Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread meekerdb 

On 6/19/2012 7:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb  wrote:


I don't see that as contrary to compatibilism which holds that 'free will'
is compatible with determinism (but not that determinism is necessarily
true).  Of course an otherwise deterministic intelligence may make a random
choice as part of a rational strategy.  Does libertarian free will *require*
that some actions be random?

These are the possibilities:

determinism true, free will true
determinism true, free will false
determinism false, free will true
determinism false, free will false

Now, I would say that if something is not determined, it is random.
You can think of unusual cases and they still fit into the determined
or random categories. For example, if my decisions depend on my brain
solving the halting program, I would say that is still determined,
even if it is not computable. I don't think invoking the spiritual
realm or exotic physics changes the dichotomy, although maybe the
argument comes down to semantics. In any case, the non-compatibilists
like Craig Weinberg won't be satisfied with *any* explanation of how
people make decisions: not antecedent cause, not retroactive
causation, not randomness, not manipulation by a spiritual force. It's
nonsensical.




I don't think random and determined are mutually exclusive, or at least not a clear 
analysis. Suppose we could monitor a person's physical state at a very low level (e.g. 
molecular) and we found that the same state did not result in the same action.  Off hand 
we might to tempted to say that then it must be random.  But suppose that we also observe 
that it is always directed toward satisfying stated objectives of that person.  So the 
actions are random in the sense of not fully determined, yet they may be statistically 
determined to fall in a few narrow categories. I think this is not only consistent with 
'free will' in the social/legal/responsible sense, it exemplifies the concept.  It shows 
some consistency of purpose and values we refer to as 'character' that is primarily 
internal to the person.


Brent

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Stathis Papaioannou 
On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 2:23 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

> Why does my free will depend on someone else's ability to predict it? Just
> because what I say is not surprising doesn't mean that I am not generating
> my own words voluntarily and freely.

Your actions are unpredictable, even if determinism is true. On the
other hand, known random behaviour such as radioactive decay is highly
predictable. Determinism is not synonymous with predictability and
randomness is not synonymous with unpredictability. And "generating
your own words voluntarily and freely" is consistent with determinism
or randomness or else it is incoherent.


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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Stathis Papaioannou 
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb  wrote:

> I don't see that as contrary to compatibilism which holds that 'free will'
> is compatible with determinism (but not that determinism is necessarily
> true).  Of course an otherwise deterministic intelligence may make a random
> choice as part of a rational strategy.  Does libertarian free will *require*
> that some actions be random?

These are the possibilities:

determinism true, free will true
determinism true, free will false
determinism false, free will true
determinism false, free will false

Now, I would say that if something is not determined, it is random.
You can think of unusual cases and they still fit into the determined
or random categories. For example, if my decisions depend on my brain
solving the halting program, I would say that is still determined,
even if it is not computable. I don't think invoking the spiritual
realm or exotic physics changes the dichotomy, although maybe the
argument comes down to semantics. In any case, the non-compatibilists
like Craig Weinberg won't be satisfied with *any* explanation of how
people make decisions: not antecedent cause, not retroactive
causation, not randomness, not manipulation by a spiritual force. It's
nonsensical.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread meekerdb 

On 6/19/2012 11:38 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
As for Newtons arguments for God, please find below quotes from Soul of Science, p. 
66-67. If you do not agree, you may want to read Newton's Principia and offer your own 
interpretation.


Evgenii

"The reason Newton felt free to avoid ultimate causes was, of course, that for him the 
ultimate cause was God. He viewed gravity as an active principle through which God 
Himself imposes order onto passive matter—as one of the avenues through which God 
exercises His immediate activity in creation. As Kaiser puts it, for Newton things like 
gravity “depended on God’s immediate presence and activity as much as the breathing of 
an organism depends on the life-principle within.” Like breathing, these active powers 
were regular and natural, and yet they could not be explained in purely mechanical terms."


"A second way Newton found to “fit God in” was in his concept of absolute time and 
space. From the mathematician Isaac Barrow, Newton adopted the idea that time and space 
are expressions of God’s own eternity and omnipresence. Newton took God’s eternity to 
mean He is actually extended throughout all time — in his words, God’s “duration reaches 
from eternity to eternity.” He took God’s omnipresence to mean that He is extended 
throughout all space — His presence reaches “from infinity to infinity.” Therefore time 
must be eternal and space infinite.20 Physics textbooks often describe Newton’s concepts 
of absolute space and time as purely metaphysical without explaining that his motivation 
was primarily religious."


"A third way Newton found a role for God in the world was as the source of its orderly 
structure. In the cosmic order, Newton saw evidence of intelligent design. “The main 
business” of science, he said, is to argue backward along the chain of mechanical causes 
and effects “till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical.” 
Newton also regarded several specific characteristics of the world as inexplicable 
except as the work of a Creator. “Was the eye contrived without skill in optics,” he 
asked, “or the ear without knowledge of sounds?”"


"A fourth way Newton found a role for God was by assuming that the universe needs God’s 
intervention from time to time to stabilize it. For example, the orbits of the planets 
exhibit irregularities when they pass close to other planets or to comets. Newton feared 
that over time these fluctuations would accumulate and cause chaos, and the solar system 
would collapse. Therefore, he argued, God must step in periodically and set things right 
again. If the universe is a clock, then it is a clock that on occasion needs to be 
repaired and rebuilt." 


I note that Newton is described as "finding a role for God", which I think is correct.  
Newton took his scientific discoveries and found a way to fit God into them, to give God 
something to do, gaps to fill.


Brent

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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi 

On 19.06.2012 09:50 Bruno Marchal said the following:




..


This might be because you confine yourself to christian theologians.
I read a long time ago a book ("La malle de Newton") which confirms
Newton neo-platonic tendencies. Keep in mind that neo-platonist have
to hide their idea since Rome, and still today. Theology comes from


I am not that sure. The Church was not uniform and there were many 
different intellectual groups as usually fighting with each other. 
Neo-platonists belonged just to one of such groups. Below there are a 
couple of quotes from Soul of Science.


Well, if we talk about Giordano Bruno

"He argued that the Egyptian pantheism described in the hermetic 
writings was superior to Christianity."


This was too much for Christians and Bruno was burned. Yet most 
Christians as neo-platonists did not want to replace Christianity.


"Whereas the Christian Aristotelian tradition stressed God’s 
rationality, the neo-Platonic tradition stressed His indwelling spirit 
working in and through matter. A favorite metaphor was God as an 
artisan—“the best and most orderly Artisan of all,” in the words of

Copernicus."

"Like Aristotelianism, neo-Platonism saw the world as an organism but 
with a different emphasis: In explaining natural processes it appealed 
not to rational Forms but to the creative power of spiritual forces. 
These forces were often regarded as divine, or at least as avenues of 
divine activity in the world."


