On 05 Apr 2015, at 01:19, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 03:35:59PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Apr 2015, at 01:29, Russell Standish wrote:
On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 06:33:52PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 03 Apr 2015, at 00:44, Russell Standish wrote:
The whole point of the MGA is to try and close off a gap in the
argument if you assume that ontological reality
I guess you mean here: physical ontological reality (assuming it
exists).
If we have a robust ontology (ie the full Platonia),
You really mean: robust physical ontology.
No, because the label physical should refer to what is phenomenal,
otherwise it doesn't have any meaning.
?
But then it seems you assume what we want to prove.
Not at all. After quite some to-and-fro with you about what "physical"
actually means, we settled on phenomena (things like matter, forces
and the like).
As opposed to arithmetic. You need MGA to make things like matter,
forces, into a phenomenology. For Aristotelian matter is ontological.
Phenomenological is the opposite to ontological. If physics is
(purely) phenomenological, then the reversal is done.
I have introduced the term "robust" only for the physical universe
(be it ontological or phenomenological). It is just what makes an
entire (never ending) physical universal dovetailing possible.
That does not make sense. Already by the time you have introduced the
term, you have shown that a robust ontology (one capable of running
the UD) cannot be physical (ie the phenomena).
?
The Church Thesis (true by
assumption) shows that what is phenomenal cannot be ontological (or
noumenal, to borrow Kant's term), when the ontology is robust.
That is
pretty much the whole point of UDA1-7.
What does it mean than an ontology is robust? UD* is "robust" in
arithmetic by definition.
Sure. And if arithmetic is your ontology, your ontology is robust.
The point of UDA1-7 is only that if we assume the physical universe
run a UD, then physics is a branch of arithmetic/computer science.
OK if your replace "physical" with "ontology"
Moreover, I would argue that the MGA doesn't even work, as
recordings can be fully counterfactually correct.
By adding the inert Klara? But then the physical role of the inert
Klara to produce consciousness to the movie is not Turing emulable,
and you stop assuming computationalism.
But in a robust ontology, the Klaras are no longer inert. They
cannot be.
I don't know what is a robust ontology. It looks that you mean by
this an everything ontology, or a many-world or many states or many
computations ontology.
Sure.
But in that case the Klara are still inert in the relevant branch
where we do the reasoning. So I am not sure to see the relevance of
the remark here.
We cannot seperate the branches in this way.
I can understand the role of Klara and counterfactual correctness
for the computation and behavior being correct hen change occur,
but
how could they change the consciousness by being non present when
not needed?
If they are not needed, then some non-counterfactually correct
recordings can be conscious.
That is right, but that is the path to the reductio ad absurdum.
I don't have a strong opinion on this, as
the relevant recordings will be really very complex, but do suspect,
along with Brent, that full embodiment in an environment is needed,
along with counterfactual correctness.
?
Then they are no more recordings, but computation.
Then what is your definition of a recording? In my eyes, UD* is a
recording, particularly a finite portion of it, such as the first
10,000 steps of the first 10,000 programs.
You confuse description of computations, which exists in the "movies"
obtained by filming the boolean graph, and the computations
themselves, with involves semantic, that is a reality (be it the
static standard model of Peano Arithmetic) or a physical reality.
As I point out in my paper, that, physical supervenience, and the
MGA entails
a robust ontology (ie something like the Multiverse to exist).
You mean a primitively physical multiverse?
That would already be a quite non trivial result, but I don't see
how you get it.
Not where "physical"="phenomenal". UDA7 already proves that a robust
ontology cannot be physical.
If you mean something else by physical, I have no idea what you mean.
It is what is studied by physics, mainly through empirical means: the
measurable quantities in laboratories.
Aristotle (well mainly its followers) assume that the physical reality
is irreducible, so that we have to assume primitively physical
objects, like atoms, particles, 3d spaces, or today, strings for
example. It makes physics the fundamental science (physicalism).
I was just saying that arithmetic is not a branch of physics, that
numbers, sets, functions, are, by virtue of their definitions, not
physical. More below.
IIRC, the discussion went something like this:
Q: "What does 'primitively physical' mean?"
A: "The ontology on which you run the UD"
I was thinking of the "concrete UD" mentioned in step seven. The one
which needs an ever expanding universe, and his robustness (as most,
perhaps all, solutions of Einstein equation makes an infinite
expanding universe getting to much cold to pursue the running of the
UD).
Q: "Oh, so you mean numbers?"
A: "No, number are not physical"
That was the point of the conversation (I remember it).
Q: "Then what?"
A: "Things like protons and electrons, magnetic force and so on"
yes, that are example of physical objects, and they might be in the
ontology (Aristotle) or in the phenomenology, in the sense of the
philosophers (sometimes used with a slightly different sense by
physicists).
Q: "Oh so like phenomenal things, things we can directly measure?"
A: "Yes".
Q: "Then if we assume the ontology is rich enough to be able to run
the UD, the Church-Turing thesis means that any such ontology will
deliver identical phenomenal outcomes, so there is no way of
identifying the ontology with what is physical."
Well, in step seven, the question is that question indeed, but with
"physical" at the place of the "ontology", and indeed with a strong
occam razor, the reversal is already done.
