Re: computer pain
Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:07, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You could speculate that the experience of digging holes involves the dirt, the shovel, robot sensors and effectors, the power supply as well as the central processor, which would mean that virtual reality by playing with just the central processor is impossible. This is perhaps what Colin Hales has been arguing, and is contrary to computationalism. Again, putting the environment, with some level of details, in the generalized brain is not contrary to comp. Only if you explicitly mention that the shovel, or the sensors, or the power supply, are not turing emulable, then that would be contrary to comp. 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of Life
Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:14, Mark Peaty a écrit : SP: ' In the end, what is right is an irreducible personal belief, which you can try to change by appeal to emotions or by example, but not by appeal to logic or empirical facts. And in fact I feel much safer that way: if someone honestly believed that he knew what was right as surely as he knew 2+2=4, he would be a very dangerous person. Religious fanatics are not dangerous because they want to do evil, but because they want to do good. ' Just to be clear, I do agree with Stathis here. Completely. I have already argue this is even a provable consequence of comp (or the arithmetical comp). MP: I agree with this, saving only that, on a 'numbers' basis, there are those whose personal evolution takes them beyond the dynamic of 'good' or 'evil' into the domain of power for its own sake. This entails complete loss of empathic ability and I think it could be argued that such a person is 'legislating' himself out of the human species. OK, except I don't see what you mean by on a number basis. We know that number have a lot of quantitative interesting relationships, but after Godel, Solovay etc. we do know that numbers have astonishing qualitative relationship to (like the hypostases to mention it). MP: I think a key point with 'irreducible personal belief' is that the persons in question need to acknowledge the beliefs as such and take responsibility for them. I believe we have to point this out, whenever we get the opportunity, because generally most people are reluctant to engage in analysis of their own beliefs, in public anyway. I think part of the reason for this is the cultural climate [meme-scape?] in which Belief in a G/god/s or uncritical Faith are still held to be perfectly respectable. This cultural climate is what Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet have been criticising in recent books and articles. Except that Dawking and Dennet fall in their own trap, and perpetuates the myth of a physical universe as an explanation. They continue to burry the mind/body problem under the rug. SP: 'I am not entirely convinced that comp is true' MP: At the moment I am satisfied that 'comp' is NOT true, certainly in any format that asserts that 'integers' are all that is needed. 'Quantum' is one thing, but 'digital' is quite another :-) OK, but comp is *digital* mechanism. Then it is a theorem that a digital machine cannot distinguish a physically real computational history with a purely mathematical or even arithmetical computational history. You can add Matter in the immaterial brain: it will change nothing unless you give a non turing emulable role to that Matter. Why not add magic directly? Then the quantum has to be justified from the digital (that is not trivial, see my url for more, or ask questions). The main problem [fact I would prefer to say] is that existence is irreducible whereas numbers or Number be dependent upon something/s existing. MP: Why are we not zombies? The answer is in the fact of self-referencing. Right! In our case [as hominids] there are peculiarities of construction and function arisen from our evolutionary history, ... Sure, ... but there is nothing in principle to deny self-awareness from a silicon-electronic entity that embodied sufficient details within a model of self in the world. This is *comp* (unless you think about putative non turing emulable silicon electronic). The existence of such a model would constitute its mind, broadly speaking, and the updating of the model of self in the world would be the experience of self awareness. What it would be like TO BE the updating of such a model of self in the world is something we will probably have to wait awhile to be told :-) How could we ever know? Of course, *assuming* the comp hyp, we already know: it is like being us here and now. 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: The Meaning of Life
Mark Peaty writes: SP: ' In the end, what is right is an irreducible personal belief, which you can try to change by appeal to emotions or by example, but not by appeal to logic or empirical facts. And in fact I feel much safer that way: if someone honestly believed that he knew what was right as surely as he knew 2+2=4, he would be a very dangerous person. Religious fanatics are not dangerous because they want to do evil, but because they want to do good. ' MP: I agree with this, saving only that, on a 'numbers' basis, there are those whose personal evolution takes them beyond the dynamic of 'good' or 'evil' into the domain of power for its own sake. This entails complete loss of empathic ability and I think it could be argued that such a person is 'legislating' himself out of the human species. MP: I think a key point with 'irreducible personal belief' is that the persons in question need to acknowledge the beliefs as such and take responsibility for them. I believe we have to point this out, whenever we get the opportunity, because generally most people are reluctant to engage in analysis of their own beliefs, in public anyway. I think part of the reason for this is the cultural climate [meme-scape?] in which Belief in a G/god/s or uncritical Faith are still held to be perfectly respectable. This cultural climate is what Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet have been criticising in recent books and articles. SP: 'I am not entirely convinced that comp is true' MP: At the moment I am satisfied that 'comp' is NOT true, certainly in any format that asserts that 'integers' are all that is needed. 