"Neo-Platonism contained two somewhat distinct streams of thought. One 
stream can be traced in astronomy; it contained a strong Pythagorean 
element with a profound and even mystical respect for mathematics. The 
other stream can be traced in medicine and early chemistry; it focused 
on immanent, quasi-spiritual forces in nature—“active principles,” as

they were called."

You will find in the Soul of Science many names of this tradition. It 
might be interesting to read theological works in this respect.


Evgenii



the Platonic idea that what we see, observe and measure, is not the
whole of reality, but the christians came back with the strong
emphasis on the material nature of the creation, and the
oversimplication and personification of the "creator".

Bruno


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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi 

On 18.06.2012 23:53 meekerdb said the following:

On 6/18/2012 12:37 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 18.06.2012 19:33 meekerdb said the following:

On 6/13/2012 1:02 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

And what is that meaning which they have expounded with
unanimity and has anyone who is *not* a theologian ever
believed it?


I believe that educated people, for example scientists, have
followed theological books.


But I asked what *it* is, the meaning they have expounded with
*unanimity*. No doubt some scientists have been influenced by
some theological and philosophical writing. But did they *believe
it* and *was it unanimous* or was it selected by the scientist
from many contradictory writings as one agreeable to his ideas.



This would be a goal of historical research to find it out.


But the quote you posted asserted that such a meaning was already
known: "I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the
meaning I suppose to be attached by this author to the proposition
'God exists' is a meaning Christian theologians have never attached
to it, and does not even remotely resemble the meaning which with
some approach to unanimity they have expounded at considerable
length."


Collingwood has written this statement according to the historical 
research available at his time. In his lectures, Maarten Hoenen who is 
an expert in middle ages, says similar things. You may assume that both 
of them are apologetic but then you should find other historians and see 
what they say. You may also read originals texts and offer your own 
interpretation. The point however that the interpretation should be 
based on the texts that had been written at those times.



For example a couple of quotes from Newton (according to Soul of
Science)

Newton, General Scholium "This Being governs all things, not as the
 soul of the world, but as Lord over all; ... and Deity is the
dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy
God to be the soul of the world, but over servants."

“this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only
 proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and
powerful Being.”

Now the quote from the book Soul of Science itself:

"Roger Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Newton’s
Principia, wrote that the book 'will be the safest protection
against the attacks of atheists, and nowhere more surely than from
this quiver can one draw forth missiles against the band of godless
men.'"


Hard to have been more wrong than that.


I am not sure if I understand what you mean. Do you mean that this had 
not been written in the preface to the second edition of Newton’s

Principia?

From SEV

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/

"The second edition appeared in 1713, twenty six years after the first."

"In addition to these, two changes were made that were more polemical 
than substantive: Newton added the General Scholium following Book 3 in 
the second edition, and his editor Roger Cotes provided a long 
anti-Cartesian (and anti-Leibnizian) Preface."


It seems that quote from Soul of Science is the correct one. Note that 
this had happened when Newton was alive.


As for Newtons arguments for God, please find below quotes from Soul of 
Science, p. 66-67. If you do not agree, you may want to read Newton's 
Principia and offer your own interpretation.


Evgenii

"The reason Newton felt free to avoid ultimate causes was, of course, 
that for him the ultimate cause was God. He viewed gravity as an active 
principle through which God Himself imposes order onto passive matter—as 
one of the avenues through which God exercises His immediate activity in 
creation. As Kaiser puts it, for Newton things like gravity “depended on 
God’s immediate presence and activity as much as the breathing of an 
organism depends on the life-principle within.” Like breathing, these 
active powers were regular and natural, and yet they could not be 
explained in purely mechanical terms."


"A second way Newton found to “fit God in” was in his concept of 
absolute time and space. From the mathematician Isaac Barrow, Newton 
adopted the idea that time and space are expressions of God’s own 
eternity and omnipresence. Newton took God’s eternity to mean He is 
actually extended throughout all time — in his words, God’s “duration 
reaches from eternity to eternity.” He took God’s omnipresence to mean 
that He is extended throughout all space — His presence reaches “from 
infinity to infinity.” Therefore time must be eternal and space 
infinite.20 Physics textbooks often describe Newton’s concepts of 
absolute space and time as purely metaphysical without explaining that 
his motivation was primarily religious."


"A third way Newton found a role for God in the world was as the source 
of its orderly structure. In the cosmic order, Newton saw evidence of 
intelligent design. “The main business” of science, he said, is to argue 
backward along the chain of mechanical causes and ef

Re: Autonomy? A proposal

2012-06-19 Thread Stephen P. King 

On 6/19/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 19 Jun 2012, at 08:01, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 5:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Brent, Stephen,


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:55, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 11:51 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/18/2012 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Because consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced 
a separation between me and not me, and the "not me" below my 
substitution level get stable and persistent by the statistical 
interference between the infinitely many computations leading to 
my first person actual state.


How does on computation interfere with another? and how does that 
define a conscious stream of thought that is subjective agreement 
with other streams of thought?


Brent




They interfere statistically by the first person indeterminacy on 
UD* (or arithmetic).


Hi Bruno,

You seem to have an exact metric for this "measure" of "the first 
person indeterminacy on UD* (or arithmetic)".


Not at all. I only reduce the mind-body problem (including the body 
problem) into the problem of finding that metric. UDA must be seen as 
a proof of existence of that "metric" from the comp hypothesis. Then 
AUDA gives the logic of observable which is a step toward that metric 
isolation.


Dear Bruno,

What I fail to understand is how the currently well known and 
existing proofs of the non-existence of generic metrics on infinite sets 
that are, AFAIK, identical to your concept of computations (as strings 
of numbers) do not seem to impress you at all. It is as if your are 
willfully blind to evidence that contradicts your claims. I am 
sympathetic to your motivation and am interested in finding a path 
around this serious problem that I see in your reasoning. My point here 
is that this claim that "UDA must be seen as a proof of existence of 
that "metric" from the comp hypothesis" has no epistemological "weight" 
if it cannot be associated with the other aspects of mathematics. One 
must show how one's new idea/discovery of mathematical 
"objects/relations" are related to the wider universe of mathematical 
objects and relations; or one is risking the path of solipsism.
I have tried to get your attention to look at various 
possibilities, such as the axiom of choice, non-well founded sets, the 
Tennenbaum theorem, etc. as possible hints to a path to the solution but 
you seem to be trapped in a thought, like light orbiting a black hole, 
endlessly repeating the same idea over and over. Would you snap out of 
it and see what I am trying to explain to you?







What I need to understand is the reasoning behind your choice of set 
theory and arithmetic axioms;


I don't use set theory. Only elementary arithmetic. At the ontological 
level.


But Bruno, you are being disingenuous here. The phrase "only 
elementary arithmetic" is not all that is involved! in order to have a 
meaningful description of "only elementary arithmetic" one has to relate 
to a wider univerce of concepts and one must connect to the physical 
acts that support the experience of what numbers are.