But some people can still believe that the physical = the ontological
that we need to assume, and thus that the reversal has not yet
occurred? They do this by assuming that such a physical reality is too
small to run any significative version of the UD.
That is why there is a step 8: to show that such a move leads to the
belief that recording can be conscious, despite they do not run a
computation, or worse, if we do the "second reductio ad absurdum
(either the one that I have given again in my post to Stathis
yesterday, or the one with the stroboscope). It is a reductio ad
absurdum showing that moving to a ontological small physical universe
does not work, or lead to absurdities.
A: "OK. Now let us assume that the 'primitive physical ontology' is
not-robust, ie incapable of running a UD"
Q: "Did you mean ontology or the physical?"
A: "Could be both, because the ontological limitations introduced by
being
non-robust can affect the phenomenal, hence are phenomena in
themselves, hence physical."
?
If physics is only phenomenological, the reversal is already done.
I think that you are convinced that the step1-7 are enough, and fail
to appreciate the move done by people, who, like Pere Jones, to save
the ontology of physics (that is the idea that physics is not just
phenomenological), imagine that the physical reality (which they want
to be primitive, = in need of being assumed) is not robust, or is to
small, so that the UD white rabbits are not a problem. Interestingly,
that is what Sean Carroll suggested in his talk mentioned by Brent,
when wanting to get rid of the Boltzmann brain problem.
Step 8 is the (perhaps subtle) point that such a move does not work,
or force us to confuse a description of a computation with a
computation itself (a point which is not easy for people who have not
studied the discovery that elementary arithmetic is Turing Universal.
The counting algorithm is not Turing universal, despite it gives all
description of all computations, but nothing is running or emulated
there.
Q: OK.
That would be weird because it would prove that if can prove the
existence of primitive matter in arithmetic. I am a bit confused.
How so? I don't follow you there.
Me neither, as I am not sure what the "that" refer too in my quote.
From what you say above, I think that this does not matter.
Ontological means "existing really", or what we have to assume as
existing in some primitive way, like usually force and particles in
physics, and numbers and sets (or some sets) in mathematics.
Phenomenology means "it is in your head". It means that it does not
exist, but that it can be explained as appearance (to some observer)
from what is supposed to exist. The most typical example of something
phenomenological in physics is the rainbow.
Aristotelian believe that the ontology is physical. Reality is
WYSIWYG. Reality is what we see, or observe, measure, etc. There are
"real" particles, or "real" fields, and all the rest is either
aggregations or structure made up from those "real particles and
forces", or are emergent pattern, like life, human psychology,
sociology, consciousness, etc.
Platonists suspects that reality is not WYSIWYG, and that what we see,
although possibly real/true does emerge itself from something else (a
god, a non physical reality like arithmetic (Pythagorus), or
mathematics (Xeusippes), etc.
For the mind-body problem, I often sum up by saying that
either Matter = ontology (= primitively real), and then we must build
a phenomenology of the mind;
or Mind = ontology, and then we must build a phenomenology of matter;
or neither matter nor mind are ontological, so that we have to build a
phenomenology of mind and matter from something else, like arithmetic
or any (Turing) universal system (which is the case with comp, but is
similar to Spinoza, Plotinus, Proclus, ...).
And those are the monist, monotheist, theories. There are also dualist
theories.
Dualist will assert that both mind and matter are ontological, and then
- interactionist will say that mind and matter can act on each other
(which is strange if they are in different ontologies)
- or exist in parallel (and usually in that case, they make the mind
being without cause and effect: it is epiphenomenalism, which often
slips into eliminativism).
Some nuance can be made, and the term "phenomenology" can be used with
restricted meaning when people assumes some theories (among those
above), and it is worst when the theory is assumed non explicitly, so
the term can slip in slightly different meanings according to the
field where it used. In interdisciplinary field, it is better to use
the term as it is used by the majority in the field crossed.
Computationalism leads to a neutral monism, assuming an arbitrary
(Turing) universal reality, and it provides, to the entities of that
reality the appearances of observers and observed, consciousness and
appearance of matter. And this leads to the mathematical formulation
of the measure problem, and tools are provided, including the
"solutions" at the propositional level).
The bad news for literary philosophers is that with computationalism
we must do math, and in particular get familiar with the mathematical
"discovery" (assumption, theory) of the universal (truly universal
with Church's thesis) machine.
It is important to distinguish a computation (realized physically, or
arithmetically) from a description of computation (needed when we want
talk about a computation, same as with the numbers).
The point is subtle as for finite computations we have that a
computation is realized iff a description of the computation exists:
it is closely related with the formula p <-> []p, which is true
*about* the machine,with p sigma_1, yet not provable by the machine.
For p sigma_1 (= equivalent with a finite computation, or with "done
by the UD"), the (correct) machine can prove p -> []p, but cannot
prove that []p -> p. The fact that []p -> p is true but not provable
does not make the movie able to think, it only means that if you can
prove the existence of a computation, through the movie description
for example, then that computation is realized in the UD, or in the
sigma_1 arithmetical reality ("my" ontology).
Best,
Bruno
PS Heavy weeks, I might provide comments with some delays.
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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret
(http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)
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