Re: UDA query
On 15 Jan 2010, at 03:52, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 14-janv.-10, à 09:01, Brent Meeker a écrit : I think there may be different kinds of consciousness, so a look- up-table (like Searle's Chinese Room) may be conscious but in a different way. In a way distinguishable by the person? From its own (first person) perspective? Also, I don't think it makes sense to attribute consciousness to anything which "do" the computation, but only to the (abstract or immaterial) person supervening on the logical and arithmetical relations defining those computations, (infinitely many exist). Persons need to be self-referentially correct relatively to their most probable computations, only. I don't understand what "self-referentially correct" means nor in what sense computations can be "theirs"? A machine (number) x is self-referentially correct relatively to a history/computation y if the proposition asserted by x are true relatively to y. Rough example: the machine is an altimeter in a plane. The plane is 500 miles above the ground. The altimeter asserts "1000 miles". Given that the altimeter *is* in the plane, it is not self-referentially correct relatively to the most probable computation (already well approximatized by Newton, best described (if ever) by appropriated quantum fields, but (if comp is correct and uda valid) only correctly described by the fields emerging from the numbers in fine. Despite the "self" in self-referentially correct, it is a third person form of self-reference, it is not the first person, but a first person can be attached to it by the Theaetetus definition as I attempt to sketch below. Persons are conscious, not machine, nor computation, nor states, nor numbers, except in a metaphorical way. So you take "person" as well as arithmetic to be fundamental. Not at all. I take "person" as an important concept, even a key concept. But it is not "fundamental". It does not belong to the ontology. Matter and mind, histories and persons, realities and consciousness, emerge already from addition and multiplication, assuming comp. Digital Mechanism obviously assumes the existence of consciousness and persons. This has to be done, if only implictly, by the doctor. It would be annoying, if not frightening, if the doctor tells you that after examining you he has come to the conclusion that you are a zombie and that you will got a digital brain independently of you saying "yes" or "no". So comp assumes persons, like it assumes some amount of consensual reality. But not necessarily as fundamental. But then ... ... the uda reasoning leads to the conclusion that, ONCE we assume comp, the best TOE we can ever dream of is elementary arithmetic. Or, you can chose your favorite universal system, and consider its minimal first order logical specification. Ontologically it is enough. Any Sigma_1-complete segment of arithmetic is enough. From the "persons" inside this will already be immeasurably *bigger*. I prefer elementary arithmetic because it is virtually believed by all those who have been lucky enough to have followed good primary school. It is hardly the case for java, lisp, the combinators or quantum topology! So what is a person? In auda I opt for a minimalist conception. A first person is defined by its true beliefs. If it is a correct machine it inherits a "theology" from the subtraction TARSKI (truth theory) \minus GODEL (provability theory). That gives the 8 hypostases/universal person points of view. That theology is correct for all "correct lobian numbers" I limit myself to correct machine. You may though that for such machines "true belief" = "belief". And you are, of course correct. But (important "but"!) ... ... the machine is correct, and thus consistent, and so is prevented by Gödel to prove or believe its correctness, so the machine doesn't know, nor believes that "true belief" = "belief", and the logic of true beliefs of the machine is different from the machine logic of beliefs. All the 6 + 2 * infinity universal machine person points of view differentiates through that gap between truth and provability. For the ontology, we need no more than Sigma_1 completeness. Like Robinson Arithmetic. For the epistemology (and the unravelling of the internal views), we need no more than "provable Sigma_1 completeness". Like Peano Arithmetic, Zermelo-Fraenkel, etc. It is a pure first person,I am talking here, like a soul before the fall. It is before getting its self entangled to deep probable universal histories, with many universal being capable of sharing the most normal (probable) "video games". No machine can represent its "first person notion". Correct machines will compulsively NOT believe their are machines. Yet they will understand (prove) that if they are correct machine, it is normal, even necessary, th
Re: Everything List Survey
Stathis Papaioannou skrev: 2010/1/14 Stathis Papaioannou : Interesting so far: - people are about evenly divided on the question of whether computers can be conscious - no-one really knows what to make of OM's - more people believe cats are conscious than dogs Oh, and one person does not believe that they are conscious! Come on, who's the zombie? It's me. (The question on whether computers can be conscious, should have three alternatives: 1) Both computers and humans can be conscious. 2) Humans, but not computers can be conscious. 3) Neither humans nor computers can be conscious. (The alternative: Computers, but not humans can be conscious, is not needed...)) -- 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 everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
2010/1/15 Brent Meeker : > I guess I should be more explicit. I found your post bemusingly > inconsistent. You theorized that the continuity of your experience was an > illusion produced by evolution and you "really" exist as a sequence of > discrete OMs. But evolution is a process that acts on genes and in order to > have any effect on the "real" you requires continuity, not only of your body > moment-by-moment and day-by-day but of your genes over millenia. So it > strikes me as very strange to invoke it as creating an *illusion* of > continuity. Sort of like the Sun producing an illusion of daylight. Genes and everything else change over time. There is no absolute basis for saying one physical object is "the same" as another, although by convention we ignore what we consider unimportant changes and say it is the same object. Sometimes the changes are not unimportant but we still say it's "the same". For example, the infant may share almost nothing physically or mentally with the adult but we say they are "the same person" because there is a continuous series of intermediate stages between them. But when we consider duplication thought experiments not only is there a physical discontinuity, we may end up with several copies each of whom has equal claim to being "the same person" as the original. What is the truth of the matter regarding the person who gets copied? Who should get access to his bank accounts? How is it possible that I could find myself waking up somewhere other than in my bed tomorrow if I am surreptitiously copied during the night when the original stays in bed undisturbed? And how do I talk about being "the same person" if it turns out we live in a multiverse? At the very least, if we speak in terms of person-stages or observer-moments it allows us to refer to what we mean unambiguously. The specification can be a physical description of the person-stage but from a subjective point of view it is better to speak of observer-moments, since I am mainly interested in my mind and only indirectly in the hardware that produces it. The duration of a "moment" can be as long as it needs to be for the discussion at hand. However, you can see that if I can be copied at any moment, then there is no absolute reason why the next moment should be "me"; it's only "me" contingently, because there are no competing OM's. And if there are competing OM's there is no absolute way to say which one or more, if any, should continue as "me". In practice, I calculate probabilities as if I am still living in the single track world in which humans evolved. My conclusion is that in general it is simplest to think in terms of discrete OM's which associate into persons due to their information content. Only in the special case of the single track world with which we are all familiar is it simpler to say that there is a unique person persisting through time. -- 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-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2010/1/15 Brent Meeker : Or why not suppose you are your body (including your genes). Then evolution would be able to have had the imputed effect on "you" that you suppose it does. The actual effect of any adaptive behaviour must be through the genes, but evolution could not work directly on a belief about genes. Our psychology may act against our genes if we are taken out of the environment in which we evolved; for example the number of children people choose to have in the modern world is inversely proportional to the resources they control. I guess I should be more explicit. I found your post bemusingly inconsistent. You theorized that the continuity of your experience was an illusion produced by evolution and you "really" exist as a sequence of discrete OMs. But evolution is a process that acts on genes and in order to have any effect on the "real" you requires continuity, not only of your body moment-by-moment and day-by-day but of your genes over millenia. So it strikes me as very strange to invoke it as creating an *illusion* of continuity. Sort of like the Sun producing an illusion of daylight. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