'Quantum' is one thing, but 'digital' is quite another :-) The main problem [fact I would prefer to say] is that existence is irreducible whereas numbers or Number be dependent upon something/s existing. I have fallen into sometimes using the term comp as short for computationalism as something picked up from Bruno. On the face of it, computationalism seems quite sensible: the best theory of consciousness and the most promising candidate for producing artificial intelligence/consciousness (if they are the same thing: see below). Assuming comp, Bruno goes through 8 steps in his Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA), eg. in this paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm All of the steps are relatively straightforward until step 8, which invokes an argument discovered by Bruno and Tim Maudlin demonstrating that there is a problem with the theory that the mental supervenes on the physical. It seems that to be consistent you have to allow either that any computation, including the supposedly conscious ones, supervenes on any physical activity, or that computations do not supervene on physical activity at all but are complete in themselves, consciousness included, by virtue of their status as Platonic objects. Bruno concludes that the latter is the case, but Maudlin appears to take both possibilities as obviously absurd and thus presents the paper as a problem with computationalism itself. MP: Why are we not zombies? The answer is in the fact of self-referencing. In our case [as hominids] there are peculiarities of construction and function arisen from our evolutionary history, but there is nothing in principle to deny self-awareness from a silicon-electronic entity that embodied sufficient details within a model of self in the world. The existence of such a model would constitute its mind, broadly speaking, and the updating of the model of self in the world would be the experience of self awareness. What it would be like TO BE the updating of such a model of self in the world is something we will probably have to wait awhile to be told :-) It seems reasonable to theorise that if an entity could behave like a conscious being, it must be a conscious being. However, the theory does not have the strength of logical necessity. It is quite possible that if nature had electronic circuits to play with, beings displaying intelligent behaviour similar to our own may have evolved, but lacking consciousness. This need not lead to the usual criticism: in that case, how can I be sure my fellow humans are conscious? My fellow humans not only behave like me, they have a biological brain like me. We would have to invoke magic to explain how God has breathed consciousness into one person but not another, but there is no such theoretical problem if the other person turns out to be a robot. My personal view is that if a computer simply learned to copy my behaviour by studying me closely if it were conscious it would probably be differently conscious. If the computer attempted to copy me by emulating my neuronal activity I would be more confident that it was conscious in the same way I am, although I would not be 100% certain. But if I were copied in a teleportation experiment to a similar tolerance level as occurs in normal moment to moment living, it
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:07, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You could speculate that the experience of digging holes involves the dirt, the shovel, robot sensors and effectors, the power supply as well as the central processor, which would mean that virtual reality by playing with just the central processor is impossible. This is perhaps what Colin Hales has been arguing, and is contrary to computationalism. Again, putting the environment, with some level of details, in the generalized brain is not contrary to comp. Only if you explicitly mention that the shovel, or the sensors, or the power supply, are not turing emulable, then that would be contrary to comp. That's what I meant: an emulated shovel would not do, because the robot would somehow know if the data telling it it was handling a shovel did not originate in the real world, even if the sensory feeds were perfectly emulated. In the robot's case this would entail a non-computationalist theory of computer 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 02-janv.-07, à 03:22, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? Hmmm It will depend how we built the machine. If the machine is universal-oriented enough, through its computatbility, provability and inferrability abilities, I can imagine a cruelty threshold, although it would be non verifiable. This leads to difficult questions. For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. For the same reason it is impossible to build a *normative* theory of ethics, I think we cannot program high level virtue. We cannot program it in machine nor in human. So we cannot program a machine wanting to be free or afraid of dying. I think quite plausible that such high level virtue could develop themselves relatively to some universal goal (like help yourself) through long computational histories. In particular I think that we should distinguish competence and intelligence. Competence in a field (even a universal one) can be defined and locally tested, but intelligence is a concept similar to consciousness, it can be a byproduct of program + history, yet remains beyond any theory. 