date:20111209


On 12/9/2011 2:04 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 2:17 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/9/2011 4:43 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 2:47 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:
You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a mind, in contrast 
to some supernatural soul stuff.  It basically boils down to whether you suppose 
there are some things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or 
some stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that 
everything happens and exists.  In the latter case there's really no role for ur 
stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, but ironically 
"stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not" and 
"everything happens and exists" do not sleep together very well at all. The 
"everything happens and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no 
way of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick sees this 
and not that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where as the "stuff whose only 
function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not" can be coherently 
defined as the union of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers their operations 
there exists some immaterial stratifying medium that sorts one level of Gedel 
numbering from another. I am reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a 
girl had three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die and the 
third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when we look at it 
closely enough. But we might consider that just as it vanishes so too does the 
ability to distinguish one set of numbers from another. If the ability to 
distinguish this from that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations 
exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of "everything 
theories"; you did notice that this is called the "everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg my question? How 
does immaterial based "everything theories" deal with this problem that I just 
outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I understand it, the 
ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to refuse to make any distinctions, so that 
we theorize that everything exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to 
be logically coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well defined 
and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is computable.  Within this 
plenuum there are various states (numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick 
out what part we experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states 
and relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in there somewhere.


I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics implies that 
different things are computable, but I'm doubtful that it's true.


Brent

Hi Brent,

What is the basis of your doubt? Have you not looked at, for instance, the work of 
Tipler  that 
discusses how different physics alters the kinds of computations that can occur? The 
notion of Hypercomputation  is a good 
place to start. 


Yes I can understand that there are mathematical models in which computations different 
from Turing's are possible.  But I'm doubtful whether they are coherent.  If you tried 
to build a physics on them that model conscious beings would you run into 
contradictions?  That's one role the physical universe plays, it (supposedly) is free 
of contradictions.  So if we have a mathematical model of something physical and the 
model is found to have a contradiction we generally say that it cannot be a correct 
model of the physical something.


[SPK]

  Hi Brent,

Again, what is the basis of your doubt and how would you confirm the truthfulness of 
that basis?


The latter is part of the problem.   How could one test the idea that the universe 
instantiates a hypercomputer.  It seems to me that our model of the universe must be 
Turing computable because that's the kind of computation we can do to make predictions.  
To say that there are other physics that allow a hypercomputer or some other kind of 
computation, is sort of like saying there are aspects of the universe that we cannot 
model.  It might be true, but it's almost irrelevant.






My agreement with Deutsch's assertion does not

Re: The consciousness singularity

2011-12-09 Thread benjayk


Sorry, I am done with this discussion, I am just tired of it.

I actually agree your argument is useful for refuting materialism, but I
still don't think your conlusion follows from just COMP, since you didn't
eliminate COMP+non-platonic-immaterialism. 

benjayk
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Re: The consciousness singularity


On 12/9/2011 2:17 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/9/2011 4:43 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 2:47 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:
You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a 
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It basically 
boils down to whether you suppose there are some things that are 
real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or some stuff 
exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that 
everything happens and exists.  In the latter case there's 
really no role for ur stuff whose only function is to mark some 
stuff as existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, 
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff 
as existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and exists" 
do not sleep together very well at all. The "everything happens 
and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no way 
of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick 
sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where 
as the "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as 
existing and the rest not" can be coherently defined as the union 
of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers 
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying medium 
that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I am 
reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had 
three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die 
and the third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes 
when we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that 
just as it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one 
set of numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this 
from that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations 
exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of 
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the 
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg 
my question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal 
with this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I 
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to 
refuse to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that everything 
exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be logically 
coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well 
defined and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is 
computable.  Within this plenuum there are various states (numbers 
in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part we 
experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states 
and relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in 
there somewhere.


I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics 
implies that different things are computable, but I'm doubtful that 
it's true.


Brent

Hi Brent,

What is the basis of your doubt? Have you not looked at, for 
instance, the work of Tipler 
 
that discusses how different physics alters the kinds of computations 
that can occur? The notion of Hypercomputation 
 is a good place to 
start. 


Yes I can understand that there are mathematical models in which 
computations different from Turing's are possible.  But I'm doubtful 
whether they are coherent.  If you tried to build a physics on them 
that model conscious beings would you run into contradictions?  That's 
one role the physical universe plays, it (supposedly) is free of 
contradictions.  So if we have a mathematical model of something 
physical and the model is found to have a contradiction we generally 
say that it cannot be a correct model of the physical something.


[SPK]

  Hi Brent,

Again, what is the basis of your doubt and how would you confirm 
the truthfulness of that basis?




