date:20190724



On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 8:24:46 PM UTC-5, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 03:57:14AM -0700, Philip Thrift wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 5:34:38 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > The concept of “Matter” is never used in any paper in physics, only 
> in 
> > materialist philosophy.  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02062-0 
> > 
> > Strange topological materials are popping up everywhere physicists look 
> > 
> > ‘Fragile topology’ is the latest addition to a group of quantum 
> phenomena that 
> > give materials exotic — and exciting — properties. 
> > 
> > "The mathematics hidden in materials keeps getting more exotic. 
> Topological 
> > states of matter — which derive exotic properties from their electrons’ 
> > ‘knotty’ quantum states — have shot from rare curiosity to one of the 
> hottest 
> > fields in physics. Now, theorists are finding that topology is 
> ubiquitous — and 
> > recognizing it as one of the most significant ways in which solid matter 
> can 
> > behave." 
> > 
> > @philipthrift 
> > 
>
> I suspect that all of matter (eg the zoo of elementary particles) 
> might be related to the topology of the underlying spacetime. Sadly, 
> my mathematical chops are not strong enough to make headway on this 
> insight... 
>
> -- 
>
>  
>
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile) 
> Principal, High Performance Coders 
> Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpc...@hpcoders.com.au 
>  
> Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au 
>  
>
>



 Physicists blithely refer to space (and spacetime) as something that is a 
known thing, as if it were some 3d or 4d mathematical metrical entity of 
1800s mathematics that Einstein used. Today it may be some more cellular 
structure of 2000s quantum spacetime models (e.g. LQG). And then there are 
things called fields hypothetically filling space(time).

This is useful to read again (one of VIctor Stenger's last essays):

*Materialism deconstructed?*
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362

We really don't know what any of this is.

@philipthrift





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Re: STEP 3

2019-07-24 Thread 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List




On 7/24/2019 4:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


Note that the personal identity is not a transitive notion. Step
3 actually illustrates well this. I recall he cut and copy itself
from Helsinki (H) in both Washington (W) and Moscow (M). With the
definition of the personal identity above, both the HW and the HM
guy are, from that personal identity view,  the same person as
the H person.


With a more sensible notion of personal identity, the copies are 
different persons, and different persons from the original.



But that would entail that you die in step 1, which would again just 
be your opinion that mechanism is false.


Why do you assume this is all-or-nothing, live-or-die?  What seems 
likely to me is that the copy will be necessarily different due to 
information limitations of quantum mechanics...but maybe not so 
different that one would still say yes to the doctor, depending on the 
alternatives.


Brent

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Re: STEP 3

2019-07-24 Thread PGC

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 1:28:34 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 24 Jul 2019, at 01:02, Bruce Kellett > 
> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 1:06 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
>
>> On 23 Jul 2019, at 06:45, Bruce Kellett > 
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 2:30 PM Stathis Papaioannou > > wrote:
>>
>>>
> The inputs serve to put the brain in a particular state, but the brain 
>>> could go into the same state without the inputs. This can be a practical 
>>> problem in patients with schizophrenia: the may hear voices and are 
>>> convinced that the voices are real, to the point where they might assault 
>>> someone because of what they believe he said. 
>>>
>>
>> And I believe that if a particular small area of the brain is stimulated, 
>> the subject experiences the colour red. Similarly, if the colour red is 
>> shown, that same area of the brain shows activity. So quailia are nothing 
>> but particular brain activity. There is no additional "magic sauce" in 
>> consciousness.
>>
>> These same areas of the brain could be excited at random, as in your 
>> schizophrenic example. All that goes to show is that consciousness is 
>> nothing more than brain activity. Absent brain activity, there is no 
>> consciousness.
>>
>>
>> But absence of consciousness does not entail absence of brain activity.
>>
>
> It is not claimed that consciousness and brain activity are coextensive. 
> So you can have brain activity without consciousness (as in a vegetative 
> state), but there is no consciousness without brain activity.
>
>
>
> There is no human consciousness without brain activity. But with mechanism 
> things are like this:
>
> NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => PHYSICAL REALITY => BRAINS => HUMAN 
> CONSCIOUSNESS
>

All of which not only exist but have been implemented in laws for thousands 
of years, enabling you to play e.g. philosopher king on this very list. 

What is believed to be "primary" is everybody's personal business. Our 
democracies leave much to be desired; mostly avoiding self-destruction in 
the search for sustainability but platonic degrees of freedom, 
preserving and expanding them without killing ourselves, what you call 
"mechanism" is democratic business as usual of conflicting interests due to 
simultaneous existence. Plato isn't buried for a thousand years.

I don't see much philosophically noteworthy attributes that these thought 
experiments add to discourse. A hierarchy of primacy runs into 
intractability and ignorance, "we don't know" as authoritative argument is 
exploitable, as everybody can see on this list for years; it's not a 
vaccine but seems an unnecessary liability/commitment that rationally bars 
folks from enjoying life's mystery.

Every joy shared or not, merely deterministic, delusional. Every degree of 
freedom merely phenomenological. All laughter an escape mechanism 
exploited. All lives tears in the rain. Life negating and cynical. That's 
just one thing you add to "2+2=4". The walls of this list are full of the 
rest of it for 2 decades.Simplest theory, huh? 

Oscar Wilde would reply that such schools of thought, hyper rationality 
with Christian ethical-theological primary components: Propagated by those 
who don't know beauty, becoming slaves of their fanatical relation to 
nomenclature. 

You want me to show you a full theory of everything without all the body 
mind language woo woo? We do this in music and the arts for thousands of 
years. Every piece. Every person. The following piece of music is but one 
of many. All histories and ages, classical politeness discourses, romantic 
rumination and introspection, party enjoyment to Quantum superposition 
insanity at the end: progressing with every piece in that order... are 
represented by this sequence of flute and guitar notes convincingly in my 
humble opinion: Lay down or be comfortable, close our eyes, and hear for 
ourselves or not: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=852jpjmSR8Q

Arguments are in the doing and experiencing, not the explaining, nor the 
reports, which even though they should be done are just that: reports by 
people. Just people. 

I guess I should quit bitching and publish. "The interesting sexy stuff. 
Who got it? I want some. Procedural notes and algorithms. Discourse with 
balls." PGC

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread Russell Standish

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 03:57:14AM -0700, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 5:34:38 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> 
> The concept of “Matter” is never used in any paper in physics, only in
> materialist philosophy. 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02062-0
> 
> Strange topological materials are popping up everywhere physicists look
> 
> ‘Fragile topology’ is the latest addition to a group of quantum phenomena that
> give materials exotic — and exciting — properties.
> 
> "The mathematics hidden in materials keeps getting more exotic. Topological
> states of matter — which derive exotic properties from their electrons’
> ‘knotty’ quantum states — have shot from rare curiosity to one of the hottest
> fields in physics. Now, theorists are finding that topology is ubiquitous — 
> and
> recognizing it as one of the most significant ways in which solid matter can
> behave."
> 
> @philipthrift
> 

I suspect that all of matter (eg the zoo of elementary particles)
might be related to the topology of the underlying spacetime. Sadly,
my mathematical chops are not strong enough to make headway on this
insight...

-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellowhpco...@hpcoders.com.au
Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Observation versus assumption



Von Neumann's project was the physical realization of Alan Turing's 
Universal Machine, *a theoretical construct* invented in 1936. 

https://gizmodo.com/how-to-build-turing-s-universal-machine-5891399

turing did design this, whicj was built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Computing_Engine

The *Automatic Computing Engine* (*ACE*) was a British early electronic 
 stored-program computer 
 designed by Alan 
Turing .

For *lambda calculus*, see K-machines:

http://pop-art.inrialpes.fr/~fradet/PDFs/HOSC07.pdf

Perhaps the microcoded Lisp processor (Texas Instruments) comes close to a 
lambda calculus hardware ,machine.

There are the (theoretical) blueprint, specification for machines, and then 
the machines that are built.



