On 13 Jul 2011, at 01:49, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower
behaves
differently than a biological plant.
Sure. But they have not the same function.
They both decorate a vase. How do we know when we build a chip that
it's performing the same function that a neuron performs and not
just
what we think it performs, especially considering that neurology
produces qualitative phenomena which cannot be detected at all
outside
of our personal experience. Maybe the brain is a haunted house built
of prehistoric stones under layers of medieval catacombs and the
chip
is a brand new suburban tract home made to look like a grand old
mansion but it's made of drywall and stucco and ghosts aren't
interested.
Because all known laws of nature, even their approximations, which
can
still function at some high level, are Turing emulable.
But consciousness isn't observable in nature, outside of our own
interiority. Is yellow Turing emulable?
The experience of seeing yellow might be, although its stability will
needs the global structure of all computations.
If you believe the contrary, you need to speculate on an unknown
physics.
By computers I mean universal
machine, and this is a mathematical notion.
I don't know, man. I think computers are just gigantic electronic
abacuses. They don't feel anything, but you can arrange their beads
into patterns which act as a vessel for us to feel, see, know,
think,
etc.
Neither computer nor brain can think. Persons think.
And a computer has nothing to do with electronic, or anything
physical. It is more an information pattern which can emulate all
computable pattern evolution. It has been discovered in math. It
exists by virtue of elementary arithmetic. We can implement it in the
physical reality, but this shows only that physical reality is at
least Turing universal.
That's a bad note! What is the first 5th % that you don't
understand?
Each sentence is a struggle for me. I could go through each one if
you
want:
"I will first present a non constructive argument showing that the
mechanist
hypothesis in cognitive science gives enough constraints to decide
what a "physical reality"
can possibly consist in."
This is the abstract. The paper explains its meaning.
I read that as "I will first present a theoretical argument showing
that the hypothesis of consciousness arising from purely mechanical
interactions in the brain is sufficient to support a physical
reality.
Not to support. To derive. I mean physics is a branch of machine's
theology.
Right away I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm guessing that
you mean the mechanics of the brain look like physical reality to
us.
I mean physics is not the fundamental branch. You have to study the
proof, not to speculate on a theorem.
Which I would have agreed with a couple years ago, but my hypothesis
now makes more sense to me, that the exterior mechanism and interior
experience are related in a dynamic continuum topology in which they
diverge sharply at one end and are indistinguishable in another.
That's unclear.
Read just the UDA. The first seven steps gives the picture. Of
course,
you have to be able to reason with an hypothesis, keeping it all
along
in the reasoning.
I'm trying, but it's not working. I think each step would have to be
condensed into two sentences.
No, they are related to arithmetical relations and set of
arithmetical relations.
Maybe that's the issue. I can't really parse math. I had to take
Algebra 2 twice and never took another math class again. If the
universe is made of math
The point is that the universe is not made of anything. Neither
physical primitive stuff, nor mathematical stuff. You have to study
the argument to make sense of this. So you have to accept the comp
hypothesis at least for the sake of the argument.
I would have a hard time explaining that. Why
is math hard for some people if we are made of math?
Well, I could ask you why physics is hard if we obey to the laws of
physics. this is a non sequitur.
Also, we are not made of math. math is not a stuffy thing. It is just
a collection of true fact about immaterial beings.
Why is math
something we don't learn until long after we understand words,
colors,
facial expressions, etc?
Because we are not supposed to understand how we work. The
understanding of facial expression asks for many complex mathematical
operations done unconsciously. We learn to use our brain well before
even knowing we have a brain.
God create the natural numbers, all the rest is created by the
natural numbers.
Numbers create things? Why?
Relatively to universal number, number do many things. we know now
that their doing escape any complete theories. We know now why
numbers
have unbounded behavior complexity. It seems to me that you can
already intuit this when looking at the Mandelbrot set, where a very
simple mathematical operation defines a montruously complex object.
See:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6uO7ZHtK8http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=UrEoKFYk0Cs
My focus is on describing what and who we are in the simplest way.
To my mind,
what and who we are cannot be described in purely arithmetic
relations, unless arithmetic relations automatically obscure their
origin and present themselves in all possible universes as color,
sound, taste, feeling, etc.
Nice picture. This is what happens indeed.
You are saying that there is an absolute ontological correlation
between numbers and phenomenon, ie all possible spectrums begin with
red, all possible periodic tables begin with Hydrogen - the
singularity of the proton is immutably translated as the
properties of
elemental hydrogen in all physical universes?
Not necessarily. The structure of the proton might be more
geographical (contingent) than physical (same for all observers).
It is better to understand the reasoning by yourself than to
speculate
ad infinitum of what I could say. The exact frontier between
geography
and physics remains to be determined (in the comp theory). In the non
comp theory, the question cannot even be addressed.
It is in between. Because physics is not the projection of the
human
mind, but the projection of all universal (machine (number)) mind.
I can go along with that, although I would not limit the universal
interior order to machine, number, or mind, but rather a more all-
encompassing phenomenology like 'sense' or 'pattern'.
I cannot be satisfied with this, because it put what I want to
explain
(mind and matter) in the starting premises.
Then I show that comp leads to a precise (and mathematical)
reformulation of the mind-body problem.
By definition, mental phenomena are
exempt from physical constraints, such as gravity, thermodynamics,
etc.
They are not; even in Platonia.
You're not saying that Mickey Mouse has mass and velocity though,
right? I don't get it.
It depends on the context. Mickey Mouse is a fiction. as such it
has a
mass, relatively to its fictive world. That world is not complex
enough to attribute meaning to physical attribute, nor mental one, so
that your question does not make much sense.
The complex problem is how pain are possible, and yes, I think that
computer science has interesting things to say here.
Like what?
Like obeying to the las of qualia, where qualia are defined by what
the machine can know immediately, yet cannot prove that they know
that. It is a part of "machine's theology".
There might be a bit of a language barrier.. I'm just not sure what
you mean towards the end. Why does the universal machine pretend not
to be a machine?
Because the machine's first person experience is related to the
notion
of truth, which is a highly non computable notion.
Computationalism confronts all machines with a lot of non computable
elements. Theoretical computer science is mainly the study of the non
computable reality (of numbers).
Bruno
Craig
On Jul 12, 3:58 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 11 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Jul 12, 3:58 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 11 Jul 2011, at 23:57, Craig Weinberg wrote:
I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying.
Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.
That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless
you
believe in substantial infinite souls.
Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower
behaves
differently than a biological plant.
Sure. But they have not the same function.
A computer chip behaves
differently than a neuron.
Not necessarily. It might, if well programmed enough, do the same
thing, and then it is a question of interfacing different sort of
hardware, to replace the neuron, by the chips.
Why assume that a computer chip can feel
what a living cell can feel?
Because all known laws of nature, even their approximations, which
can
still function at some high level, are Turing emulable. In the case
of
biology, there is strong evidence that nature has already bet on
the
functional substitution, because it happens all the time at the
biomolecular level.
Even the quantum level is Turing emulable, but no more in real
time,
and you need a quantum chips. But few believes the brain can be a
quantum computer, and it would change nothing in our argumentation.
Your computer
can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.
Why?
I'm talking about your actual computer that you are reading this
on.
Are you asking me why it can't commit
...
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