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis and Bruno: just a proposed correction to Sathis's ...build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. Change to: OR instead of and. That also takes care of Bruno's: there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. If the question of 'slavery or death' arises, an intelligent and life-loving person would accept (willing?) slavery. Spartacus did not. I survived a commi regime. We seem too narrowly labeling a slave. John M - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 9:22 PM Subject: RE: computer pain Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of Life
Le 02-janv.-07, à 04:20, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes: Le 31-déc.-06, à 04:59, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit (to Tom Caylor): Of course: questions of personal meaning are not scientific questions. Physics may show you how to build a nuclear bomb, but it won't tell you whether you should use it. But Physics, per se, is not supposed to answer this. Socio-economics could give light, as could computer simulation of nuclear explosion in cities And some (still putative) theory of ethics could perhaps put light on that question too. Well, the ultimate decision is a problem for the president But the president and its advisers could consult some decision theory ... perhaps. No, those theories won't answer the question of whether you should use the bomb either. Suppose your theory says something like, if you wish to save a lives by taking b lives, where ab, then you should use the bomb. The scientific part of this theory involves demonstrating that, in fact, use of the bomb would save a lives by taking b lives. But this does not tell you whether you should actually use the bomb. Neither would an ethical theory like utilitarianism tell you what to do: it might confirm that according to the theory it is the right thing to do, but utilitarianism cannot tell you that utilitarianism is right. In the end, what is right is an irreducible personal belief, which you can try to change by appeal to emotions or by example, but not by appeal to logic or empirical facts. And in fact I feel much safer that way: if someone honestly believed that he knew what was right as surely as he knew 2+2=4, he would be a very dangerous person. Religious fanatics are not dangerous because they want to do evil, but because they want to do good. The number of people killed in the name of God vastly outnumbers the number killed in the name of Satan. I completely agree with you. I have just interpret your should not as a ethical should but as one relative to an ethical decision already done (by the human, mister president or whatever). I think you knew we do agree on this. It is what I sum up saying that there is no normative theory of ethics. A theory of ethics have to be a sort of meta-theory. I guess I was unclear. Where I think I disagree with you [Tom] is that you seem to want to reduce the irreducible and make values and personal meaning real world objects, albeit not of the kind that can be detected by scientific instruments, perhaps issued by God. But in proposing this you are swapping one irreducible entity extremely well-grounded in empirical evidence (I know I'm conscious, and I know that when my brain stops so does my consciousness) for another irreducible entity with no grounding in empirical evidence whatsoever. I agree that you know you are conscious. Well, I don't know that but I have good evidences and hope. But I don't see any evidence that when your brain stops so does your consciousness. I can understand the belief (not even knowledge) that when your brain stops relatively to mine (in case we share an history), then so does the possibility of your consciousness to manifest itself relatively to me; but no more. Actually what does mean the expression my brain stops. In all universe? all multiverses, all computational histories ... You have to be precise which theory you are using when relating some 3-me (like my brain) and some 1-me (like the knower, the conscious I). I agree with some critics you make with respect to Tom Caylor notion of personal God, but sometimes, it seems to me, you have a conception of reality which could as criticable as Caylor's one. Err... i see your particular point is valid though, but you are using misleading images with respect to the consequence of mechanism (I guess you are aware but that you want to remain short perhaps). It gets cumbersome to qualify everything with given the appearance of a physical world. As I have said before, I am not entirely convinced that comp is true, Nor am I. (Remind that no machine can, from its first person point of view, be entirely convinced that comp is true. Comp is an axiom for a theory, and the beauty of it is that comp can explain why it has to be a guess. The yes doctor has to be an act of faith. It is (meta?)-theological. precisely because because such ideas as a conscious computation supervening on any physical process This does not follow at all. We have already have some discussion about this and since then I have a more clear-cut argument. Unfortunately the argument is based on some result in mathematical logic concerning the distinction between real numbers and integers. We can come back on this in another thread. For a logician there is a case that real number are a simplification of the notion of natural number. An identical polynomial equation can be turing universal when the variables are conceived to belong to the