At the meta-level I use all the math I need, like any scientist in any 
part of science.




I am not sure what that means.




after all there are many mutually-exclusive and yet self-consistent 
choices that can be made. Do you see a 1p feature that would allow 
you to known that preference is not biased?


As I said, I use arithmetic because natiural numbers are taught in 
high school, but any (Turing) universal will do.


Do you understand the idea that "natural numbers [as] ... taught in 
high school" does not have special ontological status? I am trying to 
get you to think of numbers in a wider context.


the point is that neither the laws of consciousness, nor the laws of 
matter depend on the choice of the basic initial system, so I use the 
one that everybody knows.


So, does a consensus of belief grant special ontological status? 
What else am I to think of the implication of the phrase "... that 
everybody knows". Closed sets of communications are (representationally) 
studied in network, game and graph theory. From what I have read, finite 
versions of these reach equilibrium in at least log_2 N steps and once 
there never change again. This only illustrates the point that we have 
to consider open systems and those are such that they do not allow for 
exact closed form descriptions in math. This is a well known fact to any 
competent engineer.


Sometimes I use the combinators or the lambda algebra. I don't use 
geometrical or physical system because that would be both a treachery, 
in our setting, and it would also be confusing for the complete 
derivation of the physical laws.


Nice excuse! LOL!







And it remains to be seen if that defines a conscious stream of 
thought that is subjective agreement with other streams of thought.


If it does not have "subjective argeement" with other mutually 
exclusive then there wou

Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread John Clark 
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 6:01 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

> >> Unlike the proton and neutron nobody has found any experimental
> evidence that the electron has a inner structure, that it is made of parts.
>
>
> > The primitive matter I talk about is the idea of primary matter in the
> Aristotle sense
>

Aristotle was a great logician but a dreadful physicist.

> If I say that electron is not primitive, I don't mean it is made of part,
> almost the contrary, that it is a mathematical reality, or that it is
> reducible to a non physical mathematical or theological reality, an
> invariant in our sharable computations.
>

I don't know what that means. What experiment would I need to perform, what
would a electron need to do to prove it was "primitive".

>> To calculate the first 100 digits of Chaitin's constant you'd need to
>> feed all programs that can be expressed in 100 bits or less into a Turing
>> Machine and see how many of them stop and how many of then do not. Some of
>> them will never stop but the only way to know how many is to wait a
>> infinite number of years and then see how many programs are still running.
>> So you'd need to be infinitely patient, in other words you'd need to be
>> dead.
>>
>
> > Only to be sure of the decimals obtained.
>

Well yeah, it's easy to calculate Chaitin's constant  if you don't mind
getting it wrong.

> If I relax that constraints, then I need only to be *very patient*. The
> non computable, but well defined Buzzy Beaver function (BB) bounds the time
> needed to wait. Of course it grows *very* fast. But I don't need an
> *infinite* time to get the 100 first digits correct. Any time bigger than
> BB(100) will do.
>

If we wait a googoplex to the googoplex power years some 100 bit programs
will still be running, some of them could be Busy Beaver programs but
others could just be very long finite programs. And in the same 1962 paper
where Rado introduced the idea of the beaver he proved that a general
algorithm to tell if a program is a Busy Beaver or not does not exist. It's
true that if you knew the numerical value of Chaitin's Constant then you
would know that if a 100 bit program had not stopped after a Turing Machine
had run n number of finite operations then it never will; but the trouble
is you don't know Chaitin's Constant and never can, so you can never know
how big n is. So even though they have been running for a googoplex to the
googoplex power years one of those programs could stop 5 seconds from now.

And a Busy Beaver program grows faster than any computable function but to
my knowledge it has not been proven that all non-computable functions grow
as fast as the Busy Beaver.

 > Lawrence Krauss in his book "A Universe From Nothing" says that someday
> something close to that might actually be possible.
>
>
> > You mean? Deriving addition and multiplication from physics?
>

No, Krauss talks about deriving physics from addition and multiplication,
or at least from logic; he talks about proving that in the multiverse only
certain fundamental laws of physics are logically self consistent.  He even
talks about the distant dream of showing that "something" is consistent but
"nothing" is not.

> That is impossible.
>

I think both Krauss and I would give the same response to that, maybe.

> Why do you use "gibberish" to condemn free will, and not to condemn event
> without cause?
>

Because the meaning of "a event without a cause" is clear and no
circularity is involved. Even the meaning of the question "what caused a
event without a cause?" is clear, although it is a stupid question because
the answer is so obvious.  But the meaning of "free will" is anything but
clear and circularity abounds. And "why do we have free will?" is not a
stupid question, its not smart and its not stupid and even though it
contains a question mark it's not even a question, it's just a sequence of
ASCII characters.

  John K Clark

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Re: Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics

2012-06-19 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi 

On 18.06.2012 21:56 Craig Weinberg said the following:

On Monday, June 18, 2012 3:12:35 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:




Do you have a good definition of 'cause'?



Any change originating from beyond your own direct participation, ie,
the consequence of any motive other than your own.


The question is how you define it for the physical world. If you as 
Greeks believe in an animistic theory of nature, then it would work. But 
if not, they I personally do not know how. For example, how to define 
cause in Einstein's spacetime?


Evgenii

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 19 Jun 2012, at 17:11, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/19/2012 3:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Lawrence Krauss in his book "A Universe From Nothing" says that  
someday something close to that might actually be possible.


You mean? Deriving addition and multiplication from physics? That  
is impossible.


I'd say that depends on what you mean by 'derive'.  Certainly the  
idea of addition and multiplication occurs to humans, and even to  
some animals, through evolutionary processes.


I meant derive by a logical deduction.

Like we can derive exponentiation from addition and multiplication,  
but it is a *very* difficult problem which took seventy years to be  
solved (mainly by Davis, Robinson, and Matiyasevich).


Bruno

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



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 19 Jun 2012, at 17:00, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/19/2012 12:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



On 19 Jun 2012, at 00:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/18/2012 2:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Brent, Stephen,


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:55, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 11:51 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/18/2012 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Because consciousness, to be relatively manifestable,  
introduced a separation between me and not me, and the "not  
me" below my substitution level get stable and persistent by  
the statistical interference between the infinitely many  
computations leading to my first person actual state.


How does on computation interfere with another? and how does  
that define a conscious stream of thought that is subjective  
agreement with other streams of thought?


Brent




They interfere statistically by the first person indeterminacy on  
UD* (or arithmetic).


That still seems very vague.  I can suppose that many computations  
go thru the same or similar sequences which later branch and so  
have indeterminant futures.  But is that 'interference'?


Sure. Of course a priori it is not wave like, for the probabilities  
add only, untilm you take the self-reference constraint into  
account, which leads to the arithmetical quantization, which  
imposes a quantum logic on the consistent extensions.



