Re: How would a computer know if it were conscious?
David, Le 17-juin-07, à 18:28, David Nyman a écrit : IMHO this semantic model gives you a knock-down argument against 'computationalism', *unless* one identifies (I'm hoping to hear from Bruno on this) the 'primitive' entities and operators with those of the number realm - i.e. you make numbers and their relationships the 'primitive base'. But crucially, you must still take these entities and their relationships to be the *real* basis of personal-world 'grasp'. If you continue to adopt a 'somethingist' view, then no 'program' (i.e. one of the arbitrarily large set that could be imputed to any 'something') could coherently be responsible for its personal- world grasp (such as it may be). This is the substance of the UDA argument. All personal-worlds must emerge internally via recursive levels of relationship inherited from primitive grasp: in a 'somethingist' view, such grasp must reside with a primitive 'something', as we have seen, and in a computationalist view, it must reside in the number realm. But the fundamental insight applies. I agree completely, but I am not yet convinced that you appreciate my methodological way of proceeding. I have to ask you questions, but I see you have been prolific during the Siena congress, which is not gentle for my mailbox :). Anyway I will take some time to read yours' and the others' posts before asking for questions that others have perhaps asked and that you have perhaps already answered. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Asifism
Le 19-juin-07, à 10:55, Mohsen Ravanbakhsh wrote (to Torgny Tholerus) TT: The subjective experience is just some sort of behaviour. You can make computers show the same sort of behavior, if the computers are enough complicated. But we're not talking about 3rd person point of view. I can not see how you reduce the subjective experience of first person to the behavior that a third person view can evaluate! All the problem is this first person experience. Of course, in this context, I do agree with Mohsen Ravanbakhsh's anwer. But eventually, I could say, perhaps with David, that the first person experience is not so much the problem. On the contrary, the third person discourse and its apparent sharability (first person plural, with the comp hyp), is the real difficult problem. It just happens that we are used to take that problem for granted. Also, for Torgny, I doubt there is a problem with first person notions, given that for him (if that means something) there is no first person! Torgny self-zombiness is irrefutable, like solipsism (but more original than solipsism though). Of course each of us capable of knowing anything knows that Torgny is wrong about us, and I guess Torgny is not a zombie so that I guess (and cannot do anything more than that) that he is also wrong about himself. But this nobody can know for sure. OK? 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: How would a computer know if it were conscious?
On 28/06/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: I agree completely. DN: A good beginning! BM: .but I am not yet convinced that you appreciate my methodological way of proceeding. DN: That may well be so. In that case it's interesting that we reached the same conclusion. BM: Anyway I will take some time to read yours' and the others' posts before asking for questions that others have perhaps asked and that you have perhaps already answered. DN: I'm at your disposal. David David, Le 17-juin-07, à 18:28, David Nyman a écrit : IMHO this semantic model gives you a knock-down argument against 'computationalism', *unless* one identifies (I'm hoping to hear from Bruno on this) the 'primitive' entities and operators with those of the number realm - i.e. you make numbers and their relationships the 'primitive base'. But crucially, you must still take these entities and their relationships to be the *real* basis of personal-world 'grasp'. If you continue to adopt a 'somethingist' view, then no 'program' (i.e. one of the arbitrarily large set that could be imputed to any 'something') could coherently be responsible for its personal- world grasp (such as it may be). This is the substance of the UDA argument. All personal-worlds must emerge internally via recursive levels of relationship inherited from primitive grasp: in a 'somethingist' view, such grasp must reside with a primitive 'something', as we have seen, and in a computationalist view, it must reside in the number realm. But the fundamental insight applies. I agree completely, but I am not yet convinced that you appreciate my methodological way of proceeding. I have to ask you questions, but I see you have been prolific during the Siena congress, which is not gentle for my mailbox :). Anyway I will take some time to read yours' and the others' posts before asking for questions that others have perhaps asked and that you have perhaps already answered. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Asifism
