RE: computationalism and supervenience
Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Like Bruno, I am not claiming that this is definitely the case, just that it is the case if computationalism is true. Several philosophers (eg. Searle) have used the self-evident absurdity of the idea as an argument demonstrating that computationalism is false - that there is something non-computational about brains and consciousness. I have not yet heard an argument that rejects this idea and saves computationalism. [ rolls up sleaves ] The idea is easilly refuted if it can be shown that computation doesn't require interpretation at all. It can also be refuted more circuitously by showing that computation is not entirely a matter of intepretation. In everythingism , eveything is equal. If some computations (the ones that don't depend on interpretation) are more equal than others, the way is still open for the Somethinginst to object that interpretation-independent computations are really real, and the others are mere possibilities. The claim has been made that computation is not much use without an interpretation. Well, if you define a computer as somethin that is used by a human, that is true. It is also very problematic to the computationalist claim that the human mind is a computer. Is the human mind of use to a human ? Well, yes, it helps us stay alive in various ways. But that is more to do with reacting to a real-time environment, than performing abstract symbolic manipulations or elaborate re-interpretations. (Computationalists need to be careful about how they define computer. Under some perfectly reasonable definitions -- for instance, defining a computer as a human invention -- computationalism is trivially false). I don't mean anything controversial (I think) when I refer to interpretation of computation. Take a mercury thermometer: it would still do its thing if all sentient life in the universe died out, or even if there were no sentient life to build it in the first place and by amazing luck mercury and glass had come together in just the right configuration. But if there were someone around to observe it and understand it, or if it were attached to a thermostat and heater, the thermometer would have extra meaning - the same thermometer, doing the same thermometer stuff. Now, if thermometers were conscious, then part of their thermometer stuff might include knowing what the temperature was - all by themselves, without benefit of external observer. We should ask ourselves how do we know the thermometer isn't conscious of the temperature? It seems that the answer has been that it's state or activity *could* be intepreted in many ways other than indicating the temperature; therefore it must be said to unconscious of the temperature or we must allow that it implements all conscious thought (or at least all for which there is a possible interpretative mapping). But I see it's state and activity as relative to our shared environment; and this greatly constrains what it can be said to compute, e.g. the temperature, the expansion coefficient of Hg... With this constraint, then I think there is no problem in saying the thermometer is conscious at the extremely low level of being aware of the temperature or the expansion coefficient of Hg or whatever else is within the constraint. I would basically agree with that. Consciousness would probably have to be a continuum if computationalism is true. Even if computationalism were false and only those machines specially blessed by God were conscious there would have to be a continuum, across different species and within the lifespan of an individual from birth to death. The possibility that consciousness comes on like a light at some point in your life, or at some point in the evolution of a species, seems unlikely to me. Furthermore, if thermometers were conscious, they might be dreaming of temperatures, or contemplating the meaning of consciousness, again in the absence of external observers, and this time in the absence of interaction with the real world. This, then, is the difference between a computation and a conscious computation. If a computation is unconscious, it can only have meaning/use/interpretation in the eyes of a beholder or in its interaction with the environment. But this is a useless definition of the difference. To apply we have to know whether some putative conscious computation has meaning to itself; which we can only know by knowing whether it is conscious or not. It makes consciousness ineffable and so makes the question of whether computationalism is true an insoluble mystery. That's what I have in mind. Even worse it makes it impossible for us to know whether we're talking about the same thing when we use
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:10:52 -0700 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: computationalism and supervenience Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: I think we need to say what it means for a computation to be self-interpreting. Many control programs are written with self-monitoring functions and logging functions. Why would we not attribute consciousness to them? Well, why not? Some people don't even think higher mammals are conscious, and perhaps some there are true solipsists who could convince themselves that other people are not really conscious as rationalisation for antisocial behaviour. Autistic people don't emphathize with others feelings - perhaps because they don't have them. But their behavoir, and I would expect the behavoir of a real solipist, would be simply asocial. On the other hand, maybe flies experience pain and fear when confronted with insecticide that is orders of magnitude greater than that of any mere human experience of torture, and maybe when I press the letter y on my keyboard I am subjecting my computer to the torments of hell. And maybe every physical process implements all possible computations - but I see no reason to believe so. I don't buy the argument that only complex brains or computations can experience pain either: when I was a child I wasn't as smart as I am now, but I recall that it hurt a lot more and I was much more likely to cry when I cut myself. Stathis Papaioannou You write as though we know nothing about the physical basis of pain and fear. There is a lot of empirical evidence about what prevents pain in humans, you can even get a degree in aesthesiology. Fear can be induced by psychotropic drugs and relieved by whisky. Brent Meeker But can you comment on the difference between your own subjective experience of fear or pain compared to that of a rabbit, a fish, or something even more alien? I know we can say that when you prod a fish with stimulus A it responds by releasing hormones B, C and D and swishing its tail about in pattern E, F or G according to the time of day and the phases of the moon, or whatever, and furthermore that these hormones and behaviours are similar to those in human responses to similar stimuli - but what is the fish feeling? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)
But this only shows that mathematical objects exist in the sense that chair exists; as a abstraction from chairs. So chair isn't identical with any particular chair. Brent Meeker What follows is actually a very important and profound metaphysical point, absolutely fundamental for understanding platonism and reality theory. Both the *concept* of a chair and mathematical concepts are *abstract* things. But there's a big difference. In the case of the chair concept, it's simply a human creation - it's simply a word we humans use to summarize high-level properties of physical arrangements of matter. There are no 'chairs' in reality, only in our heads. We can see this by noting the fact that we can easily dispense with the 'chair concept' and simply use physics descriptions instead. So in the case of the 'chair' concept, we're obviously dealing with a human construct. Critical point: The 'chair' concept is only a (human) cognitive category NOT a metaphysical or ontological categories. Mathematical concepts are quite different. The key difference is that we *cannot* in fact dispense with mathematical descriptions and replace them with something else. We cannot *eliminate* mathematical concepts from our theories like we can with say 'chair' concepts. And this is the argument for regarding mathematical concepts as existing 'out there' and not just in our heads. There are two steps to the argument for thinking that mathematical entities are real: (1) A general mathematical category is not the same as any specific physical thing AND (2) Mathematical entities cannot be removed from our descriptions and replaced with something else ( the argument from indispensibility). It's true that both 'chair' concepts (for example) and math concepts are *abstract*, but the big difference is that for a 'chair' concept, (1) is true, but not (2). For mathematical concepts both (1) AND (2) are true. There's another way of clarifying the difference between the 'chair' concept and math concepts. Math concepts are *universal* in scope (applicable everywhere - we cannot remove them from our theories) where as the 'chair' concept is a cultural construct applicable only in human domains. To make this even clearer, pretend that all of reality is Java Code. It's true that both a 'chair' *concept* and a 'math' concept is an abstraction, and therfore a *class* , but the difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'math' concept is this: 'Math' is a *public class* (an abstract category which can be applied everywhere in reality), where as a 'chair' concept is *private* class, applicable only in specific locations inside reality (in this case inside human heads). Reality Java Code for a math concept: PUBLIC CLASS MATH () Reality Java Code a chair concept: PRIVATE CLASS CHAIR () Big difference! The critical and profound point if we accept this argument, is this: *There is NO difference between *epistemological* and *metaphysical* categories in the cases where we are dealing with cognitive categories which are universal in scope. Math concepts of universal applicability are BOTH epistemological tools AND metaphysical or ontological categories. One needs to think about this carefully to realize just how important this is. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Brent meeker writes: I think it goes against standard computationalism if you say that a conscious computation has some inherent structural property. Opponents of computationalism have used the absurdity of the conclusion that anything implements any conscious computation as evidence that there is something special and non-computational about the brain. Maybe they're right. Stathis Papaioannou Why not reject the idea that any computation implements every possible computation (which seems absurd to me)? Then allow that only computations with some special structure are conscious. It's possible, but once you start in that direction you can say that only computations implemented on this machine rather than that machine can be conscious. You need the hardware in order to specify structure, unless you can think of a God-given programming language against which candidate computations can be measured. I regard that as a feature - not a bug. :-) Disembodied computation doesn't quite seem absurd - but our empirical sample argues for embodiment. Brent Meeker I don't have a clear idea in my mind of disembodied computation except in rather simple cases, like numbers and arithmetic. The number 5 exists as a Platonic ideal, and it can also be implemented so we can interact with it, as when there is a collection of 5 oranges, or 3 oranges and 2 apples, or 3 pairs of oranges and 2 triplets of apples, and so on, in infinite variety. The difficulty is that if we say that 3+2=5 as exemplified by 3 oranges and 2 apples is conscious, then should we also say that the pairs+triplets of fruit are also conscious? If so, where do we draw the line? That is what I mean when I say that any computation can map onto any physical system. The physical structure and activity of computer A implementing program a may be completely different to that of computer B implementing program b, but program b may be an emulation of program a, which should make the two machines functionally equivalent and, under computationalism, equivalently conscious. Maybe this is wrong, eg. there is something special about the insulation in the wires of machine A, so that only A can be conscious. But that is no longer computationalism. