Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic

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Brent Meeker

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Sep 13, 2019, 10:45:10 PM9/13/19
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This should be of interest to the list:

Refuting Strong AI: Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic
Andrew Knight
(Submitted on 11 Jun 2019)
While physicalism requires only that a conscious state depends entirely
on an underlying physical state, it is often assumed that consciousness
is algorithmic and that conscious states can be copied, such as by
copying or digitizing the human brain. In an effort to further elucidate
the physical nature of consciousness, I challenge these assumptions and
attempt to prove the Single Stream of Consciousness Theorem (SSCT): that
a conscious entity cannot experience more than one stream of
consciousness from a given conscious state. Assuming only that
consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon, it is shown that both
Special Relativity and Multiverse theory independently imply SSCT and
that the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is inadequate
to counter it. Then, SSCT is shown to be incompatible with Strong
Artificial Intelligence, implying that consciousness cannot be created
or simulated by a computer. Finally, SSCT is shown to imply that a
conscious state cannot be physically reset to an earlier conscious state
nor can it be duplicated by any physical means. The profound but
counterintuitive implications of these conclusions are briefly discussed.
Subjects:    History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph);
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as:    arXiv:1906.10177 [physics.hist-ph]
     (or arXiv:1906.10177v1 [physics.hist-ph] for this version)

Brent

Stathis Papaioannou

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Sep 14, 2019, 2:54:00 PM9/14/19
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The argument is that if consciousness is algorithmic then it can run in two parallel processes which can at some point diverge, which the author thinks would create the problem of two different streams of consciousnesses coexisting in the one mind, which he considers absurd.
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Philip Thrift

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Sep 14, 2019, 3:24:57 PM9/14/19
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I really couldn't follow this paper - many worlds (of QM) vs. multiverse (of cosmology) seemed all mixed up.

@philipthrift

Stathis Papaioannou

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Sep 14, 2019, 6:43:33 PM9/14/19
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On Sun, 15 Sep 2019 at 05:24, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:


I really couldn't follow this paper - many worlds (of QM) vs. multiverse (of cosmology) seemed all mixed up.

The author essentially disagrees with the idea that a person can be copied, whatever the mechanism.

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Philip Thrift

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Sep 15, 2019, 1:39:37 AM9/15/19
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In Sabine Hossenfelder's post on Sean Carroll's Many Worlds book


someone raised conscious beings:

Martien  9:05 AM, September 12, 2019

One of the arguments of Philip Ball against the Many Worlds Interpretation is that he believes that the 'self' or 'soul' cannot branch of in different multiverses. This doesn't seem to be a good argument to me. Imagine one would be able to make a clone of me, kind of twin, in this world. Both versions of me would descent from me (Martien) and live on as Martien-a and Martien-b. An identicical history and memory upto a point in time, and hereafter they live their own lives. In principle the same could be argued for splittng universes. It is akin to speciation of life-forms. Maybe Ball's objection comes from a (religious) belief in a soul which can exist separate from a body, I don't know.



Philip Thrift  5:05 AM, September 13, 2019

Actually, Philip Ball's article seems to suggest that MWI leads to consciousness being either immaterial or nonexistent (it is some sort of illusion, or confusion).
...
"And if consciousness — or mind, call it what you will — were somehow able to snake along just one path in the quantum multiverse, then we’d have to regard it as some nonphysical entity immune to the laws of (quantum) physics. For how can it do that when nothing else does?"

But some of the scientific sort are (when one examines closely their "theory") what Galen Strawson calls* "consciousness deniers", so MWI may be a type of consciousness denial - the denial that there one has a real 'self':



Martien 10:18 AM, September 13, 2019

But why along just one path?


Philip Thrift 2:31 AM, September 14, 2019

Selves (unlike "basic" brains) are not considered (very much, if at all) by scientists as something to be part of scientific theories. So maybe there are (self-less) brains, being split every Planck-time second, and then each one independently going on doing what it does. But selves (self-full brains) doing that seems to me to create a nightmarish scenario of spit personalities.

Galen Strawson - What are Selves?