To quick for me. Is this spelled out somewhere.


In most of my papers. I think I describe the quantization in sane04.  
You have to study a bit of mathematical logic. The quantization of p  
is given mainly by [] <> p, with the [] p = Bp & Dt, and B Gödel's  
provability predicate. You have to restrict p to the sigma_1  
propositions. We can come back on this.







And why should it produce any "me", "not me" boundary?


It does not. "personal identity" is an illusion due to disconnected  
memories,


But they are not 'disconnected'.  It's their connectedness that is  
essential to the 'illusion'.



 I was talking about the memories of different individuals.





and correct self-reference. The me/not me is just explained by the  
diagonalisation: if Dx gives xx, DD gives DD.


Again, does not explain it to me.


It makes possible to have program defined in term of their own code.  
It solves the conceptual difficulties described by Descartes and  
Driesch about life. I used it to implement "planarias" (self- 
regenerating programs, or collection of programs). It explains self- 
reference at least in the technical sense that it provides the tools  
to handle self-reproduction, and self-reference. It is *the* tool in  
proving the arithmetical completeness of the logic of self-reference G  
and G*.  It gives a precise mathematical notion of self, defined  
relatively to a universal number/machine/probable-neighboor.


You can use it to show that there is no possible algorithm for the  
stopping problem. Just define the following "duplicator D"


Dx = if stop(xx) then continue, else stop.

Then "stop" fails on DD:

DD = if stop(DD) then continue, else stop.

I can give a more formal view with the phi_i, or with the W_i, but the  
basic idea is very simple. It starts the whole subject on  
(arithmetical) self-reference.


A good introductory paper is

SMORYNSKI, C., 1981, Fifty Years of Self-Reference in Arithmetic,  
Notre Dame Journal

of Formal Logic, Vol. 22, n° 4, pp. 357-374.

Bruno







And it remains to be seen if that defines a conscious stream of  
thought that is subjective agreement with other streams of thought.








Do you realize that you are asking Bruno the same question  
here that I have been asking him for a long time now? Exactly  
how do computations have any form of causal efficacy upon each  
other within  an immaterialist scheme?


By the embedding of a large part of the constructive computer  
science in arithmetic.


There is a universal diophantine polynomial (I will say more on  
this on the FOAR list soon). Once you have a universal system,  
you get them all (with CT). I might identify a notion of cause  
with the notion of universal (or not) machine. Some existing  
number relation implements all the possible relations between all  
possible universal machine.


You have to study the detail of Gödel's proof, or study Kleene's  
predicate, which translate computer science in arithmetic. For  
the non materialist, the problem is not to get interactions, the  
problem is not having too much of them.


Exactly.  It's the problem of having proved too much.  To say all  
computations can exist and if consciousness is computation then  
all conscious thoughts will exist is true but meaningless - like  
tautologies are.


It is not tautological because we can test if there are too much  
computations and if they obey quantum logic or not, so it is  
certainly not tautological. You forget that the laws of physics are  
given by the statistics on those computations.


Bruno




Brent



Keep in mind I submit a problem, for the comp

Re: free will and mathematics

2012-06-19 Thread R AM 
On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 13 Jun 2012, at 10:44, R AM wrote:
>
> I know that you and Bruno are compatibilists. I'm not attacking your
> notion of free will. I agree that free will is a social construct. I'm
> going even further: free will doesn't even deserve a name. Deep down, free
> will is not something people have, but just a social definition of under
> what conditions or situations we will be considered responsible (and
> punishable).
>
>
>
> You can do that. But  would *that* not be a reductionist view of reality?
>
>
No, because I'm just exposing a false belief.


> You are saying that free-will does not exist because it is a higher level
> description of complex aggregations of simple processes.
>

Not really, all I'm saying is that belief in free will is like belief in
flat earth: false. And this is not based on physical reality being
deterministic or random but on subjective experience:

- Introspection shows that most of our thoughts and decisions are
unconscious (try not to think on anything for 30 minutes and see what
happens)

- The idea of "I could have done otherwise" is silly. If you try to imagine
yourself in exactly the same conscious situation, you will have to conclude
that you would not have done otherwise (at least, not consciously).
Otherwise, you would already have done it.

Dan Dennett says most of these things much better than I could, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLAbWFCh1E

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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 19 Jun 2012, at 16:55, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/19/2012 12:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Is this the "meaning which with some approach to unanimity they  
have expounded at considerable length."  It doesn't sound  
unanimous with with any theologians I've read.


This might be because you confine yourself to christian theologians.


You're saying that because I only read one kind of theologian I  
don't see the unanimity that I would if I read different theologians??



Have you read Aldous Huxley "Philosophia perennis". There might be a  
silencious unanimity because God has no Name, and it might go without  
saying.






I read a long time ago a book ("La malle de Newton") which confirms  
Newton neo-platonic tendencies. Keep in mind that neo-platonist  
have to hide their idea since Rome, and still today.


Because they are persecuted??  Or because they have not been able to  
provide any useful results?


They have inspired research, and the search for truth.





Theology comes from the Platonic idea that what we see, observe and  
measure, is not the whole of reality, but the christians came back  
with the strong emphasis on the material nature of the creation,  
and the oversimplication and personification of the "creator".


Hardly a Christian invention, since they borrowed it from the Jews  
whose Yaweh was one of many tribal war gods.


You are right, the Christians took the Jewish Legend and the Greek  
Theory, but unfortunately they got the authoritarian virus. The greek  
were divided between WYSIWYG or NOT WYSIWYG. The questions remain.  
Well, in the comp theory is it clearly NOT WYSIWYG. Things run deeper.


Bruno


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



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread 1Z 


On Jun 19, 3:59 pm, John Clark  wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 1Z  wrote:
> >> how would the world be different if causes WERE reasons?
>
> > > if someone gets struck  by lightning, God really does hate them.
>
> I pray to God you're joking.

Causes=reasons is *your* idea. I'm just stating the consequence.

> > Reasons are aims and intentions in the minds of intelligent agents which
> > explain and justify their actions. If you want to promote causes to
> > reasons, you are going to need a lot more intelligent agents.
>
> So the difference between intelligent agents and other complex things like
> cells or computers or redwood trees or galaxies is that intelligent agents
> do things because of reasons but other mechanical things do things because
> of causes;

Sufficiently advanced AIs and non human animals may count
as intelligent agents too.

> and the difference between causes and reasons is that reasons do
> things to intelligent agents but causes do things to other mechanical
> things.

No. Causes do, reasons explain.

>And around and around we go and where we stop nobody knows.

You seem to be alleging  that "intelligent agent" and "reason" have
been defined in a mutually circular way. They haven't been.

> And when you say "the reason the street's wet is that it's raining" you are
> implying that asphalt is an intelligent agent.

No, that's a deviant use of "reason", which you have based
you whole argument on. It is as if you are insisting that ships
really are female because they are called "she".