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Colin Hales writes: Please consider the plight of the zombie scientist with a huge set of sensory feeds and similar set of effectors. All carry similar signal encoding and all, in themselves, bestow no experiential qualities on the zombie. Add a capacity to detect regularity in the sensory feeds. Add a scientific goal-seeking behaviour. Note that this zombie... a) has the internal life of a dreamless sleep b) has no concept or percept of body or periphery c) has no concept that it is embedded in a universe. I put it to you that science (the extraction of regularity) is the science of zombie sensory fields, not the science of the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No amount of creativity (except maybe random choices) would ever lead to any abstraction of the outside world that gave it the ability to handle novelty in the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No matter how sophisticated the sensory feeds and any guesswork as to a model (abstraction) of the universe, the zombie would eventually find novelty invisible because the sensory feeds fail to depict the novelty .ie. same sensory feeds for different behaviour of the natural world. Technology built by a zombie scientist would replicate zombie sensory feeds, not deliver an independently operating novel chunk of hardware with a defined function(if the idea of function even has meaning in this instance). The purpose of consciousness is, IMO, to endow the cognitive agent with at least a repeatable (not accurate!) simile of the universe outside the cognitive agent so that novelty can be handled. Only then can the zombie scientist detect arbitrary levels of novelty and do open ended science (or survive in the wild world of novel environmental circumstance). In the absence of the functionality of phenomenal consciousness and with finite sensory feeds you cannot construct any world-model (abstraction) in the form of an innate (a-priori) belief system that will deliver an endless ability to discriminate novelty. In a very Godellian way eventually a limit would be reach where the abstracted model could not make any prediction that can be detected. The zombie is, in a very real way, faced with 'truths' that exist but can't be accessed/perceived. As such its behaviour will be fundamentally fragile in the face of novelty (just like all computer programs are). --- Just to make the zombie a little more real... consider the industrial control system computer. I have designed, installed hundreds and wired up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of sensors and an unthinkable number of kilometers of cables. (NEVER again!) In all cases I put it to you that the phenomenal content of sensory connections may, at best, be characterised as whatever it is like to have electrons crash through wires, for that is what is actually going on. As far as the internal life of the CPU is concerned... whatever it is like to be an electrically noisy hot rock, regardless of the programalthough the character of the noise may alter with different programs! I am a zombie expert! No that didn't come out right...erm perhaps... I think I might be a world expert in zombies yes, that's better. :-) Colin Hales I'm not sure I understand why the zombie would be unable to respond to any situation it was likely to encounter. Doing science and philosophy is just a happy side-effect of a brain designed to help its owner survive and reproduce. Do you think it would be impossible to program a computer to behave like an insect, or a newborn infant, for example? You could add a random number generator to make its behaviour less predictable (so predators can't catch it and parents don't get complacent) or to help it decide what to do in a truly novel situation. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Mathematico-Cognition Reality Theory (MCRT) Ver 6.0
Le 08-sept.-06, à 05:42, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : snip It must consist of the 'movement' of mathematical forms through state space. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that mathematical truth is not fixed, but can vary with time - because that's exactly what 'the movement of mathematical forms through state space' represents... the shifting of mathematical truth. And I suggest *that Qualia are precisely these abstract processes* !!! Hope this all makes a bit more sense. I would certainly encourage you in that direction, although I am not sure you are aware that even modern math is going in a similar direction. Seeing qualia as mathematical *motions*, as you said in another post, can be related in a precise way with the arithmetical hypostases (comp notions of n-person) once you realize that modal logic is already a way to tackle notions of shifting mathematical truth: once for each world in a multiplicity (sometimes a continuum) of worlds. Modal logic, but also Cohen's forcing technic in set theory, have led to a vast literature on variable truth. The MWI itself can be seen in that context too. The whole category approach to math and logic can also be seen as a way to study variable notion of truth, especially through the notion of topos (boolean valued or not). All what you say, as far as I understand it, can, and perhaps should, be recasted in such a frame. Note that with comp, for technical reasons which I intuit only through my understanding of quantum mechanics, the quanta appears themselves to be sharable (first person plural) qualia having relational and somehow variable truth values attached to it too. The advantage of modal logic and category theory is that such variable truth approach can be based on common non-variable usual notion of mathematical truth, making it possible to prevent extreme relativism which often appears in corresponding approaches in less rigorous philosophical works. I think this is not a problem for you, especially seeing your today's post (with which I do agree). Technical remark: all arithmetical hypostases (godel-lobian derived notion of n-persons) come equipped with their own notions of multiverses (not all are Kripkean one), and so they are all equipped with a canonical notion of variable truth, but only the 1-person hypostase (and probably the sensible matter hypostase) got a notion of temporal-like (albeit bifurking) notion of variability. With the other hypostases, truth varies, not in a temporal way but in a more abstract and logical way. With those remarks what you say makes sense for me, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Maybe this is a copout, but I just don't think it is even logically possible to explain what consciousness *is* unless you have it. Not being *logically* possible means entailing a contradiction - I doubt that. But anyway you do have it and you think I do because of the way we interact. So if you interacted the same way with a computer and you further found out that the computer was a neural network that had learned through interaction with people over a period of years, you'd probably infer that the computer was conscious - at least you wouldn't be sure it wasn't. True, but I could still only imagine that it experiences what I experience because I already know what I experience. I don't know what my current computer experiences, if anything, because I'm not very much like it. It's like the problem of explaining vision to a blind man: he might be the world's greatest scientific expert on it but still have zero idea of what it is like to see - and that's even though he shares most of the rest of his cognitive structure with other humans, and can understand analogies using other sensations. Knowing what sort of program a conscious computer would have to run to be conscious, what the purpose of consciousness is, and so on, does not help me to understand what the computer would be experiencing, except by analogy with what I myself experience. But that's true of everything. Suppose we knew a lot more about brains and we created an intelligent computer using brain-like functional architecture and it acted like a conscious human being, then I'd say we understood its consciousness better than we understand quantum field theory or global economics. We would understand it in a third person sense but not in a first person sense, except by analogy with our own first person experience. Consciousness is the difference between what can be known by observing an entity and what can be known by being the entity, or something like the entity, yourself. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (1) A general mathematical category is not the same as any specific physical thing But why can't it be reduced to classes of specific physical things? How can you show that it is necessary for anything corresponding to this description to 'exist' apart from its instantiations as documented procedures and actual occurrences of their application? In this case: (2) Mathematical entities cannot be removed from our descriptions and replaced with something else ( the argument from indispensibility). would be false, though such removal would be inconvenient (as would 'chair' for that matter). A 'mathematical entity' would then merely refer to the classes of all descriptions, and all actual occurrences of the application, of a given procedure - i.e. a human cognitive category like 'chair', although as you say of greater generality. David But this only shows that mathematical objects exist in the sense that chair exists; as a abstraction from chairs. So chair isn't identical with any particular chair. Brent Meeker What follows is actually a very important and profound metaphysical point, absolutely fundamental for understanding platonism and reality theory. Both the *concept* of a chair and mathematical concepts are *abstract* things. But there's a big difference. In the case of the chair concept, it's simply a human creation - it's simply a word we humans use to summarize high-level properties of physical arrangements of matter. There are no 'chairs' in reality, only in our heads. We can see this by noting the fact that we can easily dispense with the 'chair concept' and simply use physics descriptions instead. So in the case of the 'chair' concept, we're obviously dealing with a human construct. Critical point: The 'chair' concept is only a (human) cognitive category NOT a metaphysical or ontological categories. Mathematical concepts are quite different. The key difference is that we *cannot* in fact dispense with mathematical descriptions and replace them with something else. We cannot *eliminate* mathematical concepts from our theories like we can with say 'chair' concepts. And this is the argument for regarding mathematical concepts as existing 'out there' and not just in our heads. There are two steps to the argument for thinking that mathematical entities are real: (1) A general mathematical category is not the same as any specific physical thing AND (2) Mathematical entities cannot be removed from our descriptions and replaced with something else ( the argument from indispensibility). It's true that both 'chair' concepts (for example) and math concepts are *abstract*, but the big difference is that for a 'chair' concept, (1) is true, but not (2). For mathematical concepts both (1) AND (2) are true. There's another way of clarifying the difference between the 'chair' concept and math concepts. Math concepts are *universal* in scope (applicable everywhere - we cannot remove them from our theories) where as the 'chair' concept is a cultural construct applicable only in human domains. To make this even clearer, pretend that all of reality is Java Code. It's true that both a 'chair' *concept* and a 'math' concept is an abstraction, and therfore a *class* , but the difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'math' concept is this: 'Math' is a *public class* (an abstract category which can be applied everywhere in reality), where as a 'chair' concept is *private* class, applicable only in specific locations inside reality (in this case inside human heads). Reality Java Code for a math concept: PUBLIC CLASS MATH () Reality Java Code a chair concept: PRIVATE CLASS CHAIR () Big difference! The critical and profound point if we accept this argument, is this: *There is NO difference between *epistemological* and *metaphysical* categories in the cases where we are dealing with cognitive categories which are universal in scope. Math concepts of universal applicability are BOTH epistemological tools AND metaphysical or ontological categories. One needs to think about this carefully to realize just how important this is. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Now, suppose some more complex variant of 3+2=3 implemented on your abacus has consciousness associated with it, which is just one of the tenets of computationalism. Some time later, you are walking in the Amazon rain forest and notice that under a certain mapping of birds to beads and trees to wires, the forest is implementing the same computation as your abacus was. So if your abacus was conscious, and computationalism is true, the tree-bird sytem should also be conscious. No necessarily, because the mapping is required too. Why should it still be conscious if no-one is around to make the mapping. Are you claiming that a conscious machine stops being conscious if its designers die and all the information about how it works is lost? You are, if anyone is. I don't agree that computation *must* be interpreted, although they *can* be re-interpreted. What I claim is this: A computation does not *need* to be interpreted, it just is. However, a computation does need to be interpreted, or interact with its environment in some way, if it is to be interesting or meaningful. A computation other than the one you are running needs to be interpreted by you to be meaningful to you. The computation you are running is useful to you because it keeps you alive. By analogy, a string of characters is a string of characters whether or not anyone interprets it, but it is not interesting or meaningful unless it is interpreted. But if a computation, or for that matter a string of characters, is conscious, then it is interesting and meaningful in at least one sense in the absence of an external observer: it is interesting and meaningful to itself. If it were not, then it wouldn't be conscious. The conscious things in the world have an internal life, a first person phenomenal experience, a certain ineffable something, whatever you want to call it, while the unconscious things do not. That is the difference between them. Which they manage to be aware of without the existence of an external oberver, so one of your premises must be wrong. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: That's what I'm saying, but I certainly don't think everyone agrees with me on the list, and I'm not completely decided as to which of the three is more absurd: every physical system implements every conscious computation, no physical system implements any conscious computation (they are all implemented non-physically in Platonia), or the idea that a computation can be conscious in the first place. You haven't made it clear why you don't accept that every physical system implements one computation, whether it is a conscious computation or not. I don't see what contradicts it. