An analogy for Qualia
alexalex
The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
your opinion about what it says.
Thanks!
<<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
they're discussing about even though as far as I've been able to
understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
subject it to what science has been and will always be? Third-party
analysis. So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?” I
ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain though not of the
same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
large and complex computer programs.
If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing. Here we
are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
real world. These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card. Let's call that
perspective, the perspective of knowing all there is to know about the
3D-model, the third-person perspective (the perspective described by
using only third-party objective data). What's interesting is that all
of these 3D design programs have the option to add cameras to whatever
world model you are currently developing. Cameras present a scene from
a particular point-of-view (POV – or point of reference, call it how
you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or
video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The
benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a
scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as
a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light
reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the
lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this
doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can
perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of
the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models
similar to the ones that are found real life. We’ll use POVs and CPOVs
interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of
our argumentation.
The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely
traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person
perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the
physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera
through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is
projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the
lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the
software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had
the ambition you could practically do all that work for yourself by
taking the 3D-model’s mathematical and geometric data from the saved
computer file containing your particular model description and
calculate on sheets of paper how objects from it would look and behave
from a particular CPOV, and more to that, you could literally draw
those objects yourself by using the widely known techniques of
descriptive geometry (the same as the ones used by the 3D modeling
software). But what point would that make when we already have
computers that achieve this arduous task for us? Maybe living in a
period of time without computers would make this easily relentless
task one worth considering.
So, we can basically take a virtual trip to whatever part of Rome we
want by just jumping inside a CPOV provided to us by the software. We
can see, experience what it is like to be in Rome by adopting whatever
CPOV which will be calculated and drawn to us by this complex but 100%
describable and understandable computer program. The software would be
no mystery to us if we were sufficiently trained programmers,
architects and mathematicians. The WIIL of experiencing Rome will
never be a mystery to us also if we’ll let the 3D design software do
the job of calculating and drawing the CPOV for us. Of course, as said
above, we can achieve the same WIIL by making strenuous calculations
and draw ourselves on sheets of paper exactly the same POV “painted”
to us by the computer program. Whatever our choice one thing stands to
pure reason: We will achieve to experience the what-it-is-likeness
(WIIL) of Rome by deducing it from objective, third-party data that we
can all share by accessing the program file that contains the 3D-model
third-person description; so there is nothing special about it. The
whole point is that the experience of the WIIL can be achieved and
built by/for us using third-person data). The WIIL only seems to be
some kind of metaphysical thing because of its circumstantial
relatedness with the idiosyncrasies of the POV. No need to squander
energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
it’s all data, 0s and 1s. The WIIL and the POV represent the same
thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
that data contained in the POV taken as a whole. The WIIL is all
accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
is 100% physical but non-reducible because of its intentionality, and
how the circumstantial relation to its POV makes it seem as if it’s
something separate from it but that's an illusion.
The what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of points-of-view (POVs) in our model
of Rome are unique in the sense that they each have idiosyncrasies in
the arrangement of points, lines, planes, colors and light reflectance
that make up the objects in the model, idiosyncrasies caused by the
perspective that we randomly chose to be a point or a certain area
(lens of the camera) on the map of our 3D model onto which the light
reflected by some of the objects contained in it is projected through.
The WIIL is 100% mathematically, geometrically described and accounted
for by the calculations and drawings done in order to design the POV
that we experience the WIIL through. To make it more clearly lets
describe the relationship between the WIIL and the POV a little more.
The WIIL is not something separate from the POV in one important sense
and here sits the crux of my argumentation: The POV which was inferred
and created from the objective, third-person perspective of the
computer model is the WIIL in the sense that all we need to know if we
are to describe the WIIL is the mathematical description of the POV
and that is all. For someone (or something) to experience objects
contained in the city model through a specific CPOV that is how WIILs
come into existence. The sole act of accessing that POV (i.e, its
mathematical description) is the WIIL. The question "And then what
happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
there to be said; the story is complete. Acknowledging the richness in
description of the mathematical and geometric data does not mean that
the observer needs to understand all the intricate equations,
elaborate calculations and geometric deductions; all there needs to be
done is for that observer is to be hit with all that idiosyncratic
data ". “Can you describe this WIIL?" Of course, by providing you with
all the mathematical relations between all the points, planes and
surface properties that describe the POV through which this wholeness
of experience (WIIL) comes to reality. How did i get those points and
planes and their properties? Again, I got them from the third-party,
objective data contained in the 3D-model of the city located on the 1s
and 0s hardwired on the hard-drive of the computer.
Something on privateness now. The WILL is only private in the sense
that only something which experiences a certain POV can experience its
WIIL but that is all. Can this POV be shared with others? Of course.
After we create that CPOV in the computer program we can save it to a
file and send it via email to whatever part of the globe you want for
someone else to experience its WIIL. So, the possibility of sharing it
with others makes it a not very good candidate for privateness. POVs
are only unique, but hardly private so let's not confuse the terms.
The same reasons as above I should say go for the qualia of color,
smells, etc. So, I doubt there is any difference with these types of
experiences. What it is like to see a color is just experiencing the
complete model from a slice of the world from a certain POV. Why can't
that POV be deduced and inferred from the widely agreed-upon,
sufficient, scientific data as qualophiles’ plea for metaphysics
suggest eludes me so far as i can see, so that's why the they haven't
proved anything yet. I doubt they'll ever will. If we knew almost
everything there is to know about the particles and forces that make
up our world we could be able to build models of whatever brains we'd
like that could experience all there is to be possible designable as
an experience.
Daniel Dennett's RoboMarry shouldn't have a hard job at building color
into herself without access to the already build in color-modules that
are part of her 100% silica made brain. And that's our next story.
<<<RoboMarry has a busy afternoon>>>
In one of his more recent books, Daniel Dennett answered critics whom
do not share his position on the possibility that John Searle's color-
bereft Mary, recently liberated from the black&white, grey-shaded
Chinese room which she inhabited in the course of her lifetime, could
not be fooled into believing that a blue-colored banana shown to her
by her masters is in fact yellow. Even though Mary did not experience
any colors in her lifetime she somehow managed to put herself into the
dispositional states of yellowness and blueness with the help of
scientific data she gathered and made sense of in her black&white
room. Mary would not be at all fooled by the cheap trick her masters
tried on her, but Dan's critics said Mary wouldn't be able to pull
this task off. So, Dennett devised another but more ingenious
intuition pump: Locked RoboMary. From now on my story will differ a
bit from Dennett's in order to make my point clearer (You can check
the original story in Dan’s 2006 book, Sweet Dreams).
Let's replace Mary with RoboMary: a robot just as adroit in cognitive
skills as any other human being but much more rapid in thinking and
with a greater bandwidth for information acquiring than any of us
could ever imagine would be possible in the future even by today's
standards of technological advancement. Even if she's a standard Mark
19 model, RoboMary was stripped of her HD Color Cameras and was
equipped with bulk black&white CCDs that have the same performance and
resolution but cannot compute colors. Also, RoboMary had been
restricted access to her color-experience modules that were part of
her silica-made brain using some set of plug-ins installed into her by
her masters before her brain’s conscious capabilities were activated.
So, RoboMary has no experience of colors in her memory, and could
neither experience them through her black&white electronic eyes
because they can't render color, nor would she ever be able to put
herself into the state of experiencing them because she was denied
access to the color memory stack that was accessible by her color-
experience modules now blocked by the plug-ins. So, Locked-RoboMary,
trapped in her black&white room, with her black&white CCDs, without
her color rendering parts of her mechanized brain could apparently
never be able to experience colors. Or would she?
Even though her electronic color-experience brain modules were blocked
by the plug-ins installed at birth into her kernel software, the
design plans for that part of her electronic brain could be accessed
by her if she was trained enough to hack into the servers of the
corporation that happens to hold the patents for Mark 19 robots. Being
trapped in a room that has non-stop general-level access into the
network of the corporation and having access to the Internet this
makes her task so much easier. More to that she can converse with
other Mark 19 and Mark 20 robots. Low and behold, RoboMary managed to
hack into one of her robotic friends' computer some months ago by
installing a version of a Trojan horse that she managed to program in
her spare time; the fun part is that his friend which is now part of
the developing team for Mark 21 models thanks to the months of
training and million-dollar software installed into him has two levels
higher network access to the complete design files for Mark 19 robots.
That's how RoboMary managed to educate herself about the hardware and
software that makes up her brain, about her robot mechanics and the
design of the electronics from which her currently missing HD Color
Cameras are build. She now completely understands the functionality of
all the subsystems that make her color-experiencing modules even
though she still cannot access them directly. Having access to Moogle,
which is now the greatest and most used search engine on the Internet
network, she can easily access all information having to do with
vision and vision systems. By accessing the web she understands the
physics and chemistry of color, acquires vast knowledge about the
biomechanics of vision in humans with all the details on how their
color detection systems are wired into their brains, etc. Nothing
about vision and the world of physics, biology, artificial-
intelligence and bio-technology is un-known to her. She has an almost
complete third-person perspective on everything there is to know from
the world (also on everything there is to know from the design of Mark
19 robots) that has anything to do with colors. But how could she
build into herself the phenomenal, personal, ineffable experience of
colors having only third-party data about these phenomena? How could
she do that when, in the first place, one needs to have been in that
state of first-person experiencing sometime in the past, privilege she
was denied off at birth?
So, on Sunday afternoon, having some hours off because her training
has ended prematurely due to failure of all the Design and Development
server farms in the building complex she happened to be installed,
RoboMary put herself onto the task of building into herself the
experience of colors which were described by her robotic friends as
very awkward and unusual tools used to study the surface properties of
objects. She was now ready to do this because she gathered all the
data which was needed in order achieve this task. All she lacked up
until now was the computing power from the supercomputer located in
her building and which she now had access to because its processors
are not as stressed in this afternoon "thanks" to the cessation in
normal operation of the server clusters; she could now use that those
extra flops for herself in order to see what's so special about these
colors.
Being locked inside her room RoboMary had no colored object she could
study. Nothing colored ever touched her senses so she had to make use
of the ingenuity which always made her the adroitful robot she proved
to be. Having access to the higher level network though the trojan
virus she installed in her robotic friend's computer she could
replicate and simulate a complete digital model of her brain (and the
original HD Color Cameras that usually equip Mark 19 robots) inside
the currently laid-off supercomputer located in her building; that
would be no problem to her because she managed to steal all the Mark
19 design files; all she needed now was a few hours in order to built
the replica model into the system of the supercomputer and to make a
few thousand simulations on it using as input the few terabytes of
video-data gathered from all the security cameras spread inside the
corporation building complex she was living in (all those stolen video
recordings were in color format but that was no use to her because the
LCD screen inside her room was black&white) plus the gigabytes of
scientific information on vision systems, optics, colors, etc. But how
was she going to put herself into the state of experiencing colors if
there were no color that tickled her senses? All was black& white
around her.
