Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 14 Aug 2009, at 03:21, Colin Hales wrote:
Here's a nice pic to use in discussion from GEB. The map for a
formal system (a tree). A formal system could not draw this picture.
It is entirely and only ever 'a tree'. Humans dance in the forest.
col
You may compare Hofstadter's picture with the Mandelbrot set, and
understand better why it is natural to think that the Mandelbrot set
(or its intersection with Q^2) to be a creative set in the sense of
Emil Post, that is, mainly, a (Turing) Universal system. The UD* (the
block comp multiverse) can be mapped in a similar way.
See here for a picture of the Mnadebrot set (and a comparison with
Verhulst bifurcation in the theory of chaos):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Verhulst-Mandelbrot-Bifurcation.jpg
Or see here for a continuos enlargement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTuP02b_a7Yfeature=channel_page
Or perhaps better, in this context, a black and white enlargment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrEoKFYk0Csfeature=channel_page
or a 3-d version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zciBjiD9Zfgfeature=channel_page
Colors or eights help to see the border of the set, but it is really a
subset of R^2. The border is infinitely complex, but not fuzzy! It is
really a function from R^2 to {0, 1}.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 14 Aug 2009, at 04:11, Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Here's a nice pic to use in discussion from GEB. The map for a formal system (a tree). A formal system could not draw this picture. Where's your proof of this assertion? Indeed. A case could be make that only a formal system can draw such picture. See the preceding post. If you understand what is really a universal machine, you can uderstand that it is very difficult to show things that they cannot do. It is really theoretical computer science which explore this. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
I think I have at least two problems, not necessarily well formulated. I accept that there are concepts(mathematical) that are not necessrily part of the physical Universe(Multiverse). I do not see that there are only the abstractions. Also, Bruno mentions QM, as being included in COMP. QM is an incomplete description of this universe with being merged with GR. I do not see that that final theory would necessarily fit in with COMP. Ronald On Aug 14, 5:21 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 14 Aug 2009, at 04:11, Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Here's a nice pic to use in discussion from GEB. The map for a formal system (a tree). A formal system could not draw this picture. Where's your proof of this assertion? Indeed. A case could be make that only a formal system can draw such picture. See the preceding post. If you understand what is really a universal machine, you can uderstand that it is very difficult to show things that they cannot do. It is really theoretical computer science which explore this. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 14 Aug, 03:11, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Here's a nice pic to use in discussion from GEB. The map for a formal system (a tree). A formal system could not draw this picture. Where's your proof of this assertion? Seconded. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 13 Aug 2009, at 02:42, Colin Hales wrote: It starts with the simple posit that if COMP is true then all differences between a COMP world (AC) and the natural world (NC) should be zero under all circumstances and the AC/NC distinction would be false. The difference between natural and artificial is artificial, and thus natural: all machines will tend to do it. That is the natural result of unconditional universality of COMP yes? I don't think so. If comp is true (if I am a machine), then nature, of whatever I am not, cannot be described entirely as a machine. The place where we get an informal system is in the human brain, which can 'symbolically cohere and explore' any/all formal systems. I specifically chose the human brain of a scientist, the workings of which were used to generate the 'law of nature' running the artificial (COMP) scientist (who must also be convinced COMP is true in order to bother at all!). I have no clues about what you are trying to say. Obviously if the human brain is not a machine, nature can't be described as a machine. It seems you assume what you want to show. Also, if comp is true, no entities at all can ever be convinced that comp is true. Cf the needed act of faith. No problem with your conclusion, given that you postulate a primitive (I guess) natural world, it follows from UDA. But I don't see the reasoning. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
2009/8/13 Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au: Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2009/8/12 Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au: My motivation to kill COMP is purely aimed at bring a halt to the delusion of the AGI community that Turing-computing will ever create a mind. They are throwing away $millions based on a false belief. Their expectations need to be scientifically defined for a change. I have no particular interest in disturbing any belief systems here except insofar as they contribute to the delusion that COMP is true. 'nuff said. This is another minor battle in an ongoing campaign. :-) Colin You want so much COMP to be false that you've forget in the way that your argument is flawed from the start... You start with, AI can't do science to conclude that... tada... AI can't do science. It's absurd. Quentin It is a 'reductio ad absudum' argument. My argument does not start with AI can't do science. It starts with the simple posit that if COMP is true then all differences between a COMP world (AC) and the natural world (NC) should be zero under all circumstances and the AC/NC distinction would be false. That is the natural result of unconditional universality of COMP yes? OK. This posit is not an assumption that AC cannot be a scientist. The rationale is that if I can find one and only one circumstance consistent/sustaining that difference, then the posit of the universal truth of COMP is falsified. The AC/NC distinction is upheld: . I looked and found one place where the difference is viable, a difference that only goes away if you project a human viewpoint into the 'artificial scientist' ( i.e. valid only by additional assumptions).that position is that the NC artificial scientist cannot ever debate COMP as an option. Not because it can't construct the statements of debate, but because it will never be able to detect a world in which COMP is false, because in that world the informal systems involved can fake all evidence and lead the COMP scientist by the nose anywhere they want. If the real world is a place where informal systems exist, those informal systems can subvert/fake all COMP statements, no matter what they are and the COMP scientist will never know. It can be 100% right, think it's right and actually not be connected to the actual reality of it. A world in which COMP is false can never verify that it is. Do not confuse this 'ability to be fooled' with an inability to formulate statements which deal with inconsistency. The place where we get an informal system is in the human brain, Here is where you *assume* AI can't do science by assuming human is an informal system... (and therefore different from an AI) where is the demonstration of this ? Because the fact is, if COMP is true, consciousness is digitalisable and can run on a computer hardware, therefore consciousness is not an informal system (it's program+data). As you did not demonstrate that (that's the whole point), you did not demonstrate anything which can 'symbolically cohere and explore' any/all formal systems. I specifically chose the human brain of a scientist, the workings of which were used to generate the 'law of nature' running the artificial (COMP) scientist (who must also be convinced COMP is true in order to bother at all!). I can see how, as a human, I could 100% fake the apparent world that the COMP entity examines COMP-ly and it will never know. (The same way that a brilliant virtual reality could 100% fool a human and we'd never know. A virtual reality that fools us humans is not necessarily made of computation either. ) I am not saying humans are magical. I am saying that humans do not operate formally like COMP and that 'formally handling inconsistency' is not the same thing as 'delivering inconsistency by being an informal system'. BTW I mean informal in the Godellian sense...simultaneous inconsistency and incompleteness. This is a highly self referential situation. Resist the temptation to assume that a COMP/NC scientist construction of statements capturing inconsistency is equivalent to dealing the intrinsic inconsistency of the human brain kind. Also reject the notion that the brain is computing of the COMP (Turing) type. This is not the case. You might also be interested in Bringsjord, S. 1999. The Zombie Attack on the Computational Conception of Mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LIX:41-69. He ends with.In the end, then, the zombie attack proves lethal: computationalism is dead. It's a formal modal logic argument to the same end as mine in the end, they are actually the same argument. It's just not obvious. I like mine better because it has the Godellian approach. The informality issue has some elaboration here: Cabanero, L. L. and Small, C. G. 2009. Intentionality and Computationalism: A Diagonal Argument. Mind and Matter 7:81-90. Also here: Fetzer, J. H. 2001. Computers
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 13 Aug, 01:42, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote: I am not saying humans are magical. I am saying that humans do /not/ operate formally like COMP and that '/formally handling inconsistency/' is not the same thing as '/delivering inconsistency by being an informal/ /system/'. BTW I mean informal in the Godellian sense...simultaneous inconsistency and incompleteness. You can have formal systems that are simultaneously inconsistent and incomplete too. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 13 Aug 2009, at 10:53, 1Z wrote: On 13 Aug, 01:42, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote: I am not saying humans are magical. I am saying that humans do /not/ operate formally like COMP and that '/formally handling inconsistency/' is not the same thing as '/delivering inconsistency by being an informal/ /system/'. BTW I mean informal in the Godellian sense...simultaneous inconsistency and incompleteness. You can have formal systems that are simultaneously inconsistent and incomplete too. I guess you mean you can't have formal systems Or you were talking about paraconsistent system, or relevant systems. Then I agree. At least in classical and intuitionist logic, all inconsistent systems are complete, in the sense of proving all what is true, and also ... all what is false. This is due to the fact that (false-A) is a tautology. (A being any proposition) Of course Colin could answer by saying that he was talking about informal system. But thenas Quentin points out, he put the conclusion in the hypothesis. And what does he mean by Godelian sense, which makes sense only for formal systems? What Colin means by informal, in his context, is a bit of a mystery. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 13 Aug, 10:30, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 13 Aug 2009, at 10:53, 1Z wrote: On 13 Aug, 01:42, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote: I am not saying humans are magical. I am saying that humans do /not/ operate formally like COMP and that '/formally handling inconsistency/' is not the same thing as '/delivering inconsistency by being an informal/ /system/'. BTW I mean informal in the Godellian sense...simultaneous inconsistency and incompleteness. You can have formal systems that are simultaneously inconsistent and incomplete too. I guess you mean you can't have formal systems No Or you were talking about paraconsistent system, or relevant systems. Then I agree. yes At least in classical and intuitionist logic, all inconsistent systems are complete, in the sense of proving all what is true, and also ... all what is false. This is due to the fact that (false-A) is a tautology. (A being any proposition) Of course Colin could answer by saying that he was talking about informal system. He is talking about both: he is contrasting them. He is guessing the abilities of informal systems, and wrong about formal systems. But thenas Quentin points out, he put the conclusion in the hypothesis. And what does he mean by Godelian sense, which makes sense only for formal systems? What Colin means by informal, in his context, is a bit of a mystery. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Colin Hales wrote: Here's a nice pic to use in discussion from GEB. The map for a formal system (a tree). A formal system could not draw this picture. Where's your proof of this assertion? Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Hi, I guess I am pretty much over the need for any 'ism whatever. I can re-classify my ideas in terms of an 'ism, but that process tells me nothing extra and offers no extra empirical clue. I think I can classify fairly succinctly the difference between approaches: *(A) Colin* (a) There is a natural world. (b) We can describe how it appears to us using the P-consciousness of scientists. (c) We can describe how a natural world might be constructed which has an observer in it like (a) Descriptions (b) are not the natural world (a) but 'about it' (its appearances) Descriptions (C) are not the natural world (a) but 'about it' (its structure) (b) and (c) need only ever be 'doxastic' (beliefs). I hold that these two sets of descriptions (b) and (c) need /not/ be complete or even perfect/accurate. Turing-computing (b) or (c) is not an instance of (a)/will not ever make (a) Turing-computing (b) or (c) can tell you something about the operation of (a). NOTE: If (b) is a description of the rules of chess (no causality whatever, good prediction of future board appearances), (c) is a description of the behaviour of chess players (chess causality). There's a rough metaphor for you. - *(B) not-Colin (as seems to be what I see here...)