019, at 23:40, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 7:54 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> Without the notion of multiplication and division "a prime number" would have no meaning, and multiplication and division is something ONLY physics can do. 

> First that is false. Any universal digital machine can add and multiply,

Yes  a universal digital machine can add and multiply, and a universal digital machine just like any machine is made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

“Digital machine” is just an expression referring to the kind of machine defining Universal system. They are finite mathematical object. Which one is not relevant. Turing used finite sets, but usually people use (mathematical) words, or just numbers. Finite object can be identified with their Gödel numbers without problem.

 

> Second, the expression “physics can do” is so terribly vague that I can interpret it it many different ways,

The statement "physics can do X" may be vague in the Brunospeak language but it isn't in the English language .

You mean such expression is not English. I agree.

> But I explicitly do not postulate physics.

I know for a fact that is untrue. You postulate physics every time you wish to get to the outer side but refuse to step off the curb into the street if you judge that a physical car moving at its current physical speed will intersect with your physical body before you have time to get to the other side. And you are not the only one, for the last 500 million years without exception every single one of your ancestors has postulated physics or you wouldn't be here today; I'm sure some animals ignored physics but they left no descendants.   

Where is the physical assumption in the theory, which I recall can be put in the form:

1) If A = B and A = C, then B = C
2) If A = B then AC = BC
3) If A = B then CA = CB
4) KAB = A
5) SABC = AC(BC)

I do not use any other assumption. Of course I do use the physical reality to send this too you, but that is different from a postulate assuming something physical. It would like saying that group theory assumes the existence of blackboard and chalks … (a confusion of level).

You can also assume classical logic +

1) 0 ≠ s(x)
2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)
3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y)) 
4) x+0 = x
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)
6) x*0=0
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

In English:

1) 0 is not the successor of a number
2) Different numbers have different successors
3) Except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor
4) If you add zero to a number, you get that number
5) If you add a number x to the successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y
6) If you multiply a number by 0, you get 0
7) If you multiply a number x by the successor of y, you get the number x added to the multiplication of the number x with y

As everyone can see, there is no physical assumption. A physical assumption would be the hypothesis that some particles or fields exist, or a physical “universe”, etc.

 

> Without physics no statement in arithmetic would be true and none would be false either, they would just be meaningless squiqles.

> If that is true, 2+2=4 would be a theorem in some physical theory 

No theory was involved. People observed that whenever they added two physical things to two more physical things they always got a invariant quantity, four physical things. People then used inductive reasoning to conclude this would always be true even when they are not observed, and at least until the discovery of quantum mechanics this has all worked out fine. But if you wait long enough induction will always let you down.     

Let us use “inductive inference” in place of “induction” to avoid a confusion between mathematical induction and inductive inference.

Then what you describe is how the humans discovered the numbers, but with mechanism, we need to assume the numbers, or anything equivalent, and then to derive the physical reality appearance from the computations. 

That is what the main reasoning proves, and what both math and the empirical reality confirms, up to now.

 

> you need to explain how an arithmetical John Clark is not conscious,

I was talking about intelligence, I have not proposed any consciousness theory not because it is hard but because it is easy.

It is certainly easier that matter. But with mechanism, matter must be explained from that theory of consciousness, and that works very well.

A theory must fit the facts and it's easy to do that with consciousness because there are no facts about it to fit except that I John Clark am conscious.

But there is an infinity of John Clark in arithmetic, and you have to drive the appearance of matter from the first person indeterminacy on that infinity. That works.

> How does you God, [...]

And that is my cue to skip to the next paragraph because I believe in the value of induction and you've never said anything intelagent after that. 

Judgment weaken your point a lot.

>>  I don't know how to be clearer or more unambiguous. As I've said more than once, a real calculation can be used to buy a Bitcoin but your pretend phantom calculations lack that property. 

> How can the arithmetical John Clark distinguish between an arithmetical bitcoin and a physical bitcoin?

 Distinguish? The arithmetical John Clark can't *do* any distinguishing, arithmetical John Clark can't *do* anything at all because doing involves change and arithmetic never changes, but matter that obeys the laws of physics does. 

Appearance of change are explained from within arithmetic. Indeed S4Grz1 is a logic of subjective time.

> You just repeat your credo, without providing explanations or justifications. You seem to imbue a lot of magic in your notion of matter.

If the ability to change by interacting with time and space is magic then yes, matter has a certain magic that numbers lack.

Good!

It is that magic which makes you not Turing emulable, once you link consciousness and piece of matter.

>>  Speak for yourself. Maybe you lack the ability to deduce the fact that a non physical thing can't emulate a computer or emulate anything else but I'm smart enough to have figured it out; and I'm not bragging because it takes very little brain power to figure it out. 

> A point which is simply contradict by the facts. The only problem is that you don’t open the textbook.

I don't have to open my computer for it to make a calculation, why do I have to open a textbook for it to make a calculation? 

Textbook does not make calculation. 

I refer to those textbook so you can see that you are the only person believing that a Turing machine or a digital machine, or a program, or a lambda expression is a physical object, or need a physical reality to be implemented.

I say that the number x emulate the number y on the number z when phi_x(y,z) = phi_y(z), and that relation is definable in pure arithmetic (usually this is done using Kleene’s predicate). See Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4, where it is done in detail, or ask me to show it here.

(By phi_i, I = 0, 1, 2, …) I mean a computable enumeration of all partial computable function, corresponding to the comptable enumeration of the codes of the machines or programs is a fixed universal system. I gave examples like the combinators, the coffee bar machines, the Turing machine, etc.

It is “easy" to show that the operation # defined by a#b = phi_a(b) transform N into a combinatory algebra, making the combinator formalism both a very low level language and a very high level language (which explains its importance in theoretical computer science and constructive mathematics, proof theory, etc.).

Now the relation phi_x(y) = z is shown, in those textbooks to be an arithmetical relation, by the use of the “well known” predicate of Kleene T(a, b, c),  T(a, b, c) says that there is a Turing machine with number a which applies on input b leads to the (halting) computation c.  phi_x(y) = z is z = U(min c T(x,y,c).

Read the chapter 4 of Davis’ book for all (tedious) details, or read Gödel’s 1931 paper.

You need to understand that once you accept the church-Turing thesis, then the code of the total functions canot be mechanically ordered, so that the universal machine is confronted quickly to a non computable reality in arithmetic.

> Arithmetic implement also the computation with oracle.

It the computations performed by a mathematical oracle are real then so is the magic performed by Harry potter.

No, because all mathematician and scientists agrees it is arithmetically or set theoretically real. Depending on the oracle, we might need richer theory, but that is necessarily the case in arithmetic as the arithmetical reality is far above what any effective theory, or machine, can say about it (by incompleteness).

I know nobody who take seriously the magic of Harry Potter, most would say it is only for entertaining.

But the non computable distribution of the code of the total computable functions is not a convention; it is the hard price of  all universal machineries phi_i, be it combinators, Turing machine, or sigma_1 arithmetical relations, or even just polynomial Diophantine relations.

 

>> It has been proven that the truth or falsehood of the Continuum hypothesis makes no difference to our current set theory; and in a similar way if the entire multiverse lacks the resources to calculate a prime number bigger than 10^(10^1000), and it probably does, then the existence or nonexistence of that enormous number has nothing to do with reality.

> With your conception of reality, which is inconsistent with mechanism.

Maybe so but I'm not sure because I don't know what the definition of "mechanism" is in Brunospeak,

Please stop this bullying ad hominem absurdity. 

Mechanism is CT + YD, and you have shown some understanding of both. Indeed, you are the only computationalist practitioner. You already said yes to the doctor! I can have some admiration for that.

My point is just that we cannot have mechanism and materialism (both in rather weak sense) together. 

Then the physical facts (quantum mechanics) add evidences to Mechanism, I would say.

although I have a feeling it would contain words like "primitive" and "fundamental" which seem pretty irrelevant on a discussion about mind.    

It is relevant when we discuss on the relation between mind, matter, and number. 

>> . I and my entire world might be a simulation, but if so I am NOT the product of a computation in arithmetic,

> How do you know?

I explained how I know that immediately after the comma: 

"I am the product of a computation made in a Physical Turing Machine because matter that obeys the laws of physics can change but arithmetic lacks that ability and you can't have computation without change.”

Knocking table argument, already shown to be invalid. The arithmetical John Clark in similar histories claims the same things. You posit the existence of some god, that you call matter, and by its magical ability, it transforms all the John Clark in arithmetic into zombie, except one, just for you or perhaps us. That is worst than “a miracle occur”. If that matter has a role in consciousness, either it is Turing emulable, but then it is in arithmetic, or it is not Turing emulable, and you will not survive with the digital brain.

If you survive in a physical yet digital emulation, you survive in the digital emulations, and those are run out of time and space in arithmetic, in the relative way apparently confirmed by the observation. 

> Even in many physical theories, like GR, change is relative to the subject.

Well duh, change is always relative to something. In physics 2 object change their orientation in space with time, but the change between 2 and 3 is always one everywhere. Physical stuff changes, mathematical stuff doesn't, And mind needs change.   

> I am waiting for your explanation, avoiding terms like "real”,  of why the arithmetical John Clark are zombies.

There is only one thing I know for certain about zombies, I am not one; other than that my ignorance on that subject is total.

Of course talk of the p-zombies. This might illustrate your lack of interest in the domain, but that should be the reason to be more modest when you identify reality with what we see/observe/measure, which is just following Aristotle theology.

Today, only a con scientist could claim has decided between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle’s idea was fertile, but when looking closer we have reason to doubt and not take it for granted. The Church Turing thesis rehabilitates Pythagorus, with the gift of some vaccine against the reductionist conception of the person.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 1:09 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> “Digital machine” is just an expression referring to the kind of machine defining Universal system. They are finite mathematical object.

If it's a mathematical object then it's not a machine because machines change and mathematics doesn't.

> Finite object can be identified with their Gödel numbers without problem.

Identified by who? Identified by brains made of matter that obey the laws of physics that are inside the heads of mathematicians.  

>> You postulate physics every time you wish to get to the outer side but refuse to step off the curb into the street if you judge that a physical car moving at its current physical speed will intersect with your physical body before you have time to get to the other side. And you are not the only one, for the last 500 million years without exception every single one of your ancestors has postulated physics or you wouldn't be here today; I'm sure some animals ignored physics but they left no descendants. 

 

> Where is the physical assumption in the theory, which I recall can be put in the form:

1) If A = B and A = C, then B = C

2) If A = B then AC = BC

3) If A = B then CA = CB

4) KAB = A

5) SABC = AC(BC)
I do not use any other assumption.

I don't see any physics in the above either, that's why it can't change and if it can't change it can't compute.

> You can also assume classical logic +

1) 0 ≠ s(x)
2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)
3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y)) 
4) x+0 = x
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)
6) x*0=0
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

Those squiggles are slightly different but I still don't see any physics in them, and so it still can't change and it still can't compute.

> In English:

1) 0 is not the successor of a number
2) Different numbers have different successors
3) Except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor
4) If you add zero to a number, you get that number
5) If you add a number x to the successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y
6) If you multiply a number by 0, you get 0
7) If you multiply a number x by the successor of y, you get the number x added to the multiplication of the number x with y

As everyone can see, there is no physical assumption.

And as everyone can see there is no computation in the above without "you" to actually *do* things, and "you" is made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

 

>> People observed that whenever they added two physical things to two more physical things they always got a invariant quantity, four physical things. People then used inductive reasoning to conclude this would always be true even when they are not observed, and at least until the discovery of quantum mechanics this has all worked out fine. But if you wait long enough induction will always let you down.     

> Let us use “inductive inference” in place of “induction” to avoid a confusion between mathematical induction and inductive inference.

Why use different words when it's the same thing? Induction just says that things usually continue and animals have been making very good use of that fact for at least 500 million years. For a few hundred years mathematicians have been using induction to generalize things by saying if they can prove that something is true for integer n and if they can also prove its true for integer n+1 then they have proven it is true for ANY integer larger than n. And that line of reasoning all seems to work very well; but Bertrand Russell, a man who knew a thing or two about mathematical logic and induction said:

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken."

Mathematicians say that if n is prime then n+1 can not be prime because it is divisible by 2, however if n+1 is a lot larger than 10^100^100^100 then the entire multiverse may lack the computational resources needed to divide n+1 by 2 or by any other number. So if n+1 can't be divided by any integer then by definition both n and n+1 are prime.  

 

>> A theory must fit the facts and it's easy to do that with consciousness because there are no facts about it to fit except that I John Clark am conscious.

> But there is an infinity of John Clark in arithmetic,

An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; I know this for a fact because I know for a fact that John Clark can change and I know for a fact that arithmetic can't.

 

> and you have to drive the appearance of matter from the first person indeterminacy 

First person indeterminacy is just your prosaic observation that people are not omniscient, for some reason you think this is a revolutionary new discovery but I feel no duty whatsoever to explain it. 

>> If the ability to change by interacting with time and space is magic then yes, matter has a certain magic that numbers lack.

> Good! It is that magic which makes you not Turing emulable, once you link consciousness and piece of matter.

That statement does not compute. I can change and if matter can change by interacting with time and space then a material Turing Machine can emulate me.

> Textbook does not make calculation. 

I agree, so telling me to look at a textbook can not strengthen your argument. To make a calculation you need 2 things:

1) Matter

2) Organization made in the way Turing described.

Textbooks only have one of those attributes, and pure numbers don't have any. 

 

 > See Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4

 Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 is incapable of figuring out what 2+2 is because Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 never changes.

 

> Read the chapter 4 of Davis’ book for all (tedious) details, or read Gödel’s 1931 paper.

Davis’ book and Gödel’s 1931 paper are made of matter but it is not organized in the way Turing described thus neither one has the ability to figure out what 2+2 is. Bruno, I think your problem is that although you can follow each individual step in a proof when you get to the end you really don't understand what has just been proven.

>> It the computations performed by a mathematical oracle are real then so is the magic performed by Harry Potter.

> No, because all mathematician and scientists agrees it is arithmetically or set theoretically real.

Theoretically real? I don't know what that means.

> I know nobody who take seriously the magic of Harry Potter, most would say it is only for entertaining.

Harry Potter is English fiction, it answers the question what would happen if a boy could do magic. Mathematical oracles are mathematical fiction, it answers the question what would happen if a machine could solve problems that a Turing Machine couldn't. 

>> I don't know what the definition of "mechanism" is in Brunospeak,

 

>Please stop this bullying ad hominem absurdity.

Ad hominem my ass! You persist in making up a new language and inventing eccentric definitions for very common words like God and atheism (which is somehow very close to Christianity) and theology and primitive and even the personal pronoun "you"; and the truth is that in your language I really don't know what "mechanism" means in Brunospeak or how it differs from "materialism".

> You already said yes to the doctor! I can have some admiration for that.

Well thank you. Examples are better than definitions so does that mean I believe in "mechanism"? Do I also believe in "materialism"? I'm not kidding, I don't know if I believe in those things or not because I don't know what the words mean in your unique language. 

 

> You posit the existence of some god, that [...]

And that is my cue to skip to the next paragraph because nothing interesting ever follows.

> following Aristotle theology [...]

And that is my cue to say goodnight.

 John K Clark

 

[J O]

Isn’t determination of consciousness relational?  Is the water “hot”? There is no way of knowing without another different temperature water.   Is John Clark conscious?  There is no way of knowing without another different level of consciousness.

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Aug 2019, at 18:07, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 1:09 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> “Digital machine” is just an expression referring to the kind of machine defining Universal system. They are finite mathematical object.

If it's a mathematical object then it's not a machine because machines change and mathematics doesn’t.

Would you say that if the block universe view of general relativity happened to be correct, there would be no more any machine? Already some physicist think that time is an illusion. Obviously, in arithmetic, time is a relative concept, and the change of a machine is defined relatively to other universal machine and natural numbers (which is a discrete version of time already).

Anyway, I don’t assume a physical reality, if only because its existence or appearance is what we have to explain from arithmetic once we bet on Digital Mechanism.

> Finite object can be identified with their Gödel numbers without problem.

Identified by who?

By some universal number.

Identified by brains made of matter

I will wait your answer to how that matter make a computation more real than the one already executed in arithmetic (executed in the sense of Church-Turing).

that obey the laws of physics that are inside the heads of mathematicians.  

>> You postulate physics every time you wish to get to the outer side but refuse to step off the curb into the street if you judge that a physical car moving at its current physical speed will intersect with your physical body before you have time to get to the other side. And you are not the only one, for the last 500 million years without exception every single one of your ancestors has postulated physics or you wouldn't be here today; I'm sure some animals ignored physics but they left no descendants. 

 

> Where is the physical assumption in the theory, which I recall can be put in the form:

1) If A = B and A = C, then B = C

2) If A = B then AC = BC

3) If A = B then CA = CB

4) KAB = A

5) SABC = AC(BC)
I do not use any other assumption.

I don't see any physics in the above either, that's why it can't change and if it can't change it can't compute.

> You can also assume classical logic +

1) 0 ≠ s(x)
2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)
3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y)) 
4) x+0 = x
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)
6) x*0=0
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

Those squiggles are slightly different but I still don't see any physics in them, and so it still can't change and it still can't compute.

But it does.

> In English:

1) 0 is not the successor of a number
2) Different numbers have different successors
3) Except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor
4) If you add zero to a number, you get that number
5) If you add a number x to the successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y
6) If you multiply a number by 0, you get 0
7) If you multiply a number x by the successor of y, you get the number x added to the multiplication of the number x with y

As everyone can see, there is no physical assumption.

And as everyone can see there is no computation in the above without "you" to actually *do* things, and "you" is made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

That is simply false.

 

>> People observed that whenever they added two physical things to two more physical things they always got a invariant quantity, four physical things. People then used inductive reasoning to conclude this would always be true even when they are not observed, and at least until the discovery of quantum mechanics this has all worked out fine. But if you wait long enough induction will always let you down.     

> Let us use “inductive inference” in place of “induction” to avoid a confusion between mathematical induction and inductive inference.

Why use different words when it's the same thing? Induction just says that things usually continue and animals have been making very good use of that fact for at least 500 million years. For a few hundred years mathematicians have been using induction to generalize things by saying if they can prove that something is true for integer n and if they can also prove its true for integer n+1 then they have proven it is true for ANY integer larger than n. And that line of reasoning all seems to work very well; but Bertrand Russell, a man who knew a thing or two about mathematical logic and induction said:

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”

Mathematical induction is an axiom in some mathematical theories, like Peano arithmetic, or ZF, etc There is simple induction and transfinite inductions.

Inductive inference is a technic to infer something about some reality.

Machine’s inductive inference is a branch of IA, practical, and theoretical.

There are obvious relations between both, but they are very different concepts.

Mathematicians say that if n is prime then n+1 can not be prime because it is divisible by 2, however if n+1 is a lot larger than 10^100^100^100 then the entire multiverse may lack the computational resources needed to divide n+1 by 2 or by any other number. So if n+1 can't be divided by any integer then by definition both n and n+1 are prime.  

 

>> A theory must fit the facts and it's easy to do that with consciousness because there are no facts about it to fit except that I John Clark am conscious.

> But there is an infinity of John Clark in arithmetic,

An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; 

Then the digital mechanist hypothesis is false.

I know this for a fact because I know for a fact that John Clark can change and I know for a fact that arithmetic can’t.

You confuse Joihn Clark belongs to arithmetic in the relative way, with John clark is arithmetic. In physics that would be like claiming that you cannot change because the block universe is static.

 

> and you have to drive the appearance of matter from the first person indeterminacy 

First person indeterminacy is just your prosaic observation that people are not omniscient, for some reason you think this is a revolutionary new discovery but I feel no duty whatsoever to explain it. 

You think that it is revolutionary? Thanks, but it is just a modest step in a longer reasoning, which shows that with mechanism, physics is a real and persistent “illusion” in the mind of the universal numbers/machines.

>> If the ability to change by interacting with time and space is magic then yes, matter has a certain magic that numbers lack.

But they explains already the existence of change in time and space, and that there are aware of this, without committing an ontological commitment.

> Good! It is that magic which makes you not Turing emulable, once you link consciousness and piece of matter.

That statement does not compute. I can change and if matter can change by interacting with time and space then a material Turing Machine can emulate me.

If they exist. But the John Clark in arithmetic makes the same reasoning, and we know a priori that it is false; and that invalidate your reasoning. It begs the question by using an ontological commitment. You have no evidence for a primitive matter, and with mechanism, such evidence are testable, but none have been given until now.

> Textbook does not make calculation. 

I agree, so telling me to look at a textbook can not strengthen your argument. To make a calculation you need 2 things:

1) Matter

2) Organization made in the way Turing described.

And Turing showed that a lambda expression can emulate all Turing machine, so that a model of lambda calculus contains already the universal dovetailing, even the quantum universal dovetailing. It remains to show why it wins the “measure battle”, but the discovery of quantum logics where they are needed for this is a promising step in that direction.

Textbooks only have one of those attributes, and pure numbers don't have any. 

 

 > See Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4

 Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 is incapable of figuring out what 2+2 is because Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 never changes.

You make again the rather low level confusion between a text and its meaning.

 

> Read the chapter 4 of Davis’ book for all (tedious) details, or read Gödel’s 1931 paper.

Davis’ book and Gödel’s 1931 paper are made of matter but it is not organized in the way Turing described thus neither one has the ability to figure out what 2+2 is. Bruno, I think your problem is that although you can follow each individual step in a proof when you get to the end you really don't understand what has just been proven.

>> It the computations performed by a mathematical oracle are real then so is the magic performed by Harry Potter.

> No, because all mathematician and scientists agrees it is arithmetically or set theoretically real.

Theoretically real? I don't know what that means.

> I know nobody who take seriously the magic of Harry Potter, most would say it is only for entertaining.

Harry Potter is English fiction, it answers the question what would happen if a boy could do magic. Mathematical oracles are mathematical fiction, it answers the question what would happen if a machine could solve problems that a Turing Machine couldn't. 

>> I don't know what the definition of "mechanism" is in Brunospeak,

 

>Please stop this bullying ad hominem absurdity.

Ad hominem my ass! You persist in making up a new language and inventing eccentric definitions for very common words like God and atheism (which is somehow very close to Christianity) and theology and primitive and even the personal pronoun "you"; and the truth is that in your language I really don't know what "mechanism" means in Brunospeak or how it differs from "materialism".

> You already said yes to the doctor! I can have some admiration for that.

Well thank you. Examples are better than definitions so does that mean I believe in "mechanism"? Do I also believe in "materialism"? I'm not kidding, I don't know if I believe in those things or not because I don't know what the words mean in your unique language. 

You show that you believe in matter when you say that a computation has to be done by matter to be real.

 

> You posit the existence of some god, that [...]

And that is my cue to skip to the next paragraph because nothing interesting ever follows.

> following Aristotle theology [...]

And that is my cue to say goodnight.

OK. Good morning!

Bruno

 John K Clark

 

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 5:10 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> Already some physicist think that time is an illusion.

Whenever a philosopher starts throwing around the word "illusion", particularly if the discussion is about subjectivity and consciousness, you know he's running out of ideas. 

 

> Obviously, in arithmetic, time is a relative concept,

No! In arithmetic time is not a concept at all and neither is space, but it is in physics.

 

> Anyway, I don’t assume a physical reality,

Yes you do, if you didn't assume the physical you would not exist, you would have been hit by a car decades ago. And thanks to Natural Selection if every single one of your ansestors had not assumed a physical reality you would have never even been born.

 

> I will wait your answer to how that matter make a computation more real than the one already executed in arithmetic

You're just not paying attention I've answered that same question more than once. Matter can change with time and arithmetic can't.

>>> You can also assume classical logic +
1) 0 ≠ s(x)
2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)
3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y)) 
4) x+0 = x
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)
6) x*0=0
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

>> Those squiggles are slightly different but I still don't see any physics in them, and so it still can't change and it still can't compute.