Well, if you remember the story of how architects create specific
camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) inside their 3D modeling software in
order to experience a certain point-of-view (POV) of whatever model of
reality or of their imagination they are designing, maybe building
color experience inside oneself without ever having experienced colors
may not seem that unbelievable after all. Remember that RoboMary knows
everything about the physical world there is to be known. Couldn't she
simulate (that is by a third-person perspective of course) what the
brain state of a Mark 19 robot would be upon experiencing colors using
a computer model of this type of robot and subjecting it to a
completely digital replica of a LCD monitor screen onto which the
stolen colorized security videos would be projected onto? The CAD/CAM
software for integration of optical and electronic mechanics in 2050
is highly advanced so this wouldn’t be at all an impossible task; it's
would be quite ordinary in fact. Having access to the brain states
(i.e. the color-experiencing modules) of the simulated Mark 19 brain
while its mind experiences colors that would mean RoboMary could
easily make some print-screens of those brain states and then put
herself into the specific mental point-of-view (POV – or mental point
of reference) that would allow her to experience what-it-is-likeness
of colors by building into her RAM a complete replica of those color-
experiencing modules and setting them up with the data captures in the
print-screens. Also, having a complete list of all the belongings of
the corporation, their GPS position, their colors, that means she
could easily deduce from their position in the stolen videos how a
specific object's color is named so that she could easily build into
herself the color-verbal associations that every other Mark 19 robot
and human being has already built in. So, when the "playful"
scientists release RoboMary from here color bereft room and give her a
blue banana they will be the ones amazed by the lack of non-
astonishment in her behavior; RoboMary will completely call their
spoof. Many will deny that the above story could ever be true or, more
interestingly, some will retort that what RoboMary did was cheating.
But would that be true in any sense of the word? Is it failure of
imagination on the side of the party-popper philosophers perhaps?
Some may retort that what may be a true fact for architecture and 3D
computer modeling is not even close at explaining special phenomenal
qualities like colors, pains, etc. But then again, why would that be a
possibility worth taking into consideration? What qualia is, this what-
it-is-likeness, is not something metaphysical (at least that is what
we should a priori consider it if we ever wish to explain it),
indescribable by third-party objective data; it is in fact just the
intentional interpretation of the apparent immediateness in
understanding of the sumptuousness (which is 100% accountable) of
whatever particular POV’s description we are acknowledging at the
moment. The richness in the description of the POV and its
acknowledgement is the what-it-is-likeness; there is nothing
metaphysical about it. By using only third-party, objective data
RoboMary built into herself the experience of color so how could she
be cheating? How was she able to put herself into experiencing the so-
called ineffable, private phenomenal qualities of colors by only using
data provided by science? Would that be because colors are from this
world, not so ineffable, not so private qualities after all?
Qualophiles may retort by further stating that the POV's description
doesn't explain the specialness of the WIIL because my explanation
misses the enjoyer, the analyzer, but, as I've stated above, that is
just an illusion because there is an analyzer: the virtual machine in
the brain takes care of all those tasks of acknowledging and
discrimination. So, there should be no mystery about who the enjoyer
is and the means by which it achieves the acknowledgement of POV’s
mathematical description.
Others think otherwise. Consider what Torin Alter has to say about
Dennett's Locked RoboMary intution pump:
"Why does putting herself in state B enable RoboMary to know what it’s
like to see red? B is a dispositional and (let us assume)
nonphenomenal
state; there is nothing it’s like to be in B. Nevertheless, B involves
color phenomenology in that it contains the relevant phenomenal
information. Therein lies the problem for Dennett’s argument. By
putting herself in a state that involves color phenomenology, RoboMary
cheats. Pre-release
Mary should be no less puzzled about B than she is about seeing red.
If she lacks phenomenal information about seeing red, then she lacks
the phenomenal information that B contains. If there are open
epistemic possibilities about the nature of phenomenal redness that
she cannot eliminate, then there are open epistemic possibilities
about the content of B that she cannot eliminate. RoboMary comes by
her phenomenal knowledge of color experience not by a priori deduction
from physical information but rather by putting herself in a
nonphenomenal dispositional state that contains the relevant
phenomenal information. (The case for Qualia, p252-253)"
So Torin Alter's argumentation goes like this: "Why would architects
that adopt certain camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) in their 3D model of
Rome come to experience the what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of Rome? There
is nothing like experiencing something that would be born from a point-
of-view (POV), is it? POVs are from-this-world, non-phenomenal (not-
metaphysical) descriptions of reality so how can they account for the
WIIL of Rome? By accessing the POV and practically acknowledging its
"sudden" mathematical and geometrical description architects cheat
because even though they've accepted and recognized all the above they
are missing something important. There is more to the WIIL of the POV
than the intentional interpretation of its mathematical description."
That's nonsense of course! The arguments don't line up and are
obviously self-contradictory. Saying that the specialness of POVs
could not be accounted for by their mathematical description only, but
also by the fact that they possess something special, out of this
world is just plain old unmotivated fantasy and sky-hook anchoring of
an illusion as old as debates about brain an mind. A brain only needs
its virtual machine and its specialized intentional discrimination
devices in order to process the description of the POV and that
discrimination done by the brain is the WIIL. So, to finish my
deductive reasoning, what Alter is actually saying is that if color-
bereft RoboMary could manage to achieve the task of putting herself
into the state of experiencing colors only by using third-party,
scientific data that would mean qualia is just a messed-up term
invented by science-deprived, imagination-bereft philosophers, and
that would make the mystery go away! Quales would be from-this-world,
100% explainable, non-magical tools used by the brain to discriminate
different properties from their external world. The magic of
phenomenal experience would fade away like the blink of an eye, at
least that's what qualophiles fear. How else could RoboMary build into
herself the experience of colors she now enjoys, only by using
objective data, if this so-called "color quales" weren't completely
accountable and traceable by that data? So, RoboMary has got to cheat,
Alter says, otherwise color quales wouldn't be out of this world.
Alter's got an agenda all right but I doubt it is finding out the
truth if he keeps postulating things out of this world which will, by
definition, always defy scientific explanation. Let's not confuse
failures in imagination with truths about reality.
To take the analogy with 3D computer modeling a little farther we can
say that just like an architect enjoys objects from a computer model
through the custom CPOV (having whatever custom properties its
designer want it to have) created by its 3D modeling software, by the
same line of reasoning we could say that Mark 19 robots are given
“immediate” representations of color experiences through the HD color
cameras they posses and are able to acknowledge that richness of
information through their color-experiencing modules (there are
another sort of CPOV). In the case of RoboMary that couldn’t be
possible because she was bereft of the HD color cameras and her color-
experience modules. But she managed to get around this problem by
building a complete digital replica of a Mark 19 robot and calculating
how her color discriminating systems would functionally look and
behave from third-person perspective; just like architects that can
calculate and draw camera-points-of-view (CPOVs) without the help of
computers RoboMary managed to "calculate" and "draw" to herself the
WIIL of colors. If was just that it took a lot more time, but it was
worth it: she could now appreciate the mechanisms that bring colors to
reality; and oddly enough, colors are so much more interesting because
she now knows that what brings them to reality are just physical
subsystems build onto bigger modules that are further arranged into
intricate discrimination systems of which's functionality is all that
matters.
Craig Weinberg
> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>
> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
> your opinion about what it says.
>
> Thanks!
>
> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>
> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
> they're discussing
abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
subjectivity that they use to deny it with. Agreement is not a
contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
(psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
unique or idiosyncratic. We are both human so we share the broader
levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
narrows and deepens toward individuality.
>about even though as far as I've been able to
> understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
> would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
> bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
> personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
> reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
have a chance: http://s33light.org/SEEES
> How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
> subject it to what science has been and will always be?
in a cave of pseudo-certainty and throwing rocks at people who ask
about subjectivity.
>Third-party analysis.
If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
definition subjective. Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
> So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
> quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
> but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?”
other way around.
> I ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
> respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
> sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
> we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
> analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
> some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
> build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
>
> The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
> market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
> whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
> by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain
They have no temperature or specific gravity. They are abstractions we
use to understand how we can manipulate semiconductors to act as
computation devices for us.The only physicality that 1s and 0s have
are as sensotimotive significators in the human mind. In a computer
they are not 1s and 0s, but concrete events experienced by doped
semiconductors of holding and releasing 'charge' (feeling or proto-
feeling or sensorimotive detection-reaction which we consider
'electromagnetic').
> though not of the
> same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
> that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
> of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
> on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
> adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
> details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
> large and complex computer programs.
>
> If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
> the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
> monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
> be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
> using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
> even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
> could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing.
nothing else in the universe would. Try to grow some real grapes in a
virtual Rome and it won't work. 3D models are an aid for human
visualization. They have no coherence independent of our usage of
them. Rome is a city made of tons of concrete, wood, ceramic, etc.
It's located in Italy and filled with living people who are constantly
changing the city, etc. A 3D model is an image in our eyes and mind
produced by a computer and a graphic display.
> Here we
> are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
> the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
> presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
> laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
> real world.
makes no sound. A picture of a city is not a city. The map is not the
territory, even a really good map.
>These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
> traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
> on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
> is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
> computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
> can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
> lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
> the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
> video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card.
aspect of a human visual representation. It is to say that an
accounting spreadsheet is 100% traceable to a factory and it's
employees.
in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?
> Of course, as said
> above, we can achieve the same WIIL by making strenuous calculations
> and draw ourselves on sheets of paper exactly the same POV “painted”
> to us by the computer program. Whatever our choice one thing stands to
> pure reason: We will achieve to experience the what-it-is-likeness
> (WIIL) of Rome by deducing it from objective, third-party data that we
> can all share by accessing the program file that contains the 3D-model
> third-person description; so there is nothing special about it.
what it was like for people who live there. This thought experiment is
based on a strawman of qualia, with no resemblance to actual
subjective experience. It is to say that by producing a perfect copy
of a book written in Chinese, whoever reads it will automatically be
able to read Chinese.
> The
> whole point is that the experience of the WIIL can be achieved and
> built by/for us using third-person data).
photographs. All of which are far superior qualitatively at enabling
WIIL experiences than anything that computers have achieved separately
from those media.
> The WIIL only seems to be
> some kind of metaphysical thing because of its circumstantial
> relatedness with the idiosyncrasies of the POV.
quark or a galaxy, it just 'insists' and 'persists' through time
rather than exists across space. What is metaphysical is the idea that
subjective perception spontaneously emerges from computation.
> No need to squander
> energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
> relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
> mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
> relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
> richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
> whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
> can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
> it’s all data, 0s and 1s.
at what point do 0s and 1s start to feel like they are on a side of
which intentionally interprets rather than one which performs generic
a-signifying data manipulations?
>The WIIL and the POV represent the same
> thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
> the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
> description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
> certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
> reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
> that data contained in the POV taken as a whole.
presentations of the same underlying ontology. The problem is that
your view arbitrarily privileges one view as real and the other as
'illusion' or 'metaphysical'. Both are real is some sense, unreal in
another, both real and unreal in another, and neither real nor unreal
in another. The underlying ontology is in fact the gap which separates
and the sense which infers the wholeness underneath the gap.
>The WIIL is all
> accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
blind person to give them a precise accounting of green?
> is 100% physical but non-reducible because of its intentionality, and
> how the circumstantial relation to its POV makes it seem as if it’s
> something separate from it but that's an illusion.
> The what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of points-of-view (POVs) in our model
> of Rome are unique in the sense that they each have idiosyncrasies in
> the arrangement of points, lines, planes, colors and light reflectance
> that make up the objects in the model, idiosyncrasies caused by the
> perspective that we randomly chose to be a point or a certain area
> (lens of the camera) on the map of our 3D model onto which the light
> reflected by some of the objects contained in it is projected through.
> The WIIL is 100% mathematically, geometrically described and accounted
> for by the calculations and drawings done in order to design the POV
> that we experience the WIIL through. To make it more clearly lets
> describe the relationship between the WIIL and the POV a little more.