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Craig Weinberg 
On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:20:32 AM UTC-4, John K Clark wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> > I can provide an example of something that is neither random nor 
>> determined*
>>
>> * (from certain perspectives)
>>
>
> Of course it's not random or determined *FROM CERTAIN PERSPECTIVES*!  
>

Are you assuming that it is possible to have any other kind of perspective? 
An omniscient voyeur who sees all possible perspectives without 
participating in any of them in any way? 
 

> I've said over and over that there are only 2 meanings to the phrase "free 
> will" that are not gibberish, and one of them is the inability to always 
> predict what you will do next even in a stable environment 
>

Why does my free will depend on someone else's ability to predict it? Just 
because what I say is not surprising doesn't mean that I am not generating 
my own words voluntarily and freely.
 

> and even if such a prediction would be easy to make by someone else who 
> has a different perspective. And I have also said that it is unfortunate 
> that nobody except me has either meaning in mind when they make the "free 
> will" noise and prefer circularity and gibberish.  
>
>   John K Clark   
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>>
>> Cursor movements when controlling a VM.  While a super-intelligent AI 
>> program running in the VM could come up with theories about the mouse 
>> movements, even possibly learning some rudimentary rules about acceleration 
>> and inertia from the movements of the cursor, or theorize they are 
>> controlled by diurnal creatures, such an AI could never truly predict when 
>> and where the mouse pointer will be moved next.
>>
>> Similarly, when one plays a computer game, from the perspective of the AI 
>> characters in the game, your character is controlled by an indeterminable 
>> process whose total information and description can never be fully known to 
>> those characters within the simulation.  Chalmers mentions this as a 
>> possibility for concretely realizing dualism: 
>> http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html
>>
>> There is little difference, that I can see, between Brent's proposed 
>> spirit world intervening in the physical world, and brains in vats 
>> intervening in a virtual world, and there is nothing impossible about the 
>> latter scenario.  From the perspective of those in the virtual world, the 
>> actions of entities would be neither random nor determined.
>>  
>> Jason
>>  
>>
>>>
>>>  >but believers in contra causal free will think that at least some of 
 their actions are.

>>>
>>> In other words believers in contra causal free will (whatever the hell 
>>> that's supposed to mean) believe that nothing caused them to do it and 
>>> being masters of doublethink simultaneously believe that nothing didn't 
>>> cause them to do it, in still other words believers in "contra causal free 
>>> will" believe in the power of gibberish. 
>>>
>>> > I don't know whether they would allow that psychological states must 
 be either deterministic or random.

>>>
>>> What do you mean you don't know! If they did it because they wanted to 
>>> then it's deterministic. 
>>>
>>>  > There is even an interpretation of QM (mostly associated with Henry 
 Stapp) that looks at "random" events as "caused by future states".

>>>
>>> Fine, but if it's caused then it's not random. Maybe things we believe 
>>> are random are really caused but the causes are very strange,
>>>
>>
But not strange enough to be ordinary 'free will' apparently...that is the 
one thing that cannot exist or be named. Hard to prohibit the existence of 
something unless you know precisely what it is you are prohibitingand 
if you know what free will is supposed to be, then it is hardly 
incomprehensible noise.

however just because humans find them weird does not make them one bit less 
>>> mechanical. 
>>>
>>
Perhaps just because you find non-mechanical free will intolerable doesn't 
make it one bit less real?
 

> Perhaps last month you had no choice and you just had to spend good money 
>>> to see the movie "John Carter on Mars", you were forced into it because a 
>>> hundred years from now your great great great granddaughter will buy an ice 
>>> cream cone at a movie called "Mars on John Carter". But I don't understand 
>>> how any of this is supposed to make the "free will" noise less idiotic.
>>>
>>
What does it matter how much sense free will makes if you have no free will 
to determine your own opinion about it?

Craig
 

>
>>
>

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread John Clark 
On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:56 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

> I can provide an example of something that is neither random nor
> determined*
>
> * (from certain perspectives)
>

Of course it's not random or determined *FROM CERTAIN PERSPECTIVES*!  I've
said over and over that there are only 2 meanings to the phrase "free will"
that are not gibberish, and one of them is the inability to always predict
what you will do next even in a stable environment and even if such a
prediction would be easy to make by someone else who has a different
perspective. And I have also said that it is unfortunate that nobody except
me has either meaning in mind when they make the "free will" noise and
prefer circularity and gibberish.

  John K Clark






>
> Cursor movements when controlling a VM.  While a super-intelligent AI
> program running in the VM could come up with theories about the mouse
> movements, even possibly learning some rudimentary rules about acceleration
> and inertia from the movements of the cursor, or theorize they are
> controlled by diurnal creatures, such an AI could never truly predict when
> and where the mouse pointer will be moved next.
>
> Similarly, when one plays a computer game, from the perspective of the AI
> characters in the game, your character is controlled by an indeterminable
> process whose total information and description can never be fully known to
> those characters within the simulation.  Chalmers mentions this as a
> possibility for concretely realizing dualism:
> http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html
>
> There is little difference, that I can see, between Brent's proposed
> spirit world intervening in the physical world, and brains in vats
> intervening in a virtual world, and there is nothing impossible about the
> latter scenario.  From the perspective of those in the virtual world, the
> actions of entities would be neither random nor determined.
>
> Jason
>
>
>>
>>  >but believers in contra causal free will think that at least some of
>>> their actions are.
>>>
>>
>> In other words believers in contra causal free will (whatever the hell
>> that's supposed to mean) believe that nothing caused them to do it and
>> being masters of doublethink simultaneously believe that nothing didn't
>> cause them to do it, in still other words believers in "contra causal free
>> will" believe in the power of gibberish.
>>
>> > I don't know whether they would allow that psychological states must be
>>> either deterministic or random.
>>>
>>
>> What do you mean you don't know! If they did it because they wanted to
>> then it's deterministic.
>>
>>  > There is even an interpretation of QM (mostly associated with Henry
>>> Stapp) that looks at "random" events as "caused by future states".
>>>
>>
>> Fine, but if it's caused then it's not random. Maybe things we believe
>> are random are really caused but the causes are very strange, however just
>> because humans find them weird does not make them one bit less mechanical.
>> Perhaps last month you had no choice and you just had to spend good money
>> to see the movie "John Carter on Mars", you were forced into it because a
>> hundred years from now your great great great granddaughter will buy an ice
>> cream cone at a movie called "Mars on John Carter". But I don't understand
>> how any of this is supposed to make the "free will" noise less idiotic.
>>
>>   John K Clark
>>
>> --
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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread meekerdb 

On 6/19/2012 3:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Lawrence Krauss in his book "A Universe From Nothing" says that someday something close 
to that might actually be possible.


You mean? Deriving addition and multiplication from physics? That is impossible.