*A blueprint/specification for a building is not a building.*


@philipthrift

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 3:03:33 PM UTC-5, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>
>
> Le mer. 24 juil. 2019 à 21:57, John Clark  > a écrit :
>
>> On 23 Jul 2019, at 20:16, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>>
>> *> In 1972, Washington University professors Wesley Clark and Bob Arnzen 
>>> likely made the first physical version of Turing's machine.*
>>
>>  
>> I think that estimate is off by at least fifteen orders of magnitude, not 
>> counting stuff that may be on other planets, but even if it were dead 
>> accurate that would still mean there was one more Turing Machine than Lambda 
>> Calculus Machines.
>>
>
> I think you're conflating physical Von Neumann machines as turing 
> machines...
>
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2782014/turing-machine-vs-von-neuman-machine
>
>>
>> John K Clark
>>
>>
>>

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Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism

2019-07-24 Thread spudboy100 via Everything List

I bet that biology is reducible to physics and the belief, since that is what 
it is, a belief, is one reason we have missed the boat on the life sciences 
apparently. We still can' (won't) bring basic physical elements and from this 
create organisms. My suspicion that since the days or Urey, scientists have 
backed off why this is not so. Unless we invoke the elan vitale? :-D 

-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Wed, Jul 24, 2019 5:59 am
Subject: Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism

On 22 Jul 2019, at 22:33, spudboy100 via Everything List 
 wrote:
I would say that physics is diff from inorganic chemistry and biological 
science, in the sense that how academics observe and measure phenomena. Its a 
Venn diagram in which the circles or ovals align one on top of the other, maybe 
off-center here and there, but the same thing. 

Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that 
terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.
Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and computer 
science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, arithmetic.
It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, and 
which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the phenomenologies 
derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new assumptions (only 
definitions).
Bruno

-Original Message-
From: Bruno Marchal 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Mon, Jul 22, 2019 9:31 am
Subject: Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism

On 22 Jul 2019, at 11:44, Philip Thrift  wrote:

Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/historical-contingency-and-the-futility-of-reductionism-why-chemistry-and-biology-is-not-physics/

Partly why I'm a materialist, not a physicalist.
But this has implications for arithmetical reality (?).

If Chemistry is not physics, it would mean that ours substitution level would 
be in between QM and chemistry (something slightly more complex to be sure, but 
it is a reasonable approximation).
Now, I am not convinced by the paper above that chemistry is not reducible to 
quantum mechanics, especially that chemistry count the most successful 
application of quantum mechanics.
I have no definite ideas on all this. The paper might confuse []p and []p & p, 
like 99,9998% of materialist thinkers here.
Bruno

@philipthrift

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread Quentin Anciaux

Le mer. 24 juil. 2019 à 21:57, John Clark  a écrit :

> On 23 Jul 2019, at 20:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>
> *> In 1972, Washington University professors Wesley Clark and Bob Arnzen
>> likely made the first physical version of Turing's machine.*
>
>
> I think that estimate is off by at least fifteen orders of magnitude, not
> counting stuff that may be on other planets, but even if it were dead
> accurate that would still mean there was one more Turing Machine than Lambda
> Calculus Machines.
>

I think you're conflating physical Von Neumann machines as turing
machines...

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2782014/turing-machine-vs-von-neuman-machine

>
> John K Clark
>
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> 
> .
>

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread John Clark

On 23 Jul 2019, at 20:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:

*> In 1972, Washington University professors Wesley Clark and Bob Arnzen
> likely made the first physical version of Turing's machine.*


I think that estimate is off by at least fifteen orders of magnitude, not
counting stuff that may be on other planets, but even if it were dead
accurate that would still mean there was one more Turing Machine than Lambda
Calculus Machines.

John K Clark

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List





On 7/24/2019 11:31 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 17:41, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:


On 7/23/2019 11:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 17:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 7/23/2019 4:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Hi Brent,

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural (and
arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we cannot
doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is
immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect
consciousness.

That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as conscious,
unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day.  The myth that
consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to be
understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. There's no
scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an electron
either.  But with the electron we're happy to have an effective theory
that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery mongering
about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere measurement
and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory.

I understand your point that we can always make additional demands for 
explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do more than 
what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly predict phenomena.

My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our disagreement:
No scientific theory predicts consciousness!

What would it mean to predict consciousness.  When we predict electrons
what we mean it we predict the observable effects of electrons.

Right, so what are the observable effects of consciousness? All I can see in 
neuroscience are predictions about the observable effects of (wet) 
computations. Neuroscience is not capable of pointing to a behavior and saying: 
ah! consciousness! see, this couldn't happen without consciousness.

If you rob physicists of electrons, suddenly many of their models will have 
holes in them, they will no longer be valid. If you rob neuroscientists of 
consciousness, everything works the same.

I'm not sure that's true.  ISTM that some of the experiments by
cognitive neuroscientists include conscious thoughts and judgements as
elements of their theory.

They try, but they can't measure.

- Alexa, are you conscious?
- Of course!

Err...


In that
sense I think we will, eventually, predict consciousness.  We will
engineer intelligent entities and some of them will have the observable
aspects of consciousness...and we will be able to say why the do and
others don't and how we can design entities that have more or less or
different kinds of consciousness: perception, self-identity, reflection,
etc.

I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is investigating 
the sort of relationships that people develop with voice assistants such as 
Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being emotionally attached 
to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or deluded. This woman is an 
engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what Alexa is, and how it works in 
general. And yet, the emotional attachment still kicks in. So I guess, 
according to your idea, we should start searching Alexa for an initial model of 
consciousness?

Certainly.  Two obvious ones are that Alexa is responsive to the
environment (speech) and is knowledgeable.

But you don't need Alexa for that. You start by assuming that consciousness is 
related to things such as being responsive to the environment, and then you 
point at something that is responsible to the environment and you find signs of 
consciousness. Don't you really see the problem here?
I see a problem that it is very weak evidence, two points of similarity 
in a vast field.  Exactly, the same problem I see with Bruno finding a 
similarity between Goedelian self-reference and self consciousness.






Putting it another way, every single successful scientific theory that we know 
about as these two properties:

- Consciousness is not required for anything "to work";
- Consciousness is not predicted to exist in any way.

But when we have a successful theory of intelligence I think we will
find that consciousness is required for it to work for certain kinds of
entities, one's we would think of as "social".

On a side note: I believe that an important component that is still missing in AI is the 
ability to model and forecast the internal states of human beings. The AI could then 
attempt to predict the effects of its actions in the user's internal state, and learn 
from mistakes. I think this can lead to the "social" AI you talk about, now 
it's just a matter of filling in the implementation details :)

I agree.  And notice that these details would at least implicitly
include modeling

Re: Observation versus assumption



On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 1:24:37 PM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 18:08, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 8:18:09 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
>
>
> Brent argues that the consciousness problem will be solved by building AIs 
> that behave in such a way as to convince us they are conscious. My point is 
> that our relation to an AI tells us nothing about consciousness.
>
> Telmo.
>
>
> If the cognitivist (information-processing) AI approach to consciousness 
> is right, then consciousness can be realized on any mechanism that performs 
> (conventional) information processing.
>
> The alternative is "not all materials are equal" and that (self-aware) 
> consciousness can be realized only in mechanisms made of a particular type 
> of materials (e.g. biomaterials).
>
>
> A third possibility is that materials are things within consciousness, 
> i.e. consciousness is more fundamental than matter.
>
> Telmo.
>
>
>
But then that goes back to my "materials science argument for matter": 
matter (as demonstrated in the summer Materials Camp for high school 
students) shows it does things beyond what consciousness on its own can 
imagine.

@philipthrift

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Re: Observation versus assumption




On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 17:41, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> 
> 
> On 7/23/2019 11:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 17:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> >>
> >> On 7/23/2019 4:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> >>> Hi Brent,
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>  On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> > I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural (and
> > arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we cannot
> > doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is
> > immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect
> > consciousness.
>  That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as conscious,
>  unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day.  The myth that
>  consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to be
>  understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. There's no
>  scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an electron
>  either.  But with the electron we're happy to have an effective theory
>  that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery mongering
>  about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere measurement
>  and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory.
> >>> I understand your point that we can always make additional demands for 
> >>> explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do more 
> >>> than what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly 
> >>> predict phenomena.
> >>>
> >>> My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our 
> >>> disagreement:
> >>> No scientific theory predicts consciousness!
> >> What would it mean to predict consciousness.  When we predict electrons
> >> what we mean it we predict the observable effects of electrons.
> > Right, so what are the observable effects of consciousness? All I can see 
> > in neuroscience are predictions about the observable effects of (wet) 
> > computations. Neuroscience is not capable of pointing to a behavior and 
> > saying: ah! consciousness! see, this couldn't happen without consciousness.
> >
> > If you rob physicists of electrons, suddenly many of their models will have 
> > holes in them, they will no longer be valid. If you rob neuroscientists of 
> > consciousness, everything works the same.
> I'm not sure that's true.  ISTM that some of the experiments by 
> cognitive neuroscientists include conscious thoughts and judgements as 
> elements of their theory.