> The WIIL is not something separate from the POV in one important sense
> and here sits the crux of my argumentation: The POV which was inferred
> and created from the objective, third-person perspective of the
> computer model is the WIIL in the sense that all we need to know if we
> are to describe the WIIL is the mathematical description of the POV
> and that is all. For someone (or something) to experience objects
> contained in the city model through a specific CPOV that is how WIILs
> come into existence. The sole act of accessing that POV (i.e, its
> mathematical description) is the WIIL.
individual perception. Without a graphic display and eyes to see it,
there is no POV.
The question "And then what
> happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
> said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
> can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
> every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
> think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
> objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
> on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
> mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
> world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
> remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
> there to be said; the story is complete.
and geometric descriptive richness, only precision and resolution.
There is no world-making quality of perception oozing out of abstract
coordinates and points.
> Acknowledging the richness in
> description of the mathematical and geometric data does not mean that
> the observer needs to understand all the intricate equations,
> elaborate calculations and geometric deductions; all there needs to be
> done is for that observer is to be hit with all that idiosyncratic
> data ". “Can you describe this WIIL?" Of course, by providing you with
> all the mathematical relations between all the points, planes and
> surface properties that describe the POV through which this wholeness
> of experience (WIIL) comes to reality. How did i get those points and
> planes and their properties? Again, I got them from the third-party,
> objective data contained in the 3D-model of the city located on the 1s
> and 0s hardwired on the hard-drive of the computer.
of feeling in one's teeth, the blueness of blue. Those are examples of
qualia, not a CGI interactive map of Rome.
>
> Something on privateness now. The WILL is only private in the sense
> that only something which experiences a certain POV can experience its
> WIIL but that is all. Can this POV be shared with others? Of course.
> After we create that CPOV in the computer program we can save it to a
> file and send it via email to whatever part of the globe you want for
> someone else to experience its WIIL. So, the possibility of sharing it
> with others makes it a not very good candidate for privateness. POVs
> are only unique, but hardly private so let's not confuse the terms.
you an mp3 but my WILL of that song is that it is a great song but
yours may be a boring song.
>
> The same reasons as above I should say go for the qualia of color,
> smells, etc. So, I doubt there is any difference with these types of
> experiences. What it is like to see a color is just experiencing the
> complete model from a slice of the world from a certain POV.
need more than one sense? What it's like to hear music is nothing like
seeing something, even in synesthesia where the sense 'data' is
presumably directly translated from one sense modality to another. The
data is the same, but the qualia *cannot be translated* even if the
end result from a functional perspective might seem the same to an
outside observer (ie if I am seeing a base drum sound instead of
hearing it, I can produce accurate estimates of the timing, intensity,
rhythm, etc of the drum, but I cannot hear it).
> Why can't
> that POV be deduced and inferred from the widely agreed-upon,
> sufficient, scientific data as qualophiles’ plea for metaphysics
> suggest eludes me so far as i can see,
they are actually talking about. I agree that qualia are not
metaphysical though, unless you are talking about physics only in
terms of material objects as seen from the outside. Qualia is physical
alright, which is why they are altered with a molecule like LSD, but
there is nothing about the molecule LSD which is significant or
interesting without a human nervous system to experience it.
> so that's why the they haven't
> proved anything yet. I doubt they'll ever will. If we knew almost
> everything there is to know about the particles and forces that make
> up our world we could be able to build models of whatever brains we'd
> like that could experience all there is to be possible designable as
> an experience.
about particles and forces already to do that.
>
> Daniel Dennett's RoboMarry shouldn't have a hard job at building color
> into herself without access to the already build in color-modules that
> are part of her 100% silica made brain. And that's our next story.
http://s33light.org/post/14618926856
I'm not familiar with RoboMarry, but I'll debunk that for you if you
like another time. Dennett's worldview is obsolete. Mine is superior.
Craig
Craig Weinberg
>
>Thanks for taking the time to read about my analogy!
Sure, thanks for reading my responses!
>>
>> > The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
>> > I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
>> > translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
>> > your opinion about what it says.
>>
>> > Thanks!
>>
>> > <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>>
>> > It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
>> > mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a priori
>> > defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
>> > analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
>> > they're discussing
>>
>> abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
>> subjectivity that they use to deny it with. Agreement is not a
>> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
>> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
>> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
>> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
>> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
>> unique or idiosyncratic. We are both human so we share the broader
>> levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
>> different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
>> narrows and deepens toward individuality.
>
>materialists like Dennett don't deny it if i understand them corectly.
>I don't see what is stoping us from describing subjectivity in a way
>that makes possible theories about qualia testable. How are we going
>to achieve an explanation if the very quandary we're trying to explain
>is forlorn to another realm?
It's not another realm, it's right here, it just the opposite
ontological paradigm. It can be tested and explained, it's just that
the technology is a little problematic. We're probably going to need
volunteers to make their brain into a laboratory so that we can
integrate external appliances into the subjective scope. Only then
will we know what other organisms and ultimately inorganic matter
might experience so that we can begin to map the evolution of
sensorimotive significance.
>
>> >about even though as far as I've been able to
>> > understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
>> > would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
>> > bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
>> > personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
>> > reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
>>
>> have a chance:http://s33light.org/SEEES
>
Thanks. It's a work in progress for sure, but hopefully it gets some
of the major points across.
>
>
>> >Third-party analysis.
>>
>> If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
>> will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
>> definition subjective. Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>>
>
>definition subjective so it cannot be explained by third-party
>scientific data" other than a cry for dualism or for the metaphysical?
I just mean that to say third-party is already a distinction from
first person, which is what subjective means. You are saying in effect
"Science will always be only about dehydration, so it's silly to say
that we will never have dehydrated water".
It's not dualism, it's an involuted monism which is multisense at one
end, monosense at the other. Think of how specular reflection works.
You see the sky in a puddle of water from one angle, but from another
you see the water. In one sense the puddle is what is literally real,
in another it's merely a generic reflector to display the sky for you.
That's what the universe is. Not dumb particles that magically become
smart just because there is an especially large quantity of them, but
events which are particulate in one sense and sensorimotive
experiences in another.
>It is just like saying: Vitalism contains by its definition "elan
>vital" so science must adapt in order to explain this special sauce,
>that must, a priori - by your postulates -, be out of this world.
It's not metaphysical, in fact it's so concrete and obvious that we
miss it. It's the 'elephant in every room'. You are reading this by
looking through your eyes, are you not? Where is that happening? Right
here. It's actually the materialist position which banishes
consciousness to a metaphysical never-never land of representation or
computation...some magical dimension in which quintillions of 1s and
0s come to believe that they are loaves of bread and hydrogen bombs.
The 'real world' imagined by computationalism is a completely
different sense of reality than direct subjectivity based on indirect
observations and measurements (of other perceptual inertial frames).
It is to interpret ourselves in the eyes of inanimate instruments that
have no capacity to make sense of who and why we are, only what our
bodies are and how they work.
>
>
>
>
>> > So, here it is: Qualia, one of the last remaining unresolved
>> > quandaries for us to splinter and rise on the pedestals of science,
>> > but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... “Because what?”
>>
>> other way around.
>>
>
>game over then. You've got your story right there.
Is science so pathetic and feeble that it cannot stretch and expand
it's intelligence to accommodate ordianry reality? An infant
understands subjectivity, an insect. Subjectivity isn't complicated,
it's just hard to work with because of the problems of ubiquity,
disorientation, etc. (it's in my multisense intro)
>
>> > I ask. “Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia” most of them will
>> > respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
>> > sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
>> > we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, “aprioristic
>> > analysis”. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
>> > some analogies while telling the story of how architects and designers
>> > build 3D models of reality with the help of 3D modeling software.
>>
>> > The 1s and 0s that make the large variety of 3D design software on the
>> > market today are all we need in order to bring to virtual-reality
>> > whatever model of our real world we desire. Those 1s and 0s, which are
>> > by the way as physical as the neurons in your brain
>>
>> They have no temperature or specific gravity. They are abstractions we
>> use to understand how we can manipulate semiconductors to act as
>> computation devices for us.The only physicality that 1s and 0s have
>> are as sensotimotive significators in the human mind. In a computer
>> they are not 1s and 0s, but concrete events experienced by doped
>> semiconductors of holding and releasing 'charge' (feeling or proto-
>> feeling or sensorimotive detection-reaction which we consider
>> 'electromagnetic').
>>
>
>all that matters.
What's a physical one or zero? What function do they have?
>Their dance, which is as dynamical as the dance of
>the ions in your neurons, is as real as the chemistry in your brain.
Nothing is made of 1s or 0s, except maybe an artwork or computer data
viewed through a binary editor. They don't exist any more than A's and
E's.
>So I don't see your point here. You're maybe saying that you can't
>make buildings out of steel and dry wall, but only from masonry and
>concrete; I flatly deny it, even though you may reject my analogy.
No I'm saying that you can't make real buildings out of *pictures* of
steel and drywall (or anything else).
>
>The statement that zeros and ones are somehow abstract and
>disconnected from physical reality deserves its place on the shrine-of-
>fail near concepts like epiphenomenalism and quales. The zeros and
>ones that make up our computers are as physical as physical can get:
There *are no* zeros and ones that make up our computers at all. There
are semiconducting microelectronic assemblies which we stimulate with
electromotive power, causing the doped silicon crystals to be
precisely controlled to alternate between states of conductivity and
resistance. You could call them anything, yin and yang, stop and go,
Apollonian and Dionysian, whatever. There is nothing about them that
is literally one or zero. We use binary math to bridge the gap between
our human intellect and the primitive sense of semiconductor
technology, that's all.
>there’s in the voltages on your network wire, in the logical gates of
>almost all of your computer’s integrated circuits, in you hard-disk
>stored as magnetic patterns, on your processor stored in micro-
>circuits with the width of only a few tens of atoms.
No 1s or 0s anywhere in there at all. No more than there are dogs and
cats. Not literally. Figuratively, yes, 1s and 0s are an excellent way
for us to make sense of how these technologies work together. We
design them to be that way specifically, going to great lengths to
research and refine materials to behave in this way. Not so easy to
run the internet on a cheeseburger.
> If zeros and ones
>are real, physical things,
They aren't real in the sense that I assume you mean - that physics
would mean. To be real in that sense they would have to be found on
the periodic table of elements, the electromagnetic spectrum, or in
field equations for quantum physics. They aren't though. They are real
in the sense that color and odor are real but at the opposite end of
the sensorimotive continuum. They are thought-feelings which are
intended to represent 'information' evacuated of feeling.
> then in what sense would you use the term
>“abstract” when referring to Turing machines?
In the sense that a Turing machine is an ideal mechanism that can be
enacted in any physical substance which supports mechanical physics -
i.e. you probably need something that is solid at room temperature,
some source of mechanical energy, etc. You could probably enact a
Turing machine in Coke bottles or foam rubber as well as
microelectronics, but it wouldn't be easy. The machine itself though
is conceptual. The Coke bottles don't know that they are acting like a
Turing machine, and neither does an electronic computer, despite
appearances to the contrary.
>I don’t know, but
>whatever you mean is bound to failure because between Turing machines
>and computer programs, on the one hand, and brains and minds on the
>other hand there is absolutely no difference in how their prowess come
>to existence, at least we have no reason to believe otherwise if we a
>priori consider that their systemic architecture, their functionality
>is all that matters; that’s what gives off their talent.