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: We should ask ourselves how do we know the thermometer isn't conscious of the temperature? It seems that the answer has been that it's state or activity *could* be intepreted in many ways other than indicating the temperature; therefore it must be said to unconscious of the temperature or we must allow that it implements all conscious thought (or at least all for which there is a possible interpretative mapping). But I see it's state and activity as relative to our shared environment; and this greatly constrains what it can be said to compute, e.g. the temperature, the expansion coefficient of Hg... With this constraint, then I think there is no problem in saying the thermometer is conscious at the extremely low level of being aware of the temperature or the expansion coefficient of Hg or whatever else is within the constraint. I would basically agree with that. Consciousness would probably have to be a continuum if computationalism is true. I don't think that follows remotely. It is true that it is vastly better to interpret a column of mercury as a temperature-sensor than a pressure-sensor or a radiation-sensor. That doesn't mean the thermometer knows that in itself. Computationalism does not claim that every computation is conscious. If consciousness supervenes on inherent non-interprtation-dependent features, it can supervene on features which are binary, either present or absent. For instance, whether a programme examines or modifies its own code is surely such a feature. Even if computationalism were false and only those machines specially blessed by God were conscious there would have to be a continuum, across different species and within the lifespan of an individual from birth to death. The possibility that consciousness comes on like a light at some point in your life, or at some point in the evolution of a species, seems unlikely to me. Surely it comes on like a light whenver you wake up. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: I think it goes against standard computationalism if you say that a conscious computation has some inherent structural property. Opponents of computationalism have used the absurdity of the conclusion that anything implements any conscious computation as evidence that there is something special and non-computational about the brain. Maybe they're right. Stathis Papaioannou Why not reject the idea that any computation implements every possible computation (which seems absurd to me)? Then allow that only computations with some special structure are conscious. It's possible, but once you start in that direction you can say that only computations implemented on this machine rather than that machine can be conscious. You need the hardware in order to specify structure, unless you can think of a God-given programming language against which candidate computations can be measured. I regard that as a feature - not a bug. :-) Disembodied computation doesn't quite seem absurd - but our empirical sample argues for embodiment. Brent Meeker I don't have a clear idea in my mind of disembodied computation except in rather simple cases, like numbers and arithmetic. The number 5 exists as a Platonic ideal, and it can also be implemented so we can interact with it, as when there is a collection of 5 oranges, or 3 oranges and 2 apples, or 3 pairs of oranges and 2 triplets of apples, and so on, in infinite variety. The difficulty is that if we say that 3+2=5 as exemplified by 3 oranges and 2 apples is conscious, then should we also say that the pairs+triplets of fruit are also conscious? No, they are only subroutines. If so, where do we draw the line? At specific structures That is what I mean when I say that any computation can map onto any physical system. The physical structure and activity of computer A implementing program a may be completely different to that of computer B implementing program b, but program b may be an emulation of program a, which should make the two machines functionally equivalent and, under computationalism, equivalently conscious. So ? If the functional equivalence doesn't depend on a baroque-reinterpretation, where is the problem ? Maybe this is wrong, eg. there is something special about the insulation in the wires of machine A, so that only A can be conscious. But that is no longer computationalism. No. But what would force that conclusion on us ? Why can't consciousness attach to features more gneral than hardware, but less general than one of your re-interpretations ? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: I could make a robot that, having suitable thermocouples, would quickly withdraw it's hand from a fire; but not be conscious of it. Even if I provide the robot with feelings, i.e. judgements about good/bad/pain/pleasure I'm not sure it would be conscious. But if I provide it with attention and memory, so that it noted the painful event as important and necessary to remember because of it's strong negative affect; then I think it would be conscious. It's interesting that people actually withdraw their hand from the fire *before* they experience the pain. The withdrawl is a reflex, presumably evolved in organisms with the most primitive central nervour systems, while the pain seems to be there as an afterthought to teach us a lesson so we won't do it again. Thus, from consideration of evolutionary utility consciousness does indeed seem to be a side-effect of memory and learning. Even more curious, volitional action also occurs before one is aware of it. Are you familiar with the experiments of Benjamin Libet and Grey Walter? These experiments showed that in apparently voluntarily initiated motion, motor cortex activity actually preceded the subject's awareness of his intention by a substantial fraction of a second. In other words, we act first, then decide to act. Does Benjamin Libet's Research Empirically Disprove Free Will ? Scientifically informed sceptics about FW often quote a famous experiment by benjamin Libet, which supposedly shows that a kind of signal called a Readiness Potential, detectable by electrodes, precedes a conscious decisions, and is a reliable indicator of the decision, and thus -- so the claim goes -- indicates that our decisions are not ours but made for us by unconsious processes. In fact, Libet himself doesn't draw a sweepingly sceptical conclusion from his own results. For one thing, Readiness Potentials are not always followed by actions. he believes it is possible for consicousness to intervene with a veto to the action: The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act! Is there, then, any role for conscious will in the performing of a voluntary act?...To answer this it must be recognised that conscious will (W) does appear about 150milliseconds before the muscsle is activated, even though it follows the onset ofthe RP. An interval of 150msec would allow enough time in which the conscious function might affec the final outcome of the volitional process. (Libet, quoted in Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, p. 230 ) This suggests our conscious minds may not have free will but rather free won't! (V.S Ramachandran, quoted in Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 ) However, it is quite possible that the Libertarian doesn't need to appeal to free won't to avoid the conclusion that free won't doesn't exist. Libet tells when the RP occurs using electrodes. But how does Libet he when conscious decison-making occurs ? He relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock. But, as Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they occur. Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at second 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseonds -- a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a consicous decision of simulataneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories: # the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick # the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted. (Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 ) Dennett refers to an experiment in which Churchland showed, that just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds. Does that mean that all actions taking longer than that are unconcisous ? The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes. A top tennis player can set
Russell's book
Hi Russell I just received the book and have swiftly perused it (one of many iterations I expect). I find it to be a clear presentation of your own approach as well as a fine exposition of many topics from the list that had me baffled. A couple of things immediately occur: 1) QTI - I must say until reading your remarks (e.g. re pension plans) the possible personal consequences of QTI hadn't really struck me. If QTI is true, there is a fundamental assymetry between the 1st and 3rd-person povs vis-a-vis personal longevity (at least the longevity of consciousness), and this seems to imply that one should take seriously the prospect of being around in some form far longer than generally assumed from a purely 3rd-person perspective. This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? 2) RSSA vs ASSA - Isn't it the case that all 'absolute' self samples will appear to be 'relative' (i.e. to their own content) and hence 1st-person experience can be 'time-like' without the need for 'objective' sequencing of observer moments? If the 'pov' is that of the multiverse can't we simply treat all 1st-person experience as the 'absolute sampling' of all povs compresently? David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Arithmetical Realism
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 29-août-06, à 20:45, 1Z a écrit : The version of AR that is supported by comp only makes a commitment about mind-independent *truth*. The idea that the mind-independent truth of mathematical propositions entails the mind-independent *existence* of mathematical objects is a very contentious and substantive claim. You have not yet answered my question: what difference are you making between there exist a prime number in platonia and the truth of the proposition asserting the *existence* of a prime number is independent of me, you, and all contingencies ? P is true is not different to P. That is not the difference I making. I'm making a difference between what exists means in mathematical sentences and what it means in empiricial sentences (and what it means in fictional contexts...) The logical case for mathematical Platonism is based on the idea that mathematical statements are true, and make existence claims. That they are true is not disputed by the anti-Platonist, who must therefore claim that mathematical existence claims are somehow weaker than other existence claims -- perhaps merely metaphorical. That the the word exists means different things in different contexts is easily established. For one thing, this is already conceded by Platonists! Platonists think Platonic existence is eternal, immaterial non-spatial, and so on, unlike the Earthly existence of material bodies. For another, we are already used to contextualising the meaning of exists. We agree with both: helicopters exist; and helicopters don't exist in Middle Earth. (People who base their entire anti-Platonic philosophy are called fictionalists. However, mathematics is not a fiction because it is not a free creation. Mathematicians are constrained by consistency and non-contradiction in a way that authors are not. Dr Watson's fictional existence is intact despite the fact that he is sometimes called John and sometimes James in Conan Doyle's stories). The epistemic case for mathematical Platonism is be argued on the basis of the objective nature of mathematical truth. Superficially, it seems persuasive that objectivity requires objects. However, the basic case for the objectivity of mathematics is the tendency of mathematicians to agree about the answers to mathematical problems; this can be explained by noting that mathematical logic is based on axioms and rules of inference, and different mathematicians following the same rules will tend to get the same answers , like different computers running the same problem. (There is also disagreement about some axioms, such as the Axiom of Choice, and different mathematicians with different attitudes about the AoC will tend to get different answers -- a phenomenon which is easily explained by the formalist view I am taking here). The semantic case for mathematical Platonism is based on the idea that the terms in a mathematical sentence must mean something, and therefore must refer to objects. It can be argued on general linguistic grounds that not all meaning is reference to some kind of object outside the head. Some meaning is sense, some is reference. That establishes the possibility that mathematical terms do not have references. What establishes it is as likely and not merely possible is the obeservation that nothing like empirical investigation is needed to establish the truth of mathematical statements. Mathematical truth is arrived at by a purely conceptual process, which is what would be expected if mathematical meaning were restricted to the Sense, the in the head component of meaning. A possible counter argument by the Platonist is that the downgrading of mathematical existence to a mere metaphor is arbitrary. The anti-Platonist must show that a consistent standard is being applied. This it is possible to do; the standard is to take the meaning of existence in the context of a particular proposition to relate to the means of justification of the proposition. Since ordinary statements are confirmed empirically, exists means can be perceived in that context. Since sufficient grounds for asserting the existence of mathematical objects are that it is does not contradict anything else in mathematics, mathematical existence just amounts to concpetual non-contradictoriness. (Incidentally, this approach answers a question about mathematical and empirical truth. The anti-Platonists want sthe two kinds of truth to be different, but also needs them to be related so as to avoid the charge that one class of statement is not true at all. This can be achieved because empirical statements rest on non-contradiction in order to achive correspondence. If an empricial observation fails co correspond to a statemet, there is a contradiction between them. Thus non-contradiciton is a necessary but insufficient justification for truth in empircal statements, but a sufficient one for mathematical statements). Where is it shown the UD exists ?
Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But this only shows that mathematical objects exist in the sense that chair exists; as a abstraction from chairs. So chair isn't identical with any particular chair. Brent Meeker What follows is actually a very important and profound metaphysical point, absolutely fundamental for understanding platonism and reality theory. Both the *concept* of a chair and mathematical concepts are *abstract* things. But there's a big difference. In the case of the chair concept, it's simply a human creation - it's simply a word we humans use to summarize high-level properties of physical arrangements of matter. There are no 'chairs' in reality, only in our heads. We can see this by noting the fact that we can easily dispense with the 'chair concept' and simply use physics descriptions instead. So in the case of the 'chair' concept, we're obviously dealing with a human construct. Critical point: The 'chair' concept is only a (human) cognitive category NOT a metaphysical or ontological categories. Mathematical concepts are quite different. The key difference is that we *cannot* in fact dispense with mathematical descriptions and replace them with something else. We cannot *eliminate* mathematical concepts from our theories like we can with say 'chair' concepts. And this is the argument for regarding mathematical concepts as existing 'out there' and not just in our heads. There are two steps to the argument for thinking that mathematical entities are real: (1) A general mathematical category is not the same as any specific physical thing AND (2) Mathematical entities cannot be removed from our descriptions and replaced with something else ( the argument from indispensibility). It's true that both 'chair' concepts (for example) and math concepts are *abstract*, but the big difference is that for a 'chair' concept, (1) is true, but not (2). For mathematical concepts both (1) AND (2) are true. There's another way of clarifying the difference between the 'chair' concept and math concepts. Math concepts are *universal* in scope (applicable everywhere - we cannot remove them from our theories) where as the 'chair' concept is a cultural construct applicable only in human domains. To make this even clearer, pretend that all of reality is Java Code. It's true that both a 'chair' *concept* and a 'math' concept is an abstraction, and therfore a *class* , but the difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'math' concept is this: 'Math' is a *public class* (an abstract category which can be applied everywhere in reality), where as a 'chair' concept is *private* class, applicable only in specific locations inside reality (in this case inside human heads). Reality Java Code for a math concept: PUBLIC CLASS MATH () Reality Java Code a chair concept: PRIVATE CLASS CHAIR () Big difference! The critical and profound point if we accept this argument, is this: *There is NO difference between *epistemological* and *metaphysical* categories in the cases where we are dealing with cognitive categories which are universal in scope. Math concepts of universal applicability are BOTH epistemological tools AND metaphysical or ontological categories. One needs to think about this carefully to realize just how important this is. It is an interesting point, but it's not so fundamental as you seem to think. We can do without 'chair' and 'table' etc. But we can't do wihtout 'this' and 'that'. Without distinguishing objects we couldn't count and we wouldn't have the integers. Language, logic, and math are human inventions just as chair is, c.f. William S. Cooper The Evolution of Reason. Probably they are nomologically necessary in the sense that any sentient species that evolves would have to invent them. But just because mathematics and logic are built into our language and are necessary to any language that we could recognize, does not show they are out there like the object we call 'that chair' is out there. That chair would continue to exist even if all humans were wiped off the Earth - but the concept of 'chairs' wouldn't and neither would '2'. Ontology is invented too. Most ontologies put the chair 'out there' and math 'in our heads'. Some put the chair 'out there' and math in 'Mathematica' (I don't like to use 'Platonia' because Plato put chair in there too). Java has it's own ontology; that we invented to reflect an idea of instances and classes. There's nothing necessary about that as is easily seen from the fact that anything Java can do can also be done in Fortran or assembly or by a Turing machine. Brent Meeker The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: I think it goes against standard computationalism if you say that a conscious computation has some inherent structural property. Opponents of computationalism have used the absurdity of the conclusion that anything implements any conscious computation as evidence that there is something special and non-computational about the brain. Maybe they're right. Stathis Papaioannou Why not reject the idea that any computation implements every possible computation (which seems absurd to me)? Then allow that only computations with some special structure are conscious. It's possible, but once you start in that direction you can say that only computations implemented on this machine rather than that machine can be conscious. You need the hardware in order to specify structure, unless you can think of a God-given programming language against which candidate computations can be measured. I regard that as a feature - not a bug. :-) Disembodied computation doesn't quite seem absurd - but our empirical sample argues for embodiment. Brent Meeker I don't have a clear idea in my mind of disembodied computation except in rather simple cases, like numbers and arithmetic. The number 5 exists as a Platonic ideal, and it can also be implemented so we can interact with it, as when there is a collection of 5 oranges, or 3 oranges and 2 apples, or 3 pairs of oranges and 2 triplets of apples, and so on, in infinite variety. The difficulty is that if we say that 3+2=5 as exemplified by 3 oranges and 2 apples is conscious, then should we also say that the pairs+triplets of fruit are also conscious? If so, where do we draw the line? I'm not sure I understand your example. Are you saying that by simply existing, two apples and 3 oranges compute 2+3=5? If so I would disagree. I would say it is our comprehending them as individual objects and also as a set that is the computation. Just hanging there on the trees they may be computing apple hanging on a tree, apple hanging on a tree,... but they're not computing 2+3=5. That is what I mean when I say that any computation can map onto any physical system. But as you've noted before the computation is almost all in the mapping. And not just in the map, but in the application of the map - which is something we do. That action can't be abstracted away. You can't just say there's a physical system and there's a manual that would map it into some computation and stop there as though the computation has been done. The mapping, an action, still needs to be performed. The physical structure and activity of computer A implementing program a may be completely different to that of computer B implementing program b, but program b may be an emulation of program a, which should make the two machines functionally equivalent and, under computationalism, equivalently conscious. I don't see any problem with supposing that A and B are equally conscious (or unconscious). Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Colin Hales writes: Please consider the plight of the zombie scientist with a huge set of sensory feeds and similar set of effectors. All carry similar signal encoding and all, in themselves, bestow no experiential qualities on the zombie. Add a capacity to detect regularity in the sensory feeds. Add a scientific goal-seeking behaviour. Note that this zombie... a) has the internal life of a dreamless sleep b) has no concept or percept of body or periphery c) has no concept that it is embedded in a universe. I put it to you that science (the extraction of regularity) is the science of zombie sensory fields, not the science of the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No amount of creativity (except maybe random choices) would ever lead to any abstraction of the outside world that gave it the ability to handle novelty in the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No matter how sophisticated the sensory feeds and any guesswork as to a model (abstraction) of the universe, the zombie would eventually find novelty invisible because the sensory feeds fail to depict the novelty .ie. same sensory feeds for different behaviour of the natural world. Technology built by a zombie scientist would replicate zombie sensory feeds, not deliver an independently operating novel chunk of hardware with a defined function(if the idea of function even has meaning in this instance). The purpose of consciousness is, IMO, to endow the cognitive agent with at least a repeatable (not accurate!) simile of the universe outside the cognitive agent so that novelty can be handled. Only then can the zombie scientist detect arbitrary levels of novelty and do open ended science (or survive in the wild world of novel environmental circumstance). In the absence of the functionality of phenomenal consciousness and with finite sensory feeds you cannot construct any world-model (abstraction) in the form of an innate (a-priori) belief system that will deliver an endless ability to discriminate novelty. In a very Godellian way eventually a limit would be reach where the abstracted model could not make any prediction that can be detected. The zombie is, in a very real way, faced with 'truths' that exist but can't be accessed/perceived. As such its behaviour will be fundamentally fragile in the face of novelty (just like all computer programs are). --- Just to make the zombie a little more real... consider the industrial control system computer. I have designed, installed hundreds and wired up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of sensors and an unthinkable number of kilometers of cables. (NEVER again!) In all cases I put it to you that the phenomenal content of sensory connections may, at best, be characterised as whatever it is like to have electrons crash through wires, for that is what is actually going on. As far as the internal life of the CPU is concerned... whatever it is like to be an electrically noisy hot rock, regardless of the programalthough the character of the noise may alter with different programs! I am a zombie expert! No that didn't come out right...erm perhaps... I think I might be a world expert in zombies yes, that's better. :-) Colin Hales I'm not sure I understand why the zombie would be unable to respond to any situation it was likely to encounter. Doing science and philosophy is just a happy side-effect of a brain designed to help its owner survive and reproduce. Do you think it would be impossible to program a computer to behave like an insect, or a newborn infant, for example? You could add a random number generator to make its behaviour less predictable (so predators can't catch it and parents don't get complacent) or to help it decide what to do in a truly novel situation. Stathis Papaioannou And after you had given it all these capabilities how would you know it was not conscious? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
David Nyman wrote: [re: QTI] This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. It's the cul-de-sac situations that interest me. Are there truly any? Are there moments of consciousness which have no logically possible continuation (while remaining conscious?) It seems the canonical example is surviving a nearby nuclear detonation. One logical possibility is that all your constituent particles quantum-tunnel away from the blast in time. This would be of extremely low measure in absolute terms, but what about the proportion of continuations that contain you as a conscious entity? This also touches on a recent thread about how being of low measure feels. If QTI is true, and I'm subject to a nuclear detonation, does it matter if my possible continuations are of such a low relative measure? Once I'm in them, would I feel any different and should I care? These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I raised a similar question on the list a few months ago when Tookie Wiliams was in the headlines and was eventually executed by the State of California. What possible continuations exist in this situation? In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? A very interesting question. If my expectation is that QTI is true and I'll be living for a very long time, I may adjust my financial planning accordingly. But QTI only applies to my own first-person view; I'll be constantly shedding branches where I did indeed die. If I have any financial dependents, do I provide for their welfare, even if they'll only exist forever outside my ability to interact with? -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes (quoting SP): Maybe this is a copout, but I just don't think it is even logically possible to explain what consciousness *is* unless you have it. Not being *logically* possible means entailing a contradiction - I doubt that. But anyway you do have it and you think I do because of the way we interact. So if you interacted the same way with a computer and you further found out that the computer was a neural network that had learned through interaction with people over a period of years, you'd probably infer that the computer was conscious - at least you wouldn't be sure it wasn't. True, but I could still only imagine that it experiences what I experience because I already know what I experience. I don't know what my current computer experiences, if anything, because I'm not very much like it. It's like the problem of explaining vision to a blind man: he might be the world's greatest scientific expert on it but still have zero idea of what it is like to see - and that's even though he shares most of the rest of his cognitive structure with other humans, and can understand analogies using other sensations. Knowing what sort of program a conscious computer would have to run to be conscious, what the purpose of consciousness is, and so on, does not help me to understand what the computer would be experiencing, except by analogy with what I myself experience. But that's true of everything. Suppose we knew a lot more about brains and we created an intelligent computer using brain-like functional architecture and it acted like a conscious human being, then I'd say we understood its consciousness better than we understand quantum field theory or global economics. We would understand it in a third person sense but not in a first person sense, except by analogy with our own first person experience. Consciousness is the difference between what can be known by observing an entity and what can be known by being the entity, or something like the entity, yourself. Stathis Papaioannou But you are simply positing that there is such a difference. That's easy to do because we know so little about how brains work. But consider the engine in your car. Do you know what it's like to be the engine in your car? You know a lot about it, but how do you know that you know all of it? Does that mean your car engine is conscious? I'd say yes it is (at a very low level) and you *can* know what it's like. This just an extreme example of that kind of special pleading you hear in politics - nobody can represent Black interests except a Black, no man can understand Feminism. Can only children be pediatricians? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
