The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from
experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that
non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and
neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the
capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of
evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the
neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals,
including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including
octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

[Bruno Marchal]

Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.

My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious, and
the one described above are already self-conscious, and "potentially
Löbian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

Are plants conscious? I don't know.

Bruno




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

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 05:05:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> >"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an
> >organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence
> >indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical,
> >neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious
> >states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.
> >Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not
> >unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate
> >consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds,
> >and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these
> >neurological substrates."
> >
> >http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
>
> Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.
>
> My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious,
> and the one described above are already self-conscious, and

> "potentially L�bian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

>
> Are plants conscious? I don't know.
>

The Cambridge Declaration strikes me as a political statement, rather
than a scientific one. Just because certain neurological states are
correlated with affective states (wants or desires of the animal) does
not entail that the animal is aware of that emotion, or genuinely
experiencing qualia of any sort.

I would not be suprised if some non-human species are genuinely
conscious - eg most of the apes, some cetaceans, pachyderms, corvids and
quite possibly cephalopods, but I'm not convinced by the above that we
really have the means of establishing that beyond reasonable doubt.

Cheers

--

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

[Jason Resch]

On May 26, 2013, at 6:12 PM, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
wrote:

> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 05:05:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an
>>> organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence
>>> indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical,
>>> neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious
>>> states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.
>>> Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not
>>> unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate
>>> consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds,
>>> and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these
>>> neurological substrates."
>>>
>>> http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
>>
>> Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.
>>
>> My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious,
>> and the one described above are already self-conscious, and

>> "potentially Löbian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

>>
>> Are plants conscious? I don't know.
>>
>
> The Cambridge Declaration strikes me as a political statement, rather
> than a scientific one. Just because certain neurological states are
> correlated with affective states (wants or desires of the animal) does
> not entail that the animal is aware of that emotion, or genuinely
> experiencing qualia of any sort.
>
> I would not be suprised if some non-human species are genuinely
> conscious - eg most of the apes, some cetaceans, pachyderms, corvids
> and
> quite possibly cephalopods, but I'm not convinced by the above that we
> really have the means of establishing that beyond reasonable doubt.

How have we established that other humans are conscious beyond
reasonsable doubt? Have we even done that?

Jason

>
>
> Cheers
>
> --
>
> ---
> ---

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

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 May 2013, at 01:12, Russell Standish wrote:

> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 05:05:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an
>>> organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence
>>> indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical,
>>> neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious
>>> states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.
>>> Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not
>>> unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate
>>> consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds,
>>> and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these
>>> neurological substrates."
>>>
>>> http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
>>
>> Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.
>>
>> My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious,
>> and the one described above are already self-conscious, and

>> "potentially Löbian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

>>
>> Are plants conscious? I don't know.
>>
>
> The Cambridge Declaration strikes me as a political statement, rather
> than a scientific one. Just because certain neurological states are
> correlated with affective states (wants or desires of the animal) does
> not entail that the animal is aware of that emotion, or genuinely
> experiencing qualia of any sort.

I agree. It is more theology than politics. It is like agreeing to
attribute a sort of soul to animals.
It is interesting you say "politics" as indeed this is what theology
has become nowadays (since 1500 years in occident).

>
> I would not be suprised if some non-human species are genuinely
> conscious - eg most of the apes, some cetaceans, pachyderms, corvids
> and
> quite possibly cephalopods, but I'm not convinced by the above that we
> really have the means of establishing that beyond reasonable doubt.

But we cannot attribute, beyond reasonable doubt, consciousness to any
human different from oneself, also.

Woman votes since recently!

Bruno

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

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Mikes]

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC? 

JM

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[meekerdb]

On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.  Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.  Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 04:53:56PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>
> I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property. You have
> to ask "Consciousness of what?" There's consciousness of
> surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical
> concentrations.... There's consciousness of internal states.
> Consciousness of sex. Consciousness of one's location.
> Consciousness of one's status in a tribe. I think human-like
> consciousness requires language of some kind.
>
> Brent

I would be happy with consciousness of surroundings. It seems to be
the most basic of all the ones you mention there.

[meekerdb]

On 5/27/2013 5:08 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 04:53:56PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>> I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property. You have
>> to ask "Consciousness of what?" There's consciousness of
>> surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical
>> concentrations.... There's consciousness of internal states.
>> Consciousness of sex. Consciousness of one's location.
>> Consciousness of one's status in a tribe. I think human-like
>> consciousness requires language of some kind.
>>
>> Brent
> I would be happy with consciousness of surroundings. It seems to be
> the most basic of all the ones you mention there.

It is pretty basic, but I'd say consciousness of some internal states is more basic and
occurred early in the evolution of life. Even a cell must know when to divide.

But that's a large class and is not all-or-nothing either. We're conscious of light and
it's phase relations which form images, but we don't see the polarization. And we don't
see very much of the spectrum. We don't detect magnetic fields and our detection of
chemicals in the air is almost non-existent compared to dogs.

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 05:44:57PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> On 5/27/2013 5:08 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> >On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 04:53:56PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> >>I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property. You have
> >>to ask "Consciousness of what?" There's consciousness of
> >>surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical
> >>concentrations.... There's consciousness of internal states.
> >>Consciousness of sex. Consciousness of one's location.
> >>Consciousness of one's status in a tribe. I think human-like
> >>consciousness requires language of some kind.
> >>
> >>Brent
> >I would be happy with consciousness of surroundings. It seems to be
> >the most basic of all the ones you mention there.
>
> It is pretty basic, but I'd say consciousness of some internal
> states is more basic and occurred early in the evolution of life.
> Even a cell must know when to divide.
>

Why does that require consciousness? I'm not conscious of my body
repairing itself, or dogesting food.

> But that's a large class and is not all-or-nothing either. We're
> conscious of light and it's phase relations which form images, but
> we don't see the polarization. And we don't see very much of the
> spectrum. We don't detect magnetic fields and our detection of
> chemicals in the air is almost non-existent compared to dogs.
>

You appear to be confusing sensory capability with consciousness. A
thermostat is capable of sensing temperature, but I doubt it is
conscious of the temperature.

Consciousness is an experiential quality. We are either conscious when
we experience something (called qualia), or we're not conscious at all.

Still seems all or nothing to me. People who claim consciousness comes
in different types, or comes in shades of grey, seem to be talking
about completely different things than the usual meaning of the term.

[meekerdb]

Why not? It acts on the temperature.

>
> Consciousness is an experiential quality. We are either conscious when
> we experience something (called qualia), or we're not conscious at all.

That seems to me just substituting one word "experience" for another "conscious" and
doesn't tell us anything. The thermostat experiences temperature.

>
> Still seems all or nothing to me. People who claim consciousness comes
> in different types, or comes in shades of grey, seem to be talking
> about completely different things than the usual meaning of the term.

I think the usual meaning refers to humans inner narration (which depends on language) and
the association of values to that narration. What do you think "the usual meaning" is?

Brent
>

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 May 2013, at 23:18, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious?

?

No, not at all. My current feeling (for what is worth) is that consciousness begins with the bacteria, plants and all animals. 

And self-consciousness arise already with the invertebrates, like the cuttle fish, the octopus, some spiders. Of course those animals don't actually exploits the Löbianity (the self-consciousness level) a lot.

or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

Humans have far more universal layers, and above all, they have developed languages, and words kill worlds more than bullets. In a sense the human neocortex is a field of battles between many universal memes, but then it is nothing compare to the internet tomorrow. You can see internet as a neo-neo-cortex. 

Life can only complexifies, fro the same reason that arithmetic, seen from inside, is inconceivably complex.

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

No, I am very open to the idea that plant are conscious, but it is so hard to understand for some people, that I do not insist. I am not sure if that consciousness "operates" on the same scale as our own.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC? 

Some quasi-cristal perhaps. But keep in mind that I assume comp, so some computational state must be represented. Without DNA or computer, there might be entities that we don't detect, and the question begin to be a trivial "yes", as a material object is a projection of infinities of computational histories, some involving consciousness. In comp, besides the numbers, it is not clear in what sense a non conscious entity, like a physical stone, can "exist" (even if it is clear why they are apparent to conscious beings). It is difficult. Comp is universal machine- CENTRIC.

Bruno

JM

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.  Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.

My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious, and the one described above are already self-conscious, and "potentially Löbian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

Are plants conscious? I don't know.

Bruno




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

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 May 2013, at 01:53, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.  Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.  Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.

Hmm... I would have agreed some years ago. I would have even say that consciousness always involve consciousness of time. But I am no more sure on this. Some altered conscious state seems to be like being conscious of literally only one thing; being conscious, and nothing else, but such state are quasi not memorizable, and might quite exotic. Sometimes there is consciousness of something, but which is not related to anything temporal or spatial. My be in math some feeling like that can occur, when understanding a proof, for example.

Many aspect of human consciousness requires languages, but humans have still a big part of the animal consciousness. You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire. 

Bruno

Brent

JM

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 26 May 2013, at 13:29, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.  Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

Always a pleasure, if not some relief, to hear that.

My opinion, for what is worth, is that all animals are conscious, and the one described above are already self-conscious, and "potentially Löbian" (meaning: like you, me, and Peano Arithmetic).

Are plants conscious? I don't know.

Bruno




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

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[meekerdb]

On 5/28/2013 9:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 May 2013, at 01:53, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.  Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.  Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.

Hmm... I would have agreed some years ago. I would have even say that consciousness always involve consciousness of time. But I am no more sure on this. Some altered conscious state seems to be like being conscious of literally only one thing; being conscious, and nothing else, but such state are quasi not memorizable, and might quite exotic. Sometimes there is consciousness of something, but which is not related to anything temporal or spatial. My be in math some feeling like that can occur, when understanding a proof, for example.

Many aspect of human consciousness requires languages, but humans have still a big part of the animal consciousness. You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire.

Then you are agreeing now.  If you agree that consciousness can have different aspects and some aspects may be lacking in some species, then consciousness is not all-or-nothing.

Brent

[John Mikes]

Evgenyi, you write very 'deep' and 'smart things. 

One bothers me:

  "..the neurological substrates that generate consciousness." 

first the anthropocentric sound (neurological?) and then the unidentified term of Ccness. 

In this same post (cf Russell and Brent) different contents are proposed, still with (some) "awareness" type side-effect in the shadow, while I keep propagating the final result of my 2 decade long struggle to "generalize" the term, used by EVERY author as THEIR theory required, into RESPONSE TO (first: information, then refined into) RELATIONS. 

From such wording all human, animal, plant, in fact all DNA-based-and not based Ccness variations can be derived. 

Neocortex etc. makes it easier. The thermostat has none of the kind, yet it exercises the PROCESS of CCnes quite well. 

We T H I N K in human terms with our human mind (indeed: language). The fact that we are ignorant in following other "languages" than human does not mean that those creatures have none. The 'crystal' decides (in its ways) whether to build  further links, or terminate the growth, a 'mental object' (idea?) decides(!) whether to branch out into broader domains, or let it be as is. 

Bruno's restrictions (Loeb, comp, numbers) are regrettably suppressing his brillinat mind into limitations he does not want to transcend. Pity. 

Brent sometimes observes limits of a rather physicalistic way in his conclusions (pity, again) and Russell seems not to forget sometimes what he wrote in his books or taught to students. 

I freed up into agnosticism and accept critical denigration. It was not easy. I had to abandon 'that' conventional science of my 50+ years lectured on 3 continents and start my 'thinking' anew. I could not review and start again, if a nonagenarian is wrong, he should close shop and go fishing.

John Mikes

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.  Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

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[John Mikes]

Brent:

 "...I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.." 

In that unnerving struggle of 2 decades to 'generalize' (some of) those zillion positions the diverse authors exuded about Ccness (to fit THEIR own theories - whatever they thought it was) I concluded that what most people have in mind for Ccness is a  - P R O C E S S - . 

This is why I ended up with RESPONSE in my identification. 

Not "property". Not "a thing". Not "a quale". 

So I don't go with your question: 'Ccness of what?' "about" maybe. I accept your position as SUCH, especially if you restrict your image to "human-like Ccness". 

The anthropocentric view is a cut-out and a specialty. 

The term Ccness - IMO - is an artifact to speak about. If I follow the 'response to relations' explanation, the word would be rather 'existence', 'infinite complexity', maybe: 'life' or even 'totality' (The World Entirety) - in a fashion whatever we have in our own mini-solipsism about the world we live in. 

Or: I put down my weapons and stop using it at all, accepting YOUR (or others') version of a human (animal?) treat based on awareness etc. as used in tons of literature. 

As I said many times: I am agnostic, not a fighter. 

John M

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[Jason Resch]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 27 May 2013, at 23:18, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious?

?