That's not the case at all. The brain and mind absolutely do use
computation, but only in the service of the user. Computer programs
have no user of their own. They have no need for a presentation layer
within their logic. It's actually functionalism that is a dead end
since everything that the consciousness does would be better served by
unconscious processes (like digestion or immune response). There is no
purely functional explanation for the existence of any kind of
experience or awareness. Function matters, but it wouldn't if not for
the more primitive reality of sense making.
>For one to
>say that there is another story to be told besides the story of how
>the bigger parts of the brain are build upon its most bottom parts and
>how those sub-modules are integrated to each other is to fail at
>Science; why should you possible want to postulate another mystery
>that also needs an explanation when you’re trying to explain all there
>is to explain about a phenomenon?
Because that story is utterly meaningless if not for the other half of
the story of how owners of the brain use it to make sense of
themselves and the universe and to participate in them significantly.
It needs no explanation. 'I' only need to be what and who I am. What
needs to be explained is why the rest of the universe is not me, which
is relatively straightforward.
>
>My belief is that deniers of the strong AI thesis fail in two regards.
>On the one hand their mistake the physical states of 1s and 0s with
>the arbitrary tokens of 0 and 1 that we apply to them. The fact that 1
>and 0 are what we call numbers this doesn’t mean that what they really
>represent is abstract.
What is it that you imagine they represent? I understand exactly what
you are saying that you think AI critics mistake the symbolic
abstractions of 0 and 1 with the referents that those glyphs are
associated with, but I'm not mistaking your meaning at all. I'm
asserting positively that there is nothing about what 0 and 1 point to
that is common to all physical phenomena. By contrast, all phenomena
in the universe is describable in terms of sense.
>So, going a bit further, computer programs,
>even though they present themselves to thinkers like Searle as being
>just randomly-jazzed, non-understandable sets of ones and zeros are in
>fact the recipes for the dynamics of the functionalistic architecture
>of all the sub-modules that control the movement of electrons inside
>the PC that runs the software. The dance of the electrons on the
>silica chips that up your personal computer is all dynamical,
>physical, complex, functional, and can only be understood if one
>adopts the intentional stance.
The key words are 'understandable' and 'recipes'. The ones and zeros
are not the dance of electrons, they are a command and control
language or logos which are powerless to do anything unless they are
articulated through a physical technology (including our own
neurology).
>
>The second mistake deniers make is to a priori postulate that only
>certain kind of physical parts can build up a brain that has what we
>would call a mind.
It's not a mistake. No mind has every been observed to exist
independently of a brain, anywhere in the universe. You can't water a
sunflower with acetic acid or build a computer out of live hamsters,
so there is no reason to assume that the feelings of a living human
nervous system can be emulated in another physical environment. It's
possible, but I doubt it could work on silicon. I think you need
living cells to feel what an animal feels.
>They somehow excluded from this set of peculiar
>physical fragments of reality all the physical implementations of
>zeros and ones even though they didn’t provide any reason for it. So,
>for some reason, unbeknownst to some of the thinkers that brainstormed
>all of these issues in detail, we can apparently have a mind build out
>of ion pumps, synapses and axon hillocks but we cannot have one made
>out of CMOS gate arrays, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) gate arrays,
>index registers, and pad transceiver circuits.
You can't build a human mind out of orange peels and catalytic
converters either. We don't even know how to reconnect a severed
spinal cord to itself much make a motherboard feel romantic. Your
reasoning is sound, but your assumptions are exactly antithetical to
concrete reality. They are perfectly suited to developing technology
and information theory, but they take us in exactly the wrong
direction to understanding subjectivity and qualia.
>Of course I don’t
>believe that at all because there is no reason to. Again, as I’ve said
>above, why should you possible want to presuppose, for no scientific
>reason at all, that the micro-parts that make the meat of your brain
>have some extra stuff (mindality perhaps?)
They don't need any extra stuff. Human consciousness is just orders of
magnitude more elaborate than the sense that inorganic molecules make,
but it's essentially the same thing. What you don't realize is that if
you say that the mind is nothing but ones and zeros, then ones and
zeros *must* inherently have the potential to develop feeling and
thinking, in which case calling them ones and zeros would be
profoundly misleading.
> that will also need an
>explanation if we are to follow the rules of science, whereas the
>chunks of silicon, silver, plastics, etc that make up your computer
>don’t posses it, when all you’ve got as an argument is your intuition
>about the specialness of subjectivity?
It's not subjectivity that is special, it's human subjectivity that is
special to humans (and maybe on some more objective scale). The
silicon, silver, plastics, etc all have subjectivity, just it's
presumably very primitive - like a trillion times more primitive. We
don't know how it is though. Maybe all silver is a single subjective
entity or something, who knows. If anything other than human DNA could
make a human mind though, it seems like we would see some indication
of that. Surely some pattern of melting snowflakes would have begun to
self-replicate by now if it could. The recipe for DNA is quite
specific, as is the recipe for human consciousness. I wouldn't count
on it being possible to export to something much different than our
native hardware. I'm not ruling it out, but it's the height of naivety
to toss out a billion years of biological evolution because we are
impressed with the specialness of our own computer programs designed
to simulate our own human logic.
>
>> > though not of the
>> > same assortment (see below), are further arranged into sub-modules
>> > that are further integrated into other different parts and subsystems
>> > of the computer onto which the software they are part of is running
>> > on, so their arrangement is obviously far from aleatory. One needs to
>> > adopt the intentional stance in order to understand the intricacies,
>> > details and roles that these specific particular modules play in this
>> > large and complex computer programs.
>>
>> > If you had the desire you could bring to virtual reality any city of
>> > the world you want. Let's for example take the city of Rome. Every
>> > monument, restaurant, hospital, park, mall and police department can
>> > be accounted for in a detailed, virtual replica which we can model
>> > using one of these 3D modeling programs. Every car, plane and boat,
>> > even the people and their biomechanics are so well represented that we
>> > could easily mistake the computer model for the real thing.
>>
>> nothing else in the universe would. Try to grow some real grapes in a
>> virtual Rome and it won't work. 3D models are an aid for human
>> visualization. They have no coherence independent of our usage of
>> them. Rome is a city made of tons of concrete, wood, ceramic, etc.
>> It's located in Italy and filled with living people who are constantly
>> changing the city, etc. A 3D model is an image in our eyes and mind
>> produced by a computer and a graphic display.
>
>world and you get your story right there.
Obviously, but then your 3D model has to model biology and agriculture
as well as physics. Even then it's still only a silhouette of grapes.
Nothing more than a cartoon with an encyclopedia plugged into it.
>Do you deny that there could
>ever be a computer simulated program that simulated grapes from the
>real world almost exactly?
I deny that simulation exists. It's a subjective interpretation. Is a
plastic plant almost exactly a real plant? To who? Aphids? No. Your
sense of smell or taste? No. For a computer program to simulate grapes
almost exactly, I would have to be able to drink their juice and
recognize it as grape juice. Real yeast would have to be able to turn
it into real wine. A computer simulation is just a cartoon. It has no
universal realism, only human visual-cognitive pseudo-realism.
>If you knew everything about the world
>(objective data) you could know everything about grapes from your
>computer simulation.
Objective data is not a real thing. Grapes have no objective data.
They are nothing but quantum entanglements or ephemeral specks of
fruiting vine processes on a tiny planet. To a colony of yeast they
are a world to conquer. To a grape vine they may be an embodiment of
botanical destiny, self-actualization. A five year old child knows
more about grapes than any computer simulation ever could.
>
>> > Here we
>> > are looking at the monitor screen from our God-like-point-of-view. All
>> > the points, lines, 2D-planes and 3D objects in this digital
>> > presentation have their properties and behavior ruled by simulated
>> > laws of physics which are identical to the laws encountered in our
>> > real world.
>>
>> makes no sound. A picture of a city is not a city. The map is not the
>> territory, even a really good map.
>
>objects and their physics, chemistry ,etc. You deny that there ever
>could be such a simulation?
No I just deny that it's anything more than expensive puppetry. It's a
nice map, nothing more.
>
>> >These objects and the laws that govern them are 100%
>> > traceable to the 1s and 0s, that is, to the voltages and transistors
>> > on the silica chips that make up the computer onto which the software
>> > is runs on. We have a 100% description of the city of Rome in our
>> > computer in the sense that there is no object in that model that we
>> > can't say all there is to say about it and the movement of the points,
>> > lines and planes which compose it because they're all accounted for in
>> > the 0s and 1s saved on the hard-drive and then loaded into the RAM and
>> > video-RAM of our state of the art video graphics card.
>>
>> aspect of a human visual representation. It is to say that an
>> accounting spreadsheet is 100% traceable to a factory and it's
>> employees.
>
>tried to make din't need a perfect simulation, exact representation of
>the real world. I was trying to prove something else. Merely, that
>subjectivity can be derived from 3rd-party data. I don't see where i
>failed.
Because if we found a human brain without having our own subjective
experience to correlate it with, we could not in a trillion years
guess that there was a such thing as subjectivity. Everything that can
be derived from 3rd party data relates only to other 3rd part function
and gives no hint whatsoever of any significant experience going on.
Therefore, any model derived purely from 3rd party data would be
catastrophic to subjectivity - a complete amputation of qualia and
sentience.
>> in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?
>
I'm just pointing out how narrow it is to conceive of 3D computer
graphics as a viable thought experiment for virtualizing subjectivity.
>
>>
>> > No need to squander
>> > energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
>> > relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
>> > mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
>> > relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
>> > richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
>> > whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
>> > can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
>> > it’s all data, 0s and 1s.
>>
>> at what point do 0s and 1s start to feel like they are on a side of
>> which intentionally interprets rather than one which performs generic
>> a-signifying data manipulations?
>
>ones.
Why would it do a pointless and non-functional thing like that? Even
if there were a point, how could that be possible mechanically? We use
a GUI and computer languages for human convenience, but a computer
doesn't need a monitor to do it's computing.
>The mental-lens that separates your qualia - presented to you by
>your joycean virtual machine - is the analogue of the lens in my 3d
>model simulation.
But what would be the point of any lens? Why and how would ones and
zeros ever seem to be anything other than exactly what they are? What
needs 'interpreting'?
>
>> >The WIIL and the POV represent the same
>> > thing but each are different interpretations of a specific slice of
>> > the 3D model: one is a reducible, mathematical and geometric
>> > description of a set of objects and how their would appear from a
>> > certain vantage point (i.e. the POV), the other one is the non-
>> > reducible, intentional, apparently immediate interpretation of all
>> > that data contained in the POV taken as a whole.
>>
>> presentations of the same underlying ontology. The problem is that
>> your view arbitrarily privileges one view as real and the other as
>> 'illusion' or 'metaphysical'. Both are real is some sense, unreal in
>> another, both real and unreal in another, and neither real nor unreal
>> in another. The underlying ontology is in fact the gap which separates
>> and the sense which infers the wholeness underneath the gap.
>
>party data.
Like how? An equation which will make a blind person see green when
they hear it spoken aloud?
>
>> >The WIIL is all
>> > accounted for, we know all about it: how it comes to existence, how it
>>
>> blind person to give them a precise accounting of green?
>
>concept of the triangle, but of course for colors it would take a hell
>of a lot more time.
Haha, like eternity? It's a category error. Color is a visual
experience which is either experienced directly or not at all. It
cannot be described in any other terms no matter how long you take to
try to conceptualize it.