My agreement with Deutsch's assertion does not follow from just 
taking his words as authority. Consider a physical would in which the 
Plank constant was zero, Newton's universe for example; in such a 
world computations would be radically different if only because there 
do not exists any stable atoms. 


In Newton's universe there weren't any atoms to be unstable.  But 
Newton's universe was not Turing computable.

[SPK]
  OK, but that is illustrating Deutsch's point that proofs require a 
physical universe. See pages 190-191 in BoI. Without the 'thisness" of

Re: The consciousness singularity


On 12/9/2011 11:48 AM, Pzomby wrote:


On Dec 8, 12:20 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

On 12/8/2011 10:18 AM, Pzomby wrote:



On Dec 7, 10:31 am, meekerdbwrote:

On 12/7/2011 8:14 AM, benjayk wrote:

Most materialist just say: Well, the natural laws are just there, without
any particular reason or meaning behind them, we have to take them for
granted. But this is almost as unconvincing as saying "A creator God is just
there, we have to take him for granted". It makes no sense (it would be a
totally absurd universe), and there also is no evidence that natural laws
are primary (we don't find laws to describe the Big Bang and very plausibly,
there are none because it is a mathematical singularity).

You are attributing a naive concept of physical laws to "we".  Physical laws 
are models we
make up to explain and predict the world.  That's why they change when we get 
new
information.  Mathematical singularities are in the mathematics.  Nobody 
supposes they are
in the world.
Brent

Brent
You state: Physical laws are models we make up to explain and predict
the world.  Are properties of mathematics then dual, being both
representational (models) and encoded (rules) as instantiated brain
functions?

Mathematics is a subset of language in which propositions are related by rules 
of
inference that preserve "truth".  We can use it to talk about all kinds of 
things, both
real and fictional.  We try to create mathematical models where possible 
because then we
have the rules of inference to make predictions that are precise.  Where our 
models are
not mathematical, e.g. in politics or psychology, it's never clear exactly what 
the model
predicts.

I think the rules of inference are encoded in our brains.  See William S. 
Coopers book
"The Evolution of Reason".




In other words could the singularity in mathematics you refer to be
further divided?

The singularity I was referring to is the hypersurface of infinite energy 
density and
curvature which general relativity predicts at the center of a black hole and 
the Big
Bang.  It is in the mathematical model - which only shows that the model 
doesn't apply at
these extreme conditions.  This was not a surprise to anyone, since it was 
already known
that general relativity isn't compatible with quantum mechanics and is expected 
to
breakdown at extremely high energies and short distances.

Brent


  Brent

I was attempting to go down another layer of understanding as I see
it.  I will restate an abbreviated opinion:

Numerals (mathematics) and languages are themselves fundamental
instantiations of the laws/rules/inferences of truth… abstract
mathematics representing the precise observed or discovered structure
and order of the universe and the semantically less precise languages
are used to interpret and communicate the mathematical models in
descriptions and predictions of the universe.


I think it's a mistake to think mathematics has something to do with truth.  Truth is an 
attribute of a proposition that expresses a fact.  Mathematics consists of relations of 
inference between propositions - which may or may not express anything at all beyond the 
relations.




Mathematics...has multi faceted properties, being at least (1)
representational numbers as in descriptively enumerated models as well
as adjective position in spatiotemporal sequence (ordinals) and (2)
computable numbers as in counting and arithmetic.


Mathematics doesn't exist in space and time; although it may be used to 
describe them.



Your statement: “I think the rules of inference are encoded in our
brains”, This, I think, infers that primitive mathematics and
languages are instantiated in the biological brain and can,
*potentially*, represent or reflect any and all laws and rules
fundamental to the real (even abstract) and fictional universe.


I don't think laws/rules are fundamental.  They are compact models we make up to explain 
and predict facts.


Brent


The
role of human embodied consciousness in any “theory of everything” is
established by this fact.

Mathematics may be “a subset of language” as you state or language
could also be an extension or instantiation (as a concrete verbal
idea) of what primitive mathematics represents (abstract rules/laws).
In either case it becomes circular as to what is more relevant…
mathematics or the language to understand what the mathematics
represents or enumerates.

It is my opinion that there is no singularity but a duality which
roughly could be stated as both “a state of being” (quanta) and the
“reason of being” (qualia) (access to abstract primitive laws/rules or

as you state “newer information”).

Perhaps monistic materialism and monistic idealism are semantically
created notions that lack “newer information”.

Thanks for your comments.