1Z wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: We should ask ourselves how do we know the thermometer isn't conscious of the temperature? It seems that the answer has been that it's state or activity *could* be intepreted in many ways other than indicating the temperature; therefore it must be said to unconscious of the temperature or we must allow that it implements all conscious thought (or at least all for which there is a possible interpretative mapping). But I see it's state and activity as relative to our shared environment; and this greatly constrains what it can be said to compute, e.g. the temperature, the expansion coefficient of Hg... With this constraint, then I think there is no problem in saying the thermometer is conscious at the extremely low level of being aware of the temperature or the expansion coefficient of Hg or whatever else is within the constraint. I would basically agree with that. Consciousness would probably have to be a continuum if computationalism is true. I don't think that follows remotely. It is true that it is vastly better to interpret a column of mercury as a temperature-sensor than a pressure-sensor or a radiation-sensor. That doesn't mean the thermometer knows that in itself. Computationalism does not claim that every computation is conscious. If consciousness supervenes on inherent non-interprtation-dependent features, it can supervene on features which are binary, either present or absent. It could, depending on what it is. But that's why we need some independent operational definition of consciousness before we can say what has it and what doens't. It's pretty clear that there are degrees of consciousness. My dog is aware of where he is and who he is relative to the family etc. But I don't think he passes the mirror test. So whether a thermometer is conscious or not is likely to be a matter of how we define and quantify consciousness. For instance, whether a programme examines or modifies its own code is surely such a feature. Even if computationalism were false and only those machines specially blessed by God were conscious there would have to be a continuum, across different species and within the lifespan of an individual from birth to death. The possibility that consciousness comes on like a light at some point in your life, or at some point in the evolution of a species, seems unlikely to me. Surely it comes on like a light whenver you wake up. Not at all. If someone whispers your name while you're asleep, you will wake up - showing you were conscious of sounds and their meaning. On the other hand, it does come on like a light (or a slow sunrise) when you come out of anesthesia. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Johnathan Corgan wrote: If my expectation is that QTI is true and I'll be living for a very long time, I may adjust my financial planning accordingly. But QTI only applies to my own first-person view; I'll be constantly shedding branches where I did indeed die. If I have any financial dependents, do I provide for their welfare, even if they'll only exist forever outside my ability to interact with? Is this in fact your expectation? And do you so plan? Forgive me if this seems overly personal, but I'm fascinated to discover if anyone actually acts on these beliefs. David David Nyman wrote: [re: QTI] This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. It's the cul-de-sac situations that interest me. Are there truly any? Are there moments of consciousness which have no logically possible continuation (while remaining conscious?) It seems the canonical example is surviving a nearby nuclear detonation. One logical possibility is that all your constituent particles quantum-tunnel away from the blast in time. This would be of extremely low measure in absolute terms, but what about the proportion of continuations that contain you as a conscious entity? This also touches on a recent thread about how being of low measure feels. If QTI is true, and I'm subject to a nuclear detonation, does it matter if my possible continuations are of such a low relative measure? Once I'm in them, would I feel any different and should I care? These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I raised a similar question on the list a few months ago when Tookie Wiliams was in the headlines and was eventually executed by the State of California. What possible continuations exist in this situation? In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? A very interesting question. If my expectation is that QTI is true and I'll be living for a very long time, I may adjust my financial planning accordingly. But QTI only applies to my own first-person view; I'll be constantly shedding branches where I did indeed die. If I have any financial dependents, do I provide for their welfare, even if they'll only exist forever outside my ability to interact with? -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Like Bruno, I am not claiming that this is definitely the case, just that it is the case if computationalism is true. Several philosophers (eg. Searle) have used the self-evident absurdity of the idea as an argument demonstrating that computationalism is false - that there is something non-computational about brains and consciousness. I have not yet heard an argument that rejects this idea and saves computationalism. [ rolls up sleaves ] The idea is easilly refuted if it can be shown that computation doesn't require interpretation at all. It can also be refuted more circuitously by showing that computation is not entirely a matter of intepretation. In everythingism , eveything is equal. If some computations (the ones that don't depend on interpretation) are more equal than others, the way is still open for the Somethinginst to object that interpretation-independent computations are really real, and the others are mere possibilities. The claim has been made that computation is not much use without an interpretation. Well, if you define a computer as somethin that is used by a human, that is true. It is also very problematic to the computationalist claim that the human mind is a computer. Is the human mind of use to a human ? Well, yes, it helps us stay alive in various ways. But that is more to do with reacting to a real-time environment, than performing abstract symbolic manipulations or elaborate re-interpretations. (Computationalists need to be careful about how they define computer. Under some perfectly reasonable definitions -- for instance, defining a computer as a human invention -- computationalism is trivially false). I don't mean anything controversial (I think) when I refer to interpretation of computation. Take a mercury thermometer: it would still do its thing if all sentient life in the universe died out, or even if there were no sentient life to build it in the first place and by amazing luck mercury and glass had come together in just the right configuration. But if there were someone around to observe it and understand it, or if it were attached to a thermostat and heater, the thermometer would have extra meaning - the same thermometer, doing the same thermometer stuff. Now, if thermometers were conscious, then part of their thermometer stuff might include knowing what the temperature was - all by themselves, without benefit of external observer. We should ask ourselves how do we know the thermometer isn't conscious of the temperature? It seems that the answer has been that it's state or activity *could* be intepreted in many ways other than indicating the temperature; therefore it must be said to unconscious of the temperature or we must allow that it implements all conscious thought (or at least all for which there is a possible interpretative mapping). But I see it's state and activity as relative to our shared environment; and this greatly constrains what it can be said to compute, e.g. the temperature, the expansion coefficient of Hg... With this constraint, then I think there is no problem in saying the thermometer is conscious at the extremely low level of being aware of the temperature or the expansion coefficient of Hg or whatever else is within the constraint. I would basically agree with that. Consciousness would probably have to be a continuum if computationalism is true. Even if computationalism were false and only those machines specially blessed by God were conscious there would have to be a continuum, across different species and within the lifespan of an individual from birth to death. The possibility that consciousness comes on like a light at some point in your life, or at some point in the evolution of a species, seems unlikely to me. Furthermore, if thermometers were conscious, they might be dreaming of temperatures, or contemplating the meaning of consciousness, again in the absence of external observers, and this time in the absence of interaction with the real world. This, then, is the difference between a computation and a conscious computation. If a computation is unconscious, it can only have meaning/use/interpretation in the eyes of a beholder or in its interaction with the environment. But this is a useless definition of the difference. To apply we have to know whether some putative conscious computation has meaning to itself; which we can only know by knowing whether it is conscious or not. It makes consciousness ineffable and so makes the question of whether computationalism is true an insoluble mystery. That's what I have in mind. Even worse it makes it impossible for us to know whether we're talking about the same thing when we use the word consciousness. I know what I mean, and you probably know what I mean
Re: Russell's book
David Nyman wrote: Is this in fact your expectation? And do you so plan? Forgive me if this seems overly personal, but I'm fascinated to discover if anyone actually acts on these beliefs. It's not overly personal; I brought it up in fact. But personally, no, I don't act on these beliefs because they are not mine. That is, I've not established to my satisfaction that QTI is correct. However, I do have an intense interest and must admit I want it to be true. Alas, I may only find out when I look around and wonder why I'm the only 150 year old person :-) It does seem to me the theory hinges on whether cul-de-sac's exist or not, hence my earlier questioning. I've already accepted the essential underlying MWI explanation. -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
1Z wrote: ... Dennett's idea of stored conscious volition is quite in line with our theory. Indeed, we would like to extend it in a way that Dennett does not. We would like to extend it to stored indeterminism. Any decision we make in exigent situations wher we do nto have the luxury of conisdered thought must be more-or-less determinsistic -- must be more-or-less determined by our state of mind at the time - -if they are to be of any use at all to us. Otherwise we might as well toss a coin. But our state of mind at the time can be formed by rumination, training and so over a long period, perhaps over a lifetime. As such it can contain elemetns of indeterminism in the positive sense -- of imagination and creativity, not mere caprice. Right. Even if it's determined, it's determined by who we are. This extension of Dennett's criticism of Libet (or rather the way Libet's results are used by free-will sceptics) gives us a way of answering Dennett's own criticisms of Robert Kane, a prominent defender of naturalistic Free Will. I didn't refer to Libet and Grey Walter as refuting free will - I was well aware of Dennett's writings (and Stathis probably is to). But I think they show that the conscious feeling of making a decision and actually making the decision are different things; that most of a decision making is unconscious. Which is exactly what you would expect based on a model of a computer logging it's own decisions. I actually found Grey Walter's experiments more convincing that Libet's. It's too bad they aren't likely to be repeated. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Johnathan Corgan wrote: It does seem to me the theory hinges on whether cul-de-sac's exist or not, hence my earlier questioning. I've already accepted the essential underlying MWI explanation. Yes, the question of cul-de-sacs is indeed interesting. However, it seems to me that they need only exist in a relative sense for it still to be worthwhile to make a 'bet' (in the spirit of 'yes doctor') - hence my point about avoiding 'insane' risks - perhaps like nuclear blasts (incidentally this is strongly reminiscent of the 'infinite improbability drive' for Douglas Adams fans). So long as there seemed to be some plausible (even if very small) number of 'escape routes' then it might be worth a punt. Your speculation re extremely small measure is interesting in this context. Personally, I would expect some sort of consciousness to survive in a non-zero branch, but in what company? David David Nyman wrote: Is this in fact your expectation? And do you so plan? Forgive me if this seems overly personal, but I'm fascinated to discover if anyone actually acts on these beliefs. It's not overly personal; I brought it up in fact. But personally, no, I don't act on these beliefs because they are not mine. That is, I've not established to my satisfaction that QTI is correct. However, I do have an intense interest and must admit I want it to be true. Alas, I may only find out when I look around and wonder why I'm the only 150 year old person :-) It does seem to me the theory hinges on whether cul-de-sac's exist or not, hence my earlier questioning. I've already accepted the essential underlying MWI explanation. -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Johnathan Corgan wrote: David Nyman wrote: [re: QTI] This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. It's the cul-de-sac situations that interest me. Are there truly any? Are there moments of consciousness which have no logically possible continuation (while remaining conscious?) It seems the canonical example is surviving a nearby nuclear detonation. One logical possibility is that all your constituent particles quantum-tunnel away from the blast in time. This would be of extremely low measure in absolute terms, but what about the proportion of continuations that contain you as a conscious entity? This also touches on a recent thread about how being of low measure feels. If QTI is true, and I'm subject to a nuclear detonation, does it matter if my possible continuations are of such a low relative measure? Once I'm in them, would I feel any different and should I care? These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I think it is not and there is a lower limit below which cross terms in the density matrix must be strictly (not just FAPP) zero. The Planck scale provides a lower bound on fundamental physical values. So it makes sense to me that treating probability measures as a continuum is no more than a convenient approximation. But I have no idea how to make that precise and testable. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Johnathan Corgan wrote: QTI makes a big twist on this by removing from the numerator *and* denominator those outcomes where consciousness ceases. Precisely. And this is what should bias one's choices in the case that one is prepared to bet on the validity of QTI. Not sure what the question is. Do you mean, what would things be like afterward? Would it be worth it? Yes, because this should also be taken into account before 'betting' (at least in certain near-cul-de-sac circumstances). Any thoughts? David David Nyman wrote: So long as there seemed to be some plausible (even if very small) number of 'escape routes' then it might be worth a punt. From a 'yes doctor' bet point of view, this introduces the idea of relative expectation of different future outcomes, an idea hashed out here many many times. Personally I think it's rational to base one's current actions on the probability of expected outcome*value (maximum utility theory). And I also think subjective probability should equate to proportion of measure. (Others disagree with this way of measuring future expectation.) QTI makes a big twist on this by removing from the numerator *and* denominator those outcomes where consciousness ceases. Your speculation re extremely small measure is interesting in this context. Personally, I would expect some sort of consciousness to survive in a non-zero branch, but in what company? Not sure what the question is. Do you mean, what would things be like afterward? Would it be worth it? -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
(This is the original post that seems somehow to have gone missing) Hi Russell I just received the book and have swiftly perused it (one of many iterations I expect). I find it to be a clear presentation of your own approach as well as a fine exposition of many topics from the list that had me baffled. A couple of things immediately occur: 1) QTI - I must say until reading your remarks (e.g. re pension plans) the possible personal consequences of QTI hadn't really struck me. If QTI is true, there is a fundamental assymetry between the 1st and 3rd-person povs vis-a-vis personal longevity (at least the longevity of consciousness), and this seems to imply that one should take seriously the prospect of being around in some form far longer than generally assumed from a purely 3rd-person perspective. This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? 2) RSSA vs ASSA - Isn't it the case that all 'absolute' self samples will appear to be 'relative' (i.e. to their own content) and hence 1st-person experience can be 'time-like' without the need for 'objective' sequencing of observer moments? If the 'pov' is that of the multiverse can't we simply treat all 1st-person experience as the 'absolute sampling' of all povs compresently? David --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Brent Meeker wrote: Everett who originated the MWI thought about QTI. Although he never explicitly said he believed it, he led a very unhealthy life style smoking, drinking, eating to excees, never exercising and he died young, of a heart attack IIRC. So some of his acquaintences have speculated that he did really believe in QTI. Well, that's not quite rational--what is the quality of life (utility) that succeeds surviving a heart attack? If QTI is true, and I'm going to live a very long time, it would not only motivate me to plan for the long term, but also to be much more careful about my health--I'll be living in this body for much longer than ~73 years! -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mathematical concepts are quite different. The key difference is that we *cannot* in fact dispense with mathematical descriptions and replace them with something else. We cannot *eliminate* mathematical concepts from our theories like we can with say 'chair' concepts. And this is the argument for regarding mathematical concepts as existing 'out there' and not just in our heads. Actually, it's an arguement against doing so. If mathematical terms referred to particular things, they would not be universally applicable. They are universally applicable because they don't refer to anything. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
Johnathan Corgan wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I think it is not and there is a lower limit below which cross terms in the density matrix must be strictly (not just FAPP) zero. The Planck scale provides a lower bound on fundamental physical values. So it makes sense to me that treating probability measures as a continuum is no more than a convenient approximation. But I have no idea how to make that precise and testable. Having measure ultimately having a fixed lower limit would I think be fatal to QTI. But, consider the following: At every successive moment our measure is decreasing, possibly by a very large fraction, depending on how you count it. Every moment we branch into only one of a huge number of possibilities. A moment here is on the order a Planck time unit. First, it may not be such a large factor. All nearby trajectories in configuration space constructively interfere to produce quasi-classical evolution in certain bases. So if we are essentially classical and I think we are (c.f. Tegmark's paper on the brain) then we are not decreasing in measure by MWI splitting on a Planckian or even millisecond time scale. The evolution of our world is mostly deterministic. Second, if there is a lower limit on the interference terms in the SE of the universe, then the density matrix gets diagonalized. Then the MWI goes away. QM is, as Omnes' says, a probabilistic theory and it predicts probabilities. Probabilities mean something happens and other things don't. So we don't risk vanishing. The fact that our probability seems to become vanishingly small is only a artifact of what we take as the domain of possibilities and it is no different than our improbability pre-QM. But undoubtedly there are mathematical difficulties with assuming a lower bound on probabilities. All our mathematics and theory has been built around continuous variables for the very good reason that it seems overwhelmingly difficult to do physics in discrete variables - just look at how messy numerical solution of partial differential equations is compared to the equations themselves. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
I think I can prove that QTI as intepreted in this list is false, I'll post the proof in a new thread. The only version of QTI that makes sense to me is this: All possible states exist out there in the multiverse. The observer moments are timeless objects so, in a certain sense, QTI is true. But then you must consider surviving with memory loss. E.g., if I'm diagnosed with a terminal illness, then there is still a branch in which I haven't been diagnosed with that illness. If I'm 100 years old, then I still have copies that are only 20 years old etc. etc. Saibal - Original Message - From: Johnathan Corgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 7:43 PM Subject: Re: Russell's book David Nyman wrote: [re: QTI] This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. It's the cul-de-sac situations that interest me. Are there truly any? Are there moments of consciousness which have no logically possible continuation (while remaining conscious?) It seems the canonical example is surviving a nearby nuclear detonation. One logical possibility is that all your constituent particles quantum-tunnel away from the blast in time. This would be of extremely low measure in absolute terms, but what about the proportion of continuations that contain you as a conscious entity? This also touches on a recent thread about how being of low measure feels. If QTI is true, and I'm subject to a nuclear detonation, does it matter if my possible continuations are of such a low relative measure? Once I'm in them, would I feel any different and should I care? These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I raised a similar question on the list a few months ago when Tookie Wiliams was in the headlines and was eventually executed by the State of California. What possible continuations exist in this situation? In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? A very interesting question. If my expectation is that QTI is true and I'll be living for a very long time, I may adjust my financial planning accordingly. But QTI only applies to my own first-person view; I'll be constantly shedding branches where I did indeed die. If I have any financial dependents, do I provide for their welfare, even if they'll only exist forever outside my ability to interact with? -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Proof that QTI is false
QTI in the way defined in this list contradicts quantum mechanics. The observable part of the universe can only be in a finite number of quantum states. So, it can only harbor a finite number of observer moments or experiences a person can have, see here for details: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102010 If there can only be a finite number of observer moments you can only experience a finite amount of time. QED. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Russell's book
After many life-expectancy-spans worth of narrow escapes, after thousands or millions of years, wouldn't the probability be pretty high for my personality/memory etc. to change so much that I wouldn't recognize myself, or that I could be more like another person than my original self, and so for all practical purposes wouldn't I be another person? How do I know this hasn't happened already? If it has, what difference does it make? Isn't it true that the only realities that matter are the ones that make any difference to my reality? (almost a tautology) Johnathan Corgan wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: These questions may reduce to something like, Is there a lower limit to the amplitude of the SWE? If measure is infinitely divisible, then is there any natural scale to its absolute value? I think it is not and there is a lower limit below which cross terms in the density matrix must be strictly (not just FAPP) zero. The Planck scale provides a lower bound on fundamental physical values. So it makes sense to me that treating probability measures as a continuum is no more than a convenient approximation. But I have no idea how to make that precise and testable. Having measure ultimately having a fixed lower limit would I think be fatal to QTI. But, consider the following: At every successive moment our measure is decreasing, possibly by a very large fraction, depending on how you count it. Every moment we branch into only one of a huge number of possibilities. A moment here is on the order a Planck time unit. So does this mean we run the risk of suddenly ceasing to exist, if our measure decreases past a lower limit simple due to the evolution of the SWE? -Johnathan --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Proof that QTI is false