> But it does.

Wow, that's great news! So show me how it works so I can get rich by starting a computer hardware company that needs no hardware. Let's start by you showing me how to use it and only it to compute the ninth prime number larger than 10^100^100.

>>> In English:
1) 0 is not the successor of a number
2) Different numbers have different successors
3) Except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor
4) If you add zero to a number, you get that number
5) If you add a number x to the successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y
6) If you multiply a number by 0, you get 0
7) If you multiply a number x by the successor of y, you get the number x added to the multiplication of the number x with y
As everyone can see, there is no physical assumption.

>> And as everyone can see there is no computation in the above without "you" to actually *do* things, and "you" is made of matter that obeys the laws of physics.

> That is simply false.

I am crushed by your devastating rebuttal. 

>> Why use different words when it's the same thing? Induction just says that things usually continue and animals have been making very good use of that fact for at least 500 million years. For a few hundred years mathematicians have been using induction to generalize things by saying if they can prove that something is true for integer n and if they can also prove its true for integer n+1 then they have proven it is true for ANY integer larger than n. And that line of reasoning all seems to work very well; but Bertrand Russell, a man who knew a thing or two about mathematical logic and induction said:

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”

> Mathematical induction is an axiom in some mathematical theories, like Peano arithmetic, or ZF, etc There is simple induction and transfinite inductions. Inductive inference is a technic to infer something about some reality. Machine’s inductive inference is a branch of IA, practical, and theoretical.
There are obvious relations between both, but they are very different concepts.

You speak of several areas where induction is used but apparently there are so many "very different" things about the two types of induction that you are unable to specify a single one. I would really like to know which one does not involve the core concept that things usually continue.   

>>> But there is an infinity of John Clark in arithmetic,

>> An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; 

> Then the digital mechanist hypothesis is false.

OK maybe it is false but I really don't know because I don't know what "digital mechanist hypothesis" means in Brunospeak and I have a strong suspicion you don't either. 

>> I know this for a fact because I know for a fact that John Clark can change and I know for a fact that arithmetic can’t.

> You confuse Joihn Clark belongs to arithmetic in the relative way, with John clark is arithmetic. In physics that would be like claiming that you cannot change because the block universe is static.

What on earth are you talking about? The block universe is not homogeneous, it is a 4D object, 3 dimensions of space and one of time, and the block universe most certainly does change with time and does so in accordance with General Relativity. And of course the block universe is only an approximation of reality because it completely ignores Quantum Mechanics, a rather significant  omission.   

 

> physics is a real and persistent “illusion” in the mind of the universal numbers/machines.

So whenever you get stuck just throw out the word "illusion" and run.

 

>> I can change and if matter can change by interacting with time and space then a material Turing Machine can emulate me.

> If they exist.

If you're reading this then right now the proof they exist is LITERALLY right in front of your face because your computer is a material Turing Machine. 

 

> But the John Clark in arithmetic makes the same reasoning,

The John Clark in arithmetic does not exist because John Clark can change but arithmetic can't.

  

> You have no evidence for a primitive matter,

You keep talking about that but as far as intelagent behavior and consciousness is concerned I'll be damned if I can see how it makes the slightest difference if matter is primitive or not. Animals are not primitive because they are made of atoms, but that does not change the fact that animals are alive and atoms are not. 

> And Turing showed that a lambda expression can emulate all Turing machine,

No he did not. A Physical Turing Machine can emulate Lambda Calculus but Lambda Calculus can't emulate a damn thing without getting physical. And that's why Godel thought Turing's work was superior to that of Alonzo Church. Lambda Calculus is just a programing language, it's unique because it's the smallest one known but it's still just a language. Yes Lambda Calculus can represent any Turing Machine but in much the same way that the English word C-A-T symbolizes a particular mammalian animal, but C-A-T is not a cat.
It reminds me of the painting by René Magritte:

This Is Not A Pipe

>> Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 is incapable of figuring out what 2+2 is because Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 never changes.

> You make again the rather low level confusion between a text and its meaning.

Meaning? The Davis book by itself has no meaning whatsoever, it only has meaning in relation to something physical, like a brain that knows English and is familiar with mathematical notation.  And the knowledge of those things is encoded in the way physical neurons in the brain are wired up. 

> You show that you believe in matter when you say that a computation has to be done by matter to be real.

I am guilty as charged, but that's not all I believe. I also believe you exist so I believe that you and without exception every single one of your ansestors also believed in matter because Natural Selection insists on it.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 12 Aug 2019, at 16:30, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 5:10 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> Already some physicist think that time is an illusion.

Whenever a philosopher starts throwing around the word "illusion", particularly if the discussion is about subjectivity and consciousness, you know he's running out of ideas. 

 

> Obviously, in arithmetic, time is a relative concept,

No! In arithmetic time is not a concept at all and neither is space, but it is in physics.

 

> Anyway, I don’t assume a physical reality,

Yes you do, if you didn't assume the physical you would not exist,

I don’t *assume* the physical. By this I don’t mean that the physical does not exist. Eventually I show that it is derivable from the laws of the observable for the universal machine.

Mathematical induction is only a set of induction rules or axioms, used in theoretical deduction.

Inductive inference rules are heuristic concerning some reality that we postulate. It is used in applied mathematics, and it is studied in theoretical learning theory. I mentioned often the paper by Case and Smith, for a very good introduction to learning (and extrapolating, …) theory. 

 

>>> But there is an infinity of John Clark in arithmetic,

>> An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; 

When you say “yes” to the *digitalist* doctor, you bet that you will survive through the fact that some reconstitution of yourself will keep intact the digital (and thus arithmetical) relations at some relevant level. But it is a theorem that the arithmetical reality (the models of our artithmetic theories) do satisfy the existence of those arithmetical relation sustaining the computations, indeed all of them. 

> Then the digital mechanist hypothesis is false.

OK maybe it is false but I really don't know because I don't know what "digital mechanist hypothesis" means in Brunospeak and I have a strong suspicion you don't either. 

>> I know this for a fact because I know for a fact that John Clark can change and I know for a fact that arithmetic can’t.

> You confuse Joihn Clark belongs to arithmetic in the relative way, with John clark is arithmetic. In physics that would be like claiming that you cannot change because the block universe is static.

What on earth are you talking about? The block universe is not homogeneous, it is a 4D object, 3 dimensions of space and one of time, and the block universe most certainly does change with time and does so in accordance with General Relativity. And of course the block universe is only an approximation of reality because it completely ignores Quantum Mechanics, a rather significant  omission.   

The whole quantum multiverse admit a statical description in the block universe view, and is provably a subpart of how arithmetic (semantic, the model, the reality) is seen from inside.

 

> physics is a real and persistent “illusion” in the mind of the universal numbers/machines.

So whenever you get stuck just throw out the word "illusion" and run.

 

>> I can change and if matter can change by interacting with time and space then a material Turing Machine can emulate me.

> If they exist.

If you're reading this then right now the proof they exist is LITERALLY right in front of your face because your computer is a material Turing Machine. 

Yes, but a material machine is not necessarily a primitively material machine. Given that all computations are realised in the arithmetical reality, then, once we assume Digital Mechanism, we cannot be sure that the observation and use of a machine proves the existence of a primitively material machine. It might be a dreamed machine appearing in the relevant sigma_1 arithmetical true relation, satisfied by all models of our theories of natural numbers.

 

> But the John Clark in arithmetic makes the same reasoning,

The John Clark in arithmetic does not exist because John Clark can change but arithmetic can’t.

The John Clark in arithmetic does change relatively to the universal number running them.

  

> You have no evidence for a primitive matter,

You keep talking about that but as far as intelagent behavior and consciousness is concerned I'll be damned if I can see how it makes the slightest difference if matter is primitive or not. Animals are not primitive because they are made of atoms, but that does not change the fact that animals are alive and atoms are not. 

The change is conceptual. Some people argued that learning that we come from evolving biological structure does not change their everyday life, but when the goal is to put some light on fundamental question, those fact can become important.

You can see the consequence of Mechanism as a generalisation of Everett to Arithmetic, but also of Darwin, as it shows how the laws of physics arise from number’s hallucinations (or number’s psychological reality, if you don’t like the word hallucinations or illusions).

> And Turing showed that a lambda expression can emulate all Turing machine,

No he did not.

That is proved in all textbook. 

A Physical Turing Machine can emulate Lambda Calculus but Lambda Calculus can't emulate a damn thing without getting physical.

x emulate y on z means only the arithmetical sentence saying that phi_x(y,z) = phi_y(z), usually arithmetic with Kleene’s predicate.

And that's why Godel thought Turing's work was superior to that of Alonzo Church.

Gödel’s thought Turing was more convincing for the claim that his formalism captures the notion of human calculation.

Lambda Calculus is just a programing language, it's unique because it's the smallest one known but it's still just a language.

Don’t confuse the syntax and grammar, with the model of Lambda Calculus.

Yes Lambda Calculus can represent any Turing Machine but in much the same way that the English word C-A-T symbolizes a particular mammalian animal, but C-A-T is not a cat.
It reminds me of the painting by René Magritte:

This Is Not A Pipe

>> Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 is incapable of figuring out what 2+2 is because Davis “computability and unsolvability” chapter 4 never changes.

> You make again the rather low level confusion between a text and its meaning.

Meaning? The Davis book by itself has no meaning whatsoever, it only has meaning in relation to something physical, like a brain that knows English and is familiar with mathematical notation.  And the knowledge of those things is encoded in the way physical neurons in the brain are wired up. 

I was not talking on the meaning of a book, but about an explanation useful for this thread which can be found in that book, but you shift the level systematically here. I will no more answer such claims.

> You show that you believe in matter when you say that a computation has to be done by matter to be real.

I am guilty as charged, but that's not all I believe. I also believe you exist

so I believe that you and without exception every single one of your ansestors also believed in matter because Natural Selection insists on it.

Natural selection selected the belief in matter. I can be OK with this. But natural selection did not select the metaphysical assumption that such belief is grounded in the existence of irreducible (to math, for example) matter.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:37 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> I don’t *assume* the physical. By this I don’t mean that the physical does not exist.

Then I don't know what you mean.

> Eventually I show that it is derivable from the laws of the observable for the universal machine.

Physical objects are observable, pure numbers are not and neither is a universal machine unless its made of physical objects. 

 

>> You speak of several areas where induction is used but apparently there are so many "very different" things about the two types of induction that you are unable to specify a single one. I would really like to know which one does not involve the core concept that things usually continue. 

> Mathematical induction is only a set of induction rules or axioms, used in theoretical deduction.

The fundamental axiom of any form of induction is the same, things usually continue. For animals induction is even more important than deduction even though if you follow it for long enough eventually it will always fail. It won't work forever but it will give you a very good winning streak.

 

> It is used in applied mathematics, and it is studied in theoretical learning theory. I mentioned often the paper by Case and Smith, for a very good introduction to learning (and extrapolating, …) theory. 

Animals have been using induction to their advantage for at least 500 million years and they didn't need a paper by Case and Smith to do it.

 

>> An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; 

> When you say “yes” to the *digitalist* doctor,

And I have in effect said yes to the digitalist* doctor.

 

> you bet that you will survive

It's the very best sort of bet. If I win I receive a infinitely large jackpot. If I don't win then I've lost nothing except $80,000 and I can afford that. 

> through the fact that some reconstitution of yourself will keep intact the digital (and thus arithmetical) relations at some relevant level.

I'm betting that certain atoms don't have my name scratched on them and atoms are generic. I'm betting that the key aspect of what makes me be me is not the particular atoms that make up my body right now but the related orientation the atoms have with each each other, and that is information can be stored digitally. I'm betting that is the road to immortality if such a road exists.

>> If you're reading this then right now the proof they exist is LITERALLY right in front of your face because your computer is a material Turing Machine. 

> Yes, but a material machine is not necessarily a primitively material machine.

Given that consciousness is the only thing you're interested in I don't understand why you keep talking about what is or is not "primitive". Complex things are by definition NOT primitive but they can do things that primitive things can not, things that are more...well.. complex; intelligent behavior for example. And if you believe that Darwin was right about Natural Selection than you'd have to conclude you couldn't be smart without being conscious, although you couldn't rule out the reverse.    

 

> Given that all computations are realised in the arithmetical reality [,,,]

No computations are realised in arithmetic. Not one. Computations are performed by Physical Turing Machines and only by Physical Turing Machines. 

>>The John Clark in arithmetic does not exist because John Clark can change but arithmetic can’t.

> The John Clark in arithmetic does change relatively to the universal number running them.

Then the John Clark in Physics is totally uninterested in the John Clark in arithmetic because the John Clark in arithmetic can not change and thus can not behave intelligently or be conscious or *do" anything at all. In other words it does not make the slightest difference to me or to anything in my world if the "John Clark in arithmetic" exists or not.

 You keep talking about that but as far as intelagent behavior and consciousness is concerned I'll be damned if I can see how it makes the slightest difference if matter is primitive or not. Animals are not primitive because they are made of atoms, but that does not change the fact that animals are alive and atoms are not. 

>>> And Turing showed that a lambda expression can emulate all Turing machine,

>> No he did not.

> That is proved in all textbook. 

No they do not. What textbooks prove is one set of ASCII characters that belong to the lambda universe is equivalent to another set of ASCII characters that belongs to the Turing universe. What those textbooks most certainly do NOT prove or even hint at is that either set of ASCII characters can do what a Physical Turing Machine can do. I said it before I'll say it again, you may be able to follow the individual steps of a proof but when you get to the end you don't understand exactly what it is that has been proven.

>> A Physical Turing Machine can emulate Lambda Calculus but Lambda Calculus can't emulate a damn thing without getting physical.

> x emulate y on z means only the arithmetical sentence saying that phi_x(y,z) = phi_y(z),

Yes exactly, one set of squiggles means the same thing as another set of squiggles; but squiggles can not make a calculation, only a Physical Turing Machine can.

>> And that's why Godel thought Turing's work was superior to that of Alonzo Church.

 

> Gödel’s thought Turing was more convincing for the claim that his formalism captures the notion of human calculation.

Yes I agree, Gödel’s thought humans and Physical Turing Machines could make calculations but lambda calculus could not.

 

>> Lambda Calculus is just a programing language, it's unique because it's the smallest one known but it's still just a language.

> Don’t confuse the syntax and grammar, with the model of Lambda Calculus.

If Lambda Calculus is a model it's not a working model, but a Turing Machine is the real deal.

 

>> Meaning? The Davis book by itself has no meaning whatsoever, it only has meaning in relation to something physical, like a brain that knows English and is familiar with mathematical notation.  And the knowledge of those things is encoded in the way physical neurons in the brain are wired up. 

> I was not talking on the meaning of a book, but about an explanation useful for this thread which can be found in that book, but you shift the level systematically here. I will no more answer such claims.

That is probably a wise move on your part; I mean how could anybody successfully rebut such claims.

 

> Natural selection selected the belief in matter. I can be OK with this.

Nature selected the belief in matter because it worked, so there must be some truth to it. Animals that believed in Physics were able to pass on their genes to the next generation, animals that didn't did not.  

 

> But natural selection did not select the metaphysical assumption that

Natural Selection is totally uninterested in metaphysics because it has just as much effect on the physical universe as your silly phantom calculations do. None at all.

 John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Aug 2019, at 16:22, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:37 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> I don’t *assume* the physical. By this I don’t mean that the physical does not exist.

Then I don't know what you mean.

I mean that I believe in the physical reality, but I do not necessarily believe that the physical reality is the fundamental reality. Like I tend to believe that the human biological reality emerges from the physical reality, I am aware that if we assume Mechanism, the physical reality has to emerges from arithmetic, or more precisely from some intensional variant of the Gödel-Löb-Solovay (known as GLS, or G*).

> Eventually I show that it is derivable from the laws of the observable for the universal machine.

Physical objects are observable, pure numbers are not and neither is a universal machine unless its made of physical objects. 

We might argue differently. Look at experimental physicists. They measure numbers only, and they infer relation between numbers. That those number corresponds to some reality is possible, but not obvious, and certainly more so with quantum mechanics, which behaves already much more like Mechanism suggest, as a measure theory on locally accessible histories/computations (with a notion of first person plural view).

This explains the physical observable without the need to commit oneself ontologically in a primitively physical reality. The laws of physics have a reason, in the mechanist setting.

 

>> You speak of several areas where induction is used but apparently there are so many "very different" things about the two types of induction that you are unable to specify a single one. I would really like to know which one does not involve the core concept that things usually continue. 

> Mathematical induction is only a set of induction rules or axioms, used in theoretical deduction.

The fundamental axiom of any form of induction is the same, things usually continue. For animals induction is even more important than deduction even though if you follow it for long enough eventually it will always fail. It won't work forever but it will give you a very good winning streak.

Yes, inference inductive is done all the time, and mathematical induction has some relation with this, but is different, and used in deduction, where inductive inference is never valid as a deduction. I just point on the fact that induction and inductive inference are different notions (even if related philosophically).

 

> It is used in applied mathematics, and it is studied in theoretical learning theory. I mentioned often the paper by Case and Smith, for a very good introduction to learning (and extrapolating, …) theory. 

Animals have been using induction to their advantage for at least 500 million years and they didn't need a paper by Case and Smith to do it.

Atoms have been around since a longer time, and they didn’t need Bohr, Heisenberg, de Broglie’s papers to do what they do. 

Your argument are weird.

 

>> An infinity? There may or may not be an infinity of John Clarks in the Multiverse but there is not even one John Clark in arithmetic; 

> When you say “yes” to the *digitalist* doctor,

And I have in effect said yes to the digitalist* doctor.

 

> you bet that you will survive

It's the very best sort of bet. If I win I receive a infinitely large jackpot. If I don't win then I've lost nothing except $80,000 and I can afford that. 

That is a bit like 0 and 1, in a context where there are many more possibilities in between the jackpot and some putative inexistence. You have no idea who  will be the doctor who would reconstitute you, nor his intent, and life might be not so rosy, if not hellish when you see what humans can do to their fellow. 

> through the fact that some reconstitution of yourself will keep intact the digital (and thus arithmetical) relations at some relevant level.

I'm betting that certain atoms don't have my name scratched on them and atoms are generic. I'm betting that the key aspect of what makes me be me is not the particular atoms that make up my body right now but the related orientation the atoms have with each each other, and that is information can be stored digitally. I'm betting that is the road to immortality if such a road exists.

With mechanism, we are already immortal. Our digital information is store in the many number relations, and execute in all possible relative computational histories, and there is an infinity of such histories realised in all the models of arithmetic.

Technological immortality is complaisance in the Samsara and procrastination of the Nirvana.

>> If you're reading this then right now the proof they exist is LITERALLY right in front of your face because your computer is a material Turing Machine. 

> Yes, but a material machine is not necessarily a primitively material machine.

Given that consciousness is the only thing you're interested in I don't understand why you keep talking about what is or is not "primitive”.

“Primitive” refer to what I have to assume. To define what is a digital machine, I have to assume the natural numbers and at least addition and multiplication. That can be proved to be non derivable by anything less.

But then that is already a lot. Indeed once we have the natural numbers and those two laws, we get all “digital machine” and all their computation, on all inputs (including all streaming). I cannot select one computation as more real than other, and physics is reduced to an internal “many-histories” interpretation of arithmetic, on which the universal machine converges by introspection (handled by Kleene or Gödel’s technics).

Complex things are by definition NOT primitive

We agree on this important point. That is a reason why I do not assume, neither matter, nor consciousness, in the formal mechanist TOE (which is basically only Kxy = x, + Sxyz = xz(yz) with some identity rules).

but they can do things that primitive things can not, things that are more...well.. complex; intelligent behavior for example.

OK. 

And if you believe that Darwin was right about Natural Selection than you'd have to conclude you couldn't be smart without being conscious, although you couldn't rule out the reverse.    

As I have explained, consciousness is just the obvious indubitable truth that no universal machine can avoid, and that the Löbian machine can describe but not truly defined, except using computationalism and some notion of truth.

(A Löbian machine is a universal machine capable of proving its own Turing universality. You like examples, and the examples are numerous: all effective consistent extensions of Peano arithmetic PA, or of Zermelo-Fraenkel theory ZF, etc.).

 

> Given that all computations are realised in the arithmetical reality [,,,]

No computations are realised in arithmetic.

That is wrong. I guess you mean again “No primitively physical computations are realised in arithmetic” which is true.

Not one. Computations are performed by Physical Turing Machines and only by Physical Turing Machines. 

Only Physical computations, and this is explained in arithmetic, and by PA, ZF, etc.

>>The John Clark in arithmetic does not exist because John Clark can change but arithmetic can’t.

> The John Clark in arithmetic does change relatively to the universal number running them.

Then the John Clark in Physics is totally uninterested in the John Clark in arithmetic because the John Clark in arithmetic can not change and thus can not behave intelligently or be conscious or *do" anything at all.

The John Clark in arithmetic change relatively to the universal numbers running them. Take the number corresponding to a simulation of our cluster of galaxies at the level of strings with 10^(10^10000) decimals. There was already an infinity of John Clark there, and they move, and sent mails, etc. Now, you can know, by reasoning, that they might not have a big measure, compared to the simulations of the Big Bang, and compared to all universal dovetailing in arithmetic. But that requires work, etc.

In other words it does not make the slightest difference to me or to anything in my world if the "John Clark in arithmetic" exists or not.

Except that with computationalism, all physical objects are reduced into map of your accessible computations in arithmetic. If the John Clark in arithmetic does not exist, you don’t exist, unless miracle, magic matter, etc.

 You keep talking about that but as far as intelagent behavior and consciousness is concerned I'll be damned if I can see how it makes the slightest difference if matter is primitive or not. Animals are not primitive because they are made of atoms, but that does not change the fact that animals are alive and atoms are not. 

It does not matter FAPP. But it matters to figure out why we are here, who we are, and what we can expect in the long run. 

It matters for people interested in metaphysics,theology and/or any fundamental questions.

>>> And Turing showed that a lambda expression can emulate all Turing machine,

>> No he did not.

> That is proved in all textbook. 

No they do not. What textbooks prove is one set of ASCII characters that belong to the lambda universe is equivalent to another set of ASCII characters that belongs to the Turing universe.

Programming language are not just set of characters. There is a grammar, and a notion of reality attached to their first order logical specification. The equivalence are true proof that whatever a Turing machine do, a lambda expression can do that as well, and thus elementary arithmetic too, as elementary arithmetic *is* a first order specification of a Turing complete theory.

What those textbooks most certainly do NOT prove or even hint at is that either set of ASCII characters can do what a Physical Turing Machine can do.

Indeed. They don’t even assumes anything physical, unless they have a chapter on the physical machines, which is rare in the theoretical textbook I refer too. But none assume a primitively real reality. Only metaphysicists work on such type of assumption. Then the point is that it is inconsistent with Computationalism.

I said it before I'll say it again, you may be able to follow the individual steps of a proof but when you get to the end you don't understand exactly what it is that has been proven.

>> A Physical Turing Machine can emulate Lambda Calculus but Lambda Calculus can't emulate a damn thing without getting physical.

> x emulate y on z means only the arithmetical sentence saying that phi_x(y,z) = phi_y(z),

Yes exactly, one set of squiggles means the same thing as another set of squiggles; but squiggles can not make a calculation, only a Physical Turing Machine can.

You confuse x and “x”. Here x did not refer to anything syntactical, but on what the apparent syntax refers for. 

I point the finger toward the moon, but you keep looking at the finger.

You can demolish all intellectual activities with trick like that (I am aware it is a trick).

>> And that's why Godel thought Turing's work was superior to that of Alonzo Church.

 

> Gödel’s thought Turing was more convincing for the claim that his formalism captures the notion of human calculation.

Yes I agree, Gödel’s thought humans and Physical Turing Machines could make calculations but lambda calculus could not.