No, not at all. My current feeling (for what is worth) is that consciousness begins with the bacteria, plants and all animals. 

And self-consciousness arise already with the invertebrates, like the cuttle fish, the octopus, some spiders. Of course those animals don't actually exploits the Löbianity (the self-consciousness level) a lot.

Indeed, when seen under time lapse these climbing vines seem quite conscious:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/40622-life-creeper-plants-climb-trees-video.htm

Jason 

[Kim Jones]

On 29/05/2013, at 2:04 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire. 

Bruno

You don't need language to feel the effect of music.

Kim Jones

"Language is the greatest barrier to communication that still exists" - Edward de Bono

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

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[Bruno Marchal]

Why?

Consciousness can take many shapes. 

I would say it is "all-or-nothing", like a continuous function is either non-negative or negative, even if it can be close to zero.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 May 2013, at 00:10, John Mikes wrote:

Evgenyi, you write very 'deep' and 'smart things. 

One bothers me:

  "..the neurological substrates that generate consciousness." 

first the anthropocentric sound (neurological?) and then the unidentified term of Ccness. 

In this same post (cf Russell and Brent) different contents are proposed, still with (some) "awareness" type side-effect in the shadow, while I keep propagating the final result of my 2 decade long struggle to "generalize" the term, used by EVERY author as THEIR theory required, into RESPONSE TO (first: information, then refined into) RELATIONS. 

From such wording all human, animal, plant, in fact all DNA-based-and not based Ccness variations can be derived. 

Neocortex etc. makes it easier. The thermostat has none of the kind, yet it exercises the PROCESS of CCnes quite well. 

We T H I N K in human terms with our human mind (indeed: language). The fact that we are ignorant in following other "languages" than human does not mean that those creatures have none. The 'crystal' decides (in its ways) whether to build  further links, or terminate the growth, a 'mental object' (idea?) decides(!) whether to branch out into broader domains, or let it be as is. 

Bruno's restrictions (Loeb, comp, numbers) are regrettably suppressing his brillinat mind into limitations he does not want to transcend. Pity. 

John, I respectfully disagree with the term 'restriction'.

 Löb, numbers, ... are consequence of comp, and if you postulate non-comp, you become the one restricting consciousness to a smaller class of entities.

Comp can be seen as a restriction with respect to panpsychism, OK. But saying that every entities are conscious makes consciousness into a trivial notion, and we loss the explanation of where the physical (quanta and qualia) comes from.

Bruno

Brent sometimes observes limits of a rather physicalistic way in his conclusions (pity, again) and Russell seems not to forget sometimes what he wrote in his books or taught to students. 

I freed up into agnosticism and accept critical denigration. It was not easy. I had to abandon 'that' conventional science of my 50+ years lectured on 3 continents and start my 'thinking' anew. I could not review and start again, if a nonagenarian is wrong, he should close shop and go fishing.

John Mikes

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.  Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

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[meekerdb]

On 5/28/2013 11:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 May 2013, at 19:23, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/28/2013 9:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 May 2013, at 01:53, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.  Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.  Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.

Hmm... I would have agreed some years ago. I would have even say that consciousness always involve consciousness of time. But I am no more sure on this. Some altered conscious state seems to be like being conscious of literally only one thing; being conscious, and nothing else, but such state are quasi not memorizable, and might quite exotic. Sometimes there is consciousness of something, but which is not related to anything temporal or spatial. My be in math some feeling like that can occur, when understanding a proof, for example.

Many aspect of human consciousness requires languages, but humans have still a big part of the animal consciousness. You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire.

Then you are agreeing now.  If you agree that consciousness can have different aspects and some aspects may be lacking in some species, then consciousness is not all-or-nothing.

Why?

Consciousness can take many shapes. 

I would say it is "all-or-nothing", like a continuous function is either non-negative or negative, even if it can be close to zero.

I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension.  "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is either 1 or 0.  If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount).  In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions.  I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans.  I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

Yes. here is a plant know as aggressive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjR4rVA8to

Time lapse helps to attribute some sensibility to plants, but case of complex dialog between trees has been made, for some forest, with complex chemical processing shared by many trees, through they roots, and with the help of bacteria.

Bruno 

Jason 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 May 2013, at 06:59, Kim Jones wrote:

On 29/05/2013, at 2:04 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire. 

Bruno

You don't need language to feel the effect of music.

Good point.

"Language is the greatest barrier to communication that still exists" - Edward de Bono

Language is like computer. At first it looks like it simplifies life, but then it makes you in front of new difficulties. It is like the whole of life, always getting more complex, from universal layer on universal layers.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 May 2013, at 08:33, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/28/2013 11:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 May 2013, at 19:23, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/28/2013 9:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 May 2013, at 01:53, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/27/2013 2:18 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno:

do you indeed exclude the "other" animals from being selfconcious? or - having a logic on their own level? Or any other trait we assign (identify?) for humans - in our terms? 

A question about plants (rather: about being conscious):

you may feel free to define 'being conscious' in human terms,  or mammal (etc.) terms, but the "response" plants exude to information (circumstances, impact. etc.) shows reactivity we may appropriate to us humans. 

So do not deny consciousness from fellow DNA-bearing plants.

How about the DNA-not-bearing other creatures? (crystals, stones, water, impact you may call energy, - whatever?) 

Anthropocentric? zoocentric? phitocentric? what-CENTRIC?

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.  Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.  Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like consciousness requires language of some kind.

Hmm... I would have agreed some years ago. I would have even say that consciousness always involve consciousness of time. But I am no more sure on this. Some altered conscious state seems to be like being conscious of literally only one thing; being conscious, and nothing else, but such state are quasi not memorizable, and might quite exotic. Sometimes there is consciousness of something, but which is not related to anything temporal or spatial. My be in math some feeling like that can occur, when understanding a proof, for example.

Many aspect of human consciousness requires languages, but humans have still a big part of the animal consciousness. You don't need language to feel the hotness of a fire.

Then you are agreeing now.  If you agree that consciousness can have different aspects and some aspects may be lacking in some species, then consciousness is not all-or-nothing.

Why?

Consciousness can take many shapes. 

I would say it is "all-or-nothing", like a continuous function is either non-negative or negative, even if it can be close to zero.

I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension.  "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is either 1 or 0. 

The point is more that it is > 0, or 0.

If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount). 

That is about consciousness' content. Not on being or not conscious. 

In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions.  I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans.

Most plausibly. But this again is about the content, and the character of consciousness, not the existence or not on some consciousness.

I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack.

Sure. Bats have plausibly some richer qualia associated to sound than humans. But what we discuss is that consciousness is either present or not. Then it can take many different shapes, and even intensity, up to the altered state of consciousness. Cotard syndrom is also interesting. People having it believe that they are dead, and some argue that they are not conscious, but in fact what happen is that they lack the ability to put any meaning on their consciousness. It shows that consciousness seems independent of the ability to interpret the consciousness content. Many pathological states of consciousness exist, but none makes me feel like if consciousness was not something (rich and variated) or nothing. You refer to the content of consciousness, not consciousness itself.

Bruno

Brent

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[John Mikes]

Brent: after lots of back-and-forth you wrote:

"...I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension.  "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is either 1 or 0.  If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount).  In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions.  I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans.  I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack.
Brent "

Please consider my definition for that monster of a word (I deny to use): consciousness 

NOT IDENTICAL to the noun referring to "being conscious (aware!) of" but a PROCESS of 

responding to relations. Human, animal, stone,idea, anything. The Totality (Everything) that 

exists. Including Bruno's favorites (Loebianism, universal anything, numbers, etc.) and much 

more. The infinite complexity we have no access to, only to a small segment. 

I cannot imagine a 'negative' of a process that either goes on, or not. (Maybe the reverse can 

be called so, but that would be the 'triggering of a response' - different from the response, not 

a negative of it.) The 'response' is richer than we could 'restrict' (again!) into dimensions of our 

views. We may 'see' only some dimensions in the way how WE ARE CONSCIOUS OF it.

Colorblind, or not. 

And your fragment:

   "...animals have this and so have different consciousness..." 

refers to a THING, the noumenon of "being conscious of". 

John M

--

[meekerdb]

You seem to regard consciousness as a kind of magic vessel which exists even when it is empty.  I think John Mikes is right when he says it is a process.  When a process isn't doing anything it doesn't exist.

I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack.

Sure. Bats have plausibly some richer qualia associated to sound than humans. But what we discuss is that consciousness is either present or not. Then it can take many different shapes, and even intensity, up to the altered state of consciousness. Cotard syndrom is also interesting. People having it believe that they are dead, and some argue that they are not conscious, but in fact what happen is that they lack the ability to put any meaning on their consciousness.

"Put meaning on consciousness"?  That makes no sense to me.  They are obviously conscious of some things.  If they were unconscious they couldn't respond.

It shows that consciousness seems independent of the ability to interpret the consciousness content. Many pathological states of consciousness exist, but none makes me feel like if consciousness was not something (rich and variated) or nothing. You refer to the content of consciousness, not consciousness itself.

But you seem to contend that there can be consciousness without content - which I find absurd.

Brent

[meekerdb]

On 5/29/2013 8:45 AM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent: after lots of back-and-forth you wrote:

"...I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension.  "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is either 1 or 0.  If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by a tiny amount).  In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express axioms and propositions.  I doubt that simpler animals have this and so have different consciousness than humans.  I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of consciousness that we lack.
Brent "

Please consider my definition for that monster of a word (I deny to use): consciousness 

NOT IDENTICAL to the noun referring to "being conscious (aware!) of" but a PROCESS of 

responding to relations.

Your write as though you strongly disagree with me, but I don't see the disagreement.  I agree that consciousness is a process. 

Human, animal, stone,idea, anything. The Totality (Everything) that 

exists. Including Bruno's favorites (Loebianism, universal anything, numbers, etc.) and much 

more. The infinite complexity we have no access to, only to a small segment.

I don't know what the significance of that is?  We can only be conscious of a small finite part of everything...sure.

I cannot imagine a 'negative' of a process that either goes on, or not. (Maybe the reverse can 

be called so, but that would be the 'triggering of a response' - different from the response, not 

a negative of it.)

Me neither. It was Bruno who implied that consciousness was analogous to a continuous function that was either >0 or not.

The 'response' is richer than we could 'restrict' (again!) into dimensions of our 

views.

??  What 'response'?  Ours?

We may 'see' only some dimensions in the way how WE ARE CONSCIOUS OF it.

Are you saying we might see some dimensions in a way we are not conscious of?  Certainly we're not conscious of a lot.  Although "unconscious seeing" is kind of metaphorical, there is blind sight in which there is unconscious response to visual stimuli.

Colorblind, or not. 

And your fragment:

   "...animals have this and so have different consciousness..." 

refers to a THING, the noumenon of "being conscious of".

So?  A process is a thing too.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 May 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote:

> On 5/29/2013 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be
>>> negative, or even that it can be measured by one dimension. "All-
>>> or-nothing" would be a function that is either 1 or 0.
>>
>> The point is more that it is > 0, or 0.
>>
>>
>>
>>> If you can be conscious of red and green, then I'd say you are
>>> more conscious than someone who is red/green colorblind (albeit by
>>> a tiny amount).
>>
>> That is about consciousness' content. Not on being or not conscious.
>>
>>
>>
>>> In order to have beliefs about arithmetic requires that you be
>>> conscious of numbers and have a language in which to express
>>> axioms and propositions. I doubt that simpler animals have this
>>> and so have different consciousness than humans.
>>
>> Most plausibly. But this again is about the content, and the
>> character of consciousness, not the existence or not on some
>> consciousness.
>
> You seem to regard consciousness as a kind of magic vessel which
> exists even when it is empty. I think John Mikes is right when he
> says it is a process. When a process isn't doing anything it
> doesn't exist.

To be sure, I don't use this in the usual reasoning, but I have to say
that I am more and more open that there is something like that, indeed.
But I agree that consciousness is related to a process, in part (if
not comp would be meaningless).
It just appears that such a process is very basic, that it is emulated
by (many) arithmetical relations, and that it is also related to
arithmetical truth (which is not emulable by any machine, but machine
are confronted to it).
Consciousness per se is not just a process: it is a first person
mental state relating some process with truth. What I say is that such
process can be kept very minimal.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I don't venture to say less consciousness because I think of it as
>>> multi-dimensional and an animal may have some other aspect of
>>> consciousness that we lack.
>>
>> Sure. Bats have plausibly some richer qualia associated to sound
>> than humans. But what we discuss is that consciousness is either
>> present or not. Then it can take many different shapes, and even
>> intensity, up to the altered state of consciousness. Cotard syndrom
>> is also interesting. People having it believe that they are dead,
>> and some argue that they are not conscious, but in fact what happen
>> is that they lack the ability to put any meaning on their
>> consciousness.
>
> "Put meaning on consciousness"? That makes no sense to me. They
> are obviously conscious of some things. If they were unconscious
> they couldn't respond.