* There are descriptions of type (b), one of which is quantum mechanics QM. The math of QM suggests a multiple-histories TOE concept. If I then project a spurious attribution of idealism into this then if I squint at the math I can see what might operate as a 'first person perspective' and I realise/believe that if I Turing-compute the math, it *is* a universe. I can make it be reality. Causality is a mystery solved by prayer to the faith of idealism and belief in 'comp', driven by the hidden mechanism of the Turing 'tape reader/punch'. - What's happening here AFAICT, is that players in (B) have been so far 'down the rabbit hole' for so long they've lost sight of reality and think 'isms explain things! In (A) you get to actually explain things (appearances and causal necessity). /The price is that you can never truly know reality/. You get 'asymptotically close to knowing it', though. (A) involves no delusion about Turing-computation implementing reality. The amount of 'idealism', 'physicalism', 'materialism' and any other 'ism you need to operate in the (A) framework is Nil. In (A) the COMP (as I defined it) is obviously and simply false and there is no sense in which Turing-style-computation need be attributed to be involved in natural processes. It's falsehood is expected and natural and consistent with all empirical knowledge. The spurious attributions in (B) are replaced in (A) by the descriptions (c), all of which must correlate perfectly (empirically) with (b) through the provision of an observer and a mechanism for observation which is evidenced in brain material. The concept of a Turing machine is not needed at all. There may be a sense in which a Turing (C-T) equivalent of (c) might be constructed. That equivalent is adds zero to knowledge systems (b) and (c). Under (A) the C-T thesis is perfectly right but simply irrelevant. My motivation to kill COMP is purely aimed at bring a halt to the delusion of the AGI community that Turing-computing will ever create a mind. They are throwing away $millions based on a false belief. Their expectations need to be scientifically defined for a change. I have no particular interest in disturbing any belief systems here except insofar as they contribute to the delusion that COMP is true. 'nuff said. This is another minor battle in an ongoing campaign. :-) Colin Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Colin, It seems that to me that until one understands the nature of the extreme Idealism that COMP entails, no arguement based on the physical will do... I refute it thus! -Dr. Johnson http://www.samueljohnson.com/refutati.html Onward! Stephen - Original Message - *From:* Colin Hales mailto:c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2009 9:51 PM *Subject:* Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental? Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2009, at 09:08, Colin Hales wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
2009/8/12 Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au: My motivation to kill COMP is purely aimed at bring a halt to the delusion of the AGI community that Turing-computing will ever create a mind. They are throwing away $millions based on a false belief. Their expectations need to be scientifically defined for a change. I have no particular interest in disturbing any belief systems here except insofar as they contribute to the delusion that COMP is true. 'nuff said. This is another minor battle in an ongoing campaign. :-) Colin You want so much COMP to be false that you've forget in the way that your argument is flawed from the start... You start with, AI can't do science to conclude that... tada... AI can't do science. It's absurd. Quentin -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Colin, We agree on the conclusion. We disagree on vocabulary, and on the validity of your reasoning. Let us call I-comp the usual indexical mechanism discussed in this list (comp). Let us call m-comp the thesis that there is a primitive natural world, and that it can be described by a digital machine. UDA shows that I-comp entails NOT m-comp. Obviously m-comp entails I-comp. So m-comp entails NOT m-comp. This refutes m-comp. Now you seem to believe in a stuffy natural reality, so you have to abandon I-comp. This is coherent. Now you have to say no to the doctor and introduce actual infinities in the brain. I find this very unplausible, but it is not my goal to defend it. Now I find your reasoning based on informality not convincing at all, to say the least. It is really based on level confusion s Peter Jones was driving at correctly. You B above seems also indicate you have not study the argument. Bruno On 12 Aug 2009, at 08:11, Colin Hales wrote: Hi, I guess I am pretty much over the need for any 'ism whatever. I can re-classify my ideas in terms of an 'ism, but that process tells me nothing extra and offers no extra empirical clue. I think I can classify fairly succinctly the difference between approaches: (A) Colin (a) There is a natural world. (b) We can describe how it appears to us using the P-consciousness of scientists. (c) We can describe how a natural world might be constructed which has an observer in it like (a) Descriptions (b) are not the natural world (a) but 'about it' (its appearances) Descriptions (C) are not the natural world (a) but 'about it' (its structure) (b) and (c) need only ever be 'doxastic' (beliefs). I hold that these two sets of descriptions (b) and (c) need not be complete or even perfect/accurate. Turing-computing (b) or (c) is not an instance of (a)/will not ever make (a) Turing-computing (b) or (c) can tell you something about the operation of (a). NOTE: If (b) is a description of the rules of chess (no causality whatever, good prediction of future board appearances), (c) is a description of the behaviour of chess players (chess causality). There's a rough metaphor for you. - (B) not-Colin (as seems to be what I see here...) There are descriptions of type (b), one of which is quantum mechanics QM. The math of QM suggests a multiple-histories TOE concept. If I then project a spurious attribution of idealism into this then if I squint at the math I can see what might operate as a 'first person perspective' and I realise/believe that if I Turing-compute the math, it is a universe. I can make it be reality. Causality is a mystery solved by prayer to the faith of idealism and belief in 'comp', driven by the hidden mechanism of the Turing 'tape reader/punch'. - What's happening here AFAICT, is that players in (B) have been so far 'down the rabbit hole' for so long they've lost sight of reality and think 'isms explain things! In (A) you get to actually explain things (appearances and causal necessity). The price is that you can never truly know reality. You get 'asymptotically close to knowing it', though. (A) involves no delusion about Turing-computation implementing reality. The amount of 'idealism', 'physicalism', 'materialism' and any other 'ism you need to operate in the (A) framework is Nil. In (A) the COMP (as I defined it) is obviously and simply false and there is no sense in which Turing-style-computation need be attributed to be involved in natural processes. It's falsehood is expected and natural and consistent with all empirical knowledge. The spurious attributions in (B) are replaced in (A) by the descriptions (c), all of which must correlate perfectly (empirically) with (b) through the provision of an observer and a mechanism for observation which is evidenced in brain material. The concept of a Turing machine is not needed at all. There may be a sense in which a Turing (C-T) equivalent of (c) might be constructed. That equivalent is adds zero to knowledge systems (b) and (c). Under (A) the C-T thesis is perfectly right but simply irrelevant. My motivation to kill COMP is purely aimed at bring a halt to the delusion of the AGI community that Turing-computing will ever create a mind. They are throwing away $millions based on a false belief. Their expectations need to be scientifically defined for a change. I have no particular interest in disturbing any belief systems here except insofar as they contribute to the delusion that COMP is true. 'nuff said. This is another minor battle in an ongoing campaign. :-) Colin Stephen Paul King wrote: Hi Colin, It seems that to me that until one understands the nature of the extreme Idealism that COMP entails, no arguement based on the physical
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 11 Aug 2009, at 02:06, ronaldheld wrote: I am behind, because I was away delivering Science talk to Star Trek fans. I am uncertain what to take away from this thread, and could use the clarification. I will think about it. It could help if you were a bit more specific. As an aside, I read(or tried to) read the SANE paper on the plane. Ask any question, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2009/8/12 Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au: My motivation to kill COMP is purely aimed at bring a halt to the delusion of the AGI community that Turing-computing will ever create a mind. They are throwing away $millions based on a false belief. Their expectations need to be scientifically defined for a change. I have no particular interest in disturbing any belief systems here except insofar as they contribute to the delusion that COMP is true. 'nuff said. This is another minor battle in an ongoing campaign. :-) Colin You want so much COMP to be false that you've forget in the way that your argument is flawed from the start... You start with, AI can't do science to conclude that... tada... AI can't do science. It's absurd. Quentin It is a 'reductio ad absudum' argument. My argument /does not start with AI can't do science/. It starts with the simple posit that if /COMP is true/ then all differences between a COMP world (AC) and the natural world (NC) should be zero under all circumstances and the AC/NC distinction would be false. That is the natural result of unconditional universality of COMP yes? OK. This posit is /not/ an assumption that AC cannot be a scientist. The rationale is that if I can find one and only one circumstance consistent/sustaining that difference, then the posit of the universal truth of COMP is falsified. The AC/NC distinction is upheld: . I looked and found one place where the difference is viable, a difference that only goes away if you project a human viewpoint into the 'artificial scientist' ( i.e. valid only by additional assumptions).that position is that the NC artificial scientist cannot ever debate COMP as an option. _Not because it can't construct the statements of debate, but because it will never be able to detect a world in which COMP is false, because in that world the informal systems involved can fake all evidence_ and lead the COMP scientist by the nose anywhere they want. If the real world is a place where informal systems exist, those informal systems can subvert/fake all COMP statements, no matter what they are and the COMP scientist will never know. It can be 100% right, think it's right and actually not be connected to the actual reality of it. A world in which COMP is false can never verify that it is. Do not confuse this 'ability to be fooled' with an inability to formulate statements which deal with inconsistency. The place where we get an informal system is in the human brain, which can 'symbolically cohere and explore' any/all formal systems. I specifically chose the human brain of a scientist, the workings of which were used to generate the 'law of nature' running the artificial (COMP) scientist (who must also be convinced COMP is true in order to bother at all!). I can see how, as a human, I could 100% fake the apparent world that the COMP entity examines COMP-ly and it will never know. (The same way that a brilliant virtual reality could 100% fool a human and we'd never know. A virtual reality that fools us humans is not necessarily made of computation either. ) I am not saying humans are magical. I am saying that humans do /not/ operate formally like COMP and that '/formally handling inconsistency/' is not the same thing as '/delivering inconsistency by being an informal/ /system/'. BTW I mean informal in the Godellian sense...simultaneous inconsistency and incompleteness. This is a highly self referential situation. Resist the temptation to assume that a COMP/NC scientist construction of statements capturing inconsistency is equivalent to dealing the intrinsic inconsistency of the human brain kind. Also reject the notion that the brain is computing of the COMP (Turing) type. This is not the case. You might also be interested in *Bringsjord, S. 1999. The Zombie Attack on the Computational Conception of Mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LIX:41-69.* He ends with./In the end, then, the zombie attack proves lethal: computationalism is dead./ It's a formal modal logic argument to the same end as mine in the end, they are actually the same argument. It's just not obvious. I like mine better because it has the Godellian approach. The informality issue has some elaboration here: *Cabanero, L. L. and Small, C. G. 2009. Intentionality and Computationalism: A Diagonal Argument. Mind and Matter 7:81-90.* Also here: *Fetzer, J. H. 2001. Computers and Cognition: Why Minds are Not Machines Kluwer Academic Publishers.* I am hoping that between these and a few others, the issue is sealed. I know it'll take a while for the true believers to come around. It's not such a big deal ... except when $$$ + wasted time promulgates bad science and magical thinking in the form of a kind a 'fashion preference' based on presumptions that the natural world is obliged to operate according to human-constructed 'isms. If I look
