Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. Deterministic perhaps, but not predictable even in theory. OK, but that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory or second-order arithmetic (analysis). Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, ? ! I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. You don't know the other half. You said repeatedly that you never find the need to read after step 3. And you show to know nothing about computability theory (which explains why the second part eludes you). So you have read 3/8 of the simple part (done for the novice), that is 3/16 of the work, and you judged it? As for comp... I have so often heard you say according to comp blah blah that I no longer know what your silly little homemade slang word is supposed to mean, but I do know it can't mean Computationalism. And now dear god we've got comp1 and comp2 to add to the mix! That was a gentle attempt by Liz to make sense of *your* distinction (between Computationalism (comp1) and what I explain as consequence of it, comp2). Comp2 is computationalism when you understand UDA, and that primitive matter is transformed into a god of the gap type of notion, with respect to the mind-body problem, or even just the body problem. It is not that we don't need the notion of primary matter, it is that even if that exists, we can't relate it to consciousness in any way. If we would need a piece of matter, either it is Turing emulable, and it means we did not get the level right, or it is not Turing emulable, and then, its needs just shows that comp is wrong. QED. UDA is a question, and AUDA is the non trivial beginning of the Universal Machine's answer, when she introspect herself enough (can prove its only universality, in some technical precise sense). But how foolish am I when trying someone to listen to the machine, if that person cannot even listen to humans. The universal machines, like babies, are born intelligent, but they can evolve and become stupid, feeling superior, and destroying themselves. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 06 Jun 2015, at 02:00, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 4:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 6/5/2015 12:22 PM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, but what would be the consequences if that were really true? The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write then in the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. I agree the laws of physics are descriptions we invent; but even so they are abstractions and not material and what they define is only an approximation to what happens in the world. That's what makes them useful - they let us make predictions while leaving out a lot of stuff. So what is this lot of stuff that the mathematical abstractions leave out? In response you your initial point that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions, the obvious questions is Abstractions from what? Abstractions from physical events. We find we can leave out stuff like the location (and so conserve momentum) and the position of distant galaxies and the name of the experimenter and which god he prays to etc. Of course what we can leave out and what we must include is part of applying the theory. Physicists work by considering simple experiments in which they can leave out as much stuff they're not interested in as possible in order to test their theory. Engineers don't get to be so choosy about what's left out; they have to consider what events may obtain. But they also get to throw in safety factors to mitigate their ignorance. In other words, in this account, the pre-existing physical world is taken as a given, from which laws are simplified abstractions. Fine, that's the way I think it is. No problem when doing physics. But when working on the mind-body problem, we get reason to think that is not the way things are. Physics needs not to be physicalist, even if it is so FAPP. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. Deterministic perhaps, but not predictable even in theory. Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, ? ! I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. As for comp... I have so often heard you say according to comp blah blah that I no longer know what your silly little homemade slang word is supposed to mean, but I do know it can't mean Computationalism. And now dear god we've got comp1 and comp2 to add to the mix! John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 20:35, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Event is a physical notion. Algorithmic non compressibility is an mathematical notion. An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. Nothing caused the 9884th digit of a random number to be a 6 rather than some other digit, and that is the one and only reason it is NOT algorithmically incompressible. But something did cause the 9884th digit of PI to be a 4 and not some other digit, and that's why PI IS algorithmically compressible. I have a counter-example to your claim. Fix a universal system. It determines completely its Chaitin number, yet it is algorithmically incompressible. I don't know what you mean by fix I mean choose one. If you take a Fortran universal interpreter, you can define its Chaitin number. The Chaitin number is relative to the choice of a universal system. but if something requires an infinite number of steps to determine what it will do its not very deterministic. It is, when you agree to apply the excluded middle on the arithmetical proposition, or actually it is enough to believe that a closed Turing machine stop or does not stop. In some post you argued once that comp1 is trivial, Bullshit. I have never argued anything about comp1 and never will because I'm sick to death with comp of any variety. ? I remember you said that comp as I meant it is trivially, true, is wrong (btw). If you don't remember what you post, the conversation might loss its meaning. Bruno If time or space is quantized as most physicists think it is then the real numbers are just a simplified approximation of what happens in the physical world. Typically, physical quantization is defined by using complex numbers. Because even if space and time are quantized the discrete steps are so little that complex numbers are a good approximation of the physical world unless you're dealing with things that are ultra super small. But again, the point was just that CT does not refer to physics. Bullshit. Computationalism says you can make matter behave intelligently if you organize it in certain ways, That is a rephrasing of computationalism, and what you say follow from it, but the more precise and general version is that you stay conscious [...] To hell with consciousness! Figure out how intelligence works and then worry about consciousness. maybe that matter is primitive and maybe it is not but there has been a enormous amount of progress in recent years with AI demonstrating that Computationalism is probably true. There has been zero progress demonstrating that mathematics can behave intelligently. Mathematics does not belong to the category of things which can behave. That is a HUGE admission on your part, if it is true (and I don't know if it is or not) then the debate is over and physics is more fundamental than mathematics. End of story. But mathematics, and actually just arithmetic can define relative entities behaving relatively to universal number And I can define a new integer that has never been seen before, I call it fluxdige and it's definition is that it's equal to 2+2 but it's not equal to 4. You can't make a calculation with a definition! Nobody has shown the existence of primitive mathematics either. Primitive means that we have to assume it. Logicians have prove that arithmetic, or universality, is primitive in the sense that you cannot derive arithmetic, or the existence of universal numbers, without assuming less than that. When Peano came up with the integers he had to first assume that the number 1 existed and then he came up with rules to generate its successor, but if the physical universe did not exist, if there were ZERO things in it, then it's not at all obvious that the number 1 would exist. Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't, I don't know. One of your Greek buddies Socrates said that the first step toward wisdom is knowing when you don't know. So if Socrates was right then I'm wiser than you are. Computations have been discovered in mathematics. All textbooks in the filed explains that. You can't make a computation with a textbook! You can't make a calculation with a definition! You can. Then stop talking about it and just do it! And if it is simple enough, you can do that mentally. You will tell me that in this case we still need a physical brain Indeed I will. but this can be a local relative notion, Local? A good rule of thumb is that if a theory says Local means the entire multiverse then things may be getting out of hand. I say compute means
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 05 Jun 2015, at 21:03, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Do you agree that the simulated john Clark will still complain that matter is missing in computation, despite we know that he refers to number relations, without knowing it? If the simulation had been done correctly then the simulated John Clark will have the same opinions I do including reservations about computations being made without matter. If the simulation was being performed on a computer made of matter then the reservations were justified, if the simulation was being performed by pure mathematics and nothing else then they were not. You need also the Pope to bless the matter, I think. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 8 June 2015 at 11:14, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I think that assumes that true and exist are the same thing. One can affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one existed. So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. Yes, of course it isn't clear. But 2+2=4 isn't by definition it's the result of empirical observation of - as John wuold say - material objects. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. Yes. So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. Both of those scenarios assume that there was an external world with which the brain/AI was related to in the past and which provides meaning to the computational processes that are *ex hypothesi* now isolated from the world. The relation need not even be direct, i.e. the AI was constructed by a programmer whose knowledge of the world provides the meaning. But without some such relation it's hard to say that the computational processes are *about* anything, that they are not just noise. Yes, that's the problem in a nutshell - why aren't conscious computations just noise? (Or are
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Monday, June 8, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marc...@ulb.ac.be'); wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','marc...@ulb.ac.be'); wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's paradox - sorry, I mean argument - that a recording of such complexity may indeed be conscious. The MGA seems to hand-wave a bit about this whole process - like the Chinese room, we simply record the activities of the processing devices and then simply' project the movie onto the system, and so on, leaving aside the Vast size of the envisaged apparatus. Nevertheless, if we assume comp1 then we assume by hypothesis that a recording isn't conscious (only a computation can be conscious, according to comp1). It seems here that you've snuck an extra assumption into comp1. We know that brains can be conscious, and we assume that computations can also be conscious. But that doesn't mean that only computations can be conscious, nor does it mean that brains are computations. These two latter statements might be true, but they are not necessarily true, even given computationalism. So that's really a comp1 objection. So the question in the end is which is the most reasonable hypothesis. How does materialism explain consciousness? How does comp explain the appearance of a material
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's paradox - sorry, I mean argument - that a recording of such complexity may indeed be conscious. The MGA seems to hand-wave a bit about this whole process - like the Chinese room, we simply record the activities of the processing devices and then simply' project the movie onto the system, and so on, leaving aside the Vast size of the envisaged apparatus. Nevertheless, if we assume comp1 then we assume by hypothesis that a recording isn't conscious (only a computation can be conscious, according to comp1). So that's really a comp1 objection. So the question in the end is which is the most reasonable hypothesis. How does materialism explain consciousness? How does comp explain the appearance of a material universe? Over to you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
Must re-read my posts before sending. That should of course be which hypothesis, not why (D'oh!) And I seem to have too many coulds ...Oh well. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On 6/7/2015 3:00 PM, LizR wrote: On 8 June 2015 at 05:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 07 Jun 2015, at 18:35, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: An event is just a place and a time; are you saying that mathematics is incapable of handling 4 coordinates? Of course, applied mathematics exists, and you can represent event in mathematics, but you shopuld not confuse something (a physical event) and its mathematical representation. I am not confusing that but I think sometimes you might be confusing a physical thing with the language (mathematics) the descriptive representation of the thing is presented in. Or maybe not, maybe you're right and mathematics is more than just a language and is more fundamental than physics; nobody knows including you. Nobody can know. But we can reason from hypothesis. With the computationalist hypothesis, the immateriality of consciousness is contagious on the possible environment. Nobody pretends this is obvious, especially for people stuck at the step 3. The question being asked is, why hypothesis best explains consciousness? Comp attempts to take the default materialist assumption, that consciousness is a (very, very complicated) form of computation, and to derive results from that assumption. Hence what I've called comp1 is the default materialist