On 25 Feb 2013, at 20:10, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/25/2013 1:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 Feb 2013, at 01:30, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:07:12 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Yes. That something that the machine can prove and know.
How can we know what a machine can prove or know if our own
knowledge is only belief?
Because some time our beliefs are true.
What does 'true' mean if we can only believe?
We can't define that, but we have a lot of example.
Suppose we meet and that I give you a slap. Then "Bruno gave a slap
to Craig" would be true. It would not be true, if we meet, or not,
and don't give you a slap.
Dear Bruno and Craig,
The slap is a physical action. How was it defined? Bruno, the
physical world that we perceive our bodies to be immersed in, is
acting in this example as the definer of truth. Is this your
intention?
It was just an illustration. See our preceding conversation for where
the physical reality emerge from, once we assume computationalism.
When we believe something, it means that we believe that it is
true, even when keeping in mind that it is a belief, and that we
might be wrong, that is not true.
But there could exist a physical world different from the one we
are in
We are in infinities of computations, and the physical world emerges
from that.
that has an entity in it and there is a physical condition that
validates the belief of that entity, no?
That's correct, for the physical truth, which are epistemological in
the comp setting.
p is true means that it is the case that p, in the domain where p
is supposed to be applied.
Can the domain be defined recursively?
No.
For example, what if p is the proposition that p' is experienced and
p' is the proposition that p'' is experienced and ... ?
I cannot parse this.
If you believe that Obama is the president of the USA, it means
that you believe that in our local geographico-historical
situation, it is a true fact, even if you can have a doubt, because
you might find conceivable to wake up, perhaps younger, and that
Ronald Reagan is the president of the US. A black pothead being a
president of America... that sound like a dream, after all.
A dream only for some...
We can't know that, but we can still have sharable beliefs. By a
sort of informal habits, in most informal talk, we use very often
the term "know" for the beliefs based on quite common sharable
assumption, like "O has a successor", or the laws of addition and
multiplication. But when thinking rigorously *about* such kind of
beliefs, we have to use the term belief. It is simple: except for
the consciousness here and now, we have only beliefs.
I don't think it has to be that simple. You are only taking your
own word for that limitation on your sense. We could have all
kinds of intuitive influences beneath the threshold of our
conscious awareness which are in fact true beyond mere belief.
True is not opposed to belief. Sometimes some beliefs can be true.
ISTM that a belief is contingent on the existence of something
that contains a representation of that belief,
OK.
be it a human mind or a Platonic algorithm or whatever else may
satisfy the role.
No problem.
But once a belief concerns a reality different from consciousness-
here-and-now, I don't see how we can be sure that any statement is
true, independently of their plausibility.
We can be failed on all dreamable content, except one (actual
consciousness).
If infinitely many physical worlds exist then there could be a
'reality' for each and every belief.
That does not work. We belong automatically to an infinity of
computations. With comp, the physical reality is unique, and derivable
from 0, s, + and * (and the usual axioms). But cosmos or branch of a
multiverse can be numerous, but before they differentiated, we are in
all of them.
I conjecture that most of those physical realities would be
Boltzmann brains.
We don't need them, arithmetic is enough. It contains the UD.
Rather than assuming that belief is a logical stick model built up
from nothing,
It is not build up for nothing. It is an arithmetical relation
between a number, and some universal numbers.
No, Bruno. The fact that we can construct any number from the
empty set
I don't assume sets, at the base level.
explicitly demands that we are building up things from nothing.
You refer to one implementation of number in set theory. But we don't
need that.
This does not, IMHO, remove the 'reality' from them so long as the
mutual agreement actions are possible.
OK.
I think it makes more sense to see it as a local fog which
interferes with out larger grounding in the sense of eternity and
totality.
Knowledge does that. By linking belief with truth.
But where does the 'truth' obtain from if not a physical instance?
It comes from arithmetical truth.
It need not be ontological primitive, as a physical world could be
defined as merely that which at least 3 observers can agree upon as
being real.
Not with comp. Physics is more solid than that. Infinities of
observers can be wrong.
We say: "Jim believed that Brussels was the capital of the USA, but
now, he know better".
We don't say "Jim knew that Brussels was the capital of the USA,
but now, he believed better".
Careful that we don't define a word to have a property and then
use the word to show the existence of that property. This is
bootstrapping!
This is not done here.
This is something that can easily creep into any immaterialist
ontology and ruin it (unless it is accounted for, like what Jon
Barwise does in his work).
We can't bootstrap belief from inert conditions - sense and
participation are implicit and inherent in any discussion of
belief, whether we acknowledge it or not.
I study the case of machines believing in some limited number of
sentences in computer science, with some rules of reasoning, and
study what they can believe, known, observe, feel, etc. With
precise definition of each terms. It is testable, as comp predicts
they will believe in some precise physics that we can compare with
nature, and so we can refute comp+classical-epistemology.
As it is a very weak theory (comp is weak, and classical
epistemology too), its refutation would make us learning a lot. If
it is not refuted, then we have a much simpler theory of
everything, ---simpler than the actual one, which is QM (+general
relativity). And the new theory explains the difference between
qualia and quanta, and this is a point where QM fails to address
explicitly the question, although with Everett it leans toward the
comp theory.
Bruno
We need to have a long discussion as to how the quanta emerges
in such a way as to allow the appearance of a physical world (a
'reality') for multiple observers. I am assuming that an observer is
defined as the intersection of infinitely many computations as per
comp.
See sane04 for a precise rendering on this, based on the first person
statistics in the UD* or arithmetic.
Bruno
--
Onward!
Stephen
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