Martien  9:28 AM, September 14, 2019

Imagine God as creator of the multiverse having to send zillions copies of a deceased sinner to hell or purgatory, that is those who did nor repell their sins. Assuming of course that God and hell are not part of the splitting.


@philipthrift

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 5:43:33 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2019 at 05:24, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:


I really couldn't follow this paper - many worlds (of QM) vs. multiverse (of cosmology) seemed all mixed up.

The author essentially disagrees with the idea that a person can be copied, whatever the mechanism.

On Friday, September 13, 2019 at 9:45:10 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
This should be of interest to the list:

Refuting Strong AI: Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic
Andrew Knight

Cite as:    arXiv:1906.10177 [physics.hist-ph]
      (or arXiv:1906.10177v1 [physics.hist-ph] for this version)

Brent

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Cosmin Visan

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Sep 15, 2019, 7:39:01 AM9/15/19
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The reason is much simpler: "Physics" is just an idea in consciousness.

John Clark

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Sep 15, 2019, 1:17:38 PM9/15/19
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On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 3:24 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I really couldn't follow this paper - many worlds (of QM) vs. multiverse (of cosmology) seemed all mixed up.

I think the guy is a bit of an idiot. He starts off badly by equating intelligence and consciousness and then it gets worse when he  defines the personal pronoun "I" by what will happen in the future rather than what actually happened in the past. And that was all in the first paragraph, I didn't read any further.  

John K Clark

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Sep 15, 2019, 4:26:54 PM9/15/19
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Well, if consciousness is wholly indexical (the original word by Liebniz)  why not then have a mechanism for data transfer to another cosmos, to the clone, the nearest, closest, continuer? Yeah, this only confuses things, but it's an idea by the cell biologist Bob Lanza 20 years ago. Non-satisfying, and I can go ahead and invoke unicorns too. However, data preservation is kind of related to this via, computer science & cosmology (originally the black hole bet, tween Hawking & Susskind). 


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spudb...@aol.com

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Sep 15, 2019, 4:28:11 PM9/15/19
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You mean human consciousness or something bigger? 


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Stathis Papaioannou

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Sep 15, 2019, 5:20:34 PM9/15/19
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He does not talk about intelligence at all, and his conceptual problem is that he can’t imagine one person anticipating becoming one or other of his copies in the future.
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Cosmin Visan

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Sep 16, 2019, 5:32:04 AM9/16/19
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Any consciousness that invents that idea in itself.

Telmo Menezes

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Sep 16, 2019, 5:52:18 AM9/16/19
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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 09:32, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Any consciousness that invents that idea in itself.

Ok, but we clearly have some common ground. I can send you this message and you can read it.

Here's my simplistic / informal understanding of what is going on... Like you, I tend to believe that consciousness is more fundamental than physics, and I also agree that "human physics" is just an idea in consciousness. I think that we might diverge in that I also believe that science points to something real, as in, real phenomena with discernible patterns that you and me can agree with. My understanding is that you, me, everyone else are "windows" through which reality can be experienced. As far as I am concerned, first person experience is REALLY REAL(tm) and independent third person reality is a useful model with an unknown (perhaps unknowable) ontological status.

My point: why wouldn't an algorithm become such a "window" from which reality can be experienced? What's special about wet brains? This seems particularly obvious to me given that I have never even met you in person. You could be an algorithm running in silicon, as far as I am concerned.

Telmo.

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Cosmin Visan

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Sep 16, 2019, 7:49:15 AM9/16/19
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"Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Telmo Menezes

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Sep 16, 2019, 8:09:20 AM9/16/19
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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 11:49, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Perhaps. But so what? Do you agree or not that there is interpersonal communication going on? If you do agree, then how do you explain the common ground between your experience and mine?

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John Clark

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Sep 16, 2019, 8:29:12 AM9/16/19
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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 7:49 AM 'Cosmin Visan' <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

And "consciousness" is just the way data feels when it is being processed.

 John K Clark
 

Cosmin Visan

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Sep 16, 2019, 8:51:43 AM9/16/19
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But is trivial that there is interpersonal communication given the fact that we are from the same species.