They try, but they can't measure.

- Alexa, are you conscious?
- Of course!

Err...

> >
> >> In that
> >> sense I think we will, eventually, predict consciousness.  We will
> >> engineer intelligent entities and some of them will have the observable
> >> aspects of consciousness...and we will be able to say why the do and
> >> others don't and how we can design entities that have more or less or
> >> different kinds of consciousness: perception, self-identity, reflection,
> >> etc.
> > I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is 
> > investigating the sort of relationships that people develop with voice 
> > assistants such as Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being 
> > emotionally attached to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or 
> > deluded. This woman is an engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what 
> > Alexa is, and how it works in general. And yet, the emotional attachment 
> > still kicks in. So I guess, according to your idea, we should start 
> > searching Alexa for an initial model of consciousness?
> 
> Certainly.  Two obvious ones are that Alexa is responsive to the 
> environment (speech) and is knowledgeable.

But you don't need Alexa for that. You start by assuming that consciousness is 
related to things such as being responsive to the environment, and then you 
point at something that is responsible to the environment and you find signs of 
consciousness. Don't you really see the problem here?

> >
> >>> Putting it another way, every single successful scientific theory that we 
> >>> know about as these two properties:
> >>>
> >>> - Consciousness is not required for anything "to work";
> >>> - Consciousness is not predicted to exist in any way.
> >> But when we have a successful theory of intelligence I think we will
> >> find that consciousness is required for it to work for certain kinds of
> >> entities, one's we would think of as "social".
> > On a side note: I believe that an important component that is still missing 
> > in AI is the ability to model and forecast the internal states of human 
> > beings. The AI could then attempt to predict the effects of its actions in 
> > the user's internal state, and learn from mistakes. I think this can lead 
> > to the "social" AI you talk about, now it's just a matter of filling in

Re: Observation versus assumption



On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 18:08, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 8:18:09 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
>> 
>> Brent argues that the consciousness problem will be solved by building AIs 
>> that behave in such a way as to convince us they are conscious. My point is 
>> that our relation to an AI tells us nothing about consciousness.
>> 
>> Telmo.
>> 
> 
> If the cognitivist (information-processing) AI approach to consciousness is 
> right, then consciousness can be realized on any mechanism that performs 
> (conventional) information processing.
> 
> The alternative is "not all materials are equal" and that (self-aware) 
> consciousness can be realized only in mechanisms made of a particular type of 
> materials (e.g. biomaterials).

A third possibility is that materials are things within consciousness, i.e. 
consciousness is more fundamental than matter.

Telmo.

> 
> @philipthrift 
> 

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List

On 7/24/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 23 Jul 2019, at 00:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
> wrote:

On 7/22/2019 7:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The only one I know for a fact to exist.

Nobody can know that a world exist. You would know that you are
consistent, making you inconsistent.

A confusion of "know" and "prove”.

On the contrary. What I said has been derived (like the whole machine
theology) from the distinction between knowledge ([]p & p) and
belief/prove/assume ([]p).

Hmm, I think you are confusing “world” (nobody can prove that such a
thing exist, nor know that such a thing exist) and consciousness, that
nobody van prove that such a thing exists, but that everybody can know
that it exists).

No. You are assuming that you can only have knowledge of p if you also
have proof []p. This is essentially rejecting empirical knowledge and
instead assumes that there some axioms on which []p can be based.

A consequence of assuming knowledge requires proof...in direct
contradiction to your definition of consciousness which is defined in
terms of immediate knowledge.

Knowledge requires proof,

Nonsense. That's what I mean by your "definition" of consciousness does
not at all comport with actual experience of consciousness. What would
your proof be based on? Proofs are only relative to axioms and rules of
inference.

because the Theatetus’ sort of knowledge is limited to rational knowledge

?? I suspect your idea of "rational knowledge" does not comport with
anyone's idea of rational/since/ Theatetus.

, and is defined by ([]p & p). It is when a belief/assumption is true.

The immediate knowledge is in the “immediate mode” obtained from the
nuance ([]p & <>t & p).

G* proves that all modes are equivalent, and that the machine cannot
be aware of that equivalence, and that it obeys different logic.

There is one truth, the sigma_1 arithmetical truth, and very different
modes of handling that truth, the true mode, the belief mode, the
knowledge mode, the observable modes and the sensible modes.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Observation versus assumption



On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 8:18:09 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
>
>
> Brent argues that the consciousness problem will be solved by building AIs 
> that behave in such a way as to convince us they are conscious. My point is 
> that our relation to an AI tells us nothing about consciousness.
>
> Telmo.
>
>
If the cognitivist (information-processing) AI approach to consciousness is 
right, then consciousness can be realized on any mechanism that performs 
(conventional) information processing.

The alternative is "not all materials are equal" and that (self-aware) 
consciousness can be realized only in mechanisms made of a particular type 
of materials (e.g. biomaterials).

@philipthrift 

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List





On 7/23/2019 11:52 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 17:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:


On 7/23/2019 4:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Hi Brent,

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural (and
arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we cannot
doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is
immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect
consciousness.

That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as conscious,
unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day.  The myth that
consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to be
understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. There's no
scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an electron
either.  But with the electron we're happy to have an effective theory
that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery mongering
about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere measurement
and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory.

I understand your point that we can always make additional demands for 
explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do more than 
what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly predict phenomena.

My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our disagreement:
No scientific theory predicts consciousness!

What would it mean to predict consciousness.  When we predict electrons
what we mean it we predict the observable effects of electrons.

Right, so what are the observable effects of consciousness? All I can see in 
neuroscience are predictions about the observable effects of (wet) 
computations. Neuroscience is not capable of pointing to a behavior and saying: 
ah! consciousness! see, this couldn't happen without consciousness.

If you rob physicists of electrons, suddenly many of their models will have 
holes in them, they will no longer be valid. If you rob neuroscientists of 
consciousness, everything works the same.
I'm not sure that's true.  ISTM that some of the experiments by 
cognitive neuroscientists include conscious thoughts and judgements as 
elements of their theory.





In that
sense I think we will, eventually, predict consciousness.  We will
engineer intelligent entities and some of them will have the observable
aspects of consciousness...and we will be able to say why the do and
others don't and how we can design entities that have more or less or
different kinds of consciousness: perception, self-identity, reflection,
etc.

I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is investigating 
the sort of relationships that people develop with voice assistants such as 
Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being emotionally attached 
to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or deluded. This woman is an 
engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what Alexa is, and how it works in 
general. And yet, the emotional attachment still kicks in. So I guess, 
according to your idea, we should start searching Alexa for an initial model of 
consciousness?


Certainly.  Two obvious ones are that Alexa is responsive to the 
environment (speech) and is knowledgeable.





Putting it another way, every single successful scientific theory that we know 
about as these two properties:

- Consciousness is not required for anything "to work";
- Consciousness is not predicted to exist in any way.

But when we have a successful theory of intelligence I think we will
find that consciousness is required for it to work for certain kinds of
entities, one's we would think of as "social".

On a side note: I believe that an important component that is still missing in AI is the 
ability to model and forecast the internal states of human beings. The AI could then 
attempt to predict the effects of its actions in the user's internal state, and learn 
from mistakes. I think this can lead to the "social" AI you talk about, now 
it's just a matter of filling in the implementation details :)
I agree.  And notice that these details would at least implicitly 
include modeling inner thoughts of the kind we call conscious.




My problem with what you say, as I think you know, is that we cannot detect 
consciousness,


I pointed out in another post that we do it all the time in cases of 
great import.  I think you are demanding some kind of magical direct 
detection which we never have in other sciences.



so no matter how good the AI we build, we are still confronting with the same 
problem we have with cats, plants, stars. We have to guess.


Exactly.  The same way we guess at all scientific theories...except we 
like to say "hypothesize".  And we judge our guesses according to how 
they match and predict observations.



