Re: The seven step series
On 02 Aug 2009, at 23:20, Mirek Dobsicek wrote: > > >>> I am in a good mood and a bit picky :-) Do you know how many entries >>> google gave me upon entering >>> Theaetetical -marchal -bruno >> >> >> Well 144? >> >> Good way to find my papers on that. The pages refer quickly to this >> list or the FOR list. > > I am sorry for the delay, I've just got back from my vacation. > > Hmm. The above written search should not return any references to your > papers/letters as the minus sign in front of your name asks for an > exclusion. > > Given that it works as supposed google then gives only 1 hit in my > location (Sweden). That hit is a translation of the word > "Theaetetical" > into some eastern characters. Thus, I end up with zero meaningful hits > and a feeling that you might be the only one using this word. > > That makes me insists a little bit more (in a very polite way) that, > occasionally, your work is > "difficult to read unless one is willing to undertake long > discussions, clarifications and position adjustments." > > I am writing this in a reference to your complains that sometimes you > have troubles to get enough relevant feedback to your work. Come on Mirek: "Theaetetical" is an adjective I have forged from "Theatetus". "Theatetus" gives 195.000 results on Google. "Theatetus" wiki 4310. By "theatetical notion of knowledge", I mean the "well known" attempts to define "knowledge" by Theaetetus in Plato's Theaetetus. The most known definition is "truye justified belief", that Bill taylor just mentionned on the FOR list recently as: "This old crock should have been given a decent burial long ago." I guess I will have to make a comment ... My work is, without doubt, very difficult to read because it crosses three or four fields: "mathematical logic", "philosophy of mind" and "computer science"; + quantum mechanics to evaluate the plausibility of the derived computationalist physics. This does not help in an epoch of hyper-specialization. I am also using a deductive approach in the philosophy of mind. I am apparently the first to *postulate* "mechanism". Most philosophers of mind accept mechanism as the only rational theory, or reject it with some passion. Few, if any, use it as an hypothesis, in a deductive strategy. Then mathematical logic is virtually unknown, except by mathematical logicians, who, for historical reasons, do not want to come back to the earlier philosophical motivations: they want to be accepted as pure mathematicians. Except the philosophical logicians, who in majority criticized classical logic, and see philosphy as a mean to criticize classical philosophy. Mathematicians are so used to classical philosophy, that they consider it as science, and hate to be remind that this is still a philosophical. I have no feedback for purely contingent reason related to facts which have nothing to do with the startling feature of the conclusion of the reasoning. Up to now, I heard continuously about critics on an imaginary work I have never done. The price of the best PhD thesis that I got in France has eventually only spread those rumor from Brussels to elsewhere. All real scientist who have studied my work and have accepted to meet me, or to write a real report on it, have understood it. True, some took a rather long time to understand, but that is normal: the subject matter is very complex, and still taboo, especially for the atheists, and other religious-based thinkers. But when they study it, they quickly discover that I use the scientific method, that is I am just asking a question, what is wrong with the following reasoning? ... The reasoning is decomposed in "easy" steps, so people accepting (for personal belief or for the sake of the argument) the hypotheses and wanting to reject the conclusion have a way to put their fingers on some problems. UDA has been judged to obvious and simple in Brussels, and that is why I have augmented the thesis with the AUDA, which unfortunately is considered as ... too much simple for logicians, and too much difficult for non logicians. But AUDA is not needed at all to understand the simple and clear result: if we are digitalisable machine, the laws of physics emerge from a statistics on computations, in a verifiable way (quantitatively and qualitatively). The result is very simple and clear: the reasoning which leads to that result is much more subtle and difficult. I am not at all pretending that reasoning is correct. Science progress when people do errors, but we have to find them, and sometimes, if we don't find them, we have to accept momentarily the conclusion, perhaps with the hope an error will be find later. But the attitude of a (tiny but influencing) part of the community consists in hiding the reasoning, or deforming it completely. This can't help. Some people, even here recently (see 1Z's post) and recently on the FOR list, attrib
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
John, Is not the difference between human and non human a human illusion? With Church Turing thesis we can suspect the existence of universal illusions. Bruno On 01 Aug 2009, at 21:52, John Mikes wrote: > David, > I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and > instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try > to put below into a shorthand form by my vocabulary. But first a > plea to Mrs. N: > 'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the > Scottish tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good > mountaineering relaxation what we all would luv if we just can > afford it' > and now back to David: > > "causal accounts" are model-based originating choices in a view > reduced into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a > conventional science lingo, so ingeniously formed over the > millennia. It is our perceived