On 29 May 2017, at 13:42, David Nyman wrote:
On 29 May 2017 at 05:27, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/28/2017 3:40 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 28 May 2017 5:52 a.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 5/27/2017 3:20 PM, David Nyman wrote:
I think what is meant by the reversal is clear enough. The forward
hypothesis, mechanism, is that the realization of some information
processing in the brain, or other physical system, instantiates
consciousness. The reverse, platonism, is that all computations
exist and hence among them will be computations that instantiate
all possible conscious thoughts. And among all those
thoughts there will be some that instantiate exactly those
thoughts we have, including those thoughts of perceiving and
inferring a physical world and other people. Thoughts are related
by threads of computation and consequently they can be classified
into some that can be proven and some that are true but can't be
proven. One might hypothesize that this division corresponds to
what is thought and is communicable versus what is thought but
can't be communicated, i.e. the internal thoughts of consciousness.
Yes, although I think you could be more explicit that "those
thoughts of perceiving and inferring a physical world and other
people" must encompass the entire spectrum of observable physical
phenomena. The relevant computation must also precisely mirror the
transformational schemas of physics.
But that's the rub. If the physics is instantiated by the UD
computation, is it really a "reversal"
Yes. You keep missing the point that the reversal is already with
the 'psychology' of machinery at a fundamental explanatory level,
No, the fundamental explanatory level is the set of all possible
computations - as might be executed in the abstract by a UD. From
this plethora we are to extract in some sense experiences AND the
physics of which they are experiences.
Yes, so the explanatory priority is now that of "we are to
extract" over "the physics of which they are experiences". Or in
short, subject precedes object in the explanation. That's the
reversal.
Maybe it is here that I suspect that we might still differ a little
bit, or not in case you mean "physical object" for "object". I would
say that subjects precedes physical objects, as physics becomes a
first person plural notion. But with computationalism, to just gives
sense to that word, we have to admit that the number objects still
precedes (in some logical sense) the subject, which arises from the
infinitely many computations which supports its self-referential modes.
We can place the natural object in the mind of the God-subject, but
that would be a bit ad hoc, even if for the numbers+addition
+multiplication, we can only explains them by "God made them", in the
sense that we cannot recover them by assuming less than anything
Turing equivalent with them.
Sorry for splitting the airs, I guess,
Bruno
such that in a sense one can think of the entirety of experience in
terms of that of a single type of psychological agent. This is then
the subjective filter that effectively constrains stable,
pervasive and thereby (crucially) *consistently memorable*
experiences from the rest of the computational Babel. And the
consequence of that subjective filtration, in conjunction with the
transformational computation that effects that its very
stabilisation, then comprises the effective physics of the
experiencer, with the caveats already mentioned. So subject
precedes object in explaining the appearance of physics. That is
the reversal. And it is necessitated by the not inconsiderable
problem that the alternative explanatory order cannot help but
*omit the explanation of the experiencer and its experiences*.
or is it just a Church-Turing version of Tegmark, i.e. replacing
the equations of quantum field theory with some computational
sequences that have the same effect at the level of our experience.
But why be so cavalier about "the level of our experience"? It's
that very level that is omitted or merely taken for granted in the
conventional explanatory order. Remember that the point of
departure for all this is the computational theory of *mind*.
Nonetheless, the price of the ticket turns out to be a
computational theory of everything. Should this surprise us?
But it's not clear to me that it has *mind* as fundamental. Mind is
to be explained by relations of provability (which doesn't seem very
plausible - but maybe).
Well, mind here is explained in a sort of duality of provability
and truth, or externality and internality. The internal or
'qualitative' aspect is captured both by its incommunicability (as
seen from the 'outside') and its indubitability (as seen from the
'inside).
The fundamental stuff is all possible computations, or arithmetic.
If so, in this characterisation there would indeed be an
explanatory reversal between physics and the psychology of the
machine, as Bruno phrases it.
Fine, if it actually explained something instead of saying "If this
theory is correct there must be an explanation in terms of UD
computational threads."
I think you're being excessively demanding at this stage. The
reversal is already a startling change in explanatory perspective.
If it bears out, it can lead to a complete reformulation, not of
the mind-body problem in isolation, but of the entire problem of
origin and creativity. If one then takes this in conjunction with
the failure of the conventional explanatory sequence to account in
a non-question-begging manner for the very possibility of there
being an observable reality in the first place, one can perhaps
scrape together sufficient motivation to maintain a modicum of
interest.
The physical theory of cognition does explain some things - like
the effect of tequila on mathematical ability, why we don't
remember the future, why we love our children, etc.
Again you keep missing the hugely crucial point that your
characterisation above implicitly includes a privileged extrinsic
interpretation. It's this latter that I've called a Wittgenstein
ladder. It represents an artificial aid to comprehension that must
ultimately be let go if the final explanation is not to beg the
central question at issue. This crucial question is of course that
of *intrinsic* interpretation. In the last analysis (which we
cannot, finally, ignore) no theory of perception can coherently
rely on interpretation from any perspective but that of the subject
itself. The vital matter of *your* experience cannot ultimately be
left to the mercy of *my* interpretation. Can it?
"Vital" and "left to the mercy" are just rhetorical flourishes.
I would have hoped nonetheless that my meaning was clearer to you.
It may well be that third person accounts of you experience my be
possible.
But that's my whole point, don't you see? "Third person accounts"
always refers to an externalised interpretation in terms of which
*this can be said to be an account*. But the point is that the final
account is always an *internalised*, first-person one of which the
third-person version is merely a description. IOW *my* subjectivity
can't intelligibly depend solely on *your* externalised description
of it. And of course vice versa.