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Bruno Marchal wrote: Colin, We agree on the conclusion. We disagree on vocabulary, and on the validity of your reasoning. Let us call I-comp the usual indexical mechanism discussed in this list (comp). Let us call m-comp the thesis that there is a primitive natural world, and that it can be described by a digital machine. UDA shows that I-comp entails NOT m-comp. Obviously m-comp entails I-comp. So m-comp entails NOT m-comp. This refutes m-comp. My argument involves refuting what you call m-comp Where did you get the idea I am suggesting /It can be described by a digital machine/? I'll state it again There is a natural world (a) It is imperfectly described from within in 2 ways (b) and (c). A symbolic description which is predictive of appearances (b) needs no assumption that the natural world is computing (b) or is a computation of (b). A symbolic description which is predictive of structure (c) needs no assumption that the natural world is computing (c) or is a computation of (c). The 'describing' in (b) and (c) invokes no necessary 'digital machine'. The Turing computation of the descriptions (b) and (c) is /not claimable to be a natural world/ by anything more than a form of faith. This seems to be the sticking point ... this 'digital machine' idea the automatic attribution of symbolic regularities as some kind of computation then attributed some kind of involvement in the natural world. This extra attribution is not justified. Non-parsimonious, not logically connected in any necessary way. Now you seem to believe in a stuffy natural reality, so you have to abandon I-comp. This is coherent. Now you have to say no to the doctor and introduce actual infinities in the brain. I find this very unplausible, but it is not my goal to defend it. Now I find your reasoning based on informality not convincing at all, to say the least. It is really based on level confusion s Peter Jones was driving at correctly. You B above seems also indicate you have not study the argument. Bruno The COMP that I refute is pragmatic and empirically tractable. Yes, m-comp is false. I don't need I-comp to reach that conclusion I need only go as far as the (a)/(b)/(c) framework in which (b) and (c) are imperfect, incomplete and non-unique symbolic descriptions of a natural world and which otherwise have no involvement in the natural world /at all/. Two different entities (human and Klingon :-) ) in our natural world could have completely different (b) formulations and be as predictive as each other. Study or not study? makes no difference. The whole idea of i-comp is unnecessary. BTW, just in case there's another issue behind thisthere's no such thing as 'digital'. Anyone who has ever done electronics will tell you that. It's all 'analogue' ...a construction of a quantised reality. By 'analogue' what I mean is whatever it is that is the natural world (a) above. All the digital machines on the planet are analogue. These are the ones people are using to do AGI. The virtual-discretisation we call digital quantisation of QM. So when you invoke a 'digital machine' you are talking about a fiction, anyway. Quantum computers merely facilitate multiple simultaneous executions within the same kind of virtual-digital structure ...doing lots more virtual-digital work doesn't make the computation any more digital than a standard PC. So in reality (a) there is no such thing as a Turing machine. There are only machines acting 'as-if' they are, by design, through constraint of analogue state transitions. I have personally played with the electronic transition between 0 and 1 on many occasions it's as real as the 0 and the 1 and you can walk all over it. There's multiple layers of misconception operating in this area. And they are not all mine! Colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2009, at 09:08, Colin Hales wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. Why? COMP entails that physics cannot be described by a computation, but by an infinite sum of infinite histories. If you were correct, there would be no possible white rabbit. You are confusing comp (I am a machine) and constructive physics (the universe is a machine). This is the COMP I have a problem with. It's the one in the literature. It relates directly to the behaviour (descriptive options of) of scientists: *COMP* This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: “/The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X/”/./ If this is not the COMP you speak of, then this could be the origins of disparity in view. Also, the term I am machine says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. This is not comp. Actually the definition above is ambiguous, and seems to presuppose natural things. I did not make this up. I read it in the literature in various forms and summarised. 'Mind as computation' is a specific case of it. If I have a broken definition according to you then I am in the company of a lot of people. It's also the major delusion in many computer 'scientists' in the field of AI, who's options would be very different if COMP is false. So I'll use COMP as defined above, for now. It is what I refute. 'presupposing natural things... ?? hmm Natural thingsYou know... the thing we sometimes call the 'real world'? Whatever it is that we are in/made of, that appears to behave rather regularly and that we are intrinsically ignorant of and 'do empirical science on'. The 'thing' that our consciousness portrays to us? The place with real live behaving humans with major brain and other nervous system problems who could really use some help? That natural world that actually defined COMP as per above. That 'thing'.Whatever 'it' is... that will do for a collection of 'natural things'. The idea that the presupposition of natural things is problematic is rather unhelpful to those (above, real, natural) suffering people. Sounds a bit emotive, but .. there you go .. call me practically motivated. I intend to remain in this condition. :-) Colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Hi Colin, It seems that to me that until one understands the nature of the extreme Idealism that COMP entails, no arguement based on the physical will do... I refute it thus! -Dr. Johnson http://www.samueljohnson.com/refutati.html Onward! Stephen - Original Message - From: Colin Hales To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 9:51 PM Subject: Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental? Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2009, at 09:08, Colin Hales wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. Why? COMP entails that physics cannot be described by a computation, but by an infinite sum of infinite histories. If you were correct, there would be no possible white rabbit. You are confusing comp (I am a machine) and constructive physics (the universe is a machine). This is the COMP I have a problem with. It's the one in the literature. It relates directly to the behaviour (descriptive options of) of scientists: COMP This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: “The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X”. If this is not the COMP you speak of, then this could be the origins of disparity in view. Also, the term I am machine says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. This is not comp. Actually the definition above is ambiguous, and seems to presuppose natural things. I did not make this up. I read it in the literature in various forms and summarised. 'Mind as computation' is a specific case of it. If I have a broken definition according to you then I am in the company of a lot of people. It's also the major delusion in many computer 'scientists' in the field of AI, who's options would be very different if COMP is false. So I'll use COMP as defined above, for now. It is what I refute. 'presupposing natural things... ?? hmm Natural thingsYou know... the thing we sometimes call the 'real world'? Whatever it is that we are in/made of, that appears to behave rather regularly and that we are intrinsically ignorant of and 'do empirical science on'. The 'thing' that our consciousness portrays to us? The place with real live behaving humans with major brain and other nervous system problems who could really use some help? That natural world that actually defined COMP as per above. That 'thing'.Whatever 'it' is... that will do for a collection of 'natural things'. The idea that the presupposition of natural things is problematic is rather unhelpful to those (above, real, natural) suffering people. Sounds a bit emotive, but .. there you go .. call me practically motivated. I intend to remain in this condition. :-) Colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. Why? COMP entails that physics cannot be described by a computation, but by an infinite sum of infinite histories. If you were correct, there would be no possible white rabbit. You are confusing comp (I am a machine) and constructive physics (the universe is a machine). This is the COMP I have a problem with. It's the one in the literature. It relates directly to the behaviour (descriptive options of) of scientists: *COMP* This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: “/The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X/”/./ If this is not the COMP you speak of, then this could be the origins of disparity in view. Also, the term I am machine says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. The term The universe is a machine also says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. I offer the following distinction, which relates directly to the human behaviour (observable, testable) called scientific behaviour. (a) scientific descriptions of a natural world produced by an observer inside it, built of it. (science currently 100% here) and (b) scientific descriptions (also produced inside it by (a) human observers) of a natural world as a natural form of computation which produces the above observer.(science currently Nil% here for no justified reason) and (c) The natural world as an actual instantiation of (b).Whatever it is that we find ourselves in. When you utter the word physics above, I hear a reference to descriptions of type (a) and nothing else. I assume no direct relationship between them and (b) or (c). The framework of (a), (b),(c) is all that is needed, justified because it exhausts the list of possible views of our situation which have any empirical/explanatory relevance. None of the descriptions (a) or (b) need be unique or even exact. The only thing required of (a) is prediction. The only thing required of (b) is prediction /of an observer who is predicting/. Both (a) and (b) are justified empirically in predicting a scientist. Now consider the ways I could be confused: (i) computed (Turing) (a) is identical to (c) (all of it) or (ii) computed (Turing) (b) is identical to (c) (all of it) or (iii) computed (Turing) (a) of a piece of (c) is identical to the piece of (c) within (c) or (iv) computed (Turing) (b) of a piece of (c) is identical to the piece of (c) within (c) The COMP I refute above is of type (iii). I did not examine (iv) in the paper. (iii) is the delusion currently inhabiting computer science in respect of AGI expectations. The 'piece of (c)' I use to do this is 'the human scientist'. It is expectations of AGI projects that I seek to clarify - my motivation here. It is a 100% practical need. (i) and (ii) might be possible if you already knew everythingbut that is of no practical use. (iii) and (iv) viability depends on the piece of (c)/rest of (c) boundary and how well that boundary facilitates an AGI. So... who's assuming stuff? :-) colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 10 Aug 2009, at 09:08, Colin Hales wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. Why? COMP entails that physics cannot be described by a computation, but by an infinite sum of infinite histories. If you were correct, there would be no possible white rabbit. You are confusing comp (I am a machine) and constructive physics (the universe is a machine). This is the COMP I have a problem with. It's the one in the literature. It relates directly to the behaviour (descriptive options of) of scientists: COMP This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: “The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X”. If this is not the COMP you speak of, then this could be the origins of disparity in view. Also, the term I am machine says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. This is not comp. Actually the definition above is ambiguous, and seems to presuppose natural things. I use comp in its older and standard sense in the cognitive science. I am a machine has the advantage of having an operational meaning by entailing the possible use of artificial brain. If you give a meaning to the word consciousness, comp is the assertion that consciousness is an invariant for a precise set of transformation. The term The universe is a machine also says nothing scientifically meaningful to me. Well comp, in its indexical sense, entails the universe is a machine is inconsistent. I offer the following distinction, which relates directly to the human behaviour (observable, testable) called scientific behaviour. (a) scientific descriptions of a natural world produced by an observer inside it, built of it. (science currently 100% here) and (b) scientific descriptions (also produced inside it by (a) human observers) of a natural world as a natural form of computation which produces the above observer.(science currently Nil% here for no justified reason) and (c) The natural world as an actual instantiation of (b).Whatever it is that we find ourselves in. When you utter the word physics above, I hear a reference to descriptions of type (a) and nothing else. I assume no direct relationship between them and (b) or (c). The framework of (a), (b), (c) is all that is needed, justified because it exhausts the list of possible views of our situation which have any empirical/explanatory relevance. None of the descriptions (a) or (b) need be unique or even exact. The only thing required of (a) is prediction. The only thing required of (b) is prediction of an observer who is predicting. Both (a) and (b) are justified empirically in predicting a scientist. Now consider the ways I could be confused: (i) computed (Turing) (a) is identical to (c) (all of it) or (ii) computed (Turing) (b) is identical to (c) (all of it) or (iii) computed (Turing) (a) of a piece of (c) is identical to the piece of (c) within (c) or (iv) computed (Turing) (b) of a piece of (c) is identical to the piece of (c) within (c) The COMP I refute above is of type (iii). I did not examine (iv) in the paper. (iii) is the delusion currently inhabiting computer science in respect of AGI expectations. The 'piece of (c)' I use to do this is 'the human scientist'. It is expectations of AGI projects that I seek to clarify - my motivation here. It is a 100% practical need. (i) and (ii) might be possible if you already knew everythingbut that is of no practical use. (iii) and (iv) viability depends on the piece of (c)/rest of (c) boundary and how well that boundary facilitates an AGI. So... who's assuming stuff? :-) But then your non-comp is a direct corollary of UDA. If we assume there is a natural world, or a primitive physicalness, comp, in the sense of INDEXICAL digital mechanism (and indexical refers to the use of I in I am a machine) is false. You can sum up the UDA conclusion by: If I am a machine then observable Nature is not. I agree that brain does not do