Le 19-juin-07, à 21:27, Brent Meeker wrote to Quentin: Quentin Anciaux wrote: On Tuesday 19 June 2007 20:16:57 Brent Meeker wrote: Quentin Anciaux wrote: On Tuesday 19 June 2007 11:37:09 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Mohsen Ravanbakhsh skrev: The subjective experience is just some sort of behaviour. You can make computers show the same sort of behavior, if the computers are enough complicated. But we're not talking about 3rd person point of view. I can not see how you reduce the subjective experience of first person to the behavior that a third person view can evaluate! All the problem is this first person experience. What you call the subjective experience of first person is just some sort of behaviour. When you claim that you have the subjective experience of first person, I can see that you are just showing a special kind of behaviour. You behave as if you have the subjective experience of first person. And it is possible for an enough complicated computer to show up the exact same behaviour. But in the case of the computer, you can see that there is no subjective experience, there are just a lot of electrical fenomena interacting with each other. There is no first person experience problem, because there is no first person experience. -- Torgny Tholerus Like I said earlier, this is pure nonsense as I have proof that I have inner experience... I can't prove it to you because this is what this is all about, you can't prove 1st person pov to others. And I don't see why the fact that a computer is made of wire can't give it consciousness... there is no implication at all. Again denying the phenomena does not make it disappear... it's no explanation at all. Quentin I think the point is that after all the behavior is explained, including brain processes, we will just say, See, that's the consciousness there. Just as after explaining metabolism and growth and reproduction we said, See, that's life. Some people still wanted to know where the life (i.e. elan vital) was, but it seemed to be an uninteresting question of semantics. Brent Meeker I don't think the comparison is fair... between 'elan vital' and consciousness. I think it is fair. Remember that in prospect people argued that chemistry and physics could never explain life no matter how completely they described the physical processes in a living thing. All those cells and molecules and atoms were inanimate, none of them had life - so they couldn't possibly explain the difference between alive and dead. I think you miss the point. To define life/death can only be a useless semantic game. But nobody really doubts about his own consciousness (especially going to the dentist), despite we cannot define it nor explain it completely. Like Quentin I do think it is unfair to compare elan vital and consciousness. Somehow elan vital is a poor theory which has been overthrown by a better one. consciousness is a fact, albeit a peculiar personal one in need of an explanation; and there is a quasi consensus among workers in that field that we don't see how to explain consciousness from something simpler (a bit like the number btw...). I don't think consciousness is just a semantic question. I didn't mean to imply that. I meant that the residual question, after all the behavior and processes are explained (answering very substantive questions) will seem to be a matter of making semantic distinctions, like the question, Is a virus alive? As I don't believe that you could pin point consciousness... until proved otherwise. No it won't be pin pointed. It will be diffuse, an interaction of multiple sensory and action processes and you won't be able to point to a single location. But, if we do succeed with our explanation, maybe we'll be able to say, This being is conscious of this now and not conscious of that. or This being does not have self-awareness and this one does. Well, now, I can prove that if the comp hyp is true then those brave-new-worlds-like assertions are provably wrong. If comp is true, nobody, I should perhaps say nosoul, will ever been able to decide if any other entity is conscious or not. Actually comp could be false because it is not even clear some entity can be completely sure of his/her/it own consciousness And conscious and aware will have well defined operational (3rd person) meanings. Or maybe we'll discover that we have to talk in some other terms not yet invented, just as our predecessors had to stop talking about animate and inanimate and instead talk about metabolism and replication. Terms by themselves will not sort out the difficulty. Even just our beliefs or bets in numbers presents big conceptual difficulty. Bruno Brent Meeker One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it. --- Carl Ludwig Siegel Quentin
Re: How would a computer know if it were conscious?