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Re: The consciousness singularity

2011-12-09 Thread Pzomby

On Dec 8, 12:20 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 12/8/2011 10:18 AM, Pzomby wrote:
>
>
> > On Dec 7, 10:31 am, meekerdb  wrote:
> >> On 12/7/2011 8:14 AM, benjayk wrote:
>
> >>> Most materialist just say: Well, the natural laws are just there, without
> >>> any particular reason or meaning behind them, we have to take them for
> >>> granted. But this is almost as unconvincing as saying "A creator God is 
> >>> just
> >>> there, we have to take him for granted". It makes no sense (it would be a
> >>> totally absurd universe), and there also is no evidence that natural laws
> >>> are primary (we don't find laws to describe the Big Bang and very 
> >>> plausibly,
> >>> there are none because it is a mathematical singularity).
> >> You are attributing a naive concept of physical laws to "we".  Physical 
> >> laws are models we
> >> make up to explain and predict the world.  That's why they change when we 
> >> get new
> >> information.  Mathematical singularities are in the mathematics.  Nobody 
> >> supposes they are
> >> in the world.
>
> >> Brent
> > Brent
>
> > You state: Physical laws are models we make up to explain and predict
> > the world.  Are properties of mathematics then dual, being both
> > representational (models) and encoded (rules) as instantiated brain
> > functions?
>
> Mathematics is a subset of language in which propositions are related by 
> rules of
> inference that preserve "truth".  We can use it to talk about all kinds of 
> things, both
> real and fictional.  We try to create mathematical models where possible 
> because then we
> have the rules of inference to make predictions that are precise.  Where our 
> models are
> not mathematical, e.g. in politics or psychology, it's never clear exactly 
> what the model
> predicts.
>
> I think the rules of inference are encoded in our brains.  See William S. 
> Coopers book
> "The Evolution of Reason".
>
>
>
> > In other words could the singularity in mathematics you refer to be
> > further divided?
>
> The singularity I was referring to is the hypersurface of infinite energy 
> density and
> curvature which general relativity predicts at the center of a black hole and 
> the Big
> Bang.  It is in the mathematical model - which only shows that the model 
> doesn't apply at
> these extreme conditions.  This was not a surprise to anyone, since it was 
> already known
> that general relativity isn't compatible with quantum mechanics and is 
> expected to
> breakdown at extremely high energies and short distances.
>
> Brent

 Brent

I was attempting to go down another layer of understanding as I see
it.  I will restate an abbreviated opinion:

Numerals (mathematics) and languages are themselves fundamental
instantiations of the laws/rules/inferences of truth… abstract
mathematics representing the precise observed or discovered structure
and order of the universe and the semantically less precise languages
are used to interpret and communicate the mathematical models in
descriptions and predictions of the universe.

Mathematics...has multi faceted properties, being at least (1)
representational numbers as in descriptively enumerated models as well
as adjective position in spatiotemporal sequence (ordinals) and (2)
computable numbers as in counting and arithmetic.

Your statement: “I think the rules of inference are encoded in our
brains”, This, I think, infers that primitive mathematics and
languages are instantiated in the biological brain and can,
*potentially*, represent or reflect any and all laws and rules
fundamental to the real (even abstract) and fictional universe.  The
role of human embodied consciousness in any “theory of everything” is
established by this fact.

Mathematics may be “a subset of language” as you state or language
could also be an extension or instantiation (as a concrete verbal
idea) of what primitive mathematics represents (abstract rules/laws).
In either case it becomes circular as to what is more relevant…
mathematics or the language to understand what the mathematics
represents or enumerates.

It is my opinion that there is no singularity but a duality which
roughly could be stated as both “a state of being” (quanta) and the
“reason of being” (qualia) (access to abstract primitive laws/rules or
as you state “newer information”).

Perhaps monistic materialism and monistic idealism are semantically
created notions that lack “newer information”.

Thanks for your comments.

>
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

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Re: The consciousness singularity

On 12/9/2011 4:43 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 2:47 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King" wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form of material
process occur for computations and would go even further in prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would not specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational universality without
having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I wouldn't
call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.

You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a mind, in contrast to
some supernatural soul stuff. It basically boils down to whether you suppose there
are some things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or some
stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that everything
happens and exists. In the latter case there's really no role for ur stuff whose
only function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.

Brent

Hi Brent,

Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, but ironically
"stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not" and
"everything happens and exists" do not sleep together very well at all. The
"everything happens and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no way
of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick sees this and not
that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where as the "stuff whose only function is
to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not" can be coherently defined as the
union of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers their operations
there exists some immaterial stratifying medium that sorts one level of Gedel
numbering from another. I am reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a
girl had three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die and the
third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when we look at it
closely enough. But we might consider that just as it vanishes so too does the
ability to distinguish one set of numbers from another. If the ability to
distinguish this from that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations
exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!