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 10 Aug, 03:54, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote: ronaldheld wrote: As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? that Physics is well represented mathematically? That the Multiverse is composed of mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or something else? Ronald This is /the/ question. It always seems to get sidestepped in discussions that fail to distinguish between (a) /reality as some kind of natural computation/ and (b) /reality represented by formal statements(laws of nature) of regularity, //apparent in an observer, //that may be artificially computed/ /by a Turing style machine/. The conflation of (a) and (b) is a constant in the discussions here. (a) does not need an observer. It /constructs/ an observer. (b) involves an observer and are regularities constructed by the observer made by (a) The (roughly 5) conflations (from my paper that refutes COMP) are: Conflation #1: Deploying an artificial scientist ? Bestowing scientific knowledge Conflation #2: COMP(utation) ? experience Conflation #3: A Scientist ? Formal system Conflation #4 Rules of a rule generator ? the generated rules (except once) Conflation #5 AC Artificial Turing style abstract symbol manipulation ? NC The computation that is the natural world Note that all 5 of these permeate the discussions here. I see it all the time. The main one is #5. When you realise how many combinations of these can misdirect a discussion, you realise how screwed up things are. The following statements summarise the effects: (A) The fact that the natural world, to an observer, happens to have appearances predicted by a set of formal statements (Laws of Nature/Physics) does not entail that those statements are in any way involved in running/driving the universe. The hypothesis that laws somehow really exist is actually quite a reasonable abductive explanation for observed regularities. Like most scientific explanations it is less than certain, but that doesn't make it false. Eg. The assumption that the concept of a 'multiverse' is valid or relevant is another symptom of the conflationthe reason? QM is a mathematical construct of type (b), /not/ an example of (a). The whole concept of a multiverse is a malady caused by this conflation. Is anything an example of (a)? (B) The operation of a Turing Machine ( = hardware-invariant//artificial abstract/ symbol manipulation) is /not /what is going on in the natural world and, I'm not wild about the hypotheis, but howcome you are so sure it is wrong? specifically, is /not/ what is happening in the brain (of a scientist). Assuming 'cognition is computation' is unjustified on any level. I find the situation increasingly aggravating. It's like talking to cult members who's beliefs are predicated on a delusion, and who a re so deep inside it and so unable to see out of it that they are lost. Common sense has left the building. The appropriate scientific way out of this mess is to (i) let (a) descriptions and (b) descriptions be, for the purposes, /separate scientific depictions of the natural world/ If they are not then at some point in the analysis they will become indistinguishable...in which case you have a /scientific/logical approach./ (ii) Drop /all/ assumptions that any discussion involving Turing machines as relevant to understanding the natural world. This means accepting,/ for the purposes of sorting this mess out/, (a) as being a form of computation fundamentally different to a Turing machine, where the symbols and the processor are literally the same thing. If you predicate your work on (i) then if COMP is true then at some point, if (a) and (b) become indistinguishable, /then/ COMP will be a-priori /predicted/ to be true. I am not sure what you are saying here. Computationalism is generally taken to be a claim about the mind, and is quite a respectable thesis (you haven't disproved, BTW, since formal systems *can* handle contradictons, contra your assumption) Bruno's comp is something rather different and idiosyncratic --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 10 Aug 2009, at 11:04, 1Z wrote (to Colin Hales): I am not sure what you are saying here. Computationalism is generally taken to be a claim about the mind, and is quite a respectable thesis I agree Bruno's comp is something rather different and idiosyncratic You keep saying this. This is a lie. comp is the usual thesis in cognitive science. Except much weaker in the sense that comp, as I defined it, entails all the form of comp in the cognitive science literature (minus the *implicit* naturalist assumption). Naturalist or weak materialist forms of comp are shown epistemological contradictory, but this is the theorem, not the theory. Or I am wrong? Then please comment my last answer to you. Repeating falsities does not help anybody, and create confusions. If we disagree, let us find on what we disagree. I have explained already that there is no implicit assumption of platonism. Just an explicit assumption that we can apply classical logic in the realm of numbers. If you disagree on the fact that usual comp implies immateriality; just say that you don't understand UDA, or that you have an objection in UDA, and say which one. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Hi Peter, Bruno's comp is something rather different and idiosyncratic You keep saying this. This is a lie. I am not yet entirely sure of this. Let me correct my statement by saying that this is just a common lie, similar to those who have been made purposefully in the seventies, and repeated since then by people who even brag on this in some private circles, as it has been reported to me more than 20 times (since 1973). You have stated in this list many times recurrently that I assume platonism without ever telling us why you think so, or what texts makes you think so. Recently you have make the progress to attribute me only, now, an implicit assumption of platonism. That is a progress, because it means you have eventually realize that I am not making that assumption explicitly, and that what I call Arithmetical Realism is a much weaker statement. Good. But you still seems to want to attribute me platonism as an implicit assumption. That is not enough to refute an argument. If you believe sincerely that I am using an implicit assumption of platonism in the UDA reasoning, you have to show us where in the reasoning the assumption is implicitly used. If you dismiss this, you look like those materialist computationalist who just assume there is an error because the result contradict their theory, and then don't take the time to even read the argument. That is not a scientific attitude. It is an appeal to dogma. It prevents serious people searching some possible real mistakes or awkwardness in the reasoning. Sorry for having to make such remark. But it is highly confusing for everybody when people ascribes to other people the product of their own imagination, especially in difficult and new domains (new to scientific attitude). At least you do it publicly, which makes me think you could still be not lying, but only under the spell of materialist wishful thinking. Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
I am behind, because I was away delivering Science talk to Star Trek fans. I am uncertain what to take away from this thread, and could use the clarification. As an aside, I read(or tried to) read the SANE paper on the plane. Ronald On Aug 10, 11:24 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Peter, Bruno's comp is something rather different and idiosyncratic You keep saying this. This is a lie. I am not yet entirely sure of this. Let me correct my statement by saying that this is just a common lie, similar to those who have been made purposefully in the seventies, and repeated since then by people who even brag on this in some private circles, as it has been reported to me more than 20 times (since 1973). You have stated in this list many times recurrently that I assume platonism without ever telling us why you think so, or what texts makes you think so. Recently you have make the progress to attribute me only, now, an implicit assumption of platonism. That is a progress, because it means you have eventually realize that I am not making that assumption explicitly, and that what I call Arithmetical Realism is a much weaker statement. Good. But you still seems to want to attribute me platonism as an implicit assumption. That is not enough to refute an argument. If you believe sincerely that I am using an implicit assumption of platonism in the UDA reasoning, you have to show us where in the reasoning the assumption is implicitly used. If you dismiss this, you look like those materialist computationalist who just assume there is an error because the result contradict their theory, and then don't take the time to even read the argument. That is not a scientific attitude. It is an appeal to dogma. It prevents serious people searching some possible real mistakes or awkwardness in the reasoning. Sorry for having to make such remark. But it is highly confusing for everybody when people ascribes to other people the product of their own imagination, especially in difficult and new domains (new to scientific attitude). At least you do it publicly, which makes me think you could still be not lying, but only under the spell of materialist wishful thinking. Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
ronaldheld wrote: As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? that Physics is well represented mathematically? That the Multiverse is composed of mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or something else? Ronald This is /the/ question. It always seems to get sidestepped in discussions that fail to distinguish between (a) /reality as some kind of natural computation/ and (b) /reality represented by formal statements(laws of nature) of regularity, //apparent in an observer, //that may be artificially computed/ /by a Turing style machine/. The conflation of (a) and (b) is a constant in the discussions here. (a) does not need an observer. It /constructs/ an observer. (b) involves an observer and are regularities constructed by the observer made by (a) The (roughly 5) conflations (from my paper that refutes COMP) are: Conflation #1: Deploying an artificial scientist ? Bestowing scientific knowledge Conflation #2: COMP(utation) ? experience Conflation #3:A Scientist ? Formal system Conflation #4 Rules of a rule generator ? the generated rules (except once) Conflation #5 AC Artificial Turing style abstract symbol manipulation ? NC The computation that is the natural world Note that all 5 of these permeate the discussions here. I see it all the time. The main one is #5. When you realise how many combinations of these can misdirect a discussion, you realise how screwed up things are. The following statements summarise the effects: (A) The fact that the natural world, to an observer, happens to have appearances predicted by a set of formal statements (Laws of Nature/Physics) does not entail that those statements are in any way involved in running/driving the universe. Eg. The assumption that the concept of a 'multiverse' is valid or relevant is another symptom of the conflationthe reason? QM is a mathematical construct of type (b), /not/ an example of (a). The whole concept of a multiverse is a malady caused by this conflation. (B) The operation of a Turing Machine ( = hardware-invariant//artificial abstract/ symbol manipulation) is /not /what is going on in the natural world and, specifically, is /not/ what is happening in the brain (of a scientist). Assuming 'cognition is computation' is unjustified on any level. I find the situation increasingly aggravating. It's like talking to cult members who's beliefs are predicated on a delusion, and who a re so deep inside it and so unable to see out of it that they are lost. Common sense has left the building. The appropriate scientific way out of this mess is to (i) let (a) descriptions and (b) descriptions be, for the purposes, /separate scientific depictions of the natural world/ If they are not then at some point in the analysis they will become indistinguishable...in which case you have a /scientific/logical approach./ (ii) Drop /all/ assumptions that any discussion involving Turing machines as relevant to understanding the natural world. This means accepting,/ for the purposes of sorting this mess out/, (a) as being a form of computation fundamentally different to a Turing machine, where the symbols and the processor are literally the same thing. If you predicate your work on (i) then if COMP is true then at some point, if (a) and (b) become indistinguishable, /then/ COMP will be a-priori /predicted/ to be true. I leave you to unpack your personalised version of the conflations. Traditional physics/math training will automatically infect the trainee with the affliction that conflates (a) and (b). The system of organised thought in which an observer is a-priori predicted with suggested sources of empirical evidence, is the system that we seek. (a) and (b) above represent that very system. We are currently locked into (b) and have all manner of weird assumptions operating in place of (a) which mean, in effect, that _the /last/ thing physicists want to explain is physicists_. Endlessly blathering on about multiverses and assuming COMP does /nothing/ to that end. I've had 5 years of listening to this COMP/Turing machine/Multiverse stuff. It's old/impotent/toothless/mute (predicts nothing) and sustained only by delusion . It operates as a cult(ure). I am the deprogrammer. :-) colin