Universe as a simulated strange loop

[Russell Standish]

Not sure if this paper has been mentioned here, but it seems quite apt
to our discussions. It appears concordant with my ideas in "Theory of
Nothing", also Bruno's AUDA and Brent's virtuous circles.

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247/htm

I haven't yet read the article in full - just the summary writeup here:

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/new-hypothesis-argues-the-universe-simulates-itself-into-existence?rebelltitem=6#rebelltitem6

Cheers

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 3 May 2020, at 05:02, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
> Not sure if this paper has been mentioned here, but it seems quite apt
> to our discussions. It appears concordant with my ideas in "Theory of
> Nothing", also Bruno's AUDA and Brent's virtuous circles.
>
> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247/htm
>
> I haven't yet read the article in full - just the summary writeup here:
>
> https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/new-hypothesis-argues-the-universe-simulates-itself-into-existence?rebelltitem=6#rebelltitem6

It still postulate some physical universe, and miss the fact that elementary arithmetic must be assumed, and then cannot be completed (they miss the 1930s theorems: elementary arithmetic is the computer that they mention). Due to this, they missed the theory of qulaia, and the fact that the theory of quanta is part of that theory of qualia. Now, I have not looked at any detail, and the type of physics they use might, or not, be coherent with the mechanist hypothesis, that they seem to use (but that is unclear, as they don’t define precisely the notion of “simulation” that they use.

Best,

Bruno

>
> Cheers
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
> http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20200503030239.GB29442%40zen.

[Lawrence Crowell]

I downloaded this. I have communicated with Klee Irwin some years ago. He might be a bit of a modern day Tesla; there is evidence of some brilliance, but also a bit of madness. He has promoted a line of bogus supplements and other things. I have on FQXi an essay now on the possible role of self-reference in quantum mechanics. Hofstadter called these strange loops. There are some prospects along these lines. I though would advise keeping the skeptics mental software loaded with this paper.

LC

[Philip Thrift]

The SSH 

   

      https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247

still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(it from qubit, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.

It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but to approach consciousness as purely material - adding a new force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness

etc.

* or physicalist

@philipthrift

[smitra]

On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
> The SSH
>
> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>

> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.

>
> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but

> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new

> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>
> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>
> etc.
>
> * or physicalist
>
> @philipthrift

Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other
philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against
physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one
fell swoop. But that also opens the door to wrong theories as people
engaging with non-physicalist theories can too easily advertise their
pet theories because they don't suffer from all the diseases physicalist
theories suffer from. The bar has to be set higher, I would like to see
a derivation of the laws of physics, not some vague argument that it is
consistent with QM and unitary evolution but a lot more detail than just
that.

Saibal

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/3/2020 8:14 PM, smitra wrote:
> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> The SSH
>>
>>       https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>>
>> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
>> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.
>>
>> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
>> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but
>> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new
>> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>>
>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>>
>> etc.
>>
>> * or physicalist
>>
>> @philipthrift
>
> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other
> philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against
> physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one
> fell swoop.

Really?  What are 'all these problems that are solved'?  Does it explain
why a blow to the head renders you unconscious?  Does it explain how
anesthesia works?  Does it explain epilepsy? Synasthesia?  Drunkeness? 
Does it explain the evocation of memories by electrostimulation of the
brain?  Dementia?  Childhood amnesia?

Or is it just smug mysticism that physics hasn't explained X, so by
rejecting physics I'm entitled to any explanation I want about X.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 4 May 2020, at 05:14, smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
>
> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> The SSH
>> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
>> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.
>> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
>> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but
>> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new
>> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>> etc.
>> * or physicalist
>> @philipthrift
>
> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against physicalism.

Yes, that was the basic insight from which science is born with Pythagorus and Plato. Then Aristotle came back with the idea, by a sort of reaction. Most people want to believe in a creation (and sometimes in a creator).

Matter is an invention so as to make the mind-body problem unsolvable, to allow superstition and fake religion to be used by tyran and manipulators (instead of doing research and accept pur ignorance).

> Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one fell swoop.

But it has to deduce physics from reason only. It is the origin of theoretical physics, but this has been missed by the metaphysicians.

> But that also opens the door to wrong theories as people engaging with non-physicalist theories can too easily advertise their pet theories because they don't suffer from all the diseases physicalist theories suffer from. The bar has to be set higher, I would like to see a derivation of the laws of physics, not some vague argument that it is consistent with QM and unitary evolution but a lot more detail than just that.

If mechanism is true, physics is just the mathematics of the observable predicate, like []p & p with p partially computable, and []p & <>t, and []p & <>t & p, and then the G*/G separation, not only give the theory of quanta, but also the theory of qualia, and the explanation of consciousness, including why we cannot uindesrtand completely that theory, etc.

There is no choice in this. Materialsm remains coherent, but ask for a non computationalist theory of mind, which simply does not exist (except for vague fairy tales which are simply not theories in the scientific meaning of the term).

Bruno


>
> Saibal

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c7482009376988ca1402b892670c19da%40zonnet.nl.

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 4 May 2020, at 06:05, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2020 8:14 PM, smitra wrote:
>> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>> The SSH
>>>
>>> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>>>
>>> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
>>> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.
>>>
>>> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
>>> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but
>>> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new
>>> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>>>
>>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>>>
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> * or physicalist
>>>
>>> @philipthrift
>>
>> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one fell swoop.
>
> Really? What are 'all these problems that are solved’?

A reduction of why there is something to the existence of arithmetic + an explanation of why it is possible to explain arithmetic from less.

Then the mind body problem, including why there are physical laws, and this from a “simple” theory of consciousness. Here physics is unable to predict why we see an eclipse when we use physics to predict an eclipse.

> Does it explain why a blow to the head renders you unconscious?

That is what mechanism explains the best.

> Does it explain how anesthesia works?

Certainly better than particles physics. But ye, it does not solve all problems. It formulates them, and we have to solve them one by one, like always in science.

> Does it explain epilepsy? Synasthesia? Drunkeness? Does it explain the evocation of memories by electrostimulation of the brain? Dementia? Childhood amnesia?

Yes. Why not?

>
> Or is it just smug mysticism that physics hasn't explained X,

Has not, and cannot once we believe in say, Darwinism.

> so by rejecting physics I'm entitled to any explanation I want about X.

Yes, but the simplest explanation, with the biggest range of explanation will be the best. Physicalism remains based on a ontological commitment, which is the sort of “miracle” that scientists are skeptical about.

We don’t have evidence for a primary physical universe. The dream argument explains why evidence for a physical reality is not evidence for a primitive physical reality. We confuse them due to a very long pseudo-religious brainwashing, to be short.

Bruno





>
> Brent

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f4746a82-54b6-3397-6084-08817b3d196e%40verizon.net.

[Lawrence Crowell]

I think more likely this mean the hard problem or qualia are illusions. I have far more confidence in physics than I do in hopeful ideas about qualia, which are psychological form of elan vital thought in previous centuries to underlie biology.

LC

[Telmo Menezes]

Isn't an illusion itself a qualia? Aren't you begging the question?

Telmo.

I have far more confidence in physics than I do in hopeful ideas about qualia, which are psychological form of elan vital thought in previous centuries to underlie biology.

LC

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

[Quentin Anciaux]

Either you have no quale, and then as a zombie... it could mean something (but not to you), or you have, and if a theory cannot account for that, it miss the things it purpose to explain.

When you say "psychological form" you're talking about a quale... I don't see how that could be explained away... 

Quentin

LC

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

--

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer)

[Lawrence Crowell]

Self-reference is a case where the computation is not complete or can't be quantified. We might then consider consciousness as a strange-loop where the process can't be quantified, or any attempt to do so will always exceed the capacity of the processor.

LC

[Philip Thrift]

"Self-reference" in programming - going back to Brian Smith's 3-Lisp

   http://www.tark.org/proceedings/tark_mar19_86/p19-smith.pdf

- is a bit not-quite-real in the context of "The Self" of consciousness (self) realism (Galen Strawson). 

   http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/strawsong/Self.pdf

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/4/2020 3:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 4 May 2020, at 06:05, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/3/2020 8:14 PM, smitra wrote:
>>> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>> The SSH
>>>>
>>>> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>>>>
>>>> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
>>>> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.
>>>>
>>>> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
>>>> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but
>>>> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new
>>>> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>>>>
>>>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>>>>
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>>>>
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>> * or physicalist
>>>>
>>>> @philipthrift
>>> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one fell swoop.
>> Really? What are 'all these problems that are solved’?
> A reduction of why there is something to the existence of arithmetic + an explanation of why it is possible to explain arithmetic from less.

"Reduction of there is something to the existence of arithmetic"?? I
can't even parse what problem that is...much less how you have solved
it.  William S. Cooper has a good explanation from evolution.

>
> Then the mind body problem, including why there are physical laws, and this from a “simple” theory of consciousness. Here physics is unable to predict why we see an eclipse when we use physics to predict an eclipse.

But physics can predict why we don't see an eclipse if we look the wrong
direction or if we wear a hood or if we close our eyes or if our optic
nerve is damaged.  None of which are explained by your theory.

