On 09 Oct 2011, at 16:46, David Nyman wrote:
On 9 October 2011 14:37, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Can you find any number(s) flying around
that has any claim to an internal view right now?
Yes. Although the number per se, like programs and brains, will
refer only
to the relations that the 1-person associated with that number can
have. A
person is not a brain, not a body, not a number, not anything 3-
describable.
But we can bet on brains, numbers, etc. as tool for being able to
manifest
ourself relatively to each other.
Very succinctly put. However, speaking as a (grateful!) survivor of
many conversations on this topic, on this list, over the years, I
would venture to suggest that confusion about, or even ignorance of,
the very distinctions you draw in the above remark are responsible for
many of the more commonly encountered (perhaps simplistic)
misunderstandings of your ideas. I know that you have (indefatigably)
attempted to explain, in various places, the distinctively different
roles of the various concepts you mention above - i.e. programs,
numbers, persons, brains, bodies and what have you. However, it still
seems to be the case that various correspondents are quite confused
(and indeed differently confused) about what motivates this particular
approach in the first place,
The study of molecular biology made me think that it was plausible
that we are "natural" machine.
I have harbored a doubt due to the fact that molecular biology relies
on biochemistry, and biochemistry relies on chemistry which relies on
quantum physics, which seemed to me to have a non mechanical feature,
until I understood that the non mechanical feature (the wave collapse)
was an ad hoc principle introduced to prevent the physical reality to
multiply. At that time I knew already that the mechanist assumption
multiply us infinitely in a tiny corner of the arithmetical truth. So
when reading Everett I got the feeling that the quantum, like Gödel +
Turing + Tarski were completely rescuing the possibility of Mechanism.
I am just studying the consequence of Mechanism. They are startling.
The motivation is the holly fun. The "possible big picture awe feeling".
why and how the entities and roles in
question then appear in the theory, and finally precisely how they are
related and matched up in terms of the theory. Of course, I realise
that these topics can all be studied in much more detail via your
published papers, but in terms of this list, how might one best set
out these motivations and distinctions for pedagogical purposes?
What is simple and obvious for one person, is not for another one. My
papers have all been ordered by people having some notion in
theoretical computer science and logic. Some awareness of the "non
understanding of QM" can help.
I did make some attempt to explain logic in more detail on the list,
but it is rather difficult. I pointed on some good books too.
UDA is already a form of AUDA made accessible to layman. Computer
scientists are themselves "layman" in the philosophy of mind---alias
fundamental cognitive science.
I think it is good to distinguish UDA and AUDA. UDA can be understood
by anyone having a passive understanding of how work at least one
universal system, like a computer, or an interpreter. I present UDA in
steps, so that people can tell me at which step they have difficulties.
I have discovered that many people can have a problem to do
reasoning, or to understand what is a valid reasoning, and what is a
non valid reasoning (I have made the same finding when trying to show
non valid step in prohibitionist argument. Or just by reading
newspaper. This I think illustrates that some people want use their
emotion at the place of reason. The brain tend to make association,
which can optimize short term goal, and many keep association intact
even when they are logically or statistically debunked.
The strategy in the UDA is
1) to give a quasi operational definition of mechanism (roughly: we
can survive with an artificial brain, and it is a programmed computer,
or engrammed if it is a copy of an non decodable information),
2) to derive what we can derive from that. It leads to a rational view
of reality, quite different than the aristotelian one, but similar to
view already developed by many ancient greeks and Chinese and Indians
(it is not "new").
For AUDA, it is more difficult, because it is theoretical computer
science/mathematical logic. Logicians have discovered how finite
entities can refer to themselves relatively to universal entities, and
how some can reflect those self-references, etc. The Bp will mean "the
machine asserts p", or "the machine believes p", as described in the
language of the machine itself. That is what Gödel as shown possible,
when the beliefs are either axioms or deducible from them, in the case
of the ideally correct machine (the toy case, if you want). Then I use
Theatetus theory of knowledge, which works for machine thanks to the
incompleteness theorem, and that leads to a Plotinian-like (toy)
theology, where physics is recovered where UDA predict that it should,
and so can be compared with nature/human observation.
Now, I can answer any more specific question. It is obviously a hot
and very complex subject.
But a fascinating one and I am not trying to do really anything more
than sharing my enthusiasm and my fun when reasoning on those deep
issues.
I don't know if comp is true or not. But I think that if it is true,
the consequences are at least as startling as we can derive from it,
and most plausibly, even much more.
No doubt I have a crunch for the UMs and the LUMs :)
Bruno
David
On 08 Oct 2011, at 21:00, benjayk wrote:
I'm not saying that arithmetic isn't an internally consistent
logic
with unexpected depths and qualities, I'm just saying it can't
turn
blue or taste like broccoli.
Assuming non-comp.
There is no assumption needed for that. It is a category error to
say
arithmetics turns into a taste. It is also a category error to say
that
arithmetic has an internal view.
If by arithmetic you mean some theory/machine like PA, you *are*
using non
comp.
If by arithmetic you mean arithmetical truth then I can see some
sense in
which it is a category error.
It makes as much sense to say that a
concept has an internal view.
nternal view just applies to the only thing
that can have/is a view, namely consciousness.
It applies to person. It might be a category error to say that
consciousness
has consciousness. Consciousness is not a person, even cosmic
consciousness.
This is not a belief, this is
just the obvious reality right now.
Obvious for you. But is it obvious that PA is conscious: I don't
think so.
Nevertheless, in case it is conscious, it is obvious from her point
of view.
It is that obviousness we are looking a theory for.
Can you find any number(s) flying around
that has any claim to an internal view right now?
Yes. Although the number per se, like programs and brains, will
refer only
to the relations that the 1-person associated with that number can
have. A
person is not a brain, not a body, not a number, not anything 3-
describable.
But we can bet on brains, numbers, etc. as tool for being able to
manifest
ourself relatively to each other.
The only thing that you
can find is consciousness being conscious of itself (even an
person that
consciousness belongs to is absent, the person is just an object in
consciousness).
Here you present a theory like if it was a fact. If that was
obvious, we
would not even discuss it. Consciousness, despite being an obvious
fact for
conscious person, is a concept. As you say, concept does not think.
You abstract so much that you miss the obvious.
In interdisciplinary researches it is better to avoid the term
"obvious".
I do agree that consciousness is obvious from the first person
point of view
of a conscious person, but do you agree that a silicon machine can
emulate a
conscious person, indeed yourself (little ego)? Do you agree that
this is
not obvious for everybody (Craig believes it is false).
I don't know the answer to that question, but I can show that if
that is the
case (that you can survive without any conscious change with such a
silicon
prosthesis), then we have to come back to the Platonician
theologies, and
naturalism and weak materialism, despite being a fertile simplifying
assumption (already done by nature) is wrong.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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