reality, with math, based on the most > pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, all - in the > ongoing "HUMAN" ways of our thinking. > > Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? no > way, we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd > pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the > "3rd persons" into their own (1st pers) "mindset"(?). > > Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. > A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's > discoveries. A 'physical realist' is a conventional scientist within > the given figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' > limitations - falling repeatedly back into the faithful application > of it. > > As Brent asked: "Is the physics account of life incomplete or > wrong? Do you consider "life" to have been eliminated?" > > "eliminated" WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many > (some?) of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist > even in Brent's mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). > (Robert Rosen identified life as his 'M&R' (Metabolism and Repair) > based on his (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain > into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly > named "in-animates"). > > Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views > are based on timely evolving observational skills what we call > "physical" - worldview, science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder > if everything is touching it. It is not 'more real' than anything we > could sweat out for explaining the unexplainable. > It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. > I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of "numbers", yet > this, too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David > Bohm. And we are figments within the totality, not the original > creators. We don't 'see' too far. > Somebody asked me: "How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N > E W' ? I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated > relationships - which is only manipulting the existent. > Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute > new is not available to us - unless already having been hinted in > some corner of the totality as a 'findable' relation. The quality > from quantity Leninian principle may give a clue to it, if a large > enough background can be checked (cf. Bruno's words to get to > anything by using enough many numbers for it). Still such cop-outs > include my usual retort: applying the "somehow" > > Finally: COMP and reality? not this embryonic binary algorithm based > (physical) contraption, not even an advanced fantasy kind of similar > deficiencies can approach what we cannot: the unfathomable 'reality' > of them all. It is not a 'higher inventory', it (if there is such an > 'it' - I did not say: exists) is beyond anything we can imagine > humanly. We can speculate about reality's 'human' type aspects of > partial hints we can humanly approach and make a pars pro toto dream > of it - we are wrong for sure. > > Have a healthy mountain-climb in Scottland > > John M > > On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM, David Nyman > wrote: > > I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, > and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am > real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. > Hmm... > > Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about > the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a > functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt > to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage > feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at > the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly > computational account of mind - on the the number realm, with physics > derived as an emergent from this. Step 8 of the
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > John, > Is not the difference between human and non human a human illusion? > With Church Turing thesis we can suspect the existence of universal > illusions. Maybe illusions can be detected due to timing discrepancies between the original version of something and the virtual one. I am doing an analogy with the detection computer rootkits, which are programs that try to control another program through concealment and virtualization. I am assuming only local timing modification done by the universal system programmer. If the system can be globally stopped, local illusions inserted and the system continues, this detection methods can't be applied... Jose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F8013%2F4140976%2F04140987.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4140987&authDecision=-203 Alien vs. Quine Graizer, V.; Naccache, D. Security & Privacy, IEEE Volume 5, Issue 2, March-April 2007 Page(s):26 - 31 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2007.28 Summary:Is it possible to prove that a computer is malware-free without pulling out its hard disk? This article introduces a novel hardware inspection technique based on the injection of carefully crafted code and the analysis of its output and execution time. In theory, the easiest way to exterminate malware is to reformat the disk and then reinstall the operating system (OS) from a trusted distribution GD. This procedure assumes we can force computers to boot from trusted media, but most modern PCs have a flash BIOS, which means that the code component in charge of booting is recorded on a rewritable memory chip. Specific programs called flashers - or even malware such as the CIH (Chernobyl) virus - have the ability to update this chip. This article addresses this concern, namely, ascertaining that malware doesn't re-flash the BIOS to derail