Re: computer pain
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 30-déc.-06, à 17:07, 1Z a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. But who is everybody. Everybody who can reason ethically. I am not sure this fair. Would you say that ethical rules does not need to be applied to mentally disabled person who just cannot reason at all? I would say that. In the legal context it is called diminished responsibility or pleading insanity. I guess you were meaning that ethical rules should be applied *by* those who can reason ethically, in which case I agree. 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? Hmmm It will depend how we built the machine. If the machine is universal-oriented enough, through its computatbility, provability and inferrability abilities, I can imagine a cruelty threshold, although it would be non verifiable. This leads to difficult questions. For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. For the same reason it is impossible to build a *normative* theory of ethics, I think we cannot program high level virtue. We cannot program it in machine nor in human. So we cannot program a machine wanting to be free or afraid of dying. I think quite plausible that such high level virtue could develop themselves relatively to some universal goal (like help yourself) through long computational histories. But all psychological properties of humans or machines (such as they may be) are dependent on physical processes in the brain. It is certainly the case that I think capital punishment is bad because the structure of my brain makes me think that, and if my brain were different, I might not think that capital punishment is bad any more. (This of course is different from the assertion capital punishment is bad, which is not an asssertion about how my brain works, a particular ethical system, logic, science or anything else to which it might be tempting to reduce it). Even if a high level virtue must develop on its own, as a result of life experience rather than programmed instinct, it must develop as a result of changes in the brain. A distinction is usually drawn in psychiatry between physical therapies such as medication and psychological therapies, but how could a psychological therapy possibly have any effect without physically altering the brain in some way? If we had direct access to the brain at the lowest level we would be able to make these physical changes directly and the result would be indistinguishable from doing it the long way. In particular I think that we should distinguish competence and intelligence. Competence in a field (even a universal one) can be defined and locally tested, but intelligence is a concept similar to consciousness, it can be a byproduct of program + history, yet remains beyond any theory. I would say that intelligence can be defined and measured entirely in a 3rd person way, which is why neuroscientists are more fond of intelligence than they are of consciousness. If a computer can behave like a human in any given situation then ipso facto it is intelligent, but it may not be conscious or it may be very differently conscious. 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?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: The Meaning of Life
Bruno Marchal writes: It gets cumbersome to qualify everything with given the appearance of a physical world. As I have said before, I am not entirely convinced that comp is true, Nor am I. (Remind that no machine can, from its first person point of view, be entirely convinced that comp is true. Comp is an axiom for a theory, and the beauty of it is that comp can explain why it has to be a guess. The yes doctor has to be an act of faith. It is (meta?)-theological. precisely because because such ideas as a conscious computation supervening on any physical process This does not follow at all. We have already have some discussion about this and since then I have a more clear-cut argument. Unfortunately the argument is based on some result in mathematical logic concerning the distinction between real numbers and integers. We can come back on this in another thread. For a logician there is a case that real number are a simplification of the notion of natural number. An identical polynomial equation can be turing universal when the variables are conceived to belong to the integers, but is never turing universal when the variables belong to the reals. Well, a case can be made that the vacuum or on no physical process may be considered absurd. This would be fair enough in case the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical processes was not absurd in the first place. In all your post you do assume comp. For comp to be false you have to assume actual physical infinities and give a reason why consciousness supervenes on that. But in some reasoning it seems clear to me you talk life if comp is true, when referring to the functional role of neurotransmitters, the fact that slight change in the brain are permitted, etc. Standard computationalism says that mental processes supervene on physical processes, and moreover that these physical processes with their attendant mental processes may be emulated by a digital computer. The problems with this theory are: 1. The implementation problem: everything can implement a computation if you look at it the right way. Normally this is of no consequence - mapping the vibration of atoms in a rock to a word processing program would be at least as difficult as building a conventional computer and writing the software for it - but if computations can be conscious, then the conscious computations are hiding all