Where did I claim that. I was just pointing out the genesis of "everything
theories"; you did notice that this is called the "everything-list" didn't you?

Brent

HI Brent,

I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg my question? How
does immaterial based "everything theories" deal with this problem that I just outlined?

You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno. But as I understand it, the
ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to refuse to make any distinctions, so that we
theorize that everything exists. But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be
logically coherent. So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well defined and
still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is computable. Within this plenuum
there are various states (numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what
part we experience. Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states and
relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in there somewhere.

I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics implies that
different things are computable, but I'm doubtful that it's true.

Brent

Hi Brent,

What is the basis of your doubt? Have you not looked at, for instance, the work of
Tipler that
discusses how different physics alters the kinds of computations that can occur? The
notion of Hypercomputation is a good
place to start.

Yes I can understand that there are mathematical models in which computations different
from Turing's are possible. But I'm doubtful whether they are coherent. If you tried to
build a physics on them that model conscious beings would you run into contradictions?
That's one role the physical universe plays, it (supposedly) is free of contradictions.
So if we have a mathematical model of something physical and the model is found to have a
contradiction we generally say that it cannot be a correct model of the physical something.

My agreement

Re: The consciousness singularity

On 12/9/2011 4:34 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King" wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I wouldn't
call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.

You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a mind, in contrast to
some supernatural soul stuff. It basically boils down to whether you suppose
there are some things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or
some stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that everything
happens and exists. In the latter case there's really no role for ur stuff whose
only function is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.

Brent

Hi Brent,

Where did I claim that. I was just pointing out the genesis of "everything
theories"; you did notice that this is called the "everything-list" didn't you?

Brent

HI Brent,

I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg my question? How
does immaterial based "everything theories" deal with this problem that I just outlined?

You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno. But as I understand it, the
ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to refuse to make any distinctions, so that
we theorize that everything exists. But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be
logically coherent. So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well defined and
still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is computable. Within this plenuum
there are various states (numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what
part we experience. Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states and
relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in there somewhere.

Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the relative way, by
the universal numbers themselves.

Hi Bruno and Brent,

Sorry, I do not accept that as a "good answer" since it would be cut to shreds by
the razor itself. Postulating that everything exists without a means to even demostrate
necessity is to postulate an infinite (of unknown cardinality!) of entities, in direct
contradiction to Occam's razor.

I think you have a mistaken conception of Occam's razor. Although Occam may have had
physical objects in mind when he enunciated his principle, no one uses that razor any
more. Occam's razor advises to make one's *theory* as simple as possible. For example
the atomic theory of matter entails an enormous number of objects - but it is a simple way
to explain the existent of different materials, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics,
bio-energetics,...

Even when we reduce this to a countable infinite of entities, the need for necessitation
remains unanswered. Why do numbers exist? Why numbers a

Re: The consciousness singularity


Dear Bruno,

On 12/9/2011 11:55 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/9/2011 9:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Assuming different instances of boolean algebra is assuming more than 
the natural numbers (like assuming finite and infinite sets).


Are two Boolean algebras that have different propositional content 
one and the same? If this is true then there is no variation is 
algorithms, it is to say that all algorithms are identical in every way.


Let me answer this differently. Does not the postulation of the 
primitive existence of numbers not equivalent to postulating an infinite 
set. Are not the Integers an (countable) infinite set?


Onward!

Stephen

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Re: Movie Graph Argument

2011-12-09 Thread Joseph Knight

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 3:55 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 09 Dec 2011, at 06:30, Joseph Knight wrote:
>
> Hi Bruno
>
> I was cruising the web when I stumbled upon a couple of PDFs by Jean-Paul
> Delahaye criticizing your work. (PDF 
> 1,
> PDF 2 ). I don't
> speak French, but google translate was able to help me up to a point. The
> main point of PDF 1, in relation to the UDA, seems to be that there is not
> necessarily a notion of probability defined for truly indeterministic
> events. (Is this accurate? Are there any results in this area? I couldn't
> find much.)
>
>
> Jean-Paul Delahaye was the director of my thesis, and in 2004, when I
> asked him why I did not get the gift (money, publication of the thesis, and
> promotion of it) of the price I got in Paris for my thesis, he told me that
> he has refuted it (!). I had to wait for more than six year to see that
> "refutation" which appears to be only a pack of crap.
>

So you never got the money, publication, or promotion?