Gödel is a are thinker who did not take the “natural world” for granted, and was fond on theological reflection. Unlike Einstein,  who was religious in the meliorative sense of the word, Gödel advocate the return of reason in theology, so much that he wrote that ontological proof (a formal rendering of St-Anselmus proof of the existence of God). He never claim that such a proof must itself be taken literally, but that it was a good start to dialog on this. 

 

>> Lambda Calculus is just a programing language, it's unique because it's the smallest one known but it's still just a language.

> Don’t confuse the syntax and grammar, with the model of Lambda Calculus.

If Lambda Calculus is a model it's not a working model, but a Turing Machine is the real deal.

For all universal machinery, there is a language, a grammar, a set theory (set of axioms), a notion of proof, and then a semantic (a notion of model). It is important to distinguish all those different feature related to Turing universal systems or theories.

 

>> Meaning? The Davis book by itself has no meaning whatsoever, it only has meaning in relation to something physical, like a brain that knows English and is familiar with mathematical notation.  And the knowledge of those things is encoded in the way physical neurons in the brain are wired up. 

> I was not talking on the meaning of a book, but about an explanation useful for this thread which can be found in that book, but you shift the level systematically here. I will no more answer such claims.

That is probably a wise move on your part; I mean how could anybody successfully rebut such claims.

 

> Natural selection selected the belief in matter. I can be OK with this.

Nature selected the belief in matter because it worked, so there must be some truth to it.

True does not make something primitive, or in need to be assumed at the start.

Animals that believed in Physics were able to pass on their genes to the next generation, animals that didn't did not.  

Animals do not believe in physics. They believe in a physical reality, and rightly so. Everybody in this list, and elsewhere, believe in the physical reality.

The point is on the Plato/Aristotle debate. Is that physical reality ontological or phenomenological.

Bruno

 

> But natural selection did not select the metaphysical assumption that

Natural Selection is totally uninterested in metaphysics because it has just as much effect on the physical universe as your silly phantom calculations do. None at all.

 John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 7:31 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> I believe in the physical reality, but I do not necessarily believe that the physical reality is the fundamental reality.

Who cares? Fundamental stuff by definition is not made of parts and so its behavior is simple and dull, non-fundamental stuff, like intelagent behavior, is complex and interesting.   

> Look at experimental physicists. They measure numbers only,

How can you measure the pure number 7? You can't, nobody can measure a pure number, experimental physicists measure units that are based on physics, like mass in kilograms or speed in meters per second or acceleration in meters per second per second.

>>  It's the very best sort of bet. If I win I receive a infinitely large jackpot. If I don't win then I've lost nothing except $80,000 and I can afford that. 

> That is a bit like 0 and 1, in a context where there are many more possibilities in between the jackpot and some putative inexistence. You have no idea who  will be the doctor who would reconstitute you, nor his intent, and life might be not so rosy, if not hellish

If Everett is right then the doctor who awakens me will be angelic and bring me to technological heaven, and the doctor who awakens me will be satanic and bring me to technological hell. But the situation is no different for you because you will somehow end up getting frozen even though you haven't paid for it or want it. But as I've said before, although Everett has my favorite quantum interpretation I'm not willing to stake my life on it.  

>> I'm betting that certain atoms don't have my name scratched on them and atoms are generic. I'm betting that the key aspect of what makes me be me is not the particular atoms that make up my body right now but the related orientation the atoms have with each each other, and that is information can be stored digitally. I'm betting that is the road to immortality if such a road exists.

> With mechanism, we are already immortal.

Could be but nobody knows because every time you try to explain what you mean by  "mechanism" you start using words like "fundamental " and "primitive" which are irrelevant in a philosophical discussion about immortality, intelagent behavior or consciousness.   

 

>Our digital information is store in the many number relations, and execute in all possible relative computational histories,

I know and that is exactly the trouble. There are an infinite number of computational relationships, but most of them are nonsense and pure mathematics has no way to sort the sense from nonsense, but physics does. If you have one rock of a certain mass moving at a certain velocity and then you get another identical rock then you have exactly 2 times the energy and momentum, not 1 or 3 or 4 or any other number, only 2 will work. Without physics numbers wouldn't even have a consistent meaning. And of course there would be no way to make a calculation or form a thought.

 

> and there is an infinity of such histories realised in all the models of arithmetic.

I know, and because of that in pure mathematics there is nothing special about 2+2=4, 2+2=5 works fine, but there is something about 2+2=4 in Physics that 2+2=5 lacks.  

 

> “Primitive” refer to what I have to assume.

Whatever that primitive stuff is there are 2 things we know for certain about it:

1) It has contrast, that is to say everything either exists or it does not and there is a detectable difference between the two; "nonexistence" has the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity and existence is everything else.  

2) The primitive stuff must be able to be organized into parts that are themselves organized in complex ways and behave in ways the unorganized primitive stuff could not.

> To define what is a digital machine [...]

To hell with definitions, Turing taught us how to BUILD a digital machine. So we can just point and say a digital machine is one of those.

 

> I have to assume the natural numbers and at least addition and multiplication.

You don't have to assume numbers or anything else, you only need to observe that things change in time and space and if it's a digital machine the change occurs in steps, and you can always predict what the next step will be but not necessarily the last step. There might not even be a last step.

 

> I cannot select one computation as more real than other,

Yes you can! Some computations, like the sort INTEL makes with their silicon, can play a part in cause and effect, and some "calculations", like your silly phantom calculations, can not.

>> Complex things are by definition NOT primitive

> We agree on this important point.

And complex things have complex behavior and simple things have simple behavior, so why does someone interested in complex stuff like intelligence and consciousness talk so much about what is and what is not primitive?   

> That is a reason why I do not assume, neither matter, nor consciousness,

Not even your own consciousness? You think you may be a zombie?

 

> consciousness is just the obvious indubitable truth that no universal machine can avoid, and that the Löbian machine [...]

And now nobody knows what you're talking about, at least nobody that Google or Bing has ever heard of.

> (A Löbian machine is a universal machine capable of proving its own Turing universality.

A universal Turing machine can emulate any Turing Machine by reading its input tape which contains the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the data to be worked on. So all Löbian machines are Turing Machines but not all Turing Machines are Löbian machines. Most people can't prove anything so they can't be Löbian machines, so I guess only mathematicians are conscious.  

 

>> the John Clark in Physics is totally uninterested in the John Clark in arithmetic because the John Clark in arithmetic can not change and thus can not behave intelligently or be conscious or *do" anything at all.

> The John Clark in arithmetic change relatively to the universal numbers running them. Take the number corresponding to a simulation of our cluster of galaxies at the level of strings with 10^(10^10000) decimals.

That huge number never changes, or at least it wouldn't if it existed, but if the entire expanding accelerating universe lacks the ability to even express a number with that many digits (much less calculate it!) then ii makes no difference to any THING if the number exists or not.

 

>> What textbooks prove is one set of ASCII characters that belong to the lambda universe is equivalent to another set of ASCII characters that belongs to the Turing universe.

> Programming language are not just set of characters. There is a grammar, and a notion of reality attached

The notion of reality that needs to be attached is hardware, a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics; because without that the programing language is just a set of characters that never change and is incapable of changing anything. 

>> What those textbooks most certainly do NOT prove or even hint at is that either set of ASCII characters can do what a Physical Turing Machine can do.

> Indeed. They don’t even assumes anything physical, unless they have a chapter on the physical machines, which is rare in the theoretical textbook I refer too. But none assume a primitively real reality.

Oh no we're back with "primitive"! You agree a Physical Turing Machine can do things that pure numbers can not and that's all that's important, it's irrelevant if it's primitive.

> You confuse x and “x”. Here x did not refer to anything syntactical, but on what the apparent syntax refers for. I point the finger toward the moon, but you keep looking at the finger.

I wouldn't do that because both your finger and the moon are physical objects, but if you point to the number 7 I would have no choice but to look at your finger because there would be nothing else to look at.

> Gödel is a are thinker who did not take the “natural world” for granted, and was fond on theological reflection. Unlike Einstein,  who was religious in the meliorative sense of the word, Gödel advocate the return of reason in theology, so much that he wrote that ontological proof (a formal rendering of St-Anselmus proof of the existence of God). 

Gödel was a genius but he went insane, Einstein never did.

 

>>Nature selected the belief in matter because it worked, so there must be some truth to it.

> True does not make something primitive,

Who cares if it's primitive or not?! 

 

> Animals do not believe in physics. They believe in a physical reality, and rightly so. Everybody in this list, and elsewhere, believe in the physical reality.

Because if anybody on this list did not believe in physical reality they'd be killed the first time they tried to cross a street. But I have never believed in your phantom calculations but I survive just fine. 

 

> The point is on the Plato/Aristotle [...]

And the mention of people who didn't know where the sun went at night is my cue to say goodnight.

John K Clark 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 Aug 2019, at 01:06, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 7:31 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> I believe in the physical reality, but I do not necessarily believe that the physical reality is the fundamental reality.

Who cares?

It is the subject of the thread. If you don’t care, why do you insist that fundamental stuff must exist to dignity a computation as “real".

Fundamental stuff by definition is not made of parts and so its behavior is simple and dull, non-fundamental stuff, like intelagent behavior, is complex and interesting.   

> Look at experimental physicists. They measure numbers only,

How can you measure the pure number 7?

OK. I meant (if course) they measure numerical magnitude, and infer computable relation relating them.

You can't, nobody can measure a pure number, experimental physicists measure units that are based on physics, like mass in kilograms or speed in meters per second or acceleration in meters per second per second.

>>  It's the very best sort of bet. If I win I receive a infinitely large jackpot. If I don't win then I've lost nothing except $80,000 and I can afford that. 

> That is a bit like 0 and 1, in a context where there are many more possibilities in between the jackpot and some putative inexistence. You have no idea who  will be the doctor who would reconstitute you, nor his intent, and life might be not so rosy, if not hellish

If Everett is right then the doctor who awakens me will be angelic and bring me to technological heaven, and the doctor who awakens me will be satanic and bring me to technological hell. But the situation is no different for you because you will somehow end up getting frozen even though you haven't paid for it or want it. But as I've said before, although Everett has my favorite quantum interpretation I'm not willing to stake my life on it.  

Fair enough. Death is always risky ...

>> I'm betting that certain atoms don't have my name scratched on them and atoms are generic. I'm betting that the key aspect of what makes me be me is not the particular atoms that make up my body right now but the related orientation the atoms have with each each other, and that is information can be stored digitally. I'm betting that is the road to immortality if such a road exists.

> With mechanism, we are already immortal.

Could be but nobody knows because every time you try to explain what you mean by  "mechanism" you start using words like "fundamental " and "primitive" which are irrelevant in a philosophical discussion about immortality, intelagent behavior or consciousness.   

Mechanism is "Yes Doctor”. It needs CT, and some amount of arithmetical realism to define what is a digital machine.

That physics is no more the fundamental science is a consequence, and not part of the hypothesis.

 

>Our digital information is store in the many number relations, and execute in all possible relative computational histories,

I know and that is exactly the trouble. There are an infinite number of computational relationships, but most of them are nonsense and pure mathematics has no way to sort the sense from nonsense, but physics does. If you have one rock of a certain mass moving at a certain velocity and then you get another identical rock then you have exactly 2 times the energy and momentum, not 1 or 3 or 4 or any other number, only 2 will work. Without physics numbers wouldn't even have a consistent meaning. And of course there would be no way to make a calculation or form a thought.

Model theory illustrate that pure mathematics has meaning. Computational relationship are not propositions. It makes no sense to attribute nonsense to them. Either a sigma_1 proposition is true, or it false. Either a computation is run in arithmetic, or it is not. Then those going through your relative state are those important (for the prediction) relatively to you.

 

> and there is an infinity of such histories realised in all the models of arithmetic.

I know, and because of that in pure mathematics there is nothing special about 2+2=4, 2+2=5 works fine,

No. 2+2=5 entails 0 = 1, and that entails all propositions. It dos not work. You confuse grammar and logic.

but there is something about 2+2=4 in Physics that 2+2=5 lacks.  

 

> “Primitive” refer to what I have to assume.

Whatever that primitive stuff is there are 2 things we know for certain about it:

1) It has contrast, that is to say everything either exists or it does not and there is a detectable difference between the two; "nonexistence" has the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity and existence is everything else.  

2) The primitive stuff must be able to be organized into parts that are themselves organized in complex ways and behave in ways the unorganized primitive stuff could not.

That works well for the numbers.

> To define what is a digital machine [...]

To hell with definitions, Turing taught us how to BUILD a digital machine. So we can just point and say a digital machine is one of those.

He gave the first definition of Digital machine (together with Post, Church, etc.). Then we can implement in physics of not, but the digital machine is an abstract, immaterial notion. You cannot identify a digital machine with a representation of that machine is a Turing universal context, be it set theoretical, numerical or physical. That belongs to the confusion between finger and moon, or between representation and the thing represented. 

 

> I have to assume the natural numbers and at least addition and multiplication.

You don't have to assume numbers or anything else, you only need to observe that things change in time and space

Assuming time and space is much more than assuming numbers.

and if it's a digital machine the change occurs in steps, and you can always predict what the next step will be but not necessarily the last step. There might not even be a last step.

 

> I cannot select one computation as more real than other,

Yes you can! Some computations, like the sort INTEL makes with their silicon, can play a part in cause and effect, and some "calculations", like your silly phantom calculations, can not.

Only if the silicon is blessed with Holy water. Oh you bless it only with Holy Matter. 

That’s not my religion. I prefer to be agnostic as long as no evidences are given, and in that case, Iwill abandon Mechanism as a plausible explanation, given that magic role given to some metaphysical stuff.

>> Complex things are by definition NOT primitive

> We agree on this important point.

And complex things have complex behavior and simple things have simple behavior, so why does someone interested in complex stuff like intelligence and consciousness talk so much about what is and what is not primitive?   

Curiosity in fundamental question. 

> That is a reason why I do not assume, neither matter, nor consciousness,

Not even your own consciousness? You think you may be a zombie?

No, I derive consciousness and matter from the computational relation. I don’t have to assume it in the fundamental theory, but of course, it is needed to define computationalisme, but then we can discharge it and explain it from G* and its variants imposed by incompleteness. Roughly speaking consciousness is just the indubitable immediate truth, yet non provable and non definable without referring to the notion of truth (which is arithmetic is definable in analysis), that all universal machine can’t avoid when looking inward.

 

> consciousness is just the obvious indubitable truth that no universal machine can avoid, and that the Löbian machine [...]

And now nobody knows what you're talking about, at least nobody that Google or Bing has ever heard of.

> (A Löbian machine is a universal machine capable of proving its own Turing universality.

A universal Turing machine can emulate any Turing Machine by reading its input tape which contains the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the data to be worked on. So all Löbian machines are Turing Machines but not all Turing Machines are Löbian machines.

Indeed. The Löbian machine believes in enough induction axioms to be able to prove that they are universal. 

Let p represent a sigma_1 proposition. We have that  machine is universal iff p -> []p is true for the machine. But a machine is Löbian iff she can prove p -> []p.

Most people can't prove anything so they can't be Löbian machines, so I guess only mathematicians are conscious.  

Most people can prove or understand/check proofs in elementary arithmetic, and they can prove or convince themselves that they can prove p->[]p for p sigma_1. It is pretty obvious once you agree that any (definable) set of natural numbers has a smallest element (that is equivalent with induction).

 

>> the John Clark in Physics is totally uninterested in the John Clark in arithmetic because the John Clark in arithmetic can not change and thus can not behave intelligently or be conscious or *do" anything at all.

> The John Clark in arithmetic change relatively to the universal numbers running them. Take the number corresponding to a simulation of our cluster of galaxies at the level of strings with 10^(10^10000) decimals.

That huge number never changes, or at least it wouldn't if it existed, but if the entire expanding accelerating universe

I don’t assume any of this.

lacks the ability to even express a number with that many digits (much less calculate it!) then ii makes no difference to any THING if the number exists or not.

 

>> What textbooks prove is one set of ASCII characters that belong to the lambda universe is equivalent to another set of ASCII characters that belongs to the Turing universe.

> Programming language are not just set of characters. There is a grammar, and a notion of reality attached

The notion of reality that needs to be attached is hardware, a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics; because without that the programing language is just a set of characters that never change and is incapable of changing anything. 

That shows you have never read a book in mathematics, or you did not understand anything in there. You confuse a language with the first order specification of a Turing universal theory. I guess your “conventionalism” explains this attitude.

>> What those textbooks most certainly do NOT prove or even hint at is that either set of ASCII characters can do what a Physical Turing Machine can do.

> Indeed. They don’t even assumes anything physical, unless they have a chapter on the physical machines, which is rare in the theoretical textbook I refer too. But none assume a primitively real reality.

Oh no we're back with "primitive”!

It is what we are discussing.

You agree a Physical Turing Machine can do things that pure numbers can not and that's all that's important, it's irrelevant if it's primitive.

It is the subject of the discussion.

> You confuse x and “x”. Here x did not refer to anything syntactical, but on what the apparent syntax refers for. I point the finger toward the moon, but you keep looking at the finger.

I wouldn't do that because both your finger and the moon are physical objects, but if you point to the number 7 I would have no choice but to look at your finger because there would be nothing else to look at.

> Gödel is a are thinker who did not take the “natural world” for granted, and was fond on theological reflection. Unlike Einstein,  who was religious in the meliorative sense of the word, Gödel advocate the return of reason in theology, so much that he wrote that ontological proof (a formal rendering of St-Anselmus proof of the existence of God). 

Gödel was a genius but he went insane, Einstein never did.

 

>>Nature selected the belief in matter because it worked, so there must be some truth to it.

> True does not make something primitive,

Who cares if it's primitive or not?! 

 

> Animals do not believe in physics. They believe in a physical reality, and rightly so. Everybody in this list, and elsewhere, believe in the physical reality.

Because if anybody on this list did not believe in physical reality they'd be killed the first time they tried to cross a street.

Everybody believe in the physical reality. Not everybody believe that the physical reality is not reducible to another realm.

But I have never believed in your phantom calculations but I survive just fine. 

To you agree with Euclid’s proof that there is no biggest prime number?

 

> The point is on the Plato/Aristotle [...]

And the mention of people who didn't know where the sun went at night is my cue to say goodnight.

X saying a bs is not a proof that X says only bs.

Bruno

John K Clark 

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2019 at 5:53 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>> I believe in the physical reality, but I do not necessarily believe that the physical reality is the fundamental reality.

>> Who cares?

> It is the subject of the thread.

It most certainly is NOT! The title of this thread is "Observation versus assumption", and both observation and assumption are very complex phenomenon, and just like intelligence and consciousness they can NOT be fundamental or primitive.    

 

>  why do you insist that fundamental stuff must exist to dignity a computation as “real".

I have no idea what that means, but I know the only thing I insist is that fundamental stuff be simple, and neither consciousness or observation or assumption or intelligent behavior is simple.  

>>>Look at experimental physicists. They measure numbers only,

>> How can you measure the pure number 7?

> OK. I meant (if course) they measure numerical magnitude,

No they do NOT measure numerical magnitude! Experimental physicists measure physical magnitudes and describe what they found in the language of mathematics. How could you even in theory measure the numerical magnitude of the number 7? Does that magnature ever change?

>> every time you try to explain what you mean by  "mechanism" you start using words like "fundamental " and "primitive" which are irrelevant in a philosophical discussion about immortality, intelagent behavior or consciousness.   

> Mechanism is "Yes Doctor”.

I have actually said "yes" in that situation and I've put my money where my mouth is so obviously I believe in what you call "mechanism", and I can make a logical case for "yes" being the correct answer without expressing any opinion whatsoever about what is or is not fundamental; I may have opinions on that subject but they play no part in what I say to the doctor.  

 

> It needs CT, and some amount of arithmetical realism to define what is a digital machine.

I don't need a definition of a digital machine or a definition of anything else to figure out that "yes" is the logical thing for someone to say to the doctor if they like existence better than oblivion.  

> That physics is no more the fundamental science is a consequence, 

I strongly disagree, but even if you're correct "yes" would still be the logical thing to say to the doctor. So even if you convinced me that physics is not more fundamental than mathematics I would still believe in what you call "mechanism".

>> There are an infinite number of computational relationships, but most of them are nonsense and pure mathematics has no way to sort the sense from nonsense, but physics does. If you have one rock of a certain mass moving at a certain velocity and then you get another identical rock then you have exactly 2 times the energy and momentum, not 1 or 3 or 4 or any other number, only 2 will work. Without physics numbers wouldn't even have a consistent meaning. And of course there would be no way to make a calculation or form a thought.

> Model theory illustrate that pure mathematics has meaning.

Model theory can't think so it can't illustrate anything if there is no receptive mind around. You can't just say X has meaning you've got to specify who gets that meaning. A book has no meaning to you if you don't know the language it's written in, and without anything physical there would be no one and no thing to receive meaning. 

>> in pure mathematics there is nothing special about 2+2=4, 2+2=5 works fine,

> No. 2+2=5 entails 0 = 1,

OK so 0=1, that's fine. There is nothing physical in existence so 0=1 causes no trouble to any thing because there are no things, there are not even simple things much less complex minds that are disturbed by paradoxes.

>> Whatever that primitive stuff is there are 2 things we know for certain about it:
1) It has contrast, that is to say everything either exists or it does not and there is a detectable difference between the two; "nonexistence" has the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity and existence is everything else.  

2) The primitive stuff must be able to be organized into parts that are themselves organized in complex ways and behave in ways the unorganized primitive stuff could not.

> That works well for the numbers.

I don't think they do because there would be no contrast. If nothing physical existed then pure numbers would have the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity, so they wouldn't exist either.

>> To hell with definitions, Turing taught us how to BUILD a digital machine. So we can just point and say a digital machine is one of those.

> He gave the first definition of Digital machine (together with Post, Church, etc.).

You like fundamental stuff, at least you talk about it all the time, well... examples are more fundamental than definitions. Ultimately all definitions are derived from examples.  

 

>> You don't have to assume numbers or anything else, you only need to observe that things change in time and space

> Assuming time and space is much more than assuming numbers.

Nobody assumes time and space they observe them. Immanuel Kant goes even further and says time and space are more than just empirical but are what he calls a "pure intuition", and without them no experience is possible, not even the experience of numbers. I think Kant was pretty much right about that.   

  

>> Some computations, like the sort INTEL makes with their silicon, can play a part in cause and effect, and some "calculations", like your silly phantom calculations, can not.

> Only if the silicon is blessed with Holy water. Oh you bless it only with Holy Matter. That’s not my religion

Call it Holy Water blessed or call it Holy Silicon blessed I don't care, but are you really going to tell me with a straight face that your phantom calculations can produce all the effects that INTEL's Silicon calculations can?! Do you really want to say that? If your answer is "no" or even "no but" then you've still retained some sanity but if the answer is "yes"  then....

 

>>> That is a reason why I do not assume, neither matter, nor consciousness,

>> Not even your own consciousness? You think you may be a zombie?

> No, I derive consciousness and matter from the computational relation.

Nobody derives consciousness from computational relations or derives it from anything else. And nobody assumes consciousness either. I know I'm conscious from direct experience and, assuming that you're conscious, you have done the same thing I have. 

>>> (A Löbian machine is a universal machine capable of proving its own Turing universality.

 

>> A universal Turing machine can emulate any Turing Machine by reading its input tape which contains the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the data to be worked on. So all "Löbian machines" are Turing Machines but not all Turing Machines are "Löbian machines".

> Indeed. The Löbian machine believes in enough induction axioms to be able to prove that they are universal. 

I am a Turing Machine but I am not a Universal Turing Machine or a "Löbian machine" because there are some problems that a Turing Machine can solve with a *finite* amount of tape that I can not because my tape is too short. So I can't prove I'm universal because I'm not. And yet I'm conscious.