>
>
>> Does it explain why a blow to the head renders you unconscious?
> That is what mechanism explains the best.
>
>
>
>> Does it explain how anesthesia works?
>
> Certainly better than particles physics. But ye, it does not solve all problems. It formulates them, and we have to solve them one by one, like always in science.

In the meantime, chemisty does explain how anesthesia works.  And the
explanation is based on the theory that consciousness in produced by the
brain and depends on the diffusion of hormones across synaptic gaps.

>
>
>
>> Does it explain epilepsy? Synasthesia? Drunkeness? Does it explain the evocation of memories by electrostimulation of the brain? Dementia? Childhood amnesia?
> Yes. Why not?

You say why not.  Why not explain those things.  Fine, then where is the
explanation?  You claim the Greeks and the neo-Platonists had all this
figured out.  So they had a 900yr head start over Galileo and
Newton...and produced nothing.

>
>
>
>> Or is it just smug mysticism that physics hasn't explained X,
> Has not, and cannot once we believe in say, Darwinism.
>
>
>
>> so by rejecting physics I'm entitled to any explanation I want about X.
>
> Yes, but the simplest explanation, with the biggest range of explanation will be the best. Physicalism remains based on a ontological commitment, which is the sort of “miracle” that scientists are skeptical about.
>
> We don’t have evidence for a primary physical universe. The dream argument explains why evidence for a physical reality is not evidence for a primitive physical reality.

That we know the difference explains why the dream argument fails.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

I think the problem here is with the word "explain".   Yes, physics will never explain quale.  But physics doesn't explain matter, or gravity, or entropy either.  Physics is regarded as successful because it makes good predictions, and that allows manipulation of things.  Look at the controversy over the interpretation of quantum mechanics.  We have drastically different "explanations" of what is happening...which have zero effect on the application or usefulness of the theory.  And that's exactly the same situation with regard to consciousness and qualia.  Chemistry and biology have a lot of of good "explanations" of quale in the sense of being able to predict them and manipulate them.  Sure, it's no where near as deep as physics explanations which reach down to sub-atomic level.  But physics aims for depth and bypasses the complex problems of biology as accidents of evolution, mere geography problems.  There's no reason to suppose that chemistry and molecular biology and study of brain structure and AI will not reach the same depth of explanation of consciousness.  And it still won't "explain" quale, but it will manipulate them and reproduce them in AI and people will forget all about how mysterious they were...just like they have forgotten elan vitale.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

If we can program "matter" (or whatever we want to call it) to accomplish t goals we want

     https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2020/04/24/substrate-targeted-programming-stp/ 

then that's enough:

* send people to the moon

* output bioforms/molecules that can eliminate a killer virus

* program the human biocomputer [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_biocomputer ] qualia processing

* ...

@philipthrift

[smitra]

Physics has left these issues well behind. Finding evidence for
supersymmetry, the nature of dark matter, evidence for proton decay will
not shed much light on what the subjective experience of experiencing
pain exactly is. This strongly suggests that physics as applied to
everyday phenomena is (almost) exactly correct from a mathematical point
of view, but that there is an issue with the explanation of the
phenomena. One then cannot test any alternative explanation as this will
have to reduce to the same mathematical theory when used to predict the
outcome of experiments.

I.m.o., the best place to start is by taking physics itself seriously
and not throw parts of it away on the grounds that FAPP certain things
at the macro-level work like certain classical models and that therefore
a, say, human being is exactly what these effective laws describe.

Saibal

[Bruno Marchal]

When you say "psychological form" you're talking about a quale... I don't see how that could be explained away… 

Yes, LC’s comment  is self-refuting. 

Bruno

Quentin

LC

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

--

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAMW2kAoznb2X48gQq0domodP-%3DKU84o4VwZKtOw6xRSqLJJYtw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Yes. Consciousness cannot be an illusion, as a genuine illusion needs consciousness. LC’s remark does not makes sense. It looks like the usual physicalist attempt to put the mind-body problem under the rug.

With mechanism, it is the PRIMITIVE physical universe which is an illusion, and up to now, that illusion is explained by the number relation, except for our belief in numbers, which is still completely explained as being necessarily not explainable from less (or equivalent). That is why I claim that mechanism does solve the mind body problem, where adding infinities in the physical world just suggest a non mechanist theory of mind, which add difficulties without reason.

There are no evidence for a primitive physical universe. There strong evidence for the existence of a physical universe or physical reality, but no evidence for its pirmaryness, as the antic greek understood very well, when inventing Mathematics (a mathematician was a pholospher skeptic about he physicalness of the absolute reality).

Bruno

Telmo.

I have far more confidence in physics than I do in hopeful ideas about qualia, which are psychological form of elan vital thought in previous centuries to underlie biology.

LC

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fb72afca-3b77-447d-88d2-65286e0fe542%40www.fastmail.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 4 May 2020, at 16:39, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

"Self-reference" in programming - going back to Brian Smith's 3-Lisp

   http://www.tark.org/proceedings/tark_mar19_86/p19-smith.pdf

- is a bit not-quite-real in the context of "The Self" of consciousness (self) realism (Galen Strawson). 

   http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/strawsong/Self.pdf

Brain smith theory is basically the same theory as the theory of Gödel’s beweisbar (he is aware of this).

But he missed the platonic nuances, which I explained either through tough experiment, or using the greek definitions (as they anticipated all this through the “dream argument”t).

The platonic nuances are imposed by incompleteness. Although it is true (provable in G*) that []p, []p & p, ..; are all equivalent (see the same portion of the arithmetical reality), the machine cannot see those equivalence, and from the machine’s point of view, they are not equivalent, and indeed less to a different logic and mathematics for each one of those. []p obeys a logic of credibility, []p & p obeys a (intuitionist) logic of knowledge, []p & <>p obeys a quantum logic, []p & <>t & p obeys a quantum institionist logic, at the G* level.

All this are theorem in arithmetic, and obtained by any arithmetically sound universal machine numbers. 

Some people missed that all computation are emulated (semantically) in all models of elementary arithmetic. We know that since the 1930s.

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9597f679-52f6-4504-9004-04e1fe45e61b%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 4 May 2020, at 19:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/4/2020 3:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 4 May 2020, at 06:05, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5/3/2020 8:14 PM, smitra wrote:
>>>> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>>> The SSH
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247
>>>>>
>>>>> still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT
>>>>> FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of
>>>>> materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but
>>>>> to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new
>>>>> force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field).
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness
>>>>>
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
>>>>>
>>>>> etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> * or physicalist
>>>>>
>>>>> @philipthrift
>>>> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one fell swoop.
>>> Really? What are 'all these problems that are solved’?
>> A reduction of why there is something to the existence of arithmetic + an explanation of why it is possible to explain arithmetic from less.
>

> "Reduction of there is something to the existence of arithmetic"?? I can't even parse what problem that is…


It is the reduction of the problem “why is there a moon, where does atoms come from?”, but also “why does it hurts” to the problem of justifying the physical laws from pure arithmetic.

> much less how you have solved it.

I can help if you tell me at which points you don’t understand, without invoking your ontological commitment, of course.

> William S. Cooper has a good explanation from evolution.

Evolution explain the origin of brain, and of the human mind. If you like that explanation, you are in trouble, as Darwin’s theory of evolution assume Mechanism (it even force digital mechanism, and the finite encoding of biological information, which has been confirmed by molecular biology, which is the roots of my motivation for studying Mechanism, and mathematical logic, which discovered the digital version of mechanism).

But you might also be happy, as the theory of evolution is not refuted by mechanism, but extended to the origine of the physical laws, assuming only elementary arithmetic (x + 0 = x, etc.).

>
>>
>> Then the mind body problem, including why there are physical laws, and this from a “simple” theory of consciousness. Here physics is unable to predict why we see an eclipse when we use physics to predict an eclipse.
>
> But physics can predict why we don't see an eclipse if we look the wrong direction or if we wear a hood or if we close our eyes or if our optic nerve is damaged. None of which are explained by your theory.

It is not my theory. It is the theory of all universal machine “riche enough to believe in the arithmetical induction axiom (that is their own behaviour”.

Up to now, it is confirmed by nature, where physicalism is simply refuted or needs some string non-mechanist axiom.

>
>>
>>
>>> Does it explain why a blow to the head renders you unconscious?
>> That is what mechanism explains the best.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Does it explain how anesthesia works?
>>
>> Certainly better than particles physics. But ye, it does not solve all problems. It formulates them, and we have to solve them one by one, like always in science.
>
> In the meantime, chemisty does explain how anesthesia works.

It does not. You need a solution of the mind-body problem to solve the anaesthesia working problem. Chemistry just allow us to infer many useful things, but to stop there and simps the “hard problem” is just like the instrumentalist “shut up and calculate”.

> And the explanation is based on the theory that consciousness in produced by the brain

OK. But how? Certainly not in a Turing emulable way. A god (personal or impersonal) cannot be invoked in an explanation, at east with Mechanism. How could such a god select the conscious computations in arithmetic. If that is possible, then digital machines are zombies, and Digital Mechanism has to be abandoned.

> and depends on the diffusion of hormones across synaptic gaps.