disk-reformatting attempts or simulate their successful completion > Bruno > > > On 01 Aug 2009, at 21:52, John Mikes wrote: > > David, > I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and instead > here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put below into > a shorthand form by my vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. N: > 'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish > tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering relaxation > what we all would luv if we just can afford it' > and now back to David: > > "causal accounts" are model-based originating choices in a view reduced into > the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, so > ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our perceived reality, with > math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, > all - in the ongoing "HUMAN" ways of our thinking. > > Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? no way, we > think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd pers.explanation, it > is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the "3rd persons" into their own > (1st pers) "mindset"(?). > > Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. > A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. > A 'physical realist' is a conventional scientist within the given figments. > This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling repeatedly > back into the faithful application of it. > > As Brent asked: "Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you > consider "life" to have been eliminated?" > > "eliminated" WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) of > us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's mind > (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen identified life > as his 'M&R' (Metabolism and Repair) based on his (mathematical) biology > ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even > into the stupidly named "in-animates"). > > Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based > on timely evolving observational skills what we call "physical" - worldview, > science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It > is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the > unexplainable. > It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. > I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of "numbers", yet this, > too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are > figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too > far. > Somebody asked me: "How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? I > had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is > only manipulting the existent. > Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is > not available to us - unless alread
Re: Dreaming On
On 03 Aug 2009, at 07:51, Rex Allen wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Bruno Marchal > wrote: >> >> Rex proposes something like: >> >> CONSCIOUSNESS => ? >> >> It is radical, and it is difficult to say if it explains anything. I >> suspect the goal could be personal enlightnment instead of a search >> in >> a communicable theory which should or could explain the observable >> and >> non observable (but "feelable", like pain) phenomena. > > AND > > On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Brent > Meeker wrote: >>> >>> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience. >>> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in >>> terms >>> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity. >> >> If you explain the existence of a pain in your tooth by a cavity >> the experience may lead >> to a dentist - and less pain in your experience. > > > I am proposing, I suppose: > > CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE > > So obviously it seems useful to postulate the existence of things like > quarks and electrons, which we then use to make predictions about what > will happen if we do this, that, or the other. However, I think there > is good reason to believe that this only holds true in our own > relatively well-behaved part of what is actually a vast experiential > wilderness. > > Any proposal that has our consciousness as being "caused", whatever > the causal mechanism, is open to the possibility that we are caused to > experience something that is not reflective of the reality that > produced the experience. Dreams, delusions, hallucinations, > brains-in-vats, and computer simulations of brains all offer real or > conceivable examples of scenarios where what is experienced might lead > one astray in trying to determine the underlying nature of things. > > If our conscious experience is caused, then for all we know we're > giant amorphous blobs floating in 12 dimensional space, but with just > the right internal causal structure to produce the conscious > experience of being humans in 3-dimensional space. You are using the identity thesis. It is inconsistent for any rational agent who believe that its own consciousness is invariant for a local functional substitution. > Or we could be > "Boltzmann Brains", produced by the random fluctuations of particles > in just the right way to produce the illusion of our current > experiences. Same remark. If we are machine, Boltzmann brain does not work, unless they have the right relative statistics, but then they are no more BBs. > Given enough time, exactly our experience would be > produced, regardless of the underlying physics of the Boltzmann > Universe that we actually inhabit, just through a brute random search > of the space of possibilities, combination and recombination of all > possible configurations. OR (per Bruno) we could be mathematical > algorithms existing only in some immaterial platonic sense. No we aren't. There are no such identifty thesis