Le 05-juil.-07, à 02:40, David Nyman a écrit : > On 03/07/07, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > But it might then be > > questioned how observer and physical narratives could somehow > > 'converge' on a common or consistent environmental interface as a > > result of any form of co-evolution. Such a notion would seem to imply > > that equivalent selection effects could be operating on both > > environments despite their orthogonal orientation. It is not > > immediately apparent why this should be so. > > As far as I understand, this is *the* problem. It seems insoluble > untill you take into account explicitly the incompleteness phenomenon > which put high constraint of what sound machines can believe, bet, > observe, feel ... (that what the hypostases are all about). > > DN: On reflection, I have something else to ask about this. If I > have understood, the comp project is to give an account, as you say, > of what emerges from interviewing (computationally) sound machines > about their beliefs, bets, observations, feelings etc.
OK. I would insist that the "comp project" (extract physics from comp) is really just a comp obligation. This is what is supposed to be shown by the UDA (+ MOVIE-GRAPH). Are you OK with this. It *is* counterintuitive. Then, the interview of the universal machine is "just" a way to do the extraction of physics in a constructive way. It is really the subtleties of the incompleteness phenomena which makes this interview highly non trivial. > In other words, the maximal description of their mental and physical > worlds that is possible under such constraints. What would still be > indeterminate would be exactly how a specific machine's account could > be correlated with a physical description of the machine itself: i.e. > the perennial 'mind-body problem'. But do you believe that there can > be a way of closing this question theoretically? Is comp agnostic to > this correlation being 'functional' or 'physical'? I think that the interview provides the best we can hope concerning the mind-body problem in the comp frame. This could still currently lead to a refutation of comp in case empirical facts contradicts the comp-physics (the physics extracted from comp). There is no direct (still less one-one) correlation between the mental and the physical, that is the physical supervenience thesis is incompatible with the comp hyp. [A quale of a pain] felt at time t in place x, is not a product of the physical activity of a machine, at time t in place x. Rather, it is the whole quale of [a pain felt at time t in place x] which is associated with an (immaterial and necessarily unknown) computational state, itself related to its normal consistent computational continuations. > Or will 'yes doctor' remain always a gamble in the sense of "you > picks your theory and you takes your choice"? Hmmm... It is hard to answer this. Comp makes the "yes doctor" a gamble, necessarily. That is: assuming the "theory comp" you have to understand that, by saying yes to the doctor, you are gambling on a level of substitution. At the same time you make a "gamble" on the theory comp itself. There is double gamble here. Now, the first gamble, IF DONE AT THE RIGHT COMP SUBSTITUTION LEVEL, is comp-equivalent with the natural gamble everybody do when going to sleep, or just when waiting a nanosecond. In some sense "nature" do that gamble in our place all the time ... But this is somethjng we cannot know, still less assert in any scientific way, and that is why I insist so much on the "theological" aspect of comp. This is important in practice. It really justify that the truth of the "yes doctor" entails the absolute fundamental right to say NO to the doctor. The doctor has to admit he is gambling on a substitution level. If comp is true we cannot be sure on the choice of the subst. level. Comp predicts that machine will be more and more "dizzy" when either introspecting themsleves close enough, or by looking at nature close enough. The math predicts even thresholds and jumps in that endeavor. Does this help? I assert some propositions without justifying them, because the justification are both already on the list, or in my papers. But, please, don't hesitate to ask for more if interested. From what I understand about your intuition, you are quite close to the "natural first person discourse" of the lobian machine. And the closer you are, the more severe my comments will be on the details, so please indulge my critical way of talking ... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