Contingently. That is like saying that deep blue win the hess game thanks to the laws of Ohm, Faraday, which we know to be non relevant (Deep Blue would have win also when implemented with Babbage clock-wheel type of machine, or in arithmetic, etc.).

>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Does it explain epilepsy? Synasthesia? Drunkeness? Does it explain the evocation of memories by electrostimulation of the brain? Dementia? Childhood amnesia?
>> Yes. Why not?
>
> You say why not. Why not explain those things.

The idea that. Brain is a machine explains easily why you get weird experience if you damage your brain in a way or another, for the same reason that a computer can malfunction if you let is down.

That is part of the so called "easy problem of consciousness”. With mechanism, the hard problem becomes how could a conscious person attached itself to a singular computer? The answer is: it cannot (I can explain this with thought experiences, or with mathematical logic).

> Fine, then where is the explanation?

? (In all my peer reviewed papers on this subject). The peers being the scientists, not the philosopher who for obvious reason, dislike science going in their terrirtory).

> You claim the Greeks and the neo-Platonists had all this figured out. So they had a 900yr head start over Galileo and Newton...and produced nothing.

Not at all. They are the one having made Galileo possible. Without the interruption made by the dogmatic people after 529, I think Galileo would have appeared sooner, and we would have got the universal machine and its necessary many world quantum mechanics much earlier.

Today, the neoplatonist are still in advance in theology and metaphysics, given that we have not yet bring back those fields in the realm of the scientific attitude.

Physics works very well, to make prediction but as metaphysics, as the Platonist greeks understood, it simply does not work at all. It uses an identity thesis between mind and brain which is easy in one direction, but non-sensical in the other direction. It is not a matter of choice: if mechanism is true, the many physical histories must emerges from the many computations in all models of arithmetic, or in the standard model (as you prefer).

If you believe that a physical reality makes sense with mechanism, I am the one who does not understand your theory. What is physical and needed for consciousness that is not Turing emulable. If it Turing emulable, then how do you singularize the sheaf of computations to make it match the physical reality? That does not make sense, or at the least, I don’t see it.

Bruno

>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Or is it just smug mysticism that physics hasn't explained X,
>> Has not, and cannot once we believe in say, Darwinism.
>>
>>
>>
>>> so by rejecting physics I'm entitled to any explanation I want about X.
>>
>> Yes, but the simplest explanation, with the biggest range of explanation will be the best. Physicalism remains based on a ontological commitment, which is the sort of “miracle” that scientists are skeptical about.
>>
>> We don’t have evidence for a primary physical universe. The dream argument explains why evidence for a physical reality is not evidence for a primitive physical reality.
>
> That we know the difference explains why the dream argument fails.
>
> Brent
>
>> We confuse them due to a very long pseudo-religious brainwashing, to be short.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f4746a82-54b6-3397-6084-08817b3d196e%40verizon.net.
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fca45887-1b3a-1ea6-5865-afa02c9e6fd2%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

OK.

and AI will not reach the same depth of explanation of consciousness. 

Once you invoke AI or mechanism, the deep explanation will have to reduce physics to some mathematics (indeed to G* intensional variant). Or it brings magical ontological commitment just to hide ignorance, and that is bad religion/philosophy.

And it still won't "explain" quale,

Where Mechanism does.

but it will manipulate them and reproduce them in AI and people will forget all about how mysterious they were...just like they have forgotten elan vitale.

Even the AI will not been convinced by this. The élan vitale does not explain one thing. The qualia are just unavoidable data, which, when we suppose mechanism are easier to explain, and indeed already explains the existence of quanta as first person sharable qualia. 

Mechanism explains, in a coherent and testable way, why we feel like if there was a material reality, and a mental reality. Adding a magical primitive matter makes that explanation no more working, so why to add it?

The goal is not to replaced physics by some better predictive science, except for the afterlife problem, where, with some exception like Tipler, is not part of the physical inquiry, but of metaphysics, and the point is that with mechanism, any Aristotelian theories cannot work. 

Physics and Metaphysics are different science. To make them equal *is* the Aristotelian act of faith, and this can work only by invoking non Turing elmulable element in the brain. But there is no evidences for this, and thanks to quantum mechanics, the startling many histories aspect needed for a mechanist theory of the observable is vindicated by the experiments.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/793213e0-89f6-f6fa-bc72-4c3b7608fe34%40verizon.net.

[Lawrence Crowell]

As a strange loop consciousness may be an illusion having an illusion of itself.

LC

Telmo.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/5/2020 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Physics works very well, to make prediction but as metaphysics, as the Platonist greeks understood, it simply does not work at all. It uses an identity thesis between mind and brain which is easy in one direction, but non-sensical in the other direction. It is not a matter of choice: if mechanism is true, the many physical histories must emerges from the many computations in all models of arithmetic, or in the standard model (as you prefer).

And you use the identity theory of all possible computation and
reality...which has no evidence in support of it and I see no reason to
believe.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

Right.  And neither does "mechanism".

The qualia are just unavoidable data, which, when we suppose mechanism are easier to explain, and indeed already explains the existence of quanta as first person sharable qualia. 

Mechanism explains, in a coherent and testable way, why we feel like if there was a material reality, and a mental reality.

No it doesn't.  You just say it must.  It does not explain why you and I agree on what this sentence says.

Adding a magical primitive matter makes that explanation no more working, so why to add it?

Every time I refer to matter in an explanation, you falsely accuse me of invoking "primitive matter".  I have no concept of "primitive matter".  and I don't even believe in "primitiveness".  I think it is a religious supersitition.

Brent

The goal is not to replaced physics by some better predictive science, except for the afterlife problem, where, with some exception like Tipler, is not part of the physical inquiry, but of metaphysics, and the point is that with mechanism, any Aristotelian theories cannot work. 

Physics and Metaphysics are different science. To make them equal *is* the Aristotelian act of faith, and this can work only by invoking non Turing elmulable element in the brain. But there is no evidences for this, and thanks to quantum mechanics, the startling many histories aspect needed for a mechanist theory of the observable is vindicated by the experiments.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/793213e0-89f6-f6fa-bc72-4c3b7608fe34%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ED07C8B8-5478-46C5-8398-6A5E56E338A9%40ulb.ac.be.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 5 May 2020, at 17:36, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

As a strange loop consciousness may be an illusion having an illusion of itself.

I cannot make sense of this. How could consciousness be an illusion, as an illusion is a conscious expérience. 

I can imagine myself dreaming that my bicycle is conscious, and then wake up; that was an illusion. But I cannot imagine dreaming that I am conscious, then waking up, and understanding that consciousness is an illusion.

I would say that consciousness is the fixed point of the doubt: it is the only thing that I am unable to doubt. To doubt consciousness is non sensical, like a circular square. 

Only the content, and indeed all contents minus one exception (consciousness itself), can be doubted (could be an illusion).

When we postulate the Mechanist hypothesis, there is no ontological phenomenological physical universe. The appearance of the physical universe emerge from the statistics on all computations (a purely arithmetical notion) going through “my” current state. That works in the sense that we recover both the many-worlds/histories aspect of the observable, and the quantum logical formalism, and the symmetries. Mechanism generalises Noether theorem and Gleason theorem to arithmetic, and the laws of physics becomes “machine independent”: they don’t depend on the choice of the universal machinery that we have to postulate (to give sense to mechanism, but also because we cannot deduce a universal machinery from anything non universal).

Bruno

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/af4d2e45-79e5-4b4d-8e82-fb19fa3d339b%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

The existence of all computations is a theorem of arithmetic. If you understand 2+2=4 and similar, you can understand that all computations are emulated in (all) model(s) of arithmetic. That arithmetic is assumed in all theories made by physicists. But when you add an ontological physical universe, we have no mean to restrict the statistics on all computations on the “physical” computations without adding some magic in the theory.

So, it seems you are the one adding an ontological commitment, to make magically disappear the consciousness of the relative number in arithmetic.

The reason to believe this is just Mechanism. I have not find a reason to believe in a physical universe having an ontological primitive status, which would be a reason to believe in non-mechanism (and to reject Darwinism, molecular biology, even most physical equations, whose solutions when exploitable in nature are up to now always computable.

We just can’t invoke an ontological commitment when we do science, especially in theology or metaphysics, unless some evidences are given for it. But there are no evidence at all. People confuse the real strong evidences for physical laws with evidence for laws who would be primary.

You seem to have understood this better sometimes ago. I Hope you are not having any doubt that the arithmetical reality (not the theories!) emulate all computations, and that a universal machine (with oracles) cannot feel the difference between being emulated by this or that universal machinery.

Bruno






>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dc764642-dd49-70b2-e84f-363efe66582c%40verizon.net.

[Telmo Menezes]

Yes, I have no problem with any of what you say above.

What I have been wondering about is something else: what exactly is meant by "primitive"? Does there have to be any X such that "primitive X" is true? This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.

Hope that you (and everyone else) are doing well!
Telmo

> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Brent
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dc764642-dd49-70b2-e84f-363efe66582c%40verizon.net.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/965BBF35-DF8E-4F03-AF43-F9B0D843A1A3%40ulb.ac.be.
>

[Bruno Marchal]

?

Without Mechanism, Darwin’s theory of evolution stops working.

To negate Mechanism, you need to add magic in the brain.