Le 21-juin-07, à 01:07, David Nyman a écrit : On Jun 5, 3:12 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Personally I don' think we can be *personally* mistaken about our own consciousness even if we can be mistaken about anything that consciousness could be about. I agree with this, but I would prefer to stop using the term 'consciousness' at all. Why? To make a decision (to whatever degree of certainty) about whether a machine possessed a 1-person pov analogous to a human one, we would surely ask it the same sort of questions one would ask a human. That is: questions about its personal 'world' - what it sees, hears, tastes (and perhaps extended non-human modalitiies); what its intentions are, and how it carries them into practice. From the machine's point-of-view, we would expect it to report such features of its personal world as being immediately present (as ours are), and that it be 'blind' to whatever 'rendering mechanisms' may underlie this (as we are). If it passed these tests, it would be making similar claims on a personal world as we do, and deploying this to achieve similar ends. Since in this case it could ask itself the same questions that we can, it would have the same grounds for reaching the same conclusion. However, I've argued in the other bit of this thread against the possibility of a computer in practice being able to instantiate such a 1-person world merely in virtue of 'soft' behaviour (i.e. programming). I suppose I would therefore have to conclude that no machine could actually pass the tests I describe above - whether self- administered or not - purely in virtue of running some AI program, however complex. This is an empirical prediction, and will have to await an empirical outcome. Now I have big problems to understand this post. I must think ... (and go). Bye, Bruno On Jun 5, 3:12 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 03-juin-07, à 21:52, Hal Finney a écrit : Part of what I wanted to get at in my thought experiment is the bafflement and confusion an AI should feel when exposed to human ideas about consciousness. Various people here have proffered their own ideas, and we might assume that the AI would read these suggestions, along with many other ideas that contradict the ones offered here. It seems hard to escape the conclusion that the only logical response is for the AI to figuratively throw up its hands and say that it is impossible to know if it is conscious, because even humans cannot agree on what consciousness is. Augustin said about (subjective) *time* that he knows perfectly what it is, but that if you ask him to say what it is, then he admits being unable to say anything. I think that this applies to consciousness. We know what it is, although only in some personal and uncommunicable way. Now this happens to be true also for many mathematical concept. Strictly speaking we don't know how to define the natural numbers, and we know today that indeed we cannot define them in a communicable way, that is without assuming the auditor knows already what they are. So what can we do. We can do what mathematicians do all the time. We can abandon the very idea of *defining* what consciousness is, and try instead to focus on principles or statements about which we can agree that they apply to consciousness. Then we can search for (mathematical) object obeying to such or similar principles. This can be made easier by admitting some theory or realm for consciousness like the idea that consciousness could apply to *some* machine or to some *computational events etc. We could agree for example that: 1) each one of us know what consciousness is, but nobody can prove he/she/it is conscious. 2) consciousness is related to inner personal or self-referential modality etc. This is how I proceed in Conscience et Mécanisme. (conscience is the french for consciousness, conscience morale is the french for the english conscience). In particular I don't think an AI could be expected to claim that it knows that it is conscious, that consciousness is a deep and intrinsic part of itself, that whatever else it might be mistaken about it could not be mistaken about being conscious. I don't see any logical way it could reach this conclusion by studying the corpus of writings on the topic. If anyone disagrees, I'd like to hear how it could happen. As far as a machine is correct, when she introspects herself, she cannot not discover a gap between truth (p) and provability (Bp). The machine can discover correctly (but not necessarily in a completely communicable way) a gap between provability (which can potentially leads to falsities, despite correctness) and the incorrigible knowability or knowledgeability (Bp p), and then the gap between those notions and observability (Bp Dp) and sensibility (Bp Dp p). Even without using the conventional name of
Re: Asifism
Bruno Marchal skrev: But nobody really doubts about his own consciousness (especially going to the dentist), despite we cannot define it nor explain it completely. That sentence is wrong. There is at least one person (me...) that really doubts about my own consciousness. I am conscious about that I am not conscious. I know that I does not know anything. When I go to the dentist I behave as if I am feeling strong pain, because my pain center is directly stimulated by the dentist, which is causing my behaviour. Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: How would a computer know if it were conscious?