Saibal Mitra wrote: If there can only be a finite number of observer moments you can only experience a finite amount of time. Whether or not this is the case, it is a secondary issue to my question re *survivability* (call this the Quantum Theory of Enhanced Personal Survivability, or QTEPS) which is based on the '1st-person pruning' of non-conscious branches of MW. My question to Russell and the list is whether this actually influences real-life behaviour - i.e. is anyone in practice saying 'yes' to this doctor? David QTI in the way defined in this list contradicts quantum mechanics. The observable part of the universe can only be in a finite number of quantum states. So, it can only harbor a finite number of observer moments or experiences a person can have, see here for details: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102010 If there can only be a finite number of observer moments you can only experience a finite amount of time. QED. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Now, suppose some more complex variant of 3+2=3 implemented on your abacus has consciousness associated with it, which is just one of the tenets of computationalism. Some time later, you are walking in the Amazon rain forest and notice that under a certain mapping of birds to beads and trees to wires, the forest is implementing the same computation as your abacus was. So if your abacus was conscious, and computationalism is true, the tree-bird sytem should also be conscious. No necessarily, because the mapping is required too. Why should it still be conscious if no-one is around to make the mapping. Are you claiming that a conscious machine stops being conscious if its designers die and all the information about how it works is lost? You are, if anyone is. I don't agree that computation *must* be interpreted, although they *can* be re-interpreted. What I claim is this: A computation does not *need* to be interpreted, it just is. However, a computation does need to be interpreted, or interact with its environment in some way, if it is to be interesting or meaningful. A computation other than the one you are running needs to be interpreted by you to be meaningful to you. The computation you are running is useful to you because it keeps you alive. By analogy, a string of characters is a string of characters whether or not anyone interprets it, but it is not interesting or meaningful unless it is interpreted. But if a computation, or for that matter a string of characters, is conscious, then it is interesting and meaningful in at least one sense in the absence of an external observer: it is interesting and meaningful to itself. If it were not, then it wouldn't be conscious. The conscious things in the world have an internal life, a first person phenomenal experience, a certain ineffable something, whatever you want to call it, while the unconscious things do not. That is the difference between them. Which they manage to be aware of without the existence of an external oberver, so one of your premises must be wrong. No, that's exactly what I was saying all along. An observer is needed for meaningfulness, but consciousness provides its own observer. A conscious entity may interact with its environment, and in fact that would have to be the reason consciousness evolved (nature is not self-indulgent), but the interaction is not logically necessary for consciousness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Peter Jones writes: That's what I'm saying, but I certainly don't think everyone agrees with me on the list, and I'm not completely decided as to which of the three is more absurd: every physical system implements every conscious computation, no physical system implements any conscious computation (they are all implemented non-physically in Platonia), or the idea that a computation can be conscious in the first place. You haven't made it clear why you don't accept that every physical system implements one computation, whether it is a conscious computation or not. I don't see what contradicts it. Every physical system does implement every computation, in a trivial sense, as every rock is a hammer and a doorstop and contains a bust of Albert Einstein inside it. Those three aspects of rocks are not of any consequence unless there is someone around to appreciate them. Similarly, if the vibration of atoms in a rock under some complex mapping are calculating pi that is not of any consequence unless someone goes to the trouble of determining that mapping, and even then it wouldn't be of any use as a general purpose computer unless you built another general purpose computer to dynamically interpret the vibrations (which does not mean the rock isn't doing the calculation without this extra computer). However, if busts of Einstein were conscious regardless of the excess rock around them, or calculations of pi were conscious regardless of the absence of anyone being able to appreciate them, then the existence of the rock in an otherwise empty universe would necessitate the existence of at least those two conscious processes. Computationalism says that some computations are conscious. It is also a general principle of computer science that equivalent computations can be implemented on very different hardware and software platforms; by extension, the vibration of atoms in a rock can be seen as implementing any computation under the right interpretation. Normally, it is of no consequence that a rock implements all these computations. But if some of these computations are conscious (a consequence of computationalism) and if some of the conscious computations are conscious in the absence of environmental input, then every rock is constantly implementing all these conscious computations. To get around this you would have to deny that computations can be conscious, or at least restrict the conscious computations to specific hardware platforms and programming languages. This destroys computationalism, although it can still allow a form of functionalism. The other way to go is to reject the supervenience thesis and keep computationalism, which would mean that every computation (includidng the conscious ones) is implemented necessarily in the absence of any physical process. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes (quoting SP): I'm not sure how the multiverse comes into the discussion, but you have made the point several times that a computation depends on an observer No, I haven't! I have tried ot follow through the consequences of assuming it must. It seems to me that some sort of absurdity or contradiction ensues. OK. This has been a long and complicated thread. for its meaning. I agree, but *if* computations can be conscious (remember, this is an assumption) then in that special case an external observer is not needed. Why not ? (Well, I would be quite happy that a conscious computation would have some inherent structural property -- I want to foind out why *you* would think it doesn't). I think it goes against standard computationalism if you say that a conscious computation has some inherent structural property. I should have said, that the *hardware* has some special structural property goes against computationalism. It is difficult to pin down the structure of a computation without reference to a programming language or hardware. The idea is that the same computation can look completely different on different computers, the corollary of which is that any computer (or physical process) may be implementing any computation, we just might not know about it. It is legitimate to say that only particular computers (eg. brains, or PC's) using particular languages arev actually implementing conscious computations, but that is not standard computationalism. Statthis Papaioannou I thought standard computationalism was just the modest position that if the hardware of your brain were replaced piecemeal by units with the same input-output at some microscopic level usually assumed to be neurons, you'd still be you and you'd still be conscious. I don't recall anything about all computations implementing consciousness? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Now, suppose some more complex variant of 3+2=3 implemented on your abacus has consciousness associated with it, which is just one of the tenets of computationalism. Some time later, you are walking in the Amazon rain forest and notice that under a certain mapping of birds to beads and trees to wires, the forest is implementing the same computation as your abacus was. So if your abacus was conscious, and computationalism is true, the tree-bird sytem should also be conscious. No necessarily, because the mapping is required too. Why should it still be conscious if no-one is around to make the mapping. Are you claiming that a conscious machine stops being conscious if its designers die and all the information about how it works is lost? You are, if anyone is. I don't agree that computation *must* be interpreted, although they *can* be re-interpreted. What I claim is this: A computation does not *need* to be interpreted, it just is. However, a computation does need to be interpreted, or interact with its environment in some way, if it is to be interesting or meaningful. A computation other than the one you are running needs to be interpreted by you to be meaningful to you. The computation you are running is useful to you because it keeps you alive. By analogy, a string of characters is a string of characters whether or not anyone interprets it, but it is not interesting or meaningful unless it is interpreted. But if a computation, or for that matter a string of characters, is conscious, then it is interesting and meaningful in at least one sense in the absence of an external observer: it is interesting and meaningful to itself. If it were not, then it wouldn't be conscious. The conscious things in the world have an internal life, a first person phenomenal experience, a certain ineffable something, whatever you want to call it, while the unconscious things do not. That is the difference between them. Which they manage to be aware of without the existence of an external oberver, so one of your premises must be wrong. No, that's exactly what I was saying all along. An observer is needed for meaningfulness, but consciousness provides its own observer. A conscious entity may interact with its environment, and in fact that would have to be the reason consciousness evolved (nature is not self-indulgent), but the interaction is not logically necessary for consciousness. But it may be nomologically necessary. Not logically necessary is the weakest standard of non-necessity that is still coherent; the only things less necessary are incoherent. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: That's what I'm saying, but I certainly don't think everyone agrees with me on the list, and I'm not completely decided as to which of the three is more absurd: every physical system implements every conscious computation, no physical system implements any conscious computation (they are all implemented non-physically in Platonia), or the idea that a computation can be conscious in the first place. You haven't made it clear why you don't accept that every physical system implements one computation, whether it is a conscious computation or not. I don't see what contradicts it. Every physical system does implement every computation, in a trivial sense, as every rock is a hammer and a doorstop and contains a bust of Albert Einstein inside it. Those three aspects of rocks are not of any consequence unless there is someone around to appreciate them. Similarly, if the vibration of atoms in a rock under some complex mapping are calculating pi that is not of any consequence unless someone goes to the trouble of determining that mapping, and even then it wouldn't be of any use as a general purpose computer unless you built another general purpose computer to dynamically interpret the vibrations (which does not mean the rock isn't doing the calculation without this extra computer). I think there are some constraints on what the rock must be doing in order that it can be said to be calculating pi instead of the interpreting computer. For example if the rock states were just 1,0,1,0,1,0... then there are several arguments based on for example information theory that would rule out that being a computation of pi. However, if busts of Einstein were conscious regardless of the excess rock around them, or calculations of pi were conscious regardless of the absence of anyone being able to appreciate them, then the existence of the rock in an otherwise empty universe would necessitate the existence of at least those two conscious processes. Computationalism says that some computations are conscious. It is also a general principle of computer science that equivalent computations can be implemented on very different hardware and software platforms; by extension, the vibration of atoms in a rock can be seen as implementing any computation under the right interpretation. Normally, it is of no consequence that a rock implements all these computations. But if some of these computations are conscious (a consequence of computationalism) It's not a consequence of my more modest idea of computationalism. and if some of the conscious computations are conscious in the absence of environmental input, then every rock is constantly implementing all these conscious computations. To get around this you would have to deny that computations can be conscious, or at least restrict the conscious computations to specific hardware platforms and programming languages. Why not some more complex and subtle critereon based on the computation? Why just hardware or language - both of which seem easy to rule out as definitive of consciousness or even computation? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Proof that QTI is false
Actually, in standard quantum mechanics, there is an infinity of
observer moments, 2^{\aleph_0} of them in fact.
What you are talking about are various quantum gravity theories, such
as string theory, which appear to have a finite number of observer
moments.
However, even if as observers we are locked into a Nietschian cycle at
some point in time due to finiteness of the number of possible states,
the number will be so large that the practical effects of QTI will
still need to be considered.
Cheers
On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 11:58:14PM +0200, Saibal Mitra wrote:
QTI in the way defined in this list contradicts quantum mechanics. The
observable part of the universe can only be in a finite number of quantum
states. So, it can only harbor a finite number of observer moments or
experiences a person can have, see here for details:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102010
If there can only be a finite number of observer moments you can only
experience a finite amount of time.
QED.