Diderot consider (right Imo) that Mechanism is the same as rationalism.

Newton’s dynamic was threatening Mechanism, but quantum mechanics made all the corrections needed to save mechanism.

Same with Gödel’s incompleteness, it saves the ChurchTuring thesis. Without the incompleteness of any theory about the natural numbers, Church-thesis would be refuted.

Then, Mechanism is not used as an explanation, but as a tool to formulate the mind-body problem in a precise mathematical way, so as to make Mechanism testable, and, as I said, thanks to quantum mechanics, Mechanism is (not yet) refuted, and remains the simpler explanation—the one which assumes the less.

The qualia are just unavoidable data, which, when we suppose mechanism are easier to explain, and indeed already explains the existence of quanta as first person sharable qualia. 

Mechanism explains, in a coherent and testable way, why we feel like if there was a material reality, and a mental reality.

No it doesn't.  You just say it must.

No, I explain this in detail, informal and formal. You know that. Ask a specific question about the point where you disagree. I suspect you forgot that all computations are run in (all) model(s) of arithmetic.

  It does not explain why you and I agree on what this sentence says.

What is missed? 

Adding a magical primitive matter makes that explanation no more working, so why to add it?

Every time I refer to matter in an explanation, you falsely accuse me of invoking "primitive matter".  I have no concept of "primitive matter".  and I don't even believe in "primitiveness".  I think it is a religious supersitition.

If that is the case, you agree that we have to explain the physical appearances without invoking any physical laws.

Primitive means “needed to be assumed”, or “not derivable from less”. With mechanism, the only primitive we have are the intended meaning of the terms of any Turing universal (and non inductive) theory. 

Yes, the belief in primitive matter is an illusion, but then, if interested in the fundamental science, we have to explain that illusion from something on which we agree, and with mechanism, we don’t need, and we cannot use, more than (any) universal Turing machinery.

You can refer to matter in an explanation, but when you dismiss the consciousness problem, you seem to take some matter notion as granted, when, specifically, to explain the appearance of such matter, we have to use an immaterialist theory of mind (or to abandon Mechanism).

I am an empiricist. Without the empirical confirmation of Mechanism, (including consciousness, though), I would have abandoned the idea that Mechanism might be plausible since long. So let us continue the math and the testing, and we will see (well our grandchildren will see).

Bruno

Brent

The goal is not to replaced physics by some better predictive science, except for the afterlife problem, where, with some exception like Tipler, is not part of the physical inquiry, but of metaphysics, and the point is that with mechanism, any Aristotelian theories cannot work. 

Physics and Metaphysics are different science. To make them equal *is* the Aristotelian act of faith, and this can work only by invoking non Turing elmulable element in the brain. But there is no evidences for this, and thanks to quantum mechanics, the startling many histories aspect needed for a mechanist theory of the observable is vindicated by the experiments.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/793213e0-89f6-f6fa-bc72-4c3b7608fe34%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ED07C8B8-5478-46C5-8398-6A5E56E338A9%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/247391a7-96df-8cd6-0229-335e9f3aaa0a%40verizon.net.

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 5:28:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 5 May 2020, at 17:36, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

As a strange loop consciousness may be an illusion having an illusion of itself.

I cannot make sense of this. How could consciousness be an illusion, as an illusion is a conscious expérience. 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/af4d2e45-79e5-4b4d-8e82-fb19fa3d339b%40googlegroups.com.

[Telmo Menezes]

Am Mi, 6. Mai 2020, um 11:19, schrieb Lawrence Crowell:

On Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 5:28:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 5 May 2020, at 17:36, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

As a strange loop consciousness may be an illusion having an illusion of itself.

I cannot make sense of this. How could consciousness be an illusion, as an illusion is a conscious expérience. 

Escher was great at drawing strange loops, as famously recognized by Hofstadter.

I certainly cannot argue at your level in theoretical physics (and I am grateful for all I learn from your posts in this regard, and also Clark, Brent and others). What I can't help but notice in this reply of yours is that you seem to be aware of the deep problems, while at the same time arguing that they are just an illusion somehow. I would even dare speculate that you agree with Bruno, and mostly have a problem with certain terms he uses.

Best

Telmo

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/bf368d7a-ede8-4804-9ca9-df409a46a676%40googlegroups.com.

Dateianhänge:

• Escher hands drawing hands.jpg
  

[Lawrence Crowell]

Curious that so many images showed up. I guess this is good at drawing itself in more ways than one.

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/6/2020 3:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 5 May 2020, at 21:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/5/2020 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> Physics works very well, to make prediction but as metaphysics, as the Platonist greeks understood, it simply does not work at all. It uses an identity thesis between mind and brain which is easy in one direction, but non-sensical in the other direction. It is not a matter of choice: if mechanism is true, the many physical histories must emerges from the many computations in all models of arithmetic, or in the standard model (as you prefer).
>> And you use the identity theory of all possible computation and reality...which has no evidence in support of it and I see no reason to believe.
> The existence of all computations is a theorem of arithmetic. If you understand 2+2=4 and similar, you can understand that all computations are emulated in (all) model(s) of arithmetic. That arithmetic is assumed in all theories made by physicists. But when you add an ontological physical universe, we have no mean to restrict the statistics on all computations on the “physical” computations without adding some magic in the theory.

Understanding is belief and being true is not the same as existing.

>
> So, it seems you are the one adding an ontological commitment, to make magically disappear the consciousness of the relative number in arithmetic.
>
> The reason to believe this is just Mechanism. I have not find a reason to believe in a physical universe having an ontological primitive status, which would be a reason to believe in non-mechanism (and to reject Darwinism, molecular biology, even most physical equations, whose solutions when exploitable in nature are up to now always computable.
>
> We just can’t invoke an ontological commitment when we do science, especially in theology or metaphysics, unless some evidences are given for it. But there are no evidence at all. People confuse the real strong evidences for physical laws with evidence for laws who would be primary.

A funny thing to say for someone who always invokes and ontological
committment to arithmetic.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

OK.

>
> What I have been wondering about is something else: what exactly is meant by "primitive"?

It depends on what you are interested in. To solve the mind-body problem, the first difficulty is to formulate it, and for this the notion of “primitiveness” is required, for what we will take for granted to proceed.

Basically X is considered as primitive if we have some reason to consider X as non explainable from something else, and judged as being more simple (technically/conceptually, … there is some matter of debate here of course).

Most materialist agrees that biology is explained, or explainable in principle by chemistry, itself explainable by particles/force physics. (And I agree with them on this).
Then if they are metaphysical materialist, they will have to explain psychology from biology, say, and usually they do believe that such an explanation is possible (and of course, we know or should know that this is impossible: but before judging this, it means that for a materialist (who believes that matter cannot be explained entirely from a simpler ontological assumption), if interested in the Mind-Body problem, he has to develop a phenomenology of mind coherent with its taking matter as primitive.

Similarly, a monist immaterialist (who assumes only immaterial relations, of the type mind or of the type number, or whatever) has to develop (extract, isolate, justify in a way or in another) a phenomenology of matter, or of matter conscious appearances in its theory of mind.

A dualist has a even harder task, as he will take both mind and matter as primitive, and will have to derive a phenomenology of interactions between both. Today, few (serious) people believe that this could be meaningful.

“materialism” is just naive physicalism: the idea that physics is the fundamental science. This makes matter into a primitive thing, and the theories will have to assume some primary physical elements, like atomes, or now, particles, or strings, etc.

Mechanism leads to a neutral monism, where neither matter, nor mind, is taken as primitive, as they are explained (wrongly or correctly, we might not it is wrong through new expriements) from simpler (elementary arithmetic without induction).

The beauty here (grin) is that fr the natural numbers, or more generally, for the universal machinery/machines, we can prove in all inductive extension of those machineries that they cannot be explained by anything which is not a universal machineries itself, so the numbers, with addition and multiplication and a bit of induction can explained that they have to be primitive.

A physicalist might say that the superstrings are Turing universal, so we can take the super-strings as primitive, but then to explain consciousness, if he assumed Mechanism, he will have to justify the appearances of sperstrings from its primitive, and this will be very confusing if he start from the strings for the starting (primitive) universal machinery.
Physics is "machine independent” (in the language of computer scientist): it means that it does not depend on the choice of the phi_i (the universal machinery).

With mechanism, no universal machine can know which computations support it, among an infinity of computations. It is even a priori a non countable infinity, as the first person are determined by all oracles. And any first person prediction, and thus any reading of any experimental device, must be explained by a statistics on the first person indeterminacy where the domain of “reconstitutions” is basically the set of all true sigma_1 sentences, structured by the self-referential relevant modes.

An explanation is always a reduction of what we don’t understand (like mind and matter) to something that we do understand or at least can accept as granted (like 0 + 0 = 0, 1 + 0 = 1, 2 + 0 = 2, … and others, like 2 + 0 = 2 -> Ex(2+x = 2), etc ).

Consciousness is explained by being an invariant indubitable truth which is also non provable and non definable (without invoking some notion of truth) that all machine discover when looking inward (which is what G* proves, so that is proven by all (arithmetically sound) universal machines, although in the conditional way, like “assuming I am not wrong up to now then …, or assuming Mechanism, then …). Mechanism is the assumption that this invariant is also invariant for any relative digital functional substitution made at *some* level (it is a self-finitist local and relative assumption).