hypothesis (also known as the strong AI thesis, I think) - this is more or less equivalent to the idea that a computer could, given a suitable programme and resources, be conscious. From this Bruno attempts to show, via a chain of reasoning, that the computations involved have to take place in arithmetical reality (Platonia). This conclusion I call comp2. The task of anyone who disagrees is simply to show that comp2 doesn't follow from comp1. There are various ways to try to show this. One is to doubt the starting assumptions (comp1). The starting assumptions include the idea that simple arithmetic exists independently of mathematicians - that 2+2=4 was true in the big bang, for example. I think that assumes that true and exist are the same thing. One can affirm that Watson was Holmes assistant without admitting that either one existed. So while everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. The universe appears to obey certain bits of methematics to high precision, or alternatively you could say that various bits of maths appear to correctly describe the behaviour of the universe and its constituents to high precision. So that is the which comes first? question, which as you correctly say we can't know (indeed we can't know anything, if know means justified true belief, apart from the fact that we are conscious, as Descartes mentioned). Note that Bruno rejects the conditioning on justified. Plato's Theaetetus dialogue defines knowledge as true belief. I think that's a deficiency in modal logic insofar as it's supposed to formalize good informal reasoning. But I can see why it's done; it's difficult if not impossible to give formal definition of justified. So one can doubt comp1 by doubting either that consciousness is a computation, or that maths exists independently of mathematicians. Then one can doubt the steps of the argument. I personally find little to doubt, assuming comp1, until we reach step 7 or 8, or whichever step is the MGA. (There has been a lot of heat about pronouns, but as far as I can see this hasn't made a dent in the arguments presented.) So the other main point of attack is at the comp2 end, so to speak, with the MGA. There is Brent's light cone argument, which IMHO seems unconvincing because one can make a cut between a brain and the world along the sensory nerves - this is basically saying that a person could be a brain in a vat, and never know it. But it also fails if one can in theory have an AI, because an AI is by hyopthesis a digital machine and could therefore could be re-run and given the same inputs, and due to the nature of computation would have to repeat the same conscious experiences. Both of those scenarios assume that there was an external world with which the brain/AI was related to in the past and which provides meaning to the computational processes that are /ex hypothesi/ now isolated from the world. The relation need not even be direct, i.e. the AI was constructed by a programmer whose knowledge of the world provides the meaning. But without some such relation it's hard to say that the computational processes are *about* anything, that they are not just noise. And then that description falls foul of Bruno/Maudlin's argument about leeching away the material support for the computation until it is turned into a replayed recording. At this point we can use Russell's
Re: Notion of (mathematical) reason
LizR wrote: On 6 June 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: This is true if events have an existence apart from maths. However, that is still being debated. Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis suggests that time and events are emergent from an underlying timeless mathematical structure. To take something that is (hopefully) less contentious, the block universe of special relativity already suggests something similar to this. In relativity, all chains of events are embedded in a space-time manifold, and hence causation comes down to how world-lines are arranged within this structure. This is not true. Causality is still a fundamental consideration in SR, and that carries over into the basic structure of quantum field theory. Even within the block universe model, the light cone structure of spacetime is fundamental. The light cone encapsulates the fundamental insight of SR that causal influences cannot propagate faster than the speed of light -- the light cone is the limiting extent of causal structure. The laws of physics consistent with this structure in SR and beyond are have a (local) Lorentz symmetry, which preserves the causal structure between different Lorentz frames. The distinction between time-like and space-like separations of events is aa fundamental tenet of physical law. None of this contradicts what I said. All I am concerned with is that SR indicates that events are embedded in a 4D continuum. Describing how they're embedded doesn't change that. You started with Tegmark's idea that time and events are emergent from an underlying timeless mathematical structure. My point was that in order for time to emerge from a block universe certain structure was necessary -- we need a 4-dim manifold with a local Lorentzian metric, and physical events must be arranged with a particular structure on this manifold -- they cannot just be arranged at haphazard. So the way events are embedded is in fact crucial. The question is then whether this 4 dimensional manifold with a local Lorentzian metric exists in arithmetic? If not, there is no possibility for a time variable in arithmetic per se, and consequently nothing can 'emerge' from arithmetic, since emergence is a temporal concept. Note that it is important to distinguish between structures that can be described mathematically and the structure of arithmetic or mathematics themselves. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: that is enough to conceive the set of the Gödel number of true sentences of arithmetic, and prove theorems about that set. That set can be defined in standard set theory YOU CAN'T MAKE A COMPUTATION WITH A DEFINITION! Half of your theory is true but trivial, the other half is not trivial and not true. You don't know the other half. You said repeatedly that you never find the need to read after step 3. Because step 3 of you proof was S-T-U-P-I-D. Fix it and I'll keep reading until I see the next stupid thing. . John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
RE: Recent methane spikes in the arctic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=p2ckkxEnWpA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The scope of physical law and its relationship to the substitution level
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: everyone agrees that 2+2=4 by definition, it's not so clear that arithmetic objects exist. If 2+2=4 exists then 2+2=5 does too. Platonia may contain all true statements but it contains all false statement as well and even Platonia has no way to completely separate the two. And there are many ways to be wrong but only one way to be right. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Recent methane spikes in the arctic
The Doomsday argument is looking increasingly realistic. On 8 June 2015 at 14:20, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=p2ckkxEnWpA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