Most objection are either rhetorical tricks, or contains elementary logical
> errors. I will, or not, answer to those fake objections. I have no clue why
> Delahaye acts like that. I think that if he had a real objection he would
> have told me this in private first, and not under my back. He showed a
> lacking of elementary scientific deontology. He might have some pressure
> from Paris, who witnessed some pressure from Brussels to hide a
> belgo-french academical scandal, but of course he denies this.
>

> So Delahaye is that unique "scientist", that i have mentionned in some
> post, who pretend to refute my thesis. My director thesis!
>
>
>
> The translation of PDF 2, with regards to the Movie Graph argument, was
> much harder for me to understand. Could you help me out with what Delayahe
> is saying here, and what your response is? I am just curious about these
> things :) I noticed some discussion of removing stones from heaps, and
> comparing that to the removal of subparts of the filmed graph, which to me
> seemed to be an illegitimate analogy, but I would like to hear your take...
>
>
> The heap argument was already done when I was working on the thesis, and I
> answered it by the stroboscopic argument, which he did understand without
> problem at that time. Such an argument is also answered by Chalmers fading
> qualia paper, and would introduce zombie in the mechanist picture. We can
> go through all of this if you are interested, but it would be simpler to
> study the MGA argument first, for example here:
>
> http://old.nabble.com/MGA-1-td20566948.html
>
> There are many other errors in Delahaye's PDF, like saying that there is
> no uniform measure on N (but there are just non sigma-additive measures),
> and also that remark is without purpose because the measure bears on
> infinite histories, like the iterated self-duplication experience, which is
> part of the UD's work, already illustrates.
>
> All along its critics, he confuses truth and validity, practical and in
> principle, deduction and speculation, science and continental philosophy.
> He also adds assumptions, and talk like if I was defending the truth of
> comp, which I never did (that mistake is not unfrequent, and is made by
> people who does not take the time to read the argument, usually).
>
> I proposed him, in 2004, to make a public talk at Lille, so that he can
> make his objection publicly, but he did not answer. I have to insist to get
> those PDF. I did not expect him to make them public before I answered them,
> though, and the tone used does not invite me to answer them with serenity.
> He has not convinced me, nor anyone else, that he takes himself his
> argument seriously.
>
> The only remark which can perhaps be taken seriously about MGA is the same
> as the one by Jacques Mallah on this list: the idea that a physically
> inactive material piece of machine could have a physical activity relevant
> for a particular computation, that is the idea that comp does not entail
> what I call "the 323 principle". But as Stathis Papaioannou said, this does
> introduce a magic (non Turing emulable) role for matter in the computation,
> and that's against the comp hypothesis. No one seems to take the idea that
> comp does not entail 323 seriously in this list, but I am willing to
> clarify this.
>

Could you elaborate on the 323 principle? It sounds like a qualm that I
also have had, to an extent, with the MGA and also with Tim Maudlin's
argument against supervenience -- the notion of "inertness" or "physical
inactivity" seems to be fairly vague.


> Indeed, it is not yet entirely clear for me if comp implies 323
> *logically*, due to the ambiguity of the "qua computatio". In the worst
> case, I can put 323 in the defining hypothesis of comp, but most of my
> student, and the reaction on this in the everything list suggests it is not
> necessary. It just s

Re: The consciousness singularity


On 12/9/2011 9:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 09 Dec 2011, at 13:34, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 12/9/2011 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"  
wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form 
of material
process occur for computations and would go even further in 
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would 
not specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational universality 
without

having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I 
wouldn't

call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.


You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a 
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It 
basically boils down to whether you suppose there are some 
things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, 
or some stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you 
suppose that everything happens and exists.  In the latter case 
there's really no role for ur stuff whose only function is to 
mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

  Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, 
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff 
as existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and 
exists" do not sleep together very well at all. The "everything 
happens and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has 
no way of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " 
from "Dick sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and not 
that", where as the "stuff whose only function is to mark some 
stuff as existing and the rest not" can be coherently defined as 
the union of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
  The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers 
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying medium 
that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I am 
reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had 
three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die 
and the third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
  The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when 
we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that just as 
it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one set of 
numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this from 
that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations 
exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of 
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the 
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

  I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg 
my question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal 
with this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I 
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to 
refuse to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that 
everything exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to 
be logically coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that 
is well defined and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything 
that is computable.  Within this plenuum there are various states 
(numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part 
we experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of 
states and relations between states - so whatever we experience 
must be in there somewhere.


Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the 
relative way, by the universal numbers themselves.


Hi Bruno and Brent,

   Sorry, I do not accept that as a "good answer" since it would be 
cut to shreds by the razor itself.


?


[SPK]
I take Occam  to say 
"in any explanation do not multiply entities beyond necessity."