> Does there have to be any X such that "primitive X" is true? This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.

You will fall in Brent’s virtuous circle (still a bit vicious to me). Or in ZF + the non foundation axiom, like Stephen Paul King pressed me to do, although here you still have a notion of set taken as primitive, at least.

With Mechanism, we get free such sort of circles, and spirales (!), in the phenomenology,. They are capable of being explained with the “simple" natural numbers. Taking such circle as primitive, is like deciding to avoid the search of an explanation to them, and like to avoid the experimental testing. Eventually you might been led to philosophical relativism and dilute truth (and causality, responsibility) etc.

I can imagine a materialist psychologist claiming that the natural numbers are not primitive but explainable by a cultural anthropo-evolutionary genetic, say. But 1) he is confusing the human natural number theories with arithmetic, and 2) he is cheating, as his explanation will make only sense by an implicit acceptance of some universal machinery equivalent to the belief in RA, so, he is just confusing level of explanation. Yes, the human number theory is a fascinating subject, and it sustains the idea that 2+2=4 is “really absolutely” true, as all humans agree on this, and even many other mammals, actually. But that is a different subject matter than the one number theory is build for. This one avoid the philosophy of numbers by using the axiomatic method. It should be obvious that with mechanism, the discovery of the numbers by the numbers is part of the meta-arithmetic that Gödel’s showed embeddable in arithmetic. The real bomb is still Gödel’s 1931, even if it is the two theorems of Solovay which sums it all in G, and G*.

>
> Hope that you (and everyone else) are doing well!

I wish you (and everyone) the best Take care.

Bruno

> Telmo
>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dc764642-dd49-70b2-e84f-363efe66582c%40verizon.net.
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>> an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/965BBF35-DF8E-4F03-AF43-F9B0D843A1A3%40ulb.ac.be.
>>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/96161ef4-ce79-43e0-98a0-288cff950049%40www.fastmail.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 6 May 2020, at 19:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/6/2020 3:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 5 May 2020, at 21:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5/5/2020 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> Physics works very well, to make prediction but as metaphysics, as the Platonist greeks understood, it simply does not work at all. It uses an identity thesis between mind and brain which is easy in one direction, but non-sensical in the other direction. It is not a matter of choice: if mechanism is true, the many physical histories must emerges from the many computations in all models of arithmetic, or in the standard model (as you prefer).
>>> And you use the identity theory of all possible computation and reality...which has no evidence in support of it and I see no reason to believe.
>> The existence of all computations is a theorem of arithmetic. If you understand 2+2=4 and similar, you can understand that all computations are emulated in (all) model(s) of arithmetic. That arithmetic is assumed in all theories made by physicists. But when you add an ontological physical universe, we have no mean to restrict the statistics on all computations on the “physical” computations without adding some magic in the theory.
>
> Understanding is belief and being true is not the same as existing.

Existing is when the proposition “ExP(x)” is true in some reality. For example Ex(prime(x)) is true in the structure/model (N, 0, s, +, x).

And yes, understanding is belief. Nice point.

In the machine theory you have that “God” does not exist, and is not even “mentionable”. (Like Plotinus).

What exist primitively are the natural numbers, 0, 1, 2, 3, … or with the usual notations: 0, s0, ss0, sss0, ….

Nothing else exist “ontologically” or “primitively”. I could chosen the combinators, or the game of life pattern, but most people are more familiar with the natural numbers, and that is a good simple universal machinery, as I assume 0, s0, … but also the RA axioms, and from this I can prove the existence of universal machines and computations, and also of universal machine believing in the induction axioms, which are the one I study.

Then for each self-rerential mode you have a notion of existence. Describable in the corresponding modal logic, like with []Ex[]P(x), or withe quantisation ([]<>Ex([]<>P(x)), etc.

>
>>
>> So, it seems you are the one adding an ontological commitment, to make magically disappear the consciousness of the relative number in arithmetic.
>>
>> The reason to believe this is just Mechanism. I have not find a reason to believe in a physical universe having an ontological primitive status, which would be a reason to believe in non-mechanism (and to reject Darwinism, molecular biology, even most physical equations, whose solutions when exploitable in nature are up to now always computable.
>>
>> We just can’t invoke an ontological commitment when we do science, especially in theology or metaphysics, unless some evidences are given for it. But there are no evidence at all. People confuse the real strong evidences for physical laws with evidence for laws who would be primary.
>
> A funny thing to say for someone who always invokes and ontological committment to arithmetic.

How could you say yes to the digitalist doctor without hoping he will get the number right?

You don’t need to believe that 0 exist in a metaphysical sense, you need just to introspect yourself and see if you agree with the usual axioms, i.e. classical logic and

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

If you throw away any of those axioms, you lose Turing universality.

So if you believe that your computer exist, as a computer, you implicitly do that “ontological commitment” you seem to worry about.

The word “digital” as no meaning without the natural numbers.

Physicists nowadays assumes much more, like ZFC, to get a base in all Hilbert space, for example.

Then physicalist assumes much much much much more, like a primitive matter, or some universal numbers declared more important at the start, and that is refuted with mechanism.

Some people add metaphysics on the numbers, where, with mechanism, the number are introduced to be sure we understand the metaphysics which follows, from the number (G and G*) and eventually from the number + mechanism (G1 and G1*).

Physicist does not do metaphysics. Except in some paper of cosmology, or on foundation of QM, most physicist are metaphysically neutral. And when done with the scientific method, metaphysics itself must be done in a neutral way.

Bruno

>
> Brent
>
>>
>> You seem to have understood this better sometimes ago. I Hope you are not having any doubt that the arithmetical reality (not the theories!) emulate all computations, and that a universal machine (with oracles) cannot feel the difference between being emulated by this or that universal machinery.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
>>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dc764642-dd49-70b2-e84f-363efe66582c%40verizon.net.
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5810dae6-397d-887b-0d37-58271ac80d8c%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

Esher hands points on the usual third person self-reference is which computer science excels, as the theorem of Kleene completely explains constructively, and  the basic idea is already in the combinator Mx = xx, as MM will give MM, etc. For biology there is one more nuance to add, but I don’t want to be long. All that works in the realm of the third person beliefs.

But this self-reference does not make the link with the first person that you need for explaining consciousness and qualia.

As Gödel saw, the logic of that 3p self-reference obeys G, not a logic of knowledge S4.

In particular G does not prove []p ->p.

But that is why the Theatetus definition makes sense here. To define knowledge by true belief ([∏p & p), and arithmetic makes it possible to arithmeticize this without defining a predicate (which can be shown to NOT exist), so the logic of ([]p & p) which implies p trivially, provides a logic of a non nameable/3p-describable first person, obey a logic of knowledge, already with a temporal subjectivity (close to Brouwer and Bersgson).

That solves the consciousness part of the consciousness/matter problem.

Then, the matter problem is solved constructively by the restriction on the sigma_1 sentences (the leaves of the universal dpevtalg in arithmetic), and that can be tested, and indeed the test are already done for many part of it, and thanks to quantum logic, it fits rather well, and here too, we get a clear separation of quanta and qualia.

I have far more confidence in physics

Me to. Only physics can test if physicalism is true or false, and the physical facts get until now favour mechanism and immaterialism, I would say. 

Mechanism looks mystical, and is in a great part, as he says that the “truth” is in your head, and nowhere else. But Mechanism is also empirical, as it says that the “physical truth” is in the head of all universal machine/number, so extract it and compare with what we observe. If it is different and incompatible,  mechanism is false (or we are in a normal second order simulation, but that is the conspiracy move, which can be made with any theory).

than I do in hopeful ideas about qualia, which are psychological form of elan vital thought in previous centuries to underlie biology.

Qualia are facts, even if hard to share. You cannot discard them as illusion. It is like a doctor saying to his patient that his pain is an illusion. That makes no sense.

Elan Vitale is a typical “religion from ignorance”: it is a theory saying that another theory cannot solve a problem. It is perhaps right, in the sense that we can call elementary arithmetic an élan vitale perhaps. But this reverse the charge, and primary matter is what looks like a “religion from ignorance”.

Elan vitale without more precision is like God without a precise (testable) theology. Molecular biology has eliminated it, rightly. 

And the same will happen with materialism and physicalism, because it does not work, eliminate consciousness and persons, and contradicts Mechanism for which tuns of evidences exist.

To sum up: élan vital is bs. Yet, qualia are just a type of data that any serious theory of everything must explained. And I think mechanism does explain it, in testable way, so let us pursue the test.

Bruno

LC

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fc14bd06-c600-4e6a-abf1-b73943d36617%40googlegroups.com.

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2020 9:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> I can imagine a materialist psychologist claiming that the natural numbers are not primitive but explainable by a cultural anthropo-evolutionary genetic, say. But 1) he is confusing the human natural number theories with arithmetic, and 2) he is cheating, as his explanation will make only sense by an implicit acceptance of some universal machinery equivalent to the belief in RA, so, he is just confusing level of explanation.