consistent with the comp hyp. Comp makes consciosusness more fundamental, than usual identifty theses permit. > > > Or identical experiences, plus all variations, of being Brent or Bruno > might be caused by each of the above mechanisms at different times and > in different places. An infinite number of universes, or a universe > of infinite size, or with an infinite amount of time, or a quantum > mechanical multiverse with infinite branches, or a platonic Plenitude > containing all possible mathematical/algorithmic structures, would all > seem to be possibilities, and not even mutually exclusive ones. This is slightly less wrong, but consciousness is distributed on such multi-realities. It defines them in the limit. > > > BUT, I don't think so. > > All causal explanations for consciousness (even Bruno's) ultimately > rely on fiat assertions that "this causes conscious experience", I permanently avoid the notion of causality in search of the fundamentals. Causlaity is like free-will, it is something which emerge at some high level, of description. Comp is not "brain produces consciousness". It is the assertion of the existence of la level of description of my "body" such that I will not experience anything usual in the case my "body" is substituted by an equivalent , for that level, digital device. That is the "yes doctor". It does not presuppose that the brain causes consciousness or thing like that. > > without providing any convincing explanation for why this should be. With comp, such explanation cannot be given. If a doctor shows any such beliefs in the completeness of such an explanation, you better run away, and search for a more modest doctor. But we can have convincing evidences that comp makes sense. Today's physics implies comp, today biology implies comp, today's neurophysiology implies comp. Non-comp needs to speculate about many things we have no evidences at all. But despite this, few reali
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Bruno, let me continue as 'enfent terrible': Isn't the Church Thesis - and whatever WE suspect by it - also human illusions? (Watch out: the next question will concern 'numbers'!) John M On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > John, > Is not the difference between human and non human a human illusion? > > With Church Turing thesis we can suspect the existence of universal > illusions. > > Bruno > > > > On 01 Aug 2009, at 21:52, John Mikes wrote: > > David, > I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and > instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put > below into a shorthand form by *my* vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. > N: > *'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish > tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering **relaxation > what we all would luv if we just can afford it'* > and now back to David: > > "causal accounts" are model-based originating choices in a view reduced > into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, > so ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our *perceived reality*, > with math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called > physics, all *- in* *the ongoing "HUMAN" ways of our thinking.* > > Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? *no way*, > we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd > pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the "3rd > persons" into their own (1st pers) "mindset"(?). > > Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. > A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. > A *'physical realist'* is a conventional scientist within the given > figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling > repeatedly back into the faithful application of it. > > As Brent asked: "Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do > you consider "life" to have been eliminated?" > > "eliminated" WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) > of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's > mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen > identified life as his *'M&R'* (Metabolism and Repair) based on his > (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and > 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly named "in-animates"). > > Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based > on timely evolving observational skills what we call "physical" - worldview, > science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It > is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the > unexplainable. > It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. > I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of "numbers", yet this, > too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are > figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too > far. > Somebody asked me: "How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? > I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is > only manipulting the existent. > Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is > not available to us - unless already having been hinted in some corner of > the totality as a 'findable' relation. The quality from quantity Leninian > principle may give a clue to it, if a large enough background can be checked > (cf. Bruno's words to get to anything by using enough many numbers for it). > Still such cop-outs include my usual retort: applying the "somehow" > > Finally: COMP and reality? not this embryonic binary algorithm based > (physical) contraption, not even an advanced fantasy kind of similar > deficiencies can approach what we cannot: the unfathomable 'reality' of them > all. It is not a 'higher inventory', it (if there is such an 'it' - I did > not say: exists) is beyond anything we can imagine humanly. We can speculate > about reality's 'human' type aspects of partial hints we can humanly > approach and make a pars pro toto dream of it - we are wrong for sure. > > Have a healthy mountain-climb in Scottland > > John M > > On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM, David Nyman wrote: > >> >> I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, >> and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am >> real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. >> Hmm... >> >> Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about >> the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a >> functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt >> to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage >> feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at >> the he