There is a possibility that we can access a state where we are
conscious only of one thing, that we are conscious. It *is* part of
the unbelievable (G* minus G).

>
>> It shows that consciousness seems independent of the ability to
>> interpret the consciousness content. Many pathological states of
>> consciousness exist, but none makes me feel like if consciousness
>> was not something (rich and variated) or nothing. You refer to the
>> content of consciousness, not consciousness itself.
>
> But you seem to contend that there can be consciousness without
> content - which I find absurd.

There is always a content, but it looks like we can limit it to one
thing: "being conscious". This is coherent with Descartes and
mechanism. Consciousness is the fixed point of the doubt, notably.

Bruno


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

[meekerdb]

On 5/30/2013 2:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 29 May 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote:
>
>> On 5/29/2013 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that it

>>>> can be measured by one dimension. "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is either

You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you sometimes use Bp to mean
"proves p" and sometimes "believes p"

But it still seems absurd to me. It invites an infinite regress: I am conscious of being
conscious of being conscious of being...

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you
> sometimes use Bp to mean "proves p" and sometimes "believes p"
>

To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing. I believe in
this theorem because I can prove it. If I can't prove it, then I don't
believe it - it is merely a conjecture.

In modal logic, the operator B captures both proof and supposedly
belief. Obviously it captures a mathematician's notion of belief -
whether that extends to a scientists notion of belief, or a
Christian's notion is another matter entirely.

When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see
it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as
opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.

But I am vaguely sceptical it captures the notion of scientific
knowledge, which has more to do with falsifiability, than with proof.

And that's about where I left it - years ago.

Cheers

[meekerdb]

On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>> You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you
>> sometimes use Bp to mean "proves p" and sometimes "believes p"
>>
> To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing.

Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you believed the axioms and
rules of inference. What mathematicians generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e.
that the conclusion follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and
even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out.

> I believe in
> this theorem because I can prove it. If I can't prove it, then I don't
> believe it - it is merely a conjecture.
>
> In modal logic, the operator B captures both proof and supposedly
> belief. Obviously it captures a mathematician's notion of belief -
> whether that extends to a scientists notion of belief, or a
> Christian's notion is another matter entirely.

I don't think scientists, doing science, *believe* anything. Of course they believe
things in the common sense that they are willing to act/bet on something (at some odds).
The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the religious person must
always act as if the religious dogma is true (at any odds). This precludes doubting or
questioning the dogma.

>
> When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see
> it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as
> opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.

Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a proposition that is true
and is based on evidence but, because the evidence is not causally connected to the
proposition should not count as knowledge.
http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 04:19:53PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> >On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> >>You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you
> >>sometimes use Bp to mean "proves p" and sometimes "believes p"
> >>
> >To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing.
>
> Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you
> believed the axioms and rules of inference. What mathematicians
> generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e. that the conclusion
> follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and
> even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out.

Fair enough, although if you're a Platonist, I guess you believe in
some axioms - the PA ones, for instance.

Anyway, this is rapidly departing my area of expertise :).

[Bruno Marchal]

Hmm... you might read the Plotinus paper, or the second part of
sane04, or my old posts, or my recent post on Russell's FOAR.

I will tell you the whole thing.
1) I adopt Dennett' intentional stances. I will say that a machine
believes p if and only if the machine asserts p.
2) Being a bit tried listening to machine saying basically anything, I
limit myself to machine which believes in few things (but not so few),
that is, they believe in the classical tautologies, and some
arithmetical things like 0, successors, the addition and
multiplication laws.
(I think I so share those beliefs).
I assume that they are rational, so if they believe p and if they
believe p -> q, they can or will believe q.

In that case 'belief' can be shown to be defined in arithmetic by
Gödel's beweisbar Sigma_1 complete (Turing universal) predicate.

If the machine believes in enough induction axiom, she can proves
(believe) in its sigma_1 completeness, and she becomes Löbian, meaning
that its mathematics of self-reference is governed by the logic G,
which has the Löb formula as its main axiom: B(Bp->p)->Bp. (Solovay
1976 first theorem)

From this you can see immediately that the machine cannot believe
that she is correct, that Bp -> p is always believable. Indeed she can
show that this entails B(Bp -> p), by necessitation, and then Bp, by
Löb, and then p, and then she can proves all sentences (with p = f,
she is already inconsistent).

So Bp -> p is not always believable, despite being true for the kind
of machine I am considering, and thus, although Bp and Bp & p are
equivalent (we know the machine is correct), she cannot know that.

So, thanks to incompleteness, or Löb, we can define a new abstract
modality []p = Bp & p, and this modality behaves like knowledge, and
gives the explanation why the machine cannot define it. She can of
course bet on comp, and define it in an abstract theory, like we did,
but the definition will refer, or be interpreted, by something truly
not definable in any third person way. Incompleteness shows, at the
least, the consistency of the definition of Theatetus for knowledge,
when applied to machine's believability, whatever the axioms are as
long as they are consistent with arithmetic or computer science.

Incompleteness makes "provability" behaving not like a "knowability",
as most people thought, but like a "believability". It makes the
universal machine modest.

>
> But it still seems absurd to me. It invites an infinite regress: I
> am conscious of being conscious of being conscious of being...

Why?

Already Gödel's beweisbar is transitive: Bp -> BBp, and so if the
machine believes p, she can or will believe Bp, BBp, BBBp, BBBBp, etc.
The same occurs for the Theaetetical knowability described above, but
it does not occurs for observability, nor sensibility, with the
definitions provided.

There is no infinite regression, just an infinities of consequences,
something usual in arithmetic.

Bruno

>
> Brent
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> It shows that consciousness seems independent of the ability to
>>>> interpret the consciousness content. Many pathological states of
>>>> consciousness exist, but none makes me feel like if consciousness
>>>> was not something (rich and variated) or nothing. You refer to
>>>> the content of consciousness, not consciousness itself.
>>>
>>> But you seem to contend that there can be consciousness without
>>> content - which I find absurd.
>>
>> There is always a content, but it looks like we can limit it to one
>> thing: "being conscious". This is coherent with Descartes and
>> mechanism. Consciousness is the fixed point of the doubt, notably.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>>
>>
>

[meekerdb]

On 5/31/2013 8:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 30 May 2013, at 21:04, meekerdb wrote:
>
>> On 5/30/2013 2:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> On 29 May 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 5/29/2013 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't see the analogy. I don't think consciousness can be negative, or even that

>>>>>> it can be measured by one dimension. "All-or-nothing" would be a function that is

> In that case 'belief' can be shown to be defined in arithmetic by G�del's beweisbar

> Sigma_1 complete (Turing universal) predicate.
>
> If the machine believes in enough induction axiom, she can proves (believe) in its

> sigma_1 completeness, and she becomes L�bian, meaning
> that its mathematics of self-reference is governed by the logic G, which has the L�b

> formula as its main axiom: B(Bp->p)->Bp. (Solovay 1976 first theorem)
>
> From this you can see immediately that the machine cannot believe that she is correct,
> that Bp -> p is always believable.

But this is where you seem to make a pun on "B". You start by saying B means "proves" and
then for a logic machine "proves" and "asserts" and "believes" are all the same
(extensionally) and so you let "B" stand for both "proves" and "believes". But then you
note that the machine cannot prove she is correct and you substitute "believe" for "prove"
and conclude she cannot believe she is correct. But logic is supposed to be a
formalization of informal reasoning. You informally reasoned to the conclusion that
"proves" = "believes" for the formal machine. But this is contrary to informal reasoning
where "believes" means "willing to act on" and is very different from "proves". So I get
the feeling that you have just incorrectly formalized the informal reasoning and are
playing a semantic trick to get "believe" in place of "prove".

I wonder if this is the crux of Russell's unease too?

Brent

> Indeed she can show that this entails B(Bp -> p), by necessitation, and then Bp, by L�b,

> and then p, and then she can proves all sentences (with p = f, she is already
> inconsistent).
>
> So Bp -> p is not always believable, despite being true for the kind of machine I am
> considering, and thus, although Bp and Bp & p are equivalent (we know the machine is
> correct), she cannot know that.
>

> So, thanks to incompleteness, or L�b, we can define a new abstract modality []p = Bp &

> p, and this modality behaves like knowledge, and gives the explanation why the machine
> cannot define it. She can of course bet on comp, and define it in an abstract theory,
> like we did, but the definition will refer, or be interpreted, by something truly not
> definable in any third person way. Incompleteness shows, at the least, the consistency
> of the definition of Theatetus for knowledge, when applied to machine's believability,
> whatever the axioms are as long as they are consistent with arithmetic or computer science.
>
> Incompleteness makes "provability" behaving not like a "knowability", as most people
> thought, but like a "believability". It makes the universal machine modest.
>
>
>
>>
>> But it still seems absurd to me. It invites an infinite regress: I am conscious of
>> being conscious of being conscious of being...
>
>
> Why?
>

> Already G�del's beweisbar is transitive: Bp -> BBp, and so if the machine believes p,

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 May 2013, at 01:19, meekerdb wrote:

> On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>>> You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you
>>> sometimes use Bp to mean "proves p" and sometimes "believes p"
>>>
>> To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing.
>
> Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you
> believed the axioms and rules of inference. What mathematicians
> generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e. that the conclusion
> follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and
> even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out.
>
>> I believe in
>> this theorem because I can prove it. If I can't prove it, then I
>> don't
>> believe it - it is merely a conjecture.
>>
>> In modal logic, the operator B captures both proof and supposedly
>> belief. Obviously it captures a mathematician's notion of belief -
>> whether that extends to a scientists notion of belief, or a
>> Christian's notion is another matter entirely.
>
> I don't think scientists, doing science, *believe* anything.

They believe that they publish papers, and usually share the
consensual believes, like in rain, taxes, and death (of others).

All humans have many beliefs. A genuine scientist just know that those
are beliefs, and not knowledge (even if they hope their belief to be
true). So they will provides axioms/theories and derive from that, and
compare with facts, in case the theory is applied in some concrete
domain.

> Of course they believe things in the common sense that they are
> willing to act/bet on something (at some odds).

Yes. For example most believe that there is no biggest prime numbers.

> The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the
> religious person must always act as if the religious dogma is true
> (at any odds). This precludes doubting or questioning the dogma.

Very often, alas. But the israelites and the taoists encourage the
comments and the discussion of texts. So there are degrees of dogmatic
thinking.

>
>>
>> When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see
>> it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems,
>> as
>> opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.
>
> Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a
> proposition that is true and is based on evidence but, because the
> evidence is not causally connected to the proposition should not
> count as knowledge.
> http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html

It is equivalent with the dream argument made by someone who believes
he knows that he is awake.
Gettier is right, but he begs the question.

But the theaetetus' idea works in arithlmetic, thank to
incompleteness, and that's is deemed to be called, imo, a (verifiable)
fact.

Bruno


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

[meekerdb]

But those are not beliefs in the mathematicians sense, they are beliefs in the common
sense. They don't just believe the axioms and that the theorems follow from them.
Scientists usually call them hypotheses or models to emphasize that they are ideas that
are held provisionally and are to be tested empirically.

>
>
>
>
>
>> Of course they believe things in the common sense that they are willing to act/bet on
>> something (at some odds).
>
> Yes. For example most believe that there is no biggest prime numbers.
>
>
>
>> The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the religious person must
>> always act as if the religious dogma is true (at any odds). This precludes doubting or
>> questioning the dogma.
>
> Very often, alas. But the israelites and the taoists encourage the comments and the
> discussion of texts. So there are degrees of dogmatic thinking.
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>
>>> When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see
>>> it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as
>>> opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.
>>
>> Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a proposition that is true
>> and is based on evidence but, because the evidence is not causally connected to the
>> proposition should not count as knowledge.
>> http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
>
> It is equivalent with the dream argument made by someone who believes he knows that he
> is awake.
> Gettier is right, but he begs the question.

What question is that?

>
> But the theaetetus' idea works in arithlmetic, thank to incompleteness, and that's is
> deemed to be called, imo, a (verifiable) fact.

But does it work outside arithmetic?

Brent

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

[Kim Jones]

On 01/06/2013, at 3:35 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

All humans have many beliefs. A genuine scientist just know that those are beliefs, and not knowledge (even if they hope their belief to be true). So they will provides axioms/theories and derive from that, and compare with facts, in case the theory is applied in some concrete domain.

Beliefs relate directly to needs. This is seperate to the issue already largely explored here as to whether belief and knowledge are the same. In general, all humans have "needs". These needs range from the obvious (fuel ie food/drink, shelter etc) to less obvious things like respect, admiration from some other human or humans, a mission in life and a sense of achievement in relation to that mission. If our deep needs are not satisfied at least partially, we wither and dry-up like any plant.

