On 01 Jun 2017, at 12:44, David Nyman wrote:
On 1 Jun 2017 10:02 a.m., "Bruno Marchal" <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 31 May 2017, at 19:14, David Nyman wrote:
On 31 May 2017 at 17:00, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 30 May 2017, at 16:44, David Nyman wrote:
On 30 May 2017 at 13:05, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 29 May 2017, at 13:42, David Nyman wrote: <snip>
On 29 May 2017 at 05:27, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
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".
Yes, That's what I mean. Sometimes perhaps I can be a little too
short. But on the other hand at times when I ramble on in an
attempt to avoid ambiguities Brent tells me I'm being long-winded :(
I would say that subjects precedes physical objects, as physics
becomes a first person plural notion.
Exactly
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.
Well I guess the way I'd put it is that their abstract or
ontological component is already 'there' (i.e. assumed) in a
certain objective sense, but their 'observable' or epistemological
component can only be realised (i.e. made true) in terms of a
point-of-view.
OK. Yet, having bet on a theory making us (or the correct part of
us) aware that the first point of view is local, and so see only a
part of a bigger truth, which is the "ultimate" 0p, which
mechanism, and our sanity/soundness, which we cannot even express,
still less justify, but we can "meta-prove" for the correct
machine, that such an 0p can be reduced to first the arithmetical
truth, and secondly (blaspheming for two seconds) the sigma
arithmetical truth (the UD, The UM, the sigma_1 complete set.
That is why we can take RA for the ontology. The PA induction
axioms are put in the number epistemology already. RA can prove the
existence of PA, but "for RA" PA is already dreaming.
It is an open problem (to me at least) if this is mandatory or not.
Nelson believes (but seems unique in believing this) that the
induction axioms are "viciously" circular,
Is this in any way related to Popper's point about induction in
fact always being deduction on the basis of some theory (even if
only implicitly)? IIRC his rationale was that even the selection of
'data' on which to base the purported inductive generalisation was
itself theory-dependent. Hence the claim should really be something
more like "on the basis of a certain theory, let us select these
features as data, which then might lead us to the following
conclusion...etc.".
I agree that most (but not all) "induction" (in the sense of
inductive inference) requires explicit "induction" axioms, in the
Peano sense. But Peano induction axiom will not usually been seen as
inductive inference. I agree that inductive inference is theory
dependent, and it requires not just PA-like induction, but also the
general assumption, usually at the metalevel that there is something
to be observed (the <>t meta-assumption).
making PA inconsistent. I doubt this a lot, but with mechanism I
think we can argue that we can't really prove the consistency of
PA, despite most mathematicians believe in the consistency of much
more (in the sense of proving abilities) powerful theory than PA,
like ZF, Category, theory, group theory, etc.).
We can place the natural object in the mind of the God-subject,
but that would be a bit ad hoc,
Possibly, but in a monopsychic sense they *are* all in the mind
of the inner God-subject.
How? in Bp & p, the Bp part restricts the truth. The "Bp" is like
a finite window through which God/Truth, "p", look at itself. The
inner god is the outer God looking at itself through the Bp window.
Yes, that's what I meant. Perhaps it's just vocabulary. I assumed
(wrongly?) that by natural object you meant physical or perceptual
object.
I guess that I meant "natural *number* object.
I think that what makes you adding the whole truth in the provable
is due to the fact that the "Divine Intellect"'s view coincides
with the view of the soul-instantiated: that is: the fact that
S4Grz = S4Grz*. The soul does not split along G/G*. But that is the
"natural", "unavoidable" solipsism of the first person subject.
Yes indeed. That's what makes it compatible (at least
heuristically) with monopsychism.
OK. God's solipism. To be sure, the "(outer) God" of mechanism, V,
is not the biggest "God". Like in Plotinus, and perhaps arguably
already in Plato's Parmenides, God is overwhelmed by the "Noùs".
Quantified G*, qG*, is PI-complete in the V oracle. So, even if you
have V at your disposition, you need to complete an infinite task,
with infinitely "prayers" to V, to decide a general question (having
quantifiers) on qG*. The god of mechanism is less rich and less
complete than the "world of ideas" of mechanism. That is perhaps why
Plato missed that God, and why Plotinus added it.