>>> The John Clark in arithmetic change relatively to the universal numbers running them. Take the number corresponding to a simulation of our cluster of galaxies at the level of strings with 10^(10^10000) decimals.

>> That huge number never changes, or at least it wouldn't if it existed, but if the entire expanding accelerating universe

> I don’t assume any of this.

If that huge number can change then so can any number, so when the number 7 changes to something else the number 7 no longer exists. So in this new reality how much is 4+3?

>>> Programming language are not just set of characters. There is a grammar, and a notion of reality attached

 

>>The notion of reality that needs to be attached is hardware, a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics; because without that the programing language is just a set of characters that never change and is incapable of changing anything. 

> That shows you have never read a book in mathematics, or you did not understand anything in there.

If you really believe, and apparently you do, that a proof has been found that pure numbers can change and have the power to change things in the physical world that are not pure numbers then, as I said before, although you may be able to follow all the small steps in a proof once you get to the end you don't understand what it is that has been proven. 

>>> Indeed. They don’t even assumes anything physical, unless they have a chapter on the physical machines, which is rare in the theoretical textbook I refer too. But none assume a primitively real reality.

>> Oh no we're back with "primitive”!

> It is what we are discussing.

I thought we were discussing more interesting and complex things like intelligent behavior and consciousness. 

>> You agree a Physical Turing Machine can do things that pure numbers can not and that's all that's important, it's irrelevant if it's primitive.

> It is the subject of the discussion.

 I thought we were discussing more interesting and complex things like intelligent behavior and consciousness. 

>> if anybody on this list did not believe in physical reality they'd be killed the first time they tried to cross a street.

> Everybody believe in the physical reality. Not everybody believe that the physical reality is not reducible to another realm.

How is that relevant? An Amoeba is reducible to atoms but the Amoeba has a property the atoms lack, life.

 

> To you agree with Euclid’s proof that there is no biggest prime number?

That is a physical question. It depends on if the expanding accelerating universe has the capacity to perform a infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations and I don't know the answer to that but I have reasons to be somewhat skeptical.  

 John K Clark

[Philip Thrift]

1. There is a proof that "there is no biggest prime number".

2. The number of "prime numbers" is finite.

Both can hold!

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2019, at 21:40, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 18, 2019 at 5:53 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>> I believe in the physical reality, but I do not necessarily believe that the physical reality is the fundamental reality.

>> Who cares?

> It is the subject of the thread.

It most certainly is NOT! The title of this thread is "Observation versus assumption", and both observation and assumption are very complex phenomenon, and just like intelligence and consciousness they can NOT be fundamental or primitive.    

 

>  why do you insist that fundamental stuff must exist to dignity a computation as “real".

I have no idea what that means, but I know the only thing I insist is that fundamental stuff be simple, and neither consciousness or observation or assumption or intelligent behavior is simple.  

The simplest thing which is non trivial and that I can conceive is elementary number theory. 2+2=4 is conceptually more simple than the quantum vacuum. Consciousness, intelligence and observable are indeed things to derive, and mechanism derive it from number relations, which is natural given that they implement all computations already. But observation become a type of bet-confirmation (or bet-refutation) in a statistic on many computational relative consistent extension (that is why physics has to be recovered from []p & <>t and variants, with p sigma_1).

>>>Look at experimental physicists. They measure numbers only,

>> How can you measure the pure number 7?

> OK. I meant (if course) they measure numerical magnitude,

No they do NOT measure numerical magnitude! Experimental physicists measure physical magnitudes and describe what they found in the language of mathematics. How could you even in theory measure the numerical magnitude of the number 7? Does that magnature ever change?

The result is a number, then we can interpret the number in term of the magnitude of something, but the physicalist adds something by committing itself in the idea that the magnitude refer to a physical universe, where the computationalist explains the appearance of the magnitude by the mathematics of machine or number-self-reference, without adding the ontological commitment in some sort of stuff, whose role in consciousness would preclude us to say “ye” to the digitalise surgeon.

>> every time you try to explain what you mean by  "mechanism" you start using words like "fundamental " and "primitive" which are irrelevant in a philosophical discussion about immortality, intelagent behavior or consciousness.   

> Mechanism is "Yes Doctor”.

I have actually said "yes" in that situation and I've put my money where my mouth is so obviously I believe in what you call "mechanism", and I can make a logical case for "yes" being the correct answer without expressing any opinion whatsoever about what is or is not fundamental; I may have opinions on that subject but they play no part in what I say to the doctor.  

 

> It needs CT, and some amount of arithmetical realism to define what is a digital machine.

I don't need a definition of a digital machine or a definition of anything else to figure out that "yes" is the logical thing for someone to say to the doctor if they like existence better than oblivion.  

> That physics is no more the fundamental science is a consequence, 

I strongly disagree, but even if you're correct "yes" would still be the logical thing to say to the doctor. So even if you convinced me that physics is not more fundamental than mathematics I would still believe in what you call "mechanism”.

Nice!

>> There are an infinite number of computational relationships, but most of them are nonsense and pure mathematics has no way to sort the sense from nonsense, but physics does. If you have one rock of a certain mass moving at a certain velocity and then you get another identical rock then you have exactly 2 times the energy and momentum, not 1 or 3 or 4 or any other number, only 2 will work. Without physics numbers wouldn't even have a consistent meaning. And of course there would be no way to make a calculation or form a thought.

> Model theory illustrate that pure mathematics has meaning.

Model theory can't think

Nor did I say that.

so it can't illustrate anything if there is no receptive mind around. You can't just say X has meaning you've got to specify who gets that meaning.

That is the point of computer science and (theoretical) AI. The one making sense of words and numbers are the universal word or the universal number/machine. You want the physical universe to be *the* chosen universal numbers, but with mechanism, we have a substitution level, and below that level, all universal numbers(and their corresponding computations) play an observable role, and QM illustrates that that might the case. 

A book has no meaning to you if you don't know the language it's written in,

Not really. The book might be without a meaning accessible to me, but still accessible to another one. We might decide that a book has meaning if there is one universal number making genuine sense from it. 

That explain why we took time to decipher all manuscripts. We bet there is a meaning well before we succeed in deciphering it.

and without anything physical there would be no one and no thing to receive meaning. 

Without physical implementation, there is no direct physical use, but without a FORTRAN interpreter, no FORTRAN code could have meaning. Now, there are infinitely many FORTRAN interpreter making sense of infinitely many FORTRAN data in arithmetic.

>> in pure mathematics there is nothing special about 2+2=4, 2+2=5 works fine,

> No. 2+2=5 entails 0 = 1,

OK so 0=1, that's fine.

No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.

There is nothing physical in existence so 0=1 causes no trouble to any thing because there are no things, there are not even simple things much less complex minds that are disturbed by paradoxes.

I assume arithmetic. In the TOE extracted from Digital Mechanism, I assume not more than what is taught in primary school, and is used in most theories (about almost any subject). Physicalist assumes a physical reality. I do not, as I derive it from much simpler assumption. Particles and waves acquire phenomenological existence. They don’t disappear.

>> Whatever that primitive stuff is there are 2 things we know for certain about it:
1) It has contrast, that is to say everything either exists or it does not and there is a detectable difference between the two; "nonexistence" has the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity and existence is everything else.  

2) The primitive stuff must be able to be organized into parts that are themselves organized in complex ways and behave in ways the unorganized primitive stuff could not.

> That works well for the numbers.

I don't think they do because there would be no contrast. If nothing physical existed then pure numbers would have the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity, so they wouldn't exist either.

Contrast comes from the fact that some arithmetical relation are true, or false, or undecidable by this or that machine/number, etc. Number theory is not a subbranch of physics a priori. If you have a physical definition of natural number, let me know, but usually people claiming they have found such a definition are easily shown to have used them implicitly. It is very hard to define numbers in a physical reality which do not assume them, because to describe physics already assume numbers.  

>> To hell with definitions, Turing taught us how to BUILD a digital machine. So we can just point and say a digital machine is one of those.

> He gave the first definition of Digital machine (together with Post, Church, etc.).

You like fundamental stuff, at least you talk about it all the time, well... examples are more fundamental than definitions. Ultimately all definitions are derived from examples.  

 

>> You don't have to assume numbers or anything else, you only need to observe that things change in time and space

> Assuming time and space is much more than assuming numbers.

Nobody assumes time and space they observe them.

The whole point of Plato, and of the dream-argument, is that observation of X is not a proof of the existence of X. 

Immanuel Kant goes even further and says time and space are more than just empirical but are what he calls a "pure intuition”,

I would have said “less than empirical”. But Kant contradicts himself in the critics of its practical reason. Kant is not so easy to interpret, nor even to translate.

and without them no experience is possible,

Not with digital mechanism, unless you mean an only if here. It is ambiguous. Without the illusion of space-time there is no (N, 0, s, +, *) because (N, 0, s, +, *) implies the illusion of matters. 

not even the experience of numbers. I think Kant was pretty much right about that.   

  

>> Some computations, like the sort INTEL makes with their silicon, can play a part in cause and effect, and some "calculations", like your silly phantom calculations, can not.

> Only if the silicon is blessed with Holy water. Oh you bless it only with Holy Matter. That’s not my religion

Call it Holy Water blessed or call it Holy Silicon blessed I don't care, but are you really going to tell me with a straight face that your phantom calculations can produce all the effects that INTEL's Silicon calculations can?

Yes. It actually did. INTEL, silicon, matter are all in the head of the universal machine. The mathematical explains where INTEL comes from ... 

! Do you really want to say that? If your answer is "no" or even "no but" then you've still retained some sanity but if the answer is "yes"  then….

You need to first understand that (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies the existence of all computations, and then to explain me what is your stuff, with definition or example, and how that stuff acts negatively of the consciousness of the John Clark emulated in arithmetic, and positively on the John Clark emulated by a physical stuff. 

As I said, your problem is that if this stuff has a role, either that role is Turing emulable, but then some John Clark in arithmetic will be conscious (and part of the global indeterminacy) or it is not Turing emulable, and this prevents me to say Yes to the doctor for Digital Mechanist Reason.

 

>>> That is a reason why I do not assume, neither matter, nor consciousness,

>> Not even your own consciousness? You think you may be a zombie?

> No, I derive consciousness and matter from the computational relation.

Nobody derives consciousness from computational relations or derives it from anything else. And nobody assumes consciousness either. I know I'm conscious from direct experience and, assuming that you're conscious, you have done the same thing I have. 

But you seem to accept mechanism, which force you to accept some computationalist account of consciousness, but then, that theory of consciousness will applied to the (relative) numbers. If you insist of physical-computationalism, you have to explain the role of the stuff in your theory of consciousness. Then, as I said, if that stuff is not Turing emulable, you contradicts your bet on Mechanism.

>>> (A Löbian machine is a universal machine capable of proving its own Turing universality.

 

>> A universal Turing machine can emulate any Turing Machine by reading its input tape which contains the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the data to be worked on. So all "Löbian machines" are Turing Machines but not all Turing Machines are "Löbian machines".

> Indeed. The Löbian machine believes in enough induction axioms to be able to prove that they are universal. 

I am a Turing Machine but I am not a Universal Turing Machine

You are a universal Turing machine. Every humans are.

or a "Löbian machine”

As far as you are arithmetically sound, you are Löbian too. You are universal, and you can, in principle, proves it, so you are Löbian. Anyone believing in PA is Löbian, as long as they stay arithmetically sound.

because there are some problems that a Turing Machine can solve with a *finite* amount of tape that I can not because my tape is too short. So I can't prove I'm universal because I'm not. And yet I'm conscious.

A universal Turing machine is a finite object. It might (and will) sooner or later asks for more memory space. But the memory space is in the environment, not in the definition of the finite set of quadruplet. That is why I like to use the expression “universal number”, with number being natural number, because a universal machine is typically, like all machine, a finitely describable entity.

>>> The John Clark in arithmetic change relatively to the universal numbers running them. Take the number corresponding to a simulation of our cluster of galaxies at the level of strings with 10^(10^10000) decimals.

>> That huge number never changes, or at least it wouldn't if it existed, but if the entire expanding accelerating universe

I don’t assume a physical universe in the TOE. Nor do I assume a primitive physical universe in the thought experience.

> I don’t assume any of this.

If that huge number can change then so can any number, so when the number 7 changes to something else the number 7 no longer exists. So in this new reality how much is 4+3?

Changes are defined in the relative way, like in Block-Universe view of GR.

>>> Programming language are not just set of characters. There is a grammar, and a notion of reality attached

 

>>The notion of reality that needs to be attached is hardware,

Hardware and software are relative notion, except for the physical hardware, which is not a software at all, but a phenomenological perception by the universal numbers.

a computer made of matter that obeys the laws of physics; because without that the programing language is just a set of characters that never change and is incapable of changing anything. 

> That shows you have never read a book in mathematics, or you did not understand anything in there.

If you really believe, and apparently you do, that a proof has been found that pure numbers can change

Relatively to other number, through number relations. Obviously “a number can change” is nonsense, but in the course of a computation, even, made in arithmetic, a number can change.

and have the power to change things in the physical world

A number cannot change something in the physical world. But the relation between the numbers can make relative numbers experience change.

that are not pure numbers then, as I said before, although you may be able to follow all the small steps in a proof once you get to the end you don't understand what it is that has been proven. 

If you follow all the steps of a proof, starting to premises that you accept (momentarily or not) then you accept the conclusion (momentarily or not), or you reject the premise.

>>> Indeed. They don’t even assumes anything physical, unless they have a chapter on the physical machines, which is rare in the theoretical textbook I refer too. But none assume a primitively real reality.

>> Oh no we're back with "primitive”!

> It is what we are discussing.

I thought we were discussing more interesting and complex things like intelligent behavior and consciousness. 

… explaining consciouness in the Mechanist Frame requires revising our philosophy of matter, and reject physicalism.

>> You agree a Physical Turing Machine can do things that pure numbers can not and that's all that's important, it's irrelevant if it's primitive.

> It is the subject of the discussion.

 I thought we were discussing more interesting and complex things like intelligent behavior and consciousness. 

>> if anybody on this list did not believe in physical reality they'd be killed the first time they tried to cross a street.

> Everybody believe in the physical reality. Not everybody believe that the physical reality is not reducible to another realm.

How is that relevant? An Amoeba is reducible to atoms but the Amoeba has a property the atoms lack, life.

That we have to reduce atoms to machine’s phenomenology if we want Mechanism not leading to contradiction.

 

> To you agree with Euclid’s proof that there is no biggest prime number?

That is a physical question. It depends on if the expanding accelerating universe has the capacity to perform a infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations and I don't know the answer to that but I have reasons to be somewhat skeptical.  

So you don’t agree with Euclid? His proof of the infinity of prime number is orthogonal to physics. It says nothing in physics, and it uses nothing in physics. (Don’t reply this by saying that Euclid needs the physical reality to express its proof, because that is a confusion of level: there is no physical assumption in Euclid’s *proof*).

Bruno 

 John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 8:27 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> The simplest thing which is non trivial and that I can conceive is elementary number theory. 2+2=4 is conceptually more simple than the quantum vacuum.

I don't know if that's true, but if it is then the quantum vacuum behaves in more complex ways and does more interesting things than elementary number theory, things like intelagent behavior and consciousness. 

 

> Consciousness, intelligence and observable are indeed things to derive, and mechanism derive it from number relations,

There is simply no way that could be correct. Consciousness changes, or at least my consciousness does and so does physical relations, but numbers never do.

>> Experimental physicists measure physical magnitudes and describe what they found in the language of mathematics. How could you even in theory measure the numerical magnitude of the number 7? Does that magnature ever change?

> The result is a number, then we can interpret the number in term of the magnitude of something, but the physicalist adds something by committing itself in the idea that the magnitude refer to a physical universe,

Because a physicists can measure a voltage but he can't measure a pure number.

>> A book has no meaning to you if you don't know the language it's written in

> Not really. The book might be without a meaning accessible to me, but still accessible to another one. We might decide that a book has meaning if there is one universal number making genuine sense from it. 

I googled "universal number" and all I got was stuff about numerology and the way dentist refer to specific teeth.   

> Without physical implementation, there is no direct physical use,

Without matter there is no physical or nonphysical use directly or indirectly.

> but without a FORTRAN interpreter, no FORTRAN code could have meaning.

Having a FORTRAN interpreter is necessary but not sufficient to obtain meaning, and the same thing could be said of a Physical Turing machine. Both are needed.

 

>> OK so 0=1, that's fine.

> No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.

Yes but that's OK too, if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be upset by paradoxes.

>> there would be no contrast. If nothing physical existed then pure numbers would have the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity, so they wouldn't exist .

> Contrast comes from the fact that some arithmetical relation are true, or false, 

A physicist can say a voltage difference either exists or it doesn't, but all a mathematician can say is if a arithmetical relation can be derived from a set of agreed on axioms then its true, but derivation requires calculation and without a Physical Turing Machine nothing can be calculated.

 

> If you have a physical definition of natural number, let me know,

OK, the natural number 1 is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel 299,792,458 meters, and the natural number n is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel n times that distance.

>>Nobody assumes time and space they observe them.

 

> The whole point of Plato [...]

My cue to skip to the next paragraph.

>> are you really going to tell me with a straight face that your phantom calculations can produce all the effects that INTEL's Silicon calculations can?

> Yes. It actually did.

I hope you don't really mean that because if you do you've lost your mind.

> INTEL, silicon, matter are all in the head of the universal machine. The mathematical explains where INTEL comes from ... 

I don't want you to explain anything, I want you you to PERFORM a calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics, and we both know you're never ever EVER going to be able to do that. 

 

> You need to first understand that (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies the existence of all computations,

All? (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies ALL computations? Did I get that right, All computations?! ALL? Why in your life did you ever waste money buying a computer when (N, 0, s, +, *) can do ALL you want a computer to do?

 

> and then to explain me what is your stuff, with definition or example,

I've answered that question before, John K Clark is the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way.

> you seem to accept mechanism,

Yes and I've accepted it more than most, I spent $80,000 on it.

 

> which force you to accept some computationalist account of consciousness,

My fundamental axiom is consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. If you think about it although we strongly disagree about a lot of stuff I wouldn't be surprised if that's your fundamental axiom too. After all, what is the alternative?  

 

> but then, that theory of consciousness will applied to the (relative) numbers.

That would be valid if numbers could process data but they can't because they can't change, only matter that obeys the laws of physics can perform calculations because matter can change. We may use numbers to describe the pattern in space of voltages that are inside a computer, but it always comes down to voltages not numbers.

>> I am a Turing Machine but I am not a Universal Turing Machine or a "Löbian machine”because there are some problems that a Turing Machine can solve with a *finite* amount of tape that I can not because my tape is too short. So I can't prove I'm universal because I'm not. And yet I'm conscious.

> A universal Turing machine is a finite object.

Something can be finite and still be much much larger than me. Back in 2010 a Universal Turing Machine calculated the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit of pi, it turned out to be 0. I could not have done that, not even if I had pencil and paper to help me.

> It might (and will) sooner or later asks for more memory space.

I can ask for more memory space but unlike a UTM I won't get it, and even if I did there wouldn't be enough space for it to fit inside my skull.

> But the memory space is in the environment, not in the definition of the finite set of quadruplet.

That's OK because I don't give a damn about the definition of the finite set of quadruplets, I'm not interested in any definition I'm interested in PERFORMING calculations.

 

> Nor do I assume a primitive physical universe in the thought experience.

That's just silly, nobody assumes an experience. And no amount of assumptions or definitions can add 2 and 2 without physics.

  

>> If that huge number can change then so can any number, so when the number 7 changes to something else the number 7 no longer exists. So in this new reality how much is 4+3?

> Changes are defined in the relative way, like in Block-Universe view of GR.

Einstein made it clear that the Block-Universe is not homogeneous but changes along the time dimension and along each of the 3 spatial dimensions. You think the number 7 changes relative to something. What is that something? And you never answered my question, after the number 7 changes to something else how much is 4+3?

> Hardware and software are relative notion, except for the physical hardware,

Yes!

 

> which is not a software at all,

Yes!

 

> but a phenomenological perception by the universal numbers.

Numbers that can perceive things? In English the term "universal numbers" is only meaningful in the world of astrology and dentistry, however nobody but Bruno knows what "universal numbers" means in Brunospeak. 

>> If you really believe, and apparently you do, that a proof has been found that pure numbers can change

> Relatively to other number, through number relations.

Relative to the number 11 how has the number 7 changed?

 

> Obviously “a number can change” is nonsense, but in the course of a computation, even, made in arithmetic, a number can change.

I see, obviously a number changing is nonsense but a number can change. No, I take that back, I don't see.

> and have the power to change things in the physical world

As I've been saying for years stop telling me about how to do it and just do it, DO IT AND BECOME GOD!

> A number cannot change something in the physical world.

I see, a number has "the power to change things in the physical world" but "a number cannot change something in the physical world". No, I take that back, I don't see.

 

> But the relation between the numbers can make relative numbers experience change.

When does 4+3=7 and when does it not?

>>> To you agree with Euclid’s proof that there is no biggest prime number?

>> That is a physical question. It depends on if the expanding accelerating universe has the capacity to perform a infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations and I don't know the answer to that but I have reasons to be somewhat skeptical.  

 

> So you don’t agree with Euclid? His proof of the infinity of prime number is orthogonal to physics. It says nothing in physics, and it uses nothing in physics.

 

Euclid's proof contains no error but it starts with a INVALID ASSUMPTION and you just pointed out exactly what that assumption is; from the first line of the proof to the last Euclid assumes that numbers have nothing to do with physics.

John K Clark

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 05:18:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
>
> >> OK so 0=1, that's fine.
>
> > No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.
>
>
> Yes but that's OK too, if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't
> cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be
> upset by paradoxes.
>

That's kind of the point, though. Minds are nonphysical things, and
there is no apriori reason why physical things need to exist for minds
to exist.


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:45 AM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 05:18:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
>
>     >> OK so 0=1, that's fine.
>
>     > No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.
>
>
> Yes but that's OK too, if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't
> cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be
> upset by paradoxes.
>

That's kind of the point, though. Minds are nonphysical things, and
there is no apriori reason why physical things need to exist for minds
to exist.

You have evidence for disembodied minds? 

Bruce

[Russell Standish]

That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
things.

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/24/2019 6:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 10:06:38AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:45 AM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 05:18:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
>> >
>> >     >> OK so 0=1, that's fine.
>> >
>> >     > No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.
>> >
>> >
>> > Yes but that's OK too, if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings
>> can't
>> > cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that
>> might be
>> > upset by paradoxes.
>> >
>>
>> That's kind of the point, though. Minds are nonphysical things, and
>> there is no apriori reason why physical things need to exist for minds
>> to exist.
>>
>>
>> You have evidence for disembodied minds?
> That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
> concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
> you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
> things.
>
>

I don't see that a brain in a vat counts as a disembodied mind.  Do you
mean a brain that has no environment to perceive or act on?  I would
deny that such an isolated brain instantiates a mind.  On the other
hand, if the brain has sensors and actuators operating, say a Mars
Rover, then it isn't disembodied.

Brent

[Russell Standish]

Yes - I know your argument. In the BIV scenario, the environment could
be simulated. Basically Descartes' evil daemon (malin genie)
scenario. Nothing about the observed physics (bodies and whatnot)
exists in any fundamental sense.

[Bruce Kellett]

Presumably the vat is a physical object that provides nutrients, power, etc to the BIV. That does not count as disembodied in my book.

Bruce 

[Russell Standish]

Neither the brain, nor the vat is a body. The body is actually
simulated by the evil daemon, and doesn't exist ontologically. Hence
disembodied.

Now Brent makes good arguments (and I echo simular arguments in my
book) that a body must exist phenomenally (ie exist as an experience
of the mind), but nowhere does there appear to be a requirement for
the body to exist ontologically (in the same reality as the brain and
the vat in this example).