On Monday, 16 September 2019 15:09:20 UTC+3, telmo wrote:


On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 11:49, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Perhaps. But so what? Do you agree or not that there is interpersonal communication going on? If you do agree, then how do you explain the common ground between your experience and mine?

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Telmo Menezes

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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 12:51, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
But is trivial that there is interpersonal communication given the fact that we are from the same species.

Isn't "species" just an idea in consciousness? I'm trying to score a joke at your expense, I really don't understand how you can use your universal dismissal when it suits you, but appeal to scientific theories otherwise...


On Monday, 16 September 2019 15:09:20 UTC+3, telmo wrote:


On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 11:49, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Perhaps. But so what? Do you agree or not that there is interpersonal communication going on? If you do agree, then how do you explain the common ground between your experience and mine?

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Telmo Menezes

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Sep 16, 2019, 9:00:08 AM9/16/19
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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 12:57, Telmo Menezes wrote:


On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 12:51, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
But is trivial that there is interpersonal communication given the fact that we are from the same species.

Isn't "species" just an idea in consciousness? I'm trying to score a joke at your expense,

I meant to write "I'm not trying...". Guess the joke's on me this time.


I really don't understand how you can use your universal dismissal when it suits you, but appeal to scientific theories otherwise...


On Monday, 16 September 2019 15:09:20 UTC+3, telmo wrote:


On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 11:49, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Perhaps. But so what? Do you agree or not that there is interpersonal communication going on? If you do agree, then how do you explain the common ground between your experience and mine?

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Brent Meeker

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Sep 16, 2019, 3:19:28 PM9/16/19
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On 9/16/2019 2:51 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 09:32, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Any consciousness that invents that idea in itself.

Ok, but we clearly have some common ground. I can send you this message and you can read it.

Here's my simplistic / informal understanding of what is going on... Like you, I tend to believe that consciousness is more fundamental than physics, and I also agree that "human physics" is just an idea in consciousness.

I think this equivocates on "fundamental".  Consciousness is epistemically fundamental.  It's the basis of knowledge and specifically of the knowledge that is sharable (objective).  But based on that knowledge we have developed a theory of the world in which physics seems to be fundamental in the ontological sense.  This theory implies that consciousness is a phenomenon emergent from certain complex processes, probably of the kind called computations.  There is a lot of empirical (sharable, objective) support for this, i.e. physical effects on the brain change the consciousness.

Brent


I think that we might diverge in that I also believe that science points to something real, as in, real phenomena with discernible patterns that you and me can agree with. My understanding is that you, me, everyone else are "windows" through which reality can be experienced. As far as I am concerned, first person experience is REALLY REAL(tm) and independent third person reality is a useful model with an unknown (perhaps unknowable) ontological status.

My point: why wouldn't an algorithm become such a "window" from which reality can be experienced? What's special about wet brains? This seems particularly obvious to me given that I have never even met you in person. You could be an algorithm running in silicon, as far as I am concerned.

Telmo.


On Sunday, 15 September 2019 23:28:11 UTC+3, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
You mean human consciousness or something bigger? 



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Sent: Sun, Sep 15, 2019 7:39 am
Subject: Re: Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic


The reason is much simpler: "Physics" is just an idea in consciousness.


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Cosmin Visan

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Sep 17, 2019, 3:24:35 AM9/17/19
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@telmo, same species means same type of consciousness.

Cosmin Visan

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Sep 17, 2019, 3:25:53 AM9/17/19
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@Brent, is the other way around: consciousness is ontological since it exists, and the physical world is epistemic since is only a model.

Telmo Menezes

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Sep 17, 2019, 4:20:26 AM9/17/19
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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 19:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:


On 9/16/2019 2:51 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 09:32, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
Any consciousness that invents that idea in itself.

Ok, but we clearly have some common ground. I can send you this message and you can read it.

Here's my simplistic / informal understanding of what is going on... Like you, I tend to believe that consciousness is more fundamental than physics, and I also agree that "human physics" is just an idea in consciousness.

