Hi Jef,
Please, don't hesitate to skip the remarks you could find a bit too
technical, but which could help others who know perhaps a bit more on G
and G*, which are theories which I use to tackle many questions in this
list. You can come back on those remarks if ever
you got time and motivation to do so.
Le 28-déc.-06, à 21:14, Jef Allbright a écrit :
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense
of consciousness, on what basis can
you claim that it actually is real?
Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,
imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt everything,
we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we doubt
of everything. The same for relativization: we cannot
relativize everything without an absolute base on which
that relativization is effective.
Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:
Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at the center of the
structure of reasoning. But with our more developed awareness of
evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it is becoming
clearer that this pure "Copernican" view of reasoning is invalid. We
now can see that every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori
framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or offset to any
subjective construct. When we are aware that there is fundamental
bias,
it is clear that one can not validly reason to the point of doubting
everything.
All this makes sense to me. I can interpret your terms in the
(post-godelian) mechanist theory of mind/matter. The "bias" is given by
our "body" itself, or our "godel number" or any "correct" 3-person
description of ourselves (like the artificial digital body proposed by
the digital computationalist doctor).
When all that is in doubt is removed, we don't arrive at
zero as is classically thought,
... before Godel & Co. Classical philosophy is different before and
after Turing, Post, Church, Godel, Markov, Uspenski, Kolmogorov, etc.
but at some indistinct offset determined
by our very nature as a reasoner embedded in a real environment.
Here there is a technical problem because there is just no "real
environment"; but it could be easily resolved by replacing "real
environment" by "relatively most probable computational histories".
This is more coherent with both the comp hyp and quantum mechanics.
Understanding this eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual
identities leading to meaningless absolutes.
I am not sure which "meaningless absolutes" you refer too. In the comp
theory many simple truth can be considered as absolute and indeed
communicably so (like arithmetical truth, piece of set theoretical
truth, ...). Also the first person (which admit some precise
definition) is related to some absolutes.
This understanding also helps resolve other philosophical "paradoxes"
such as solipsism, meaning of life, free-will and others hinging on the
idea of a subjective center.
Hmmm here I think you are a bit quick. But I have no problem with many
philosophical paradoxes, although the theory solves them with different
degree of quality. "Free-will" is due in part to the availability, for
enough rich universal machine, of its "ignorance space". Somehow I am
free to choose going to the movie or to the theater because ... I don't
know what I want .... Once I know what I want, I remain free in the
sense of being self-determinate about my (future) action.
For the modalist: The 3-description of that difference space is given
by G* (truth about the self-referential ability of the machine) and G
(what the machine can prove about its self-referential ability). But G*
minus G admit modal variants, so that the ignorance space, like the
whole of arithmetical truth differentiates with the change of point of
view. This indeed shed light on many paradoxes (and, BTW, can also be
used to show invalid many reasonings in cognitive computer science).
If you want (like David
and George) consciousness is our criteria of "absolute
(but not 3-communicable) truth". I don't think we can
genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can doubt
on any content of that consciousness, but that is different.
We can doubt having been conscious in some past, but we cannot doubt
being conscious here and now, whatever that means.
<...>
The "truth" here bears on the existence of the experience, and has
nothing to do with anything which could be reported by the
experiencer.
On this basis I understand your point, and as long as we are very
careful about conveying which particular meaning of "knowing",
"certainty", and "truth" we are referring to, then there will be little
confusion.
OK.
But such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self, from which there's
no objective (and thus workable) basis for any claim.
Here I disagree. The only risk I see, is the confusion between the
3-self (grosso modo my body or body description) and the 1-self (which
*from his view* has no body at all, nor any description).
This is a difficult point. G* proves that the 1-self and the 3-self are
the same (extensionally: they have the same 3-behavior, same body,
etc.). But G* proves also that G does not prove that equivalence so
that from the first person view of the machine, those views are quite
distinct and in particular they obey different logic. Simplifying a
bit: the 3-view = classical logic, the 1-view = intuitionistic logic,
the 1-plural view = quantum logic).
My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all if one is
willing to fully accept that within any framework of description there
is absolutely no difference at all between a person and a zombie,
Should we send our children in jail when they torture their dolls? I am
afraid you are using your own G* as it was a G, making the confusion
described above. Sorry for analysing your comment in my "theoretical
terms". I am NOT pretending the theory is correct, but in the worst
case it can help as a sort of etalon for classifying other approaches.
but
even the most philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of view
even though it isn't detectable or measurable and has absolutely no
effect on the physical world.
Of course (for the long-time reader of the list, albeit soundly
skeptical) I believe (assuming comp) the contrary: what we call
"physical world" should eventually be explained in term of sheaf of
cohering machine dreams. the "cohering" factor makes possible to glue
together those dreams making us believe in a local physical reality,
but that reality emerge from *all* machine dreams
(1-plural-computations).
It is virtually impossible for many people to see that even IF the 1st
person experience actually exists, it can't be described, even by that
person,
Good intuition (with respect to the comp hyp.) This is even provable by
the machine itself (in the form: If I am consistent then the first
person cannot be described in any third person way by myself).
except from a third person perspective.
Only trough a guess, I insist.
That voice in your own
mind, those images in your imagination, none can be said to be
experienced without being interpreted.
OK.
The idea of direct experience is
incoherent.
Well, some inputs needs less internal processing than others. Some
experiences are "more direct" than others. In any case, conscious
experience most probably needs some non trivial self-reflecting
processing and are not "direct". There are many "universal machine" in
a brain, dynamically mirroring each others.
It always carries the implication that there's some other
process there to have the experience. It's turtles all the way down.
It is here that theoretical computer science can provide fixed points,
i.e. definite solution for infinite regress. The key idea for
self-reference can be technically approached through diagonalization
procedure. As illustration you get self-reproduction by applying a
duplicator on itself: if for all x, Dx gives xx, then DD gives DD.
The essence of Buddhist training is to accept this non-existence of
Self
at a deep level. It is very rare, but not impossible to achieve such
an
understanding, and while still experiencing the illusion, to see it as
an illusion, with no actual boundary to distinguish an imagined self
from the rest of nature. I think that a machine intelligence, while
requiring a model of self, would have no need of this illusion which is
a result of our evolutionary development.
I am not sure about that. Once the machine has a "model" of itself,
there is part of itself which will be interpreted correctly as
"perceptive fields" in the company of measurable but incommunicable
intensities, and this can provide natural candidates for qualia.
Some "local self" can be illusory, but some enlarged global self could
be "correct illusion", i.e. stable and consistent lawful "illusion"
with respect to its most probable (set of) computational histories.
I don't think this is "completely programmable", but it is partially
programmable by some formula like "help yourself", and so I could agree
this necessitate "evolutionary development". Those developments could
be necessary long (thus deep in Bennett sense for those who have read
Bennett). Again, in that sense, I agree with you. But such long
computation generates our "bio-physics". Physics is "secondary" with
respect to the set of all possible computations (cf Church thesis).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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