Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 02-juil.-07, à 18:12, David Nyman a écrit : After very kindly concurring with bits of my recent posts, Bruno nonetheless quite reasonably questioned whether I followed his way of proceeding. Having read the UDA carefully, I would say that in a 'grandmotherly' way I do, although not remotely at his technical level. Concerning the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) a subtle prerequisite is Church Thesis, if only to understand the relation with arithmetical realism and also to understand the term Universal in the UD. Coming back from Siena I am not sure Church thesis is well understood today. BTW I have discovered that the book edited by Martin Davis The undecidable has been republished in 2004 by Dover. This is really the comp basic bible. It contains the readable original paper by Godel, Church, Kleene, Rosser, and, above all the incredible anticipation by Post. Actually Post did even anticipate my thesis, that is the platonistic reversal physics/number-computer-science. To be sure he adds a footnote (footnote 118) saying he changed his mind ... I think I will write a paper just on that footnote But I had been doing thought experiments of a somewhat similar nature literally for decades, based on questions like why am I me and not you? or how do I know that me now is the same as me 5 minutes ago? or is the person who gets out of the transporter the same person as the one who began the journey? For some time, faced largely with incomprehension or disinterest, and seeing hardly anything remotely like this referred to in print, I despaired of finding others who believed these questions were anything but irrelevant or crazy. But gradually these topics seemed to emerge into discussion from a variety of directions, and now I've found a community of similarly crazy people on the Internet. Actually those typical comp or mechanist thought experiences (reasonings) exist since humans use tools. Reference are in the biblios of conscience et mécanisme. Many Sc. fiction book go through such experience, and the book Mind's I (ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett) contains relevant thought (but miss my favorite sc. fi. book, the SIMULACRON III by Daniel Galouye). Mind'I eyes missed the first person comp indeterminacy and the subsequent reversal. The conclusion I had come to is broadly summarised in my recent posts. It seemed to me that the 'transporter' questions could only be resolved if I thought in terms of my being incorporated in some unique or 'global' pre-differentiated manner, which nonetheless multifariously self-localised by differentiation of structures that embodied distinct 'histories'. I would say that, once we accept comp, the only problem which remains is the white rabbit problem, that is: the problem of isolating from computer science the measure on the relative computational histories capable of justifying the apparent normality of the observable laws. This seemed somehow to entail the emergence of finitude from the not-finite, which seemed weirdly right. ? (comp presupposes the natural numbers. Indeed they constitute the absolutely unsolvable mysteries). Anyway, it would be the histories that differed, not the 'self'. This could depend on choice of vocabulary. If you define the self by what is consistent, or better sound, and invariant in all comp histories, you will get the arithmetical hypostases. The histories would break the symmetry of the self into differentiated sub-selves that would be 'I' with respect to their own private environments. Hopefully. That is what is under the course of verification. Again, accepting the positive integers makes such symmetry breaking easy to understand. The real mystery (partially solved though) is in the understanding of the physical initial apparent symmetry. These environments, being participatory, could only be shared with other such sub-selves by signalling', and the sum total of shareable signals, re-embodied, would be the 'objective' or 'outside' physical description of the situation. Hopefully again. This would correspond to the first person plural notion, as far as some part of the comp indeterminacy is sharable (like the quantum reality seems to confirm). But since these 'entities' could only be self-defined emergents of the original self- relativisation, everything was in fact 'outside-less' and continued to exist uniquely or monistically as a network of self-relation. ... itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative number relations. The self itself is what computer science and provability logic explains the better. Depending on whether the participatory or 'objective' perspective was adopted, self-relation could apparently decompose into 'sense' or 'action' narratives, but such decomposition was in fact illusory, or perspective-dependent. Self-relation in fact remained singular or decomposable in nature This is fuzzy. I can
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 03/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BM: BTW I have discovered that the book edited by Martin Davis The undecidable has been republished in 2004 by Dover. DN: I've just ordered it from Amazon. BM: Many Sc. fiction book go through such experience, and the book Mind's I (ed. by Hofstadter and Dennett) contains relevant thought (but miss my favorite sc. fi. book, the SIMULACRON III by Daniel Galouye). Mind'I eyes missed the first person comp indeterminacy and the subsequent reversal. DN: Yes, science fiction did stimulate some of my speculations, and I found Minds's I frustrating for just the reasons you give. This seemed somehow to entail the emergence of finitude from the not-finite, which seemed weirdly right. BM: ? (comp presupposes the natural numbers. Indeed they constitute the absolutely unsolvable mysteries). DN: Yes, I know. One might say that (at least the human understanding of) mathematics is cast as a kind of figure-ground relation between finite and not-finite, but this is more poetical than technical, and hence need not detain us. You propose the natural numbers and their relations as a necessary point of departure for comp, and show that this leads to unexpected results. My own thought was that analysis of the semantics of whole and part leads to a fundamentally self-relative epistemology and ontology, and this can also lead to unexpected results. But this is non-technical and largely intuitive hand-waving on my part. Anyway, it would be the histories that differed, not the 'self'. BM: This could depend on choice of vocabulary. If you define the self by what is consistent, or better sound, and invariant in all comp histories, you will get the arithmetical hypostases. DN: Here I intended 'self' in the primary or 0-person sense. 