On 28/06/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Bruno The remarks you comment on are certainly not the best-considered or most cogently expressed of my recent posts. However, I'll try to clarify if you have specific questions. As to why I said I'd rather not use the term 'consciousness', it's because of some recent confusion and circular disputes (e.g. with Torgny, or about whether hydrogen atoms are 'conscious'). Some of the sometimes confused senses (not by you, I hasten to add!) seem to be: 1) The fact of possessing awareness 2) The fact of being aware of one's awareness 3) the fact of being aware of some content of one's awareness So now I would prefer to talk about self-relating to a 1-personal 'world', where previously I might have said 'I am conscious', and that such a world mediates or instantiates 3-personal content. I've tried to root this (in various posts) in a logically or semantically primitive notion of self-relation that could underly 0, 1, or 3-person narratives, and to suggest that such self-relation might be intuited as 'sense' or 'action' depending on the narrative selected. But crucially such nuances would merely be partial takes on the underlying self-relation, a 'grasp' which is not decomposable. So ISTM that questions should attempt to elicit the machine's self-relation to such a world and its contents: i.e. it's 'grasp' of a reality analogous to our own. And ISTM the machine could also ask itself such questions, just as we can, if indeed such a world existed for it. I realise of course that it's fruitless to try to impose my jargon on anyone else, but I've just been trying to see whether I could become less confused by expressing things in this way. Of course, a reciprocal effect might just be to make others more confused! David Le 21-juin-07, à 01:07, David Nyman a écrit : On Jun 5, 3:12 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Personally I don' think we can be *personally* mistaken about our own consciousness even if we can be mistaken about anything that consciousness could be about. I agree with this, but I would prefer to stop using the term 'consciousness' at all. Why? To make a decision (to whatever degree of certainty) about whether a machine possessed a 1-person pov analogous to a human one, we would surely ask it the same sort of questions one would ask a human. That is: questions about its personal 'world' - what it sees, hears, tastes (and perhaps extended non-human modalitiies); what its intentions are, and how it carries them into practice. From the machine's point-of-view, we would expect it to report such features of its personal world as being immediately present (as ours are), and that it be 'blind' to whatever 'rendering mechanisms' may underlie this (as we are). If it passed these tests, it would be making similar claims on a personal world as we do, and deploying this to achieve similar ends. Since in this case it could ask itself the same questions that we can, it would have the same grounds for reaching the same conclusion. However, I've argued in the other bit of this thread against the possibility of a computer in practice being able to instantiate such a 1-person world merely in virtue of 'soft' behaviour (i.e. programming). I suppose I would therefore have to conclude that no machine could actually pass the tests I describe above - whether self- administered or not - purely in virtue of running some AI program, however complex. This is an empirical prediction, and will have to await an empirical outcome. Now I have big problems to understand this post. I must think ... (and go). Bye, Bruno On Jun 5, 3:12 pm, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 03-juin-07, à 21:52, Hal Finney a écrit : Part of what I wanted to get at in my thought experiment is the bafflement and confusion an AI should feel when exposed to human ideas about consciousness. Various people here have proffered their own ideas, and we might assume that the AI would read these suggestions, along with many other ideas that contradict the ones offered here. It seems hard to escape the conclusion that the only logical response is for the AI to figuratively throw up its hands and say that it is impossible to know if it is conscious, because even humans cannot agree on what consciousness is. Augustin said about (subjective) *time* that he knows perfectly what it is, but that if you ask him to say what it is, then he admits being unable to say anything. I think that this applies to consciousness. We know what it is, although only in some personal and uncommunicable way. Now this happens to be true also for many mathematical concept. Strictly speaking we don't know how to define the natural numbers, and we know today that indeed we cannot define them in a communicable way, that is without assuming the auditor knows already
Re: Asifism