This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this. Bruno Marchal claims the opposite - that arithmetic, or in
fact any abstract system capable of universal computation, is
sufficient for the job. To be quite frank, I'm a fence sitter in this
debate, as I've yet to see any physically realisable experiment that
can settle the matter.

[Jason Resch]

The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Jason

[Bruce Kellett]

That is a very narrow definition of a "body". A body is the corporeal thing that, in this instance, "supports" the mind. So  the vat and its surrounds are every much a body as the skull and its attachments are in the case of the physical human body.

Now Brent makes good arguments (and I echo simular arguments in my
book) that a body must exist phenomenally (ie exist as an experience
of the mind), but nowhere does there appear to be a requirement for
the body to exist ontologically (in the same reality as the brain and
the vat in this example).

I agree with Brent's point. On the other hand, if you are talking about a mind (and its associated body) existing entirely in a virtual reality, then we have to consider what is the physical 'computer' that instantiates that virtual reality.

This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this.

I am with John here. Talk of a "disembodied" mind (or calculation). is just so much hot air. I ask for evidence of such things, and none has been provided to date. "Minds" (or calculations) are the consequence of physical operations.

Bruce

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:16 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 1:01 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 07:34:26PM -0700, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>
> On 8/24/2019 6:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 
> > That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
> > concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
> > you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
> > things.
> >
> >
>
> I don't see that a brain in a vat counts as a disembodied mind.  Do you mean
> a brain that has no environment to perceive or act on?  I would deny that
> such an isolated brain instantiates a mind.  On the other hand, if the brain
> has sensors and actuators operating, say a Mars Rover, then it isn't
> disembodied.
>
> Brent
>

Yes - I know your argument. In the BIV scenario, the environment could
be simulated. Basically Descartes' evil daemon (malin genie)
scenario. Nothing about the observed physics (bodies and whatnot)
exists in any fundamental sense.

Presumably the vat is a physical object that provides nutrients, power, etc to the BIV. That does not count as disembodied in my book.

The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

That does not imply that it can exist without some form of physical realization. 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

But then "fundamental" loses it's meaning.   The BIV+Enviroment in the
vat  constitutes a world.  The "fact" that it is implemented in some
other world becomes just magic talk, like the world exists in the mind
of God.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:51 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:16 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 1:01 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 07:34:26PM -0700, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>
> On 8/24/2019 6:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 
> > That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
> > concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
> > you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
> > things.
> >
> >
>
> I don't see that a brain in a vat counts as a disembodied mind.  Do you mean
> a brain that has no environment to perceive or act on?  I would deny that
> such an isolated brain instantiates a mind.  On the other hand, if the brain
> has sensors and actuators operating, say a Mars Rover, then it isn't
> disembodied.
>
> Brent
>

Yes - I know your argument. In the BIV scenario, the environment could
be simulated. Basically Descartes' evil daemon (malin genie)
scenario. Nothing about the observed physics (bodies and whatnot)
exists in any fundamental sense.

Presumably the vat is a physical object that provides nutrients, power, etc to the BIV. That does not count as disembodied in my book.

The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

That does not imply that it can exist without some form of physical realization. 

While I agree any mind requires an instantiation/incarnation/realization, before we can continue I think we need to clarify what is meant by "physical".

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?  Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

 

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain.  But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

Jason

[Bruce Kellett]

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

There is a big "if" there -- "if its state is duplicated".......

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

These are different ideas. The multiverse of eternal inflation is not the many worlds of Everettian QM (despite attempts to show that they are).

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

That is the theory. But it relies on many unproven assumptions about distributions in the initial state. While eternal inflation might lead to duplicate universes, it does not imply that every universe is duplicated. It might well be the case that the only universes that are duplicated are entirely uninteresting sterile universes without much structure. Why do you think that the initial conditions of our Hubble volume should be duplicated somewhere? We might come from unique initial conditions -- of measure zero in the infinite extent of space in our extended universe.

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain.  But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

Everettian quantum mechanics might imply many worlds, split off as copies from the world in which I exist. But these worlds are orthogonal to this world. This means that the existence of such orthogonal worlds can be assumed, or ignored, as you choose -- these "other worlds" have no consequences for our present existence.

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

I thought that your scenario involved a simulated "other world". That simulation is presumably performed on a computer in our world, so there is no transfer of a conscious mind from one physical universe to another.

As a related question, if you simulate consciousness in a computer, is the simulated mind necessarily conscious? For example, is the "Eliza" program created at MIT conscious when running one of its scripts?

This is an important question for the AI program. If you simulate a physical brain by simulating the detailed behaviour and interconnections of all the neutrons and other structure in the brain, will that be capable of consciousness? Or if consciousness is actually a computation independent of these neural processes, can you create consciousness only by actually running the same (or similar) program on a computer?

Bruce 

[Philip Thrift]

"settle the matter" :)

What is weird though is the number of people who think that there are "minds" that are some sort of non-material entities. To call them "patterns" is just the Platonism of reifying abstractions.

It is no different from theology or supernaturalism.

@philipthrift

 

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 9:31 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

> Assuming you're in principle OK with the concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical things.

I don't see why a brain in a vat is fundamentally different from a brain in a skull, both sorts of brains are made of matter that obeys the laws of physics. I think information is the fundamental thing that makes me be me, but information must be about something and in this case it's information about how atoms are arranged. And atoms are physical things that interact with each other according to the laws of physics.  

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:14 AM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

> This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this. Bruno Marchal claims the opposite - that arithmetic, or in
fact any abstract system capable of universal computation, is
sufficient for the job. To be quite frank, I'm a fence sitter in this
debate, as I've yet to see any physically realisable experiment that
can settle the matter.

I have.  Add 2 +2 on your computer. Observe the output. Hit your computer as hard as you can with the hammer. Add 2 +2 on your computer again. Observe if the output has changed. Note that a hammer can change physical things but can't change arithmetic. 

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:16 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

I agree with all that but there is nothing mystical about it, it's just the difference between nouns and adjectives. Mind is what a brain does.

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:16 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

A pattern must be a pattern of something, and whatever that something is it can't be numbers because numbers don't change with time and minds do. So if that something isn't numbers and it isn't atoms what is it? A mind is distinct from any particular physical incarnation but it must be physical stuff of some sort because physical stuff is the only stuff that can change with time.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:42 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe? 

Yes, one has the ability to evolve with time and one does not.

John K Clark

[Philip Thrift]

"Nuclear fusion is what a star does."

Simple as that.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 24 Aug 2019, at 23:18, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 8:27 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

> The simplest thing which is non trivial and that I can conceive is elementary number theory. 2+2=4 is conceptually more simple than the quantum vacuum.

I don't know if that's true, but if it is then the quantum vacuum behaves in more complex ways and does more interesting things than elementary number theory, things like intelagent behavior and consciousness. 

The quantum vacuum is indeed Turing universal. But elementary arithmetic also, and with mechanism, the first must be justified from the second, or from *any* universal machinery. 

 

> Consciousness, intelligence and observable are indeed things to derive, and mechanism derive it from number relations,

There is simply no way that could be correct. Consciousness changes, or at least my consciousness does and so does physical relations, but numbers never do.

Like in relativity, the changes are relative, and based on indexicals.

>> Experimental physicists measure physical magnitudes and describe what they found in the language of mathematics. How could you even in theory measure the numerical magnitude of the number 7? Does that magnature ever change?

> The result is a number, then we can interpret the number in term of the magnitude of something, but the physicalist adds something by committing itself in the idea that the magnitude refer to a physical universe,

Because a physicists can measure a voltage but he can't measure a pure number.

He can only measure a pure number. Then he can interpret it in some metaphysics. The number measured are neutral on it.

>> A book has no meaning to you if you don't know the language it's written in

> Not really. The book might be without a meaning accessible to me, but still accessible to another one. We might decide that a book has meaning if there is one universal number making genuine sense from it. 

I googled "universal number" and all I got was stuff about numerology and the way dentist refer to specific teeth.   

That says something about google, perhaps. The terming is not important. I use “universal number” because “machine” is misleading for some people who take a machine as a physical entity. 

 

The number x emulates the number y, on the number z, just means that phi_x(y, z) = phi_y(z), for some (fixed) universal machinery phi_i (like arithmetic, game-of-life, diophantine polynomial, combinators, etc.).

A number x is a universal emulator if x emulates all numbers on any input.

> Without physical implementation, there is no direct physical use,

Without matter there is no physical or nonphysical use directly or indirectly.

> but without a FORTRAN interpreter, no FORTRAN code could have meaning.

Having a FORTRAN interpreter is necessary but not sufficient to obtain meaning, and the same thing could be said of a Physical Turing machine. Both are needed.

If Fortran is not enough, Digital Mechanism is false.

 

>> OK so 0=1, that's fine.

> No, that is not fine. If 0=1, pigs have wings.

Yes but that's OK too, if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be upset by paradoxes.

Assuming a primary physical universe, yes, that’s correct, but then mechanism has to be abandoned.

>> there would be no contrast. If nothing physical existed then pure numbers would have the property of infinite unbounded homogeneity, so they wouldn't exist .

> Contrast comes from the fact that some arithmetical relation are true, or false, 

A physicist can say a voltage difference either exists or it doesn't, but all a mathematician can say is if a arithmetical relation can be derived from a set of agreed on axioms then its true, but derivation requires calculation and without a Physical Turing Machine nothing can be calculated.

All computations are emulated in all models of arithmetic. A model M of Peano arithmetic is another example of combinatory algebra. Just define, for x, y z in the model:  xy = z by M satisfies Ec(T(x, y c) & z = U(c)), with T the Kleene’s predicate and U the result-extracting function (from the computation c). See Davis’s book for the detailed implementation of T and U in arithmetic (or see Gödel’s 1931 which does practically the same with the probability predicate).

 

> If you have a physical definition of natural number, let me know,

OK, the natural number 1 is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel 299,792,458 meters,

1 is used in 299,792,458.

and the natural number n is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel n times that distance.

>>Nobody assumes time and space they observe them.

 

> The whole point of Plato [...]

My cue to skip to the next paragraph.

>> are you really going to tell me with a straight face that your phantom calculations can produce all the effects that INTEL's Silicon calculations can?

> Yes. It actually did.

I hope you don't really mean that because if you do you've lost your mind.

It can do this for an emulated observer. You have not proved that the “physical silicon” do anything more than that.

> INTEL, silicon, matter are all in the head of the universal machine. The mathematical explains where INTEL comes from ... 

I don't want you to explain anything, I want you you to PERFORM a calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics, and we both know you're never ever EVER going to be able to do that. 

“Performing” is defined in arithmetic, with Mechanism (once well understood). It is a relative notion. 

 

> You need to first understand that (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies the existence of all computations,

All? (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies ALL computations? Did I get that right, All computations?! ALL? Why in your life did you ever waste money buying a computer when (N, 0, s, +, *) can do ALL you want a computer to do?

Yes. If phi_i(x) = y, whatever the universal machinery phi_i is, you can prove that (N, 0, s, +, *) satisfies it, and satisfy all the condition to say that the computation is implemented. 

Obviously, to make such a computation manifested relatively to you, you need to interpret it in the physical reality. All sound universal numbers, in arithmetic, knows that. It does not make the physical reality primary.

 

> and then to explain me what is your stuff, with definition or example,

I've answered that question before, John K Clark is the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way.

The question was not about John Clark, but about the stuff you are using. What is it, and how does it make a computation more real. We already know how it makes the computation looking more real relatively to you.

> you seem to accept mechanism,

Yes and I've accepted it more than most, I spent $80,000 on it.

 

> which force you to accept some computationalist account of consciousness,

My fundamental axiom is consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.

I am OK with this, although that is a bit vague. It applies to all data processed through the sigma_1 arithmetical relations.

If you think about it although we strongly disagree about a lot of stuff I wouldn't be surprised if that's your fundamental axiom too. After all, what is the alternative?  

Yes, we agree on this. We disagree only that you invoke some impersonal god, Matter to make the processing more real, but then that appears to be invalid. If that was true, that matter would need magical, non Turing emulable, element, to make some computation more real, but the Mechanism can no more be true.

 

> but then, that theory of consciousness will applied to the (relative) numbers.

That would be valid if numbers could process data but they can't because they can't change,

They can’t change in the absolute way, nor can the block space-time universe of GR.

But they can change in the relative way. Indeed that the point of proving that arithmetic is Turing universal.

only matter that obeys the laws of physics can perform calculations because matter can change.

Matter can do computations because it is Turing universal. But the same is true for all combinatory algebra, all model of arithmetic, etc.

We may use numbers to describe the pattern in space of voltages that are inside a computer, but it always comes down to voltages not numbers.

Only when you interpret the numbers through electricity. But you can build a Babbage machine, or just look inside arithmetic to see the emulation of electrical machine, Babbage machine, combinators, etc.

>> I am a Turing Machine but I am not a Universal Turing Machine or a "Löbian machine”because there are some problems that a Turing Machine can solve with a *finite* amount of tape that I can not because my tape is too short. So I can't prove I'm universal because I'm not. And yet I'm conscious.

> A universal Turing machine is a finite object.

Something can be finite and still be much much larger than me. Back in 2010 a Universal Turing Machine calculated the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit of pi, it turned out to be 0. I could not have done that, not even if I had pencil and paper to help me.

> It might (and will) sooner or later asks for more memory space.

I can ask for more memory space but unlike a UTM I won't get it, and even if I did there wouldn't be enough space for it to fit inside my skull.

That why the biological universal entity develop brains, add neurons, or begin to use the wall of the cave as memory extension, until they discover paper, … magnetic tape. All universal machine want always more memory.

> But the memory space is in the environment, not in the definition of the finite set of quadruplet.

That's OK because I don't give a damn about the definition of the finite set of quadruplets, I'm not interested in any definition I'm interested in PERFORMING calculations.

That si what the quadruplets do, relatively to the universal machinery implementing it, be it arithmetic, etc.

 

> Nor do I assume a primitive physical universe in the thought experience.

That's just silly, nobody assumes an experience.

Nor did I do that.

And no amount of assumptions or definitions can add 2 and 2 without physics.

2+2=4 independently of anyone verifying the fact.

  

>> If that huge number can change then so can any number, so when the number 7 changes to something else the number 7 no longer exists. So in this new reality how much is 4+3?

> Changes are defined in the relative way, like in Block-Universe view of GR.

Einstein made it clear that the Block-Universe is not homogeneous but changes along the time dimension and along each of the 3 spatial dimensions.

Like the numbers.

You think the number 7 changes relative to something. What is that something?

7 is 6 “after” 1 is added, like 8 is 7, when 1 is added.

And you never answered my question, after the number 7 changes to something else how much is 4+3?

If the register as change its content 7 by 8, 7 +1 in a further instruction could become 8 + 3.

Number are not changed, but memory content can change, and they can be represented by numbers. I have explained a bit more on this already.

> Hardware and software are relative notion, except for the physical hardware,

Yes!

 

> which is not a software at all,

Yes!

 

> but a phenomenological perception by the universal numbers.

Numbers that can perceive things? In English the term "universal numbers" is only meaningful in the world of astrology and dentistry, however nobody but Bruno knows what "universal numbers" means in Brunospeak. 

Other logicians have used that expression, like Smullyan in its last book. But scientist hate vocabulary discussion. The key point is that the digital machine are arithmetical concept. See the paper recently cited by called, which shows, in passing, how PA proves the Turing universality of some machine:number.

>> If you really believe, and apparently you do, that a proof has been found that pure numbers can change

> Relatively to other number, through number relations.

Relative to the number 11 how has the number 7 changed?

4

 

> Obviously “a number can change” is nonsense, but in the course of a computation, even, made in arithmetic, a number can change.

I see, obviously a number changing is nonsense but a number can change. No, I take that back, I don't see.

A number can represent a register. This is sometimes written like x := x + 1, and it means that we add 1 to the register x. Then you need only to study the details of how to manage composition f programs, and recursion, in pure arithmetic. That is done in all textbooks. The details are tedious, as it consists in programming in a very low level programming language. But I did show it in all details for the combinatory algebra (which also do not assume anything about a physical reality).

> and have the power to change things in the physical world

As I've been saying for years stop telling me about how to do it and just do it, DO IT AND BECOME GOD!

Each time you ask me this you are in the start man fallacy. You ask something impossible. The point is that it is already done … in arithmetic. 

> A number cannot change something in the physical world.

I see, a number has "the power to change things in the physical world" but "a number cannot change something in the physical world". No, I take that back, I don't see.

 

> But the relation between the numbers can make relative numbers experience change.

When does 4+3=7 and when does it not?

The program x gives 7 on input 4 and 3 when M satisfies T(z, 4, 3, y) &  U(y) = 7, with T the Kleene’s predicate (with one argument more) and U the result extracting function.

>>> To you agree with Euclid’s proof that there is no biggest prime number?

>> That is a physical question. It depends on if the expanding accelerating universe has the capacity to perform a infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations and I don't know the answer to that but I have reasons to be somewhat skeptical.  

 

> So you don’t agree with Euclid? His proof of the infinity of prime number is orthogonal to physics. It says nothing in physics, and it uses nothing in physics.

 

Euclid's proof contains no error but it starts with a INVALID ASSUMPTION and you just pointed out exactly what that assumption is; from the first line of the proof to the last Euclid assumes that numbers have nothing to do with physics.

Wrong in you materialist metaphysics, but that is only the nth times you beg the question. You cannot invoke you metaphysical commitment to refute a proof (of inconsistency). If you believe in matter, you need to elaborate on what it is and how it makes a computation more real/conscious for the entities being emulated. But the reasoning I have given shows that it is impossible. Mechanism and materialism are logically incompatible.

Bruno

John K Clark

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[Bruno Marchal]

Sure. Gödel’s 1931, and all the publications which followed, including computer science and AIs, etc.

In fact it is the evidence for disembodied mind which suggest the truth of digital mechanism at the start.

 There is no evidence for primitive matter,  though, despite I give a “simple” test to verify it, but the tests do not show up any primitive matter until now. We have to pursue the testing of course.

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

All the "Kripke models" of Z1¨, X1¨and S4Grz1, obtained through G1* provides the experimental set-up to test mechanism, and up to now, thanks to QM-without-collapse, we can say that no evidences for primitive matter have been found. G* must be optimised to pursue the testing. The irony is that we might need quantum computers to progress in that task. It is a very long term project.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

All piece of matter are but maps on our relative accessible computations/history (computation seen from inside, a notion made precise with the modal logic G*, which I like to call machine’s theology, for obvious (greek) reason.

A Universal machine cannot exist without a physical reality, because it implies it from its first person view. That physical reality is a consequence of the logic of the machine’s observable ([]p & <>t (& p)).

This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this.

I am with John here. Talk of a "disembodied" mind (or calculation). is just so much hot air. I ask for evidence of such things, and none has been provided to date. "Minds" (or calculations) are the consequence of physical operations.

That is revisionism. The notion of computation has been discovered by mathematicians working on the foundation of mathematics, as a way to avoid some paradoxes. You confuse “physical implementation of a computation” with “computation”. That is like confusing a function and a set representation a function. It is a common error. But when doing metaphysics, that error becomes important to avoid. A mathematical object is different from all its representations through any other mathematical objects.

Bruno

Bruce

 

Bruno Marchal claims the opposite - that arithmetic, or in
fact any abstract system capable of universal computation, is
sufficient for the job. To be quite frank, I'm a fence sitter in this
debate, as I've yet to see any physically realisable experiment that
can settle the matter.

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[Bruno Marchal]

OK, but then God does not need to be more than a tiny segment of the arithmetical reality, and this is already used by all scientists.

The fact is that all computation are implemented in all Turing universal machinery, like the tiny sigma_1 arithmetical reality.

Bruno



>
> Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

That is your hypothesis, and you are coherent: you need to abandon Mechanism, as you said you do.

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

With mechanism, we explain the mind from 2+2=4 & Co. 

Not the reverse, which does not make much sense, as all physical theories does the assumption of 2+2=4 & Co. 

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

Yes, if the brain is emulated at the right level, which existence is part of the Digital Mechanist assumption.In arithmetic, the brain is emulated/simulated at all levels. The physical reality has to be given by the statistics on all computations, structured by the logic of self-reference. That works rather well, up to now. We can only pursue the testing and see.

Bruno

Bruce 

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Bruce 

[Bruno Marchal]

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this. Contrarily, when you say that a mathematical structure describe things, that is like saying that the physical universe describes the content of a book on physics. 

A reality, be it physical or mathematical, is not a description, but the thing being described by some theory. PA describes a portion of the Arithmetical Reality, which can be shown never completely described by *any* (effective) theory. I take this as a strong evidence that the arithmetical reality is independent of me, and actually, quite above me (and that is provable when we assume mechanism).

You might have a conventionalist philosophy of mathematics, but if that philosophy was true, why would we give a million of dollars for a solution to Riemann hypothesis? Or how to explain why the formula of the partition of numbers is so much more difficult than the formula for the composition of numbers, as I showed once. The composition of n is the number of way you can describe n as a sum of numbers, taking the order into account. The partition of n is the same, except the order of the sum is not taking into account. The number of composition is simply 2^(n-1), but the number of partitions is given by the most complex (in the two sense of the word) formula in mathematics.

If the arithmetical reality was conventional, I would have simplified all this already :)

You don’t need to accept full realism. You need to accept that phi_x(y) converges or not. You need to believe that the program i stops on x or does not stop on x. Whatever number x is. Nothing more.

If you do metaphysics/theology with the scientific attitude, you cannot invoke words like “truth”, “real”, “god”, “universe” in your theory, but you might use them in some meta-theory, to give sense to your theory, temporarily.  

Bruno

Bruce 

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[Bruno Marchal]

The analogy breaks down at some point.

The conception of the Star is 3p (to simplify, eventually with mechanism a Star is only 1p plural).

Nuclear fission is 3p.

The reduction makes sense.

Now, “mind” is ambiguous. Clark defines it by what brain does, but by accepting mechanism, he has to accept that it is what any universal machine does. (If he survived in virtue of a digital emulation, it cannot matter which universal machinery is used to implement it, or he put some magic somewhere, but then he cannot say yes to the doctor which does not take that magic (non Turing emulable thing) into account).

But that is OK, because when “mind” is defined in that sense, you can see it in an as much 3p way than the brain, or the machine, or the relative code in arithmetic. Everything is 3p here.

Where the analogy break down, is when you try to singularise your first person experience, the 1p, that you live, with the 3p brain. Imagine that two identical brain/computer run the same program. Are you located in one brain/computer or in both? What if one computer run quickly, processed by a high speed machine, and the second one is processed slowly, by a Babbage machine. Would you be able to tell the difference? To predict, not an eclipse, but the 1p experience of seeing an eclipse, correctly, you need to know if some Boltzmann brain will not emulate your exact “here-and-now” state before the eclipse, and that will not help, because you need actually to know about all computations going through your here and now state, and see the proportion of those going through the experience of seeing the eclipse. All computations are executed in arithmetic, which means you need some measure theory, based on the mathematics of digital self-reference (with some random oracle, etc.).

The problem of the 1p-mind is that he can do nothing, and still feel something. Mechanism truncated the persons, but that entails that person is more a non material type than a nominalist singular token. We are abstract beings (with mechanism), and we are linked to all our relative representations, and we have an infinity of them. 

A non-mechanist can try to singularise a mind and the physical machine supporting it, by adding infinities in both, but I am not sure this could work out, as the infinities multiplies even more than the finite, so they will get a super-infinite type of universal dovetailing, on some large cardinals or ordinals, and they will get the same, but more complex, measure problem. It is just an open problem if non-mechanism can provide any help, to be honest. I think it is simplest take the simpler theory, and change it when we find discrepancies with facts, or internal inconsistencies. 