around us. 2. The Maudlin/Marchal argument showing that even if you specify that a computer must handle counterfactuals in order to avoid the trivial conclusion (1), you end up concluding that physical processes are irrelevant to consciousness. You (BM) think that (1) is absurd but (2) is OK; Maudlin thinks that (1) and (2) are both absurd, and that therefore computationalism is a flawed theory. You would like to keep computationalism but drop the computers, i.e. the supervenience thesis. I am not certain which I would rather drop: computationalism or the idea of disembodied consciousness. It is quite possible, for example, that there is something special about the structure of the brain which leads to consciousness, and a digital computer will not be able to copy this, even if it copies 3rd person observable behaviour. Against that idea is the question of why we didn't evolve to be zombies, but maybe we would have if nature had electronic circuits to play with. You are saying that zombie are possible if comp is false. I can agree. Actually I believe that comp entails the existence of a notion of local zombie (which can make you believe that they are conscious during a time). If I had to guess between comp and not-comp I don't think I could do better than flipping a coin. Comp is my working hypothesis, and I tend to consider that arguing for or against comp is a bit of a waste of time (especially given that comp is undecidable for machines). Still I am astonished that you would flip a coin on that matter. Comp is just the statement that I am turing emulable at some level. Even if we have to emulate the quantum state of the entire galaxy (some generalized brain) comp remain true unless we have both: - my brain = the complete physical description of the galaxy - the object galaxy is not turing emulable. It is possible to drop computationalism and keep a form of functionalism, without introducing magical effects or even any new physics. For example, it is possible that consciousness is a property of actual neuronal activity, and although you might be able to emulate this activity using a digital computer, even to the point where you can build a substitute brain that behaves just like the biological equivalent, it won't be conscious. In order to build a proper replacement brain you would have to copy the actual physical structure of the neurons, not just emulate them. I am not sure that I believe this theory but it is theoretically possible. Stathis Papaioannou
Re: The Meaning of Life
SP: 'using the term comp as short for computationalism as something picked up from Bruno. On the face of it, computationalism seems quite sensible: the best theory of consciousness and the most promising candidate for producing artificial intelligence/consciousness' That is what I thought 'comp' meant. My approach to this is to adhere, as much as possible, to plain and simple English. Not being a 'mathematician' I stick with my type of sceptical method. To me this does not seem deeply problematic although is does of course limit the scope of conversations I can participate in. As far as I can see, Bruno's grand scheme depends on 'assume', like the economists do. Unfortunately that which is assumed remains, I believe, unprovable. Furthermore there are deep, common sense, problems which undermine all these theories of universal emulation possibilities, never mind those potentially lethal :-) teleporting/fax holidays and cryogenic time shifts. The biggest hurdle is the requirement for infinite computing ability. This is simply the recognition that all measurements are approximations so the teleporter/fax machine could only ever send an approximate copy of me to whatever destination duty or holiday dreamings might lead me. Still, it is probable that I, as subjective experiencer, would not notice most anomalies, particularly if trying to fill in the temporal gaps caused by Bruno's gratuitous delays in reading me back out of his archive :-) This limitation hits all the 'Matrix' type scenarios as well: the emulation system would require essentially infinite computing capacity to reproduce any useful world that a real person inhabits. If on the other hand the Matrix is only concerned to make A world, its virtual reality inhabitants might be sustained [I am admitting this as a possibility] until they started engaging in real science. As I understand things the denizens of a Matrix type world would start to find real anomalies in their 'reality' unless the matrix machine could operate at a fineness of resolution unattainable by any experimental method the matrixians could devise. There would be much less, or even no problem at all if they were all believers in 'Intelligent Design' of course. [I can put that very rudely as: the problem is not 'If our mind were simple enough to understand then we would be too dumb to understand it' but rather 'If Intelligent Design were really true then we have been designed to be so dumb that it really doesn't matter!'] Re Platonic objects - I think this is illusory. The numbers that people write down and think about are words in the language/s of logico-mathematics. They do what they do because they are defined as such but they do not exist apart from the systems which generate and record them - by which I mean brains, blackboards and computers, etc... The regularities, and exciting facts people discover about them are just that, regularities and exciting facts about languages. I don't mean that in any derogatory sense. We live largely BY MEANS OF our languages and certainly our cultural lives as human beings would be impossible without language in the general and inclusive senses. But the universe is not made out of languages, it just exists - for the moment at least. [NB: it just occurs to me that certain G/goddists will say that the universe is made out of the mind of G/god/s which could perhaps be included as a or THE language of existence. To be 'perfect' however, this would need to be allowed to have infinite recursion, i.e. ''made out of(made out of(made out of(made out of ... - inf ... ))). As far as I can see however this would amount to an assertion of many layered uncertainty and/or a Heraclitan in-falling in the direction of smallwards due to the necessity of each layer of divinity maintaining omniscience, omnipotence, and so for, over and under its 'turf'. As this has the minimalist effect of underpinning either standard model QM, etc. or something like the Process Physics advocated by Colin Hales and friends [which I find attractive], all is well with the world. :-] But, seriously, all this stuff about 'supervening' and so forth is all based on the Cartesian assumption that mind-stuff has no physical extension. Well the Inquisition is no longer the authority or power base that it was and empirical science has moved on. I think the onus is falling ever more heavily on those who deny the identity of mind and brain to explain WHY they still do so. The 'distinction' between 1st and 3rd person view points is simply raw fact. Both view points have limits which can be seen to derive from the view of reality they embody. 1st person viewpoint conflates the experience of being the embodiment of a view point with an experience of all that is viewable, the 3rd person viewpoint conflates objective models of things with the things themselves. There is a sense in which these are simply manifestations of the
Re: The Meaning of Life
Mark Peaty wrote: SP: 'using the term comp as short for computationalism as something picked up from Bruno. On the face of it, computationalism seems quite sensible: the best theory of consciousness and the most promising candidate for producing artificial intelligence/consciousness' That is what I thought 'comp' meant. My approach to this is to adhere, as much as possible, to plain and simple English. Not being a 'mathematician' I stick with my type of sceptical method. To me this does not seem deeply problematic although is does of course limit the scope of conversations I can participate in. As far as I can see, Bruno's grand scheme depends on 'assume', like the economists do. Unfortunately that which is assumed remains, I believe, unprovable. Furthermore there are deep, common sense, problems which undermine all these theories of universal emulation possibilities, never mind those potentially lethal :-) teleporting/fax holidays and cryogenic time shifts. The biggest hurdle is the requirement for infinite computing ability. Remember that Bruno is a logician. When he writes infinite he really means infinite - not really, really big as physicists do. Almost all numbers are bigger than 10^120, which is the biggest number that appears in physics (and it's wrong). This is simply the recognition that all measurements are approximations so the teleporter/fax machine could only ever send an approximate copy of me to whatever destination duty or holiday dreamings might lead me. Still, it is probable that I, as subjective experiencer, would not notice most anomalies, particularly if trying to fill in the temporal gaps caused by Bruno's gratuitous delays in reading me back out of his archive :-) This limitation hits all the 'Matrix' type scenarios as well: the emulation system would require essentially infinite computing capacity to reproduce any useful world that a real person inhabits. If on the other hand the Matrix is only concerned to make A world, its virtual reality inhabitants might be sustained [I am admitting this as a possibility] until they started engaging in real science. As I understand things the denizens of a Matrix type world would start to find real anomalies in their 'reality' unless the matrix machine could operate at a fineness of resolution unattainable by any experimental method the matrixians could devise. There would be much less, or even no problem at all if they were all believers in 'Intelligent Design' of course. [I can put that very rudely as: the problem is not 'If our mind were simple enough to understand then we would be too dumb to understand it' but rather 'If Intelligent Design were really true then we have been designed to be so dumb that it really doesn't matter!'] Re Platonic objects - I think this is illusory. The numbers that people write down and think about are words in the language/s of logico-mathematics. They do what they do because they are defined as such but they do not exist apart from the systems which generate and record them - by which I mean brains, blackboards and computers, etc... The regularities, and exciting facts people discover about them are just that, regularities and exciting facts about languages. I don't mean that in any derogatory sense. We live largely BY MEANS OF our languages and certainly our cultural lives as human beings would be impossible without language in the general and inclusive senses. But the universe is not made out of languages, it just exists - for the moment at least. I incline to this view. I agree that the Platonic objects of mathematics are inventions or language - but so are our models based on material particles. An electron is almost (but maybe not quite) as abstract an invention as the number two. [NB: it just occurs to me that certain G/goddists will say that the universe is made out of the mind of G/god/s which could perhaps be included as a or THE language of existence. To be 'perfect' however, this would need to be allowed to have infinite recursion, i.e. ''made out of(made out of(made out of(made out of ... - inf ... ))). As far as I can see however this would amount to an assertion of many layered uncertainty and/or a Heraclitan in-falling in the direction of smallwards due to the necessity of each layer of divinity maintaining omniscience, omnipotence, and so for, over and under its 'turf'. As this has the minimalist effect of underpinning either standard model QM, etc. or something like the Process Physics advocated by Colin Hales and friends [which I find attractive], all is well with the world. :-] But, seriously, all this stuff about 'supervening' and so forth is all based on the Cartesian assumption that mind-stuff has no physical extension. Well the Inquisition is no longer the authority or power base that it was and empirical science has moved on. I think the onus is falling ever more heavily on those who deny the identity