On Thursday 28 June 2007 16:52:12 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: But nobody really doubts about his own consciousness (especially going to the dentist), despite we cannot define it nor explain it completely. That sentence is wrong. Don't think so... There is at least one person (me...) that really doubts about my own consciousness. I am conscious about that I am not conscious. I know that I does not know anything. When I go to the dentist I behave as if I am feeling strong pain, because my pain center is directly stimulated by the dentist, which is causing my behaviour. What is behaving ? (can't ask for who obviously you're insisting that there isn't any). Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. I don't know what is consciouslike behaviour without consciousness in the first place. Quenton --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Asifism
Quentin Anciaux skrev: On Thursday 28 June 2007 16:52:12 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. I don't know what is consciouslike behaviour without consciousness in the first place. An animal can show a consciouslike behaviour. When a dog sees a rabbit, then the dog behaves as if he is conscious about that there is food in front of him. He starts running after the rabbit as quick as he can. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Asifism
On Thursday 28 June 2007 19:22:35 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Quentin Anciaux skrev: On Thursday 28 June 2007 16:52:12 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. I don't know what is consciouslike behaviour without consciousness in the first place. An animal can show a consciouslike behaviour. When a dog sees a rabbit, then the dog behaves as if he is conscious about that there is food in front of him. He starts running after the rabbit as quick as he can. -- Torgny Tholerus It doesn't mean anything... what means as if if the thing you are comparing it to does not exists (here consciousness). You can't act as if you are conscious if cousciousness is something which does not exists, it simply doesn't mean anything. By the way, I'm sure dogs are conscious (have inner personal world). Quentin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Penrose and algorithms
This is not fair to Penrose. He has convincingly argued in 'Shadows of the Mind' that human mathematical intelligence cannot be a knowably sound algorithm. Assume X is an algorithm representing the human mathematical intelligence. The point is not that man cannot recognize X as representing his own intellingence, it is rather that human intellingence cannot know X to be sound (independently of whether X is recognized as what it is). And this is strange because humans could exhaustively inspect X and they should find it correct since it contains the same principles of reasoning human intelligence employs! One way out is claiming that human intelligence is insonsistent. Another, that such a thing as human intelligence could not exist, since it is not well defined. The latter seems more of a serious objection to me. So, I consider Penrose's argument inconclusive. Anyway, the use Lucas and Penrose make of Gödel's theorem make it seem less likely that human reason can be reproduced by machines. This must be granted. Regards On 9 jun, 18:40, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Chris, Le 09-juin-07, à 13:03, chris peck a écrit : Hello The time has come again when I need to seek advice from the everything-list and its contributors. Penrose I believe has argued that the inability to algorithmically solve the halting problem but the ability of humans, or at least Kurt Godel, to understand that formal systems are incomplete together demonstrate that human reason is not algorithmic in nature - and therefore that the AI project is fundamentally flawed. What is the general consensus here on that score. I know that there are many perspectives here including those who agree with Penrose. Are there any decent threads I could look at that deal with this issue? All the best Chris. This is a fundamental issue, even though things are clear for the logicians since 1921 ... But apparently it is still very cloudy for the physicists (except Hofstadter!). I have no time to explain, but let me quote the first paragraph of my Siena papers (your question is at the heart of the interview of the lobian machine and the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus). But you can find many more explanation in my web pages (in french and in english). In a nutshell, Penrose, though quite courageous and more lucid on the mind body problem than the average physicist, is deadly mistaken on Godel. Godel's theorem are very lucky event for mechanism: eventually it leads to their theologies ... The book by Franzen on the misuse of Godel is quite good. An deep book is also the one by Judson Webb, ref in my thesis). We will have the opportunity to come back on this deep issue, which illustrate a gap between logicians and physicists. Best, Bruno -- (excerp of A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable, Interpretation of Plotinus¹ Theory of Matter Cie 2007 ) 1) Incompleteness and Mechanism There is a vast literature where G odel¹s first and second incompleteness theorems are used to argue that human beings are different of, if not superior to, any