On 04 Mar 2010, at 22:59, Jack Mallah wrote:
Bruno, I hope you feel better.
Thanks.
My quarrel with you is nothing personal.
Why would I think so?
Now I am warned.
--- Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Jack Mallah wrote:
Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just have to
assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that
'prescience' or any kind of problem.
This would lead to fading qualia in the case of progressive
substitution from the Boolean Graph to the movie graph.
I thought you said you don't use the 'fading qualia' argument (see
below), which in any case is invalid as my partial brain paper
shows. So, you are wrong.
It is a different fading qualia argument, older and different from
Chlamers. It is explained in my PhD thesis, and earlier article, bur
also in MGA3 on this list, and in a paper not yet submitted. Do you
agree with the definition I give of the first person and third person
in teleportation arguments? I mean I have no clue what you are missing.
You confuse MGA and Maudlin's argument. If consciousness supervenes on
the physical realization of a computation, including the inactive
part, it means you attach consciousness on an unknown physical
phenomenon.
It is a magical move which blurs the difficulty. Eithr the "physical
counterfactualness" is Turing emulable, or not. If it is, we can
emulate it at a some level, and you will have to make consciousness
supervene on something not Turing emulable to keep the physical
supervenience.
gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the
standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components
that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave
correctly by luck.
You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could
plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as
the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference
to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the
'fading qualia' argument is invalid.
I am not using the 'fading qualia' argument.
Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some
point. In any case, it was the only interesting argument in favor
of your position, which was not trivially obviously invalid. My
PB paper shows that it is invalid though.
?
What do you mean by "?"?
You may cite the paper then, and say where things go wrong. I provide
a deductive argument. It is a proof, if you prefer. It is not easy,
but most who take the time to study it have not so much problem with
the seven first steps, and eventually ask precise questions for the
8th one, which needs some understanding of what is a computation, in
the mathematical sense of the terms. The key consists in understanding
the difference that exists, even in platonia, between a 'genuine
computation", and a mere description of a computation.
I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on
physical activity only.
Not at all. In the comp theory, it means supervenience on the
physical realization of a computation.
So, it includes supervenience on the counterfactuals?
But "physical" is taken in the agnostic sense. It is whatever is
(Turing) universal and stable enough in my neighborhood so that I can
bet my immaterial self and its immaterial (mathematica) computation or
processing will go through a functional substitution.
Eventually, that physical realization is shown to be a sum on an
infinity of computation realized in elementary arithmetic.
If so, the movie obviously doesn't have the right counterfactuals,
Of course. Glad you agree that the movie has no private experience.
Most who want to block the UD argument pretend that the movie is
conscious (but this leads to other absurdities).
so your MGA fails.
On the contrary, that was the point. It was a reductio ad absurdo. If
consciousness supervenes, in "real time and place" to a physical
activity realizing a computation, and this "qua computatio" then
consciousness supervenes on the movie (MGA2). But this is indeed
absurd, and so consciousness does not supervene on the physical
activity realizing the computation, but on the computation itself (and
then on all computations by first person indeterminacy). This solves
also Maudlin's difficulty, given that Maudlin find weird that
consciousness supervenience needs the presence of physically inactive
entities.
I see nothing nontrivial in your arguments.
Nice! You agree with the argument then. Or what?
Computationalism assumes supervenience on both physical activity
and physical laws (aka counterfactuals).
? You evacuate the computation?
I have no idea what you mean by that. Computations are implemented
based on both activity and counterfactuals, which is the same as
saying they supervene on both.
Then you have to provide a physical definition of what are activity,
counterfactual and computation. But if those definitions leads to a
Turing emulable process, you just lift the difficulty on another
level. Eventually you talk like if we knew which universal system
supports us. You take for granted an Aristotelian principle.
Consciousness does not arise from the movie, because the movie has
the wrong physical laws. There is nothing about that that has
anything to do with 'prescience'.
This is not computationalism.
Of course it is. Any mainstream computationalist agrees that the
right counterfactuals (aka the right 'physical' laws) are needed.
Certainly Chalmers would agree. What else would you call this
position?
Chalmers told me publicly, at a poster presentation in Brussels, that
in the duplication Washington/Moscow, the first person feels be to at
the two places at once. This is indeed coherent with his dualism. But
this, together with comp, entails telepathy between the multiplied
selves. He left the room when I made that remark.
Now I agree with the mainstream computationalist that the 'right
counterfactual' are needed. But I do not follow the "(aka the right
'physical' laws)". It is not computationalism, it is physicalism at
the start.
