Hey Bruno, I have done some thinking and reformulated my thoughts about our ongoing discussion.
To sum up my (intuitive) objection, I have struggled to understand how you make the leap from the consciousness of abstract logical machines to human consciousness. I now have an argument that I think formalizes this intuition. First, I grant that the computation at the neuron-level is at least universal, since neurons are capable of addition and multiplication, and as you say, these are the only operations a machine is required to be able to perform to be considered universal. I could even see how neural computation may be Löbian, where the induction operations are implemented in terms of synaptic strengths (as 'confidence' in the synaptic connections that mediate particular 'beliefs'). Furthermore, I grant that a kind of consciousness might be associated with Löbianity (and perhaps even universality). I will argue however that that is not the consciousness we as humans experience, and we cannot know - solely on the basis of abstract logical machines - how to characterize human consciousness. The critical point is that human psychology (which I will refer to henceforth as 'psy') emerges from vast assemblages of neurons. When we talk about emergence, we recognize that there is a higher-order level that has its own dynamics which are completely independent (what I refer to as 'causally orthogonal') to the dynamics of the lower-order level. The Game of Life CA (cellular automata) has very specific dynamics at the cell level, and the dynamics that emerges at the higher-order level cannot be predicted or explained in terms of those lower-order dynamics. The higher order is an emergence of a new 'ontology'. The neural correlates of psy experiences can indeed be traced down to the firings of (vast numbers of) individual neurons, in the same way that a hurricane can be traced down to the interactions of (vast numbers of) water and air molecules. But I'm saying the dynamics of human psychology will never be understood in terms of the firings of neurons. Psy can be thought of as 'neural weather'. True understanding of psy may one day be enabled by an understanding of the dynamics of the structures that emerge from the neuronal level, in the same way that weather forecasters understand the weather in terms of the dynamics of low/high pressure systems, fronts, troughs, jet-streams, and so on. To put this in more mathematical terms, propositions about psy are not expressible in the 'machine language' of neurons. Propositions about 'psy' are in fact intrinsic to the particular 'program' that the neural machinery runs. It is a form of level confusion, in other words, to attribute the human consciousness that is correlated with emergent structures to the consciousness of neural machinery. What I think is most likely is that there are several levels of psychological emergence related to increasingly encompassing aspects of experience. Each of these levels are uniquely structured, and in a "form follows function" kind of way, each correspond with a different character of consciousness. Human consciousness is a sum over each of those layers (including perhaps the base neuronal level). Given that the only kind of consciousness we have any direct knowledge of is human consciousness, we cannot say anything about the character of the consciousness of abstract logical machines. To truly "explain" consciousness, we're going to have to understand the dynamics that emerge from assemblages of (large) groups of neurons, and how psy phenomenon correlate to those dynamics. A little more below... Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> If no, do you think it is important to explain how >> biological machines like us do have access to our beliefs? > > That is crucial indeed. But this is exactly what Gödel did solve. A > simple arithmetical prover has access to its belief, because the laws > of addition and multiplication can define the prover itself. That > definition (the "Bp") can be implicit or explicit, and, like a patient > in front of the description of the brain, the machine cannot recognize > itself in that description, yet the access is there, by virtue of its > build in ability. The machine itself only identifies itself with the > Bp & p, and so, will not been able to ever acknowledge the identity > between Bp and Bp & p. That identity belongs to G* minus G. The > machine will have to bet on it (to say "yes" to the doctor). > This seems like an evasive answer because Gödel only proved this for the logical machine. I am saying that we can assume comp but still not have access to the propositions of a level that emerges from the computed substrate. Bruno Marchal wrote: > > For the qualia, I am using the classical theory of Theaetetus, and its > variants. So I define new logical operator, by Bp & p, Bp & Dt, Bp & > Dt & p. The qualia appears with Bp & p (but amazingly enough those > qualia are communicable, at least between Löbian entities). > Doesn't their communicability (between Löbian entities) represent a contradiction? I'm not sure how you can call them qualia anymore. Bruno Marchal wrote: > > The hallucination existence is counter-intuitive because it seems to > imply that our consciousness is statical, and that the time is a > complex product of the brain activity (or of the existence of some > number relation). I thought that consciousness needs the illusion of > time, but salvia makes possible an hallucination which is out of time. > How could we hallucinate that? I see only one solution, we are > conscious even before we build our notion of time. > I don't see why this is counter-intuitive for you Bruno, given that (assuming comp) all experiences of time as experienced by infinities of universal numbers are happening in Platonia, which is by definition timeless. The self-consciousness you attribute to Löbian machines does not require time either, correct? Thanks for you interesting write ups of your salvia experiences... definitely food for thought. Best, Terren -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Mathematical-closure-of-consciousness-and-computation-tp31771136p32117606.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