I think this equivocates on "fundamental".  Consciousness is epistemically fundamental.  It's the basis of knowledge and specifically of the knowledge that is sharable (objective).  But based on that knowledge we have developed a theory of the world in which physics seems to be fundamental in the ontological sense. 

Ok. To be clear, when I write "I tend to believe", I meant it. I don't claim any knowledge. I also agree that physics has been spectacularly successful in producing theories of our shared reality. I would just point out that these theories are both incomplete (e.g. dark matter) and incompatible with each other (QM vs Relativity). Maybe this will be fixed in due time, but it could also be the case that there is some fundamental epistemological limit.

Maybe a model that fits certain things makes other things irreducibly mysterious. Maybe Hawking's model realism is the best we can do. This could be because of fundamental limits in ourselves, the same way that you can't teach a cat to speak, maybe it is impossible for a human being to understand certain things. It could also be the case that fundamental reality really works like that, and this is one of the reasons why I find Bruno's ideas compelling (as well as Hofstadter's strange loops, for example).


This theory implies that consciousness is a phenomenon emergent from certain complex processes, probably of the kind called computations.  There is a lot of empirical (sharable, objective) support for this, i.e. physical effects on the brain change the consciousness.

I agree with all of this evidence, and also with all of my direct experience, which at points contradicts this evidence. This is why, again, I like theories that embrace the paradox instead of trying to get rid of it.

Telmo.

Telmo Menezes

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Sep 17, 2019, 8:52:33 AM9/17/19
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On Tue, Sep 17, 2019, at 07:24, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> @telmo, same species means same type of consciousness.

"Species" is mostly a convention for creating taxonomies of organisms. In school we learn that organisms belong to the same species if they can mate and produce viable offspring. Of course, this is too simplistic when you think deeper. What about asexual reproduction (which creates a branching tree with increasing mutation and genetic distance, but no necessarily clear boundaries), not to speak of hybridization, the weird world of viruses, etc.

I did a DNA test and apparently I am about 4% neanderthal. Does this mean that I should expect to have a closer type of consciousness to someone who also has above average neanderthal DNA?

In any case, even if you are correct, it still remains the case that there is some inter-personal pheneomenon going on, that you can't just dismiss by saying: "well, X is just an idea in consciousness". Might very well be, but that doesn't change the game of science, which is to describe a plausible model and then test it against observable, interpersonal reality.

Telmo.

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Cosmin Visan

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Sep 17, 2019, 8:57:20 AM9/17/19
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Sure, but that inter-personal phenomenon derives from the workings of consciousness which remains the nature of reality. You don't create consciousness out of computations, you create computations out of consciousness.

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 17, 2019, 8:58:31 AM9/17/19
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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 17, 2019, 9:02:51 AM9/17/19
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> On 14 Sep 2019, at 04:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> This should be of interest to the list:
>
> Refuting Strong AI: Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic
> Andrew Knight
> (Submitted on 11 Jun 2019)
> While physicalism requires only that a conscious state depends entirely on an underlying physical state, it is often assumed that consciousness is algorithmic and that conscious states can be copied, such as by copying or digitizing the human brain. In an effort to further elucidate the physical nature of consciousness, I challenge these assumptions and attempt to prove the Single Stream of Consciousness Theorem (SSCT): that a conscious entity cannot experience more than one stream of consciousness from a given conscious state.

This is a direct consequence of Mechanism. And indeed the very fact that consciousness is not algorithmic is a theorem of mechanism. The knower described by ([]p & p) is provably not algorithmic, not even identifiable to anything 3p.

Here the author confuse Mechanism and Materialism at the start.





> Assuming only that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon,

So he identifies 1p and 1p-plural, or 1p and 3p.



> it is shown that both Special Relativity and Multiverse theory independently imply SSCT and that the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is inadequate to counter it. Then, SSCT is shown to be incompatible with Strong Artificial Intelligence, implying that consciousness cannot be created or simulated by a computer. Finally, SSCT is shown to imply that a conscious state cannot be physically reset to an earlier conscious state nor can it be duplicated by any physical means. The profound but counterintuitive implications of these conclusions are briefly discussed.