I'd say that depends on what you mean by 'derive'.  Certainly the idea of addition and 
multiplication occurs to humans, and even to some animals, through evolutionary processes.


Brent


You can't derive them from anything which does not postulate them implicitly. Physics 
already assume + and * (or R and trigonometric functions, which are a way to (re)define 
the integers in analysis, by sin(2*PI*x) = 0; for example).


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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread meekerdb 

On 6/19/2012 12:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 19 Jun 2012, at 00:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/18/2012 2:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Brent, Stephen,


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:55, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 11:51 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/18/2012 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Because consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced a separation 
between me and not me, and the "not me" below my substitution level get stable and 
persistent by the statistical interference between the infinitely many computations 
leading to my first person actual state.


How does on computation interfere with another? and how does that define a conscious 
stream of thought that is subjective agreement with other streams of thought?


Brent




They interfere statistically by the first person indeterminacy on UD* (or 
arithmetic).


That still seems very vague.  I can suppose that many computations go thru the same or 
similar sequences which later branch and so have indeterminant futures.  But is that 
'interference'?


Sure. Of course a priori it is not wave like, for the probabilities add only, untilm you 
take the self-reference constraint into account, which leads to the arithmetical 
quantization, which imposes a quantum logic on the consistent extensions.



To quick for me. Is this spelled out somewhere.






And why should it produce any "me", "not me" boundary?


It does not. "personal identity" is an illusion due to disconnected memories,


But they are not 'disconnected'.  It's their connectedness that is essential to the 
'illusion'.



and correct self-reference. The me/not me is just explained by the diagonalisation: if 
Dx gives xx, DD gives DD.


Again, does not explain it to me.

Brent








And it remains to be seen if that defines a conscious stream of thought that is 
subjective agreement with other streams of thought.








Do you realize that you are asking Bruno the same question here that I have been 
asking him for a long time now? Exactly how do computations have any form of causal 
efficacy upon each other within an immaterialist scheme?


By the embedding of a large part of the constructive computer science in 
arithmetic.

There is a universal diophantine polynomial (I will say more on this on the FOAR list 
soon). Once you have a universal system, you get them all (with CT). I might identify 
a notion of cause with the notion of universal (or not) machine. Some existing number 
relation implements all the possible relations between all possible universal machine.


You have to study the detail of Gödel's proof, or study Kleene's predicate, which 
translate computer science in arithmetic. For the non materialist, the problem is not 
to get interactions, the problem is not having too much of them.


Exactly.  It's the problem of having proved too much.  To say all computations can 
exist and if consciousness is computation then all conscious thoughts will exist is 
true but meaningless - like tautologies are.


It is not tautological because we can test if there are too much computations and if 
they obey quantum logic or not, so it is certainly not tautological. You forget that the 
laws of physics are given by the statistics on those computations.


Bruno




Brent



Keep in mind I submit a problem, for the computationalist. Not a solution., but 
precise problems. You can use the arithmetical quantization to test test the quantum 
tautologies.


We will see if there is or not some winning topological quantum computer on the border 
of numberland, as seen from inside all computations.



Bruno



Might it be that 'subjective agreement" between streams of thought is just another 
form of what computer science denotes as bisimulation (except that it is not a 
timeless platonic version of it)?--

Onward!

Stephen




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



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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread John Clark 
On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 1Z  wrote:

>> how would the world be different if causes WERE reasons?
>>
>
> > if someone gets struck  by lightning, God really does hate them.
>

I pray to God you're joking.

> Reasons are aims and intentions in the minds of intelligent agents which
> explain and justify their actions. If you want to promote causes to
> reasons, you are going to need a lot more intelligent agents.
>

So the difference between intelligent agents and other complex things like
cells or computers or redwood trees or galaxies is that intelligent agents
do things because of reasons but other mechanical things do things because
of causes; and the difference between causes and reasons is that reasons do
things to intelligent agents but causes do things to other mechanical
things. And around and around we go and where we stop nobody knows.

And when you say "the reason the street's wet is that it's raining" you are
implying that asphalt is an intelligent agent.

 John K Clark

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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread meekerdb 

On 6/19/2012 12:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Is this the "meaning which with some approach to unanimity they have expounded at 
considerable length."  It doesn't sound unanimous with with any theologians I've read.


This might be because you confine yourself to christian theologians. 


You're saying that because I only read one kind of theologian I don't see the unanimity 
that I would if I read different theologians??



I read a long time ago a book ("La malle de Newton") which confirms Newton neo-platonic 
tendencies. Keep in mind that neo-platonist have to hide their idea since Rome, and 
still today. 


Because they are persecuted??  Or because they have not been able to provide any useful 
results?


Theology comes from the Platonic idea that what we see, observe and measure, is not the 
whole of reality, but the christians came back with the strong emphasis on the material 
nature of the creation, and the oversimplication and personification of the "creator".


Hardly a Christian invention, since they borrowed it from the Jews whose Yaweh was one of 
many tribal war gods.


Brent

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Jason Resch 



On Jun 19, 2012, at 4:26 AM, R AM  wrote:




On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Jason Resch   
wrote:


There is little difference, that I can see, between Brent's proposed  
spirit world intervening in the physical world, and brains in vats  
intervening in a virtual world, and there is nothing impossible  
about the latter scenario.  From the perspective of those in the  
virtual world, the actions of entities would be neither random nor  
determined.


But in that case, physics would not be closed.

And, it would be a mistery why spirits that cause violations in  
physical law are attached to complex structures like human brains,  
and not, let's say, rocks or dead bodies.




I am not defending the veracity of this position, only pointing out it  
is not gibberish nor logically impossible.


John sought an example of something neither random or determined, and  
so I attempted to provide one.


Jason




Jason

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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:32, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


 > This is debatable. nobody has found, nor can found, example of  
primitive matter.


Unlike the proton and neutron nobody has found any experimental  
evidence that the electron has a inner structure, that it is made of  
parts.



The primitive matter I talk about is the idea of primary matter in the  
Aristotle sense (simplified). If I say that electron is not primitive,  
I don't mean it is made of part, almost the contrary, that it is a  
mathematical reality, or that it is reducible to a non physical  
mathematical or theological reality, an invariant in our sharable  
computations.






> Now, it is easy, when assuming comp, to have example of  
consciousnes without *primitive* matter,


But then its odd that in the "illusion" we live our lives in  
consciousness is ALWAYS linked with matter.


In REM sleep, the night, clearly consciousness is related to  
appearance of matter, and the day, we can agree on stable patterns,  
apparantly consistent pattern. The physicist measure numbers, infer  
relations, extrapolate, and publish about those relations of numbers.  
That consciousness is always related to matter can be explained  
through evolution, and long computation (and the derivation of physics  
from arithmetic). The point is not the non existence of matter, but of  
primitive (not "atomic", but conceptually irreducible) matter.