Possibly because these less-obvious needs are such deep motivators of human activities on just about every level, it is rather boring (or sometimes frankly embarrassing) to talk about them or indeed to own-up to the fact. Freud's great achievement was that he got humans to fess-up to their needs and to stop bullshitting each about them. Even Einstein the Great was able to say "I don't have any special talent. I'm just insatiably curious." Or words to that effect. Thus, his whole life was about satisfying his *personal need* to know stuff. That's fine; we all benefitted from his attending to his own needs in that regard. Beethoven wrote great music. Not because it was an expectation of others put on him that he tried to live up to, but because he perceived entities existing in a realm that can only be experienced in the mind via musical compositions. In fact he was exploring Platonia - as you do when you write great music or do great science. Please don't get out the Thor's Hammer of reductionism to clout me with because this is not reductionism. This is HONESTY.

In Edward de Bono's framework for Parallel Thinking "The Six Thinking Hats" the Red Hat is donned for the expression of feelings, hunches and intuitions. In other words, with the Red Hat on, everybody gets a chance to spruik their beliefs about something. There is no requirement that these be rational or even logical. You can spit the dummy if you want to, or, out a "gut-feeling" about the issue under consideration. No one can be criticised for having a bit of a rave or a rant under the Red Hat because that's the essence of "Parallel Thinking": everyone wears the same-coloured hat at the same time and the result is that the neurotransmitters for that mental operation (beliefs, needs, emotions etc) are optimised. Later on, we take off the Red Hat and put on the Yellow Hat which is about everyone in the room optimising the neurotransmitters associated with positive thinking. If you cannot see anything positive or beneficial about an idea or an issue, (like John Clark in relation to Bruno's comp theory) then you are merely advertising the fact that you are an excellent Red Hat thinker but a lousy Yellow Hat thinker. There are benefits to everything. The trick is, to be able to see them. Then there is of course the Black Hat, which is the "Logical Negative". Don't confuse the Red and Black Hats. The Red Hat has everything to do with needs and beliefs and nothing at all to do with logic. The Black Hat has everything to do with logic. Under the Black Hat, you must judge an idea as unworthy for the following logically-demonstrable reasons: a) - b) - c) etc. Indeed, you may BELIEVE and FEEL that an idea is just fine, but the logical operation of isolating and identifying faults and systemic errors may trump belief. In fact, it usually does.

The existence of the Red Hat is an acknowledgement of Freud's primary insight: that the core of the human self is a set of needs that will not go away and which it is absurd to try and rationalise as something else somehow (usually by some fancy "logical" discourse). The default mode of human "thinking" (so often observed on this and related lists) is to smuggle back in one's needs-based beliefs under the disguise of "reason" and "evidence" as Bruno is clearly saying in the quote, above. If you "believe" an idea will not work, or is dangerous in some regard, you may well be right, but then you may well be wrong. We cannot yet know. You can however, now be respected for having that belief because clearly you have a deep-seated emotional need to believe that. Only a fool would assert that their beliefs are purely rational and based only on reasoned evidence. As Camus said: "which of the sun or the earth turns around the other is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The only philosophical question worth considering is whether life is worth living." This was an attempt (in "Le Mythe de Sisyphe") to understand the supreme logic of suicide. 

Cheers,

Kim Jones

[Bruno Marchal]

>> Gödel's beweisbar Sigma_1 complete (Turing universal) predicate.

>>
>> If the machine believes in enough induction axiom, she can proves

>> (believe) in its sigma_1 completeness, and she becomes Löbian,

>> meaning
>> that its mathematics of self-reference is governed by the logic G,

>> which has the Löb formula as its main axiom: B(Bp->p)->Bp. (Solovay

>> 1976 first theorem)
>>
>> From this you can see immediately that the machine cannot believe
>> that she is correct, that Bp -> p is always believable.
>
> But this is where you seem to make a pun on "B". You start by
> saying B means "proves" and then for a logic machine "proves" and
> "asserts" and "believes" are all the same (extensionally) and so you
> let "B" stand for both "proves" and "believes". But then you note
> that the machine cannot prove she is correct and you substitute
> "believe" for "prove" and conclude she cannot believe she is
> correct. But logic is supposed to be a formalization of informal
> reasoning.

The point is that the modal logic of *formal*, or *mechanical*
provability obeys G.
Then, and that's magic somehow, when you apply the Theaetetus idea,
you get a modal logic which formalize a non definable (by the machine)
informal notion of knowledge.

> You informally reasoned to the conclusion that "proves" = "believes"
> for the formal machine.

Not at all, I start from there. It happens that probability obeys an
axiomatic of belief. Even a special one which is based on the bizarre
Löbian placebo phenomenon.

> But this is contrary to informal reasoning where "believes" means
> "willing to act on" and is very different from "proves".

Noooo.... Of course, when we formalize, we do some simplification. But
I make this clear by using the intentional stance, and treating only
the case of ideally correct machine.

> So I get the feeling that you have just incorrectly formalized the
> informal reasoning and are playing a semantic trick to get "believe"
> in place of "prove".

If you are willing to accept that you believe in arithmetic, and not
too believe much more, then all this works well. If you add new
beliefs, there are some caution to take, but basically as long as you
don't believe in a blattant arithmetical contradiction this will work.

It is just amazing that formal logic obeys the accepted law for
belief, and knowledge can only be something non formal, and non
directly formlizable (but still indirectly) assuming comp. I will come
back on this soon or probably later on Russell's list.

Bruno

>
> I wonder if this is the crux of Russell's unease too?
>
> Brent
>
>> Indeed she can show that this entails B(Bp -> p), by necessitation,

>> and then Bp, by Löb, and then p, and then she can proves all

>> sentences (with p = f, she is already inconsistent).
>>
>> So Bp -> p is not always believable, despite being true for the
>> kind of machine I am considering, and thus, although Bp and Bp & p
>> are equivalent (we know the machine is correct), she cannot know
>> that.
>>

>> So, thanks to incompleteness, or Löb, we can define a new abstract

>> modality []p = Bp & p, and this modality behaves like knowledge,
>> and gives the explanation why the machine cannot define it. She can
>> of course bet on comp, and define it in an abstract theory, like we
>> did, but the definition will refer, or be interpreted, by something
>> truly not definable in any third person way. Incompleteness shows,
>> at the least, the consistency of the definition of Theatetus for
>> knowledge, when applied to machine's believability, whatever the
>> axioms are as long as they are consistent with arithmetic or
>> computer science.
>>
>> Incompleteness makes "provability" behaving not like a
>> "knowability", as most people thought, but like a "believability".
>> It makes the universal machine modest.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> But it still seems absurd to me. It invites an infinite regress:
>>> I am conscious of being conscious of being conscious of being...
>>
>>
>> Why?
>>

>> Already Gödel's beweisbar is transitive: Bp -> BBp, and so if the

[Bruno Marchal]

?
The beliefs of the mathematicians are beliefs in the common sense. It
seems to me.

> They don't just believe the axioms and that the theorems follow from
> them.

?

> Scientists usually call them hypotheses or models to emphasize that
> they are ideas that are held provisionally and are to be tested
> empirically.

Mathematicians do the same. It is just than on arithmetic we have kept
the same hypothesis for long, and only weaken them, like replacing the
induction axiom with set of numbers by the induction axioms on first
order formula. But I am not sure there is any significant change. Only
what is studied is different.

>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Of course they believe things in the common sense that they are
>>> willing to act/bet on something (at some odds).
>>
>> Yes. For example most believe that there is no biggest prime numbers.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The Abrahamic religious notion of 'faith' is similar to that; the
>>> religious person must always act as if the religious dogma is true
>>> (at any odds). This precludes doubting or questioning the dogma.
>>
>> Very often, alas. But the israelites and the taoists encourage the
>> comments and the discussion of texts. So there are degrees of
>> dogmatic thinking.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can
>>>> see
>>>> it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true
>>>> theorems, as
>>>> opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.
>>>
>>> Gettier (whom I know slightly) objected that one may believe a
>>> proposition that is true and is based on evidence but, because the
>>> evidence is not causally connected to the proposition should not
>>> count as knowledge.
>>> http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
>>
>> It is equivalent with the dream argument made by someone who
>> believes he knows that he is awake.
>> Gettier is right, but he begs the question.
>
> What question is that?

The question of how to distinguish belief from knowledge.

>
>>
>> But the theaetetus' idea works in arithlmetic, thank to
>> incompleteness, and that's is deemed to be called, imo, a
>> (verifiable) fact.
>
> But does it work outside arithmetic?

AUDA is after UDA. We "know" (in the comp theory, 'course) that there
is no outside of arithmetic ever needed to be assumed. The bosons and
fermions are inside too.


Bruno


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

[John Mikes]

Russell wrote:

"...When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.

But I am vaguely sceptical it captures the notion of scientific knowledge, which has more to do with falsifiability, than with proof.
And that's about where I left it - years ago.

..."

Interesting difference between 'scientific' and 'mathematical' 

(see the Nobel Prize distinction) - also in falsifiability, that does not automatically escape the agnostic questioning about the circumstances of the falsifying and the original images. Same difficulty as in judging "proof".  

"Scientific knowledge" indeed is part of a belief system. In conventional sciences we THINK we know, in math we assume 

(apologies, Bruno). 

John M

[John Mikes]

Brent,

thanks for your clear ideas - not controversial to what I try to explain in my poor wordings. 

No proof is "valid", or "true". Applicable, maybe. 

In our 'makebilieve' world-model many facets SEEM true in our terms of explanation, i.e. using conventional science and wisdom. Mathematicians are even more stubborn. 

JohnM

Bruno


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

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[Bruno Marchal]

Russell wrote:

"...When it comes to Bp & p capturing the notion of knowledge, I can see it captures the notion of mathematical knowledge, ie true theorems, as opposed to true conjectures, say, which aren't knowledge.

I can see your point, at least for arithmetic, but I am not sure that distinction is interesting, at least for awhile. In both case we assert some proposition, that we cannot prove. Then with some luck it can be true.

But I am vaguely sceptical it captures the notion of scientific knowledge, which has more to do with falsifiability, than with proof.

But the Löbian point is that "proof", even when correct, are falsifiable. Why, because we might dream, even of a falsification. 

On 01 Jun 2013, at 21:41, John Mikes wrote:

And that's about where I left it - years ago.

..."

Interesting difference between 'scientific' and 'mathematical' 

(see the Nobel Prize distinction)

That's one was contingent. 

Nobel was cocufied by a mathematician who would have deserved the price (Mittag Leffler I think). Hmm.. Wiki says it is a legend, and may be it is just the contingent current Aristotelianism. Some people believe that math is not a science, like David Deutsch. That makes no sense for me. Like Gauss I think math is the queen of science, and arithmetic is the queen of math ...

- also in falsifiability, that does not automatically escape the agnostic questioning about the circumstances of the falsifying and the original images.

Excellent point.

Same difficulty as in judging "proof".  

Formal, first order proof can be verified "mechanically", but they still does not necessarily entail truth, as the premises might be inconsistent or incorrect.

"Scientific knowledge" indeed is part of a belief system. In conventional sciences we THINK we know,

Only the pseudo-religious or pseudo-scientist people think they know.

in math we assume 

(apologies, Bruno). 

?

On the contrary I agree. I thought I insisted a lot on this. Except for the non scientific personal (not 3p) consciousness it is always assumption, that is why I say that I assume that 0 is a number, that 0 ≠ s(x) for all x, etc.

In science there is only assumption. We never know-for-certain anything that we could transmit publicly.

Science is born from doubt, lives in doubt and can only augment the doubts. 

In the ideal world of the correct machines, *all* certainties are madness.

Bruno

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

[Richard Ruquist]

I have to respond that in Judaism in the high holiday service there is a  prayer praising doubt.

I think that may be unique to Judaism?

Richard

[Stephen Paul King]

How do we integrate empirical data into Bp&p?

[John Mikes]

How about Tao?

JM

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Jun 2013, at 16:08, John Mikes wrote:

How about Tao?

JM

On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Richard Ruquist <yan...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have to respond that in Judaism in the high holiday service there is a  prayer praising doubt.

I think that may be unique to Judaism?

Richard

I agree, the israelite (by which I mean the religious jewish) share with many other religion the idea that you can doubt, criticize, and comment freely whatever is said in religious text. Some buddhist repeat that we have to kill all the buddhas and it is often interpreted as a method to prevent the use of authoritative argument. Of course abuse, and political perversion can always exist. Another common point is the absence of proselytism, which does not make much sense for those trusting their gods.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Jun 2013, at 01:41, Stephen Paul King wrote:

How do we integrate empirical data into Bp&p?