OK. That is coherent again, as he claim both (weak) Materialism and negate Mechanism.

Bruno





> Subjects: History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
> Cite as: arXiv:1906.10177 [physics.hist-ph]
> (or arXiv:1906.10177v1 [physics.hist-ph] for this version)
>
> Brent
>

Philip Thrift

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Sep 17, 2019, 9:03:54 AM9/17/19
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On Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 7:57:20 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
Sure, but that inter-personal phenomenon derives from the workings of consciousness which remains the nature of reality. You don't create consciousness out of computations, you create computations out of consciousness.



Consciousness is experience processing, not (just) information processing.

@philipthrift 

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 17, 2019, 9:06:36 AM9/17/19
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> On 15 Sep 2019, at 13:39, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> The reason is much simpler: "Physics" is just an idea in consciousness.

This makes sense with mechanism. Even constructive sense. Physics is in the head of the universal machine, so let us test Mechanism (and its immaterialist consequences) by comparing the inferred physics and the deduced, by any correct universal machine, physics.

You cannot say “physics “ is just an idea in consciousness, because that too is just an idea in consciousness. It is science only if you can derived the physical law from a price enough theory of consciousness.

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 17, 2019, 9:10:28 AM9/17/19
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But “I” is used in statement concerning the future, or you could not say “I didn’t read any further”.

There is of course no problem at all with having two different future, that happens to amoeba all the time, and to anyone in a quantum reality (without collapse).

But the paper is just coherent globally. He defends weak materialism (rather implicitly, yet clearly), so it is mandatory to abandon Mechanism.

Bruno




John K Clark


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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 17, 2019, 9:12:48 AM9/17/19
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Right. And the use of “or” is the point of the step 3 in the UDA, which is also where John Clark get too much dizzy to pursue, apparently.

Bruno




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Brent Meeker

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Sep 17, 2019, 12:46:57 PM9/17/19
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On 9/17/2019 12:25 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> @Brent, is the other way around: consciousness is ontological since it exists, and the physical world is epistemic since is only a model.
>

Every model has it's own ontology and it's own epistemology, a theory of
how you know about it.  It makes no sense to say a model is epistemic or
ontological alone.

Brent

John Clark

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Sep 17, 2019, 3:55:41 PM9/17/19
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On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 9:10 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>I think the guy is a bit of an idiot. He starts off badly by equating intelligence and consciousness and then it gets worse when he  defines the personal pronoun "I" by what will happen in the future rather than what actually happened in the past. And that was all in the first paragraph, I didn't read any further.  
 
> But “I” is used in statement concerning the future, or you could not say “I didn’t read any further”.

"Did" is the PAST tense form of "do". However personal pronouns are perfectly fine and everybody uses them a thousand times a day, so it would be OK to say "I will not read him in the future" UNLESS:
1) The statement was NOT made in our everyday world where personal pronoun duplicating machines don't exist yet, or...
2) The personal pronoun was used in a thought experiment that was trying to illustrate a point about existentialism and the fundamental nature of personal identity.

 John K Clark

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Sep 17, 2019, 4:23:44 PM9/17/19
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Premise-wise, Consciousness could indeed be algorithmic, and thus emergent. In other words baked-in. 
View this video link and despair puny humans! 


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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 19, 2019, 9:19:36 AM9/19/19
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On 17 Sep 2019, at 22:23, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Premise-wise, Consciousness could indeed be algorithmic, and thus emergent. In other words baked-in. 
View this video link and despair puny humans! 



Consciousness cannot be algorithmic if Mechanism is true, because it relies on the notion of truth, which is not just not algorithmic, but is not even definable.

Consciousness is related to the semantic of some program observing itself, and no program can defined its own semantic once he has enough arithmetical belief.

Sometimes “mechanism” is described as a theory in which consciousness is algorithmic, and that is OK for an oversimplified description of mechanism, but at some point we have to be more precise to avoid contradictions and some nonsense.

Most attribute of a program are not algorithmic.

A program can compute the factorial function. That is algorithmic. But the attribute “being a program computing the factorial function” is not algorithmic.