It's not confusion when you explain something in terms of what you
understand.  Confusion is to say things must be explained in terms of
something infinite and incomprhensible...and then claim it's
incomprehensibility proves it's primitive because is can't have an
explanation.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/7/2020 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Existing is when the proposition “ExP(x)” is true in some reality. For example Ex(prime(x)) is true in the structure/model (N, 0, s, +, x).

"In some reality" completely drains "reality" of all meaning.  It simply
means some set of assertions that is not self-contradictory.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, May 7, 2020 at 12:00:30 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Physicists nowadays assumes much more, like ZFC, to get a base in all Hilbert space, for example.

Bruno

But in a real operational sense, that is not the case.

There is nothing in theoretical physics that is applied to matching what is observed in experiments or telescopes that depends on anything more than what programs of computational physics (computational/numerical relativity and quantum mechanics) can produce today on supercomputers in university and government labs.

Show me any observational data that would refute this.

@philipthrift 

[Bruno Marchal]

A candidate is the measurement of a perfect quantum random bit. Anyway, digital physicalism is inconsistent, as it implies Mechanism, and Mechanism implies its falsity (my contribution), so computational physics, although very useful when doing physics, cannot be taken seriously in metaphysics (without elimination of person and consciousness, of course).

Bruno 

@philipthrift 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/79cf1a58-4e9b-4ac7-9268-a015b5fedb30%40googlegroups.com.

[Telmo Menezes]

Ok, but let me make the analogy with Copernicus' heliocentric model. It provides a simpler model for planetary dynamics in the solar system than assuming the earth at the center, but a more modern view on this debate is that there is really no center anywhere in the universe. You just choose whatever referential makes calculations easier.

I wonder if primitiveness is not like that. I believe that consciousness becomes irreducible if one takes matter as primitive, and I agree that taking the integers as primitive and proceeding as you do provides a perspective to tackle the mind-body problem that simply is not available to materialism. At the same time, it makes it very hard to explain why this particular dream that I am experiencing has such and such specific features and patterns.

I guess I am in an extremely agnostic mood. Maybe it's the corona.

> Most materialist agrees that biology is explained, or explainable in
> principle by chemistry, itself explainable by particles/force physics.
> (And I agree with them on this).

Btw, have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=makaJpLvbow

I love that simulation for several reasons. Firstly because I was involved in ALife / Complex Systems, and it is of course exciting to see such "biological" behavior emerging from such simple rules. But also because it exposes a certain emptiness in the idea of "explanation". It is not hard to imagine that one day Wolfram will be successful, and will be able to produce a simple rule that allows for complexity of the level we observe in the "real world". At the same time, I do not really feel that things were explained at that point.

> Then if they are metaphysical materialist, they will have to explain
> psychology from biology, say, and usually they do believe that such an
> explanation is possible (and of course, we know or should know that
> this is impossible: but before judging this, it means that for a
> materialist (who believes that matter cannot be explained entirely from
> a simpler ontological assumption), if interested in the Mind-Body
> problem, he has to develop a phenomenology of mind coherent with its
> taking matter as primitive.

I agree with you, but I think you use "psychology" in a different sense than they do. I think modern mainstream psychology is zombie psychology, in the sense that it discards the first person.

> Similarly, a monist immaterialist (who assumes only immaterial
> relations, of the type mind or of the type number, or whatever) has to
> develop (extract, isolate, justify in a way or in another) a
> phenomenology of matter, or of matter conscious appearances in its
> theory of mind.
> A dualist has a even harder task, as he will take both mind and matter
> as primitive, and will have to derive a phenomenology of interactions
> between both. Today, few (serious) people believe that this could be
> meaningful.

Agreed.

> “materialism” is just naive physicalism: the idea that physics is the
> fundamental science. This makes matter into a primitive thing, and the
> theories will have to assume some primary physical elements, like
> atomes, or now, particles, or strings, etc.
>
> Mechanism leads to a neutral monism, where neither matter, nor mind, is
> taken as primitive, as they are explained (wrongly or correctly, we
> might not it is wrong through new expriements) from simpler
> (elementary arithmetic without induction).

Ok, so elementary arithmetic is taken as primitive. I have no doubt that this is fruitful, but I wonder if it doesn't offer its own dead-ends.

Yes, but we could also be crazy. We ourselves cannot escape Gödel. Which I think is a beautiful thing, but I am in an agnostic mood. In other words, I think that you place some "faith" in the natural numbers. No?

> Mechanism is the assumption that this invariant is also invariant for
> any relative digital functional substitution made at *some* level (it
> is a self-finitist local and relative assumption).
>
>
> > Does there have to be any X such that "primitive X" is true? This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.
>
> You will fall in Brent’s virtuous circle (still a bit vicious to me).

I think that Brent is more optimistic than me. I don't think that creating real AI will explain consciousness, even though I am interested in the problem of creating real AI. My circle is totally vicious.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/700B3302-51A9-4647-A70C-2E6EEDAC7627%40ulb.ac.be.
>

[Bruno Marchal]

It this not more “perspectival” or even “first person” centred. At the beginning, some thought that Earth was at the center of the universe. This meant that everything else was truly moving around us. Then we understood, that a simpler explanation (and also less anthropocentric) was that the Sun is a the center, and Earth go around it, and then we understood that even the Sun is revolving in a galaxy. We could have decided that our blackhole at the center of the Milky Way, is the “center” of the universe, but, as Kant suggested, there are other galaxies, etc… 

Today, we know that the “Big Bang” occurred everywhere, somehow, and that the notion of center of the (physical) universe might not make sense at all, but it is hard to say, as we can see only a tiny fraction of the physical universe, and have not yet a coherent theory of the whole, even restricted to the physical.

We have not much choice than to use Occam. The theory with the less hypotheses and the bigger range of prediction is the best one, until we find a simpler and more powerful one.

I wonder if primitiveness is not like that. I believe that consciousness becomes irreducible if one takes matter as primitive, and I agree that taking the integers as primitive and proceeding as you do provides a perspective to tackle the mind-body problem that simply is not available to materialism. At the same time, it makes it very hard to explain why this particular dream that I am experiencing has such and such specific features and patterns.

I guess I am in an extremely agnostic mood. Maybe it's the corona.

Agnostic is the position of the scientist. Even theologian are agnostic when rational, like the greeks.

So, if the corona makes you agnostic, double the dose! Well, it contains alcohol, so better to use some moderation!

There are much less toxic product for the same, if not better effect …. 

Most materialist agrees that biology is explained, or explainable in
principle by chemistry, itself explainable by particles/force physics.
(And I agree with them on this).

Btw, have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=makaJpLvbow

I did not, but I saw this one, which looks to belong to the same family, you might like it, but there is no sound/music until 4:07 (the there is good music!):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr28DwXeyu0

I love that simulation for several reasons. Firstly because I was involved in ALife / Complex Systems, and it is of course exciting to see such "biological" behavior emerging from such simple rules. But also because it exposes a certain emptiness in the idea of "explanation". It is not hard to imagine that one day Wolfram will be successful, and will be able to produce a simple rule that allows for complexity of the level we observe in the "real world". At the same time, I do not really feel that things were explained at that point.

I agree. The (quantum or classical) cellular automata, despite quite interesting and useful, is still physicalism, when used in metaphysics, even if conceived in an immaterialist frame. To get the explanation, you need a theory of consciousness, and an explanation of how the “computations” (made by the cellular automata) makes this consciousness relatively stable.

I do think that G* provides a as complete as possible explanation of consciousness (including why it cannot be completed) and as long as nature obeys to the logic of the machine’s observable (like currently) I think it would be premature to search for another explanation (which adds only difficulties, up to now at least).

Then if they are metaphysical materialist, they will have to explain
psychology from biology, say, and usually they do believe that such an
explanation is possible (and of course, we know or should know that
this is impossible: but before judging this, it means that for a
materialist (who believes that matter cannot be explained entirely from
a simpler ontological assumption), if interested in the Mind-Body
problem, he has to develop a phenomenology of mind coherent with its
taking matter as primitive.

I agree with you, but I think you use "psychology" in a different sense than they do. I think modern mainstream psychology is zombie psychology, in the sense that it discards the first person.

That was the case when I was young. A term like “consciousness” was taboo, and most theoretical psychologist were behaviourists. Today, they are no more behaviourist and they accept the existence of consciousness, but they often limit themselves to the “easy” part of the problem, and some (but not all) dismiss the “hard problem” (which is the antic mind-body problem) as either non sensical or non answerable. 

With Mechanism, the easy problem becomes not so easy, as it relies on some implementation of a program, which relies on some statistically stable computations, with a relative measure close to one, and well, G* solves that problem, but is not trivial, and rather not well known, despite Gödel 1931 and Löb 1955.

Thanks to G*, the hard problem of consciousness and matter is solved. I think. A Mistry remains which is why we believe in numbers, but that problem is entirely explained as being indeed necessarily not answerable, because we cannot derive a Turing universal machinery from something which is not already a universal Turing machinery. 

We can explain the (natural) numbers from the finite set theory, or from the combinators, or from any Turing universal machinery. In all case, we have to assume a universal Turing machinery. Natural numbers + plus and times is just the simpler one.

