On Monday, June 9, 2014 2:20:26 AM UTC+1, Kim Jones wrote:
In the "Is Conscious Computable?" and "Suicide Words God and Ideas" threads there is considerable overlap of discussion of "primitive materialism". This is the place where the Neoplatonists and the Aristotelians get to slug it out, so to speak. I feel the quality of the discussion between David Nyman and Bruno is worth signalling. Perhaps the time is ripe for a revision of Bruno’s version of CTM and I take the liberty to provide this. In 2013 he released a summary version to a Biomathics website which I thought was very good. I then redacted it into what I believe is the first Plain English version of comp available. Note that this is the short version of the SANE 2004 paper. This may help you to check your understanding or to consolidate/change your stance vis à vis Bruno’s core ideas. It is designed to read as fluently as possible. The link has been set up to download the .pdf file direct to your download folder *Comp 2013 Redux* <http://www.kmjcommp.com/COMP%202013%20Redux.pdf> thanks for taking the trouble to do this. I did read it through once again, but I suppose with some amount of trepidation shall have to report no status change as the result. Then to highlight the issues as I see them: 1. Nothing wrong with logic on its own terms. His points are reason and - allowing I probably miss some of the deeper layerings of significance - easy to understand and even 'obvious' (in a good way). Emphasis once more on 'that of it I could make out' as it were. 2. The issue - as I see it - is logical nonetheless, which may seem contradictory but just isn't....not once one appreciates the nature of the UDA is that of successive levels of logical deduction, each one building on the last (or summation of all previous taken together or subset or whatever). The logical nature of *that* kind of structure, must/should always include - cumulative with each further layer - appreciation and allowance for what might be termed 'exo-logic'. That is, say from the perspective of the initial conditions, or in this case the initial assumption (comp), the logical implications of not just what is in the assumption, but what 'sense', by what 'degree' what (a given thing) is in the assumption. all the way to what s not in the assumption at all despite appearing to be. All from the *retrospective* vantage point of whatever direction the layered deductive structure actually converges to. I appreciate this isn't necessarily intuitive immediately, and that it is very easy to overlook. But once you do get it, it does become intuitive, and also very clearly legitimate in terms of logic. I appreciate what I've said so far won't make much sense to those not already aware. However, hopefully WITH the following two brief clarifications read and internalized, then everything read again, it might. Or more so. Enough perhaps for a question that goes beyond "?". the two clarifications are: *- the 'structure' (i.e. an initial assumption followed by several layers of cumulating logical inference) is one kind of versioning on some more generic concept of a 'magnification' device*. In this context logical, in that where proper the final step 8, say, *could* be deduced directly, intuitively (say with the right intuition/intellect) directly from the initial assumption in a single step. Just as, say, the Moon through a telescope may technically be the resultant of multiple layers of components/alignments involving whatever physics, the actual crater one views is - assuming all proper - the same as, say, the crater would look from 200 km away in similar conditions. As with all magnification devices, not only what is desired or intended is magnified but *everything* - including imperfections and inaccuracies and limitations according to the basic logic of the task. In the case of a telescope, because it is logic+engineering that will include imperfections that can and will be at every level. In the case of Bruno's UDA - allowing that it is logically proper all the way through - everything then becomes about the initial assumption itself. But the principle is the same, that what may appear to the 'naked eye' as it were, looking at the assumption by itself, is not necessarily reliable when it comes to analysing the logic of the magnified resultant multiple levels subsequent. any more than the moon to the naked eye is useful for analysing the magnified resultant of the moon through a telescope when it comes to the difference of that to the actual moon from whatever much nearer vantage point would be the approximate equivalent. What gets magnified is everything, and what everything is, is not necessarily obvious or even detectable from the 'naked eye' vantage point. In many cases it's literally impossible to gauge what 'everything' is from that 'naked eye' vantage point alone, simply because the very question is wholly dependent on what dimensions of some potential space of absolutely everything, are *actually* magnified by the 'device' itself. In the case of a telescope it's more obvious; in the case of something like comp there could be countless directions of 'magnification' and each one would define 'everything' according to itself. Everything, though, whatever it is, on whatever definition, will always include imperfections. At a certain granularity, imperfections will always include not just what is present, but progressively, what *sense* present, inclusive of what is missing. What to the 'naked eye' does not appear relevant, can become very relevant. A magnification device is always objective where proper, therefore does not depend on subjective perception of what is there to the 'naked eye'. This is no less true for a logic-based device than a telescope. The cumulative logic, will increasingly magnify not only the logic that the logician was aware of, but also the imperfections that he either was or was not aware of. Logic won't discern between the two. Clarification two: The key or core 'direction' of magnification in the UDA is the entity 'consciousness'. Put simply, the UDA magnifies implications for consciousness, one sense or another, from an initial assumptions that does not contain *knowledge* about consciousness. Which does not matter to the 'naked eye' since the assumption is actually about something else, that being computation. But when the direction of magnification converges T0 implications for consciousness, from an assumption that does not contain knowledge of consciousness, the logic itself at each layer will inevitably magnify precisely this imperfection...which is at an encapsulating layer...entirely logical in nature. the impact is duality. You get logical correctness in terms of what the 'naked eye' can see of the initial assumption. But increasingly, every next layer is equally adequetely, but more simplistically, explained by the imperfection, in direct proportion to the size of the imperfection from the retrospective vantage point of the resultant (this case step 8) resultant vantage point. In the case of a convergence around consciousness from an assumption containing zero or small knowledge of consciousness, the distortion can be assumed large. an example of a dual explanation would be Bruno identifies a phenomenon of 'first person indeterminacy' as 'amazing'....probably with some nod in the direction of indeterminacy in qm. However, an equally valid explanation would be the less interesting more common variety of indeterminacy arising - again in all logical domains - when implications are drawn too far.....say in terms of resolution, than the resolution available in the initial conditions (e.g. statistics assuming what is most significant or even logical deduction from a large set is the same at a much smaller subset of the same data...e.g. case in point racial differences if they exist, getting applied between two individuals of different races). Indeterminacy is ALWAYS the logical result of asking such questions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