Consider my AI Mars Rover example. It behaves with human like
intelligence - and it is generally agreed that a philosophical
zombie is impossible, hence the Mars Rover is conscious.
That argument is a mere artifact of the way the definition is
formulated. It's simply saying that if consciousness is considered
to depend only on physical action then both we and the Mars Rover
must be considered conscious because our physical actions are deemed
to qualify in that respect.
And the engineers who designed its sensors and wrote its programs
will be able to give you a very good account of what it is conscious
of. What it's thoughts are on various subjects. What answers it
will be give to various questions. Even how it would be affect by
tequila. Of course you will say, "Yes, but they won't know it's
inner experience."
You're missing the point again. Which is that both the engineers'
accounts, and your own account of their accounts, ultimately depend
solely on internalised first-person interpretations (i.e. theirs and
yours). Your subsequent description is then an attempt to make this
interpretation explicit in the third-person mode. But the first-
person interpretation is the lens through which all this is being
viewed (aka the Wittgenstein ladder). Since it's that very lens
we're trying to explain, you can't simply assume it in the
explanation. In effect, the account you give above eliminates it
from the explanans whilst implicitly retaining it in the explanandum.
But Newton didn't know how gravity reached across empty space.
Einstein didn't know why stress-energy appears on the RHS.
True, but if such an account were to be known or knowable it would
presumably be fully accountable in the third-person mode without
loss. Indeed isn't that what Einstein achieved with respect to
Newton's spooky action at a distance?
And Bruno doesn't know why some computations instantiate
experience and others don't, and which do which.
He won't ever know *why* because that's subsumed in the assumption
of CTM. But his aim, at least in a preliminary way, on the basis of
that assumption, is to suggest *how*, and in so doing also make
plausible what the logical limits of such an account might
consequently be.
The further point is that, if an everythingist approach is to work,
both the how and the why must in the end 'self-select' from the dual
plenitude of the ontological and epistemological assumptions. I know
you have a distaste for this mode of explanation and indeed in the
end it might never be made to work. But as a conception it has a
certain compelling quality; at least it does for me. That's because,
at least potentially, it addresses core questions of origins and
creativity without assuming either. Everything that is, and
everything that can be performed or known, emerge in this view as
the dumb extensional consequences of an intensionally minimal
widget, itself a consequence of mere arithmetic. It's a conception
of an entirely ignorant but supremely productive creative process.
To that extent it might be said to out-Darwin Darwin.
I have suggested several times to Bruno questions related to
fundamental physics which it seems his theory might address, e.g.
why is QM based on complex Hilbert space instead of quarteronic or
octonic? Is the wave function ontic or epistemic? But then he says
his theory is just showing there's a problem - not solving them.
Well give the poor guy a break why don't you? Open problems are
open to all. Why not give it a try yourself? That said, in response
to your question about the wavefunction, this bears on the
distinction I've recently been trying to draw between the
ontological and epistemological components of a general theory.
Inasmuch as the wavefunction is itself an inference from the
arithmetical ontology, in terms of my explanatory scheme it is
therefore an aspect of epistemology. IOW the implication is that
the physical organisation imposed on the computational Babel by
subjective filtration 'necessarily' (with the usual caveats here)
takes the mathematical form of the wavefunction.
That's the implication of a hope.
Indeed. But doesn't all speculation begin that way?
With an incidental historical appropriateness, this is probably the
view that Schrodinger himself might well have taken, given his well
known philosophical position.
Computationalism makes this characteristic of the physical a little
less surprising since the superposition of outcomes is a direct
consequence of the multiplicity of continuations proceeding from
any relative state.
No. The multiplicity is use to explain the probabilistic nature of
outcomes - or beliefs. But it doesn't explain interference patterns
that arise from superpositions.
You're right; my imprecision. What I meant of course is that it
would at least make the counterfactuality implied by MWI plausible
to that extent.
The question of relative measure of course remains open for solution.
Of course there is an assumption here that the modes of perception
we are attempting to explain depend in some critical way on just
that physics whose phenomena we observe and whose mathematical
transformations we hypothesise. And further that the measure of
such a physics would typically predominate over any other physics
that might produce either different modes of perception or a
different spectrum of 'probabilities'. These are, to say the
least. open problems although as you are aware they have begun to
figure even in 'conventional' physical speculation.
Yes, very open. It's a version of everything happens, and that
explains everything.
But this is the Everything List, so if not here where and if not
now when? Everythingism, in whatever form, seems in favour at the
moment as a general opening up of the possibilities of explanation
with a corresponding minimisation of the basic entities and
relations to be 'taken for granted'. As such, it will either
collapse into the theoretical graveyard as is the fate of most such
hypotheses or else emerge into the light as a genuinely novel and
fertile direction.
I know you're fond of the slogan that a theory that explains
everything actually succeeds in explaining nothing. But in fact I
think this is a misunderstanding of the original aphorism. Its
applicability is appropriate to a theory of epicycles -
psychoanalysis for example - in terms of which there can be no
counter-examples because new epicycles can always be added to shore
up the structure, no matter how rickety it becomes. Bruno's
approach isn't like that. It's open to falsification by counter-
example or contradiction at any point. So aren't you still curious?
Just a little?
Sure. That's why I've been on this list a long time. And I've even
offered to recommend Bruno for a Templeton - his theological
approach would really appeal to them.
Good idea.
David
Brent
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