1-person would be attached to the histories, and hence the arithmetical hypostases would pick out sound and invariant features of 1-personal histories. Consciousness would then be associated with the relation of the 0-self to such features of itself. In a sense this equates to a sort of all-embracing 'solipsism' - but a solipsism of the All. The histories would break the symmetry of the self into differentiated sub-selves that would be 'I' with respect to their own private environments. BM: Hopefully. That is what is under the course of verification. Again, accepting the positive integers makes such symmetry breaking easy to understand. DN: Yes, this is how I understand comp with respect to the semantics of self-relation I've been using. But since these 'entities' could only be self-defined emergents of the original self- relativisation, everything was in fact 'outside-less' and continued to exist uniquely or monistically as a network of self-relation. BM: .. itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative number relations. The self itself is what computer science and provability logic explains the better. DN: Yes, in the comp frame the numbers and their relations would be the basis of what I've been calling sense and action (i.e. self-relation in its 1 and 3-person aspects). Depending on whether the participatory or 'objective' perspective was adopted, self-relation could apparently decompose into 'sense' or 'action' narratives, but such decomposition was in fact illusory, or perspective-dependent. Self-relation in fact remained singular or decomposable in nature BM: This is fuzzy. I can agree but I have more than one interpretation. It's hard not being more technical here. DN: I'm sorry, I missed out a 'non'! I should have said self-relation in fact remained non-decomposable. By 'non-decomposable' I mean that the terms 'sense' and 'action' should be understood as observer effects in a self-relative frame. So epistemologically they are decomposable, but ontologically they aren't. To avoid further confusion, I see that in the comp frame 'self-relation' can indeed be 'decomposed' into different numbers and their relations, but that these are not further decomposable. I would have no problem with this. Consequently, if physics is held to be fundamental to consciousness, and consciousness is an observer effect, then such observers must be fully describable by physical relationships, not functional ones, and the appropriate substitution level is physical duplication, to some level of tolerance. BM: OK, but this is explicitly what cannot be done in the comp frame. A good thing given that physical can hardly be defined by the product of observation. DN: Yes. I'm sorry if it wasn't absolutely clear that my point in this section of the argument was precisely to give a reductio of the materialist position on functionalism or computationalism. So of course I'm claiming that it can't be done. I assume then that you agree with my line of argument? By contrast, if the reality of parts and relationships is to be considered fundamentally numerical, BM: The main first half of my work
Re: Asifism revisited.
Torgny Tholerus wrote: Imagine that we have a second Universe, that looks exactly the same as the materialistic parts of our Universe. We may call this second Universe B-Universe. (Our Universe is A-Universe.) This B-Universe looks exactly the same as A-Universe. Where there is a hydrogen atom in A-Universe, there will also be a hydrogen atom in B-Universe, and everywhere that there is an oxygen atom in A-Universe, there will be an oxygen atom i B-universe. The only difference between A-Universe and B-Universe is that B-Universe is totally free from consciousness, feelings, minds, souls, and all that kind of stuff. The only things that exist in B-Universe are atoms reacting with eachother. All objects in B-Universe behave in exactly the same way as the objects in A-Universe. The objects in B-Universe produces the same kind of sounds as we produce in A-Universe, and the objects in B-Universe pushes the same buttons on their computers as we do in our A-Universe. Questions: Is B-Universe possible? If we interview an object in B-Universe, what will that object answer, if we ask it: Are you conscious?? So far as I know, consciousness is some processes in (at least some) human brains. Since B-universe would have brains with the same processes, I'd say those objects would answer, Yes. with the same likelihood as in this universe - in other words I don't think there's any difference between the A-universe and the B-universe. 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: Asifism revisited.
On 04/07/07, David Nyman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TT: This B-Universe looks exactly the same as A-Universe. DN: IMO your thought experiment might as well stop right here. No universe can look like anything to anyone except a participant in it - i.e. an 'observer' who is an embedded sub-structure of that universe. The looking that you refer to here is an illusory artefact of syntax - i.e. the relation is to an imaginative construct which in fact is part of A-Universe. IOW this sort of 'existence' is a metaphor which is relative to *us*, not the self-relation of any realisable B-Universe. What you describe as B-Universe looking exactly the same is really an implicit relation to an observer in *that* universe, and consequently that observer is already accepted as conscious. Alternatively, it doesn't look like anything to anyone, and hence is by no stretch of the imagination exactly the same. We can imagine an external observer looking at two model universes A and B side by side, interviewing their occupants. -- 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 [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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