A total (everywhere defined) program is an algorithm, which stops on all inputs. But being a program computing a total function, or emulating total program is NOT algorithmic at all. It is Pi_2-complete, which is far beyond what is emulable or definable by the partial computable function which does not leave the sigma_1 reality.

In practice, that is not important, but it is crucial for handling the mind-body problem when we assume mechanism.

Bruno





-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Sep 17, 2019 3:55 pm
Subject: Re: Why Consciousness Cannot Be Algorithmic

On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 9:10 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>>I think the guy is a bit of an idiot. He starts off badly by equating intelligence and consciousness and then it gets worse when he  defines the personal pronoun "I" by what will happen in the future rather than what actually happened in the past. And that was all in the first paragraph, I didn't read any further.  
 
> But “I” is used in statement concerning the future, or you could not say “I didn’t read any further”.

"Did" is the PAST tense form of "do". However personal pronouns are perfectly fine and everybody uses them a thousand times a day, so it would be OK to say "I will not read him in the future" UNLESS:
1) The statement was NOT made in our everyday world where personal pronoun duplicating machines don't exist yet, or...
2) The personal pronoun was used in a thought experiment that was trying to illustrate a point about existentialism and the fundamental nature of personal identity.

 John K Clark
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Jason Resch

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Sep 19, 2019, 5:14:33 PM9/19/19
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This Halloween will mark 6 years since you agreed with Step 3, but said it was a let down (presumably because you thought it so obvious):


Should we expect another 6 years before you proceed through the next steps?  There's no rush, since you are freezing yourself this debate could go on another 10^100 years.

Jason

Brent Meeker

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Sep 19, 2019, 7:25:55 PM9/19/19
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On 9/19/2019 6:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Consciousness cannot be algorithmic if Mechanism is true, because it
> relies on the notion of truth, which is not just not algorithmic, but
> is not even definable.

What does "it" refer to?  Consciousness being algorimthic or Mechanism? 
and what notion of truth does it rely on?  (not the one conditional on
Mechanism being true, I hope).

>
> Consciousness is related to the semantic of some program observing
> itself, and no program can defined its own semantic once he has enough
> arithmetical belief.

"Related to" to is vague and whether the semantic of program observing
itself and be defined by the program doesn't imply there is not such
semantic that consciousness can be "related to".

>
> Sometimes “mechanism” is described as a theory in which consciousness
> is algorithmic, and that is OK for an oversimplified description of
> mechanism, but at some point we have to be more precise to avoid
> contradictions and some nonsense.

Isn't that what you mean when you suppose that consciousness is digital.

spudb...@aol.com

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Sep 20, 2019, 3:20:07 AM9/20/19
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At this point, I'd settle for mere intelligence that helps solve human problems as opposed to the "hard" Chalmers Question. 


Bruno Marchal

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Sep 23, 2019, 9:43:05 AM9/23/19
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> On 20 Sep 2019, at 01:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 9/19/2019 6:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Consciousness cannot be algorithmic if Mechanism is true, because it relies on the notion of truth, which is not just not algorithmic, but is not even definable.
>
> What does "it" refer to?

The meta-definition of consciousness in the Mechanist frame.




> Consciousness being algorimthic or Mechanism? and what notion of truth does it rely on? (not the one conditional on Mechanism being true, I hope).

Not it relies on the arithmetical truth, which we cannot define, but everybody agrees on it.

Then there is a great pedagogical difficulty, which is that eventually we need only the sigma_ arithmetical truth, but that very facts belongs to G* minus G (and the other coronas) and so can be asserted without risking falling in the theological trap. But the fact is that the universal dovetailing does not assume more than the truth of of one quantifier formula in arithmetic, based on a decidable (sigma_0) predicate.



>
>>
>> Consciousness is related to the semantic of some program observing itself, and no program can defined its own semantic once he has enough arithmetical belief.
>
> "Related to" to is vague

You know that in may papers, I make the relation clear, but it is necessarily long and not obvious. I am not sure what you want me to add here.


> and whether the semantic of program observing itself and [can] be defined by the program doesn't imply there is not such semantic that consciousness can be "related to”.