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

Russell, we cannot settle the matter if Mechanism is true, but if false, we can discover it, by finding a theorem in the material modes violated by nature. It is like the dream: we can know-for-sure that we are dreaming but we cannot know-for-sure when we are awake. Of course we can know that we are awake in the Theaetus’ sense, like when we believe that we are awake and "God knows" that we are indeed awake.

Concerning any reality, science offers only degrees of plausibility. 

Public certainty about public things is a form of madness, even if quite useful FMPP. (For Most Practical Purposes).

"settle the matter" :)

What is weird though is the number of people who think that there are "minds" that are some sort of non-material entities. To call them "patterns" is just the Platonism of reifying abstractions.

It is no different from theology or supernaturalism.

Philip, give me your TOE. Either it is Turing universal and then it could redundant, or it is not Turing universal, and then it missed the main heroin of Mechanism.

The point is first that Mechanism and Materialism are incompatible, then secondly, that math and physics seems to favour Mechanism and seems to refute Materialism.

Bruno

@philipthrift

 

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[Brent Meeker]

On 8/24/2019 9:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

What does "distinct" mean in that?  It's a distinction you make because
you can think of a brain and processes of the brain as separate.  Just
like you can think of an automobile plant as distinct from the steps
required to make a car.  But that doesn't mean that a car can be made
without any physical process.

>
> Brains have mass, minds do not.

Neither does insurance or football.

> Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

How do you know this?  Minds get affected when brains do.

> Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Poetic equivocation on "exist".

> Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to
> locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater
> than c, brains cannot.

OK.  Report back to us when your mind is on Jupiters Moon, Titan. We can
compare it to what Dragonfly finds in 2026.  Could save NASA a lot of 
money.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

 

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain. 

No, there are 2^48 orthogonal projections in the infinite dimensional Hilbert space of the universe.

But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

No.  You assumed it was created within our universe.  Otherwise we could not "abduct" it.  A universe is by definition closed.  What you're trying to use is that idea that a universe can be completely simulated.  But to really be complete it must be closed...and in that case there is no difference between a "simulated" and a "real" universe.  It is just magical thinking to say that the universe isn't real because it's possible that it's a simulation within some other universe IF it is actually closed.  It is muddled thinking to postulate a simulated universe and then think of going in and out of it, of having it supported by computers in another universe.  Those are psuedo-universes and that's why assuming them lead to silly speculations.  Of course it's possible we live in a psuedo-universe, but then we should look for empirical evidence it is not closed and that we can interact with the "real" universe.

Brent

Jason

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[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 1:10 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
> This is an important question for the AI program. If you simulate a
> physical brain by simulating the detailed behaviour and
> interconnections of all the neutrons and other structure in the brain,
> will that be capable of consciousness? Or if consciousness is actually
> a computation independent of these neural processes, can you create
> consciousness only by actually running the same (or similar) program
> on a computer?

My view is that consciousness must be conscious OF something and that
implies it is relative to an environment.  The environment may also be
part of the computation, i.e. "simulated".  But then the consciousness
is limited by this.  If the consiousness is to be human-like then it
must be consciousness OF a human-like physical world.  That not to
assume the physical world cannot also be simulated in the sense of be
computable.  But it means that it is a world which is largely
independent of the conscious minds within it, so physics is essential to it.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 12:38:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Once one eliminates Platonism and accepts that mathematics is programming then all of physics (what humans have thought of to model the cosmos) can be found in the numerical relativity and quantum simulation programs running on computers.

So a program and a "physical structure" are only isomorphic if the universe itself is a simulation.

@philipthrift

 

[Jason Resch]

Why do you think this?

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

You view mathematics as only a language with no referent.  But Godel's result is that the referent transcends any language conceived to describe it.  In this sense it is more real than the language.

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

There is a big "if" there -- "if its state is duplicated".......

It's a direct (independent) consequence of several different well accepted theories.

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

These are different ideas. The multiverse of eternal inflation is not the many worlds of Everettian QM (despite attempts to show that they are).

I know that.

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

That is the theory. But it relies on many unproven assumptions about distributions in the initial state.

If (eternal inflation) or (infinite homogeneous cosmology) or (no collapse) then there are many duplicates of your mind state.

No theory in science is ever proven.

While eternal inflation might lead to duplicate universes, it does not imply that every universe is duplicated.

If it can happen once it can happen again. Given inflation is eternal it will happen again.

It might well be the case that the only universes that are duplicated are entirely uninteresting sterile universes without much structure. Why do you think that the initial conditions of our Hubble volume should be duplicated somewhere?

The Hubble volume has a finite information content.  If the universe is infinite, that finite state reappears an infinite number if times -- like the digits of pi, any finite digit sequence reappears an infinite number of times with probability 1.

We might come from unique initial conditions -- of measure zero in the infinite extent of space in our extended universe.

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain.  But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

Everettian quantum mechanics might imply many worlds, split off as copies from the world in which I exist. But these worlds are orthogonal to this world. This means that the existence of such orthogonal worlds can be assumed, or ignored, as you choose -- these "other worlds" have no consequences for our present existence.

I would say the same of your duplicate 10^10^28 meters away, but you only asked for evidence duplicate minds exist.  If you wait a few more decades, we will have direct evidence with uploaded minds and AI.

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

I thought that your scenario involved a simulated "other world". That simulation is presumably performed on a computer in our world, so there is no transfer of a conscious mind from one physical universe to another.

From the point of view of the mind, it does travel from one universe to another.

As a related question, if you simulate consciousness in a computer, is the simulated mind necessarily conscious?

I think so.

For example, is the "Eliza" program created at MIT conscious when running one of its scripts?

If the mind defined by the Eliza program is conscious then it's emulations are.

This is an important question for the AI program. If you simulate a physical brain by simulating the detailed behaviour and interconnections of all the neutrons and other structure in the brain, will that be capable of consciousness?

This is what most neuroscientists and philosophers of mind believe.

Or if consciousness is actually a computation independent of these neural processes, can you create consciousness only by actually running the same (or similar) program on a computer?

This is what Bruno refers to when he speaks of substitution level.  I.e., do we need to simulate the brain regions, the neurons, the glial cells, the neurotransmitters, the atoms, the quarks, etc.  Different levels of detail may or may not be necessary to replicate behavior or recreate the same mind.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 4:30 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:16 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

A pattern must be a pattern of something, and whatever that something is it can't be numbers because numbers don't change with time and minds do.

The structure has a time dimension.  The structure varies with the time coordinate.  That's what time is.

So if that something isn't numbers and it isn't atoms what is it? A mind is distinct from any particular physical incarnation but it must be physical stuff of some sort because physical stuff is the only stuff that can change with time.

Does space change?  In physics time and space are one unified whole.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:08 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 9:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

What does "distinct" mean in that?  It's a distinction you make because
you can think of a brain and processes of the brain as separate.  Just
like you can think of an automobile plant as distinct from the steps
required to make a car.  But that doesn't mean that a car can be made
without any physical process.

It is distinct in the sense that bits are different from electrical voltages or scribbles on paper.

>
> Brains have mass, minds do not.

Neither does insurance or football.

> Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

How do you know this?  Minds get affected when brains do.

Because of what I write below.

> Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Poetic equivocation on "exist".

> Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to
> locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater
> than c, brains cannot.

OK.  Report back to us when your mind is on Jupiters Moon, Titan. We can
compare it to what Dragonfly finds in 2026.  Could save NASA a lot of 
money.

It requires the cooperation of equipment already present on Titan.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

This confuses truth with proof.

  It is static. 

All change is relative.

It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.

This shows only that there's often many ways of talking about what is fundamentally the same thing.

  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.

Why?

  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Why do you doubt the possibility of this?

How do you know what you believe to be the physical universe isn't already mathematical?

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

 

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain. 

No, there are 2^48 orthogonal projections in the infinite dimensional Hilbert space of the universe.

And each contains what in our conventional language we would call a brain.

But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

No.  You assumed it was created within our universe.  Otherwise we could not "abduct" it. 

I assumed there is the other physical universe out there. Perhaps it is one of the other bubble universe possibilities permitted under eternal inflation.  Our universe just replicated the mind in from that universe.

A universe is by definition closed.

Simulation is a way of exploring other universes, visiting them and bringing back information from them.  Computer's in a sense are telescopes that can peer into other realities.

  What you're trying to use is that idea that a universe can be completely simulated.  But to really be complete it must be closed...and in that case there is no difference between a "simulated" and a "real" universe. 

That's true. Simulation can create reality.

It is just magical thinking to say that the universe isn't real because it's possible that it's a simulation within some other universe IF it is actually closed. 

I'm not saying it isn't real because it can be simulated, I was only saying minds can travel from one universe to another.

It is muddled thinking to postulate a simulated universe and then think of going in and out of it, of having it supported by computers in another universe.  Those are psuedo-universes and that's why assuming them lead to silly speculations.  Of course it's possible we live in a psuedo-universe, but then we should look for empirical evidence it is not closed and that we can interact with the "real" universe.

The full simulation of the other universe isn't necessary to abduct a mind, but it helps explain the plausibility of the abduction.

Jason

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 7:00 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

>> a physicists can measure a voltage but he can't measure a pure number.

> He can only measure a pure number.

How can a physicist measure the number 7? Even if he found a way what would be the point when he already knows the answer, if 7 is not equal to 7 what is it equal to?

 

> Then he can interpret it in some metaphysics.

He can measure a physical quantity and describe what he found with the help of numbers.

>> I googled "universal number" and all I got was stuff about numerology and the way dentist refer to specific teeth.   

> That says something about google, perhaps.

I think not, Bing doesn't know what you're talking about either. The problem is that like me neither Google or Bing knows Brunocpeak.

>> Having a FORTRAN interpreter is necessary but not sufficient to obtain meaning, and the same thing could be said of a Physical Turing machine. Both are needed.

> If Fortran is not enough,

It isn't.

 

> Digital Mechanism is false.

How on earth do figure that?? When I payed $80,000 and said yes to the digital doctor (which is YOUR definition of mechanism) I did so with the full understanding that there is nothing special about the particular atoms that are in my body right now and with the doctor's promise that he would do his best to someday arrange atoms so they behave in a johnkclarkian way. The idea is my frozen brain provides the information about how to arrange the atoms, the atoms themselves although vitally important are not a problem because they can come from anywhere. 

 

>> if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be upset by paradoxes.

> Assuming a primary physical universe, yes, that’s correct, but then mechanism has to be abandoned.

You must have changed your definition yet again, originally you said a belief in mechanism is saying "yes" to the digital doctor and certainly there is nothing in the above that would justify changing the answer to "no", and existence or nonexistence of a primary physical universe has nothing to do with it. So I knew what "mechanism" mente in Brunospeak yesterday but not today.

>> the natural number 1 is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel 299,792,458 meters,

> 1 is used in 299,792,458.

That's the trouble with all definitions, eventually they always become circular, but this is not a definition this is something much much better, an example. I show you a distance. I show you the one second mark on a stopwatch. And I show you a light beam.  

> It can do this for an emulated observer. You have not proved that the
“physical silicon” do anything more than that

I can't think of any reason why one emulated observer should have power over numbers that another emulated observer does not, and I think I could make a pretty good case that you are not God and you would be if you could command pure numbers to perform calculations.

>>I don't want you to explain anything, I want you you to PERFORM a calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics, and we both know you're never ever EVER going to be able to do that. 

> “Performing” is defined in arithmetic,

Please please stop babbling about definitions. A definition can't produce a answer to a calculation. And definitions are ALWAYS derivative, they play second fiddle to examples.  

> It does not make the physical reality primary.

And please please stop babbling about things that have NOTHING to do with what we're talking about!

> and then to explain me what is your stuff, with definition or example,

John K Clark is the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way. Right now there is only one chunk of matter in the observable universe that behaves that way but there is no law of physics that demands that always be true.

> The question was not about John Clark, but about the stuff you are using. What is it,

Physical stuff. And what is physical stuff? The only stuff that can interact with time AND the only stuff where it would matter if 2+2=4 or 2+2=5.

> and how does it make a computation more real.

Mind and physical stuff is the only stuff with the ability to interact with time and the only stuff that can determine that 2+2 is 4 and not 5.

>> My fundamental axiom is consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.

> I am OK with this, although that is a bit vague.

I'd be OK with it if you wanted to change "the way" to "a way".

 

> It applies to all data processed through the sigma_1 arithmetical relations.

No it doesn't. Consciousness changes with time, sigma_1 arithmetical relations don't. And the only thing that makes sigma_1 arithmetical relations different from the other infinitely many arithmetical relations is it happens to come out with 2+2=4 just as you wanted, but the only reason you wanted it to do that is  because it's the only one compatible with physics, and the only way you figured out it would work is by using  your physical brain. 

 

>> If you think about it although we strongly disagree about a lot of stuff I wouldn't be surprised if that's your fundamental axiom too. After all, what is the alternative?  

> Yes, we agree on this. We disagree only that you invoke some impersonal god, Matter to make the processing more real,

I would invoke any "impersonal god" with the ability to interact with time but I know of only one, physical stuff.

 

> but then that appears to be invalid. If that was true, that matter would need magical, non Turing emulable, element, to make some computation more real,

I don't have any idea what you mean by that, but I do know a physical Turing Machine can change with time but a description of a Turing Machine written in the language of mathematics can't. 

> but then, that theory of consciousness will applied to the (relative) numbers.

> That would be valid if numbers could process data but they can't because they can't change,

> They can’t change in the absolute way,

Numbers can't change in ANY way. A 7 is always a 7 and that's the only reason why 4+3 is always 7.

> nor can the block space-time universe of GR.

INCORRECT! If the block space-time universe never changed why wouldn't physicists always get a zero whenever they differentiated a function with respect to time? The rate of change of the block universe can and does change with the time axis.

 

> Matter can do computations because it is Turing universal.

Yes, and it's the only thing that is.

> But the same is true for all combinatory algebra, all model of arithmetic, etc.

This is exactly what I meant when I said you may understand the individual steps in a proof but when you get to the end you've lost track of exactly what it is that has been proven; in this case you've forgotten that mind can change and matter can change but combinatory algebra and all model of arithmetic can't.

>> We may use numbers to describe the pattern in space of voltages that are inside a computer, but it always comes down to voltages not numbers.

> Only when you interpret the numbers through electricity.

Electricity will do what it does regardless of what interpretation I put on it.  

> But you can build a Babbage machine,

Then rather than electricity it would all come down to the momentum of gears and levers, but both electricity and momentum are physical. You can interpret the electricity or momentum as numbers if you like but that's up to you, the computer doesn't care.

 

> or just look inside arithmetic to see the emulation of electrical machine,

You've got it exactly backwards, arithmetic isn't emulating the machine, the machine is emulating arithmetic. A simulation shouldn't be more complex than the thing it's simulating! It would be like saying a hurricane is simulating a model of a hurricane the weather bureau is running on its computer. 

> 2+2=4 independently of anyone verifying the fact.

If nothing physical existed and there was not 2 of anything (much less 4) then 2+2=4  would mean nothing and *do* nothing and thus be nothing.

 

>> You think the number 7 changes relative to something. What is that something?

> 7 is 6 “after” 1 is added,

So 7 didn't exist before you added 1 to 6? Bruno, come on, you must know you're talking nonsense.

> And you never answered my question, after the number 7 changes to something else how much is 4+3?

> If the register as change its content 7 by 8, 7 +1 in a further instruction could become 8 + 3.

A computer register stores a pattern of voltages in time and space, those voltages can change, numbers can't.

> Number are not changed, but memory content can change,

Yes, and memory content must ALWAYS be physical because physical stuff can change with time and nothing else can.

 

> and they can be represented by numbers.

Yes, numbers can be helpful in describing voltages, but voltages are not numbers.

>> Relative to the number 11 how has the number 7 changed?

> 4

So 11+2 = 6.  Bruno, come on, you must know you're talking nonsense.

> Obviously “a number can change” is nonsense, but in the course of a computation, even, made in arithmetic, a number can change.

>> I see, obviously a number changing is nonsense but a number can change. No, I take that back, I don't see.

> A number can represent a register.

Yes a number can represent the voltages in a register, and 3 ASCII characters C and A and T can represent a cat, but C-A-T is not a cat.

> That is done in all textbooks.

No calculation has ever been done in any textbook. Once more you haven't understood what the textbook has proven.

>>> and have the power to change things in the physical world

>> As I've been saying for years stop telling me about how to do it and just do it, DO IT AND BECOME GOD!

> Each time you ask me this you are in the start man fallacy. You ask something impossible. The point is that it is already done … in arithmetic. 

So its impossible and it's already been done in arithmetic. I suppose being able to do the impossible is a good definition of God but unfortunately I don't know how to get arithmetic to do that, but you claim you do. So why aren't you God?

> The program x gives 7 on input 4 and 3 when M satisfies T(z, 4, 3, y) &  U(y) = 7, with

Wait a minute! Program? You can't *do* anything with a program without a computer and you can't have a computer without matter and physics.

 

>>>  So you don’t agree with Euclid? His proof of the infinity of prime number is orthogonal to physics. It says nothing in physics, and it uses nothing in physics.

 

>> Euclid's proof contains no error but it starts with a INVALID ASSUMPTION and you just pointed out exactly what that assumption is; from the first line of the proof to the last Euclid assumes that numbers have nothing to do with physics.

> Wrong in you materialist metaphysics, but that is only the nth times you beg the question. You cannot invoke you metaphysical commitment to refute a proof (of inconsistency). 

I have no idea what you're talking about.

John K Clark

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

 

Contrarily, when you say that a mathematical structure describe things, that is like saying that the physical universe describes the content of a book on physics.

You beg the question. You are assuming that the mathematical structure is the reality, and that the physical universe is the description of that structure. Wrong way round, yet again.

 

A reality, be it physical or mathematical, is not a description, but the thing being described by some theory.

You are using your own mathematician's understanding of the relationship between a theory and a reality. You claim that a model that instantiates the theory is a reality for that theory. That is just a matter of particular linguistic usage, and it has nothing to do with the relationship between physical reality and the mathematical theories used to (partially) describe it.

 

PA describes a portion of the Arithmetical Reality, which can be shown never completely described by *any* (effective) theory. I take this as a strong evidence that the arithmetical reality is independent of me, and actually, quite above me (and that is provable when we assume mechanism).

You really do get hung up on what you think Godel proved when he showed that some true statements in arithmetic are not theorems. That simply uses a notion of "truth" that is outside theorems of the system. It has nothing to do with existence or an ontology.

 

You might have a conventionalist philosophy of mathematics, but if that philosophy was true, why would we give a million of dollars for a solution to Riemann hypothesis? Or how to explain why the formula of the partition of numbers is so much more difficult than the formula for the composition of numbers, as I showed once. The composition of n is the number of way you can describe n as a sum of numbers, taking the order into account. The partition of n is the same, except the order of the sum is not taking into account. The number of composition is simply 2^(n-1), but the number of partitions is given by the most complex (in the two sense of the word) formula in mathematics.

If the arithmetical reality was conventional, I would have simplified all this already :)

Arithmetic is defined by certain axioms. Systems of axioms can have consequences that were not dreamed of when the axioms were formulated. There is nothing more to it than that -- it is not some super revealed "truth".

 

You don’t need to accept full realism. You need to accept that phi_x(y) converges or not. You need to believe that the program i stops on x or does not stop on x. Whatever number x is. Nothing more.

Some computations halt and some do not. And you can't always tell in advance which is which ... this is not the source of all wisdom.

Bruce

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:30 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 07:43, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:14 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this.

I am with John here. Talk of a "disembodied" mind (or calculation). is just so much hot air. I ask for evidence of such things, and none has been provided to date. "Minds" (or calculations) are the consequence of physical operations.

That is revisionism. The notion of computation has been discovered by mathematicians working on the foundation of mathematics, as a way to avoid some paradoxes. You confuse “physical implementation of a computation” with “computation”.

You confuse the formal definition of a "computation" with the physical object that performs the operations necessary to do the calculation.

 

That is like confusing a function and a set representation a function. It is a common error. But when doing metaphysics, that error becomes important to avoid. A mathematical object is different from all its representations through any other mathematical objects.

"A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction." as Brent says. It may be isomorphic to other mathematical objects, but that does not give it independent existence.

Bruce

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 05:08:42AM -0400, John Clark wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:14 AM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>

> wrote:
>
>
> > This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
> exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
> something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to

> do this. Bruno Marchal claims the opposite - that arithmetic, or in
> fact any abstract system capable of universal computation, is
> sufficient for the job. To be quite frank, I'm a fence sitter in this
> debate, as I've yet to see any physically realisable experiment that
> can settle the matter.
>
>

> I have.  Add 2 +2 on your computer. Observe the output. Hit your computer as
> hard as you can with the hammer. Add 2 +2 on your computer again. Observe if
> the output has changed. Note that a hammer can change physical things but can't
> change arithmetic. 

You could be observing a simulation of a hammer breaking a simulated
computer, which if faithful, should prevent the computation from
taking place. It does not demonstrate ontological existence of the
computer.

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 12:50 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

No.  The difference is one of completeness.  A abstract something is incomplete.  The verb is "to abstract" meaning to leave aside irrelevant things.  But a universe doesn' t have anything "left aside".  That's why I look at it the other way around when you talk about a "simulation" that is isomorphic to our universe.  If it's a complete and perfect simulation, then it's a universe itself.  It can't be just a mathematical structure, it's identical to what you think it is "simulating".

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 12:58 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 4:30 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:16 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

A pattern must be a pattern of something, and whatever that something is it can't be numbers because numbers don't change with time and minds do.

The structure has a time dimension.  The structure varies with the time coordinate.  That's what time is.

Which one?  Coordinate time?  Clock time?  Proper time?  Whose proper time?

So if that something isn't numbers and it isn't atoms what is it? A mind is distinct from any particular physical incarnation but it must be physical stuff of some sort because physical stuff is the only stuff that can change with time.

Does space change?  In physics time and space are one unified whole.

That's the theory now.  But maybe it's made of quantum entanglements?  That's the trouble all religions have with trying to base their validity on physics.  Physics is a science and it never provides certainty...and least of all in its theories.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 2:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:08 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 9:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

What does "distinct" mean in that?  It's a distinction you make because
you can think of a brain and processes of the brain as separate.  Just
like you can think of an automobile plant as distinct from the steps
required to make a car.  But that doesn't mean that a car can be made
without any physical process.

It is distinct in the sense that bits are different from electrical voltages or scribbles on paper.

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

>
> Brains have mass, minds do not.

Neither does insurance or football.

> Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

How do you know this?  Minds get affected when brains do.

Because of what I write below.

> Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Poetic equivocation on "exist".

> Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to
> locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater
> than c, brains cannot.

OK.  Report back to us when your mind is on Jupiters Moon, Titan. We can
compare it to what Dragonfly finds in 2026.  Could save NASA a lot of 
money.

It requires the cooperation of equipment already present on Titan.

Right. It requires a physical part of your extended brain to be there.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

c.f. Pontius Pilate

  It is static. 

All change is relative.

There is no change in a mathematical structure.

It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.

This shows only that there's often many ways of talking about what is fundamentally the same thing.

Don't you notice that "fundamentally" is a weasel word, signally that your sentence is strickly false.  A Leibniz noted, if two things are the same then they are only one thing.

  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.

Why?

Because physical things have "accidental" attributes and relations.

  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Why do you doubt the possibility of this?

How do you know what you believe to be the physical universe isn't already mathematical?

You just don't get it.  If your "mathematical universe" is the same as the physical universe then it's physical too.  "Physical" is the name for the universe we live in.  One we can perceive and interact with and subjectively agree on.

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[Brent Meeker]

And if the universe itself is a simulation..."simulation" is meaningless.  Something can only be a simulation if it is within and open to some bigger environment.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

Bruno is talking about the territory and I think you are confusing it with Bruno talking about the map.  To be clear, axioms in math are just theories to explain the mathematical reality, in the same sense as physical theories do.  Since you presume there is no mathematical reality all you can imagine are maps.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 12:50 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

No.  The difference is one of completeness. 

