Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On 14 Dec 2010, at 20:24, Brent Meeker wrote: On 12/14/2010 7:30 AM, Jason Resch wrote: Ron, I think the path to seeing the mind as a program is easier in this way: 1. It's not what the parts of the brain are made of its how they function which determines behavior 2. This leads to the idea of multiple realizability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_realizability (Brains can be made in different ways so long as the parts function the same) 3. Accordingly, one could replace each neuron, or each atom, (or whatever) with a device that behaved like what it was replacing (A man made out of antimatter and antiparticles would still be a man) 4. Philosophical zombies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie ) are not possible, their brain/mind would have all the same beliefs, and all the same information as the equivalently organized and behaving brain it replaced, but in what sense could one say this one's beliefs are wrong but this one's beliefs are right? There would be no way to ever prove that one is conscious and one is not, it would be wrong for no reason at all. This is what it takes for the idea of zombies to be consistent. Further, the real brain and zombie brain could never even report feeling any different, since both brains contain the same information and same knowledge, how is it possible for one to report differences in experience? This addresses your question of whether or not there would be an impact to one's consciousness if their brain were swapped by a device with equivalent processing of information. I don't disagree with any of the above. But there is a complexity that is passed over. Having information, and being able to equate the same information, implies that the processes in the brain are about something, something that the differently realized brains can agree on. I think this requires an external world with which they both can interact. The problem, that is *the* mind-body problem in the mechanist frame, is that a digital mechanism cannot distinguish a local simulation of an external world with an external world. This eventually leads to making external worlds into a statistical sum on all the computations going through our current state. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-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: advice needed for Star Trek talk
On 14 Dec 2010, at 16:30, Jason Resch wrote: Ron, I think the path to seeing the mind as a program is easier in this way: 1. It's not what the parts of the brain are made of its how they function which determines behavior 2. This leads to the idea of multiple realizability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_realizability (Brains can be made in different ways so long as the parts function the same) 3. Accordingly, one could replace each neuron, or each atom, (or whatever) with a device that behaved like what it was replacing (A man made out of antimatter and antiparticles would still be a man) 4. Philosophical zombies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie ) are not possible, their brain/mind would have all the same beliefs, and all the same information as the equivalently organized and behaving brain it replaced, but in what sense could one say this one's beliefs are wrong but this one's beliefs are right? There would be no way to ever prove that one is conscious and one is not, it would be wrong for no reason at all. This is what it takes for the idea of zombies to be consistent. Further, the real brain and zombie brain could never even report feeling any different, since both brains contain the same information and same knowledge, how is it possible for one to report differences in experience? This addresses your question of whether or not there would be an impact to one's consciousness if their brain were swapped by a device with equivalent processing of information. 5. If zombies are impossible, then any device containing the same information and processing it in the same way as another mind should have the same consciousness. 6. By Church-Turing thesis, a Turing machine (computer) can process information in any way that information can be processed. But then a digital machine cannot see the difference between its brain emulated by a physical device, of by the true existence of the proof of the Sigma_1 relation which exists independently of us in arithmetic. Some will argue that a physical universe is needed, but either they add a magic, non comp-emulable, relation between mind and matter, or if that relation is emulable, they just pick up a special universal number (the physical universe) or introduce an ad hoc physical supervenience thesis. Note that to say the mind is emulable by a computer says very little about a mind, it essentally says only that that the mind is a process. The analogy is that a computer can process information in any possible way given the appropriate programming, just as a record player can produce any possible sound given the appropriate record. Saying the mind is emulable by a computer is like saying voice is emulable by a record player. (It is not a very big leap, conceptually) I agree. But the consequence seems to be a big leap for many. Seems because the results are more ignored than criticized. The problem (for many) is that mechanism is used by materialists, but in fine mechanism is not compatible with materialism. Mechanism makes matter an emerging pattern from the elementary arithmetical truth seen from inside. That makes mechanism a testable hypothesis, and that can already explain many qualitative features of the observable worlds, like indeterminacy, non-locality, non-clonability of matter, and some more quantitative quantum tautologies. A key idea not well understood is the difference between proof/belief and computation/emulation. I will send a post on this. It doesn't matter if the process is like parallel programs, networked computers, etc. a single computer can process information in the same way as a whole bunch