On Thursday, October 11, 2012 11:08:16 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > >> The problem is the meanwhile you have this meta-universe which is doing >> the computing, yes? What does it run on? >> >> >> On the true number relations. >> >> Indirectly on some false propositions too, as the meta-arithmetic, >> involving false propositions/sentences belongs to arithmetic. >> > > Right, so the number relations don't require any meta-computation. Why > then do their progeny require number-relations? > > > ? > > To see movies, or to chat on the net perhaps. >
If they already have the capacity to want to see movies or have experiences of any kind, then it begs the question of consciousness. They are already conscious. This is my main problem with what I understand of your view. Like Dennett, you seem to be saying "It [Some process which is pre-loaded with confirmation bias] thinks, therefore it thinks that it *is*" I gather from talking to you over these months (years?) that you have discovered the precise method, more or less, through which arithmetic process can and must dream this self-confirmation bias into its functionality - which, if that's the case, I do not dispute. I don't have a problem with a theoretical modeling of self-confirmation as prerequisite for certain classes of computation (UMs and LUMs - which, in my mind, the only difference is that the LUMs are the more promiscuously surrealistic of the two...having more whobytes than howbytes). My problem has always been that there is no 'there' there. We arbitrarily start with elemental propositions which are perfect for describing recursively enumerable public operations, but really have no justification for their primacy other than their own confirmation bias of themselves. Numbers add up perfectly, therefore itching and laughing and water-skiing in the blue Aegean. There's just no sense there - it's all taken for granted a priori and then claimed as the trophy of proof at the end. Yes, a lot of things can be reduced to numbers - a lot of things can be reduced to yin/yang or good/evil also. Craig > Your question is a bit like why do Saturn needs rings? > It's more like 'why does putting a computer in a building make that building any taller'? > > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> If it doesn't need to run on anything, then way not just have that be the >> universe in the first place? >> >> >> OK. >> >> It is the arithmetical universe, or (I prefer) arithmetic truth. We >> cannot really defined it. >> >> You can call it God or Universe, but it is important to distinguish from >> the physical reality, which is an internal emerging secondary structure, in >> the comp setting. >> > > I am ok with secondary structure, and I think the same thing only that it > has to be that structure is secondary to sense (the capacity to experience > + the capacity to partially experience) rather than arithmetic, because I > can see why it would serve sense to invent numbers to help keep track of > things but I can't see why keeping-track-ness would bother to create > experience. > > > Why not? It makes sense when the keeping-track-ness is done > self-referentially by the keeper tracker, in some environment, at some > level of description of itself. The study of the brain suggests such > self-represention, and computer science can study fixed point of such > self-representation, and they have, even when super-simplified, a rich, > un-bound-able mathematical complexity. > You can have complexity and self-representation without experience though. What does experience add to the task of keeping track? > Why are you sure they can't have experience? They might disagree with you. > And somehow, using the most classical logic of knowledge, they already > disagree. Why not listen to them? > Because there isn't any such thing as experience until it makes sense for something to have it. It only makes sense for us to have it because we cannot escape the fact that we do. That isn't true for other things though. Just as much as I know that I have experience, I know that Bugs Bunny and Pinocchio do not have experiences. I know that I can read Chinese well enough to know that it is probably Chinese, but not enough to know much about what it is intended to mean. I also understand that my body is a living organism growing from a single dividing cell out if it's own motives and sense. By the same token I understand that a computer is an assembly of inorganic parts selected specifically for accountability and fidelity of imitation. I know that machines and computers are known the world over to be inert, empty, devoid of feeling or comfort or personhood. Why not listen to these clues? Why not see the relative stagnation in 60 years of AI research as a sign that there is no gold in this electronic lead? > > Many people argue against comp, up to the point they believe that they > don't have to study a bit of computer science. But you would study computer > science, you might perhaps find more deep argument against comp, instead of > begging the question by confusing the person (existing somehow with comp, > and rather well described for the case of simple Löbian machine) with the > crunching numbers machine physically conceived. > > You defend a reductionist conception on numbers that the existence of the > universal numbers already refute. And the Löbian numbers already know that > (meaning: the person associated to such numbers know that relatively to > its most probable universal environment/computation/dream). > The reflexivity of numbers does not surprise me. All channels of sense are self-fulfilling to some extent. Any angle on the cosmos reveals a picture which can be extended to some degree of truth revelation. Numbers are a particularly universal class of sense, which makes them especially inappropriate to have anything to do with consciousness, which is the essence of non-universality. What I don't understand is that you interpret Godel as saying that there is no limit to arithmetic truth, whereas I think most people interpret his incompleteness as meaning that arithmetic fails to live up to it's own standards. It's sense ultimately doesn't even make sense to itself and needs to supervene on some other layer of sensemaking, always. Craig > > Bruno > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/8sAsjaUT2v0J. 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.