Indeed that the points. Minski said so, and it becomes a theorem with Mechanism. That means the machine will get a semantic of its own, but will not been able to convey it to other machine: that is consciousness. Truth and belief that you can’t communicate to others, and that you know that you can’t communicate to other in a purely rational way.




>
>>
>> Sometimes “mechanism” is described as a theory in which consciousness is algorithmic, and that is OK for an oversimplified description of mechanism, but at some point we have to be more precise to avoid contradictions and some nonsense.
>
> Isn't that what you mean when you suppose that consciousness is digital.


I suppose only that consciousness is preserved in a digital transformation, like mathematicians supposed that the truth their premise is preserved by the application of the inference rule, despite they can’t define the truth in general.

"Consciousness is digital” does not mean anything, except as a quick short and rather misleading summary of Mechanism. The arithmetical truth bears on digital relation, but can be shown to be a highly not digital notion. It requires analytical truth to be described. (Of course analytical truth is even more difficult to make precise, but that does not lead top problems, except some paradoxes which help us to improve the analytical theories).

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 23, 2019, 9:47:08 AM9/23/19
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On 20 Sep 2019, at 09:19, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

At this point, I'd settle for mere intelligence that helps solve human problems as opposed to the "hard" Chalmers Question. 

Chalmers “hard problem” is just a materialist reformulation of the well known, by philosopher of mind and theologian, mind-body problem.

For some humans, death or the idea of death is a problem, which plays a big role in our history, but of course, you might not be interested in that human problem or type of human problem. That’s OK, but I am not sure we ever discuss here of human problem, we just try to figure out what is happening here and now, and why …

Bruno 



Philip Thrift

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Sep 23, 2019, 1:41:30 PM9/23/19
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On Monday, September 23, 2019 at 8:43:05 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 20 Sep 2019, at 01:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Consciousness being algorimthic or Mechanism?  and what notion of truth does it rely on?  (not the one conditional on Mechanism being true, I hope).

Not it relies on the arithmetical truth, which we cannot define, but everybody agrees on it.


 
There is no "arithmetical truth" that "everybody agrees on" because there is no agreement on the things the variables refer to.

(An ontology that only has a finite set of numbers 1, 2, ..., #thatsallfolks leads to a different arithmetical truth.)

@philipthrift

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 24, 2019, 12:01:13 PM9/24/19
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On 23 Sep 2019, at 19:41, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Monday, September 23, 2019 at 8:43:05 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 20 Sep 2019, at 01:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Consciousness being algorimthic or Mechanism?  and what notion of truth does it rely on?  (not the one conditional on Mechanism being true, I hope).

Not it relies on the arithmetical truth, which we cannot define, but everybody agrees on it.


 
There is no "arithmetical truth" that "everybody agrees on" because there is no agreement on the things the variables refer to.

I am not sure why you say that. That could make some sense for set theory, or function theory, but for arithmetic, we have a pretty good idea what the variable refers to, as we can get them from 0 and a simple operation s(0) (1), s(s(0)) (2), etc.

It is like consciousness and time, we cannot define them, but we do know what we are talking about.

In fact, concerning the natural numbers, it takes a lot of study to understand that we cannot genuinely define them.





(An ontology that only has a finite set of numbers 1, 2, ..., #thatsallfolks leads to a different arithmetical truth.)


No. It leads to different notion of numbers, unrelated with the arithmetical truth. We have accepted the following axioms:

0 ≠ s(x)
s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))    
x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)
x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

There is no model of this with only finitely many numbers or, you are using “finite” in a non standard sense.

We can’t define “finite” and “infinite” either, except by using stronger logics or axioms, leading to further ambiguities, like in analysis (second order arithmetic) or in set theory.

The natural numbers is the domain where all humans have no problems, other that the problem in cognitive science related to how we can understand the numbers.

A nice paper is McCulloch paper: “what is a number that a man can understand, and what is a man that can understand the number”.

You have cited numerous paper which are based on our understanding of the natural numbers and their laws.

Bruno




@philipthrift

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