Sometime we don't even have a basis to guess. I

Re: Observation versus assumption



On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 07:58, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 5:25 PM Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>> __
>> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 07:08, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 4:52 PM Telmo Menezes  
>>> wrote:
 
 I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is 
 investigating the sort of relationships that people develop with voice 
 assistants such as Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to 
 being emotionally attached to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or 
 deluded. This woman is an engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what 
 Alexa is, and how it works in general. And yet, the emotional attachment 
 still kicks in. So I guess, according to your idea, we should start 
 searching Alexa for an initial model of consciousness?
>>> 
>>> I have an emotional attachment to my art collection. Should I start 
>>> searching prints by George Baldessin and Lionel Lindsay for an initial 
>>> model of consciousness?
>> 
>> So you agree with my point?
> 
> Which was?

Brent argues that the consciousness problem will be solved by building AIs that 
behave in such a way as to convince us they are conscious. My point is that our 
relation to an AI tells us nothing about consciousness.

Telmo.

> 
> Bruce 
> 

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Re: The origin of life has not been explained


> On 23 Jul 2019, at 20:26, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 9:23:45 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 14:15, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 8:56:07 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 13:45, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>> 
>>> Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.
>> 
>> Is there matter without consciousness?
>> 
>> Telmo.
>> 
>> 
>> According to panpsychists, no. :) 
>> 
>> https://www.iep.utm.edu/panpsych/ 
> 
> I know :)
> But panpsychists are still materialists. Which leads me to the tougher 
> question: does matter exist outside of first-person conscious experience? If 
> your answer is "yes", my follow-up question is quite predictable: how do you 
> know?
> 
> Telmo.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There us no reason to know (and one cannot claim to know) anything whatsoever 
> outside of knowing one's selfhood.
> 
> Anything else is just best-effort-guessing.

Right.
What we can do is expressed those guess in the form of theories, and try to 
refute them, either by showing internal contradictions, or discrepancy with 
repeatable facts in nature.

Bruno



> 
> 
> @philipthrift 
> 
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Re: STEP 3


> On 24 Jul 2019, at 01:02, Bruce Kellett  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 1:06 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2019, at 06:45, Bruce Kellett  > wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 2:30 PM Stathis Papaioannou > > wrote:
>> 
>> The inputs serve to put the brain in a particular state, but the brain could 
>> go into the same state without the inputs. This can be a practical problem 
>> in patients with schizophrenia: the may hear voices and are convinced that 
>> the voices are real, to the point where they might assault someone because 
>> of what they believe he said. 
>> 
>> And I believe that if a particular small area of the brain is stimulated, 
>> the subject experiences the colour red. Similarly, if the colour red is 
>> shown, that same area of the brain shows activity. So quailia are nothing 
>> but particular brain activity. There is no additional "magic sauce" in 
>> consciousness.
>> 
>> These same areas of the brain could be excited at random, as in your 
>> schizophrenic example. All that goes to show is that consciousness is 
>> nothing more than brain activity. Absent brain activity, there is no 
>> consciousness.
> 
> But absence of consciousness does not entail absence of brain activity.
> 
> It is not claimed that consciousness and brain activity are coextensive. So 
> you can have brain activity without consciousness (as in a vegetative state), 
> but there is no consciousness without brain activity.


There is no human consciousness without brain activity. But with mechanism 
things are like this:

NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => PHYSICAL REALITY => BRAINS => HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS


We, human needs brain, but that does not make brain existing in a primitive 
sense. They are appearance in the mind of the universal numbers, which does not 
require “a physical reality”, only a Turing universal machinery, like 
elementary arithmetic already is.

(I assume digital mechanism all along).



> 
> 
> With mechanism, the personal identity can be defined by the personal memory, 
> and a person cannot be identified with its brain or its body, because that 
> person can in principle do a backup of itself, and reload herself with a 
> different body and brain. Changing our bodies illustrates that the body is 
> more like a mean of transport and a way to interact with pals.
> 
> The trouble with this, as has already been pointed out, is that our bodies 
> have a significant role to play in our personal identities. If you replace 
> the brain/consciousness with a computer, -- without some sort of body with 
> independent locomotion and manipulation of the environment -- even in the 
> presence of input from the environment, my prediction is that that person 
> would go mad within a few hours or days. In other words, replacing a physical 
> brain/body with a computer will generally destroy the person.

That is arguing against mechanism, but I prefer not doing that type of 
philosophy. 

I just don’t know if mechanism is true, so I collect its concrete consequences 
and compare with the empirical observations, and it works well, notably where 
physicalist feel the need to dismiss consciousness and person, when not 
eliminating them completely.



>  
> Note that the personal identity is not a transitive notion. Step 3 actually 
> illustrates well this. I recall he cut and copy itself from Helsinki (H) in 
> both Washington (W) and Moscow (M). With the definition of the personal 
> identity above, both the HW and the HM guy are, from that personal identity 
> view,  the same person as the H person.
> 
> With a more sensible notion of personal identity, the copies are different 
> persons, and different persons from the original.


But that would entail that you die in step 1, which would again just be your 
opinion that mechanism is false.

What in the brain is NOT Turing emulable?

Without one evidence for non mechanism, this seems like speculation just to 
prevent the continuation of research and testing. 




>  
> But from the indexical first personal “lived” view, the HW guy knows that he 
> is not the same (first) person as the HM person, and vice versa, but both can 
> agree (and could have decided beforehand) that they are legally the same 
> person, and “right descendant” of the H person.
> 
> No, they have likely gone mad by this time.

In your theory. But you cannot use your theory to invalidate a reasoning done 
in another theory.




> Though experiments are all very well, but they have to conform to the basic 
> laws of existence -- physics, consciousness, and neuropsychology in this case.
>  
> If the duplication iterated, all histories are realised (in this particular 
> protocol) and it is a simple exercise to show that the majority of first 
> person obtained have no possible algorithm for both their past and futures. 
> The non random histories get rare (meagre) when the number of iteration get 
>

Re: Observation versus assumption


> On 23 Jul 2019, at 20:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 10:57:51 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 10:28 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> 
> > When you have a Turing universal machinery, you have a Turing machine,
> 
> You don't unless the machine is made of matter and isn't just printed on the 
> pages of a textbook.
> 
> > I guess you mean “a real Turing machine”,
> 
> I mean a Physical Turing Machine.
> 
> > but invoking “real” is not better than invoking God
> 
> That would be true if God could make calculations but there is precisely zero 
> evidence He can even add 2+2, however there is overwhelming evidence that a 
> Physical Turing Machine can. Therefore a Physical Turing Machine is 
> astronomically less unreal than God.
> 
>  John K Clark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Only Working Turing Machine There Ever Was, Probably
> 
> The TOWTMTEWP
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Hj5x6OWTM
> 
> In 1936, Alan Turing wrote about a theoretical universal computer now 
> referred to as a "Turing Machine." In 1972, Washington University professors 
> Wesley Clark and Bob Arnzen likely made the first physical version of 
> Turing's machine. Clark used the TOWTMTEWP ("The Only Working Turing Machine 
> There Ever Was, Probably") as an educational tool, demonstrating basic 
> computer theory for his students.

Thanks Philip. It shows indeed that physical Turing machine are rather the 
exception than the rules. The physical implementations of universal machines 
are mostly boolean nets (“boolean” in a large sense, as they have the 
bifurcating wires, which needs some implicit “linear logic”, to be precise.

Bruno 



> 
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Re: Observation versus assumption

> On 23 Jul 2019, at 17:57, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 10:28 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >>> Which World?
>  
> >>The only one I know for a fact to exist.
> 
> > Nobody can know that a world exist.
> 
> Does anybody know what "exists" means?

Perhaps we don’t, and that is why I ask people to formalise their idea in first 
order logic, so we can move forward without any metaphysical baggage. 

> 
> > Of course, we all agree that some reality has to exist,
> 
> And everybody experiences a world

Everybody experiences consciousness, but "experiencing a world” is non 
sensical. You can experience the appearance of a world, and that does not prove 
its existence, as the dreams illustrates.

> so that world exists, that is if the word "exists" has any meaning.

That is why the theology of the universal number is handy: it clearly assumes a 
very simple ontological existence, in which only 0, s(0), … exists, and it 
provides 7 different other sense of existence, which are phenomenological, and 
justified by mathematical logic (mainly Löb’s theorem, Solovay theorems).

ExP(x) = ontological existence.

[]Ex[]P(x) with the seven “[]” given by the modes of the selves, provides all 
the phenomenological existence, and we get a common language to build 
assertions mixing them in a proper way.

> And don't talk to me about illusion because illusions exist. 

Illusions exists, but usually, the object of the illusion does not.

