On 8/19/2014 3:10 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 19 August 2014 01:53, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the
"dreams
of the machines")
Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we
usually
practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by
proving it
from Peano's axioms?
Well, you frequently counsel me against arguing on the basis of personal incredulity. So
I could respond by asking you when was the last time you learned a fact about the world
by deducing it from the molecular structure of your brain.
But that's not my theory of epistemology. I infer the existence of my brain and molecular
structures via a very long chain of inferences and hypotheses starting with my
perceptions. Bruno defines []p & p as knowledge, but that doesn't show any way of getting
knowledge except []p, i.e. proving p from axioms (and p happening to be true, i.e. the
axioms are true). So the epistemology is either mathematical proof or it's left to the
hoped-for "statistical mechanics" analysis of the UD.
Brent
Given that we are committed to explaining the complex in terms of something simpler,
then some sort of structure, defined molecularly or otherwise, must surely be implicated
in what it means to learn a fact, even though we can't yet say precisely what it is.
I guess I take the logics that Bruno investigates in AUDA to be at something analogous
to the "molecular" level vis-a-vis any explanation of cognition or perception that would
strike us as intuitively familiar. So just as an understanding of the dynamics of
molecular bonding has turned out to be crucial to an appreciation of the possibilities
of large-scale structure, the hope (or project) is that we can derive something of
analogous relevance, to the structure of human-like cognition and perception, from a
rigorous study of particular classes of more basic logical relations.
that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes
will be
characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike
relations over
their range of reference.
It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events
or states
that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals,
and
classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events.
That's not a bad way of putting it as a general position. My point though was that if we
want to start from a very general notion of computation that doesn't presuppose physics,
we must seek to justify the differentiation of a sub-class of lawlike physical realities
from a much larger totality. According to comp, this differentiation is rooted in the
statistical dominance of certain classes of internal "belief" or reference that are
deducible from a quasi-ubiquitous form of self-referential "machine psychology". I guess
it is only to be expected that a fundamental concept of this sort would strike us as
being at some remove from any putative elaboration at the human scale. The devil, as
ever, will be found in the detail.
David
On 8/18/2014 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
<mailto:stath...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way
I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being
simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that
simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness.
I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without
instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the
appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics.
I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the
dovetailer
necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential computations. Very
generally, such computations are then regarded as emulating self-referred
(i.e.
first-personal or indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment
as
"beliefs" in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp necessarily
entails
epistemological logics (the "dreams of the machines")
Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones we
usually
practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about the world by
proving it
from Peano's axioms?
that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-classes will
be
characterised by the statistical dominance of physically-lawlike relations
over
their range of reference.
It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are events
or states
that classified one way constitute experiences or thoughts of individuals,
and
classified another way, some of them constitute objective physical events.
Brent
I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of "machine psychology"
over
the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the
postulated "reversal".
David
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