A simple, if rough, analogy might be the relation between the
mechanism of a DVD player and the spectrum of possible movies it is
capable of instantiating (assuming also an infinite collection of
discs and a suitable extrinsic interpretation). The DVD Library of
Babel, if you like. It would be impossible in principle to predict
the movies as experienced purely on the basis of the mechanism
involved in the encoding /decoding process. Generalising to include
the implicit observer, truth is then consequent on a reflexive or
intrinsic notion of self-interpretation. So it is, in an
epistemological sense, emergent from mechanism, though not in any
objective sense mechanistically predictable. ISTM that these general
principles lie at the core of the notions of origins and creativity
necessarily implicit in the 'mechanistic TOE'.
I think so, but that is why at some point we have to rely to the
theory of self-reference of the universal numbers. It is not a
coincidence why post used the term "creative".
Yet this needs to assume some truth, as independent of all observers,
machines, numbers (except God, but God is arithmetical truth, in this
context, and neither "God", nor the term "truth" names it genuinely).
Now, even that truth is partially accessible only to the first person.
That's why God invented it, to talk poetically, as such truth are
supposed to be absolute for mechanism making sense.
Bruno
David
So, I would say that they are in the mind of the outer God
In what sense is the outer-God conceptualised as possessing a
'mind'? Do you simply mean perception in some generic sense
before symmetry is broken?
The outer God is the Truth "predicate" (the one that the machine
cannot define unless she invoke a bigger God). You can see it as a
person by identifying the outer-God with a putative mind knowing, or
believing, all (and only all) arithmetical truth.
My habit is to keep "perception" for the physical realm. I prefer to
say that I do not perceive a number, but that I only conceive it, or
believe in it, even when I close my eyes. The reason is that I want
to avoid the idea that number are physical objects. Eventually,
there will be no physical object at all, but physical sensations,
explained by (infinities) of number relations.
OK
, and the inner God is the outer God becoming amnesic, and "lost"
in the belief that he is PA, or that number on the hard disk of the
doctor.
Yes, as above.
On this, the math are difficult, and I assume fully the "galois
connection", with consciousness side with the semantic, that is the
G, <>t, by the completeness theorem. Eventually, and to be short,
consciousness sides with p, making Bp, the brain/machine/theory/
formula restricting consciousness.
The problem with this is that it makes a butterfly more conscious
than a human. Little mind have more possibilities, and a far bigger
set of consistent extensions, and consciousness reflects that
spectrum ignorance. I don't know, I find that weird.
Well, in a monopsychic sense the 'roots' of consciousness, in the
generic, virgin machine, are perhaps very deep. So if the brain/
body somehow 'filters' perception then perhaps, the less
constriction, the less consequent impedance, at least to some
limit. The doors of perception perhaps open a bit wider. I don't
know either, but it might make some sort of sense.
Less restriction? I guess so. Plotinus want the ONE to be simple. I
can think of it as being a person, or a thing. It might defines more
restricted notion of God, which could make more sense for people
having had a religious education. There is room for debate, but in
the mind-body problem, those consideration are irrelevant, as we use
only the points of view available by the machine, and this requires
always the "[]p (& #)".
I should perhaps insist that I identify a person with its set of
beliefs. Then you can associate a person to any subset of V,
including V. But a machine is characterized by the fact that its
subset of belief (or better: believable propositions) is (locally) RE.
That's one of the reasons I find that particular heuristic
intuitively helpful. I guess it's my version of the Wittgenstein
ladder. But don't worry, I can always let go of it. I hope.
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.
I can't think of anything less, offhand.
Sorry for splitting the airs, I guess,
Split away! It's hairs, by the way :)
Now, *you* are splitting the hairs.
Let me really split one hair. What could that give? I tell you that
it gives h and airs. h is the indivisible horse!
Oy veh :(
I was just using Occam :)
Don't cut yourself!
Oops ...
Bruno
David
Bruno
David
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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