Technically, by restricting p to the "leaves of the UD*" (the true, and thus provable, sigma_1 sentences).

Then to get the physics (the probability measure à-la-UDA), you can do the same with Bp & Dp & p. Think about the WM-duplication, where the W or M selection plays the role of a typical empirical data. 

More on this when you came back to this, probably on FOAR.

Bruno

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

[John Mikes]

Brent wrote (I wish I knew "TO" whom):
    "Why not?  It acts on the temperature."

Acts? remember my proposed definition for Ccness:

    "Response to relations" (like: temperature). 

We are deeply in a semantic fit. 

I don't think you wanted to argue with me - just clarifying.

JM

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 10:49 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 5/27/2013 6:55 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 05:44:57PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

On 5/27/2013 5:08 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 04:53:56PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

I don't think consciousness is an all-or-nothing property.  You have

to ask "Consciousness of what?"  There's consciousness of
surroundings: sound, photons, temperature, chemical
concentrations....  There's consciousness of internal states.
Consciousness of sex.  Consciousness of one's location.
Consciousness of one's status in a tribe.  I think human-like
consciousness requires language of some kind.

Brent

I would be happy with consciousness of surroundings. It seems to be
the most basic of all the ones you mention there.

It is pretty basic, but I'd say consciousness of some internal
states is more basic and occurred early in the evolution of life.
Even a cell must know when to divide.

Why does that require consciousness? I'm not conscious of my body
repairing itself, or dogesting food.

But that's a large class and is not all-or-nothing either.  We're
conscious of light and it's phase relations which form images, but
we don't see the polarization.  And we don't see very much of the
spectrum.  We don't detect magnetic fields and our detection of
chemicals in the air is almost non-existent compared to dogs.

You appear to be confusing sensory capability with consciousness. A
thermostat is capable of sensing temperature, but I doubt it is
conscious of the temperature.

Why not?  It acts on the temperature.

Consciousness is an experiential quality. We are either conscious when
we experience something (called qualia), or we're not conscious at all.

That seems to me just substituting one word "experience" for another "conscious" and doesn't tell us anything.  The thermostat experiences temperature.

Still seems all or nothing to me. People who claim consciousness comes
in different types, or comes in shades of grey, seem to be talking
about completely different things than the usual meaning of the term.

I think the usual meaning refers to humans inner narration (which depends on language) and the association of values to that narration.  What do you think "the usual meaning" is?

Brent

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[meekerdb]

On 6/5/2013 3:13 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Brent wrote (I wish I knew "TO" whom):
    "Why not?  It acts on the temperature."

Acts? remember my proposed definition for Ccness:

    "Response to relations" (like: temperature). 

We are deeply in a semantic fit. 

I don't think you wanted to argue with me - just clarifying.

It's good I don't want to argue with you; since I can't discern what the disagreement is.  :-)

Brent

[Alberto G. Corona]

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection. Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm, The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection" has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example. But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad), we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics.  I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

2013/6/3 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

--
Alberto.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

e=mc^2 is an interesting theory (belief), or an interesting theorem in an interesting theory. True. Perhaps, but that's a question for theologian, not physicists.

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm,

OK. But that's equivalent with saying that we accept elementary arithmetic as true, and then proceed from there. With comp, we cannot take more axioms.

The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

OK.

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection"

This presupposed some theory, implicitly as being true.

has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

OK. But all this depends on your fundamental theory. What is "natural selection" when you have no time, no space, no persons, etc. What are your starting assumptions?

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example.

OK. I like to see truth as a queen which win all wars without any army (but that can take times!).

But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad),

That's not a truth. It is a normative imperative. (A good one imo).

we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics. 

With comp we can't really use more than arithmetic for the ontology, and we need full higher order mathematics for anything inside arithmetic seen from arithmetic. Arithmetic seen from inside is much bigger than arithmetic (cf the Skolem phenomenon).

 I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

I don't see this. Craig assumes some primitive matter, and attribute mind to it. You seem more to be in agreement with comp than with Craig, it seems to me.

Bruno

Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

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

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

e=mc^2 is an interesting theory (belief), or an interesting theorem in an interesting theory. True. Perhaps, but that's a question for theologian, not physicists.

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

It do not try to define truth beyond the psychological truth. However, the psychological truths are  the self evident truths, that are the true absolute truths. You want a pure mathematical or logical notion of absolute truth, which is impossible.   natural selection is like e= mc2 . it explain things, but has implicit beliefs, but expand the categories of problems and the deep of them that we can think of, create new hypothesis and test them. The Konrad Lorenz theory about the Kantian a prioris is one of them.

Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm,

OK. But that's equivalent with saying that we accept elementary arithmetic as true, and then proceed from there. With comp, we cannot take more axioms.

It is not the same IMHO. To Accept as truth the constants and the algorithm of a being actually living (like humans), which implies heavy constraints imposed by the environment (for example moral rules as a result of  almost a infinite sucession of games of life and death in society) than the wider affirmation that elementary aritmetic is true. 

"Aritmetic theory is true" is not a self evident truth.   "to kill your neighbour is bad" is a "constant" or part of an "algoritm" for the  navigation in the social environment. It has psychological meaning of "truth"  at the psychological level. and therefore is true in the sense that humans use the word true.

The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

OK.

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection"

This presupposed some theory, implicitly as being true.

has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

OK. But all this depends on your fundamental theory. What is "natural selection" when you have no time, no space, no persons, etc. What are your starting assumptions?

Natural selection then becomes a non-process in a block universe defined by a mathematical equation which contains Self aware structures. As Tegmark defines them.  

NS is perceived psychologically as a law  of the spacetime. A law at the macro level which operate at very large scales, but not very different that any law with space and time embedded in it, like s= v . t .  But this is just the way we perceive them. 

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example.

OK. I like to see truth as a queen which win all wars without any army (but that can take times!).

But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad),

That's not a truth. It is a normative imperative. (A good one imo).

In terms of psychological self evident truths, it is absolute, since there is no higher truth in the world of the mind, by definition, but self evident , psychological truths.  What kiked-back across generations was incorporated in our algoritms as self evident truths of the reality. By means of?  by the evolution of the genetic program that develop our brains. that is what Konrad Lorenz said.

we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics. 

With comp we can't really use more than arithmetic for the ontology, and we need full higher order mathematics for anything inside arithmetic seen from arithmetic. Arithmetic seen from inside is much bigger than arithmetic (cf the Skolem phenomenon).

But as i said before, there is no pure mathematical notion of truth that can model what humans take for truth. Only the world of the mind has truths. To do so you have to leap from math and talk about dreams, that is, indeed, the proposition of wold of the mind, a second reality emerging right from the world of the numbers. But I do not see this emergence, neither I see the emergence of minds or souls from whatever complicated algorithms. That demand a leap of faith and this faith is not mine. I don´t buy this extension of observed correlations to causalities.

By the way, If for KL the kantian a prioris of the human mind are shaped by evolution, what is the nature of the things-in-themselves? what are the things before being perceived and processed by the mind?. According with Kant, the knowledge of the things-in-themselves is impossible. I propose that they are nothing but the mathematics of the block universe.  it may be homomorphic to some computation or part of a computation (i don´t like the computation idea because it implies time. and computation can be reduced to a timeless transformation using category theory) 

And there may be other realities behind, we don´t know.

 I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

I don't see this. Craig assumes some primitive matter, and attribute mind to it. You seem more to be in agreement with comp than with Craig, it seems to me.

Bruno

I´m more idealist. I believe in an autonomous world of the mind that is the REAL world that we inhabit by definition. The material phenomena are events in the mind. All that we see is in the mind that is evident. The coherence between phenomena in different minds and the laws of nature may be a result of a process of selection in which the minds select their substrate. In the same way than the definition of existence of a mathematical structure is the existence of Self Aware Structures that contemplate it from within.  

I admit a certain dualism mind-math here that need a kind of Roger-Lebnizian pre-existing harmony and a creator Mind.

--
Alberto.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

e=mc^2 is an interesting theory (belief), or an interesting theorem in an interesting theory. True. Perhaps, but that's a question for theologian, not physicists.

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

It do not try to define truth beyond the psychological truth.

OK. I heard you. But it is almost the difference between reality and dream, or between the first hypostase (God, truth, the real, the One, ..), and the first person (the soul, the subjective, etc.).

However, the psychological truths are  the self evident truths, that are the true absolute truths. You want a pure mathematical or logical notion of absolute truth, which is impossible.  

I don't want it, but here computationalism simplifies the picture a lot. Despite this, the "absolute" truth remains non definable, non expressible, and ply the role of the God that you cannot name. 

natural selection is like e= mc2 . it explain things, but has implicit beliefs,

In the fundamental science, there is a point where we have to make all the beliefs explicit. 

but expand the categories of problems and the deep of them that we can think of, create new hypothesis and test them. The Konrad Lorenz theory about the Kantian a prioris is one of them.

I have no problem with Kant. 

Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm,

OK. But that's equivalent with saying that we accept elementary arithmetic as true, and then proceed from there. With comp, we cannot take more axioms.

It is not the same IMHO. To Accept as truth the constants and the algorithm of a being actually living (like humans), which implies heavy constraints imposed by the environment (for example moral rules as a result of  almost a infinite sucession of games of life and death in society) than the wider affirmation that elementary aritmetic is true. 

Wider?

"Aritmetic theory is true" is not a self evident truth.  

my own consciousness here and now is the only self-evident truth. All the rest are theories. Now far more people will find 2+2=4 more self-evident than "thou shall not kill".

"to kill your neighbour is bad" is a "constant" or part of an "algoritm" for the  navigation in the social environment.

It can be a law, but we depart from the fundamental inquiry. We might talk on different things. 

It has psychological meaning of "truth"  at the psychological level. and therefore is true in the sense that humans use the word true.

But that cannot be used to do science.

The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

OK.

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection"

This presupposed some theory, implicitly as being true.

has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

OK. But all this depends on your fundamental theory. What is "natural selection" when you have no time, no space, no persons, etc. What are your starting assumptions?

Natural selection then becomes a non-process in a block universe defined by a mathematical equation which contains Self aware structures. As Tegmark defines them.  

Tegmark use some identity thesis which is incoherent with comp. I think.

To put it shortly: I don't believe in a physical universe. The physical reality is a sharable dream by numbers.

NS is perceived psychologically as a law  of the spacetime. A law at the macro level which operate at very large scales, but not very different that any law with space and time embedded in it, like s= v . t .  But this is just the way we perceive them. 

OK.

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example.

OK. I like to see truth as a queen which win all wars without any army (but that can take times!).

But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad),

That's not a truth. It is a normative imperative. (A good one imo).

In terms of psychological self evident truths, it is absolute, since there is no higher truth in the world of the mind, by definition, but self evident , psychological truths.  

Only consciousness is self-evident. "To kill is bad" is not precise enough to get a truth value. "Even killing a human" can be good for a lot of reason (self-defense, for example).

What kiked-back across generations was incorporated in our algoritms as self evident truths of the reality. By means of?  by the evolution of the genetic program that develop our brains. that is what Konrad Lorenz said.

I agree in part, but again, this is about living in society, not attempting to understand the big picture (which I think is theological).

we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics. 

With comp we can't really use more than arithmetic for the ontology, and we need full higher order mathematics for anything inside arithmetic seen from arithmetic. Arithmetic seen from inside is much bigger than arithmetic (cf the Skolem phenomenon).

But as i said before, there is no pure mathematical notion of truth that can model what humans take for truth.

Nor even what machines can take for truth.

Only the world of the mind has truths.

In your sense of psychological truth? OK. 

But fundamental science needs a notion of truth being independent of humans, machines, observers, etc.

To do so you have to leap from math and talk about dreams, that is, indeed, the proposition of wold of the mind, a second reality emerging right from the world of the numbers. But I do not see this emergence, neither I see the emergence of minds or souls from whatever complicated algorithms. That demand a leap of faith and this faith is not mine. I don´t buy this extension of observed correlations to causalities.

Are you saying that you don't believe in comp? 

The truth of comp is another topic, which I prefer to avoid. 

Also, if you buy a non-comp theory, you should state it. Get theorems, and show how to test them.

By the way, If for KL the kantian a prioris of the human mind are shaped by evolution, what is the nature of the things-in-themselves? what are the things before being perceived and processed by the mind?.

But this will depend on your theory. What is your theory? What are your assumptions?

According with Kant, the knowledge of the things-in-themselves is impossible.

In which theory? With comp, that is possible, up to a recursive equivalence. The thing in themselves are 0 and its successors. 

I propose that they are nothing but the mathematics of the block universe.