> 
> >> Yes, and a damn fine argument that is too. Another name for it is "The 
> >> Scientific Method" which has worked out rather well for us in the past.
> 
> > Unfortunately the use of the knocking table argument has been debunked 
> > already by Plato
> 
> And even if I knew nothing else that would immediately tell me that Plato's 
> debunking had itself been debunked sometime in the last 500 years because 
> Plato, just like the other ancient Greek philosophers, didn't know the 
> difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.
> 
> >> Reasoning is entirely dependent on a brain made of matter that obeys the 
> >> laws of physics.
> 
> > Assuming primitive matter.
> 
> Oh for god's sake, what does that have to do with it?! The brain can think 
> but it's certainly not primitive matter, it's made of neurons. And neurons 
> are not primitive matter, they're made of organic molecules. And organic 
> molecules are not primitive matter, they're made of atoms.  And atoms are not 
> primitive matter, they're made of subatomic particles. And subatomic 
> particles are not primitive matter, they're made of quarks and gluons.
> 
> And quarks and gluons may or may not be primitive matter nobody knows, but 
> for the purposes of our discussion it doesn't matter (pun intended) because 
> whatever else they may be we know one thing for sure, they can't think, they 
> display as much intelligent behavior as a sack full of doorknobs.  

No problem, but with mechanism, we can go further and say that the quarks and 
gluons are not primate matter, because they are invariant for the all universal 
numbers.

>  
> >>> observation is explained by relative mathematical relations, or some set 
> >>> of them.
>  
> >> Mathematical relations between what?
> > Numbers and set of numbers.
> 
> Rather like the relative literary relationship between a set of characters in 
> a Harry Potter novel.

If that was the case, we would not promise a million of dollars to solve the 
arithmetical Riemann hypothesis, or the twin conjectures. 
There is no unreasonable applications of Harry Potter novel in physics, for 
another exemple (an unreasonable applications of math entirely obvious when we 
postulate mechanism, btw).

>  
> > Nobody knows for a fat that a material world exist, even the arithmetical 
> > world.
> 
> Meaning needs contrast. If nothing exists

Nobody says that nothing exists. Everyone knows that his/her consciousness 
exists. The doubt is on the notion of world, or of any semantic large enough to 
encompass us. In that case, we can explain why we cannot prove the existence of 
such a world, as this would makes us into inconsistent universal machine.

> then "exists" means the same thing that "Klogknee" does, absolutely nothing. 
> So the word needs to be anchored at some point and nobody on this list, or 
> anyplace else, has proposed a better place than the physical world we know to 
> exist to anchor and calibrate the word.
> 
>  >> you've got the mathematical equivalent of a Harry Potter novel. 
> 
> > Nonsense. 
> 
> You've been using that one word as your only rebuttal quite a lot lately, if 
> you're not doing it just because you can't think of anything else to say then 
> please elaborate.  
>  
> > In the post 529 christian theology [...]
> 
> You just never stop with that crap! Bruno, lots of interesting things have 
> happened since 529. And none of them involved theology. 

Indeed. But only because those who dare to do it

Re: Observation versus assumption

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 5:34:38 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> The concept of “Matter” is never used in any paper in physics, only in 
> materialist philosophy. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02062-0

*Strange topological materials are popping up everywhere physicists look*

*‘Fragile topology’ is the latest addition to a group of quantum phenomena 
that give materials exotic — and exciting — properties.*

"The mathematics hidden in materials keeps getting more exotic. Topological 
states of *matter *— which derive exotic properties from their electrons’ 
‘knotty’ quantum states — have shot from rare curiosity to one of the 
hottest fields in physics. Now, theorists are finding that topology is 
ubiquitous — and recognizing it as one of the most significant ways in 
which *solid matter* can behave."

@philipthrift

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Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism

2019-07-24 Thread 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List

"Brain" is just an idea in consciousness. If your question is "Can anything 
be known without a consciousness knowing it?", then again, consciousness 
can only know itself.

On Monday, 22 July 2019 16:26:17 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 5:46:25 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
>>
>> I think you make the old age confusion between epistemology and ontology.
>>
>
> Can anything be known without a brain knowing it?
>
> @philipthrift 
>

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Re: Observation versus assumption

> On 23 Jul 2019, at 13:50, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
> 
> Hi Brent,
> 
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>> I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural (and 
>>> arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we cannot 
>>> doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is 
>>> immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect 
>>> consciousness.
>> 
>> That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as conscious, 
>> unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day.  The myth that 
>> consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to be 
>> understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. There's no 
>> scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an electron 
>> either.  But with the electron we're happy to have an effective theory 
>> that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery mongering 
>> about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere measurement 
>> and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory.
> 
> I understand your point that we can always make additional demands for 
> explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do more 
> than what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly predict 
> phenomena.
> 
> My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our disagreement:
> No scientific theory predicts consciousness!

Elementary arithmetic predicts consciousness, at least in the sense that it 
predicts that all universal machine looking inward discover his theology, and 
that includes the knowledge of something immediately true, not definable, nt 
provable, etc.
If the machine learns to use natural language, she will use the term 
“consciousness” for this, I think. Or terms like souls, private knowledge, etc.

> Putting it another way, every single successful scientific theory that we 
> know about as these two properties:
> 
> - Consciousness is not required for anything "to work”;

Are you not assuming the materialist hypothesis. With mechanism, the physical 
reality is only an appearance, so consciousness is required for a physical work 
to work.

> - Consciousness is not predicted to exist in any way.

Arithmetic “predicts” that all universal machine have knowledge, consciousness, 
and get confronted to the hesitation between security and liberty. 

Arithmetic explains both the equivalence of all modes of the self, and why that 
equivalence is impossible to grasp by the machine ‘in its “normal state of 
consciousness”, making the machines believing in difference between the 
believable, the knowable, the observable, etc.

> 
> Now, I know you will argue that yes, neuroscience can predict and observe 
> conscious states, but the only thing it can do is find correlates between 
> observable behavior and brain activity. Which is great, but has nothing to do 
> with the hard problem. Firstly because consciousness itself cannot be 
> measured or observed. What you can do is observe behaviors that you *assume 
> to be correlated with consciousness*. I challenge you to find any other 
> theory or filed of science where such a speculative leap is accepted and the 
> results after such a leap taken seriously.
> 
> - Are my cells individually conscious? I don't know.

Yes, as they are Turing universal, they have the highly dissociative 
consciousness state. As it is the same for all universal machine, this is a bit 
of  trivia. But that is important in the apparition of the physical appearances 
from arithmetic when see from inside.

> - Are stars conscious? Is Google? Who knows. Emergentists might suspect they 
> are, because they are systems with highly complex behavior.

Complexity is not enough, and even could endanger consciousness. All you need 
is Turing universality. Self)—consciousness needs the induction axioms.

> - Are cats conscious? I assume they are, but am I not just noticing their 
> similarities to me? What about plants? Why or why not?
> - Etc.

We can bet that all animals and plants are conscious (when we bet on 
computationalism).

I have not heard evidences that Star are Turing universal. 

A very simple boolean circuits can be Turing universal, but we can build highly 
complex boolean graph which are not.

> 
> In the end, I find John Clark's position on this more palatable: he agrees 
> that consciousness cannot be measured, so he doesn't care about the problem. 
> He thinks it's a waste of time to think about it. Intelligence is the 
> interesting thing. Fair enough. But your position is a bit different: you 
> present your own metaphysical belief as scientifically justified, and I don't 
> think that is a tenable position.

All you say here seems to me applicable for Matter (primary matter). No 
experimental evidences, and it brought only metaphysical faculties. No theories 
at

Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism



On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 4:59:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that 
> terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.
>
> Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and 
> computer science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, 
> arithmetic.
>
> It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, 
> and which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the 
> phenomenologies derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new 
> assumptions (only definitions).
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
Does "conceptually reducible" mean anything? It means nothing to me.

Start with the Standard Model in Lagrangian language:

   
https://www.sciencealert.com/images/Screen_Shot_2016-08-03_at_3.20.12_pm.png

Can one compile or translate the theories of biology into this? If so, it 
could be made explicit.

@philipthrift

 

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Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism


> On 22 Jul 2019, at 22:33, spudboy100 via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> I would say that physics is diff from inorganic chemistry and biological 
> science, in the sense that how academics observe and measure phenomena. Its a 
> Venn diagram in which the circles or ovals align one on top of the other, 
> maybe off-center here and there, but the same thing. 

Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that 
terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.

Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and computer 
science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, arithmetic.

It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, and 
which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the phenomenologies 
derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new assumptions (only 
definitions).

Bruno



> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Bruno Marchal 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Mon, Jul 22, 2019 9:31 am
> Subject: Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism
> 
> 
>> On 22 Jul 2019, at 11:44, Philip Thrift > > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics
>> 
>> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/historical-contingency-and-the-futility-of-reductionism-why-chemistry-and-biology-is-not-physics/
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Partly why I'm a materialist, not a physicalist.
>> 
>> But this has implications for arithmetical reality (?).
> 
> If Chemistry is not physics, it would mean that ours substitution level would 
> be in between QM and chemistry (something slightly more complex to be sure, 
> but it is a reasonable approximation).
> 
> Now, I am not convinced by the paper above that chemistry is not reducible to 
> quantum mechanics, especially that chemistry count the most successful 
> application of quantum mechanics.
> 
> I have no definite ideas on all this. The paper might confuse []p and []p & 
> p, like 99,9998% of materialist thinkers here.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
>> 
>> @philipthrift
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>>  
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>> 
> 
> 
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Re: Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism


> On 22 Jul 2019, at 19:36, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 8:31:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 22 Jul 2019, at 11:44, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics
>> 
>> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/historical-contingency-and-the-futility-of-reductionism-why-chemistry-and-biology-is-not-physics/
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Partly why I'm a materialist, not a physicalist.
>> 
>> But this has implications for arithmetical reality (?).
> 
> If Chemistry is not physics, it would mean that ours substitution level would 
> be in between QM and chemistry (something slightly more complex to be sure, 
> but it is a reasonable approximation).
> 
> Now, I am not convinced by the paper above that chemistry is not reducible to 
> quantum mechanics, especially that chemistry count the most successful 
> application of quantum mechanics.
> 
> I have no definite ideas on all this. The paper might confuse []p and []p & 
> p, like 99,9998% of materialist thinkers here.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> It is a kind of a faith some have that chemistry from atoms to big organic 
> molecules (if that is the right "spectrum" of chemical materials) can be 
> reduced to physics. There is certainly a camp in the theoretical chemistry 
> community that don't think it can.
> 
> 
> There is also the list of unsolved problems in chemistry:
> 
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_chemistry 
>  
> 
> And then one gets to even "higher" chemistry like RNA and DNA at the 
> "boundary" with biology.
> 
> The demarcations of physics, chemistry, biology are human made fictions of 
> course.

The demarcation between oneself  and (Löbian) number in general is a universal 
machine common fiction, yes.

To invoke unsolved problem to make the metaphysics more complex is not valid. 
It is the obscurantist move, or the filling-holes with God strategy (the 
“bouche-trou” conception of God).

Bruno



> 
> @philipthrift
> 
> @philipthrift
> 
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Re: Observation versus assumption

> On 23 Jul 2019, at 00:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/22/2019 7:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> The only one I know for a fact to exist.
>> 
>> Nobody can know that a world exist. You would know that you are consistent, 
>> making you inconsistent.
> 
> A confusion of "know" and "prove”. 

?

On the contrary. What I said has been derived (like the whole machine theology) 
from the distinction between knowledge ([]p & p) and belief/prove/assume ([]p).

Hmm, I think you are confusing “world” (nobody can prove that such a thing 
exist, nor know that such a thing exist) and consciousness, that nobody van 
prove that such a thing exists, but that everybody can know that it exists).

> A consequence of assuming knowledge requires proof...in direct contradiction 
> to your definition of consciousness which is defined in terms of immediate 
> knowledge.

Knowledge requires proof, because the Theatetus’ sort of knowledge is limited 
to rational knowledge, and is defined by ([]p & p). It is when a 
belief/assumption is true.

The immediate knowledge is in the “immediate mode” obtained from the nuance 
([]p & <>t & p).

G* proves that all modes are equivalent, and that the machine cannot be aware 
of that equivalence, and that it obeys different logic.

There is one truth, the sigma_1 arithmetical truth, and very different modes of 
handling that truth, the true mode, the belief mode, the knowledge mode, the 
observable modes and the sensible modes.

Bruno

> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: Observation versus assumption


> On 23 Jul 2019, at 01:17, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 10:03 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >> Yes you can implement lambda expressions physically but it's not "more 
> >> simple" because the "basic physical substitution" always comes back to a 
> >> Turing Machine. Always.
> 
> > Of course not. 
> 
> OK, so now your official position is that a Turing Machine can not emulate 
> lambda expressions.


I don’t see how this would follow from what I said. All universal machine and 
machineries can emulate any universal machine or machineries.

Bruno


> Are you sure you really want to go there?
> 
> > The substitution are realise by boolean graph directly.
> 
> And now to the growing list of words that have no English Brunospeak 
> translation we must add either, boolean graph, directly, or  realise. Or 
> perhaps all three.  
> 
> John K Clark
> 
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Re: Observation versus assumption

> On 23 Jul 2019, at 00:32, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 4:15 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote: 
>  
> >> I don't care if you assume "primary matter" or not regardless of what that 
> >> piece of philosophical gobbledygook happens to mean today. I am just 
> >> telling you that matter is needed to mine Bitcoins that you can use to buy 
> >> stuff.
> 
> > Relatively to us, no-one doubt this,
> 
> Then there is at least one thing that a Turing Machine can do that Lambda 
> Calculus or Turing quintuplets can not do, and there is no doubt about it. So 
> stop pretending that Turing quintuplets are more profound than Turing 
> Machines, the oposite is true.

A Turing machine is a set of quintuplets. A head + a tape might implements 
physically a Turing machine, but the result is a particular case of Turing 
machine: it is a physical implementation of a Turing machine.

> 
> >> A Bitcoin that can be used to buy a car is real, and a calculation used to 
> >> mine that Bitcoin is more real than a calculation that lacks this Bitcoin 
> >> mining car buying property.
> 
> > In your theology.
> 
> So let me see if I've got this straight. If I believe in theology X then I'll 
> need about half a ton of expensive hardware and many megawatt hours of 
> electricity to mine even a few Bitcoins that I can use to buy stuff; but if I 
> convert to "theology" Y then I can mine Bitcoins with no hardware at all and 
> won't need one single watt of electricity. 

That would be like a program/subject exploiting the infinite computations 
emulating it below its substitution level. Yes we do that, necessarliyly so, in 
arithmetic and provably in the Mechanist theory). It looks weird, but is not 
weirder than Quantum physics. On the contrary it explains that weird 
“many-histories” aspect of Nature.

> And as a bonus if I change the "theology" I believe in I will not only get 
> rich I'll change the very laws of physics. And I wouldn't even have to go as 
> far as to change my "religion", I could just change an assumption and a 
> definition or two and presto change-o I'm more powerful then God. 
> 
> I conclude from your usage that I still don't know what "theology" means in 
> Brunospeak and please don't crank out yet another definition of it because 
> you've just given me an example and examples are far more powerful than 
> definitions. But I have learned that whatever the meaning of that word is in 
> Brunospeak it has absolutely nothing to do with the English meaning of the 
> word, and the same holds true for "assumption" and "religion”. 

Yes. In science we redefine all words, because the informal mundane sense is 
not enough precise.

>>> > Why to make that assumption,
>> >> What assumption?
> > That the God Matter is primitively real.
> 
> The first problem is you don't know what the word "assumption" means in 
> English.

I don’t see an argument. Nor even an example, or any clues to suggest this. 

You can identify “assumption", “hypothesis", “theory", and eventually even 
“body”, “number”, etc.

I use the terms in their larger sense, and made them more precise driven by the 
reasoning. This allows to avoid the 1004 fallacy (if you remember this).

> The second problem is I don't know what "God Matter" means in Brunospeak;  
> for a while I thought I almost sorta understood what "primitively real" meant 
> in your strange language but then from your usage it was obvious the meaning 
> had mutated away once more to a unknown place, so now I'm back to square one.

God is define by the Reality we hope exists, and which would be the reason of 
all sort of realities we can encounter, from matter to sensations.

The God of the materialist is some primitive material reality, but a mechanist 
cannot invoke this without ascribing to the mind magical abilities (making some 
computation more “real” than others.

The God of Mechanism is conceptually the simplest one: the (sigma_1) 
arithmetical reality, or the partial computable truth, or the Universal 
Dovetailing, etc.