PS. Brent I seem to have picked up a SHOUTING habit from a relatively brain dead AGI forum, where the folk are particularly deluded about what they are doing They are so lost in (ii) above and have so little clue about science, they need therapy! I'll try and calm myself down a bit. Maybe use /italics/ instead :-) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:54:00PM +1000, Colin Hales wrote: ronaldheld wrote: As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? that Physics is well represented mathematically? That the Multiverse is composed of mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or something else? Ronald This is /the/ question. It always seems to get sidestepped in discussions that fail to distinguish between (a) /reality as some kind of natural computation/ and (b) /reality represented by formal statements(laws of nature) of regularity, //apparent in an observer, //that may be artificially computed/ /by a Turing style machine/. The conflation of (a) and (b) is a constant in the discussions here. (a) does not need an observer. It /constructs/ an observer. (b) involves an observer and are regularities constructed by the observer made by (a) I confess I don't see this conflation here. a) is the sort of viewpoint advocated by Steve Wolfram, and maybe by Schmidhuber, but he seems to have left the list long ago. b) is more the viewpoint of myself or Bruno. Stuff snipped, because I didn't get that from your paper. The following statements summarise the effects: (A) The fact that the natural world, to an observer, happens to have appearances predicted by a set of formal statements (Laws of Nature/Physics) does not entail that those statements are in any way involved in running/driving the universe. Eg. The assumption that the concept of a 'multiverse' is valid or relevant is another symptom of the conflationthe reason? QM is a mathematical construct of type (b), /not/ an example of (a). The whole concept of a multiverse is a malady caused by this conflation. No - the Multiverse is a malady caused by the operation of Occams Razor. The appearance of a multiverse only makes the malady worse :). (B) The operation of a Turing Machine ( = hardware-invariant//artificial abstract/ symbol manipulation) is /not /what is going on in the natural world and, specifically, is /not/ what is happening in the brain (of a scientist). Assuming 'cognition is computation' is unjustified on any level. Nobody is suggesting that brains are Turing machines. All that is being suggested (by COMP) is that brains perform computations (and nothing but), hence can be perfectly emulated by a Turing machine, by virtue of the Church-Turing thesis. I find the situation increasingly aggravating. It's like talking to cult members who's beliefs are predicated on a delusion, and who a re so deep inside it and so unable to see out of it that they are lost. Common sense has left the building. The appropriate scientific way out of this mess is to (i) let (a) descriptions and (b) descriptions be, for the purposes, /separate scientific depictions of the natural world/ If they are not then at some point in the analysis they will become indistinguishable...in which case you have a /scientific/logical approach./ (ii) Drop /all/ assumptions that any discussion involving Turing machines as relevant to understanding the natural world. This means accepting,/ for the purposes of sorting this mess out/, (a) as being a form of computation fundamentally different to a Turing machine, where the symbols and the processor are literally the same thing. If you Are you implying that thought is a form of computation that lies outside the class of Church-Turing thesis? There are such things as hypercomputations, but they remain controversial as having any relevance to the real world. Even probabilistic machines (my favourite type non-Turing machine) still only compute standard computable functions, albeit with different complexity class to standard machines. predicate your work on (i) then if COMP is true then at some point, if (a) and (b) become indistinguishable, /then/ COMP will be a-priori /predicted/ to be true. I leave you to unpack your personalised version of the conflations. Traditional physics/math training will automatically infect the trainee with the affliction that conflates (a) and (b). The system of organised thought in which an observer is a-priori predicted with suggested sources of empirical evidence, is the system that we seek. (a) and (b) above represent that very system. We are currently locked into (b) and have all manner of weird assumptions operating in place of (a) which mean, in effect, that _the /last/ thing physicists want to explain is physicists_. Endlessly blathering on about multiverses and assuming COMP does /nothing/ to that end. I've had 5 years of listening to this COMP/Turing machine/Multiverse stuff. It's old/impotent/toothless/mute (predicts nothing) and sustained only by delusion . It operates as a cult(ure). I am the deprogrammer. :-) What is your constructive theory then? --
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
regrettable snips to get at the heart of it. One thing at a time. Hope you don't mind. russell standish wrote: Nobody is suggesting that brains are Turing machines. All that is being suggested (by COMP) is that brains perform computations (and nothing but), hence can be perfectly emulated by a Turing machine, by virtue of the Church-Turing thesis. /Nobody is suggesting that brains are Turing machines./ _Yes they are_- /implicitly/ in an expectation that a computation of a model of the appearances of a brain can be a brain (below). To see this...note that you said: That brains perform computations.hence can be perfectly emulated etc etc Brains are a naturally evolving self-manipulating natural process that involves natural symbols going through continual transformations in regular ways. // And...yeswe can construct a _/model/_ X of the appearances that brain has whilst that manipulation/transformation is underway but...so what? There is /nowhere in the universe that model X is being computed on anything _in the sense we understand as a Turing machine_./ (This applies to models of cognition and to models of the material/space of the brain.) This is the false assumption. The C-T thesis is not wrong. /It's just not saying anything/. The 'emulation' you cite is only ever justified as of a model of a cognitive process, /not a cognitive process/. This is precisely the conflation of (a) /the natural world as some kind of as-yet un-elaborated natural computation/ with (b) /Turing-style computation of a _model_ of the natural world/. The COMP I refute in the paper is exactly this (b) kind: *COMP* This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: /The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X//./ There is a fundamental logical error being made of the kind: /natural thing X behaves as if abstract-scientific-formal-description is running as a program on a computer, so therefore all abstract/artificial //computations-of-formal-description//-X are (by an undisclosed, undiscussed mechanism) identical to natural thing X/. // Do you see how the C-T Thesis and the Turing machine ideas can be perfectly right and at the same time deliver absolutely no claim to be involved in or describing the origins of an actual natural cognitive process? So when you say Nobody is suggesting that brains are Turing machines - _this cannot be true_, because everyone is methodologically behaving as if they had. It's an act of supposition/omission a failure to properly distinguish two kinds of things. There are other options which do not make this presupposition, and which are therefore better justified as forming descriptive framework which might involve understanding /actual cognition/ instead of assuming its origins. I have been exploring these 'other options' for a long time. Their details don't matter - the very fact of the possibility is what is important - and what has been tacitly presumed out of existence by the conflation I have delineated. Our failure to consider these other options is a subscription to the conflation I have elaborated. This is the true heart of the matter. We have been rattling off paragraphs like the one you delivered above for so long that we fail to see the implicit epistemic poison of the unjustified claim hidden inside. colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 08 Aug 2009, at 05:20, ronaldheld wrote: As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? It depends of many things. Most physicists and non physicists take more or less for granted an Aristotelian picture of reality. Now, if you are willing to believe that you can survive classical teleportation, you may have to prepare yourself to be open to a different picture, where 3-reality is (say) elementary arithmetic, and 1-realities are dreams by universal machine/number(s). This is new, apparently, so this is something that you have to understand by yourself, by studying UDA, for example. You have to be open to the idea of taking the notion of person, subjective memories, consciousness, etc. seriously into account. Tell me if you say yes to the doctor, and I can show you what sort of reality you will be confront with. that Physics is well represented mathematically? I know mathematicians who have heart palpitations when seeing the math of physicists :) They don't put just mind under the rug, they put many infinities there too! But I am unfair because they do that in an more and more elegant way... Actually physicians have literally created new interesting branch in math. This is a new phenomenon. But I am not sure Physics, as a whole, can be said well represented mathematically in any global way. Some theories are more lucky than others. GR and QM are not yet well integrated, and comp does not really help in this regard, up to now. Some like Tegmark and Schmidhuber seem to believe that the physical world could be a mathematical structure, or a computation, but I argue that if comp is true, the relation is more complex. In a sense physics sums up the whole of math in any of its part, and eventually, physical reality is defined by the border of the ignorance of all possible universal machines. That the Multiverse is composed of mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or something else? Assuming comp, the physical world(s) emerge(s) from first person filterings on infinite set of (arithmetical) computations. Comp predict that if there is a notion of first person plural, then it defines a common level below which we can detect the parallel histories. This gives a first person plural indeterminacy, which prevents solipsism. What is your opinion on quantum mechanics? With comp, the quantum facts, by alluding indirectly, but clearly, on the superposition of the ambient computations, or just by its sharable and measurable indeterminacy, confirms comp and this in a way which protect us from solipsism. Have you read Everett, or Deutsch? They are the physicists beginning to realize the self-multiplication that comp predicts quasi- trivially (UDA). Universal machines cannot know which histories they go through and perhaps share (partially) with others, among a very big, yet definable, set. I have few doubts that we share a very long story. Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental? I doubt it. Bruno Ronald On Aug 6, 10:23 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 08 Aug 2009, at 20:01, Bruno Marchal wrote: Actually physicians have literally created new interesting branch in math I mean physicists of course. So sorry. Well, actually I know a physician, Philippe Smets, the creator of IRIDIA, where I am working, who was a physician, not a physicist, and contributed in the mathematics of belief and plausibility. Physicians have to ponder evidences in order to diagnostic. That's a very complex process where usual statistical tools fail. And then remember, the ethic of comp is that you have the right to say no to the doctor. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
As a formally trained Physicist, what do I accept? that Physics is well represented mathematically? That the Multiverse is composed of mathematical structures some of which represent physical laws? Or something else? Ronald On Aug 6, 10:23 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what? /* *Please re-read the scenarioThis situation is very very specific: 1) Embodied situated robot scientist Sa is doing science on the 'natural world'. 2) As a COMP artificial scientist Sa, you are software. A formal system *ts* computes you. 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist suit/'. 4) Sa is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of Sa involves dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with the radically unknown, which Sa is trying to find a 'universal abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'. 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for Sa. There is only an abstraction (a category called) out there. You cannot project any kind of human 'experience' into Sa. REASON: If COMP is true, then computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP Sa
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Hi, it seems you start with the assumptions that an AI can't do science as humans... to conclude just that. Regards, Quentin 2009/8/6 Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. FACT: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! This argument is has very 'Godellian' structure. That was accidental. When you say 'physics is fundamental'. I don't actually known what that means. What I can tell you is that to construct an authentic ARTIFICIAL SCIENTIST (not a simulation, but an 'inorganic' scientist), you have to replicate the real physics of cognition, not 'compute a model' of the cognition or a 'compute a model of the physics underlying cognition'. Then an artificial scientist is a scioentist in the same sense that artificial light is light. R.I.P. COMP = Strong AI (a computer can be a mind) is false. = Weak AI (A computer model of cognition can never be actual cognition) is true. It's nice to finally have at least one tiny little place (X) where the seeds of clarity can be found. Cheers colin hales 1Z wrote: On 31 July, 22:39, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm...