I wasn't assuming incompleteness when I used the term abstract. That's why I stipulated isomorphically identical.

 

 A abstract something is incomplete.  The verb is "to abstract" meaning to leave aside irrelevant things.  But a universe doesn' t have anything "left aside".  That's why I look at it the other way around when you talk about a "simulation" that is isomorphic to our universe.

Could you clarify this point, I'm not sure I follow.

 

  If it's a complete and perfect simulation, then it's a universe itself.  It can't be just a mathematical structure, it's identical to what you think it is "simulating".

Why can't a simulation be a mathematical structure?  Computations and Turing machines are mathematical objects.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

There's no case I am aware of where something that changes over one dimension can't be viewed equivalently as a static object with one extra dimension.

If you think a static point can exist as a mathematical object, but not a point that moves up and down can't because movement implies change, then does the sin function exist as a mathematical object?

(Curious what John Clark would say on this).

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 2:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:08 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 9:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

What does "distinct" mean in that?  It's a distinction you make because
you can think of a brain and processes of the brain as separate.  Just
like you can think of an automobile plant as distinct from the steps
required to make a car.  But that doesn't mean that a car can be made
without any physical process.

It is distinct in the sense that bits are different from electrical voltages or scribbles on paper.

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

Under your own definition of abstraction above, there is a distinction between a mind and a brain.  There's not an identity relation between the two, as one discards unnecessary details.  As an abstract pattern, there's many physical incarnations that could map to the same mind. Under the computational theory of mind, any universe capable of building a computer could reproduce your mind.

 

>
> Brains have mass, minds do not.

Neither does insurance or football.

> Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

How do you know this?  Minds get affected when brains do.

Because of what I write below.

> Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Poetic equivocation on "exist".

> Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to
> locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater
> than c, brains cannot.

OK.  Report back to us when your mind is on Jupiters Moon, Titan. We can
compare it to what Dragonfly finds in 2026.  Could save NASA a lot of 
money.

It requires the cooperation of equipment already present on Titan.

Right. It requires a physical part of your extended brain to be there.

And if the equipment existed beyond the cosmological horizon and if it had my brain state, it would enable me to go there.  The mind can access places neither my brain, nor any object on earth can get to.

Jason 

 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:03 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

Bruno is talking about the territory and I think you are confusing it with Bruno talking about the map.  To be clear, axioms in math are just theories to explain the mathematical reality,

Using the word "reality" here just begs the question. Arithmetic (or mathematics) is nothing more than the product of its axioms. Proofs from the axioms may not capture all that one might regard as "truth", but that is really beside the point. Using the word "truth" is just as fraught as using the term "reality" -- question begging.

in the same sense as physical theories do.  Since you presume there is no mathematical reality all you can imagine are maps.

Maybe the physical reality actually is the territory that we are talking about.

Bruce 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:26 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

Under your own definition of abstraction above, there is a distinction between a mind and a brain.

Just as there is a distinction between scissors and cutting a piece of paper. Mind is what a brain does, just as cutting paper is what scissors do. It is the difference between a noun and a verb. Not that one is an abstraction from the other.

Bruce

[Jason Resch]

Nor in physics. C.f. Einstein.

 

It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.

This shows only that there's often many ways of talking about what is fundamentally the same thing.

Don't you notice that "fundamentally" is a weasel word, signally that your sentence is strickly false.  A Leibniz noted, if two things are the same then they are only one thing.

That's what I said.

 

  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.

Why?

Because physical things have "accidental" attributes and relations.

Define accidental.  I'm not sure you can define it in such a way that a physical object could have it while a mathematical object could not.

 

  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Why do you doubt the possibility of this?

How do you know what you believe to be the physical universe isn't already mathematical?

You just don't get it.  If your "mathematical universe" is the same as the physical universe then it's physical too.

Okay great. That's where I was hoping to get to. That there's no difference that could be a difference.

 

  "Physical" is the name for the universe we live in.  One we can perceive and interact with and subjectively agree on.

Yes. This is the point I was trying to make with saying abstract and concrete were observer relative.

Jason

 

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:50 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 3:10 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

Why do you think this?

Because the physical universe exists, and mathematical structures are human constructs within this universe.

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?

Things that exist differ from things that are only imagined.

 

  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

What other universes? Other universes, if they exist, are self-contained and do not interact with our known universe. So speculation along these lines is fruitless, even if not actually meaningless.

Bruce 

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 11:10 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 12:38:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Once one eliminates Platonism and accepts that mathematics is programming then all of physics (what humans have thought of to model the cosmos) can be found in the numerical relativity and quantum simulation programs running on computers.

That's false.  If it were true it would imply that the simulation programs would simulate simulation programs and so on, ad infinitum.

Brent

So a program and a "physical structure" are only isomorphic if the universe itself is a simulation.

@philipthrift

 

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[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:03 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

Bruno is talking about the territory and I think you are confusing it with Bruno talking about the map.  To be clear, axioms in math are just theories to explain the mathematical reality,

Using the word "reality" here just begs the question. Arithmetic (or mathematics) is nothing more than the product of its axioms. Proofs from the axioms may not capture all that one might regard as "truth", but that is really beside the point. Using the word "truth" is just as fraught as using the term "reality" -- question begging.

Any system of axioms can only prove a finite number if bits of Chaitin's constant.  More powerful systems can prove more bits of it, but no system is capable of proving endless bits of it.  So where does this number belong?  It's complete set of digits are not decidable under any system of axioms.  It's not the product of any system if axioms.

 

in the same sense as physical theories do.  Since you presume there is no mathematical reality all you can imagine are maps.

Maybe the physical reality actually is the territory that we are talking about.

There's no escaping it. The question of whether or not a light will ever turn during by the evolution of a physical system is a physical problem.

If the physical system under consideration is a computer running some program and the light turns on only when the computation finishes, then physical theories are no longer enough to answer the question.

If mathematical theories are necessary to answer the question, why aren't they as much about the reality as the other physical theories?

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:26 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

Under your own definition of abstraction above, there is a distinction between a mind and a brain.

Just as there is a distinction between scissors and cutting a piece of paper. Mind is what a brain does, just as cutting paper is what scissors do. It is the difference between a noun and a verb. Not that one is an abstraction from the other.

Bruce

But a mind doesn't require a brain to do what the brain does. A Turing machine can replicate any finitely describable process, so if the brain is finite it would be more accurate to say a mind is what a particular program does.

Jason

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:57 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:26 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

Under your own definition of abstraction above, there is a distinction between a mind and a brain.

Just as there is a distinction between scissors and cutting a piece of paper. Mind is what a brain does, just as cutting paper is what scissors do. It is the difference between a noun and a verb. Not that one is an abstraction from the other.

Bruce

But a mind doesn't require a brain to do what the brain does.

That is not exactly what I said. Mind is what a brain does -- and maybe other things can do what a brain does, although we do not have any examples of this as yet. I did not claim that a brain is what a mind does.... 

Bruce

[Jason Resch]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:50 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 3:10 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

Why do you think this?

Because the physical universe exists, and mathematical structures are human constructs within this universe.

You are confusing mathematical structures with human descriptions of those structures.  If there is evidence to disbelieve that other structures, different in form from our universe, exist, I haven't seen it.

 

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?

Things that exist differ from things that are only imagined.

But how do we know something is only imagined, versus we are imagining something that exists elsewhere?

 

 

  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

What other universes?

Hypothetical ones.

 

 Other universes, if they exist, are self-contained and do not interact with our known universe. So speculation along these lines is fruitless, even if not actually meaningless.

If you think so, why participate in this list? Other universes is the basis for discussion of the everything list.

Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998
From: Wei Dai
Subject: ANNOUNCE: the "everything" mailing list

You are invited to join a mailing list for discussion of the idea that all possible universes exist. Some possible topics of discussion might include:

• What is the set of all possible universes?
• What is a reasonable prior/posterior distribution for the universe that I am in?
• Why do we believe that both the past and the future are not completely random, but the future is more random than the past?
• Before observing anything about the universe, should we expect it to have (infinitely?) many observers?
• How can we/should we predict the future and postdict the past?

Jason

[Brent Meeker]

It can.  Like 2 is a simulation of pairs.  But as a simulation it must be relative to an environment which is not a simulation.   Which means it can't be THE reality.

Brent

Computations and Turing machines are mathematical objects.

Jason

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 12:07 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:50 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 3:10 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

Why do you think this?

Because the physical universe exists, and mathematical structures are human constructs within this universe.

You are confusing mathematical structures with human descriptions of those structures.

No, I am not confusing them. I am saying that mathematical structures are nothing but the human descriptions of them -- they have no independent existence.

 

If there is evidence to disbelieve that other structures, different in form from our universe, exist, I haven't seen it.

What evidence do you have that such structures, different in form from our universe, actually exist?

 

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?

Things that exist differ from things that are only imagined.

But how do we know something is only imagined, versus we are imagining something that exists elsewhere?

Do unicorns exist elsewhere? I think evidence plays a role here.

 

  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

What other universes?

Hypothetical ones.

Hypothetical universes do not exist, by definition.

 

 Other universes, if they exist, are self-contained and do not interact with our known universe. So speculation along these lines is fruitless, even if not actually meaningless.

If you think so, why participate in this list? Other universes is the basis for discussion of the everything list.

Maybe I participate to undermine people's naive faith that such other universes do exist, or that the existence or non existence of other universes can have any bearing on anything at all.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 9:03:45 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 12:07 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:50 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 3:10 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

Why do you think this?

Because the physical universe exists, and mathematical structures are human constructs within this universe.

You are confusing mathematical structures with human descriptions of those structures.

No, I am not confusing them. I am saying that mathematical structures are nothing but the human descriptions of them -- they have no independent existence.

 

If there is evidence to disbelieve that other structures, different in form from our universe, exist, I haven't seen it.

What evidence do you have that such structures, different in form from our universe, actually exist?

 

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?

Things that exist differ from things that are only imagined.

But how do we know something is only imagined, versus we are imagining something that exists elsewhere?

Do unicorns exist elsewhere? I think evidence plays a role here.

 

  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

What other universes?

Hypothetical ones.

Hypothetical universes do not exist, by definition.

They might exist, at least that's how I understand English. AG 

[Brent Meeker]

"I'd rather know some of the questions than all  of the answers."
    A. Einstein
Pilate asked a question. 

 

It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.

This shows only that there's often many ways of talking about what is fundamentally the same thing.

Don't you notice that "fundamentally" is a weasel word, signally that your sentence is strickly false.  A Leibniz noted, if two things are the same then they are only one thing.

That's what I said.

So if you could (although I think you can't) create a mathematical structure exactly the same as our universe, it would be our universe and it would be physical.

 

  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.

Why?

Because physical things have "accidental" attributes and relations.

Define accidental.  I'm not sure you can define it in such a way that a physical object could have it while a mathematical object could not.

One not necessary, random.

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/25/2019 6:26 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 2:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:08 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 9:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

What does "distinct" mean in that?  It's a distinction you make because
you can think of a brain and processes of the brain as separate.  Just
like you can think of an automobile plant as distinct from the steps
required to make a car.  But that doesn't mean that a car can be made
without any physical process.

It is distinct in the sense that bits are different from electrical voltages or scribbles on paper.

Yes and insurance is different from cash.  So what?  A bit is just a physical thing that you choose to  regard purely in terms of its computational relations...we calll the "abstractions" for a reason.

Under your own definition of abstraction above, there is a distinction between a mind and a brain.  There's not an identity relation between the two, as one discards unnecessary details. 

"Unnecessary" to what?

As an abstract pattern, there's many physical incarnations that could map to the same mind.

No.  Because the mind is relative to the environment...including the brain. 

Brent

Under the computational theory of mind, any universe capable of building a computer could reproduce your mind.

 

>
> Brains have mass, minds do not.

Neither does insurance or football.

> Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

How do you know this?  Minds get affected when brains do.

Because of what I write below.

> Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Poetic equivocation on "exist".

> Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to
> locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater
> than c, brains cannot.

OK.  Report back to us when your mind is on Jupiters Moon, Titan. We can
compare it to what Dragonfly finds in 2026.  Could save NASA a lot of 
money.

It requires the cooperation of equipment already present on Titan.

Right. It requires a physical part of your extended brain to be there.

And if the equipment existed beyond the cosmological horizon and if it had my brain state, it would enable me to go there.  The mind can access places neither my brain, nor any object on earth can get to.

Jason 

 

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[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 8:47:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 8/25/2019 11:10 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 12:38:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Once one eliminates Platonism and accepts that mathematics is programming then all of physics (what humans have thought of to model the cosmos) can be found in the numerical relativity and quantum simulation programs running on computers.

That's false.  If it were true it would imply that the simulation programs would simulate simulation programs and so on, ad infinitum.

Brent

So a program and a "physical structure" are only isomorphic if the universe itself is a simulation.

@philipthrift

Of course one can simulate simulations. That's what a hierarchy of virtual machines does.

Sometimes people confuse physics - a human-made subject communicated via some textbooks and papers (like on arXiv) - and the material word itself. Name a theory (a theory - something written with TeX/Math in a paper on arXiv -not an entity or process of the material world itself) of physics that a physicist claims cannot be written as a program.

@philipthrift

 

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 10:16:28 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 9:03:45 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 12:07 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hypothetical universes do not exist, by definition.

They might exist, at least that's how I understand English. AG 

Every entity of a theory is hypothetical, in a pragmatic view:

According to Giere, interpretation is mediated by theoretical hypotheses positing representational relations between a model and relevant parts of the world. Such relations may be stated as follows:

    S uses X to represent W for purposes P.

Here S is a scientist, research group or community, W is a part of the world, and X is, broadly speaking, any one of a variety of models (Giere 2004, 743, 747, 2010). Model-world similarity judgments are conventional and intentional:

"Note that I am not saying that the model itself represents an aspect of the world because it is similar to that aspect. …Anything is similar to anything else in countless respects, but not anything represents anything else. It is not the model that is doing the representing; it is the scientist using the model who is doing the representing."(2004, 747)

from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theories/

@philipthrift 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:57 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> a mind doesn't require a brain to do what the brain does. 

You don't explain how you reached that very strange conclusion.

> A Turing machine can replicate any finitely describable process,

 A Turing machine can't replicate anything or *do* anything unless it's physical, that's because a Turing machine must have the ability to change its state, and it must perform operations in a certain order with respect to time so cause always precedes effect, for example  it must not replace a mark on the tape before it reads it. And physical stuff is the only stuff that can change its state and the only stuff that can interact with time.

 > so if the brain is finite it would be more accurate to say a mind is what a particular program does.

No program can *do" anything. But a program running on a physical Turing machine can do anything that can be done. A GPS may give you precise instructions on how to get to your distant destination, that's necessary but not sufficient,  you're still going to need a car.

John K Clark

[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Aug 2019, at 19:38, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:51 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:16 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 1:01 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 07:34:26PM -0700, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>
> On 8/24/2019 6:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 
> > That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
> > concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
> > you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
> > things.
> >
> >
>
> I don't see that a brain in a vat counts as a disembodied mind.  Do you mean
> a brain that has no environment to perceive or act on?  I would deny that
> such an isolated brain instantiates a mind.  On the other hand, if the brain
> has sensors and actuators operating, say a Mars Rover, then it isn't
> disembodied.
>
> Brent
>

Yes - I know your argument. In the BIV scenario, the environment could
be simulated. Basically Descartes' evil daemon (malin genie)
scenario. Nothing about the observed physics (bodies and whatnot)
exists in any fundamental sense.

Presumably the vat is a physical object that provides nutrients, power, etc to the BIV. That does not count as disembodied in my book.

The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

That does not imply that it can exist without some form of physical realization. 

While I agree any mind requires an instantiation/incarnation/realization, before we can continue I think we need to clarify what is meant by "physical".

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe? 

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.

That is a theory. The mathematical structure is the model, or semantic, of the theory. 

  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features.

In general that is relative. The group (Z, 0, +) is a commutative model of the theory of group, but you can make a general theory of the commutative groups.  Then (Q_0, 1, *) is another model of that theory. But concerning physics, the idea is that the physical laws have to be the same for all machine, and the rest will be geographical particularisation.

Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

That depends on the metaphysical theory. Before we have evidences for something, it is better to avoid taking it for granted? With Digital Mechanism, there is no choice: the physical reality is given by the laws of the observable by universal numbers. Adding an ontology to the numbers requires a non mechanist theory of mind.

Bruno

Brent

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

 

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain. 

No, there are 2^48 orthogonal projections in the infinite dimensional Hilbert space of the universe.

But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

No.  You assumed it was created within our universe.  Otherwise we could not "abduct" it.  A universe is by definition closed.  What you're trying to use is that idea that a universe can be completely simulated.  But to really be complete it must be closed...and in that case there is no difference between a "simulated" and a "real" universe.  It is just magical thinking to say that the universe isn't real because it's possible that it's a simulation within some other universe IF it is actually closed.  It is muddled thinking to postulate a simulated universe and then think of going in and out of it, of having it supported by computers in another universe.  Those are psuedo-universes and that's why assuming them lead to silly speculations.  Of course it's possible we live in a psuedo-universe, but then we should look for empirical evidence it is not closed and that we can interact with the "real" universe.

Brent

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Aug 2019, at 20:10, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 12:38:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Once one eliminates Platonism and accepts that mathematics is programming 

If you accept the idea that a machine stops, or does not stop, then 99,9999…% of the mathematical reality, and some percentage of the physical reality, is not programmable. 

then all of physics (what humans have thought of to model the cosmos) can be found in the numerical relativity and quantum simulation programs running on computers.

If I am computable, reality cannot be computable.

So a program and a "physical structure" are only isomorphic if the universe itself is a simulation.

With mechanism, despite a general misunderstanding, the physical reality is not a simulation, nor is the mathematical reality (even limited to the arithmetical reality). This is already empirically confirmed somehow, by QM, I would say.

Bruno

@philipthrift

 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 25 Aug 2019, at 23:35, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 7:00 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

>> a physicists can measure a voltage but he can't measure a pure number.

> He can only measure a pure number.

How can a physicist measure the number 7? Even if he found a way what would be the point when he already knows the answer, if 7 is not equal to 7 what is it equal to?

 

> Then he can interpret it in some metaphysics.

He can measure a physical quantity and describe what he found with the help of numbers.

>> I googled "universal number" and all I got was stuff about numerology and the way dentist refer to specific teeth.   

> That says something about google, perhaps.

I think not, Bing doesn't know what you're talking about either. The problem is that like me neither Google or Bing knows Brunocpeak.

>> Having a FORTRAN interpreter is necessary but not sufficient to obtain meaning, and the same thing could be said of a Physical Turing machine. Both are needed.

> If Fortran is not enough,

It isn't.

 

> Digital Mechanism is false.

How on earth do figure that?? When I payed $80,000 and said yes to the digital doctor (which is YOUR definition of mechanism) I did so with the full understanding that there is nothing special about the particular atoms that are in my body right now and with the doctor's promise that he would do his best to someday arrange atoms so they behave in a johnkclarkian way. The idea is my frozen brain provides the information about how to arrange the atoms, the atoms themselves although vitally important are not a problem because they can come from anywhere. 

 

>> if nothing physical exists then pigs and wings can't cause problems because they don't exist. And there are no minds that might be upset by paradoxes.

> Assuming a primary physical universe, yes, that’s correct, but then mechanism has to be abandoned.

You must have changed your definition yet again, originally you said a belief in mechanism is saying "yes" to the digital doctor and certainly there is nothing in the above that would justify changing the answer to "no", and existence or nonexistence of a primary physical universe has nothing to do with it. So I knew what "mechanism" mente in Brunospeak yesterday but not today.

>> the natural number 1 is exactly the number of seconds it takes light to travel 299,792,458 meters,

> 1 is used in 299,792,458.

That's the trouble with all definitions, eventually they always become circular, but this is not a definition this is something much much better, an example. I show you a distance. I show you the one second mark on a stopwatch. And I show you a light beam.  

> It can do this for an emulated observer. You have not proved that the
“physical silicon” do anything more than that

I can't think of any reason why one emulated observer should have power over numbers that another emulated observer does not, and I think I could make a pretty good case that you are not God and you would be if you could command pure numbers to perform calculations.

>>I don't want you to explain anything, I want you you to PERFORM a calculation without using matter that obeys the laws of physics, and we both know you're never ever EVER going to be able to do that. 

> “Performing” is defined in arithmetic,

Please please stop babbling about definitions. A definition can't produce a answer to a calculation. And definitions are ALWAYS derivative, they play second fiddle to examples.  

> It does not make the physical reality primary.

And please please stop babbling about things that have NOTHING to do with what we're talking about!

> and then to explain me what is your stuff, with definition or example,

John K Clark is the way matter behaves when it is organized in a johnkclarkian way. Right now there is only one chunk of matter in the observable universe that behaves that way but there is no law of physics that demands that always be true.

> The question was not about John Clark, but about the stuff you are using. What is it,

Physical stuff. And what is physical stuff? The only stuff that can interact with time AND the only stuff where it would matter if 2+2=4 or 2+2=5.

> and how does it make a computation more real.

Mind and physical stuff is the only stuff with the ability to interact with time and the only stuff that can determine that 2+2 is 4 and not 5.

>> My fundamental axiom is consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.

> I am OK with this, although that is a bit vague.

I'd be OK with it if you wanted to change "the way" to "a way".

 

> It applies to all data processed through the sigma_1 arithmetical relations.

No it doesn't. Consciousness changes with time, sigma_1 arithmetical relations don't. And the only thing that makes sigma_1 arithmetical relations different from the other infinitely many arithmetical relations is it happens to come out with 2+2=4 just as you wanted, but the only reason you wanted it to do that is  because it's the only one compatible with physics, and the only way you figured out it would work is by using  your physical brain. 

 

>> If you think about it although we strongly disagree about a lot of stuff I wouldn't be surprised if that's your fundamental axiom too. After all, what is the alternative?  

> Yes, we agree on this. We disagree only that you invoke some impersonal god, Matter to make the processing more real,

I would invoke any "impersonal god" with the ability to interact with time but I know of only one, physical stuff.

 

> but then that appears to be invalid. If that was true, that matter would need magical, non Turing emulable, element, to make some computation more real,

I don't have any idea what you mean by that, but I do know a physical Turing Machine can change with time but a description of a Turing Machine written in the language of mathematics can't. 

> but then, that theory of consciousness will applied to the (relative) numbers.

> That would be valid if numbers could process data but they can't because they can't change,

> They can’t change in the absolute way,

Numbers can't change in ANY way. A 7 is always a 7 and that's the only reason why 4+3 is always 7.

> nor can the block space-time universe of GR.

INCORRECT! If the block space-time universe never changed why wouldn't physicists always get a zero whenever they differentiated a function with respect to time? The rate of change of the block universe can and does change with the time axis.

 

> Matter can do computations because it is Turing universal.

Yes, and it's the only thing that is.

> But the same is true for all combinatory algebra, all model of arithmetic, etc.

This is exactly what I meant when I said you may understand the individual steps in a proof but when you get to the end you've lost track of exactly what it is that has been proven; in this case you've forgotten that mind can change and matter can change but combinatory algebra and all model of arithmetic can't.

>> We may use numbers to describe the pattern in space of voltages that are inside a computer, but it always comes down to voltages not numbers.

> Only when you interpret the numbers through electricity.

Electricity will do what it does regardless of what interpretation I put on it.  

> But you can build a Babbage machine,

Then rather than electricity it would all come down to the momentum of gears and levers, but both electricity and momentum are physical. You can interpret the electricity or momentum as numbers if you like but that's up to you, the computer doesn't care.