Postulating that everything exists without a means to even demostrate 
necessity is to postulate an infinite (of unknown cardinality!) of 
entities, in direct contradiction to Occam's razor.


Occam razor asks for the minimal number of assumption in a theory. It 
does not care about the cardinal of the models of the theory. That is 
why the many worlds is a product of occam principle.


Sure, but the necessity of the plurality of "actual worlds" given 
that we can only observe one requires additional evidence. Some say that 
the interference of particles "with themselves"

Re: The consciousness singularity



On 09 Dec 2011, at 13:34, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 12/9/2011 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"   
wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form  
of material
process occur for computations and would go even further in  
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would  
not specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational  
universality without

having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I  
wouldn't

call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.


You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a  
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It  
basically boils down to whether you suppose there are some  
things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't,  
or some stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you  
suppose that everything happens and exists.  In the latter  
case there's really no role for ur stuff whose only function  
is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

  Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into,  
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff  
as existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and  
exists" do not sleep together very well at all. The "everything  
happens and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is  
has no way of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the  
" from "Dick sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and  
not that", where as the "stuff whose only function is to mark  
some stuff as existing and the rest not" can be coherently  
defined as the union of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not  
see.
  The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers  
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying  
medium that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I  
am reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had  
three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die  
and the third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
  The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes  
when we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that  
just as it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one  
set of numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this  
from that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that  
computations exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of  
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the  
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

  I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg  
my question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal  
with this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I  
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to  
refuse to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that  
everything exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to  
be logically coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that  
is well defined and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything  
that is computable.  Within this plenuum there are various states  
(numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part  
we experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of  
states and relations between states - so whatever we experience  
must be in there somewhere.


Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the  
relative way, by the universal numbers themselves.


Hi Bruno and Brent,

   Sorry, I do not accept that as a "good answer" since it would be  
cut to shreds by the razor itself.


?


Postulating that everything exists without a means to even  
demostrate necessity is to postulate an infinite (of unknown  
cardinality!) of entities, in direct contradiction to Occam's razor.


Occam razor asks for the minimal number of assumption in a theory. It  
does not care about the cardinal of the models of the theory. That is  
why the many worlds is a product of occam principle.





Even when we reduce this to a countable infinite of entities,


Which is indeed the case for the comp ontology, but the epistemology  
can and will be bigger. It is a sort of Skolem phenomenon, that I have  
often described.




the need for necessitation remains unanswered. Why do numbers exist?


Nobody can answer that. We

Re: The consciousness singularity


On 12/9/2011 2:47 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"  wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

  Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form of 
material
process occur for computations and would go even further in 
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would not 
specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational universality 
without

having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I 
wouldn't

call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.


You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a 
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It basically 
boils down to whether you suppose there are some things that are 
real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or some stuff exists 
and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that everything 
happens and exists.  In the latter case there's really no role for 
ur stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as existing and 
the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, 
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as 
existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and exists" do 
not sleep together very well at all. The "everything happens and 
exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no way of 
sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick sees 
this and not that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where as the 
"stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as existing and 
the rest not" can be coherently defined as the union of what Tom, 
Dick and Jane see and do not see.
The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers 
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying medium 
that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I am reminded 
of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had three sealed 
jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die and the third 
contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when 
we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that just as it 
vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one set of numbers 
from another. If the ability to distinguish this from that itself 
vanishes, how are we to claim that computations exist "independent 
of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of 
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the 
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg my 
question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal with 
this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I 
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to refuse 
to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that everything exists.  
But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be logically coherent.  
So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well defined and still 
possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is computable.  Within 
this plenuum there are various states (numbers in arithmetic) and some 
principle will pick out what part we experience.  Computation includes 
an uncountable infinity of states and relations between states - so 
whatever we experience must be in there somewhere.


I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics 
implies that different things are computable, but I'm doubtful that 
it's true.


Brent

Hi Brent,

What is the basis of your doubt? Have you not looked at, for 
instance, the work of Tipler 
 
that discusses how different physics alters the kinds of computations 
that can occur? The notion of Hypercomputation 
 is a good place to 
start. My agreement with Deutsch's assertion does not follow from just 
taking his words as authority. Consider a physical would in which the 
Plank constant was zero, Newton's universe for example; in such a world 
computations would be radically different if only because there do not 
exists any stable atoms. All computers would be sporadic and stochastic 
Boltzmann type computers. Would the same kind of universality that we 
have with our Turing thesis exist in such? The paper tape and read head 
would not have any physical support in the sense that its continuous 
existence over an a

Re: The consciousness singularity


On 12/9/2011 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"  wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

 Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form of 
material
process occur for computations and would go even further in 
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would not 
specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational universality 
without

having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I 
wouldn't

call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.


