On 11 Jun 2011, at 10:10, Russell Standish wrote:
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:45:56AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I realize I have been clear on this in some FOR list post, perhaps
not here. I don't think I have varied on this. To be conscious, you
need only to be universal.
I have heard of universality being argued to be necessary (to which I
have some sympathy, but not beyond doubt), but not sufficient
before. Why do you say that universality is sufficient for
consciousness? Surely the machine needs to actually be running the
right
program in order to be consious.
It is very hard to explain in plain, natural, language what happens
here, because natural language are not prepared to handle those
difficult counter-intuitive self-reference cases. This is new material
and is not in my publication, and I assume Digital Mechanism, and that
there is no flaw in UDA, and AUDA.
Having said this I recall also that no machine are conscious, only
person, which "are" infinities of immaterial, abstract, number
relations.
Now for the weird thing: I do think now that all universal person (the
one canonically attach to any universal entity) are conscious. The
point is that it is the consciousness of that unique person. It is the
same consciousness. You might call it cosmic consciousness. It is the
same that ours, but in a sort of superamnesic state, cut from all
possible interfaces with any other universal entity (unlike our
"little ego").
Less than universal might be able to have that consciousness too, in
some trivial sense. But keep in mind that universality is very cheap,
so I prefer to start with the universal beings. I use universal in the
Turing sense, and I can show that bacteria and even viruses are
already universal.
To be self-conscious, and have free-will,
you need to be Löbian.
I have no doubts that planaria and other
worms are conscious, but they have no notion of self and of others
(or very crude one). Löbianity is more sophisticated. They can infer
proposition on themselves and on others. They can attribute
consciousness on others.
OK - I understand this. But effectively Loeb's axiom gives rise to
self-referential discourse,
It is more Löbianity which comes from correct self-references.
Anything believing in numbers, classical logic and enough induction-
axioms is Löbian (and thus have the number octo-theology; octo = 8
hypostases).
so it doesn't really add anything over
saying something is self-aware to say it is Loebian.
But I am saying the opposite. That Löbianity gives rise to self-
consciousness. They are probably equivalent.
It is useful because Löbianity is a well defined computer-theoretical
and thus arithmetical notion. Loebianity is also very cheap, although
quite stronger than simple universality. But technically Löbianity is
universality + Bp -> BBp. (or p -> Bp for p Sigma_1).
It would be nice
if the approach gave us some new tests of self-awareness,
The approach shows that there is no test possible. I think that this
was already intuitively obvious. But any Löbian entity can develop
*personal* conviction that some other entity is Löbian (self-
conscious), by interacting with it, ... like most of us believe that
"we" are not zombie. This happened to me recently for the octopus and
the jumping spiders!
or even
better ways of quantifying the level of thinking.
This is not quantifiable, except by saying:
- Universal (Sigma_1 complete) = conscious
- Löbian = self-conscious (and there is nothing above that).
The rest is history and geography, and leads to incomparable degrees
of complexity, which concerns more ingenuity than consciousness. This
is structured into a vast lattice structure where only domain
dependent competencies can be relatively compared and evaluated (by
exams, for example).
In the arithmetical term, consciousness appears with Robinson
Arithmetic (= Peano Arithmetic without the induction axioms), and
Löbianity (and self-consciousness) appears with Peano Arithmetic.
Löbian entity have the same rich theology (captured *completely* by
G and G* at the propositional level).
Sufficient or necessary? I find it hard to believe that all RA
theorems are consious,
It is RA itself which is conscious, not its theorems. It is the
abstract, immaterial, quasi-trivial, person attached to RA which is
conscious, not its description (material or not). No material thing is
conscious. Bodies are owned by immaterial (software like) person.
RA's consciousness is fixed, atemporal, aspatial and unrelated to any
manifestation.
but I can accept that some might be, given that
a universal machine must appear within RA.
RA emulates all Löbian machines, including some much more powerful
than itself, like ZF, of ZF+high-cardinals. But to confuse RA and the
entities that RA emulates is a case of "Searle's level confusion".
Give me time and I can emulate Einstein's brain, but I will not be
Einstein for that reason (unless we already both identify ourself with
the "cosmic consciousness": personal identity *is* an illusion).
RA is "currently" emulating you an infinity of times, all at once,
from your first person perspective. But you, the "you" who is <here
and now>, are not typically identified with RA, unless you
consume,<here and now>, some drug leading to the total amnesia
described above.
So to be conscious, all you need is a brain, or a computer. All
animals with a centralized nervous system are probably conscious.
Again, I think you can only say it is necessary to have a brain, or a
computer, but not sufficient. Unless I'm missing something.
It is necessary, but from your first person perspective you *always*
have a brain, if only RA itself in "sigma_1-arithmetical-
Platonia" (which is just elementary arithmetic). A physical brain is
not necessary. Even the big crunch will not make RA disappear. But you
need a physical brain to manifest "your" consciousness relatively to
that physical reality. And it is sufficient. A real brain consumes
energy to make us forget who we are, to make us believing that we can
be unconscious, and to delude us about our "real" identity. In fact we
all share that "cosmic consciousness" of the universal number(s). I
just continue to take the comp reversal between physics and number's
theology completely seriously. It is "my" game. I am quite open this
leads to an absurdity, but up to now it leads only to the the quantum
theory and the quantum-like weirdness, including immortality.
Assuming you're
identifying free will (or Loebianity) with consciousness, then only
selectively granting species might get around the anthropic ant
argument.
My critics of that argument was more about the use of a form of
Absolute Self-sampling assumption. It makes no sense for me to ask
what is the probability of being a bacterium, or a human, or an
alien.
The only probability is the probability to have some
conscious state starting from having some conscious state (cf. RSSA
versus ASSA).
I take it that you find the original doomsday argument as absurd. I
don't, so I'm keen to hear other people's rationlisation of why it
doesn't work. Even better would be an empirical test that it fails
abysmally.
Only the ASSA do I find absurd :). But I don't use this.
I think that with ASSA, the doomsday argument is valid, and is a
correct application of Bayes formula. But without ASSA or some form of
ASSA, I don't see how the argument can go through. I can't find any
relative OMEGA space for defining the probabilities. You might recall
us your argument.
Then I think than in Everett QM, and in comp, the argument is directly
contradicted by their QM or comp consequences, like the fact that we
exists through a continuum (plausibly, but at least an infinity) of
different bodies, and always survive. Rossler said that consciousness
is a prison, and this is a meta-theorem in the digital mechanist
theory. I am not saying that any of this is true, just that it is a
logical consequence of believing that we are Turing emulable at some
level.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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