 

> or just look inside arithmetic to see the emulation of electrical machine,

You've got it exactly backwards, arithmetic isn't emulating the machine, the machine is emulating arithmetic. A simulation shouldn't be more complex than the thing it's simulating! It would be like saying a hurricane is simulating a model of a hurricane the weather bureau is running on its computer. 

> 2+2=4 independently of anyone verifying the fact.

If nothing physical existed and there was not 2 of anything (much less 4) then 2+2=4  would mean nothing and *do* nothing and thus be nothing.

 

>> You think the number 7 changes relative to something. What is that something?

> 7 is 6 “after” 1 is added,

So 7 didn't exist before you added 1 to 6? Bruno, come on, you must know you're talking nonsense.

> And you never answered my question, after the number 7 changes to something else how much is 4+3?

> If the register as change its content 7 by 8, 7 +1 in a further instruction could become 8 + 3.

A computer register stores a pattern of voltages in time and space, those voltages can change, numbers can't.

> Number are not changed, but memory content can change,

Yes, and memory content must ALWAYS be physical because physical stuff can change with time and nothing else can.

 

> and they can be represented by numbers.

Yes, numbers can be helpful in describing voltages, but voltages are not numbers.

>> Relative to the number 11 how has the number 7 changed?

> 4

So 11+2 = 6.  Bruno, come on, you must know you're talking nonsense.

> Obviously “a number can change” is nonsense, but in the course of a computation, even, made in arithmetic, a number can change.

>> I see, obviously a number changing is nonsense but a number can change. No, I take that back, I don't see.

> A number can represent a register.

Yes a number can represent the voltages in a register, and 3 ASCII characters C and A and T can represent a cat, but C-A-T is not a cat.

> That is done in all textbooks.

No calculation has ever been done in any textbook. Once more you haven't understood what the textbook has proven.

>>> and have the power to change things in the physical world

>> As I've been saying for years stop telling me about how to do it and just do it, DO IT AND BECOME GOD!

> Each time you ask me this you are in the start man fallacy. You ask something impossible. The point is that it is already done … in arithmetic. 

So its impossible and it's already been done in arithmetic. I suppose being able to do the impossible is a good definition of God but unfortunately I don't know how to get arithmetic to do that, but you claim you do. So why aren't you God?

> The program x gives 7 on input 4 and 3 when M satisfies T(z, 4, 3, y) &  U(y) = 7, with

Wait a minute! Program? You can't *do* anything with a program without a computer and you can't have a computer without matter and physics.

A computer is a universal number. You believe in a physical ontological realm, but you cannot invoke it when doing science, as you do implicitly all the times and explicitly sometimes. That is simply not valid. It is like defending creationism by saying that evolution fails to explains who God made everything in six days. I just do not share your religious belief. I am agnostic on matter, but I can proof that such an idea is impossible to maintain once you assume Digital Mechanism.

Bruno

 

>>>  So you don’t agree with Euclid? His proof of the infinity of prime number is orthogonal to physics. It says nothing in physics, and it uses nothing in physics.

 

>> Euclid's proof contains no error but it starts with a INVALID ASSUMPTION and you just pointed out exactly what that assumption is; from the first line of the proof to the last Euclid assumes that numbers have nothing to do with physics.

> Wrong in you materialist metaphysics, but that is only the nth times you beg the question. You cannot invoke you metaphysical commitment to refute a proof (of inconsistency). 

I have no idea what you're talking about.

John K Clark

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[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 5:22:53 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 20:10, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 12:38:17 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.  It is static.  It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Brent

Once one eliminates Platonism and accepts that mathematics is programming 

If you accept the idea that a machine stops, or does not stop, then 99,9999…% of the mathematical reality, and some percentage of the physical reality, is not programmable. 

Every physicist seems to think that their own theory of physics (which they have written in TeX/Math) can be written as a program.

Beyond those kind of programs, there are matter compilers after all.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 01:57, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

How could an infinite mathematical structure be an abstract human construct.

How do you know if it is not the idea of a physical reality which is a human covenant fiction.

You talk like a priest, who knows things. 

That’s OK, because you are at least consistent (you believe in materialism, so it is normal to abandon Mechanism). But then you talk like if we knew, which is the mark of the charlatans. 

 

Contrarily, when you say that a mathematical structure describe things, that is like saying that the physical universe describes the content of a book on physics.

You beg the question. You are assuming that the mathematical structure is the reality,

Not at all. I have proven that IF Digital Mechanism is true, then we CANNOT assume more than a universal machinery. 

and that the physical universe is the description of that structure. Wrong way round, yet again.

That was the absurd conclusion, in a a proof by redact ad absurd. Neither the mathematical reality, nor its border (the physical reality) are description, except the physics become the study of the relative maps on the set of relative computations. We don’t need (and can’t) go out of the (sigma_1) arithmetical reality.

 

A reality, be it physical or mathematical, is not a description, but the thing being described by some theory.

You are using your own mathematician's understanding of the relationship between a theory and a reality. You claim that a model that instantiates the theory is a reality for that theory. That is just a matter of particular linguistic usage, and it has nothing to do with the relationship between physical reality and the mathematical theories used to (partially) describe it.

The theorem in mechanism is that the physical reality has to be entirely explained in the universal machine phenomenology. Nature confirms this, at a place where physics either is inconsistent or eliminate consciousness.

 

PA describes a portion of the Arithmetical Reality, which can be shown never completely described by *any* (effective) theory. I take this as a strong evidence that the arithmetical reality is independent of me, and actually, quite above me (and that is provable when we assume mechanism).

You really do get hung up on what you think Godel proved when he showed that some true statements in arithmetic are not theorems. That simply uses a notion of "truth" that is outside theorems of the system. It has nothing to do with existence or an ontology.

By definition the ontology is what we take as primitive, and not explainable from less. Why add an ontology when there is no evidence for it, and it brings insoluble problem (like consciousness). 

 

You might have a conventionalist philosophy of mathematics, but if that philosophy was true, why would we give a million of dollars for a solution to Riemann hypothesis? Or how to explain why the formula of the partition of numbers is so much more difficult than the formula for the composition of numbers, as I showed once. The composition of n is the number of way you can describe n as a sum of numbers, taking the order into account. The partition of n is the same, except the order of the sum is not taking into account. The number of composition is simply 2^(n-1), but the number of partitions is given by the most complex (in the two sense of the word) formula in mathematics.

If the arithmetical reality was conventional, I would have simplified all this already :)

Arithmetic is defined by certain axioms.

Not entirely. That the point of Gödel: we cannot define Arithmetic. You confuse the theory and the model/reality.

Systems of axioms can have consequences that were not dreamed of when the axioms were formulated.

It is worth than that. The arithmetical reality satisfies proposition which we cannot prove in our theories. 

There is nothing more to it than that -- it is not some super revealed "truth”.

Agreed, but it is still true and play a role in our consciousness and in the origin of the physical laws.

It provides a surrational corona in between the rational (locally provable) and the irrational (false). It is all what is true, but that we cannot prove, (yet some part of it is believable, observable, knowable, sensible). It is studied by the mathematics of G* minus G (and the intensional variants).

 

You don’t need to accept full realism. You need to accept that phi_x(y) converges or not. You need to believe that the program i stops on x or does not stop on x. Whatever number x is. Nothing more.

Some computations halt and some do not.

Oh! Good. You are arithmetical realist after all. But that is normal, as you need to be realist on analysis and probably set theory if you want build your non computational theory of mind (as you need, at the least, to get some ontological matter).

And you can't always tell in advance which is which ... this is not the source of all wisdom.

I am not sure if we disagree on anything, except we work in different theory.

Bruno 

Bruce

If you do metaphysics/theology with the scientific attitude, you cannot invoke words like “truth”, “real”, “god”, “universe” in your theory, but you might use them in some meta-theory, to give sense to your theory, temporarily.  

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 02:05, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:30 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 07:43, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:14 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

This is all different from John Clark's argument that something must
exist to breathe fire into all the computations. He calls that
something "matter", and strongly disavows the ability of arithmetic to
do this.

I am with John here. Talk of a "disembodied" mind (or calculation). is just so much hot air. I ask for evidence of such things, and none has been provided to date. "Minds" (or calculations) are the consequence of physical operations.

That is revisionism. The notion of computation has been discovered by mathematicians working on the foundation of mathematics, as a way to avoid some paradoxes. You confuse “physical implementation of a computation” with “computation”.

You confuse the formal definition of a "computation" with the physical object that performs the operations necessary to do the calculation.

You did that. In fact you are doing that right now, as you seem to want to interpret the computation by its physical representation.

And my definition of computation is usually informal, but yes, with Church thesis it is the same notion, and it has been shown to be an arithmetical notion, or a finite-set theoretical notion. No axiom in physics needs to be assumed, but you need to believe in 2+2=4 & Co.

 

That is like confusing a function and a set representation a function. It is a common error. But when doing metaphysics, that error becomes important to avoid. A mathematical object is different from all its representations through any other mathematical objects.

"A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.”

That is false. That confuses a theory and a model of that theory. That confuses the notion of a "Model satisfying a proposition", with the notion of a "a theory proving a proposition". 

Those things are related, but very different. For complete theories,  T proves p iff p is true in *all* models of the theory. T is consistent if it has at least one model. 

The problem is that most people ignore basically all of mathematical logics. I use the term “reality” because logicians and physicists use “model” in quite opposite sense. In logic the Model is the reality, like in Art, where the naked subject is the real thing and the painting is the approximation/theory.

as Brent says. It may be isomorphic to other mathematical objects, but that does not give it independent existence.

We need only the independent existence of the digital machine, and realism can be limited to sigma_1 and pi_1 sentences, that is halting and non halting statement about machines. All physical theories assumes much more, and sometimes they assumes things which appears to be incompatible with Mechanism, like primary matter.

Your problem is methodological. You talk like if you knew the truth, which is an handicap when trying to come back to reason in this field (where there is a tradition of wishful thinking).

Bruno

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 02:28, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 12:50 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

No.  The difference is one of completeness.  A abstract something is incomplete. 

It is the finite construction, like a theory, which can be incomplete. The arithmetical reality is complete. The theories are incomplete. A model or a reality is complete. A person or a theory is incomplete with respect to what its studies, even limited to numbers.

The verb is "to abstract" meaning to leave aside irrelevant things.  But a universe doesn' t have anything "left aside”. 

I agree (if such a reality exists, which is the question being debated).

That's why I look at it the other way around when you talk about a "simulation" that is isomorphic to our universe.  If it's a complete and perfect simulation, then it's a universe itself.  It can't be just a mathematical structure, it's identical to what you think it is "simulating”.

With Mechanism, the physical universe is not emulable by any machine. But it can admit sequences of better and better approximation. With mechanism, the physical universe is a purely phenomenological constructs, made by *all* sound universal number in arithmetic, and indeed, they all gives the same physics, and we can compare it with Nature: just compare the math of the material modes with what we infer from observation. 

It is a waste of time to *speculate* that a theory is wrong, without evidences, when we have no alternate theories. I think.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 02:32, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 12:58 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 4:30 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:16 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

A pattern must be a pattern of something, and whatever that something is it can't be numbers because numbers don't change with time and minds do.

The structure has a time dimension.  The structure varies with the time coordinate.  That's what time is.

Which one?  Coordinate time?  Clock time?  Proper time?  Whose proper time?

So if that something isn't numbers and it isn't atoms what is it? A mind is distinct from any particular physical incarnation but it must be physical stuff of some sort because physical stuff is the only stuff that can change with time.

Does space change?  In physics time and space are one unified whole.

That's the theory now.  But maybe it's made of quantum entanglements?  That's the trouble all religions have with trying to base their validity on physics.  Physics is a science and it never provides certainty...and least of all in its theories.

Yes, that is right. But metaphysics is a science too, and we must reserve our judgment on facts, not wishful thinking, which unfortunately is a tradition in that field. Physics can be equated to metaphysics when we do the Aristotelian ontological commitment, but the mechanism has to be abandoned.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 02:52, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/25/2019 2:29 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:38 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/24/2019 11:42 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 12:51 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 2:16 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 1:01 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 07:34:26PM -0700, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>
> On 8/24/2019 6:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 
> > That's not an apriori reason. Assuming you're in principle OK with the
> > concept of a brain in a vat (which is a disembodied mind), then the
> > you too do not have an apriori reason for the existence of physical
> > things.
> >
> >
>
> I don't see that a brain in a vat counts as a disembodied mind.  Do you mean
> a brain that has no environment to perceive or act on?  I would deny that
> such an isolated brain instantiates a mind.  On the other hand, if the brain
> has sensors and actuators operating, say a Mars Rover, then it isn't
> disembodied.
>
> Brent
>

Yes - I know your argument. In the BIV scenario, the environment could
be simulated. Basically Descartes' evil daemon (malin genie)
scenario. Nothing about the observed physics (bodies and whatnot)
exists in any fundamental sense.

Presumably the vat is a physical object that provides nutrients, power, etc to the BIV. That does not count as disembodied in my book.

The mind is a pattern distinct from any of it's physical incarnations.

That does not imply that it can exist without some form of physical realization. 

While I agree any mind requires an instantiation/incarnation/realization, before we can continue I think we need to clarify what is meant by "physical".

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe? 

A mathematical structure is a relation between propositions defined by some rules of deduction.

This confuses truth with proof.

c.f. Pontius Pilate

  It is static. 

All change is relative.

There is no change in a mathematical structure.

It has no "accidental" or as Bruno would say "geographic" features. Two mathematical structures can be isomorphic precisely because of this.

This shows only that there's often many ways of talking about what is fundamentally the same thing.

Don't you notice that "fundamentally" is a weasel word, signally that your sentence is strickly false.  A Leibniz noted, if two things are the same then they are only one thing.

  It is impossible that a mathematical and a physical structure be isomorophic.

Why?

Because physical things have "accidental" attributes and relations.

  That is just a loose way of talking that assumes we will abstract away enough of the physical structure so that the remainder can be represented mathematically and then that can be isomorphic to some other mathematical structure. 

Why do you doubt the possibility of this?

How do you know what you believe to be the physical universe isn't already mathematical?

You just don't get it.  If your "mathematical universe" is the same as the physical universe then it's physical too. 

With mechanism, it is an open problem if such a mathematical structure exist, except in the loose sense to defined it by the relative statistics. But there is no assumed physical universe. Its appearance is explained by the theology of the machine, which is explained by the arithmetical self-reference.

"Physical" is the name for the universe we live in. 

With mechanism, we don’t live *in* a universe. We live in arithmetic, and the universe is explained by the coherence conditions brought by the self-referential observable.

It explains the origin of both consciousness and matter. Perhaps wrongly, that is the interesting thing: we can test the explanation, and without QM, I agree that Mechanism would be rightly judged implausible.

There are no evidence for physicalism, even for a pure mathematical physicalism. If the universe looks like a mathematical structure, that has been to justify in arithmetic with induction (Lôbianity), and the results are promising.

Bruno

One we can perceive and interact with and subjectively agree on.

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

Either way (with or without zombies in the mathematical structure) would you agree that the isomorphically identical mathematical structure would contain humans, human civilization, philosophers, books about consciousness, arguments about qualia, and all the other phenomena we see in the physical universe?

 

Brains have mass, minds do not.

Brains have definite locations, minds do not.

Can you prove that?

A mind can exist in multiple locations if its state is duplicate (just as a Moby Dick exists in many locations while a single book can exist only in one location).

 

 

Minds can exist in multiple locations at once, brains cannot.

Can you prove that? That is, show me a mind that is in several locations at once.

It is a consequence of:

- the standard cosmological model (infinite, homogenous, isotropic universe)

- eternal inflation

- quantum mechanics without collapse

So unless all of those theories are false, they are a natural consequence.

The basic idea is any finite volume of finite energy contains only a finite amount of information.  By the pigeon hole principle, there are only so many ways matter and energy can be organized in a finite volume.  With infinite space you inevitably will find repetitions of patterns (from the size of skulls to the size of planets and Hubble volumes).  These repetitions, however, will be very far away, so I cannot point out one to you.  This paper estimates your nearest doppelganger might be 10^10^28 meters away: https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf

Of course if there is no collapse then QM also implies duplications of brains.  I obtained the following 48 bits from a quantum random number generator:

000111100110110110001101011110111010011101101010

Since you have looked at them, there are 2^48 new copies of your brain. 

No, there are 2^48 orthogonal projections in the infinite dimensional Hilbert space of the universe.

And each contains what in our conventional language we would call a brain.

But here, your mind has also differentiated, as these bits entered your conscious awareness.  If instead I kept the numbers to myself, and did not tell you about them, only that I saw a 48-bit number, then I would have created many new physically distinct brain states without creating new mind states (for you).

 

Minds can travel from one physical universe to another, or to locations beyond the cosmological horizon receding at speeds greater than c, brains cannot.

Is this supposed to mean anything other than that we can think about such things? Beside, what evidence do you have for the existence of other physical universes to which we can travel, even in thought?

You seem to assume a lot of mythology here.

No mythology involved here.

Let's say we simulate another physical universe with completely different physical laws.  And we simulate it in sufficient detail that we can witness life evolve in that universe, and eventually evolve brains and consciousness.  We can then "abduct" one of those beings into our universe by copying its information into our own, we might even equip it with a robotic body so that we can interact with that alien in our own universe.  This being was able to travel from one universe to another, though its physical brain are forever stuck in the physical universe where it evolved.

No.  You assumed it was created within our universe.  Otherwise we could not "abduct" it. 

I assumed there is the other physical universe out there. Perhaps it is one of the other bubble universe possibilities permitted under eternal inflation.  Our universe just replicated the mind in from that universe.

A universe is by definition closed.

Simulation is a way of exploring other universes, visiting them and bringing back information from them.  Computer's in a sense are telescopes that can peer into other realities.

  What you're trying to use is that idea that a universe can be completely simulated.  But to really be complete it must be closed...and in that case there is no difference between a "simulated" and a "real" universe. 

That's true. Simulation can create reality.

It is just magical thinking to say that the universe isn't real because it's possible that it's a simulation within some other universe IF it is actually closed. 

I'm not saying it isn't real because it can be simulated, I was only saying minds can travel from one universe to another.

It is muddled thinking to postulate a simulated universe and then think of going in and out of it, of having it supported by computers in another universe.  Those are psuedo-universes and that's why assuming them lead to silly speculations.  Of course it's possible we live in a psuedo-universe, but then we should look for empirical evidence it is not closed and that we can interact with the "real" universe.

The full simulation of the other universe isn't necessary to abduct a mind, but it helps explain the plausibility of the abduction.

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 03:03, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

Bruno is talking about the territory and I think you are confusing it with Bruno talking about the map. 

Exactly. 

To be clear, axioms in math are just theories to explain the mathematical reality,

OK. Or a mathematical reality, like we can use the theory of groups to study one special group among many others. The Master group is an incredible example of *a* mathematical reality, for example. It was not obvious that there is a biggest finite sporadic simple group. It does not strike the eyes that is has 808,017,424,794,512,875,886,459,904,961,710,757,005,754,368,000,000,000 elements!

Bruno

in the same sense as physical theories do.  Since you presume there is no mathematical reality all you can imagine are maps.

Jason

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[PGC]

On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 1:10:46 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Your problem is methodological. You talk like if you knew the truth, which is an handicap when trying to come back to reason in this field (where there is a tradition of wishful thinking).

This statement still assumes a truth notion itself, while itself policing alleged truth claims of others. What amuses me about this discourse of yours nowadays is to imagine you with responsibility of authority; e.g. in some university department, organization, or politics:

On the first days there'd be this frenzy to convince the world of its physicalist bias. All the books would be rewritten in some allegedly mechanist mode of interpretation until the day that some students raise the issue of the turing universality of worms and flies, along with the mechanist status of fridges, alleged to have a much more general, universal kind of soul larger than that of turing machines, who's universality is structurally ordained, as if the god of mechanist truth were somehow insecure. Fridges, according to the new students, elevate themselves with universality of pure soul instead of structure and demand that the leader of mechanism cleans more of them instead of enforcing the turing machine structural fascism. 

Then there would be the plant people who would question our ability to eat vegetables by asking: "By which divine right do you even dare eating cabbage of pure Robinson arithmeticality?" And all of these discourses and personal mysticisms would be "rational" in your sense. Your belief that they are manageable in some ordered scientific sense is innocent in a charming way. It's refreshing and inspiring for those that need that. PGC  

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 03:28, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:03 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 11:03 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 14:01, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:39 PM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 25 Aug 2019, at 10:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

The mathematical structure might describe these things, but descriptions are not the things they describe.

I think you confuse the mathematical structure, and the theory describing that mathematical structure. Those are very different things.

I think that is exactly the mistake that you make all the time.

Where? I don’t remind you ever show this.

I have said it many times. A mathematical structure is an abstract human construct. Such a structure might go some way towards describing physical reality, but the map is not the territory.

Bruno is talking about the territory and I think you are confusing it with Bruno talking about the map.  To be clear, axioms in math are just theories to explain the mathematical reality,

Using the word "reality" here just begs the question.

I use the term “reality” to avoid “model” which is often used in the sense of theory in physics.

Arithmetic (or mathematics) is nothing more than the product of its axioms.

That is simply false. We do have a reasonable intuition of what the arithmetical reality is. It does not ask us much more than the usual belief in analysis. But it escapes essentially *all* effective theory. Even ZF = a giant cardinal cannot prove all the true proposition of the standard model of arithmetic. Arithmetic is essentially undecidable (Tarski). All its finite or recursively enumerable extensions miss some truth.

Proofs from the axioms may not capture all that one might regard as "truth", but that is really beside the point. Using the word "truth" is just as fraught as using the term "reality" -- question begging.

Arithmetical truth does admit a purely mathematical definition (cf Tarski). Like the notion of “reality” used here.

All theories needs more than themselves to define their models or semantics. No effective theories can prove the existence of a reality staying its axioms, by incompleteness. That is why the study by a machine, of its own semantics, will be a theology. It will requires an irrational, or better surrational, act of faith. The set of such possible faith is axiomatised by the modal logic G* (that is why I call it theology, for the machine who begin to guess the presence of that something above itself).

in the same sense as physical theories do.  Since you presume there is no mathematical reality all you can imagine are maps.

Maybe the physical reality actually is the territory that we are talking about.

With mechanism, that territory appearance is explained by the statistic on all (relative) computations. Let us do the test to see if we get some discrepancy with Nature.

Bruno

Bruce 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 03:44, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:50 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 3:10 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 4:42 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, do you think there is any important difference between a mathematical structure that is isomorphic to a physical universe and that physical universe?

Yes; the physical universe is self-sustaining, the mathematical structure is not.

Why do you think this?

Because the physical universe exists, and mathematical structures are human constructs within this universe.

That would answer Jason’s question ONLY if you meant by this “Because the physical universe exists primarily”, but this is the point being debated. Obviously, the human discover the mathematical structure through human brain, like they discover the physical structure, but both the human and the physical is simpler to explain in arithmetic, than in physics (which usually avoid the question of consciousness). Human mathematical stature are human construct, but they can fit with the mathematical reality, or not. All theories are questions, never answers.

 

Assuming both exist, is one capable of building conscious minds while the other is not?  If one cannot, what do you think it is that "physicalness" adds which is not present in that mathematical structure which enables the physical one to hold conscious minds?

As I said; the physical structure exists independently, whereas the mathematical structure is only an abstract construct, which does not exist independently of the mind that created it.

What's the difference between abstract and concrete?

Things that exist differ from things that are only imagined.

 

  I think it's only a matter of relative perspective. Other universes to us seem abstract.  While to people in other universes ours would seem abstract.  Do you agree?

What other universes? Other universes, if they exist, are self-contained and do not interact with our known universe. So speculation along these lines is fruitless, even if not actually meaningless.

They interfere statistically in case the other universes/computations emulate you.

Bruno

Bruce 

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