Similarly, a monist immaterialist (who assumes only immaterial
relations, of the type mind or of the type number, or whatever) has to
develop (extract, isolate, justify in a way or in another) a
phenomenology of matter, or of matter conscious appearances in its
theory of mind.
A dualist has a even harder task, as he will take both mind and matter
as primitive, and will have to derive a phenomenology of interactions
between both. Today, few (serious) people believe that this could be
meaningful.

Agreed.

“materialism” is just naive physicalism: the idea that physics is the
fundamental science. This makes matter into a primitive thing, and the
theories will have to assume some primary physical elements, like
atomes, or now, particles, or strings, etc.

Mechanism leads to a neutral monism, where neither matter, nor mind, is
taken as primitive, as they are explained (wrongly or correctly, we
might not it is wrong through new expriements)  from simpler
(elementary arithmetic without induction).

Ok, so elementary arithmetic is taken as primitive.

Yes. 

But any universal machinery would do the same job.

I have no doubt that this is fruitful, but I wonder if it doesn't offer its own dead-ends.

It is complete for the ontology, and then all the phenomeloqies, from real numbers to physics, is explained by the universal machine escaping the infinitely many dead-ends which occurs “everywhere” in arithmetic, seen from inside.

This is somehow literal true, as the modal logic of G entails that dead-ends occur in all possible state. Now, the fits person (the soul) and even matter, is based on []p & p, and/or the waker and stronger  []p & <>t, and []p & <>t & p, are obtained from abstractions one self from the dead-ends (cul-sac world).

If you mean “conceptual dead ends”, you will need to elaborate. I don’t see any, although it "strikes the eyes" in the materialist framework. 

By “primitive” I mean what we feel that we have to assume. Something is primitive if we cannot explained it by something simpler. Matter is not primitive in Mechanism, because we have no choice: we have to explain it by a statistic on dreams in arithmetic (where we are “truly living” somehow).

Sure. With Mechanism, this is a theorem. If we are not crazy (~[]f) we could be crazy (<>[]f).

But you cannot use this in metaphysics, and even less in physics, which is based on []p & <>t by construction.

To use “we are crazy” as an explanation would be like a self-conspiracy theory. 

We ourselves cannot escape Gödel.

Probably so with Mechanism, and indeed G* (which axiomatise incompleteness) is the canonical theology of all universal platonism machine (platonism means here simply that they accept the validity of the excluded middle principle for the closed proposition on the natural numbers or digital machines).

Which I think is a beautiful thing, but I am in an agnostic mood. In other words, I think that you place some "faith" in the natural numbers. No?

Not really.

I would if I claimed that mechanism is true, but that is not my job.

I would if I meet a doctor that I can trust so much as telling him “yes”.  We are far from this … 

I say that mechanism requires faith, but that does not mean that I have that faith, and even if I would, I would not make it public. 

Now, I can say that I am pretty sure that 2+2=4, or even that 4 = the cubic root of 20 minus the square root of 392, added to the cubic root of 20 plus the square root of 392, which is far more difficult to prove (yet I believe in it).

Mechanism is the assumption that this invariant is also invariant for
any relative digital functional substitution  made at *some* level (it
is a self-finitist local and relative assumption).

Does there have to be any X such that "primitive X" is true? This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.

You will fall in Brent’s virtuous circle (still a bit vicious to me).

I think that Brent is more optimistic than me. I don't think that creating real AI will explain consciousness,

Indeed. AsMinski once said, the conscious machine will be as much confused on this complex topic than we are.

even though I am interested in the problem of creating real AI. My circle is totally vicious.

The creation of AI is a natural phenomenon. It will explains a lot of things in psychology, but can hardly tackle the ontological questions.

It isa bit like the recursion theorem of Kleene. It explains self-reproduction, self-regeneration, embryology, but cannot explain consciousness. For this a reference to some notion of Truth is needed (even if just the arithmetical truth, or even just the sigma_1 arithmetical truth. There are some subtleties here that is belong the scope of this post :)

To sum up:

For the corona beer: moderation.

For the corona G* \ G: no moderation!

For the corona virus: be careful (of the virus and of the humans …).

Best,

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/07a264aa-a10b-43e3-a68a-8b0e020ae599%40www.fastmail.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

You are right. That follows from the completeness theorem. A (reasonable) theory is consistent iff it has a model (a reality which satisfies all the theorems).

Now no machine can prove the existence of a reality satisfying all its belief, that is why we use terms like God, or “No-Name” or “Reality” with a big “R”. That sort of reality is no more model theory, but is theology, and the first theorem in Mechanist theologies is that we cannot define it, nor invoke it in arguments.

Here I was just using “reality” for “model”, as “model” when used by physicists means what logicians call “theories”.

So now I can deduce that by “it exist”, you refer to some metaphysical reality. You need to say which one to be precise. I suspect you mean the physical reality, but that early what is questioned when we assume mechanism, where the metaphysical reality is only (a part) of the arithmetical truth.

Bruno




>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/40b5fb59-3729-c882-7dbd-e57a6f4dfaaf%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 May 2020, at 23:00, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/7/2020 9:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> I can imagine a materialist psychologist claiming that the natural numbers are not primitive but explainable by a cultural anthropo-evolutionary genetic, say. But 1) he is confusing the human natural number theories with arithmetic, and 2) he is cheating, as his explanation will make only sense by an implicit acceptance of some universal machinery equivalent to the belief in RA, so, he is just confusing level of explanation.
>

> It's not confusion when you explain something in terms of what you understand. Confusion is to say things must be explained in terms of something infinite and incomprhensible…

Not with mechanism. The assumption are just that Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz). In fact, with mechanism, we can explain why the axiom of infinity has to be false. Even, the induction axioms are possibly false ontologically. Mechanism, contrary of what I said a long time ago, is consistent with utltrafinithsm.

> and then claim it's incomprehensibility proves it's primitive because is can't have an explanation.

That is provably the case for “simple" things like natural numbers and combinators, but is false for the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

Evidences for a physical reality are not the same as evidence for a primitive physical reality. That is the Aristotelian prejudice, which I think comes from a misunderstanding of Plato, or a lack of reasoning.

There are tuns of evidences for a physical reality, and I understand the elegance and appeal the idea that such reality is primitive.
Yet, I am rationalist and an empiricist. The close observation of the physical universe confirms that it cannot be primitive, like digital mechanism predicts.

Bruno

>
> Brent
>
>> Yes, the human number theory is a fascinating subject, and it sustains the idea that 2+2=4 is “really absolutely” true, as all humans agree on this, and even many other mammals, actually. But that is a different subject matter than the one number theory is build for. This one avoid the philosophy of numbers by using the axiomatic method. It should be obvious that with mechanism, the discovery of the numbers by the numbers is part of the meta-arithmetic that Gödel’s showed embeddable in arithmetic. The real bomb is still Gödel’s 1931, even if it is the two theorems of Solovay which sums it all in G, and G*.
>
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/27aed6d9-b0f1-80e1-93ca-29ed04d4257a%40verizon.net.

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/17/2020 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

You frequently say this, but I have not seen this explanation except in
vague hand waving.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 May 2020, at 00:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/17/2020 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

You frequently say this,

Yes, it is the PhD content. 

1) UDA = the constructive reduction of the mind-body problem to the necessity of deriving he physical laws from arithmetic. 

2) AUDA = the derivation itself.

but I have not seen this explanation except in vague hand waving.

Hand waving?

Your remark does look like hand waving, I would say.

Come on Brent, I am the guy who gives 8 precise mathematical theories, three of them being concerned with the appearance of matter in arithmetic, and so are testable, and indeed confirmed by all experiences until now.

I refer you to my two last papers(*), which contains also some difficult open problems.

You might try to ask specific questions.

Marchal B. The computationalist reformulation of the mind-body problem. Prog Biophys Mol Biol; 2013 Sep;113(1):127-40
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23567157

Marchal B. The Universal Numbers. From Biology to Physics, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 2015, Vol. 119, Issue 3, 368-381.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26140993

Now, if you read carefully the second part of my Sane04(*) or my “Plotinus paper" (larger public) talk, then, if you have read some introduction to G and G*, like Smullyan “Forever Undecided” of better” Boolos 1979” or even better “Boolos 1993”, you have all the ingredient to proceed, and certainly to ask precise and specific question.

B. Marchal. The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations. In 4th International System Administration and Network Engineering Conference, SANE 2004, Amsterdam, 2004.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html (sane04)

Marchal B. A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus’ Theory of Matter. In Barry Cooper S. Löwe B., Kent T. F. and Sorbi A., editors, Computation and Logic in the Real World, Third Conference on Computability in Europe June 18-23, pages 263–273. Universita degli studi di Sienna, Dipartimento di Roberto Magari, 2007.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CiE2007/SIENA.pdf

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/39f9ebf7-7038-d236-7ddd-9436c04c3bc9%40verizon.net.

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/18/2020 3:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 May 2020, at 00:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/17/2020 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

You frequently say this,

Yes, it is the PhD content. 

1) UDA = the constructive reduction of the mind-body problem to the necessity of deriving he physical laws from arithmetic. 

2) AUDA = the derivation itself.

but I have not seen this explanation except in vague hand waving.

Hand waving?

Your remark does look like hand waving, I would say.