I keep the me definition, but change the images to avoid boring repetitions and 
to help to understand the meaning, which is vocabulary independent.

Unlike Bruce’s materialism, your materialist position is inconsistent, as you 
defend Mechanism together with materialism, but then you have to explain how 
matter makes some computation real, and some not. In fact, in metaphysics, you 
cannot invoke the word “real”, “true” or any god’s name.

Bruno

> 
>  John K Clark
>   
> 
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Re: Observation versus assumption


> On 22 Jul 2019, at 19:56, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 4:08 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >> You keep confusing stuff that can *do* things from stuff that can not
>  
> > You keep assuming that such things exists.
> 
> You keep assuming existence exists.


I have no interpretation for “existence exists”. I don’t see what this could 
mean. Mechanism assumes elementary arithmetic, but all theories enough rich to 
prove the existence of computer have to assumed it.


>  
> > When we do metaphyics with the scientific method ...
> 
> ...then it's just called "physics”.


In the Aristotelian theology. Not in platonician theology. That’s the whole 
point.

Physics does not address the issues of metaphysics at all. 




> 
> >> from stuff that can not. A sequence of ASCII characters can't *do* 
> >> anything unless it interacts with a brain made of matter that obeys the 
> >> laws of physics, and the exact same thing is true of digital machine code.
> 
> > Using Aristotle theology.
> 
> Screw Aristotle. Screw theology.
> 
> >> Lambda  Calculus and Turing quintuplets can't *do* anything unless they 
> >> interact with the physical brain of a mathematician,
> 
> > Relatively to you, 
> 
> So you agree that a Turing Machine can do something that Turing quintuplets 
> or Lambda Calculus can not.

Physical machine can do thing that a mathematical machine cannot do. But they 
physicalness can still be a relative notion. In arithmetic, it is a theorem 
that relative physical machine can do more than non physical machine.





> 
> > assuming you are made of primitive stuff.
>  
> Regardless of if I'm made of "primitive stuff" or not it remains true that a 
> Turing Machine can do something that Turing quintuplets or Lambda  Calculus 
> can not.


Yes, but that does not make them primitively real. The physical emerges from 
all computation, and is explained to be not entirely Turing emulable. 
This is already illustrated in the iterated self-duplication: no program can 
generate the first person experiences obtained, but the arithmetical reality do 
iterate ad infinitum the self-duplications, and makes subject aware of the 
presence of a non Turing emulable reality.

Bruno




> 
> >>a Turing Machine needs nothing else that is physical because it is already 
> >>physical. All by itself a Turing Machine can simulate Turing quintuplets 
> >>but Turing quintuplets CAN NOT simulate a Turing Machine,
> 
> > You change the definition of Turing machine.
> 
> I didn't but it wouldn't matter if I did. Machines don't care about 
> definitions, they just keep on doing what they do. You can define them anyway 
> you like and they won't miss a beat. A paper tape and a read/write head that 
> can change states has a name, in English it's "Turing Machine" but I don't 
> know what it is in Brunospeak.  
> 
> > I don’t believe in your god, John.
> 
> Screw God.
> 
>  John K Clark
>  
> 
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Re: The origin of life has not been explained

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 3:05:16 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
>
> Keep in mind that "matter" is just an idea in consciousness.
>
> On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 16:45:29 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>> Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.
>>
>

But even given that the only thing one knows exists is one's selfhood
(consciousness), our experience includes reading about and finding out
about all the weird stuff matter does (via materials science).

If there was only selfhoods, there would only be imaginings of matter. But
what matter actually presents to us *goes beyond* what mere imaginings of
what it is and does.

@philipthrift

*Students learn at Materials Camp*
https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/news/20190723/students-learn-at-materials-camp

By Special to The Oak Ridger
Posted Jul 23, 2019 at 5:30 PM

To understand how and why things work, sometimes you have to take a close
look. A really close look. Avery, a Roane County High School senior, did
just that at this summer’s *Materials Camp*, sponsored in part by the Y-12
National Security Complex.

She and 14 other East Tennessee high school students studied nickel, iron,
aluminum, copper, and other metals not by opening a textbook but by
heating, hammering, grinding, bending, rolling, and polishing the materials.

“We learned how these materials behave under certain conditions and
stresses,” Avery stated in a Y-12 news release. “Then we examined their
microstructures, the different grain structures, using a scanning electron
microscope and other analytical equipment.”

One of the campers’ favorite activities was pounding a hot iron bar with a
forging hammer during the blacksmithing demonstration.

“That was really fun and cool,” said Avery, who wanted to make sure
everyone, including her camp instructors, got in a few whacks at the bar.

“Avery wasn’t going to let us leave until I had a chance to take out some
aggression on that metal bar,” said Claudia Rawn, one of the camp
coordinators and associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s
Materials Science and Engineering department and director of UT’s Center
for Materials Processing.

Having fun while learning is all part of the camp formula. Through hands-on
activities and an escape-room scenario, camp instructors introduced
students to materials science, which involves the properties of materials
and their application in everything from high-performance electronics and
airplanes to stents, heart valves, and other biotechnologies to renewable
energy.

“I think all of the students now have a different view that everything is
made of a variety of materials and there are opportunities to have a
fascinating education and career with materials,” said Camp Coordinator Bob
Bridges, a Y-12 metallurgist.

Before the weeklong camp, many of the students had never heard of materials
science.

“Most high school students thinking about majoring in an engineering
discipline don’t know about materials science and engineering,” Rawn said.
“A lot of STEM-oriented students know they want to major in engineering,
and knowing about materials science and engineering helps them to make a
more informed choice.”

The camp not only serves as a recruiting tool for area colleges but also
feeds the workforce pipeline. Y-12 sponsors the camp as part of its
educational outreach efforts to develop the science, technology,
engineering, and math skills the site will need in the future.

“Because of this camp, I’m thinking about pursuing an education in
materials science,” Avery said. “It got me thinking about different avenues
for college and a career.”

In addition to UT and Consolidated Nuclear Security, which manages and
operates Y-12 for the National Nuclear Security Administration, camp
sponsors included the ASM Materials Education Foundation and Pellissippi
State Community College.

Electron Optics Instruments and IXRF Systems, Shimadzu Scientific
Instruments, Mager Scientific, and Carl Zeiss Microscopy provided almost
$400,000 worth of equipment for students to use as well as staff to train
campers on how to use it.

“This camp would not be possible without the huge number of volunteers who
work with the students behind the scenes and donate equipment and provide
expertise,” said Teri Brahams, executive director for Economic and
Workforce Development at Pellissippi State Community College.

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Re: The origin of life has not been explained

