On 12 Jun 2014, at 10:17, LizR wrote:

On 12 June 2014 15:09, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
I wouldn't go so far as to way it's "wrong", but I don't find it as conclusive as he does. First, I think it's a category confusion to say that "Ex(x+1 = 3)" proves that 2 exists. The truth of mathematical existence statements just implies that the axioms lead to the proof that a certain predicate can be satisfied. That's not the same "exist" as "Liz exists". So there is no proof that the UD exists or even that arbitrarily large numbers exist in the sense that you exist.

The problem is that (like Winston Smith) I don't know the sense in which I exist. That's one of my reasons for being on this forum.

Second, he implies that step 8 proves that the physical is dispensable; but when challenged on the point he grants that is likely that human-like consciousness can only exist within a physical environment. So he hasn't proven that the physical is dispensable. He qualifies this by saying the physical may not be dispensable, but it isn't "the primitive physical". I think "the primitive physical" is a strawman. It's ill defined and I don't know of anyone who asserts it except as a working heuristic. Even the physicists he accuses of believing in primitive matter, think that matter may be just mathematical relations (c.f. Max Tegmark, John Wheeler) and others think it is just a certain way to organize qualia or knowledge (c.f. Bertrand Russell, Chris Fuchs). Of course most physicists think the mind/body problem is too ill defined a problem to tackle right now.

Well, Tegmark and even Wheeler are rather fringey on this one I believe. Have you read Max's book? He got a lot of flak for suggesting his MUH. I think Bruno's point is that most physicists assume the material universe is primitive (irreducible to simpler things etc). Even you appear to be doing this when you say "That's not the same "exist" as "Liz exists"."

Good point.



Instead he tries to identify consciousness as just a relation between operators in modal logic or numbers in arithmetic. The similarity of relations is suggestive, but I don't see that it proves anything; or more accurately that it proves too much. It proves that consciousness is realized by very stupid, even trivial, programs. Which to me seems like changing the meaning of "consciousness". But as I say this isn't necessarily wrong - it might be right is the sense that it can be filled out and made into a theory with some predictive power and consilience.

Ah, well, that's the point of course. But you may also be chasing a straw man, or suffering from the category confusion you mention above when you insist (or appear to insist) that 2 needs to "exist" for comp to work. Maybe 2 and the UD don't need to exist. Maybe we have this notion of existence which is abstracted from the appearance of a physical world, but maybe there is no such thing.

Yes, that's the point indeed.




I must admit I too find it hard to imagine that the totality of my being is contained in something like "[]p & p" (or whatever it is).

It is not, no more than your being is something like ma. but ma, actually mg, plays its role, especially when you stand up, likewize "[]p & p" plays a role, as it makes sense (by incompleteness) and associate a knower to the machine, a non Lôbian, not quite computationalist little being, which nitpick on all substitution level.

Arithmetic is full of them, not just the everything list :)



But I also find it hard to imagine that 2 needn't be even, or that 23 could not be prime. Those are also irreducible facts, as far as I can tell.

I guess I see what you mean. Of course you can derive that 23 is prime from the definition of prime, in peano arithmetic. The primes already emerges in some sense, through the existence of arithmetical relations.



Can 2 be even without existing? Maybe it can, but then maybe the universe can be observable without existing, too.

"This world, like all worlds, is  māyā

Quite possible. But with comp, that māyā obeys laws. True or false. We can explore.

Bruno





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