Come on Brent, I am the guy who gives 8 precise mathematical theories, three of them being concerned with the appearance of matter in arithmetic, and so are testable, and indeed confirmed by all experiences until now.

They do not show the appearance of matter, the persistence of objects, the shared reality.  You merely assume that they must...since otherwise your theory doesn't work.

I refer you to my two last papers(*), which contains also some difficult open problems.

You might try to ask specific questions.

Marchal B. The computationalist reformulation of the mind-body problem. Prog Biophys Mol Biol; 2013 Sep;113(1):127-40
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23567157

A good example.  It's behind a paywall, but even the abstract shows that it all aspirational.  Nothing is proven about matter except that "If I'm right it must be provable."

" We will explain that once we adopt the computationalist hypothesis, which is a form of mechanist assumption, we have to derive from it how our belief in the physical laws can emerge from *only* arithmetic and classical computer science. In that sense we reduce the mind-body problem to a body problem appearance in computer science, or in arithmetic....The main point is that the derivation is constructive, and it provides the technical means to derive physics from arithmetic, and this will make the computationalist hypothesis empirically testable, and thus scientific in the Popperian analysis of science."

Marchal B. The Universal Numbers. From Biology to Physics, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 2015, Vol. 119, Issue 3, 368-381.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26140993

Now, if you read carefully the second part of my Sane04(*) or my “Plotinus paper" (larger public) talk, then, if you have read some introduction to G and G*, like Smullyan “Forever Undecided” of better” Boolos 1979” or even better “Boolos 1993”, you have all the ingredient to proceed, and certainly to ask precise and specific question.

OK.  What's your definition of matter?

Brent

B. Marchal. The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations. In 4th International System Administration and Network Engineering Conference, SANE 2004, Amsterdam, 2004.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html (sane04)

Marchal B. A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus’ Theory of Matter. In Barry Cooper S. Löwe B., Kent T. F. and Sorbi A., editors, Computation and Logic in the Real World, Third Conference on Computability in Europe June 18-23, pages 263–273. Universita degli studi di Sienna, Dipartimento di Roberto Magari, 2007.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CiE2007/SIENA.pdf

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/39f9ebf7-7038-d236-7ddd-9436c04c3bc9%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/AE6D1F0C-E294-4541-B1DA-03C3147F44BB%40ulb.ac.be.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 May 2020, at 21:35, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/18/2020 3:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 May 2020, at 00:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/17/2020 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

You frequently say this,

Yes, it is the PhD content. 

1) UDA = the constructive reduction of the mind-body problem to the necessity of deriving he physical laws from arithmetic. 

2) AUDA = the derivation itself.

but I have not seen this explanation except in vague hand waving.

Hand waving?

Your remark does look like hand waving, I would say.

Come on Brent, I am the guy who gives 8 precise mathematical theories, three of them being concerned with the appearance of matter in arithmetic, and so are testable, and indeed confirmed by all experiences until now.

They do not show the appearance of matter, the persistence of objects, the shared reality.  You merely assume that they must...since otherwise your theory doesn't work.

UDA explains that there is no other choice. It exposes the problem.

Then AUDA solves it at the propositional level, which is enough to see that measure exists and obey a quantum logics, and yes, this leads to an infinite sequence of open problems, which is normal for any "open science”.

Invoking an ontological commitment is not better than “God made it”. Even if false, it is interesting to discover that machine have a physics in arithmetic, and can test it. Up top now, Nature obeys the consequences of mechanism, so to invoke an ontological commitment (which is like a special propose oracle) is premature. Such an oracle explains everything, and it is like the alien in cosmology: we can appeal to them only on the last ressort.

I refer you to my two last papers(*), which contains also some difficult open problems.

You might try to ask specific questions.

Marchal B. The computationalist reformulation of the mind-body problem. Prog Biophys Mol Biol; 2013 Sep;113(1):127-40
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23567157

A good example.  It's behind a paywall, but even the abstract shows that it all aspirational.  Nothing is proven about matter except that "If I'm right it must be provable.”

?

It is not "If I'm right it must be provable.”

It is If Mechanism is right, then physics becomes Z1* or S4Grz1, or X1*. Those are complete theories (well with the addition of the quantifier) sp let us just compare with Nature. 

If the physical laws does not appear in any of Z1*, X1* or S4Grz1, then Mechanism is refuted (up to some boring technical nuances). The degree of discrepancy provides a measurable degree of non-mechanism.  If physics appears in S4Grz1, then the reality is more idealist than we thought, and if it appears in Z1*, the physical reality is almost not idealist at all, despite remaining immaterial. 

The charge is reversed when we postulate mechanism. If you believe that a physical universe is needed to be assumed, then you have to explain how that works. I claim no truth, just that we can test this, and that quantum mechanics is by itself a very strong evidence for mechanism and its neopythagorean metaphysical consequences.

" We will explain that once we adopt the computationalist hypothesis, which is a form of mechanist assumption, we have to derive from it how our belief in the physical laws can emerge from *only* arithmetic and classical computer science. In that sense we reduce the mind-body problem to a body problem appearance in computer science, or in arithmetic....The main point is that the derivation is constructive, and it provides the technical means to derive physics from arithmetic, and this will make the computationalist hypothesis empirically testable, and thus scientific in the Popperian analysis of science."

Marchal B. The Universal Numbers. From Biology to Physics, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 2015, Vol. 119, Issue 3, 368-381.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26140993

Now, if you read carefully the second part of my Sane04(*) or my “Plotinus paper" (larger public) talk, then, if you have read some introduction to G and G*, like Smullyan “Forever Undecided” of better” Boolos 1979” or even better “Boolos 1993”, you have all the ingredient to proceed, and certainly to ask precise and specific question.

OK.  What's your definition of matter?

The usual definition (that is something made of elementary insurable entities which have to be assumed) is shown to not exist.

But a notion of matter remains, it is the sharable part of the observable, which is defined by []p & <>t (& p) with “[]” being Gödel’s bewiesbar, and p is interred by any sigma_1 sentences.

We ca easily redefined even a notion of “apparent primary matter”: it is the statistical results of of our observation, and below our substitution level, it is given by a measure on all sigma_-sentences, and that measure is given by the semantics of Z1*, or X1*, or S4Grz1.

Matter is what we see, smell, touch, … in or sharable dreams, so to speak. The math shows that it obeys already variate form of possible quantum logic.

Bruno

Brent

B. Marchal. The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations. In 4th International System Administration and Network Engineering Conference, SANE 2004, Amsterdam, 2004.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html (sane04)

Marchal B. A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus’ Theory of Matter. In Barry Cooper S. Löwe B., Kent T. F. and Sorbi A., editors, Computation and Logic in the Real World, Third Conference on Computability in Europe June 18-23, pages 263–273. Universita degli studi di Sienna, Dipartimento di Roberto Magari, 2007.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CiE2007/SIENA.pdf

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/39f9ebf7-7038-d236-7ddd-9436c04c3bc9%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/AE6D1F0C-E294-4541-B1DA-03C3147F44BB%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/513e1539-2817-f09d-3256-ca858fa2d16a%40verizon.net.

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/20/2020 5:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 May 2020, at 21:35, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/18/2020 3:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 18 May 2020, at 00:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 5/17/2020 6:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

the appearance of matter as they are explained by the mechanist consciousness flux in arithmetic (itself explained by G and G* and their difference).

You frequently say this,

Yes, it is the PhD content. 

1) UDA = the constructive reduction of the mind-body problem to the necessity of deriving he physical laws from arithmetic. 

2) AUDA = the derivation itself.

but I have not seen this explanation except in vague hand waving.

Hand waving?

Your remark does look like hand waving, I would say.

Come on Brent, I am the guy who gives 8 precise mathematical theories, three of them being concerned with the appearance of matter in arithmetic, and so are testable, and indeed confirmed by all experiences until now.

They do not show the appearance of matter, the persistence of objects, the shared reality.  You merely assume that they must...since otherwise your theory doesn't work.

UDA explains that there is no other choice. It exposes the problem.

No, it simply asserts the problem follows from some axioms.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

That is right, but the problem is solved constructively, so we can test the solution. And indeed, thanks to QM-without-collapse, we can say that Mechanism is vindicated by Nature.

Also, the axioms belongs to all theories rich enough to be Turing universal, which is already the case for the ultra-finitist presentation of arithmetic. (Nelson’s ultrafinitism starts from Robinson Arithmetic).

The physicalist solution seems to be obliged to put the first person, qualia, consciousness, under the rug, as it just cannot work without postulating a non-mechanist theory of mind, which still do not exist, unless speculation that gravity is consciousness and responsible for some wave packet reduction (Penrose).

Once you grasp that all computations are realised when we accept simple truth like the existence or inexsitence  of the solution of polynomial Diophantine equations, there is no more experimental evidence that a physical universe exists in any ontological sense, and doubly so, when the many-worlds aspect of nature confirms so well the many computations which provably are realised in a very tiny part of the arithmetical reality. 

The physicalist can still be right, so let us pursue the testing.That’s all. To make an ontological commitment at the start, is just non serious theology.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ea772e6f-71c5-9852-694e-b7044a9c0401%40verizon.net.