But which universe? I don't believe in "universe". I have never found any evidence, nor anything explained by that hypothesis.

 it may be homomorphic to some computation or part of a computation (i don´t like the computation idea because it implies time. and computation can be reduced to a timeless transformation using category theory) 

Computation needs only the notion of successor. You need a cartesian close category with a natural number object. It is far simpler to just agree on the usual simple axioms of arithmetic (which is far less demanding than category theory).

And there may be other realities behind, we don´t know.

In science we know nothing as such. WE can only agree on some theory, work with it, and confront it with the facts.

 I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

I don't see this. Craig assumes some primitive matter, and attribute mind to it. You seem more to be in agreement with comp than with Craig, it seems to me.

Bruno

I´m more idealist. I believe in an autonomous world of the mind that is the REAL world that we inhabit by definition.

So you assume mind. This does not satify me, as I look for an explanation of mind and matter from things which are conceptually simpler, like numbers or combinators.

The material phenomena are events in the mind.

That is partially true in the comp theory. But mind and matter emerges from the existence of absence of solution(s) to Diophantine equation, or even to just one of them(*).

All that we see is in the mind that is evident.

That we see something is self-evident, but what we see is not.

The coherence between phenomena in different minds and the laws of nature may be a result of a process of selection in which the minds select their substrate. In the same way than the definition of existence of a mathematical structure is the existence of Self Aware Structures that contemplate it from within.  

But how will you define and work on self-aware structure without some math and realism. 

I admit a certain dualism mind-math here that need a kind of Roger-Lebnizian pre-existing harmony and a creator Mind.

No problem with this. That is offered freely by arithmetic, if we assume computationalism. You should love comp, but apparently it looks you do have some problem with it. I am not sure to understand why.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Nov 2013, at 12:17, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

The material phenomena are events in the mind.

That is partially true in the comp theory. But mind and matter emerges from the existence of [READ OR] absence of solution(s) to Diophantine equation, or even to just one of them(*). 

So there was a typo error (Read "OR" instead of "of"). And the "(*) was for this:

For your contemplative pleasure here is a unique system of Diophantine equation which is Turing universal. That is a precise TOE, written with only s, 0, + and *. It comes from a paper of P. Jones, which is based on the work of Matiyasevitch, Putnam, Davis and Robinson.

Of course an expression like Q^16 is an abbreviation of Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*QQ*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q*Q (with the parentheses that should be added!). By adding even more variables, we can get only one polynomial, with degree 4. The equation below asserts that X is in W_Nu (a Turing universal statement, in Davis' earlier sense, a bit more general than Davis change to it later).

Nu = ((ZUY)^2 + U)^2 + Y 

ELG^2 + Al = (B - XY)Q^2

Qu = B^(5^60)

La + Qu^4 = 1 + LaB^5

Th +  2Z = B^5

L = U + TTh

E = Y + MTh

N = Q^16

R = [G + EQ^3 + LQ^5 + (2(E - ZLa)(1 + XB^5 + G)^4 + LaB^5 + + LaB^5Q^4)Q^4](N^2 -N)

         + [Q^3 -BL + L + ThLaQ^3 + (B^5 - 2)Q^5] (N^2 - 1)

P = 2W(S^2)(R^2)N^2

(P^2)K^2 - K^2 + 1 = Ta^2

4(c - KSN^2)^2 + Et = K^2

K = R + 1 + HP - H

A = (WN^2 + 1)RSN^2

C = 2R + 1 Ph

D = BW + CA -2C + 4AGa -5Ga

D^2 = (A^2 - 1)C^2 + 1

F^2 = (A^2 - 1)(I^2)C^4 + 1

(D + OF)^2 = ((A + F^2(D^2 - A^2))^2 - 1)(2R + 1 + JC)^2 + 1

Bruno

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

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

e=mc^2 is an interesting theory (belief), or an interesting theorem in an interesting theory. True. Perhaps, but that's a question for theologian, not physicists.

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

It do not try to define truth beyond the psychological truth.

OK. I heard you. But it is almost the difference between reality and dream, or between the first hypostase (God, truth, the real, the One, ..), and the first person (the soul, the subjective, etc.).

However, the psychological truths are  the self evident truths, that are the true absolute truths. You want a pure mathematical or logical notion of absolute truth, which is impossible.  

I don't want it, but here computationalism simplifies the picture a lot. Despite this, the "absolute" truth remains non definable, non expressible, and ply the role of the God that you cannot name. 

A self evident truth is not definable nor demonstrable it is _experienced_. truths of this kid are in the base of any further reasoning, are not a result of reasoning.  

natural selection is like e= mc2 . it explain things, but has implicit beliefs,

In the fundamental science, there is a point where we have to make all the beliefs explicit. 

this is no longer true in  the modern sciences, where discussing their metaphisical foundations are taboo.

but expand the categories of problems and the deep of them that we can think of, create new hypothesis and test them. The Konrad Lorenz theory about the Kantian a prioris is one of them.

I have no problem with Kant. 

Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm,

OK. But that's equivalent with saying that we accept elementary arithmetic as true, and then proceed from there. With comp, we cannot take more axioms.

It is not the same IMHO. To Accept as truth the constants and the algorithm of a being actually living (like humans), which implies heavy constraints imposed by the environment (for example moral rules as a result of  almost a infinite sucession of games of life and death in society) than the wider affirmation that elementary aritmetic is true. 

Wider?

"Aritmetic theory is true" is not a self evident truth.  

my own consciousness here and now is the only self-evident truth. All the rest are theories. Now far more people will find 2+2=4 more self-evident than "thou shall not kill".

I said "kill your neighbour is bad" . That is not a commandment. it is a fact of the natural law. If you plan or other plan to kill a neighbout it follows that bad consquences would happen.

"to kill your neighbour is bad" is a "constant" or part of an "algoritm" for the  navigation in the social environment.

It can be a law, but we depart from the fundamental inquiry. We might talk on different things. 

Yes. My fundamental inquiry is about the ordinary meaning of the worlds as they are used in ordinary life. 

It has psychological meaning of "truth"  at the psychological level. and therefore is true in the sense that humans use the word true.

But that cannot be used to do science.

Then what is science for?. That is why there is no way to scientifically handle truths, because science dismiss humans and has engulfed itself in an ideological glass tower of numbers and equations.

The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

OK.

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection"

This presupposed some theory, implicitly as being true.

has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

OK. But all this depends on your fundamental theory. What is "natural selection" when you have no time, no space, no persons, etc. What are your starting assumptions?

Natural selection then becomes a non-process in a block universe defined by a mathematical equation which contains Self aware structures. As Tegmark defines them.  

Tegmark use some identity thesis which is incoherent with comp. I think.

To put it shortly: I don't believe in a physical universe. The physical reality is a sharable dream by numbers.

You use the world dreams to define the reality that you observe. That is a kind of gnostic ideology. I can not accept that. I also don´t believe in a physical universe. I believe in what I see, that is not the physical universe. But what i see is not a dream. Is the only reality that can be called reality and be attached unambiguously the label "exist"

NS is perceived psychologically as a law  of the spacetime. A law at the macro level which operate at very large scales, but not very different that any law with space and time embedded in it, like s= v . t .  But this is just the way we perceive them. 

OK.

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example.

OK. I like to see truth as a queen which win all wars without any army (but that can take times!).

But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad),

That's not a truth. It is a normative imperative. (A good one imo).

In terms of psychological self evident truths, it is absolute, since there is no higher truth in the world of the mind, by definition, but self evident , psychological truths.  

Only consciousness is self-evident. "To kill is bad" is not precise enough to get a truth value. "Even killing a human" can be good for a lot of reason (self-defense, for example).

To kill is bad is a constant, but it may be weighted with other constants and other data from the concrete situation in the algoritm for social navigation. And the outcome may be that to kill someone concrete one in a certain moment in a certain situation may be good in the short or long term of someone or some group in this concrete case with all these data. but this does not change the fact that to kill is bad.  You have to look at it in a dynamical way. The scholastics did a wonderful job of clarification for things like this.

What kiked-back across generations was incorporated in our algoritms as self evident truths of the reality. By means of?  by the evolution of the genetic program that develop our brains. that is what Konrad Lorenz said.

I agree in part, but again, this is about living in society, not attempting to understand the big picture (which I think is theological).

theology is something in the world 1 which for me it is the world of the mind. And theology is primarily about properties of minds in concrete terms, the mind of God. When I talk about psychology, change it by mind or soul. I just make the language more amenable for materialists.

we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics. 

With comp we can't really use more than arithmetic for the ontology, and we need full higher order mathematics for anything inside arithmetic seen from arithmetic. Arithmetic seen from inside is much bigger than arithmetic (cf the Skolem phenomenon).

But as i said before, there is no pure mathematical notion of truth that can model what humans take for truth.

Nor even what machines can take for truth.

Only the world of the mind has truths.

In your sense of psychological truth? OK. 

But fundamental science needs a notion of truth being independent of humans, machines, observers, etc.

Poor fundamental science I will leave it in his glass tower. Unfortunatelly,  I have more fundamental things to do.

To do so you have to leap from math and talk about dreams, that is, indeed, the proposition of wold of the mind, a second reality emerging right from the world of the numbers. But I do not see this emergence, neither I see the emergence of minds or souls from whatever complicated algorithms. That demand a leap of faith and this faith is not mine. I don´t buy this extension of observed correlations to causalities.

Are you saying that you don't believe in comp? 

The truth of comp is another topic, which I prefer to avoid. 

Also, if you buy a non-comp theory, you should state it. Get theorems, and show how to test them.

 

I do  not believe in COMP. I think that COMP can explain the universe. But also the theory "All exists" explain also the universe. 

By the way, If for KL the kantian a prioris of the human mind are shaped by evolution, what is the nature of the things-in-themselves? what are the things before being perceived and processed by the mind?.

But this will depend on your theory. What is your theory? What are your assumptions?

According with Kant, the knowledge of the things-in-themselves is impossible.

In which theory? With comp, that is possible, up to a recursive equivalence. The thing in themselves are 0 and its successors. 

I propose that they are nothing but the mathematics of the block universe.

But which universe? I don't believe in "universe". I have never found any evidence, nor anything explained by that hypothesis.

That is upto you. The mathematics of the block universe is not the universe. the universe is perceived by the mind in space and time, that are attributes of the mind it is the way the mind perceive. therefore the universe exist in the world of the mind. 

The mathematics of it is not the universe. is mathematics. 

 

 it may be homomorphic to some computation or part of a computation (i don´t like the computation idea because it implies time. and computation can be reduced to a timeless transformation using category theory) 

Computation needs only the notion of successor. You need a cartesian close category with a natural number object. It is far simpler to just agree on the usual simple axioms of arithmetic (which is far less demanding than category theory).

Category theory is also very simple. the constructions of it may be arbitrarily complicated. that happens with computation as well. 

And there may be other realities behind, we don´t know.

In science we know nothing as such. WE can only agree on some theory, work with it, and confront it with the facts.

That does not change the fact that there may be other realities . No matter how hard any club of scientists or not try to do whatever they want ;)

 I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

I don't see this. Craig assumes some primitive matter, and attribute mind to it. You seem more to be in agreement with comp than with Craig, it seems to me.

Bruno

I´m more idealist. I believe in an autonomous world of the mind that is the REAL world that we inhabit by definition.

So you assume mind. This does not satify me, as I look for an explanation of mind and matter from things which are conceptually simpler, like numbers or combinators.

But that is a prejudice. Probably there are a number of basic structures that can model what we perceive together with any wild combination of whatever is imaginable that we do not perceive. So what?

The material phenomena are events in the mind.

That is partially true in the comp theory. But mind and matter emerges from the existence of absence of solution(s) to Diophantine equation, or even to just one of them(*). 

 

All that we see is in the mind that is evident.

That we see something is self-evident, but what we see is not.

So you when wake up in the night you don`t  turn on the light...

The coherence between phenomena in different minds and the laws of nature may be a result of a process of selection in which the minds select their substrate. In the same way than the definition of existence of a mathematical structure is the existence of Self Aware Structures that contemplate it from within.  

But how will you define and work on self-aware structure without some math and realism. 

with math and realism 

I admit a certain dualism mind-math here that need a kind of Roger-Lebnizian pre-existing harmony and a creator Mind.

No problem with this. That is offered freely by arithmetic, if we assume computationalism. You should love comp, but apparently it looks you do have some problem with it. I am not sure to understand why.

I don´t see computationalism as promising primary explanation. As I say ever, living beings compute, but computation is a solution for a problem created by uncertainty, lack of information. A whole, with all the information does not compute. It has it all done. And therefore has no notion of space neither time, neither sequence. What is more fundamental the timeless equation of a parabolic trajectory or the differential equation in time that describe a movement across the parabola an find the points step by step?