of computers running in parallel without any difficulty. The thing computers have difficulty with are infinities. Questions which take an infinite amount of processing or infinite amount of information to answer can't realistically be simulated. On this Bruno has said, if you don't believe the neuron requires an infinite amount of information to decide whether or not to fire, then you are a mechanist. Jason On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 6:13 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno: Thanks for the weekend wishes. I believe the Brain runs programs, in parallel, but are they the Mind, and are they able to be run as Turing emulable programs with no impact to one's consciousness? Ronald On Dec 11, 7:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 11 Dec 2010, at 01:01, ronaldheld wrote: Bruno: I stand corrected on steps 6 and 7. I believe I understand your UDA diagrams. OK. Thanks for saying. Before I can comment, I need to decide waht progrmas are and are not Turing emulatable, All programs are Turing-emulable. That is a consequence of Church thesis. Many computer scientists tend to consider that Church Thesis is trivially
Re: advice needed for Star Trek talk
Jason: I do not think a neutron take more trhan a finite amount of voltage to be able to fire. I do wonder if merely replacing the bio parts by processing hardware, do you lose the part of the complexity of the mind? Np problem with an antimatter man and mind. Ronald On Dec 14, 10:30 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Ron, I think the path to seeing the mind as a program is easier in this way: 1. It's not what the parts of the brain are made of its how they function which determines behavior 2. This leads to the idea of multiple realizabilityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_realizability(Brains can be made in different ways so long as the parts function the same) 3. Accordingly, one could replace each neuron, or each atom, (or whatever) with a device that behaved like what it was replacing (A man made out of antimatter and antiparticles would still be a man) 4. Philosophical zombies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) are not possible, their brain/mind would have all the same beliefs, and all the same information as the equivalently organized and behaving brain it replaced, but in what sense could one say this one's beliefs are wrong but this one's beliefs are right? There would be no way to ever prove that one is conscious and one is not, it would be wrong for no reason at all. This is what it takes for the idea of zombies to be consistent. Further, the real brain and zombie brain could never even report feeling any different, since both brains contain the same information and same knowledge, how is it possible for one to report differences in experience? This addresses your question of whether or not there would be an impact to one's consciousness if their brain were swapped by a device with equivalent processing of information. 5. If zombies are impossible, then any device containing the same information and processing it in the same way as another mind should have the same consciousness. 6. By Church-Turing thesis, a Turing machine (computer) can process information in any way that information can be processed. Note that to say the mind is emulable by a computer says very little about a mind, it essentally says only that that the mind is a process. The analogy is that a computer can process information in any possible way given the appropriate programming, just as a record player can produce any possible sound given the appropriate record. Saying the mind is emulable by a computer is like saying voice is emulable by a record player. (It is not a very big leap, conceptually) It doesn't matter if the process is like parallel programs, networked computers, etc. a single computer can process information in the same way as a whole bunch of computers running in parallel without any difficulty. The thing computers have difficulty with are infinities. Questions which take an infinite amount of processing or infinite amount of information to answer can't realistically be simulated. On this Bruno has said, if you don't believe the neuron requires an infinite amount of information to decide whether or not to fire, then you are a mechanist. Jason On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 6:13 PM, ronaldheld ronaldh...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno: Thanks for the weekend wishes. I believe the Brain runs programs, in parallel, but are they the Mind, and are they able to be run as Turing emulable programs with no impact to one's consciousness? Ronald On Dec 11, 7:51 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 11 Dec 2010, at 01:01, ronaldheld wrote: Bruno: I stand corrected on steps 6 and 7. I believe I understand your UDA diagrams. OK. Thanks for saying. Before I can comment, I need to decide waht progrmas are and are not Turing emulatable, All programs are Turing-emulable. That is a consequence of Church thesis. Many computer scientists tend to consider that Church Thesis is trivially true, but, when you study it you might realize that CT is on the contrary quite miraculous. Like Gödel saw, it is a miracle that the Cantor-like diagonalization procedure does not lead outside the class of partial recursive functions. The gift is a very robust notion of universality. The price to pay for that is also very big: the abandon of any complete TOE (unless ultrafinitism, ...). But psycholically that price is a relief: it prevents computer science to be reductionist. and if the brain runs a program, parallel programs, or something else. Brains and other biological organs and organisms, run parallel programs. But all digitalizable parallel programs can be made equivalent with dovetailing on non parallel programs. The UD does run an infinity of programs in parallel, for example. So the brain parallelism does not change anything unless the brain is not a digitalizable physical process