I have already done so (for MGA): You claim that taking
counterfactuals into account amounts to assuming 'prescience' and is
thus implausible, but that's NOT true. Using counterfactuals/laws is
how computation is defined.
OK. I see you have not get the point. MGA does not need the notion of
counterfactuals. It just show that IF neurons, or basic entity have no
prescience, then the movie has the same physical activity, as far as
realizing a computation in real time, than the boolean graph. So, to
*avoid* prescience, we have to make consciousness supervening on the
counterfactuals. But those related to the computation are
mathematical, immaterial, defined only in computer science. The
physical counterfactuals have to be non relevant, or Turing emulable.
This means that "the physical", from the point of view of a universal
machine in some state S, is the sum on all computations going through
that state. And I make that point even more mathematically transparent
with the use of the self-reference logics.
You talk like if we knew that there is a primitive physical universe,
or any special universal system. But we don't, and no universal
machine could know that.
Your repeated claims that the error has not been pointed out are a
standard crackpot behavior.
That would be the case if the work did not pass the academical test. I
am sure the argument can be made clearer, and I am open that a
systematic error may subsist, but enough scientists (logicians,
analytical philosophers, physicists, and many ctheoretical computer
scientists) have take the (long) time to verify all steps. Only media
and literary philosophers, and 2 pure mathematicians, keep on saying
it is "crackpot", without any explanation (and behind my back).
If you want I can explain you in all detail. Or just look into the
archives, I did it regularly. Have you understand the first person
indeterminacy? Are you open to the *relative* self-sampling assumption?
Do you have understand the mathematical notion of universal dovetailing?
Do you have a problem only in step 8?
It helps to be agnostic on primitive matter before trying to
understand the reasoning.
In that case I should be the perfect candidate, being that I am
agnostic on Platonism. Your arguments don't sway me because they
don't make any sense.
This is more rhetorical than argumentative. If you were a (admittedly
ideal) scientist, you would say something like "I am not sure I
understand why you say that this <precise thing> follows from that
<precise thing>.
Of course I met people, including scientists, who believe that
consciousness, mind, person, are senseless notions, but those
interested in the mind body problem are usually very interested.
In this list I have already well explained the seven step of UDA, and
one difficulty remains in the step 8, which is the difference between
a computation and a description of computation. Due to the static
character of Platonia, some believes it is the same thing, but it is
not, and this is hard to explain. That hardness is reflected in the
AUDA: the 'translation' of UDA in arithmetic. The subtlety is that
again, the existence of a computation is true if and only if the
existence of a description of the computation exist, but that is true
at the level G*, and not at the G level, so that such an equivalence
is not directly available, and it does not allow to confuse a
computation (a mathematical relation among numbers), and a description
of a computation (a number).
Remember, I came to this list because like many others here I
thought up the 'everthing that exists mathematically exists in the
same way we do' idea by myself, and only found out online that
others had thought of it too. So I'm not prejudiced against it. I
just don't know if it's true, and I think it's important not to jump
to conclusions. Your 'work' has had no effect on my views on that.
I don't jump to the conclusion, it is the result of many years of work
in a difficult field. With comp, Church thesis provide the first
universal notion, mathematically definable, and immune to cantor
diagonalization. It is the only coherent "everything" notion which
admit an effective definition. I just show that from inside it makes
physics not entirely computable, and secondary: emerging from the
numbers swarm.
I already apologize to the list more than once that I published all
this in the eighties, and defend a PhD thesis in the nineties. Some
philosophers don't understand that it is a modest piece of 'science':
a derivation in the frame of a theory. It leads to something which is
not radically new: Plato or Plotinus) like theology. The proper
theology of a machine is just Tarski notion of truth (restricted to
arithmetic) minus Gödel's provability. Despite logicians are usually
very severe on the misuse on Gödel's theorem, they have no problem
with the use I made of it. It is true that usually Gödel's is used
against mechanism. Like Emil Post, Judson Webb and some other, I show
Gödel's and Löb's theorem are lucky event for the Löbian machines.
AUDA shows UDA makes sense, even arithmetical sense.
It is nice that you are open to the hypothesis, and open to the
conclusion. But if you are agnostic on platonism, why do you invoke
physicalness in the notion of computation to block the passage from
the hypothesis to the conclusion?
It seems that you contradict your own saying, your posts and your
glossary. I already mentioned this, and you did not answer. I can't
help if you have too much prejudices, as your tone seems to reflect. I
prefer to tell you in advance that I may dismiss your next posts if
they contain insults, swear words and/or rhetorical tricks.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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