Thanks Bruno. Much of your terminology at this point escapes me.
I do see that a small part of our differences below are simply due to the
imprecision of language (and my somewhat sloppy writing.)
I also sense that at the core of much of this discussion is the idea that, although we are
subjective agents, we do create objective effects within any practical context. If I intend to
swat a fly, my sensing of the fly's position is incomplete and contingent and my motor control is
subject to error, but I act, and the fly is "objectively" dead, within any reasonable
degree of certainty. I find that the concept of "context" is essential at all levels and
extends in the Godelian sense that we are fundamentally limited to operating within a limited but
expanding context.
Perhaps your terminology states this more elegantly, I can't tell.
Time for me to go do some reading from your site.
- Jef
Bruno Marchal wrote:
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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