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 06 Aug 2009, at 04:37, Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. Why? COMP entails that physics cannot be described by a computation, but by an infinite sum of infinite histories. If you were correct, there would be no possible white rabbit. You are confusing comp (I am a machine) and constructive physics (the universe is a machine). I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. FACT: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. A lie presuppose the intention of communicating the false. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! This argument is has very 'Godellian' structure. That was accidental. When you say 'physics is fundamental'. I don't actually known what that means. What I can tell you is that to construct an authentic ARTIFICIAL SCIENTIST (not a simulation, but an 'inorganic' scientist), you have to replicate the real physics of cognition, not 'compute a model' of the cognition or a 'compute a model of the physics underlying cognition'. Then an artificial scientist is a scioentist in the same sense that artificial light is light. R.I.P. COMP = Strong AI (a computer can be a mind) is false. = Weak AI (A computer model of cognition can never be actual cognition) is true. It's nice to finally have at least one tiny little place (X) where the seeds of clarity can be found.
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 12:37:38PM +1000, Colin Hales wrote: (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! This argument is has very 'Godellian' structure. That was accidental. I think all you have established with this is that the robotic scientist can never know it is a robot. Therefore it can doubt COMP. But this result is already a known theorem - which is why Bruno says we can only bet on COMP. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 6 Aug, 03:37, Colin Hales c.ha...@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au wrote: (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! Nope. Fuzziness (fuzzy logic) and inconsistently (paraconsistent logic) can be modeled formally. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what? /* *Please re-read the scenarioThis situation is very very specific: 1) Embodied situated robot scientist Sa is doing science on the 'natural world'. 2) As a COMP artificial scientist Sa, you are software. A formal system *ts* computes you. 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist suit/'. 4) Sa is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of Sa involves dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with the radically unknown, which Sa is trying to find a 'universal abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'. 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for Sa. There is only an abstraction (a category called) out there. You cannot project any kind of human 'experience' into Sa. REASON: If COMP is true, then computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP Sa needs to be a scientist. Sa can only be imagined as operating 'in the dark'.(I spent a whole section on ensuring this spurious projection does not occur in the reader of my paper!) 6) *ts* has been assumed possible by assuming COMP is true. 7) The paper is a reductio ad absurdum proof that COMP is false. 8) The contradiction that I use is that the human and the COMP scientist are different (when if COMP is true they should be
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
If computationalism is true, and computation is the source of conscious experience, then shouldn't we expect that what is ontologically real is the simplest possible universe that can develop and support physical systems that are Turing equivalent? Does our universe look like such a universe? If our universe doesn't look like such a universe, then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that ours is not the real universe, and that a simpler reality underlies it? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what? /* *Please re-read the scenarioThis situation is very very specific: 1) Embodied situated robot scientist Sa is doing science on the 'natural world'. 2) As a COMP artificial scientist Sa, you are software. A formal system *ts* computes you. 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist suit/'. 4) Sa is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of Sa involves dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with the radically unknown, which Sa is trying to find a 'universal abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'. 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for Sa. There is only an abstraction (a category called) out there. You cannot project any kind of human 'experience' into Sa. REASON: If COMP is true, then computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP Sa needs to be a scientist. Sa can only be imagined as operating 'in the dark'.(I spent a whole section on ensuring this spurious projection does not occur in the reader of my paper!) 6) *ts* has been assumed possible by assuming COMP is true. 7) The paper is a reductio ad absurdum proof that COMP is false. 8) The contradiction that I use is that the human and the COMP
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Rex Allen wrote: If computationalism is true, and computation is the source of conscious experience, then shouldn't we expect that what is ontologically real is the simplest possible universe that can develop and support physical systems that are Turing equivalent? Does our universe look like such a universe? If our universe doesn't look like such a universe, then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that ours is not the real universe, and that a simpler reality underlies it? Perhaps we have our wires crossed. The definition of computationalism you have _is not what is in the literature_. This is the distillation I have formulated from the literature (in my paper): *COMP* This is the shorthand for computationalism as distilled from the various sources cited above. The working definition here: /The operational/functional equivalence (identity, indistinguishability at the level of the model) of (a) a sufficiently embodied, computationally processed, sufficiently detailed symbolic/formal description/model of a natural thing X and (b) the described natural thing X//./ The refs...Beer, Pylyshyn^ , Putnam^ , Horst and many others. This definition of COMP therefore has nothing explicitly to do with claiming consciousness. However, if COMP is true, then if you compute some kind of model of cognition, then you may expect that model to be equivalent to a mind. An attribution of experience, however, is completely spurious. If COMP (as defined above) is true, then _all you need_ is abstract symbol manipulation of the Turing machine kind to get equivalence. You can remain completely mute/agnostic on the existence of experience in the COMP entity. This is the origin of the of the catch phrase cognition is computation. You may be confusing COMP with 'strong AI', which says that a COMP model of cognition is actual cognition (a mind, from which you might infer consciousness). Constrast this with weak AI which says that a COMP model of cognition is not an instance of cognition. Refuting COMP the way I have means strong AI is false, weak AI is true. Refuting COMP the way I have means your idea of 'Turing Equivalence is meaningless/impossible. The very best I can say of COMP is that it is trivially true in the sense that you can 'compute' a mind if you already know everything (and I mean everything, everywhere) in which case the mind operates akin to a flight simulator.you compute the brain and the entire environment. Totally pointless and inconsistent with the logic of being ignorant of the universe in the sense that scientists are ignorant. You do not know the environment, hence you can't compute it. Amazing how many different views you can get of this stuff. cheers colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what? /* *Please re-read the scenarioThis situation is very very specific: 1) Embodied situated robot scientist Sa is doing science on the 'natural world'. 2) As a COMP artificial scientist Sa, you are software. A formal system *ts* computes you. 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist suit/'. 4) Sa is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of Sa involves dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with the radically unknown, which Sa is trying to find a 'universal abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'. 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for Sa. There is only an abstraction (a category called) out there. You cannot project any kind of human 'experience' into Sa. REASON: If COMP is true, then computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP Sa needs to be a scientist. Sa can only be imagined as operating 'in the dark'.(I spent a whole section on ensuring this spurious projection does not occur in the reader of my paper!) 6) *ts* has been assumed possible by assuming COMP is true. 7) The paper is a reductio ad absurdum proof that COMP is false. 8) The contradiction that
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? Yes you can generate all such statements. /But then what*/*so what? /* *Please re-read the scenarioThis situation is very very specific: 1) Embodied situated robot scientist Sa is doing science on the 'natural world'. 2) As a COMP artificial scientist Sa, you are software. A formal system *ts* computes you. 3) All you ever do is categorise patterns and cross-correlate patterns in massive streams of numbers that arrive from your '/robot scientist suit/'. 4) Sa is a SCIENTIST. The entirety of the existence of Sa involves dealing with streams of numbers that are the result of an encounter with the radically unknown, which Sa is trying to find a 'universal abstraction' for = 'a law of nature'. 5) There is no 'out there in an environment' for Sa. There is only an abstraction (a category called) out there. You cannot project any kind of human 'experience' into Sa. REASON: If COMP is true, then computation (of abstract symbol manipulation of formal *ts*) is all COMP Sa needs to be a scientist. Sa can only be imagined as operating 'in the dark'.(I spent a whole section on ensuring this spurious projection does not occur in the reader of my paper!) 6) *ts* has been assumed possible by assuming COMP is true. 7) The paper is a reductio ad absurdum proof that COMP is false. 8)
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On 31 July, 22:39, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly computational account of mind - on the the number realm, with physics derived as an emergent from this. Step 8 of the UDA addresses these issues in a very particular way. However, I've always felt that there's a more intuitively obvious and just as devastating blow that can be dealt to functional or computational notions based on physical entities and relations conceived as ontologically foundational and singular (i.e. no dualism please). So as not to be misunderstood (too quickly!) let me make it clear at the outset that I'm addressing this to first person conscious experience, not to third person descriptions of 'mentality' - so eliminativists can stop reading at this point as there is nothing further that requires explanation in their view (as odd as I trust this sounds to you non-eliminativists out there). The argument runs as follows. To take what physics describes with maximal seriousness - as standing for ontological reality - is just to take its entities and causal relationships seriously to the same extent. God knows, physicists have gone to enough trouble to define these entities and relationships with the most precisely articulated set of nomological-causal principles we possess. Consequently, taking these with maximal seriousness entails abjuring other causal principles as independently efficacious: i.e. showing how - or at least being committed to the belief that - all higher order causal principles somehow supervene on these fundamentals. Any other position would be either obscurantist or incoherent for a physical realist. Now I should say at this point that I'm not criticising this position, I'm merely articulating it. It follows from the foregoing that although we may speak in chemical, biological, physiological or historical narratives, we believe that in principle at least these are reducible to their physical bases. We also know that although we may speak of cabbages and kings, weather, oceans, processes, computations and untold myriads of equally 'emergent' phenomena, we still must retain our commitment to their reducibility to their physical bases. So of course, we can - and do - legitimately speak, in this way, of physical computers as 'performing computations', but following the foregoing principle we can see that actually this is just a convenient shorthand for what is occurring in the physical substrates upon which the notion of computation must - and of course does - rely for its realisation in the world. To be more explicit: The notion of a 'program' or 'computation' - when we place it under analysis - is a convenient shorthand for an ordered set of first person concepts In what sense first person? Surely not in the sense that qualia are supposed to be mysteriously and incommunicably first-person. Presumably in the sense that something is only a computer when regarded as such, (like certain pieces of paper being money). But that is quite contentious. It is not enough to say under analysis, one must actually analyse which finds its way into the physical account in the form of various matter-energy dispositions. The macroscopic media for these are variously paper and ink, actions of computer keyboards, patterns of voltages in computer circuitry, illumination of pixels on screens, etc. All of these, of course, can - and must - reduce to fundamental relations amongst physical 'ultimates'. At some point after entering the physical causal nexus, this chain of dispositions may re-enter the first person account (don't ask me how - it's inessential to the argument) at which point they may again be construed *by someone* in computational terms in a first person context. But at no point is the 'computation' - qua concept - in any way material (pun intended) to the physical account; a fortiori, in no way can it - or need it - be ascribed causal significance in terms of the physical account. After all, what could this possibly mean? Are these spooky 'computational' relationships 'reaching across' the energy-transfers of the computer circuitry and changing their outcomes? Of course not. How could they? And why would they need to? Everything's going along just fine by itself by purely physical means. I hope the foregoing