2019-07-24 Thread 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List

You talk of life as if is some kind of mechanism, which is not. Life is a 
product of consciousness. So your entire analysis is beyond meaninglessness.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 22:07:05 UTC+3, smitra wrote:
>
> On 23-07-2019 04:10, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote: 
> > On 7/22/2019 3:55 PM, smitra wrote: 
> >> This doesn't address the fundamental problems. People like Leslie 
> >> Orgel have explained why metabolism first is a non-starter. 
> > 
> > And you think Nick Lane hasn't read Orgel? 
>
> Orgel's original arguments can be generalized into a no-go argument that 
> precludes all existing biochemical models for abiogenesis. This has been 
> pointed out by Paul Davies. However, Davies then argues that this means 
> that the problem lies with the fundamental laws of physics, but one can 
> also circumvent the problems raised by sticking to ordinary physics and 
> getting to the right structures within which the conventional models can 
> work. 
>
> > 
> >> He has argued on the basis of the difficulties of getting to 
> >> functional RNA, and more recently people like Paul Davies have pointed 
> >> out the fundamental nature of this problem. My suggestion is not some 
> >> new model, it simply makes conventional models such as e.g. the 
> >> protocell work better by putting these in a micro-environment that 
> >> itself has been forged in far from equilibrium conditions. The 
> >> micro-environments break the symmetry that can steer the chemistry 
> >> that takes place inside more coherently in one or the other direction 
> >> compared to whatever chemistry can go on in a macroscopic environment. 
> >> 
> >> Keep in mind that the simplest functional living organism is likely 
> >> going to be similar to a microbe, involving hundreds of thousands of 
> >> different enzymes that are then all necessary to make each other and 
> >> maintain and copy the organism. There thus exists a massive gap from 
> >> simple chemistry to the simplest self-reproducing lifeforms. The only 
> >> plausible solution is then a scenario where simpler systems that would 
> >> not function good enough to be able to reproduce with a multiplication 
> >> factor of larger than one, can reproduce with a multiplication factor 
> >> larger than 1 in a protected environment. 
> > 
> > Which Lane and others postulate to alkaline "white smokers". 
>
> This is impossible, because you need to build  structures on the 
> molecular scale without the enzymes that living organisms have 
> available. Local thermal equilibrium won't allow chemical reactions to 
> proceed differently a few atoms distance away at one site of a large 
> molecule compared to another. So, one needs to consider processes in an 
> environment where local thermal equilibrium will be violated on a 
> molecular scale. This can happen in a cryogenic environment in space 
> where UV radiation creates radical and ions and occasional cosmic ray 
> interaction causes heating allowing nearby ions and radicals to form 
> bonds. Such processes have been studied with the ail of getting to the 
> fundamental building blocks of life, but that doesn't really work 
> because of the random nature of the products. 
>
> But under those conditions one will also get extremely large clusters of 
> organics, and they can serve as the housing within which one can have 
> the right structures for conventional models to work. Confinement in a 
> small volume is essential as there will be as small number of structures 
> inside each such system. This means that the net effect of all the 
> structures inside any particular system will differ due to statistical 
> fluctuations. In a larger volume, the average effects of the structures 
> would average out to some mean effect, also the effect the structures on 
> the surface have on the chemistry taking place in the entire volume 
> would be less the larger the volume becomes. 
>
> Saibal 
>
>
> > 
> > Brent 
> > 
> >> But that environment must then have features that would have to play 
> >> the role of the more sophisticated molecular machinery that makes the 
> >> more advanced life forms work. Fixed features on the inner surface 
> >> area of a micro-environment can then work. The effect such features 
> >> have over the entire volume can be non-negligible in a small system. 
> >> 
> >> Saibal 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> On 07-07-2019 08:32, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote: 
> >>> I think Nick Lane's metabolism-first theory, which he discusses in 
> >>> his 
> >>> book "The Vital Question", is more plausible.  There's good online 
> >>> talk by Lane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhPrirmk8F4. 
> >>> 
> >>> Brent 
> >>> 
> >>> On 7/6/2019 8:32 AM, smitra wrote: 
>  https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01945 
>  
>  
>  A followup article which focuses more on the mathematical issues is 
>  under construction, the key points are: 
>  
>  1) In interstellar space, simple organic compounds captured in small 
>  ice

Re: The origin of life has not been explained

2019-07-24 Thread 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List

Keep in mind that "matter" is just an idea in consciousness. 

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 16:45:29 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
> Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.
>

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread Bruce Kellett

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 5:25 PM Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 07:08, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 4:52 PM Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
>
>
> I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is
> investigating the sort of relationships that people develop with voice
> assistants such as Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being
> emotionally attached to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or
> deluded. This woman is an engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what
> Alexa is, and how it works in general. And yet, the emotional attachment
> still kicks in. So I guess, according to your idea, we should start
> searching Alexa for an initial model of consciousness?
>
>
> I have an emotional attachment to my art collection. Should I start
> searching prints by George Baldessin and  Lionel Lindsay for an initial
> model of consciousness?
>
>
> So you agree with my point?
>

Which was?

Bruce

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Re: Observation versus assumption



On Wed, Jul 24, 2019, at 07:08, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 4:52 PM Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>> 
>> I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is 
>> investigating the sort of relationships that people develop with voice 
>> assistants such as Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being 
>> emotionally attached to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or 
>> deluded. This woman is an engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what 
>> Alexa is, and how it works in general. And yet, the emotional attachment 
>> still kicks in. So I guess, according to your idea, we should start 
>> searching Alexa for an initial model of consciousness?
> 
> I have an emotional attachment to my art collection. Should I start searching 
> prints by George Baldessin and Lionel Lindsay for an initial model of 
> consciousness?

So you agree with my point?

Telmo.

> 
> Bruce
> 

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> .

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Re: Observation versus assumption

2019-07-24 Thread Bruce Kellett

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 4:52 PM Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

>
> I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is
> investigating the sort of relationships that people develop with voice
> assistants such as Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being
> emotionally attached to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or
> deluded. This woman is an engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what
> Alexa is, and how it works in general. And yet, the emotional attachment
> still kicks in. So I guess, according to your idea, we should start
> searching Alexa for an initial model of consciousness?
>

I have an emotional attachment to my art collection. Should I start
searching prints by George Baldessin and  Lionel Lindsay for an initial
model of consciousness?

Bruce

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Re: Observation versus assumption

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 17:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> 
> 
> On 7/23/2019 4:50 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> > Hi Brent,
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, at 22:04, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> >>
> >> On 7/19/2019 4:49 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> >>> I share their perplexity. The idea of immaterialism is natural (and
> >>> arises thousands of years ago), because the only thing that we cannot
> >>> doubt (as Descartes pointed out) -- our consciousness -- is
> >>> immaterial. There is not scientific instrument that can detect
> >>> consciousness.
> >> That's not really true. Of course doctors assess patients as conscious,
> >> unconscious, in coma, or brain dead every day.  The myth that
> >> consciousness is a mystery is part hubris (we are too special to be
> >> understood) and part an exaggerated demand for understanding. There's no
> >> scientific instrument that can detect the wave function of an electron
> >> either.  But with the electron we're happy to have an effective theory
> >> that tells us when the detector will click or not. Mystery mongering
> >> about consciousness makes us demand something more that mere measurement
> >> and prediction, something that doesn't exist for any theory.
> > I understand your point that we can always make additional demands for 
> > explanation, and that any scientific theory cannot be expected to do more 
> > than what successful scientific theories do, which is to correctly predict 
> > phenomena.
> >
> > My main point is this, and I think it goes to the core of our disagreement:
> > No scientific theory predicts consciousness!
> 
> What would it mean to predict consciousness.  When we predict electrons 
> what we mean it we predict the observable effects of electrons.

Right, so what are the observable effects of consciousness? All I can see in 
neuroscience are predictions about the observable effects of (wet) 
computations. Neuroscience is not capable of pointing to a behavior and saying: 
ah! consciousness! see, this couldn't happen without consciousness.

If you rob physicists of electrons, suddenly many of their models will have 
holes in them, they will no longer be valid. If you rob neuroscientists of 
consciousness, everything works the same.

> In that 
> sense I think we will, eventually, predict consciousness.  We will 
> engineer intelligent entities and some of them will have the observable 
> aspects of consciousness...and we will be able to say why the do and 
> others don't and how we can design entities that have more or less or 
> different kinds of consciousness: perception, self-identity, reflection, 
> etc.

I attended a presentation the other day of a psychologist who is investigating 
the sort of relationships that people develop with voice assistants such as 
Alexa. She told the story of a woman who admits to being emotionally attached 
to her Alexa. She says that she is not crazy or deluded. This woman is an 
engineer and she has a pretty good grasp of what Alexa is, and how it works in 
general. And yet, the emotional attachment still kicks in. So I guess, 
according to your idea, we should start searching Alexa for an initial model of 
consciousness?

> > Putting it another way, every single successful scientific theory that we 
> > know about as these two properties:
> >
> > - Consciousness is not required for anything "to work";
> > - Consciousness is not predicted to exist in any way.
> But when we have a successful theory of intelligence I think we will 
> find that consciousness is required for it to work for certain kinds of 
> entities, one's we would think of as "social".

On a side note: I believe that an important component that is still missing in 
AI is the ability to model and forecast the internal states of human beings. 
The AI could then attempt to predict the effects of its actions in the user's 
internal state, and learn from mistakes. I think this can lead to the "social" 
AI you talk about, now it's just a matter of filling in the implementation 
details :)

My problem with what you say, as I think you know, is that we cannot detect 
consciousness, so no matter how good the AI we build, we are still confronting 
with the same problem we have with cats, plants, stars. We have to guess. 
Sometime we don't even have a basis to guess. I think the engineering approach 
to understanding is a dead end when it comes to consciousness -- even though I 
work in the field of AI and like it very much.

> > Now, I know you will argue that yes, neuroscience can predict and observe 
> > conscious states, but the only thing it can do is find correlates between 
> > observable behavior and brain activity. Which is great, but has nothing to 
> > do with the hard problem.
> 
> I reject the "hard problem".  It's a problem that is intractably hard 
> because it asks what no scientific theory ever provides.

I agree that it asks what no scientific theory so far provides, but I don't 
agree that is a valid

Re: The origin of life has not been explained