>
>> The question "And then what
>>
>> > happens?" has no meaning here because nothing happens next. As I've
>> > said above you can think of POVs as reducible in the sense that they
>> > can be accounted for mathematically by knowing each coordinate of
>> > every point belonging to every object in its description, and you can
>> > think at WIIL as a non-reducible, intentional representation of the
>> > objects described by that POV taken as a whole by the observer sitting
>> > on the other side of the lens. The sole act of acknowledging the
>> > mathematical and geometric descriptive richness of a piece of the
>> > world through the lens of the camera-point-of-view (CPOV) by whatever
>> > remains on the other side of the lens is the WIIL and nothing more is
>> > there to be said; the story is complete.
>>
>> and geometric descriptive richness, only precision and resolution.
>> There is no world-making quality of perception oozing out of abstract
>> coordinates and points.
>
>of experiencing triangles either.
The difference is that you can feel a triangular shape with your skin,
so you could conceive of a triangle if you can feel it that way. You
can't feel color that way though.
>I don't see the difference with
>colors - other than the one consisting in how they achieve their
>functionalities.
Colors have no functionalites. Blindsignt proves that visual qualia is
not necessary for visual function.
>
>
>
>> Here's where I de-bunk Dennett's views if you're interested:
>>
>> http://s33light.org/post/14618926856
>>
>> I'm not familiar with RoboMarry, but I'll debunk that for you if you
>> like another time. Dennett's worldview is obsolete. Mine is superior.
>
Cool. Have a good night.
Craig
Stephen P. King
Forgive my .o2$ but is this not a discussion of the non-bijection
of that representations and referents? We forget that what we think of
as real and objective comes to use from the filter of our senses,
reality is not presented raw to us.
Onward!
Stephen
>>>> reality. They don�t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
>>>> but we must stop, qualophiles say, because, .... �Because what?�
>>> It's not qualia that must rise to the challenge of science, it is the
>>> other way around.
>>>
>> So science can't explain this special Qualia of yours - and mine. Ok,
>> game over then. You've got your story right there.
> Is science so pathetic and feeble that it cannot stretch and expand
> it's intelligence to accommodate ordianry reality? An infant
> understands subjectivity, an insect. Subjectivity isn't complicated,
> it's just hard to work with because of the problems of ubiquity,
> disorientation, etc. (it's in my multisense intro)
>
>>>> I ask. �Because the what-it-is-likeness of qualia� most of them will
>>>> respond. And believe me that is the whole argument from which they
>>>> sprout all of the other awkward deductions and misconstrued axioms if
>>>> we are to succinctly resume their rigorous, inner-gut, �aprioristic
>>>> analysis�. I'll try to expose the absurdity of their stance by making
>> there�s in the voltages on your network wire, in the logical gates of
>> almost all of your computer�s integrated circuits, in you hard-disk
>> stored as magnetic patterns, on your processor stored in micro-
>> circuits with the width of only a few tens of atoms.
> No 1s or 0s anywhere in there at all. No more than there are dogs and
> cats. Not literally. Figuratively, yes, 1s and 0s are an excellent way
> for us to make sense of how these technologies work together. We
> design them to be that way specifically, going to great lengths to
> research and refine materials to behave in this way. Not so easy to
> run the internet on a cheeseburger.
>
>> If zeros and ones
>> are real, physical things,
> They aren't real in the sense that I assume you mean - that physics
> would mean. To be real in that sense they would have to be found on
> the periodic table of elements, the electromagnetic spectrum, or in
> field equations for quantum physics. They aren't though. They are real
> in the sense that color and odor are real but at the opposite end of
> the sensorimotive continuum. They are thought-feelings which are
> intended to represent 'information' evacuated of feeling.
>
>> then in what sense would you use the term
>> �abstract� when referring to Turing machines?
> In the sense that a Turing machine is an ideal mechanism that can be
> enacted in any physical substance which supports mechanical physics -
> i.e. you probably need something that is solid at room temperature,
> some source of mechanical energy, etc. You could probably enact a
> Turing machine in Coke bottles or foam rubber as well as
> microelectronics, but it wouldn't be easy. The machine itself though
> is conceptual. The Coke bottles don't know that they are acting like a
> Turing machine, and neither does an electronic computer, despite
> appearances to the contrary.
>
>> I don�t know, but
>> whatever you mean is bound to failure because between Turing machines
>> and computer programs, on the one hand, and brains and minds on the
>> other hand there is absolutely no difference in how their prowess come
>> to existence, at least we have no reason to believe otherwise if we a
>> priori consider that their systemic architecture, their functionality
>> is all that matters; that�s what gives off their talent.
> That's not the case at all. The brain and mind absolutely do use
> computation, but only in the service of the user. Computer programs
> have no user of their own. They have no need for a presentation layer
> within their logic. It's actually functionalism that is a dead end
> since everything that the consciousness does would be better served by
> unconscious processes (like digestion or immune response). There is no
> purely functional explanation for the existence of any kind of
> experience or awareness. Function matters, but it wouldn't if not for
> the more primitive reality of sense making.
>
>> For one to
>> say that there is another story to be told besides the story of how
>> the bigger parts of the brain are build upon its most bottom parts and
>> how those sub-modules are integrated to each other is to fail at
>> Science; why should you possible want to postulate another mystery
>> that also needs an explanation when you�re trying to explain all there
>> is to explain about a phenomenon?
> Because that story is utterly meaningless if not for the other half of
> the story of how owners of the brain use it to make sense of
> themselves and the universe and to participate in them significantly.
> It needs no explanation. 'I' only need to be what and who I am. What
> needs to be explained is why the rest of the universe is not me, which
> is relatively straightforward.
>
>> My belief is that deniers of the strong AI thesis fail in two regards.
>> On the one hand their mistake the physical states of 1s and 0s with
>> the arbitrary tokens of 0 and 1 that we apply to them. The fact that 1
>> and 0 are what we call numbers this doesn�t mean that what they really
>> zeros and ones even though they didn�t provide any reason for it. So,
>> for some reason, unbeknownst to some of the thinkers that brainstormed
>> all of these issues in detail, we can apparently have a mind build out
>> of ion pumps, synapses and axon hillocks but we cannot have one made
>> out of CMOS gate arrays, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) gate arrays,
>> index registers, and pad transceiver circuits.
> You can't build a human mind out of orange peels and catalytic
> converters either. We don't even know how to reconnect a severed
> spinal cord to itself much make a motherboard feel romantic. Your
> reasoning is sound, but your assumptions are exactly antithetical to
> concrete reality. They are perfectly suited to developing technology
> and information theory, but they take us in exactly the wrong
> direction to understanding subjectivity and qualia.
>
>> Of course I don�t
>> believe that at all because there is no reason to. Again, as I�ve said
>> above, why should you possible want to presuppose, for no scientific
>> reason at all, that the micro-parts that make the meat of your brain
>> have some extra stuff (mindality perhaps?)
> They don't need any extra stuff. Human consciousness is just orders of
> magnitude more elaborate than the sense that inorganic molecules make,
> but it's essentially the same thing. What you don't realize is that if
> you say that the mind is nothing but ones and zeros, then ones and
> zeros *must* inherently have the potential to develop feeling and
> thinking, in which case calling them ones and zeros would be
> profoundly misleading.
>
>> that will also need an
>> explanation if we are to follow the rules of science, whereas the
>> chunks of silicon, silver, plastics, etc that make up your computer
>> don�t posses it, when all you�ve got as an argument is your intuition
>>>> a particular point-of-view (POV � or point of reference, call it how
>>>> you will). Camera objects simulate still-image, motion picture, or
>>>> video cameras in the real world and have the same usage here. The
>>>> benefit of cameras is that you can position them anywhere within a
>>>> scene to offer a custom view. You can imagine that camera not only as
>>>> a point of view but also as an area point of view (all the light
>>>> reflected from the objects in your particular world model enter the
>>>> lens of the camera), but for our particular mental exercise this
>>>> doesn't matter. What you need to know is that our virtual cameras can
>>>> perfectly simulate real world cameras and all the optical science of
>>>> the lens is integrated in the program making the simulated models
>>>> similar to the ones that are found real life. We�ll use POVs and CPOVs
>>>> interchangeably from now on; they mean the same thing in the logic of
>>>> our argumentation.
>>>> The point-of-view (POV) of the camera is obviously completely
>>>> traceable and mathematically deducible from the third-person
>>>> perspective of the current model we are simulating and from the
>>>> physical characteristics of the virtual lens built into the camera
>>>> through which the light reflected of the objects in the model is
>>>> projected (Bare in mind that the physical properties and optics of the
>>>> lens are also simulated by the computer model). Of course, the
>>>> software does all that calculation and drawing for you. But if you had
>>>> the ambition you could practically do all that work for yourself by
>>>> taking the 3D-model�s mathematical and geometric data from the saved
>>>> computer file containing your particular model description and
>>>> calculate on sheets of paper how objects from it would look and behave
>>>> from a particular CPOV, and more to that, you could literally draw
>>>> those objects yourself by using the widely known techniques of
>>>> descriptive geometry (the same as the ones used by the 3D modeling
>>>> software). But what point would that make when we already have
>>>> computers that achieve this arduous task for us? Maybe living in a
>>>> period of time without computers would make this easily relentless
>>>> task one worth considering.
>>>> So, we can basically take a virtual trip to whatever part of Rome we
>>>> want by just jumping inside a CPOV provided to us by the software. We
>>>> can see, experience what it is like to be in Rome by adopting whatever
>>>> CPOV which will be calculated and drawn to us by this complex but 100%
>>>> describable and understandable computer program. The software would be
>>>> no mystery to us if we were sufficiently trained programmers,
>>>> architects and mathematicians. The WIIL of experiencing Rome will
>>>> never be a mystery to us also if we�ll let the 3D design software do
>>>> the job of calculating and drawing the CPOV for us.
>>> Imagine how absurd that would sound to someone who is blind and lives
>>> in Rome. Do they have no WIIL of experiencing Rome?
>> Again, this does not refute what i was trying to prove.
> I'm just pointing out how narrow it is to conceive of 3D computer
> graphics as a viable thought experiment for virtualizing subjectivity.
>
>>>> No need to squander
>>>> energy contriving not-worth-considering meanings because of this
>>>> relatedness. The WIIL is the intentional interpretation of the
>>>> mathematical description of the physical objects' properties and
>>>> relationships to each other which the POV describes; it is the
>>>> richness and detail of the description of the POV taken as a whole by
>>>> whatever is on the other side of the lens. On the other hand the POV
>>>> can be accounted for by its mathematical and geometrical description;
>>>> it�s all data, 0s and 1s.
Craig Weinberg
> Hi,
>
> Forgive my .o2$ but is this not a discussion of the non-bijection
> of that representations and referents? We forget that what we think of
> as real and objective comes to use from the filter of our senses,
> reality is not presented raw to us.
>
Sure, that's part of it. We always have to start by being skeptical of
both objectivity, subjectivity, and our own skepticism (since
skepticism is a personal experience of cognitive sense making) as
well. To understand qualia is to realize that although they function
to represent, they themselves are referents as well, while the literal
objects in the universe can only ultimately be representations of
second-hand experiential referents which we share with other proto-
subjects. Objects are our verbal-cognitive abstractions of how matter
perceives matter. Subjects are our first hand perceptions as human
individuals. My hypothesis is that it is the symmetrical bijection and
non-bijection of the two that gives rise to realism on every level.