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are 'rationally' adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! This argument is has very 'Godellian' structure. That was accidental. When you say 'physics is fundamental'. I don't actually known what that means. What I can tell you is that to construct an authentic ARTIFICIAL SCIENTIST (not a simulation, but an 'inorganic' scientist), you have to *replicate the real physics of cognition, *not 'compute a model' of the cognition or a 'compute a model of the physics underlying cognition'. Then an artificial scientist is a scioentist in the same sense that artificial light is light. R.I.P. COMP = Strong AI (a computer can be a mind) is false. = Weak AI (A computer model of cognition can never be actual cognition) is true. It's nice to finally have at least one tiny little place (X) where the seeds of clarity can be found. Cheers colin hales 1Z wrote: On 31 July, 22:39, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Colin Hales wrote: Man this is a tin of worms! I have just done a 30 page detailed refutation of computationalism. It's going through peer review at the moment. The basic problem that most people fall foul of is the conflation of 'physics-as-computation' with the type of computation that is being carried out in a Turing machine (a standard computer). In the paper I drew an artificial distinction between them. I called the former NATURAL COMPUTATION (NC) and the latter ARTIFICIAL COMPUTATION (AC). The idea is that if COMP is true then there is no distinction between AC and NC. The distinction should fail. I found one an one only situation/place where AC and NC part company. Call this situation X. If COMP is false in this one place X it is false as a general claim. I also found 2 downstream (consequential) failures that ultimately get their truth-basis from X, so they are a little weaker as formal arguments against COMP. *FACT*: Humans make propositions that are fundamentally of an informal nature. That is, the utterances of a human can be inconsistent and form an fundamentally incomplete set (we don't 'know everything'). The quintessential definition of a scientist is a 'correctable liar'. When a hypothesis is uttered it has the status indistinguishable of a lie. Humans can participate in the universe in ways which can (apparently) violate any law of nature. Humans must be able to 'violate' laws of nature in the process of accessing new/novel formal systems to describe the unknown natural world. Look at the world. It is not hard to see how humans exemplify an informal system. All over the world are quite normal (non-pathologically affected) humans with the same sensory systems and mental capacities. Yet all manner of ignorance and fervently held contradictory belief systems are ‘rationally’ adopted. === COMP fails when: a) You assume COMP is true and build an artificial (AC/computer) scientist Sa and expect Sa to be able to carry out authentic original science on the a-priori unknownidentically to humans. To do this you use a human-originated formal model (law of nature) ts to do this your computer 'computes ts, you EMBODY the computer in a suitable robotic form and then expect it to do science like humans. If COMP is true then the human scientist and the robot scientist should be indistinguishable. b) You then discover that it is a fundamental impossibility that Sa be able to debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. c) Humans can debate/propose that COMP is a law of nature. BECAUSE: (b) (c) they are distinguishable. NC and AC are different THEREFORE: ts cannot be the 'law of nature' for a scientist. THEREFORE: COMP is false in the special case of (b) THEREFORE: COMP is false as a general claim. (b) is not a claim of truth or falsehood. It is a claim that the very idea of Sa ever proposing COMP (= doubting that COMP is true) is impossible. This is because it is a formal system trying, with a fixed, formal set of rules (even self modifying according to yet more rules) to construct statements that are the product of an informal system (a human scientist). The very idea of this is a contradiction in terms. I don't see it. I can write a simple computer program that constructs statements which are a subset of those produced by humans (or any other system). Bruno's UD produces *all* such statements. So where's the contradiction? The formal system is 100% deterministic, unable to violate rules. When it encounters a liar it will be unable to resolve what falsehood is being presented. What does it mean to resolve what falsehood is being presented? It requires all falsehoods to be a-priori known. Impossible. How can a formal system encounter a world in which COMP is actually false? If it could, COMP would be FALSE! If COMP is true then it can't. Humans are informalergo we have some part of the natural world capable of behaving informally= GOTCHA! This argument is has very 'Godellian' structure. That was accidental. When you say 'physics is fundamental'. I don't actually known what that means. What I can tell you is that to construct an authentic ARTIFICIAL SCIENTIST (not a simulation, but an 'inorganic' scientist), you have to *replicate the real physics of cognition, *not 'compute a model' of the cognition or a 'compute a model of the physics underlying cognition'. Then an artificial scientist is a scioentist in the same sense that artificial light is light. But what is the real physics of cognition? Apprently you don't think it is neurons firing, since you refer to an 'inorganic' scientist. And artificial light is made of photons the same as sunlight or any other light. Brent R.I.P. COMP = Strong AI (a computer can be a mind) is false. = Weak AI (A computer model of cognition can never be actual cognition) is
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, Is not the difference between human and non human a human illusion? With Church Turing thesis we can suspect the existence of universal illusions. Maybe illusions can be detected due to timing discrepancies between the original version of something and the virtual one. I am doing an analogy with the detection computer rootkits, which are programs that try to control another program through concealment and virtualization. I am assuming only local timing modification done by the universal system programmer. If the system can be globally stopped, local illusions inserted and the system continues, this detection methods can't be applied... Jose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F8013%2F4140976%2F04140987.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4140987authDecision=-203 Alien vs. Quine Graizer, V.; Naccache, D. Security Privacy, IEEE Volume 5, Issue 2, March-April 2007 Page(s):26 - 31 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2007.28 Summary:Is it possible to prove that a computer is malware-free without pulling out its hard disk? This article introduces a novel hardware inspection technique based on the injection of carefully crafted code and the analysis of its output and execution time. In theory, the easiest way to exterminate malware is to reformat the disk and then reinstall the operating system (OS) from a trusted distribution GD. This procedure assumes we can force computers to boot from trusted media, but most modern PCs have a flash BIOS, which means that the code component in charge of booting is recorded on a rewritable memory chip. Specific programs called flashers - or even malware such as the CIH (Chernobyl) virus - have the ability to update this chip. This article addresses this concern, namely, ascertaining that malware doesn't re-flash the BIOS to derail disk-reformatting attempts or simulate their successful completion Bruno On 01 Aug 2009, at 21:52, John Mikes wrote: David, I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put below into a shorthand form by my vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. N: 'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering relaxation what we all would luv if we just can afford it' and now back to David: causal accounts are model-based originating choices in a view reduced into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, so ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our perceived reality, with math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, all - in the ongoing HUMAN ways of our thinking. Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? no way, we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the 3rd persons into their own (1st pers) mindset(?). Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. A 'physical realist' is a conventional scientist within the given figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling repeatedly back into the faithful application of it. As Brent asked: Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you consider life to have been eliminated? eliminated WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen identified life as his 'MR' (Metabolism and Repair) based on his (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly named in-animates). Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based on timely evolving observational skills what we call physical - worldview, science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the unexplainable. It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of numbers, yet this, too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too far. Somebody asked me: How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is only manipulting the existent. Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is not available to us - unless already having been hinted in some corner of the totality as a
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
Bruno, let me continue as 'enfent terrible': Isn't the Church Thesis - and whatever WE suspect by it - also human illusions? (Watch out: the next question will concern 'numbers'!) John M On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: John, Is not the difference between human and non human a human illusion? With Church Turing thesis we can suspect the existence of universal illusions. Bruno On 01 Aug 2009, at 21:52, John Mikes wrote: David, I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put below into a shorthand form by *my* vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. N: *'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering **relaxation what we all would luv if we just can afford it'* and now back to David: causal accounts are model-based originating choices in a view reduced into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, so ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our *perceived reality*, with math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, all *- in* *the ongoing HUMAN ways of our thinking.* Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? *no way*, we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the 3rd persons into their own (1st pers) mindset(?). Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. A *'physical realist'* is a conventional scientist within the given figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling repeatedly back into the faithful application of it. As Brent asked: Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you consider life to have been eliminated? eliminated WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen identified life as his *'MR'* (Metabolism and Repair) based on his (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly named in-animates). Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based on timely evolving observational skills what we call physical - worldview, science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the unexplainable. It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of numbers, yet this, too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too far. Somebody asked me: How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is only manipulting the existent. Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is not available to us - unless already having been hinted in some corner of the totality as a 'findable' relation. The quality from quantity Leninian principle may give a clue to it, if a large enough background can be checked (cf. Bruno's words to get to anything by using enough many numbers for it). Still such cop-outs include my usual retort: applying the somehow Finally: COMP and reality? not this embryonic binary algorithm based (physical) contraption, not even an advanced fantasy kind of similar deficiencies can approach what we cannot: the unfathomable 'reality' of them all. It is not a 'higher inventory', it (if there is such an 'it' - I did not say: exists) is beyond anything we can imagine humanly. We can speculate about reality's 'human' type aspects of partial hints we can humanly approach and make a pars pro toto dream of it - we are wrong for sure. Have a healthy mountain-climb in Scottland John M On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.comwrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly computational account of mind