Re: Dreaming On
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Rex Allen wrote: ... "I am proposing, I suppose: CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE ..." Rex, I arrived at the phrase as the ultimate rationalization and generalization of things people write (back-and-forth) about consciousness: *""Consciousness = response to information"" * ** and had to add some explanations to the words: *response* observed in relations, saving of such (memory?) and 'changing' accordingly (into new - altered - relations), - and - *information* is our acquired observation on relations. (I used first more 'showing' words, but they all returned in questions like: "and what is that?" E.g. acknowledgement, change, impact, action, function, leading to impossible marvels like: energy, physical world, figmentous explanation, etc. etc.) With all that vocabulary-cleanup, the proposed bare-bones sentence may lead to universal application and it may be hard to differentiate from 'life', 'awareness', etc. usally applied. It may comply with Bruno's "personal enlightnment" and with Brent's "conscious experience" as well. I think. John M PS. to Bruno's entertainment: Isac Asimov wrote a most enjoyable (non-sci-fi) book - titled:* "From Earth to Heaven"* where *'Earth'* meant all physical.* 'Heaven'* all mental and the *"to"* he applied as "the abstract: mathemtical". - JM On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Rex proposes something like: > > CONSCIOUSNESS => ? > > It is radical, and it is difficult to say if it explains anything. I > suspect the goal could be personal enlightnment instead of a search in > a communicable theory which should or could explain the observable and > non observable (but "feelable", like pain) phenomena. AND On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: >> >> The only thing we have direct access to is our conscious experience. >> Trying to explain the existence of this conscious experience in terms >> of what is experienced inevitably leads to vicious circularity. > > If you explain the existence of a pain in your tooth by a cavity the experience may lead > to a dentist - and less pain in your experience. I am proposing, I suppose: CONSCIOUSNESS => EVERYTHING ELSE So obviously it seems useful to postulate the existence of things like quarks and electrons, which we then use to make predictions about what will happen if we do this, that, or the other. However, I think there is good reason to believe that this only holds true in our own relatively well-behaved part of what is actually a vast experiential wilderness. Any proposal that has our consciousness as being "caused", whatever the causal mechanism, is open to the possibility that we are caused to experience something that is not reflective of the reality that produced the experience. Dreams, delusions, hallucinations, brains-in-vats, and computer simulations of brains all offer real or conceivable examples of scenarios where what is experienced might lead one astray in trying to determine the underlying nature of things. If our conscious experience is caused, then for all we know we're giant amorphous blobs floating in 12 dimensional space, but with just the right internal causal structure to produce the conscious experience of being humans in 3-dimensional space. Or we could be "Boltzmann Brains", produced by the random fluctuations of particles in just the right way to produce the illusion of our current experiences. Given enough time, exactly our experience would be produced, regardless of the underlying physics of the Boltzmann Universe that we actually inhabit, just through a brute random search of the space of possibilities, combination and recombination of all possible configurations. OR (per Bruno) we could be mathematical algorithms existing only in some immaterial platonic sense. Or identical experiences, plus all variations, of being Brent or Bruno might be caused by each of the above mechanisms at different times and in different places. An infinite number of universes, or a universe of infinite size, or with an infinite amount of time, or a quantum mechanical multiverse with infinite branches, or a platonic Plenitude containing all possible mathematical/algorithmic structures, would all seem to be possibilities, and not even mutually exclusive ones. BUT, I don't think so. All causal explanations for consciousness (even Bruno's) ultimately rely on fiat assertions that "this causes conscious experience", without providing any convincing explanation for why this should be. It's not so much causation as correlation, as far as I can see. As I mentioned, I'm sure that the brain can be viewed as representing the contents of my experience. And I'm sure that a computer program could also be written that would represent the contents of my conscious experience and whose representational state would evolve as the program ran so that it continued to match what I experience over time. But this would not mean that the program was consci