Craig
Bruno Marchal
On 23 Dec 2011, at 23:37, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>>
>> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
>> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
>> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
>> your opinion about what it says.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>>
>> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
>> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a
>> priori
>> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
>> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
>> they're discussing
>
> I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
> abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
> subjectivity that they use to deny it with.
You are quite unfair. the whole point of the UDA (and MGA) consists in
taking as important, and even fundamental (in the sense of "key", not
in the sense of "primary") the first person experience, and thus
consciousness.
> Agreement is not a
> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
> unique or idiosyncratic.
But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian dogma.
In my opinion biology is more universal than physics. psychology (of
numbers) is more universal than biology. The picture is rational and
almost upside down with aristotle ontology.
> We are both human so we share the broader
> levels, but begin to diverge in the biochemical level as we have
> different DNA. That divergence grows as the scope of the qualia
> narrows and deepens toward individuality.
>
>> about even though as far as I've been able to
>> understand they don't display the slightest scant of evidence which
>> would show that they believe there will ever be a theory that could
>> bridge the gap between the ineffable what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) of
>> personal experience and the scientific, objective descriptions of
>> reality. They don’t even try to brainstorm ideas about such a theory.
>
> My hypothesis tries to do exactly that. Check it out sometime if you
> have a chance: http://s33light.org/SEEES
>
>> How are we to explain this what-it-is-likeness (WIIL) if we can't
>> subject it to what science has been and will always be?
>
> By expanding science so that it is more scientific and not shivering
> in a cave of pseudo-certainty and throwing rocks at people who ask
> about subjectivity.
>
>> Third-party analysis.
>
> If science will always be limited to third-party analysis, then it
> will never be possible for it to address subjectivity, since it is by
> definition subjective.
This is wrong.
The discourse of science is methodologically (and wisely so, I would
add) limited to third person parties.
But the object of science is everything including consciousness,
qualia, private lives, hallucination, angel, gods, etc.
It is up to us to find proposition on which we agree, use them as
axioms of some sort, and derive propositions from them.
We can use our person stuff as data, not as argument.
> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the science,
will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
not member of some club).
Bruno
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com
> .
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
>
Craig Weinberg
> On 23 Dec 2011, at 23:37, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On Dec 22, 7:18 am, alexalex <alexmka...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Hello, Everythinglisters!
>
> >> The below text is a philosophical essay on what qualia may represent.
> >> I doubt you'll manage to finish reading it (it's kind of long, and
> >> translated from anoter language), but if you do I'll be happy to hear
> >> your opinion about what it says.
>
> >> Thanks!
>
> >> <<<A simpler model of the world with different points of view>>>
>
> >> It can often get quite amusing watching qualophiles' self-confidence,
> >> mutual assurance and agreement when they talk about something a
> >> priori
> >> defined as inherently private and un-accessible to third-party
> >> analysis (i.e. qualia), so they say, but they somehow agree on what
> >> they're discussing
>
> > I feel the same way about quantophiles' confidence in theoretical
> > abstraction and endless capacity to deny the existence of the very
> > subjectivity that they use to deny it with.
>
> You are quite unfair. the whole point of the UDA (and MGA) consists in
> taking as important, and even fundamental (in the sense of "key", not
> in the sense of "primary") the first person experience, and thus
> consciousness.
actually wasn't thinking of your work here which to me is more of a
arithmetic theology than a Dennett style quantitative mechanism.
>
> > Agreement is not a
> > contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
> > is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human beings
> > experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
> > levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
> > (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
> > unique or idiosyncratic.
>
> But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian dogma.
> In my opinion biology is more universal than physics.
physical process. Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
years, right?
> psychology (of
> numbers) is more universal than biology.
vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
I'm just pointing out that there is no such thing as third person
subjectivity. The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
flattened by externalization.
>
> > Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> > science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>
> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the science,
> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
> not member of some club).
>
ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'. They seem to have no
opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
Craig
Bruno Marchal
The UD argument is an argument based on the weaker version of
mechanism (and this makes its consequences valid for all stronger form
of mechanism).
> I
> actually wasn't thinking of your work here which to me is more of a
> arithmetic theology than a Dennett style quantitative mechanism.
Dennett uses the same comp hypothesis. Being rather rigorous, and
because he want to keep materialism, he is literally condemned to
eliminate consciousness away. I think most here (me and you in
particular) agree that it forget the most key data on consciousness,
that we cannot doubt it without lying to oneself.
>
>>
>>> Agreement is not a
>>> contradiction to the privacy of qualia because the privacy of qualia
>>> is specific to groups of subjects as well as individuals. Human
>>> beings
>>> experience universal levels of qualia (physics, chemistry), organic
>>> levels (biology, zoology, neurology), anthropomorphic levels
>>> (psychology, sociology), and individual levels which are relatively
>>> unique or idiosyncratic.
>>
>> But this, on the contrary, is only a succession of Aristotelian
>> dogma.
>> In my opinion biology is more universal than physics.
>
> Interesting. How so? If something dies, it still survives as a
> physical process.
In the dream of some numbers. Physical process, including time,
belongs to number's imagination (and this is not necessarily true, but
is a theorem in the comp theory).
> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> years, right?
Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
both conceptually and technically.
>
>> psychology (of
>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
That's ambiguous. We can have third person discourses on the first
person discourses.
> The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
> is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
> I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
> systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
> discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
> flattened by externalization.
By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
and different persons.
>
>>
>>> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
>>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>>
>> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
>> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
>> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the
>> science,
>> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
>> not member of some club).
>>
>
> We agree. It's surprising though that people's main criticism of my
> ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'.
I can disagree with them. there is no way to normalize science in a
way or another. We just find some argument irresistible, or
compelling, etc.
You are, at least coherent. You clearly believe in some primitive
matter, and abandon mechanism. I am still not convinced by the
argument you put against mechanism, because a lot of your intuition
already belongs to the subjectivity (or the discourse made by) of the
universal machines. In fact your problem is that your theory is
unclear. You really seems to reify both primitive matter (like
electromagnetism) and primitive mind, that you materialize in some
hard to understand ways.
> They seem to have no
> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is non
sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
Bruno
Craig Weinberg
>
> > Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> > matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> > Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> > years, right?
>
> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
> both conceptually and technically.
locally?
>
>
>
> >> psychology (of
> >> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> > I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> > vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> > an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> > quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia of
> > their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> > experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>
> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs. Computation is
felt directly as a sensorimotive experience, or it is inferred in a
physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
physical thinks it appears. The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
spirits, it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
through sense and motive. Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
Numbers have no independent realism.
congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
universally scoped).
>
> > The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
> > is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts, or,
> > I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
> > systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
> > discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
> > flattened by externalization.
>
> By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
> notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
> and different persons.
the way to understand how the subselves blur together to identify as a
person in the first place. Once you can join nervous systems, then you
could make appliances that could step down the process to any level so
that you could plug in other kinds of cells into the brain and feel
how it is to be them, then plug large molecules into the cells to see
what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
an interstellar scale even.
>
>
>
> >>> Since the nature of subjectivity cannot change,
> >>> science must adapt to fit the reality of the universe.
>
> >> Science is born doing that, a long time ago. Current practice, since
> >> about 1500 years put the mind-body problem under the rug. There are
> >> reason for that. It will still take time before theology, the
> >> science,
> >> will come back to academy and peer reviewed literature (real peers,
> >> not member of some club).
>
> > We agree. It's surprising though that people's main criticism of my
> > ideas are that 'science doesn't work that way'.
>
> I can disagree with them. there is no way to normalize science in a
> way or another. We just find some argument irresistible, or
> compelling, etc.
> You are, at least coherent. You clearly believe in some primitive
> matter, and abandon mechanism. I am still not convinced by the
> argument you put against mechanism, because a lot of your intuition
> already belongs to the subjectivity (or the discourse made by) of the
> universal machines. In fact your problem is that your theory is
> unclear. You really seems to reify both primitive matter (like
> electromagnetism) and primitive mind, that you materialize in some
> hard to understand ways.
both electromagnetic and sensorimotive phenomenology are primitive but
their realism is modulated by perspective. Both are real in some
sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
unreal in some sense. The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
'now'?) - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
others, both and neither in others.
My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
determinism. Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
superstition. If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
taken to it's literal extreme. If we take these profound perspectives
too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity. When
you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
then defensively denies it. That's what all sufficiently progressed
points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
which is really all that I'm after.
>
> > They seem to have no
> > opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> > physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> > suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> > It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> > born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>
> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is non
> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
out there? Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
cred? ;)
Craig
Bruno Marchal
I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers, the
programs, the digital machines, )
I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
>
>>
>>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
>>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
>>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
>>> years, right?
>>
>> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
>> both conceptually and technically.
>
> How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
> locally?
Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of the
relations are not biological.
But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> psychology (of
>>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>>
>>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
>>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
>>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
>>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
>>> of
>>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
>>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>>
>> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
>> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
>> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>
> I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be discovered
in arithmetic. The question of the existence of computations in nature
is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
> or physics,
> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
exists.
> Computation is
> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a bit
my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
felt. Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).
Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
has no meaning for me. Sorry.
> or it is inferred in a
> physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
> physical thinks it appears.
Why?
I think this view is a gross extrapolation from our animal instinct to
reify the indexicals. I belief that here and now and "I" and this and
that is more real than beyond.
Where does any place and time come from?
As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a person,
than the illusion of person to matter.
We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers and
they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
numbers.
Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
justified in some conditional way already by themselves,
> The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
> spirits,
It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers, of
many sorts.
> it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> through sense and motive.
All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
territory through sense and motive.
> Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
> local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
> manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
> arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
> kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
> Numbers have no independent realism.
In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
(Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy. But
just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any theory.
We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
"proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
surprising property of numbers.
Notably on numbers.
> You can't talk to a
> congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
> agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
> consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
> universally scoped).
I agree. That's even why I do not take a physical universe for
granted. Yet, physical realities will reappear as partial first person
plural agreement. This involves indirectly many universe, something
confirmed by the literal interpretation of Everett's formulation of QM.
>
>>
>>> The only way we can address consciousness scientifically
>>> is, as you say, to find agreements based on first person accounts,
>>> or,
>>> I think even better, by figuring out how to join multiple nervous
>>> systems experimentally. That way first person accounts can become as
>>> discrete and unambiguous as third person data but without being
>>> flattened by externalization.
>>
>> By joining the nervous system, you take the risk of blurring the
>> notion of person, and besides, of leaving the subject of other minds
>> and different persons.
>
> What's wrong with blurring the notion of person?
Nothing wrong, but you are fusing two persons into ine persons. One
day this will be a practice, and nature already does that when
building brain, which are really two UMs in front of each other, or
two brains in front of each others. Dissociative drugs permit self-
experimentation of that kind.
> I think that would be
> the way to understand how the subselves blur together to identify as a
> person in the first place.
Yes. That's interesting.
> Once you can join nervous systems, then you
> could make appliances that could step down the process to any level so
> that you could plug in other kinds of cells into the brain and feel
> how it is to be them,
No, you can't. You would diffract yourself. Only by chance can you
have less wrong feelings about that.
> then plug large molecules into the cells to see
> what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
> an interstellar scale even.
Interstellar is already infinitesimal compared to the arithmetical
scale on which our consciousness already supervene on.
But this does not diminish the interest of fusing and duplicating in
the quest for truth.