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 11/21/2013 1:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

That seems to confound "truth" and "existence".  There are some facts that make the theory of natural selection true (if it is true).  Those facts may include hardwired beliefs in human brains and then they exist whether there is a theory that expresses them or not.  It's not circular if it is grounded in facts.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Nov 2013, at 19:28, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/21/2013 1:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

That seems to confound "truth" and "existence". 

I don't see why. I was talking on the truth of the evolution facts.

There are some facts that make the theory of natural selection true (if it is true).

Yes.

  Those facts may include hardwired beliefs in human brains and then they exist whether there is a theory that expresses them or not. 

So you say "they exist" is true. What I said is that this is circular when used to define truth from evolution.

It's not circular if it is grounded in facts.

No. Evolution remains circular as an explanation of truth (it is not circular as an explanation of the species, but that's another topic).

Bruno

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

[John Mikes]

Bruno: 

 Brent's dichotomy - as you pointed out - about exist and true may go deeper in my opinion:

If we THINK of something: it DOES exist indeed (in our mind) but may not be true. I refrain from calling  T R U E  anything in our restsricted (partial) knowledge capability. "WE THINK IT IS TRUE" is in our belief system. 

Now it is up to you to call the "EXISTING" thought as 'truly existing'???? We fabricate 'truth' in this respect but only in this respect. Otherwise I am just waiting for additional input disproving what I 'beleived-in' so far. 

John M

PS I read this remark of mine to my wife who asked: if somebody KILLS a person (cuts her throat):

is it TRUE, or NOT? (pointing to the more convoluted sides of the topic). I tried to save face by saying:

Don't you apply our 'wisdom-concepts' to practical life! We seek the theoretical truth! (laugh). 

(As a matter of fact 'true' is not confoundable with 'truth' just as conscious is not the adjective representing  consciousness - in most cases)

JM

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Nov 2013, at 00:24, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno: 

 Brent's dichotomy - as you pointed out - about exist and true may go deeper in my opinion:

If we THINK of something: it DOES exist indeed (in our mind) but may not be true. I refrain from calling  T R U E  anything in our restsricted (partial) knowledge capability. "WE THINK IT IS TRUE" is in our belief system. 

I refrain from using both "real" and "true" in any scientific proposal. But in theology, we still need the concept of real or true, because it is part of the subject matter. 

I don't separate them. True is only an assertative variant of real, and both reality and truth concerns the many form of existence. Atoms exists, temperature exists, countries exist, persons exist;  all in different true senses, for example.

Now it is up to you to call the "EXISTING" thought as 'truly existing'????

I reserve the terming "really existing" or "truly existing" for the terms which are assumed in the base (ontological) theory.  But that is only a convention, depending of the choice of the basic terms, which is arbitrary insofar that we have laws making the base system universal (in Turing sense).

We fabricate 'truth' in this respect but only in this respect. Otherwise I am just waiting for additional input disproving what I 'beleived-in' so far. 

Me too. 

PS I read this remark of mine to my wife who asked: if somebody KILLS a person (cuts her throat):

is it TRUE, or NOT? (pointing to the more convoluted sides of the topic). I tried to save face by saying:

Don't you apply our 'wisdom-concepts' to practical life! We seek the theoretical truth! (laugh). 

Very good remark by your wife!

(As a matter of fact 'true' is not confoundable with 'truth' just as conscious is not the adjective representing  consciousness - in most cases)

Agreed. Now you can define truth (in some domain) by the set of true propositions (about the objects of that domain). Logicians do things like that. It can help. Arithmetical truth = the collection of all true arithmetical sentences, for example.

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Nov 2013, at 16:45, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/11/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:57, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

To say that F = m . a   or e= m c2  as truth it is necessary to accept certain beliefs. Belief that at the next moment the laws will not change for example. 

e=mc^2 is an interesting theory (belief), or an interesting theorem in an interesting theory. True. Perhaps, but that's a question for theologian, not physicists.

Let´s go to a human level:

in evolutionary terms, I would say that truth is a belief hardcoded by natural selection.

This is self-defeating or circular. You need the "truth" of natural selection to make sense of it.

It do not try to define truth beyond the psychological truth.

OK. I heard you. But it is almost the difference between reality and dream, or between the first hypostase (God, truth, the real, the One, ..), and the first person (the soul, the subjective, etc.).

However, the psychological truths are  the self evident truths, that are the true absolute truths. You want a pure mathematical or logical notion of absolute truth, which is impossible.  

I don't want it, but here computationalism simplifies the picture a lot. Despite this, the "absolute" truth remains non definable, non expressible, and ply the role of the God that you cannot name. 

A self evident truth is not definable nor demonstrable it is _experienced_.

Indeed.

truths of this kid are in the base of any further reasoning, are not a result of reasoning.  

Yes. It is experienced. It is truth confrontation in a cloud of possibilities.

natural selection is like e= mc2 . it explain things, but has implicit beliefs,

In the fundamental science, there is a point where we have to make all the beliefs explicit. 

this is no longer true in  the modern sciences, where discussing their metaphisical foundations are taboo.

That is where computationalism is very *useful*, the metaphysics is arithmetized. If we agree with the standard analytical definitions, we can interview universal machine on their metaphysics, including physics. It is both part of computer science and elementary arithmetic. 

but expand the categories of problems and the deep of them that we can think of, create new hypothesis and test them. The Konrad Lorenz theory about the Kantian a prioris is one of them.

I have no problem with Kant. 

Truth would say, is the constants plus the algorthm,

OK. But that's equivalent with saying that we accept elementary arithmetic as true, and then proceed from there. With comp, we cannot take more axioms.

It is not the same IMHO. To Accept as truth the constants and the algorithm of a being actually living (like humans), which implies heavy constraints imposed by the environment (for example moral rules as a result of  almost a infinite sucession of games of life and death in society) than the wider affirmation that elementary aritmetic is true. 

Wider?

"Aritmetic theory is true" is not a self evident truth.  

my own consciousness here and now is the only self-evident truth. All the rest are theories. Now far more people will find 2+2=4 more self-evident than "thou shall not kill".

I said "kill your neighbour is bad" . That is not a commandment. it is a fact of the natural law. If you plan or other plan to kill a neighbout it follows that bad consquences would happen.

"natural law?".

May be. may be it is a theorem on Löbian machines? Hmm... I can hardly ask, it is would be computer demanding. 

"to kill your neighbour is bad" is a "constant" or part of an "algoritm" for the  navigation in the social environment.

It can be a law, but we depart from the fundamental inquiry. We might talk on different things. 

Yes. My fundamental inquiry is about the ordinary meaning of the worlds as they are used in ordinary life. 

My fundamental inquiry is in relying that ordinary meaning with what could possibly be, when assuming computationalism.

It has psychological meaning of "truth"  at the psychological level. and therefore is true in the sense that humans use the word true.

But that cannot be used to do science.

Then what is science for?. That is why there is no way to scientifically handle truths, because science dismiss humans and has engulfed itself in an ideological glass tower of numbers and equations.

Yes, but that is really a lack of scientific attitude! It is not the fault of science, but of scientists ignoring the assumptive nature of any ontological commitment, be them positive or negative, on Person or Matter.

Science dismiss nothing. Human scientists dismiss the humans, but that is also due to the "hot potatoes' aspect of the notion: it is not an easy subject, and it is hard to avoid emotional difficulties.

The data that the living being processes, are the beliefs. 

OK.

The pivotal affirmation from Conrad Lorenz: "The kantian a priori  where shaped in our mind as a  result of natural selection"

This presupposed some theory, implicitly as being true.

has a very far reaching: it means that self evident  truths like the existence of persons, animals, space, time and all self evident truths that derives from them are hardcoded, and we have hardcoded algorithms for processing them. That is the reason why they appear behind us and we react to them without any doubt about their existence. We also have also algoritm for adquiring derived concepts in certain ways and not in others. 

OK. But all this depends on your fundamental theory. What is "natural selection" when you have no time, no space, no persons, etc. What are your starting assumptions?

Natural selection then becomes a non-process in a block universe defined by a mathematical equation which contains Self aware structures. As Tegmark defines them.  

Tegmark use some identity thesis which is incoherent with comp. I think.

To put it shortly: I don't believe in a physical universe. The physical reality is a sharable dream by numbers.

You use the world dreams to define the reality that you observe. That is a kind of gnostic ideology.

Not at all. The 3p basic reality is given by elementary arithmetic. The only laws used are derived from addition and multiplication. This is possible thanks to the *mechanical* basic operation defining the behavior of digital machines.

Then with comp you can understand that elementary arithmetic defined a giant web of all machine's consistent experiences. The UDA provides the help to get that in a less jumpy way.

The dreams are first person indeterminate on all universal machines. Comp has to justifies why quantum machines seems to win the physical measure game.

I can not accept that.

Gnostic ideology? Me too. But comp does not lead to that. It is more a block mindscape, emerging from arithmetic. Physics appears to be the border of the arithmetical truth seen by the average or universal sound universal machines' first person (plural). 

I also don´t believe in a physical universe. I believe in what I see, that is not the physical universe. But what i see is not a dream. Is the only reality that can be called reality and be attached unambiguously the label "exist"

This needs an act of faith. No problem. The machines *can* know why.

NS is perceived psychologically as a law  of the spacetime. A law at the macro level which operate at very large scales, but not very different that any law with space and time embedded in it, like s= v . t .  But this is just the way we perceive them. 

OK.

Truth in a ample sense is whatever that kick-back: a stone wall for example.

OK. I like to see truth as a queen which win all wars without any army (but that can take times!).

But that is not all. in evolutionary terms, the kick-back can happen across generations. If we doubt about certain abstract truths (like to kill is bad),

That's not a truth. It is a normative imperative. (A good one imo).

In terms of psychological self evident truths, it is absolute, since there is no higher truth in the world of the mind, by definition, but self evident , psychological truths.  

Only consciousness is self-evident. "To kill is bad" is not precise enough to get a truth value. "Even killing a human" can be good for a lot of reason (self-defense, for example).

To kill is bad is a constant, but it may be weighted with other constants and other data from the concrete situation in the algoritm for social navigation.

I don't think there is an algorithm for social navigation.

And the outcome may be that to kill someone concrete one in a certain moment in a certain situation may be good in the short or long term of someone or some group in this concrete case with all these data. but this does not change the fact that to kill is bad.

Hmm... It changes "to kill is bad" into "to kill is bad unless this, or that, or this, or that".

I have no problem with "to kill is bad", but word like "bad" can't be used in science, unless we talk on it in some precise theory of mind, or in a deontic logic. 

 You have to look at it in a dynamical way. The scholastics did a wonderful job of clarification for things like this.

OK.

What kiked-back across generations was incorporated in our algoritms as self evident truths of the reality. By means of?  by the evolution of the genetic program that develop our brains. that is what Konrad Lorenz said.

I agree in part, but again, this is about living in society, not attempting to understand the big picture (which I think is theological).

theology is something in the world 1 which for me it is the world of the mind. And theology is primarily about properties of minds in concrete terms, the mind of God. When I talk about psychology, change it by mind or soul. I just make the language more amenable for materialists.

OK. For a "believer" psychology is theology, except that theology is more about the afterlife possible, and usually psychology is more concerned with the current life.

we will not receive an inmediate negative feedback, but perhaps in a few years or even our gene/meme descendants. That is why the Lorenz`s mechanism has included in our mind a lot of  innate common sense truths).

That materialist explanation paradoxically end up in the idea  that there is no space neither time neither persons outside the world of the mind, that is what really exist. Out of the mind there is nothing. Perhaps mathematics. 

With comp we can't really use more than arithmetic for the ontology, and we need full higher order mathematics for anything inside arithmetic seen from arithmetic. Arithmetic seen from inside is much bigger than arithmetic (cf the Skolem phenomenon).

But as i said before, there is no pure mathematical notion of truth that can model what humans take for truth.

Nor even what machines can take for truth.

Only the world of the mind has truths.

In your sense of psychological truth? OK. 

But fundamental science needs a notion of truth being independent of humans, machines, observers, etc.

Poor fundamental science I will leave it in his glass tower. Unfortunatelly,  I have more fundamental things to do.

No problem. (This list is about an "everything theory", or about the big picture, etc. We cannot know it for sure, but we can show that some hypothesis (like mechanism) is incompatible with some other hypothesis (materialism, physicalism).

To do so you have to leap from math and talk about dreams, that is, indeed, the proposition of wold of the mind, a second reality emerging right from the world of the numbers. But I do not see this emergence, neither I see the emergence of minds or souls from whatever complicated algorithms. That demand a leap of faith and this faith is not mine. I don´t buy this extension of observed correlations to causalities.

Are you saying that you don't believe in comp? 

The truth of comp is another topic, which I prefer to avoid. 

Also, if you buy a non-comp theory, you should state it. Get theorems, and show how to test them.

