> On 16 Apr 2019, at 18:04, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List > <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: > > 1) What does "third-person" self-reference mean ?
It is when a program/machine/number invokes itself, in any third person way. When you say that you have a problem to a tooth, that is third person self-reference, verifiable by the dentist. When you say that you feel some toothache, that is first person self-reference, not verifiable by anybody. > To me, this would be equivalent to "third-person color red", which clearly is > not the case for red to be third-person, since red only exists in an > ontological subjective manner. That is the first person self-reference. Note that I have given here many thought experience making this easily understandable, without delving in the second recursion theorem, used to make this mathematically clean. > > 2) What "machine" ? What "self of the machine" ? "Machine" is just a concept > in human consciousness. It doesn't exist beyond merely a concept. Church’s thesis makes it 100% mathematically precise.There is no such definition of machine in physics. A physical machine is a concept, but an arithmetical machine is a precise notion, whose existence follows from 2+2=4 (& Co.). > > 3) Phenomenological is the only type of existence. It is an experience. To add ontology to such experience makes things more complex, if not unsolvable. It is the main “mistake” in Aristotle theology/metaphysics. > Everything else is merely an extrapolation starting from phenomenological > existence. All theories are extrapolations. But personal consciousness is not a theory, even if it is the only certain things. Theories are never certain. > i.e. I see an unicorn in my subjective first person existence, and then I > extrapolate and say that that unicorn somehow has an independent existence > from it being just a quale in my consciousness, which clearly is false. It is more than a quale, but unicorn, like bicorns, might only exist phenomenologically. The goal is to explain consciousness, so I prefer not to assume it at the start. The same for matter. With mechanism, we have to assume only elementary arithmetic. > > 4) You can set yourself all kinds of goals as you want. But this doesn't mean > that reality is the way you want it to be. You can wish for red to be agreed > upon by everyone, but a blind person will not agree. True. But I do not claim that Digital Mechanism is true. I say that Digital Mechanism explains consciousness and matter, so, by comparing the observation and the matter in the mind of the Turing machine, we can test mechanism, and up to now it works, where physicalism is already refuted. > > 5) There is only 1 notion of the Self: "I Am". But I would be interested to > find out the 8 types of Self that you mention. I limit myself to sound (arithmetically) rational machine (if they believe A and A-A, they will believe B). I define “believe rationally” by Gödel’s arithmetical provability predicate, written []A. (A is provable by me). Incompleteness makes impossible for the machine to prove that []A -> A, nor that []A -> <>A, making the logic of []A & A (Theatetus’ definition of knowledge) working for the machine. Provability is believability, not knowledgeability after Gödel’s theorem, so the 8 nuances are given by the following variant, with p a (sigma_1, partial computable) arithmetical sentences; p. (Truth of p) []p. (Provability of p) []p & p and []p & <>t []p & <>t & p That gives eight logics, as three of them are divided into two, again by incompleteness. I can come back on this later. We get intutionistic logic for the first person, and quantum logic for the notion of matter, which is confirmed by independent studies based on empirical inference. > > 6) You can look at the emergent phenomenology. For example, in the visual > domain you have: black-and-white -> shades-of-gray -> colors -> shapes -> > objects -> full visual scene. All these levels have the properties that each > level inherits the qualities of the previous levels, while also bringing into > existence its own quality. But it is the same for functionality. A machine is not just the addition of its parts, and it makes new things that not parts can do. That type of things is reflected in the first person domain, but the qualities comes from the intersection with Truth/meaning/semantics. > For example, the reason why a color can variate from lighter to darker is > because it inherits in itself the quality of shades-of-gray. And if you think > carefully about this, this is possible because of the properties of > self-reference that I just mentioned, x=x (color is itself), x<x > (shades-of-gray are included in color), x>x (color is more than the > shades-of-gray). The universal machine can agree or disagree with this, except for your bizarre role that you give to identity (x=x), where self-reference, by any entities, will relate a model that the entity has about itself, with itself. It is more like x = ‘x’, or some fix point of that type. > And all these happen at the same time, because the same consciousness is the > one that experience the evolution in levels. When you learn something new, > that new knowledge emerges on top of previously held knowledge, but this > doesn't create a new consciousness to experience the new knowledge, but the > same consciousness is maintained. I agree with this. This will make the consciousness of very weak, but still Turing universal, machine, into the universal consciousness, from which all personal identities differentiates. > And this is possible because the same consciousness (x=x) > includes the previous consciousness that it was (x<x) and becomes more than > what it previously was (x>x). I think I see what you mean, or want to mean, but that’s no problem for Mechanism. Your “x=x” is plausibly obtained by the machine knowing that if she (or anyone) is sound, then we have both ([]p &p) equivalent to []p, but in a non rationally provable way. We agree on something crucial in metaphysics, which is that matter is not real, and is only “in consciousness”, But that makes matter a phenomenological notion, like consciousness is judged usually to be to. Then with mechanism, we find that the numbers are already aware, when taken relatively to universal numbers, that they have a soul ([]p & p) that only God (Arithmetical truth) can know to be the same (making technically Mechanism into a theology in the original sense of Plato). My work is done. It is not a project. I invite you to read my papers. You need to understand that before Gödel, we thought we knew about everything about numbers and machines, but after Gödel, we know that we know about nothing, notably because the numbers incarnate the universal machine when living on the border between the computable and the non computable. We know that Truth is *far* bigger than proof, or anything rationally justifiable. Arithmetic promises an infinity of surprise and obligations to change ones mind on the fundamental matter, making clearer a important invariant theological core. Bruno > > On Tuesday, 16 April 2019 15:17:36 UTC+3, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > 1) With mechanism, third-person self-reference is formalisable > > 2) That is good insight, well recovered by the machine about its first person > self. > > 3) > >> In other words, the very definition of the concept of "existence" is the >> looking-back-at-itself of self-reference. > > > That type of existence is phenomenological. > > 4) >> So, existence can only be subjective, so all that can exists is >> consciousness. > > I see this as a critics of your theory. It is almost self-defeating. My goal > was to understand matter and consciousness from proposition on which (almost) > everybody agree, and with mechanism, elementary arithmetic is enough. > > 5) > OK. (Except the tiny formula which does not make much sense to me, and seem > to assume a lot of things). But with mechanism we get 8 notion of self, and > transcendance is indeed derived from them. > > 6) >> And all these apparently contradictory properties are happening all at the >> same time. So, x=x, x<x, x>x all at the same time. > > Without giving a theory or at least a realm, it is hard to figure out what > you mean. > >> But there is no actual contradiction here, because self-reference is >> unformalizable. The reason why I get to such weird conclusions is explored >> throughout the book where a phenomenological analysis of consciousness is >> done and it is shown how it is structured on an emergent holarchy of levels, >> a holarchy meaning that a higher level includes the lower levels, and I >> conclude that this can only happen if there is an entity called >> "self-reference" which has the above mentioned properties. So as you can >> see, there pretty much cannot be a mathematics of self-reference. > > But such theories exist. Even the fact that the first person self-reference > is not formalisable is provable in a meta-theory. > > Self-reference is where mathematical logic has got many surprising results, > and with mechanism, they are somehow directly usable. To not use them needs > some non-mechanist hypothesis, for which there are no evidences, and it looks > like bringing complexity to not solve a (scientific) problem. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com > <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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