Then the 8 hypostases can be seen as multisense realism, except that
the primitive are given by the laws of addition and multiplication on
numbers, and that the theory is testable by the fact that physics is
given by such hypostase-modality-modulation.
> Both are real in some
> sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
> unreal in some sense.
"it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
each hypostases.
> The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
> sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
> figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
> view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
> it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
> 'now'?)
Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of the
machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
at least (and ask question).
> - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
> others, both and neither in others.
>
> My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
> continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
> experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
> there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
> determinism.
Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.
> Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
> superstition.
Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
possible wounds we do to ourselves.
> If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
> pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
> the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
> taken to it's literal extreme.
Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.
> If we take these profound perspectives
> too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
> neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
>
> Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
> meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
> ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
> contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
> meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
> hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
> objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
> poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity.
Hmm... That's very well said, but I feel it as rather feminine :)
> When
> you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
> powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
> other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
> along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
> universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
> is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
> then defensively denies it.
It does not. On the contrary, I am the one who say "looks the numbers
are already dreaming, and not only that, they chat in their sleep, and
we can listen to what they say.
You are the one who seems to dismiss their many concrete experiences.
> That's what all sufficiently progressed
> points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
> My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
> it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
> subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
> sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
> removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
> think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
> which is really all that I'm after.
We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown reason
you don't want the machines to be part of it.
You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
position (to be frank).
>
>>
>>> They seem to have no
>>> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
>>> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
>>> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
>>> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
>>> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>>
>> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
>> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
>> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is
>> non
>> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
>
> I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my hypothesis
> out there?
By writing text to convince other people, academic or not.
> Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
> cred? ;)
Not sure this would really help you, to be honest.
Also, I should first understand what you say, and all my work starts
from the fact that I am interested in explaining the physical, and the
spiritual, without assuming them at the start.
I buy everything in Aristotle, except his metaphysics. Plotinus and
many mystics got it right, I think.
We might depart greatly on mechanism: my real test for a theory is
"try to explain you theory to a universal machine, and if she can
explain it to me after, I will be convinced". Put in another way, you
have to convince me that you can formalize you theory in PA, or ZF, or
any not to complex or eccentric Löbian machine language. Or, (but it
is more complex) explain it to a Löbian non-machine entity, if you
really believe that you are not Turing emulable. I doubt this will add
any new observable effects, though.
You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of explaining
does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
explanation.
I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
lost its biological brain ...
Bruno
Craig Weinberg
> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>
> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers, the
> programs, the digital machines, )
in quantity? Seems superfluous.
>
> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product of
recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.
>
>
>
> >>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
> >>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
> >>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four billion
> >>> years, right?
>
> >> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more simple,
> >> both conceptually and technically.
>
> > How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
> > locally?
>
> Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of the
> relations are not biological.
> But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
> infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.
large as the infinity of physical relations?
>
>
>
> >>>> psychology (of
> >>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>
> >>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
> >>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of numbers
> >>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
> >>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
> >>> of
> >>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
> >>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>
> >> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
> >> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
> >> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>
> > I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
>
> This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be discovered
> in arithmetic.
or not it is discovering computation?
> The question of the existence of computations in nature
> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>
> > or physics,
> > any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>
> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
> exists.
a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a shadow is
in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
space.
>
> > Computation is
> > felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>
> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a bit
> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
> felt.
You have a sense of what the problem is, what outcome you intend, and
this provides a motive which propels your enactment of the
computation.
> Pain and pleasure, smell and taste, touch and vision can be
> felt, but not the underlying software and hardware (if that exists).
experience begins and ends on a human scale.
> Now an expression like "felt directly as a sensorimotive experience"
> has no meaning for me. Sorry.
participate in as a person. You don't just look at a math problem and
have no choice but to solve it, you have to choose to engage in this
tangible puzzling out of the thing. You have to try, maybe struggle,
to wonder, to feel 'aha!'. These are journeys of sense making
motivation on the human scale.
>
> > or it is inferred in a
> > physical system, but I doubt it can appear anywhere unless something
> > physical thinks it appears.
>
> Why?
associated with the interior of the physical universe. We don't see
any examples of phenomena with no physical association. Empty space
literally 'doesn't count'.
> I think this view is a gross extrapolation from our animal instinct to
> reify the indexicals. I belief that here and now and "I" and this and
> that is more real than beyond.
believe that the here and now and I is more real than everything else,
that is literally what subjectivity is. That's what I mean when I say
that subjectivity is about orientation and significance. What and who
is close to us, literally in space and time or figuratively in any
number of qualities and affinities, is what matters to us. The more
distant it is, the less it 'matters' and the more it is just
'matter' (or noise or illusion, etc). This is a universal truth of
subjectivity. No person has ever felt that their own survival was less
important than the survival of a distant star, even though that star's
destruction may destroy countless lives. Both views are real in a
sense and unreal in another.
> Where does any place and time come from?
involuting itself further as spatiotemporal multiplicity.
>
> As I said, it is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a person,
> than the illusion of person to matter.
>
> We don't see a physical primitive universe. Layman and babies do
> instinctively what physicist do all the time: they measure numbers and
> they infer relations between numbers, themselves compactified in
> numbers.
>
> Consciousness and other ineffable things comes from the fact that
> those numbers are related to theoretical number truth which are far
> beyond, of what they can proof or justified, as the numbers can
> justified in some conditional way already by themselves,
>
> > The universe is not haunted by arithmetic
> > spirits,
>
> It is the arithmetical realm which is haunted by universal numbers, of
> many sorts.
don't we see any examples of that? I need physical energy to run a
computer or a machine. Why is that?
>
> > it discovers and elaborates arithmetic as a new territory
> > through sense and motive.
>
> All universal numbers discover and elaborate arithmetic as new
> territory through sense and motive.
elaboration. As far as we know.
>
> > Sense and motive may well be guided by non-
> > local, non-temporal influences, but that guidance can only be
> > manifested through physical description and it's not only to do with
> > arithmetic but morphology, language, emotion, personality, etc. Many
> > kinds of strange attractors and archetypes for sense and motive.
> > Numbers have no independent realism.
>
> In that case your theory might be just not interesting, in the sense
> that for most humans, numbers are the most possibly independent thing
> they can conceive of. It needs only the common part to classical
> (Plato, Hilbert) and constructive (Aristotle, Brouwer) philosophy. But
> just can't dispense of them or their recursive equivalent in any theory.
> We need numbers (or equivalent) to give sense to the word "theory",
> "proof", "deduction", "valid", etc. All civilisation discovered
> surprising property of numbers.
a critical link between subjectivity and objectivity. I'm just saying
they present us with a framework which we can elaborate on forever
without ever making sense of biological feeling.
don't have an adequate sense of numbers. We overlap much more in other
areas and opinions. But yes, if we did overlap, the level of precision
and dis-ambiguity is absolute. That is the purpose of enumeration.
That's why I call it the exoskeleton of sense, just as it could be
said that law is the exoskeleton of motive.
>
> > You can't talk to a
> > congenitally blind person about green. Partial intersubjective
> > agreement isn't the same thing as objective definition (or what we
> > consider objective, even if it's only intersubjectivity more
> > universally scoped).
>
> I agree. That's even why I do not take a physical universe for
> granted. Yet, physical realities will reappear as partial first person
> plural agreement. This involves indirectly many universe, something
> confirmed by the literal interpretation of Everett's formulation of QM.
agency inside out.
diffracted. Why can't I have a crab or a bag of algae instead of a
left hand?
>
> > then plug large molecules into the cells to see
> > what is experienced there, etc. Build giant arrays to try to feel on
> > an interstellar scale even.
>
> Interstellar is already infinitesimal compared to the arithmetical
> scale on which our consciousness already supervene on.
> But this does not diminish the interest of fusing and duplicating in
> the quest for truth.
like the eight trigrams of the I Ching. There is deep and universal
truth there, but deep universality is ultimately a privileged semantic
awareness. Most of what our lives are about is not deep, universal, or
true. Multisense realism embraces this as an ontological reality.
>
> > Both are real in some
> > sense, unreal in some sense, both real and unreal and neither real nor
> > unreal in some sense.
>
> "it exists" and "for all" has indeed different meaning according to
> each hypostases.
>
> > The realism arises from the symmetry - the very
> > sense of being literally only one thing in one sense and many
> > figuratively many things in another. I think mechanism is a monosense
> > view of that symmetry which necessarily de-presents realism it to make
> > it into one generic universal computation (how or why does UD create
> > 'now'?)
>
> Because the modality Bp & p defines an arithmetical indexical knower.
> Bp is the usual self-referential ideally correct assertive mode of the
> machine. "Bp & p" provides an innefable, unnameable self, which plays
> the role of the subject building its personal mental mindscape.
> But to get this you should read the second part of the sane04 paper,
> at least (and ask question).
exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
not an apple.
>
> > - which is great and true in some ways, terrible and false in
> > others, both and neither in others.
>
> > My view is that your view is a particular region of a symmetrical
> > continuum of sense. The continuum is such that subjective feeling is
> > experienced here and now, objective unfeeling is inferred then and
> > there. Look at subjectivity through the lens of objectivity and we get
> > determinism.
>
> Hmm... I would say we get the indeterminism. Like in the UD, where we
> look indeed at the subjective through the lens of the objective.
deterministic paths will be chosen statistically, not in the sense of
genuine creativity,novelty, and intention.
>
> > Look at objectivity through subjectivity and we get
> > superstition.
>
> Superstition, but also "the boss is right" and the ten thousand
> possible wounds we do to ourselves.
levels.
>
> > If we take these perspectives too literally, we get
> > pathological de-presentation (http://s33light.org/post/14722448115) in
> > the form of fundamentalism or materialism. Computationalism too if
> > taken to it's literal extreme.
>
> Less sure. Computationalism is a vaccine against reductionism. There,
> we can quickly see reductionism cannot work.
kicked in yet?
>
> > If we take these profound perspectives
> > too figuratively, we over-privilege the mundane perspective and
> > neurotically attached to the minutiae of the everyday.
>
> > Bruno's perspective I would characterize as straddling the profound
> > meridian - the least involuted region at which the highest and lowest
> > ideal monosense blur into each other. This is where monastic
> > contemplation of divinity meets arithmetic puzzle solving. I Ching
> > meets Boolean algebra. Eschewing both the florid presentations of
> > hypertrophied subjectivity and the dull representations of material
> > objects, this region of the continuum is about the poetry of the anti-
> > poetic. Purity and universality, an arid and masculine clarity.
>
> Hmm... That's very well said, but I feel it as rather feminine :)
instead of being masculine itself. It's more of a Hermetic priesthood
that is rooted in non-anthropomorphic sentience. You're right, it
could be rather feminine in the sense of being receptive and oracular,
full of secrets.
>
> > When
> > you look at the rest of the continuum from this perspective, some
> > powerful truths are revealed and others are concealed, just like any
> > other perspective along the continuum, but unlike any other place
> > along the continuum, this profound region relates specifically to
> > universality and truth as an abstract essence. My only problem with it
> > is that I think it diminishes the realism of concrete experience, and
> > then defensively denies it.
>
> It does not. On the contrary, I am the one who say "looks the numbers
> are already dreaming, and not only that, they chat in their sleep, and
> we can listen to what they say.
> You are the one who seems to dismiss their many concrete experiences.
experiences are the experiences of numbers. How can you be so sure
that numbers exist or have experiences independently of physical
entities making sense of themselves and their world that way?
>
> > That's what all sufficiently progressed
> > points of view do, otherwise they lose their integrity and progress.