 

I do  not believe in COMP. I think that COMP can explain the universe. But also the theory "All exists" explain also the universe. 

"All exists" explain nothing. "all computations exists" leads to an interesting explanation how numbers dreams percolate into deep sharable histories.

"All computations exists" is, with Church thesis, defined by finite expression, like the couple of combinator laws

Kxy = x

Sxyz = xz(yz)

or like the numbers laws:

x + 0 = x  

x + s(y) = s(x + y) 

 x *0 = 0

 x*s(y) = x*y + x  

Nothing more is assumed, and we get an explanation of both the differentiating consciousness flux(es) and the apparent but persistent collective "dreams". And this in a testable way. 

This approach does not ignore the first person point of view right at the start. And in the math this is reflected by the taking account, by the machine, of its own incompleteness and the "developing faith" in a reality, and in the gap between its beliefs and the possible truth.

By the way, If for KL the kantian a prioris of the human mind are shaped by evolution, what is the nature of the things-in-themselves? what are the things before being perceived and processed by the mind?.

But this will depend on your theory. What is your theory? What are your assumptions?

According with Kant, the knowledge of the things-in-themselves is impossible.

In which theory? With comp, that is possible, up to a recursive equivalence. The thing in themselves are 0 and its successors. 

I propose that they are nothing but the mathematics of the block universe.

But which universe? I don't believe in "universe". I have never found any evidence, nor anything explained by that hypothesis.

That is upto you. The mathematics of the block universe is not the universe. the universe is perceived by the mind in space and time, that are attributes of the mind it is the way the mind perceive. therefore the universe exist in the world of the mind. 

OK. Comp makes this mathematically precise (and necessary).

The mathematics of it is not the universe. is mathematics. 

With comp, both the definition of physical universe is lacking, and the existence of a primitive physical universe is not occam-defensible. 

 

 it may be homomorphic to some computation or part of a computation (i don´t like the computation idea because it implies time. and computation can be reduced to a timeless transformation using category theory) 

Computation needs only the notion of successor. You need a cartesian close category with a natural number object. It is far simpler to just agree on the usual simple axioms of arithmetic (which is far less demanding than category theory).

Category theory is also very simple. the constructions of it may be arbitrarily complicated. that happens with computation as well. 

Sure, and there are quite interesting application of category in both classical and quantum computation theory. And in the theory of knots.

But it still take me a long time to find product and coproduct of element in partial algebra. Allwing undefined elements makes category theory more difficult to use, in the classical theology, where machines stops, or not stop (in the 1p and/or 3p view).

And there may be other realities behind, we don´t know.

In science we know nothing as such. WE can only agree on some theory, work with it, and confront it with the facts.

That does not change the fact that there may be other realities .

Other realities are not excluded by the choice of the realm. Indeed, with the universal Everett waves, or with computationalism and arithmetic, there are a priori too many realities. And they interfere statistically. We must do the math.

No matter how hard any club of scientists or not try to do whatever they want ;)

OK :)

 I´m in aggreement with Craig on this.

I don't see this. Craig assumes some primitive matter, and attribute mind to it. You seem more to be in agreement with comp than with Craig, it seems to me.

Bruno

I´m more idealist. I believe in an autonomous world of the mind that is the REAL world that we inhabit by definition.

So you assume mind. This does not satify me, as I look for an explanation of mind and matter from things which are conceptually simpler, like numbers or combinators.

But that is a prejudice.

Why? It would be if I asserted knowing everything about numbers, but that is not the case, and never will be.

Probably there are a number of basic structures that can model what we perceive together with any wild combination of whatever is imaginable that we do not perceive. So what?

I am just formulating a problem (UDA), and suggest a method to solve it (the listening to what machines already say (AUDA)).

The material phenomena are events in the mind.

That is partially true in the comp theory. But mind and matter emerges from the existence of absence of solution(s) to Diophantine equation, or even to just one of them(*). 

 

All that we see is in the mind that is evident.

That we see something is self-evident, but what we see is not.

So you when wake up in the night you don`t  turn on the light...

Why should I not turn on the light? I do that in dreams to!

The coherence between phenomena in different minds and the laws of nature may be a result of a process of selection in which the minds select their substrate. In the same way than the definition of existence of a mathematical structure is the existence of Self Aware Structures that contemplate it from within.  

But how will you define and work on self-aware structure without some math and realism. 

with math and realism 

OK. (then).

I admit a certain dualism mind-math here that need a kind of Roger-Lebnizian pre-existing harmony and a creator Mind.

No problem with this. That is offered freely by arithmetic, if we assume computationalism. You should love comp, but apparently it looks you do have some problem with it. I am not sure to understand why.

I don´t see computationalism as promising primary explanation.

It is not sold as an explanation. It is sold as a problem. Computationalism is believed implicitly by most (weak) materialist, and I show that they does not really work together.

I just show consequence of beliefs. I am neutral, agnostic, on comp.

As I say ever, living beings compute, but computation is a solution for a problem created by uncertainty, lack of information. A whole, with all the information does not compute. It has it all done. And therefore has no notion of space neither time, neither sequence. What is more fundamental the timeless equation of a parabolic trajectory or the differential equation in time that describe a movement across the parabola an find the points step by step?

If the solution of the differential equation emulates a dreaming machine, then from her first person point of view, she belongs to both, as both are emulated in arithmetic. 

Are you OK with UDA, notably the step 3? This is what is needed to understand the universal machine's body problem.

Bruno

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

[meekerdb]

On 11/22/2013 3:24 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno: 

 Brent's dichotomy - as you pointed out - about exist and true may go deeper in my opinion:

If we THINK of something: it DOES exist indeed (in our mind) but may not be true. I refrain from calling  T R U E  anything in our restsricted (partial) knowledge capability. "WE THINK IT IS TRUE" is in our belief system. 

Now it is up to you to call the "EXISTING" thought as 'truly existing'???? We fabricate 'truth' in this respect but only in this respect. Otherwise I am just waiting for additional input disproving what I 'beleived-in' so far. 

John M

PS I read this remark of mine to my wife who asked: if somebody KILLS a person (cuts her throat):

is it TRUE, or NOT? (pointing to the more convoluted sides of the topic). I tried to save face by saying:

Don't you apply our 'wisdom-concepts' to practical life! We seek the theoretical truth! (laugh). 

(As a matter of fact 'true' is not confoundable with 'truth' just as conscious is not the adjective representing  consciousness - in most cases)

JM

In my meta-physics "true" is an attribute of a sentence meaning that the sentence expresses some fact.  Facts do not depend on sentences, they can be facts even though no one says so in a sentence.  "Exist" has different meaning in different contexts.  In physics the essential parts of a model are thought to exist just in case the model is true.

Brent

[Chris de Morsella]

Truth, perhaps, depends on some frame of reference; one could even describe it as an emergent phenomena that has meaning only within the frame of reference from which it emerges.

Chris

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Nov 2013, at 07:09, Chris de Morsella wrote:

 

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 9:11 PM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Belief vs Truth

 

On 11/22/2013 3:24 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno: 

 Brent's dichotomy - as you pointed out - about exist and true may go deeper in my opinion:

If we THINK of something: it DOES exist indeed (in our mind) but may not be true. I refrain from calling  T R U E  anything in our restsricted (partial) knowledge capability. "WE THINK IT IS TRUE" is in our belief system. 

Now it is up to you to call the "EXISTING" thought as 'truly existing'???? We fabricate 'truth' in this respect but only in this respect. Otherwise I am just waiting for additional input disproving what I 'beleived-in' so far. 

 

John M

 

PS I read this remark of mine to my wife who asked: if somebody KILLS a person (cuts her throat):

is it TRUE, or NOT? (pointing to the more convoluted sides of the topic). I tried to save face by saying:

Don't you apply our 'wisdom-concepts' to practical life! We seek the theoretical truth! (laugh). 

(As a matter of fact 'true' is not confoundable with 'truth' just as conscious is not the adjective representing  consciousness - in most cases)

JM

In my meta-physics "true" is an attribute of a sentence meaning that the sentence expresses some fact.  Facts do not depend on sentences, they can be facts even though no one says so in a sentence.  "Exist" has different meaning in different contexts.  In physics the essential parts of a model are thought to exist just in case the model is true.

 

Truth, perhaps, depends on some frame of reference; one could even describe it as an emergent phenomena that has meaning only within the frame of reference from which it emerges.

Logicians distinguish "theory" (which are set of sentences close for some applications of some inference rules), and models, which are mathematical structures together with a notion of "satisfaction of sentences". So a sentence (close formula) is never true per se. It is only satisfied, or not, by this or that model. Validity or theoremhood will correspond with the idea of being true in *all* models of a theory, at least for first order theories (which have such nice model theory). In that case the validity of a reasoning is independent of the interpretation of the theory.

Physics, biology and theology brought some difficulty here, as it assumes some "reality", and normally we should distinguish the theory, the models of the theory, and the relation between those models and reality. 

Physicists usually ignore the model theory level intermediate between theory and reality, and logicians, like mathematicians, ignore "reality", which they take as a dirty notion used only by engineers or philosophers.

Now, I can agree that many truth can emerge, but they have to emerge from some truth, which are needed to be considered as primitive. With comp, computer science or just arithmetic constitute(s) enough basic truth to explain the emergence of many different notions of truth and existence (indeed one for each "person points of view").

Bruno

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

[Chris de Morsella]

Very well put. I am attracted by this idea that some abstract mathematical reality -- itself emerging from the vastly numerous and subtle interactions of orthogonal infinities of recursive null sets/equations existing outside and apart from any and all frames of reference, by which our, and any other, for that matter, emerged reality are characterized. It provides an elegant means to exit from those endless hall of mirrors logic situations -- or turtles holding turtles (also a nice metaphor) that is uncovered at the bottom of so many attempts to present a foundation for everything.

Chris

 

 

Bruno

 

[Alberto G. Corona]

2013/11/23 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

Very well stated.

 

With comp, computer science or just arithmetic constitute(s) enough basic truth to explain the emergence of many different notions of truth and existence (indeed one for each "person points of view").

For example?. For me comp explain to much., (even what is not observed) and to few (of the truths that are self evident). There are other basic truths that work better

Bruno

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

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Alberto.

[Alberto G. Corona]

the factual notions of truth and existence are linked by the notion that what is true kick back and what kick back can render you nonexistent at the moment  `t +1`  if you negate its truth at the moment `t`.  

Now natural selection can make the units of time really really long. So it is not a surprise that people agree most in the truth and existence of things that kick back in order of seconds by the natural law of physics than abstract things that kick back in orders of generations by the natural law of game theory applied to social proceses.. 

But both kinds of truths are in our common sense by means of the Lorenzian-Kantian-evolitionary process that I mentioned above. The first kind of knowledge are in our common sense by means of the perception of solid objects in space and time. The second kind of knowledge are in the form of moral intuitions.

2013/11/23 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>

--
Alberto.

[Bruno Marchal]

The points of view of truth (p)

The points of view of rational testable deduction (Bp)

The points of view of knowledge/intuition (Bp & p)

The points of view of observation/bet (Bp & Dt)

The points of view sensations/feeling (Bp & Dt & p).

That leads to eight points of view, due to the splitting between provable and true, which take part for Bp, Bp & Dt, Bp & Dt & p.

This gives 8 interelated intensional mathematics corresponding to arithmetic seen by machines whose histories are comp-supported by the computations emulated in arithmetic. 

For me comp explain to much., (even what is not observed) and to few (of the truths that are self evident). There are other basic truths that work better

It depends on what you are interested. String theory might be useful to marry gravitation and gravity in a coherent global picture for the physical reality, but be hopelessly useless to make a pizza, or, to study afterlife. 

Comp explains where QM comes from, in a way which distinguishes what we (the machine) can prove and what is true about us but that we cannot prove. That is still awfully useless to make a pizza, but is handy to get some possible (hypothetical) light on after life and parallel life, and the complex mind-body relation. And comp is testable, which was the goal. 

It is not a question of working or not working. It is question of showing that some things does not work, (like comp + materialism) and might not work (like perhaps comp).

Bruno

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

[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Nov 2013, at 16:47, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

the factual notions of truth and existence are linked by the notion that what is true kick back and what kick back can render you nonexistent at the moment  `t +1`  if you negate its truth at the moment `t`.  

Now natural selection can make the units of time really really long. So it is not a surprise that people agree most in the truth and existence of things that kick back in order of seconds by the natural law of physics than abstract things that kick back in orders of generations by the natural law of game theory applied to social proceses.. 

But both kinds of truths are in our common sense by means of the Lorenzian-Kantian-evolitionary process that I mentioned above. The first kind of knowledge are in our common sense by means of the perception of solid objects in space and time. The second kind of knowledge are in the form of moral intuitions.

OK. 

Bruno

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