At 18:23 15/06/04 -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear
George,
BM:
The post is addressed to George, but concern my thesis. May I
make some comments?
I put my thesis in quotes because it is really the Sound
Universal (Turing) Machine's thesis, you
know. ... or
will know ;)
Turing is under quotes thanks to Church thesis. It is Church
thesis which makes the notion of universal machine independent of which
precise machine is used to define it. After denying the Church Turing
Post Markov ... thesis for some time Godel will eventually accept it and
he will call it an epistemological miracle (in its Princeton talk, see
Davis 1965).
Church thesis makes the intuitive notion of computability
-machine or -reference frame totally independent. We can also say that
the notion of computability is formalism independent.
After having accepted Church thesis, Godel will look after a
corresponding machine or formalism independent notion of provability.
This is curious, because at that time Godel did show, by its own
incompleteness phenomenon, that provability is an essentially machine or
formalism dependent notion. At the same time, by its very reasoning Godel
will provide tools for studying what *is* universal and machine
independent concerning the provability notion. This gives rise to the
logic of provability, also called the logic of self-reference, which has
made tremendous and continuous progress since its birth.
After this introduction I want to comment Stephen's genuine remarks in
some sufficiently precise
way so that we can avoid future misunderstanding.
SPK:
The problems that I have with Bruno's thesis is Digital
substitution and that it does not address the problem of
epiphenomenona found in both Idealism and Materialism.
BM:
Giving that the Comp, through the UDA (for exemple) , leads to
Monistic idealism, I think the use of the word epiphenomenon
could be misleading (it is used more in the non interactive dualist
approach of the mind body problem, as far as I know). It is better to to
talk about simply phenomena, and I guess you pretend I don't address them
(which imo is a little bit unfair as I will try to explain).
SPK:
Digital substitution seems to assume that consciousness
and awareness and related notions can be completely
explained in terms of how one number relates to another.
BM:
Here is an important error, on which ultimately
Godel's theorem will put light.
Saying yes doctor for a digital brain substitution does not
mean you or the surgeon or the international scientific community has
*explained* how consciousness is related to
numbers or machines. As I insist, comp needs an act of faith. It says
there is a level where we can survive (in the grandmother sense) to a
digital subtitution, but then it justifies why an ignorance gap remains
and must remain. That is: IF there is a level where we survive the
subtitution, then we can never pretend to know that level. Please
remember that Godel's theorem shows that provability by a machine and
truth about that machine are different from the machine perspective. Yes
the comp practionners believe its own consciousness can be reduce in some
way to relations between numbers, but he/she does not pretend that, even
if the correct realtions are given to him, that he can take them as a
complete explanation. Comp + Godel will justify why he would became
inconsistent would he find such an explanation.
It helps to keep this in mind to understand the explanation of where the
physical appearance comes from, because in some sense the physical
appearances will come from our sharable border of that necessary
ignorance, where our refers to *us* the hopefully sound
universal machines.
SPK:
I think that your would agree that Bruno's thesis
is a very sophisticated form of Idealism.
BM:
OK. Although I'm not so sure it is so sophisticated. I could argue it is
just the consequence of George Boole's laws of thought. But OK.
SPK:
It is widely recognized that matter and physicality in
general is an epiphenomenona within any Ideal theory.
BM:
You say that again. Perhaps you are right. I would be please to know some
references.
In the case of monistic idealist theory I do think phenomena
or appearances are less misleading terms.
SPK:
This in turn makes the notion of a physical substrate
suspect as it does not exist apart from its properties
as encoded in numbers, e.g. our consciousness is
merely information thus what that information is
encoded in is irrelevant.
BM:
I do not quite agree with the saying consciousness is merely
information. I will at some point suggest that consciousness is true and
partially automated anticipation of our own consistency, but it is
premature to do it now (without first explaining Godel's theorem and the
Solovay's extensions with G, G* etc.).
SPK:
What I am trying to do is to make the point that
it
is not sufficient to just take as an article of faith
or postulation the idea that digital substitution is
actually possible, especially