machine. The most famous attempts have been given by J. Lucas in the early sixties and by R. Penrose in two famous books [53, 54]. Such type of argument are not well supported. See for example the recent book by T. Franzen [21]. There is also a less well known tradition where G odel¹s theorems is used in favor of the mechanist thesis. Emil Post, in a remarkable anticipation written about ten years before G odel published his incompleteness theorems, already discovered both the main ³G odelian motivation² against mechanism, and the main pitfall of such argumentations [17, 55]. Post is the first discoverer 1 of Church Thesis, or Church Turing Thesis, and Post is the first one to prove the first incompleteness theorem from a statement equivalent to Church thesis, i.e. the existence of a universalPost said ³complete²normal (production) system 2. In his anticipation, Post concluded at first that the mathematician¹s mind or that the logical process is essentially creative. He adds : ³It makes of the mathematician much more than a clever being who can do quickly what a machine could do ultimately. We see that a machine would never give a complete logic ; for once the machine is made we could prove a theorem it does not prove²(Post emphasis). But Post quickly realized that a machine could do the same deduction for its own mental acts, and admits that : ³The conclusion that man is not a machine is invalid. All we can say is that man cannot construct a machine which can do all the thinking he can. To illustrate this point we may note that a kind of machine-man could be constructed who would prove a similar theorem for his mental acts.² This has probably constituted his motivation for lifting the term creative to his set theoretical formulation of mechanical universality [56]. To be sure, an
Re: Asifism
Quentin Anciaux wrote: On Thursday 28 June 2007 16:52:12 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: But nobody really doubts about his own consciousness (especially going to the dentist), despite we cannot define it nor explain it completely. That sentence is wrong. Don't think so... There is at least one person (me...) that really doubts about my own consciousness. I am conscious about that I am not conscious. I know that I does not know anything. When I go to the dentist I behave as if I am feeling strong pain, because my pain center is directly stimulated by the dentist, which is causing my behaviour. What is behaving ? (can't ask for who obviously you're insisting that there isn't any). Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. I don't know what is consciouslike behaviour without consciousness in the first place. Quenton But if consciousness is implied by conscious like behavior then it may be explained by the same things that explain behavior, i.e. physics and chemistry. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Penrose and algorithms
LauLuna wrote: This is not fair to Penrose. He has convincingly argued in 'Shadows of the Mind' that human mathematical intelligence cannot be a knowably sound algorithm. Assume X is an algorithm representing the human mathematical intelligence. The point is not that man cannot recognize X as representing his own intellingence, it is rather that human intellingence cannot know X to be sound (independently of whether X is recognized as what it is). And this is strange because humans could exhaustively inspect X and they should find it correct since it contains the same principles of reasoning human intelligence employs! But why do you think human mathematical intelligence should be based on nothing more than logical deductions from certain principles of reasoning, like an axiomatic system? It seems to me this is the basic flaw in the argument--for an axiomatic system we can look at each axiom individually, and if we think they're all true statements about mathematics, we can feel confident that any theorems derived logically from these axioms should be true as well. But if someone gives you a detailed simulation of the brain of a human mathematician, there's nothing analogous you can do to feel 100% certain that the simulated brain will never give you a false statement. It helps if you actually imagine such a simulation being performed, and then think about what Godel's theorem would tell you about this simulation, as I did in this post: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/f97ba8b290f7/5627eb66017304f2?lnk=gstrnum=1#5627eb66017304f2 Jesse _ Make every IM count. Download Messenger and join the i'm Initiative now. It's free. http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGHM_June07 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Asifism