You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a 
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It basically 
boils down to whether you suppose there are some things that are 
real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or some stuff 
exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that 
everything happens and exists.  In the latter case there's really 
no role for ur stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as 
existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

   Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into, 
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as 
existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and exists" do 
not sleep together very well at all. The "everything happens and 
exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no way of 
sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick 
sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where 
as the "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as 
existing and the rest not" can be coherently defined as the union 
of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
   The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers 
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying medium 
that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I am 
reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had three 
sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die and the 
third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
   The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when 
we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that just as 
it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one set of 
numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this from that 
itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations exist 
"independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of 
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the 
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

   I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg my 
question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal with 
this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I 
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to refuse 
to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that everything 
exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be logically 
coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well defined 
and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is 
computable.  Within this plenuum there are various states (numbers in 
arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part we 
experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states 
and relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in 
there somewhere.


Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the 
relative way, by the universal numbers themselves.


Hi Bruno and Brent,

Sorry, I do not accept that as a "good answer" since it would be 
cut to shreds by the razor itself. Postulating that everything exists 
without a means to even demostrate necessity is to postulate an infinite 
(of unknown cardinality!) of entities, in direct contradiction to 
Occam's razor. Even when we reduce this to a countable infinite of 
entities, the need for necessitation remains unanswered. Why do numbers 
exist? Why numbers and not Nothing? At least with the Stone-type dualism 
we have a way to show the necessity of numbers via bisimulations between 
different instances of Boolean algebras and, dually, via causality 
between Stone spaces and thus do not violate Occam blindly.
Comprehensability requires the co-existence of that which is 
comprehended with that which is doing the comprehension, that numbers 
can comprehend themselves without additional structure seem to me to be 
ruled out even by you

Re: Movie Graph Argument



On 09 Dec 2011, at 06:30, Joseph Knight wrote:


Hi Bruno

I was cruising the web when I stumbled upon a couple of PDFs by Jean- 
Paul Delahaye criticizing your work. (PDF 1, PDF 2). I don't speak  
French, but google translate was able to help me up to a point. The  
main point of PDF 1, in relation to the UDA, seems to be that there  
is not necessarily a notion of probability defined for truly  
indeterministic events. (Is this accurate? Are there any results in  
this area? I couldn't find much.)


Jean-Paul Delahaye was the director of my thesis, and in 2004, when I  
asked him why I did not get the gift (money, publication of the  
thesis, and promotion of it) of the price I got in Paris for my  
thesis, he told me that he has refuted it (!). I had to wait for more  
than six year to see that "refutation" which appears to be only a pack  
of crap. Most objection are either rhetorical tricks, or contains  
elementary logical errors. I will, or not, answer to those fake  
objections. I have no clue why Delahaye acts like that. I think that  
if he had a real objection he would have told me this in private  
first, and not under my back. He showed a lacking of elementary  
scientific deontology. He might have some pressure from Paris, who  
witnessed some pressure from Brussels to hide a belgo-french  
academical scandal, but of course he denies this.


So Delahaye is that unique "scientist", that i have mentionned in some  
post, who pretend to refute my thesis. My director thesis!





The translation of PDF 2, with regards to the Movie Graph argument,  
was much harder for me to understand. Could you help me out with  
what Delayahe is saying here, and what your response is? I am just  
curious about these things :) I noticed some discussion of removing  
stones from heaps, and comparing that to the removal of subparts of  
the filmed graph, which to me seemed to be an illegitimate analogy,  
but I would like to hear your take...


The heap argument was already done when I was working on the thesis,  
and I answered it by the stroboscopic argument, which he did  
understand without problem at that time. Such an argument is also  
answered by Chalmers fading qualia paper, and would introduce zombie  
in the mechanist picture. We can go through all of this if you are  
interested, but it would be simpler to study the MGA argument first,  
for example here:


http://old.nabble.com/MGA-1-td20566948.html

There are many other errors in Delahaye's PDF, like saying that there  
is no uniform measure on N (but there are just non sigma-additive  
measures), and also that remark is without purpose because the measure  
bears on infinite histories, like the iterated self-duplication  
experience, which is part of the UD's work, already illustrates.


All along its critics, he confuses truth and validity, practical and  
in principle, deduction and speculation, science and continental  
philosophy. He also adds assumptions, and talk like if I was defending  
the truth of comp, which I never did (that mistake is not unfrequent,  
and is made by people who does not take the time to read the argument,  
usually).