>  consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced a  
separation between me and not me,


In the "illusion" my body is always linked with my consciousness but  
a rock is not unless the rock interacts with my body, a very odd  
illusion if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, and odd  
the illusion is so persistent and universal.


Yes, but it is odd in a sufficiently precise way as to make comp  
testable. That's the point. The physics appears already rather weird,  
but is it more weird than QM? Oddness, weirdness is subjective and  
cultural.






>>  3) I dunno and will never know.  (What are the first hundred  
digits of Chaitin's Omega Constant?)


> This one, you can know, if you are patient enough. But you will  
not know it and also know that you know it


True in a way. It's very unlikely but a random number generator  
could spit it out but it would not do you any good because you'd  
have no way of knowing it is Chaitin's Omega Constant.


I can run all programs and wait. This will give me all correct decimal  
in the limit, but I will never be sure on almost all decimals.






> Chaitin's constant can be computed *in the limit*. Its decimal  
will stabilize, you just don't know when.


It can't be computed in a finite number of years.


Each initial segment can. But not in an ascertainable way.



To calculate the first 100 digits of Chaitin's constant you'd need  
to feed all programs that can be expressed in 100 bits or less into  
a Turing Machine and see how many of them stop and how many of then  
do not. Some of them will never stop but the only way to know how  
many is to wait a infinite number of years and then see how many  
programs are still running. So you'd need to be infinitely patient,  
in other words you'd need to be dead.


Only to be sure of the decimals obtained. If I relax that constraints,  
then I need only to be *very patient*. The non computable, but well  
defined Buzzy Beaver function (BB) bounds the time needed to wait. Of  
course it grows *very* fast. But I don't need an *infinite* time to  
get the 100 first digits correct. Any time bigger than BB(100) will do.






>> Although meaningful the question has no answer.  (Why is there  
something rather than nothing?)


> OK, but the question can be reduced to "why there are natural  
numbers obeying addition and multiplication law"


Lawrence Krauss in his book "A Universe From Nothing" says that  
someday something close to that might actually be possible.


You mean? Deriving addition and multiplication from physics? That is  
impossible. You can't derive them from anything which does not  
postulate them implicitly. Physics already assume + and * (or R and  
trigonometric functions, which are a way to (re)define the integers in  
analysis, by sin(2*PI*x) = 0; for example).






> A physical event without a cause or a reason does not make much  
sense to me (and makes no sense with comp).


Of course it doesn't make sense, it's in the nature of the beast.


So we agree on this. It is gibberish.



If it made sense that would mean you knew the reason behind it but  
if it's truly random there is no reason behind it. It doesn't make  
sense that X came to be, that is to say you don't understand it  
because there is nothing to understand, X came to be for no reason.


Here it looks like it makes sense, after all. Why do you use  
"gibberish" to condemn free will, and not to condemn event without  
cause?


Bruno


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

Re: Autonomy? A proposal

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 19 Jun 2012, at 08:01, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 5:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Brent, Stephen,


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:55, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 11:51 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/18/2012 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Because consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced  
a separation between me and not me, and the "not me" below my  
substitution level get stable and persistent by the statistical  
interference between the infinitely many computations leading to  
my first person actual state.


How does on computation interfere with another? and how does that  
define a conscious stream of thought that is subjective agreement  
with other streams of thought?


Brent




They interfere statistically by the first person indeterminacy on  
UD* (or arithmetic).


Hi Bruno,

You seem to have an exact metric for this "measure" of "the  
first person indeterminacy on UD* (or arithmetic)".


Not at all. I only reduce the mind-body problem (including the body  
problem) into the problem of finding that metric. UDA must be seen as  
a proof of existence of that "metric" from the comp hypothesis. Then  
AUDA gives the logic of observable which is a step toward that metric  
isolation.




What I need to understand is the reasoning behind your choice of set  
theory and arithmetic axioms;


I don't use set theory. Only elementary arithmetic. At the ontological  
level.
At the meta-level I use all the math I need, like any scientist in any  
part of science.




after all there are many mutually-exclusive and yet self-consistent  
choices that can be made. Do you see a 1p feature that would allow  
you to known that preference is not biased?


As I said, I use arithmetic because natiural numbers are taught in  
high school, but any (Turing) universal will do. the point is that  
neither the laws of consciousness, nor the laws of matter depend on  
the choice of the basic initial system, so I use the one that  
everybody knows. Sometimes I use the combinators or the lambda  
algebra. I don't use geometrical or physical system because that would  
be both a treachery, in our setting, and it would also be confusing  
for the complete derivation of the physical laws.







And it remains to be seen if that defines a conscious stream of  
thought that is subjective agreement with other streams of thought.


If it does not have "subjective argeement" with other mutually  
exclusive then there would be a big problem. No?


No. It would be a refutation of comp+classical theory of knowledge (by  
UDA). That would be a formidable result.
But the evidences available now, is that the physics derived from  
arithmetic, through comp+ usual definition of knowledge, is similar to  
the empirical physics (AUDA).















Do you realize that you are asking Bruno the same question  
here that I have been asking him for a long time now? Exactly how  
do computations have any form of causal efficacy upon each other  
within an immaterialist scheme?


By the embedding of a large part of the constructive computer  
science in arithmetic.


What "part" is not embedded?


The non elementary, second order, or analytical part. It is not  
embedded in the number relations, but it appears in the mind of the  
universal numbers as tool to accelerate the self-study. It is  
epistemological.








There is a universal diophantine polynomial (I will say more on  
this on the FOAR list soon). Once you have a universal system, you  
get them all (with CT). I might identify a notion of cause with the  
notion of universal (or not) machine. Some existing number relation  
implements all the possible relations between all possible  
universal machine.


Universality (of computations) requires the existence of an  
equivalence class (modulo diffeomorphisms) of physical systems over  
which that computation is functionally equivalent. No?


?



If not, how is universality defined? Over a purely abstract set?  
What defines the axioms for that set?


You don't need set. You can define "universal" in arithmetic. I am  
starting an explanation of this on the FOAR list.









You have to study the detail of Gödel's proof, or study Kleene's  
predicate, which translate computer science in arithmetic. For the  
non materialist, the problem is not to get interactions, the  
problem is not having too much of them.


Correct! You get an infinite regress of "interactions"! Way too  
many! In fact, I bet that you get at least a aleph_1 cardinal  
infinity. But what about the continuum hypothesis? Do you take it as  
true or false in your sets?


I don't care at all.



If you take it as false then you obtain a very interesting thing in  
the number theory; it looks like all arithmetics are non-standard in  
some infinite limit! You have to have a means to necessitate a limit  
to finite sets. The requirement of Boolean satisfyability exactly  
gives us this "rule".


? (unclear).

Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread R AM 
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
> There is little difference, that I can see, between Brent's proposed
> spirit world intervening in the physical world, and brains in vats
> intervening in a virtual world, and there is nothing impossible about the
> latter scenario.  From the perspective of those in the virtual world, the
> actions of entities would be neither random nor determined.
>

But in that case, physics would not be closed.