RE: The Meaning of Life
Mark Peaty writes: SP: 'using the term comp as short for computationalism as something picked up from Bruno. On the face of it, computationalism seems quite sensible: the best theory of consciousness and the most promising candidate for producing artificial intelligence/consciousness' That is what I thought 'comp' meant. My approach to this is to adhere, as much as possible, to plain and simple English. Not being a 'mathematician' I stick with my type of sceptical method. To me this does not seem deeply problematic although is does of course limit the scope of conversations I can participate in. As far as I can see, Bruno's grand scheme depends on 'assume', like the economists do. Unfortunately that which is assumed remains, I believe, unprovable. Furthermore there are deep, common sense, problems which undermine all these theories of universal emulation possibilities, never mind those potentially lethal :-) teleporting/fax holidays and cryogenic time shifts. The biggest hurdle is the requirement for infinite computing ability. This is simply the recognition that all measurements are approximations so the teleporter/fax machine could only ever send an approximate copy of me to whatever destination duty or holiday dreamings might lead me. Still, it is probable that I, as subjective experiencer, would not notice most anomalies, particularly if trying to fill in the temporal gaps caused by Bruno's gratuitous delays in reading me back out of his archive :-) Recall that ordinary life does not involve anything like perfect copying of your brain from moment to moment. Thousands of neurons are dying all the time and you don't even notice, and it is possible to infarct a substantial proportion of your brain and finish up with just a bit of a limp. So although a copy of your brain will need to meet some minimum standard this standard will fall far short of perfect copying at the quantum level. This limitation hits all the 'Matrix' type scenarios as well: the emulation system would require essentially infinite computing capacity to reproduce any useful world that a real person inhabits. If on the other hand the Matrix is only concerned to make A world, its virtual reality inhabitants might be sustained [I am admitting this as a possibility] until they started engaging in real science. As I understand things the denizens of a Matrix type world would start to find real anomalies in their 'reality' unless the matrix machine could operate at a fineness of resolution unattainable by any experimental method the matrixians could devise. There would be much less, or even no problem at all if they were all believers in 'Intelligent Design' of course. [I can put that very rudely as: the problem is not 'If our mind were simple enough to understand then we would be too dumb to understand it' but rather 'If Intelligent Design were really true then we have been designed to be so dumb that it really doesn't matter!'] You don't actually have to emulate the entire universe, just enough to fool its inhabitants. For example, you don't need to emulate the appearance of a snowflake in the Andromeda galaxy ecxept in the unlikely event that someone went to have a look at it. Re Platonic objects - I think this is illusory. The numbers that people write down and think about are words in the language/s of logico-mathematics. They do what they do because they are defined as such but they do not exist apart from the systems which generate and record them - by which I mean brains, blackboards and computers, etc... The regularities, and exciting facts people discover about them are just that, regularities and exciting facts about languages. I don't mean that in any derogatory sense. We live largely BY MEANS OF our languages and certainly our cultural lives as human beings would be impossible without language in the general and inclusive senses. But the universe is not made out of languages, it just exists - for the moment at least. They don't exist as material objects but they are true independently of whether anyone discovers mathematical truths. The number 17 is prime because it's prime, not because someone discovered it was prime. [NB: it just occurs to me that certain G/goddists will say that the universe is made out of the mind of G/god/s which could perhaps be included as a or THE language of existence. To be 'perfect' however, this would need to be allowed to have infinite recursion, i.e. ''made out of(made out of(made out of(made out of ... - inf ... ))). As far as I can see however this would amount to an assertion of many layered uncertainty and/or a Heraclitan in-falling in the direction of smallwards due to the necessity of each layer of divinity maintaining omniscience, omnipotence, and so for, over and under its 'turf'. As this has the minimalist effect of underpinning either standard model QM, etc. or something like the Process Physics advocated by Colin Hales and