I proposed him, in 2004, to make a public talk at Lille, so that he  
can make his objection publicly, but he did not answer. I have to  
insist to get those PDF. I did not expect him to make them public  
before I answered them, though, and the tone used does not invite me  
to answer them with serenity. He has not convinced me, nor anyone  
else, that he takes himself his argument seriously.


The only remark which can perhaps be taken seriously about MGA is the  
same as the one by Jacques Mallah on this list: the idea that a  
physically inactive material piece of machine could have a physical  
activity relevant for a particular computation, that is the idea that  
comp does not entail what I call "the 323 principle". But as Stathis  
Papaioannou said, this does introduce a magic (non Turing emulable)  
role for matter in the computation, and that's against the comp  
hypothesis. No one seems to take the idea that comp does not entail  
323 seriously in this list, but I am willing to clarify this.


Indeed, it is not yet entirely clear for me if comp implies 323  
*logically*, due to the ambiguity of the "qua computatio". In the  
worst case, I can put 323 in the defining hypothesis of comp, but most  
of my student, and the reaction on this in the everything list  
suggests it is not necessary. It just shows how far some people are  
taken to avoid the conclusion by making matter and mind quite magical.


I think it is better to study the UDA1-7, before MGA, and if you want  
I can answer publicly the remarks by Delahaye, both on UDA and MGA. I  
might send him a mail so that he can participate. Note that the two  
PDF does not address the mathematical and main part of the thesis  
(AUDA).


So ask any question, and if Delahaye's texts suggest some one to you,  
that is all good for our discussio

Re: The consciousness singularity



On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:

On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"   
wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?

Hi Craig,

 Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form  
of material
process occur for computations and would go even further in  
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would  
not specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational universality  
without

having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.

True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I  
wouldn't

call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.


You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a  
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff.  It basically  
boils down to whether you suppose there are some things that are  
real (e.g. some things happen and some don't, or some stuff  
exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you suppose that  
everything happens and exists.  In the latter case there's  
really no role for ur stuff whose only function is to mark some  
stuff as existing and the rest not.


Brent


Hi Brent,

   Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into,  
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff  
as existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and exists"  
do not sleep together very well at all. The "everything happens  
and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is has no way  
of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the " from "Dick  
sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and not that", where  
as the "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff as  
existing and the rest not" can be coherently defined as the union  
of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not see.
   The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers  
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying medium  
that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I am  
reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had  
three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die  
and the third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
   The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes when  
we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that just as  
it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one set of  
numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this from  
that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that computations exist  
"independent of physics"? Seriously!?!


Where did I claim that.  I was just pointing out the genesis of  
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the  
"everything-list" didn't you?


Brent

HI Brent,

   I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg  
my question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal  
with this problem that I just outlined?


You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno.  But as I  
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to  
refuse to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that everything  
exists.  But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to be logically  
coherent.  So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that is well  
defined and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything that is  
computable.  Within this plenuum there are various states (numbers  
in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part we  
experience.  Computation includes an uncountable infinity of states  
and relations between states - so whatever we experience must be in  
there somewhere.


Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the  
relative way, by the universal numbers themselves.






I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics  
implies that different things are computable, but I'm doubtful that  
it's true.


I agree, it is total non sense. Not only it would contradict Church  
thesis and the immunity of computability for diagonalization, but  
thanks to David Deutsch quantum computer, it does not even make sense  
with what we know currently believed in physics, and such a position  
is a sort of revisionist definition of what is a computation. That's  
is why I prefer to call Deutsch's "Church Turing principle" the  
"Deutsch's thesis". And it is an open problem if such a thesis is  
compatible with Church's thesis.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: The consciousness singularity



On 09 Dec 2011, at 00:04, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"  wrote:

On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?



Hi Craig,

 Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form of  
material
process occur for computations and would go even further in  
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would not  
specify

which it was. This way we preserve computational universality without
having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.



True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I wouldn't
call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism. To me computationalism is a degree of arithmetic
idealism already. Isn't that the whole point, that it can be emulated
independently from any specific material? If the dualistic view can be
called computationalism then what is Bruno's view called?


Mechanism is usually used by materialist or dualist to put the mind- 
body problem under the rug, with the idea that we are just (material)  
machine, so that mind emerge from material activity. Then the whole  
point of UDA is that such an idea does not work. Weak materialism (and  
thus both monistic and dualist materialism) is incompatible with  
computationalism (in the sense of "yes doctor"). That is not yet very  
well appreciated. With one exception scientist usually see the point,  
but most seems not to be interested in the mind-body issues. They see  
this kind of stuff as religious and condemn it without realizing that  
the mind-body problem, even with mechanism is not yet solved, which is  
the main point of UDA.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: UDA reducing physics to number theory