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A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
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Re: Russell's book
On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 12:52:25PM -, David Nyman wrote: Hi Russell I just received the book and have swiftly perused it (one of many iterations I expect). I find it to be a clear presentation of your own approach as well as a fine exposition of many topics from the list that had me baffled. A couple of things immediately occur: 1) QTI - I must say until reading your remarks (e.g. re pension plans) the possible personal consequences of QTI hadn't really struck me. If QTI is true, there is a fundamental assymetry between the 1st and 3rd-person povs vis-a-vis personal longevity (at least the longevity of consciousness), and this seems to imply that one should take seriously the prospect of being around in some form far longer than generally assumed from a purely 3rd-person perspective. This has obvious implications for retirement planning in general and avoidance of the more egregious cul-de-sac situations. On the other hand, short of outright lunacy vis-a-vis personal safety, it also seems to imply that from the 1st-person pov we are likely to come through (albeit possibly in less-than-perfect shape) even apparently minimally survivable situations. This struck me particularly forcibly while watching the 9/11 re-runs on TV last night. In effect, we are being presented with a kind of 'yes doctor' in everyday life. Do you find that these considerations affect your own behaviour in any way? I mentioned two examples in my book - retirement savings planning - I will be looking wherever possible for lifetime pension options. Of course from a QTI perspective, the value of these are limited by the estimated lifetime of the superannuation company. The second example is my attitude to euthanasia has changed. Beyond that, I suppose I no longer fear death. What I do fear is incapacitation, and so I weigh my risks of bodily damage in any action against the risks to personal liberty etc. by inaction. It probably does not change the decision matrix very much at all, however I can't see suicide bombing as a useful strategy under QTI. 2) RSSA vs ASSA - Isn't it the case that all 'absolute' self samples will appear to be 'relative' (i.e. to their own content) and hence 1st-person experience can be 'time-like' without the need for 'objective' sequencing of observer moments? If the 'pov' is that of the multiverse can't we simply treat all 1st-person experience as the 'absolute sampling' of all povs compresently? David I've lost you here. Maybe you need to expand a bit. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Brent Meeker: Colin Hales wrote: Stathis Papaioannou snip Maybe this is a copout, but I just don't think it is even logically possible to explain what consciousness *is* unless you have it. It's like the problem of explaining vision to a blind man: he might be the world's greatest scientific expert on it but still have zero idea of what it is like to see - and that's even though he shares most of the rest of his cognitive structure with other humans, and can understand analogies using other sensations. Knowing what sort of program a conscious computer would have to run to be conscious, what the purpose of consciousness is, and so on, does not help me to understand what the computer would be experiencing, except by analogy with what I myself experience. Stathis Papaioannou Please consider the plight of the zombie scientist with a huge set of sensory feeds and similar set of effectors. All carry similar signal encoding and all, in themselves, bestow no experiential qualities on the zombie. Add a capacity to detect regularity in the sensory feeds. Add a scientific goal-seeking behaviour. Note that this zombie... a) has the internal life of a dreamless sleep b) has no concept or percept of body or periphery c) has no concept that it is embedded in a universe. I put it to you that science (the extraction of regularity) is the science of zombie sensory fields, not the science of the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No amount of creativity (except maybe random choices) would ever lead to any abstraction of the outside world that gave it the ability to handle novelty in the natural world outside the zombie scientist. No matter how sophisticated the sensory feeds and any guesswork as to a model (abstraction) of the universe, the zombie would eventually find novelty invisible because the sensory feeds fail to depict the novelty .ie. same sensory feeds for different behaviour of the natural world. Technology built by a zombie scientist would replicate zombie sensory feeds, not deliver an independently operating novel chunk of hardware with a defined function(if the idea of function even has meaning in this instance). The purpose of consciousness is, IMO, to endow the cognitive agent with at least a repeatable (not accurate!) simile of the universe outside the cognitive agent so that novelty can be handled. Only then can the zombie scientist detect arbitrary levels of novelty and do open ended science (or survive in the wild world of novel environmental circumstance). Almost all organisms have become extinct. Handling *arbitrary* levels of novelty is probably too much to ask of any species; and it's certainly more than is necessary to survive for millenia. I am talking purely about scientific behaviour, not general behaviour. A creature with limited learning capacity and phenomenal scenes could quite happily live in an ecological niche until the niche changed. I am not asking any creature other than a scientist to be able to appreciate arbitrary levels of novelty. In the absence of the functionality of phenomenal consciousness and with finite sensory feeds you cannot construct any world-model (abstraction) in the form of an innate (a-priori) belief system that will deliver an endless ability to discriminate novelty. In a very Godellian way eventually a limit would be reach where the abstracted model could not make any prediction that can be detected. So that's how we got string theory! The zombie is, in a very real way, faced with 'truths' that exist but can't be accessed/perceived. As such its behaviour will be fundamentally fragile in the face of novelty (just like all computer programs are). How do you know we are so robust. Planck said, A new idea prevails, not by the conversion of adherents, but by the retirement and demise of opponents. In other words only the young have the flexibility to adopt new ideas. Ironically Planck never really believed quantum mechanics was more than a calculational trick. The robustness is probably in that science is actually, at the level of critical argument (like this, now), a super-organism. In retrospect I think QM will be regarded as a side effect of the desperate attempt to mathematically abtract appearances rather then deal with the structure that is behaving quantum-mechanically. After the event they'll all be going...what were we thinking! it won't be wrong... just not useful in the sense that any of its considerations are not about underlying structure. --- Just to make the zombie a little more real... consider the industrial control system computer. I have designed, installed hundreds and wired up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of sensors and an unthinkable number of kilometers of cables. (NEVER again!) In all cases I put it to you that the
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Peter Jones writes: If consciousness supervenes on inherent non-interprtation-dependent features, it can supervene on features which are binary, either present or absent. For instance, whether a programme examines or modifies its own code is surely such a feature. Even if computationalism were false and only those machines specially blessed by God were conscious there would have to be a continuum, across different species and within the lifespan of an individual from birth to death. The possibility that consciousness comes on like a light at some point in your life, or at some point in the evolution of a species, seems unlikely to me. Surely it comes on like a light whenver you wake up. Being alive/dead or conscious/unconscious would seem to be a binary property, but it's hard to believe (though not impossible) that there would be one circuit, neuron or line of code that makes the difference between conscious and unconscious. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Colin Hales wrote: ... As far as the internal life of the CPU is concerned... whatever it is like to be an electrically noisy hot rock, regardless of the programalthough the character of the noise may alter with different programs! That's like say whatever it is like to be you, it is at best some waves of chemical potential. You don't *know* that the control system is not conscious - unless you know what structure or function makes a system conscious. There is nothing there except wires and electrically noisy hot rocks, plastic and other materials = stuff. Just like me. Nothing but proteins and osmotic potentials and ACT and ADP = stuff. Whatever its consciousness is... it is the consciousness of the stuff. The function Which function? is an epiphenomenon at the scale of a human user Who's the user of my brain? Brent Meeker that has nothing to do with the experiential qualities of being the computer. What are the experiential qualities of being a computer? and how can we know them? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Proof that QTI is false
Saibal Mitra wrote: QTI in the way defined in this list contradicts quantum mechanics. The observable part of the universe can only be in a finite number of quantum states. So, it can only harbor a finite number of observer moments or experiences a person can have, see here for details: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102010 If there can only be a finite number of observer moments you can only experience a finite amount of time. QED. So that would imply that when predicting states at some fixed finite time in the future there is a smallest, non-zero probability that is realizable. So if our prediction, using continuum variables as an approximation, indicates a probability lower than this value we should set it to zero?? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: I think it goes against standard computationalism if you say that a conscious computation has some inherent structural property. Opponents of computationalism have used the absurdity of the conclusion that anything implements any conscious computation as evidence that there is something special and non-computational about the brain. Maybe they're right. Stathis Papaioannou Why not reject the idea that any computation implements every possible computation (which seems absurd to me)? Then allow that only computations with some special structure are conscious. It's possible, but once you start in that direction you can say that only computations implemented on this machine rather than that machine can be conscious. You need the hardware in order to specify structure, unless you can think of a God-given programming language against which candidate computations can be measured. I regard that as a feature - not a bug. :-) Disembodied computation doesn't quite seem absurd - but our empirical sample argues for embodiment. Brent Meeker I don't have a clear idea in my mind of disembodied computation except in rather simple cases, like numbers and arithmetic. The number 5 exists as a Platonic ideal, and it can also be implemented so we can interact with it, as when there is a collection of 5 oranges, or 3 oranges and 2 apples, or 3 pairs of oranges and 2 triplets of apples, and so on, in infinite variety. The difficulty is that if we say that 3+2=5 as exemplified by 3 oranges and 2 apples is conscious, then should we also say that the pairs+triplets of fruit are also conscious? No, they are only subroutines. But a computation is just a lot of subroutines; or equivalently, a computation is just a subroutine in a larger computation or subroutine. If so, where do we draw the line? At specific structures By structures do you mean hardware or software? I don't think it's possible to pin down software structures without reference to a particular machine and operating system. There is no natural or God-given language. That is what I mean when I say that any computation can map onto any physical system. The physical structure and activity of computer A implementing program a may be completely different to that of computer B implementing program b, but program b may be an emulation of program a, which should make the two machines functionally equivalent and, under computationalism, equivalently conscious. So ? If the functional equivalence doesn't depend on a baroque-reinterpretation, where is the problem ? Who interprets the meaning of baroque? Maybe this is wrong, eg. there is something special about the insulation in the wires of machine A, so that only A can be conscious. But that is no longer computationalism. No. But what would force that conclusion on us ? Why can't consciousness attach to features more gneral than hardware, but less general than one of your re-interpretations ? Because there is no natural or God-given computer architecture or language. You could say that consciousness does follow a natural architecture: that of the brain. But that could mean you would have a zombie if you tried to copy brain function with a digital computer, or with a digital computer not running Mr. Gates' operating system. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Proof that QTI is false
On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 08:47:04PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: So that would imply that when predicting states at some fixed finite time in the future there is a smallest, non-zero probability that is realizable. So if our prediction, using continuum variables as an approximation, indicates a probability lower than this value we should set it to zero?? Brent Meeker That is one very common way of mapping continuum models to discrete variables. Another way is probabilitistic assignment, where a value of 0.3 has a 70% chance of being mapped to 0 and 30% chance of being mapped to 1. See my paper Population models with Random Embryologies as a Paradigm for Evolution Complexity International, 2 (1994). Of course these two possibilities do not exhaust the space! Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