On Thursday 28 June 2007 21:59:40 Brent Meeker wrote: Quentin Anciaux wrote: On Thursday 28 June 2007 16:52:12 Torgny Tholerus wrote: Bruno Marchal skrev: But nobody really doubts about his own consciousness (especially going to the dentist), despite we cannot define it nor explain it completely. That sentence is wrong. Don't think so... There is at least one person (me...) that really doubts about my own consciousness. I am conscious about that I am not conscious. I know that I does not know anything. When I go to the dentist I behave as if I am feeling strong pain, because my pain center is directly stimulated by the dentist, which is causing my behaviour. What is behaving ? (can't ask for who obviously you're insisting that there isn't any). Consciouslike behaviour is good for a species to survive. Therefore human beings show that type of behaviour. I don't know what is consciouslike behaviour without consciousness in the first place. Quenton But if consciousness is implied by conscious like behavior then it may be explained by the same things that explain behavior, i.e. physics and chemistry. Brent Meeker Well, I don't see how that denies consciousness... In the other hand, currently, physics and chemistry don't explain everything... and maybe Bruno hypothesis is what underlink all this... still that does not deny consciousness phenomena. And still I *can't* accept any (so called) proof that consciousness does not exists given *I* at least am conscious for sure. Regards, Quentin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Penrose and algorithms
For any Turing machine there is an equivalent axiomatic system; whether we could construct it or not, is of no significance here. Reading your link I was impressed by Russell Standish's sentence: 'I cannot prove this statement' and how he said he could not prove it true and then proved it true. Isn't it more likely that the sentence is paradoxical and therefore non propositional. This is what could make a difference between humans and computers: the correspinding sentence for a computer (when 'I' is replaced with the description of a computer) could not be non propositional: it would be a gödelian sentence. Regards On Jun 28, 10:05 pm, Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: LauLuna wrote: This is not fair to Penrose. He has convincingly argued in 'Shadows of the Mind' that human mathematical intelligence cannot be a knowably sound algorithm. Assume X is an algorithm representing the human mathematical intelligence. The point is not that man cannot recognize X as representing his own intellingence, it is rather that human intellingence cannot know X to be sound (independently of whether X is recognized as what it is). And this is strange because humans could exhaustively inspect X and they should find it correct since it contains the same principles of reasoning human intelligence employs! But why do you think human mathematical intelligence should be based on nothing more than logical deductions from certain principles of reasoning, like an axiomatic system? It seems to me this is the basic flaw in the argument--for an axiomatic system we can look at each axiom individually, and if we think they're all true statements about mathematics, we can feel confident that any theorems derived logically from these axioms should be true as well. But if someone gives you a detailed simulation of the brain of a human mathematician, there's nothing analogous you can do to feel 100% certain that the simulated brain will never give you a false statement. It helps if you actually imagine such a simulation being performed, and then think about what Godel's theorem would tell you about this simulation, as I did in this post: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/f... Jesse _ Make every IM count. Download Messenger and join the i'm Initiative now. It's free.http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGHM_June07 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Penrose and algorithms
LauLuna wrote: For any Turing machine there is an equivalent axiomatic system; whether we could construct it or not, is of no significance here. But for a simulation of a mathematician's brain, the axioms wouldn't be statements about arithmetic which we could inspect and judge whether they were true or false individually, they'd just be statements about the initial state and behavior of the simulated brain. So again, there'd be no way to inspect the system and feel perfectly confident the system would never output a false statement about arithmetic, unlike in the case of the axiomatic systems used by mathematicians to prove theorems. Reading your link I was impressed by Russell Standish's sentence: 'I cannot prove this statement' and how he said he could not prove it true and then proved it true. But prove does not have any precisely-defined meaning here. If you wanted to make it closer to Godel's theorem, then again, you'd have to take a detailed simulation of a human mind which can output various statements, and then look at the statement The simulation will never output this statement--certainly the simulated mind can see that if he doesn't make a mistake he *will* never output that statement, but he can't be 100% sure he'll never make a mistake, and the statement itself is only about the well-defined notion of what output the simulation gives, not in more ill-defined notions of what the simulation knows or can prove in its own mind. Jesse _ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