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
2009/8/1 John Mikes jami...@gmail.com: Hi John Actually, I posted the diatribe just before setting off on the seven-hour drive to the Scottish hills. It's raining just at the moment so I'm taking the opportunity to thank you for your post and for your concern for my welfare, but this is positively the last you'll hear from me till our return! Best David David, I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put below into a shorthand form by my vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. N: 'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering relaxation what we all would luv if we just can afford it' and now back to David: causal accounts are model-based originating choices in a view reduced into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, so ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our perceived reality, with math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, all - in the ongoing HUMAN ways of our thinking. Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? no way, we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the 3rd persons into their own (1st pers) mindset(?). Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. A 'physical realist' is a conventional scientist within the given figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling repeatedly back into the faithful application of it. As Brent asked: Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you consider life to have been eliminated? eliminated WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen identified life as his 'MR' (Metabolism and Repair) based on his (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly named in-animates). Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based on timely evolving observational skills what we call physical - worldview, science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the unexplainable. It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of numbers, yet this, too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too far. Somebody asked me: How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is only manipulting the existent. Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is not available to us - unless already having been hinted in some corner of the totality as a 'findable' relation. The quality from quantity Leninian principle may give a clue to it, if a large enough background can be checked (cf. Bruno's words to get to anything by using enough many numbers for it). Still such cop-outs include my usual retort: applying the somehow Finally: COMP and reality? not this embryonic binary algorithm based (physical) contraption, not even an advanced fantasy kind of similar deficiencies can approach what we cannot: the unfathomable 'reality' of them all. It is not a 'higher inventory', it (if there is such an 'it' - I did not say: exists) is beyond anything we can imagine humanly. We can speculate about reality's 'human' type aspects of partial hints we can humanly approach and make a pars pro toto dream of it - we are wrong for sure. Have a healthy mountain-climb in Scottland John M On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly computational account of mind - on the the number realm, with physics derived as an emergent from this. Step 8 of the UDA addresses these issues in a very
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
David Nyman wrote: ... Now, you don't of course have to accept COMP. But if you want to be a physical realist, it means you can only hang on to the computational explanation of mind by eliminating the mind itself from reality. Personally, not being committed to such an explanation, this doesn't in itself constitute my problem with current physical accounts. The alternative is rather that physics as an account of mind must be incomplete, or else it is wrong. But that's another story. Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you consider life to have been eliminated? Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
David, I thought you are facing the Scottish mountains for a relaxation and instead here is a long - enjoyable- tirade about ideas which I try to put below into a shorthand form by *my* vocabulary. But first a plea to Mrs. N: *'please, do keep David away from te computer for the time of the Scottish tourism, as he suggested it, to get him a good mountaineering **relaxation what we all would luv if we just can afford it'* and now back to David: causal accounts are model-based originating choices in a view reduced into the figment of a 'physical world' i.e. in a conventional science lingo, so ingeniously formed over the millennia. It is our *perceived reality*, with math, based on the most pervasive (dominating?) principle, called physics, all *- in* *the ongoing HUMAN ways of our thinking.* Everything exists what we 'think of' in our MIND (nonexistent? *no way*, we think of that, too). There is nosuch thing as a '3rd pers.explanation, it is a 1st pers. idea, interpreted by all the 3rd persons into their own (1st pers) mindset(?). Ontology is today's explanation of today's epistemic inventory. A nice, reductionist philosophy. Not applicable for tomorrow's discoveries. A *'physical realist'* is a conventional scientist within the given figments. This list tries to overstep such 'human' limitations - falling repeatedly back into the faithful application of it. As Brent asked: Is the physics account of life incomplete or wrong? Do you consider life to have been eliminated? eliminated WHAT? I spent some braingrease to find out what many (some?) of us agree upon as 'life' - no success. YET it does exist even in Brent's mind (who is a very advanced thinking list-member). (Robert Rosen identified life as his *'MR'* (Metabolism and Repair) based on his (mathematical) biology ways. I may extend the domain into 'ideation' and 'not-so-bio' domains, even into the stupidly named in-animates). Our millennia-evolved human (reductionistic - conventional) views are based on timely evolving observational skills what we call physical - worldview, science, explanatory base etc. So no wonder if everything is touching it. It is not 'more real' than anything we could sweat out for explaining the unexplainable. It all undergoes (ontological etc.) changes as epistemy grows. I don't want to touch here the chicken-egg topic of numbers, yet this, too, is a HUMAN dilemma between Bruno and friends vs. David Bohm. And we are figments within the totality, not the original creators. We don't 'see' too far. Somebody asked me: How do we learn something that is aboslutely 'N E W' ? I had no answer. I tried: by playing with unrelated relationships - which is only manipulting the existent. Even Star Trek relied on modified knowables as novelty, the absolute new is not available to us - unless already having been hinted in some corner of the totality as a 'findable' relation. The quality from quantity Leninian principle may give a clue to it, if a large enough background can be checked (cf. Bruno's words to get to anything by using enough many numbers for it). Still such cop-outs include my usual retort: applying the somehow Finally: COMP and reality? not this embryonic binary algorithm based (physical) contraption, not even an advanced fantasy kind of similar deficiencies can approach what we cannot: the unfathomable 'reality' of them all. It is not a 'higher inventory', it (if there is such an 'it' - I did not say: exists) is beyond anything we can imagine humanly. We can speculate about reality's 'human' type aspects of partial hints we can humanly approach and make a pars pro toto dream of it - we are wrong for sure. Have a healthy mountain-climb in Scottland John M On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:39 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly computational account of mind - on the the number realm, with physics derived as an emergent from this. Step 8 of the UDA addresses these issues in a very particular way. However, I've always felt that there's a more intuitively obvious and just as devastating blow that can be dealt to functional or computational notions based on physical entities and relations conceived as ontologically foundational and singular (i.e. no dualism please). So as not to be misunderstood (too quickly!) let me make it clear at the outset that I'm addressing this to first
Can mind be a computation if physics is fundamental?
I note that the recent posts by Peter Jones - aka the mysterious 1Z, and the originator of the curiously useful 'real in the sense I am real' or RITSIAR - occurred shortly after my taking his name in vain. Hmm... Anyway, this signalled the resumption of a long-running debate about the validity of causal accounts of the first person based on a functional or computational rationale. I'm going to make an attempt to annihilate this intuition in this thread, and hope to encourage feedback specifically on this issue. You will recall that this is at the heart of Bruno's requirement to base COMP - i.e. the explicitly computational account of mind - on the the number realm, with physics derived as an emergent from this. Step 8 of the UDA addresses these issues in a very particular way. However, I've always felt that there's a more intuitively obvious and just as devastating blow that can be dealt to functional or computational notions based on physical entities and relations conceived as ontologically foundational and singular (i.e. no dualism please). So as not to be misunderstood (too quickly!) let me make it clear at the outset that I'm addressing this to first person conscious experience, not to third person descriptions of 'mentality' - so eliminativists can stop reading at this point as there is nothing further that requires explanation in their view (as odd as I trust this sounds to you non-eliminativists out there). The argument runs as follows. To take what physics describes with maximal seriousness - as standing for ontological reality - is just to take its entities and causal relationships seriously to the same extent. God knows, physicists have gone to enough trouble to define these entities and relationships with the most precisely articulated set of nomological-causal principles we possess. Consequently, taking these with maximal seriousness entails abjuring other causal principles as independently efficacious: i.e. showing how - or at least being committed to the belief that - all higher order causal principles somehow supervene on these fundamentals. Any other position would be either obscurantist or incoherent for a physical realist. Now I should say at this point that I'm not criticising this position, I'm merely articulating it. It follows from the foregoing that although we may speak in chemical, biological, physiological or historical narratives, we believe that in principle at least these are reducible to their physical bases. We also know that although we may speak of cabbages and kings, weather, oceans, processes, computations and untold myriads of equally 'emergent' phenomena, we still must retain our commitment to their reducibility to their physical bases. So of course, we can - and do - legitimately speak, in this way, of physical computers as 'performing computations', but following the foregoing principle we can see that actually this is just a convenient shorthand for what is occurring in the physical substrates upon which the notion of computation must - and of course does - rely for its realisation in the world. To be more explicit: The notion of a 'program' or 'computation' - when we place it under analysis - is a convenient shorthand for an ordered set of first person concepts which finds its way into the physical account in the form of various matter-energy dispositions. The macroscopic media for these are variously paper and ink, actions of computer keyboards, patterns of voltages in computer circuitry, illumination of pixels on screens, etc. All of these, of course, can - and must - reduce to fundamental relations amongst physical 'ultimates'. At some point after entering the physical causal nexus, this chain of dispositions may re-enter the first person account (don't ask me how - it's inessential to the argument) at which point they may again be construed *by someone* in computational terms in a first person context. But at no point is the 'computation' - qua concept - in any way material (pun intended) to the physical account; a fortiori, in no way can it - or need it - be ascribed causal significance in terms of the physical account. After all, what could this possibly mean? Are these spooky 'computational' relationships 'reaching across' the energy-transfers of the computer circuitry and changing their outcomes? Of course not. How could they? And why would they need to? Everything's going along just fine by itself by purely physical means. I hope the foregoing makes it clear that computer programs and their computations - at the point of physical instantiation - literally don't exist in the world. They're semantic formulations - ways of speaking - that have applicability only in the first-person context, and we can see that this is true any time we like by performing the kind of 'eliminativist' demonstration performed above: i.e. we can eliminate the concept without affecting the action on the ground one whit. Of course, this is the