> > My view doesn't have to be for everyone, and it could certainly have
> > it's own pathological extremism (after all, my method makes
> > subjectivity more generic and literal while revealing the
> > sensorimotive multiplicity of objects, so that I'm even further
> > removed from realism by abstracting the whole thing as language) but I
> > think that is is the biggest big picture that can make sense to us,
> > which is really all that I'm after.
>
> We might be closer than you think, except that for some unknown reason
> you don't want the machines to be part of it.
> You might have good reasons, but you don't succeed in communicating
> them, and, I am not sure, you might just wasting your time with that
> position (to be frank).
abstraction of machines is only half of the story.
>
>
>
> >>> They seem to have no
> >>> opinion about whether or not my view correctly redefines cosmology,
> >>> physics, biology, and consciousness, but strenuously oppose any
> >>> suggestion that the way I'm trying to do it could be called science.
> >>> It's ironic since so many of the greatest scientific revelations are
> >>> born out of thought experiments and not academic training.
>
> >> Academy is the worst ... except for the others institutions. Some
> >> academies are even worst. And they are always late in evolution.
> >> The publish and perish rules should be made illegal, because it is
> >> non
> >> sense, and it hides the real honest researches.
>
> > I agree. What's a non-academic to do though? How to get my hypothesis
> > out there?
>
> By writing text to convince other people, academic or not.
existing monosense fundamentalisms.
>
> > Want to help underwrite my ideas with your academic
> > cred? ;)
>
> Not sure this would really help you, to be honest.
> Also, I should first understand what you say, and all my work starts
> from the fact that I am interested in explaining the physical, and the
> spiritual, without assuming them at the start.
> I buy everything in Aristotle, except his metaphysics. Plotinus and
> many mystics got it right, I think.
>
> We might depart greatly on mechanism: my real test for a theory is
> "try to explain you theory to a universal machine, and if she can
> explain it to me after, I will be convinced". Put in another way, you
> have to convince me that you can formalize you theory in PA, or ZF, or
> any not to complex or eccentric Löbian machine language. Or, (but it
> is more complex) explain it to a Löbian non-machine entity, if you
> really believe that you are not Turing emulable.
emulable to it's native substitution level, we just don't care that it
isn't real when it's something other than ourselves. We can fool one
or more channels of our own sense into accepting the 'emulation', but
there is no literal emulation happening except through the tolerance
of subjective pattern recognition. Pixels do not literally emulate
images, we just read image and emulated perceptual referents through
the pixels by pinching out the discontinuity.
What makes me even more suspect of emulation when it comes to human
subjectivity is that since we are participants in a narrative which is
temporal, and temporality is a continuous accumulation of entangled
events, it is not clear that we can be divorced from our temporal
context. I do not exist in any other timeframe but my own. An exact
duplicate of me still comes into being at a different time than I did,
so his orientation to the present is different than mine. His memories
are my memories. We both remember the other one being created in a lab
but one of us is objectively correct. If I stand on a red square and
he materializes on a blue square, his memory is tangibly false of
himself being on a red square and seeing me materialize on a blue
square. There is not necessarily an absolute substitution level for
anything as each thing bears a specific potential relation to all
other events.
> I doubt this will add
> any new observable effects, though.
> You might try to explain to younger people, but the idea of explaining
> does consists in explaining new notion from older one. It is always
> relative. All what I know about "sensorimotive" is that it is non
> Turing emulable, which is close to being magical, when seen as an
> explanation.
project it outside of our heads or bring everyone else inside our
minds, then how much more magic would magic really be?
>
> I might be more incline to help you when you will accept to give some
> food, in your restaurant, to my sun-in-law, you know, the one who
> lost its biological brain ...
menu an he can choose his preference?
Craig
alexalex
> Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> not an apple.
it simply, a picture of an apple and nothing more. On the other hand a
complete simulated apple, with all the physics, biochemistry, etc is
exactly an apple just like a simulated self, with all its details 100%
functionally replicated, would really be a self. So your analogy with
the picture of an apple being the same as a simulated, complete
representation of a self is pretty far-fetched; they are not the same:
a picture of an apple only partially tells the story of what it is
like to be an apple; a simulated self with all its functional systems
working exactly in the same way as a real self concoted in a wet brain
completelly tells the story of what it is like to be a self.
AlexAlex.
Craig Weinberg
> > Being able to describe mathematically that the self-like functions
> > exist isn't the same thing as being the self. A picture of an apple is
> > not an apple.
>
> Why are you interpreting sentences? A picture of an apple is, to put
> it simply, a picture of an apple and nothing more.
what you would get with a digital simulation except that the digital
simulation provides you with interactive realism on whatever levels
you know how to simulate.
> On the other hand a
> complete simulated apple, with all the physics, biochemistry, etc is
> exactly an apple just like a simulated self, with all its details 100%
> functionally replicated, would really be a self.
You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
for actual physics and biochemistry. An apple isn't an apple unless an
*actual* worm can live in it. Anything that could be represented by a
digital computer on a monitor is not that. If you are talking about
some kind of nanotech impersonation of an apple, then it's not a
simulation but an artificially produced fruit which may or may not be
an apple depending on the recipe and materials used.
> So your analogy with
> the picture of an apple being the same as a simulated, complete
> representation of a self is pretty far-fetched; they are not the same:
thing to literally be another thing so that there is no such thing as
a complete representation. You're not accepting that a picture is in
fact a visual simulation. A movie would be a more complete simulation.
What you're talking about is more or less an interactive holographic
movie and nothing more.
> a picture of an apple only partially tells the story of what it is
> like to be an apple; a simulated self with all its functional systems
> working exactly in the same way as a real self concoted in a wet brain
> completelly tells the story of what it is like to be a self.
be a self - the irrelevant part. The chemistry and biology of a living
brain could be modeled in a computer program which would satisfy any
neurologist or biologist or chemist but it need not have any internal
experience at all. The program is a model of the outside of the
brain's behavior with nobody inside to actually experience the world
through that brain. A model of the self which is reverse engineered
from brain function is just a model of brain function and has no more
capacity to feel than a CAD drawing of a column can support a marble
roof.
I understand that it's irritating to think of things this way, but you
have to if you want to understand awareness. We have to break the
habit of conflating abstractions with concrete realities and concrete
realities which we are familiar with and consider important right now
in the 21st century with the unknowable totality of all possible
realities. It's one thing to simulate a game of billiards in Java, but
quite another to simulate "I".
Craig
alexalex
> Not at all. A 'simulated apple' is just several pictures superimposed.
> You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
> for actual physics and biochemistry.
superimposed from a simulated world and all your experiences are
illusions.
alexalex
> You are mistaking a visual representation of physics and biochemistry
> for actual physics and biochemistry.
Bruno Marchal
On 25 Dec 2011, at 21:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On Dec 25, 12:01 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> On 25 Dec 2011, at 16:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>>
>>> Does that mean that you consider numbers biological?
>>
>> I consider that some relations between some numbers are biological.
>> Some are theological, some physical, etc, from their (the numbers,
>> the
>> programs, the digital machines, )
>
> Why would numbers differ in quality when they already differ precisely
> in quantity? Seems superfluous.
It is not a matter of choice. Relatively to each other universal
number does discover those quality, and develop all the mind-body
problem discourses. You can call them zombie, but you can also do that
with humans. After all emiminativist does talk about consciousness as
been causally superfluous. But in the case of nulbers, at least we can
show that those who begins to bet on their nown consistency/
consciousness develop self-speeding up ability relatively to their
most probable universal number/environment, so it is not superfluous.
A number, when seen relatively to some universal number is really a
machine or a program.
>
>>
>> I consider Kleene recursion theorem as the fundamental theorem of
>> biology. It solves conceptually and practically the problem of self-
>> reproduction, self-regeneration, embryo, etc.
>
> I see recursion as just one defining exterior behavior of biology. I
> don't see pain and pleasure being an inevitable arithmetic product of
> recursion but they are an equally definitive biological quality.
This is because we are forbidden to do that. If we could access the
functional level of pain and pleasure, we would no more evolved and
disappear. Our "not seeing pain and pleasure being inevitably
arithmetic (or even physics)" is programmed at the start. Indeed some
people fears "drugs" because they believe it can gives us such an
access, but such an idea is a myth. It can only be superficially true
(and at that level, the brain already is a big "drug dealer").
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Certainly the universe is filled with inorganic
>>>>> matter while biological cells represent a small fraction of it.
>>>>> Physics seems to predate biology, at least on Earth by four
>>>>> billion
>>>>> years, right?
>>
>>>> Locally. Not in the big picture, which with comp is much more
>>>> simple,
>>>> both conceptually and technically.
>>
>>> How does comp explain the predominance of non-biological matter
>>> locally?
>>
>> Although there are infinitely biological number relations, most of
>> the
>> relations are not biological.
>> But all that local non biological matter is only the reflect of the
>> infinitely many computations which our minds does not depend on.
>
> Would you say that the infinity of biological number relations is as
> large as the infinity of physical relations?
I would say, without thinking too much, that the biological relations
are far more numerous. The physical relations are first person
constructs of the Löbian machines relations, most plausibly related to
deep (necessary long) computations, and which are relatively rare,
despite their continuum of consistent extensions.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>> psychology (of
>>>>>> numbers) is more universal than biology.
>>
>>>>> I was talking specifically about the extensive elaboration of
>>>>> vertebrate cognition in hominids. I would call the qualia of
>>>>> numbers
>>>>> an aspect of psychology while that which numbers represent are
>>>>> quantitative archetypes that have no agency, psychology, or qualia
>>>>> of
>>>>> their own (just as Bugs Bunny is a cartoon celebrity who has
>>>>> experiences independently of the audience's projected qualia).
>>
>>>> You miss the difference between a computation (as it exists in
>>>> arithmetic, and in some local physics) and a description of a
>>>> computation (as can appear in a cartoon).
>>
>>> I don't think that computation does exist in arithmetic
>>
>> This is not a matter of choice. Computations have indeed be
>> discovered
>> in arithmetic.
>
> Discovered by mathematicians, but does arithmetic itself know whether
> or not it is discovering computation?
Some numbers can know that. Arithmetic (arithmetical truth) is
plausibly not a person (or only in some non Löbian weak sense). But
its "inhabitants" can make the discovery, and indeed do it. Machines
can discover their own hypostases. Correct machines cannot miss them
eventually.
>
>> The question of the existence of computations in nature
>> is more delicate. It is just *assumed* in the comp hypothesis.
>>
>>> or physics,
>>> any more than shadows exist in trees or light bulbs.
>>
>> Shadows exist in trees or light bulb in the sense that observable
>> exists.
>
> How so? If all you have is a tree but no light source, you can't have
> a shadow. If all you have is a light bulb but no surfaces to
> illuminate, you can't have a shadow either. The realism of a shadow is
> in the the visual sense relation between light source, obstacle, and
> space.
I agree. But those things exist in the relevant relative sense.
Likewise with the numbers.
>
>>
>>> Computation is
>>> felt directly as a sensorimotive experience,
>>
>> I am not sure of the meaning "computation can be felt" (it hurts a
>> bit
>> my categorization). Neither computation nor brain activity can be
>> felt.
>
> If you are trying to solve an equation, you are feeling computation.
In a weak superficial sense. I am not feeling the computation done by
my brain for me to be aware that I am solving an equation, and that's
what I meant. If not you are confusing level of descriptions. I don't
feel my neurons either.