And, it would be a mistery why spirits that cause violations in physical
law are attached to complex structures like human brains, and not, let's
say, rocks or dead bodies.



>
> Jason
>
>

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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread Russell Standish 
On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 02:53:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

responding to Evgenii

> >
> >b) I believe in the M-theory?
> 
> M-theory doesn't care if you believe in it or not.  In fact it
> doesn't care about you or anything else.
> 

What does this even mean? M-theory is consistent? That M-theory is a
good description of reality? That reality is isomorphic to M-theory?
That reality is M-theory (channelling Tegmark here).

My gut feeling is that most physicists would plump for the second
option, and remain agnostic on the rest.

Cheers
-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Autonomy?

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 19 Jun 2012, at 00:08, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/18/2012 2:13 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Brent, Stephen,


On 18 Jun 2012, at 18:55, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 6/18/2012 11:51 AM, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/18/2012 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



Because consciousness, to be relatively manifestable, introduced  
a separation between me and not me, and the "not me" below my  
substitution level get stable and persistent by the statistical  
interference between the infinitely many computations leading to  
my first person actual state.


How does on computation interfere with another? and how does that  
define a conscious stream of thought that is subjective agreement  
with other streams of thought?


Brent




They interfere statistically by the first person indeterminacy on  
UD* (or arithmetic).


That still seems very vague.  I can suppose that many computations  
go thru the same or similar sequences which later branch and so have  
indeterminant futures.  But is that 'interference'?


Sure. Of course a priori it is not wave like, for the probabilities  
add only, untilm you take the self-reference constraint into account,  
which leads to the arithmetical quantization, which imposes a quantum  
logic on the consistent extensions.





And why should it produce any "me", "not me" boundary?


It does not. "personal identity" is an illusion due to disconnected  
memories, and correct self-reference. The me/not me is just explained  
by the diagonalisation: if Dx gives xx, DD gives DD.







And it remains to be seen if that defines a conscious stream of  
thought that is subjective agreement with other streams of thought.








Do you realize that you are asking Bruno the same question  
here that I have been asking him for a long time now? Exactly how  
do computations have any form of causal efficacy upon each other  
within an immaterialist scheme?


By the embedding of a large part of the constructive computer  
science in arithmetic.


There is a universal diophantine polynomial (I will say more on  
this on the FOAR list soon). Once you have a universal system, you  
get them all (with CT). I might identify a notion of cause with the  
notion of universal (or not) machine. Some existing number relation  
implements all the possible relations between all possible  
universal machine.


You have to study the detail of Gödel's proof, or study Kleene's  
predicate, which translate computer science in arithmetic. For the  
non materialist, the problem is not to get interactions, the  
problem is not having too much of them.


Exactly.  It's the problem of having proved too much.  To say all  
computations can exist and if consciousness is computation then all  
conscious thoughts will exist is true but meaningless - like  
tautologies are.


It is not tautological because we can test if there are too much  
computations and if they obey quantum logic or not, so it is certainly  
not tautological. You forget that the laws of physics are given by the  
statistics on those computations.


Bruno




Brent



Keep in mind I submit a problem, for the computationalist. Not a  
solution., but precise problems. You can use the arithmetical  
quantization to test test the quantum tautologies.


We will see if there is or not some winning topological quantum  
computer on the border of numberland, as seen from inside all  
computations.



Bruno



Might it be that 'subjective agreement" between streams of thought  
is just another form of what computer science denotes as  
bisimulation (except that it is not a timeless platonic version of  
it)?--

Onward!

Stephen




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



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Re: Theology & deepities

2012-06-19 Thread Bruno Marchal 


On 18 Jun 2012, at 23:53, meekerdb wrote:


On 6/18/2012 12:37 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 18.06.2012 19:33 meekerdb said the following:

On 6/13/2012 1:02 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

And what is that meaning which they have expounded with unanimity
and has anyone who is *not* a theologian ever believed it?


I believe that educated people, for example scientists, have
followed theological books.


But I asked what *it* is, the meaning they have expounded with
*unanimity*. No doubt some scientists have been influenced by some
theological and philosophical writing. But did they *believe it* and
*was it unanimous* or was it selected by the scientist from many
contradictory writings as one agreeable to his ideas.



This would be a goal of historical research to find it out.


But the quote you posted asserted that such a meaning was already  
known: "I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the  
meaning I suppose to be attached by this author to the proposition   
'God exists' is a meaning Christian theologians have never attached  
to it, and does not even remotely resemble the meaning which with  
some approach to unanimity they have expounded at considerable  
length."


For example a couple of quotes from Newton (according to Soul of  
Science)


Newton, General Scholium "This Being governs all things, not as the  
soul of the world, but as Lord over all; ... and Deity is the  
dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy  
God to be the soul of the world, but over servants."


“this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only  
proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and  
powerful Being.”


Now the quote from the book Soul of Science itself:

"Roger Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Newton’s  
Principia, wrote that the book 'will be the safest protection  
against the attacks of atheists, and nowhere more surely than from  
this quiver can one draw forth missiles against the band of godless  
men.'"


Hard to have been more wrong than that.



No doubt, the historical research can offer different  
interpretations. Another quote from Soul of Science


"In recent years much scholarly ink has been spilled in attempts to  
pin down his philosophical orientation. Keynes studied Newton’s  
manuscripts and concluded that, in contrast to the standard  
conception, Newton stood within the neo-Platonic tradition with its  
fascination for symbols and magic. 'Why do I call him a magician?'  
Keynes

asks.

'Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a  
riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to  
certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the  
world. ... He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the  
Almighty.'


Is this the "meaning which with some approach to unanimity they have  
expounded at considerable length."  It doesn't sound unanimous with  
with any theologians I've read.


This might be because you confine yourself to christian theologians. I  
read a long time ago a book ("La malle de Newton") which confirms  
Newton neo-platonic tendencies. Keep in mind that neo-platonist have  
to hide their idea since Rome, and still today. Theology comes from  
the Platonic idea that what we see, observe and measure, is not the  
whole of reality, but the christians came back with the strong  
emphasis on the material nature of the creation, and the  
oversimplication and personification of the "creator".


Bruno







'Newton was not the first of the age of reason,' Keynes concludes.  
'He was the last of the magicians.'"


Hence when you think of Newton you indeed have a choice. It might  
be a good idea to read Newton directly, then you may have a better  
idea what was his reason to call in God and offer your own  
interpretation.


Evgenii

P.S. I have finished listening to Hawking's (I hope that I have got  
his name right this time) Grand Design. What is the difference  
between


a) I believe in God

and

b) I believe in the M-theory?


M-theory doesn't care if you believe in it or not.  In fact it  
doesn't care about you or anything else.


Brent

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