Re: Dreams and Machines
On 22 July, 17:15, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Dinna fash yursel laddie, trnaslation: Faut pas te facher. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
On 23 Jul 2009, at 01:18, David Nyman wrote: 2009/7/22 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: explanatory redundancy. Hence I'm a monist (or a non-dualist) who - given the singular incorrigibility of first-person 'experiential reality' - concludes that though whatever underlies remains forever *unknowable* it must nonetheless perforce be 'real in the sense that I am real' (RITSIAR - a gnomic acronym that has surfaced before on this list). Hmm... OK. Nice. Not completely convinced yet. Let's try to be clear(!) I don't intend 'RITSIAR' to refer merely to the 1-person, but to the 0-person and all the other persons you can think of. Why? Because given that I am indubitably RITSIAR, then whatever I emerge from must also subsist in a status that is also RITSIAR in some uneliminable *ontological* sense. Naturally I don't intend by this that either the One, or 3-person descriptions, literally call themselves I, but rather that what is ontologically RITSIAR in the 1-person is irreducibly so in the whole, and vice versa. As an analogy, if - merely for the sake of argument - we were to choose to ascribe fundamental 'materiality' to the world', then we also must consistently hold that all and any constituent parts and sub-wholes subsist in ontological 'materiality' by the same token. Not to do this would be equivalent to accepting sudden non-linear step-changes in *ontological* status merely as a function of scale - which AFAICS is incoherent - i.e. I wouldn't have a clue what this could possibly mean. I don't want us to talk past each other merely on the basis of incommensurable jargon - if there's anything I can do to make this point clearer, I'll go on trying. I think I do agree with you. The problem is more pedagogical. RITSIAR involves the notion of I, which is *very* delicate. Some will identify I with the body, and concludes that I is material, for example. 1) The unknowable is singular (i.e symmetrical, holistic, indivisible: e.g. Plotinus' One) unknowable? or unprovable, uncommunicable, that is unbelievable, unjustifiable. Here I'm saying that the *undifferentiated* One is unknowable, because 'knowing' is here posited precisely to subsist in differentiated ways-of-being adopted by the One *posterior* to its bare, undifferentiated 'presence'. Hence, this 'bare presence' or personal ground is a priori both unknowing and unknowable. 'Knowledge' subsists in the multiplicity of distinguished ways-of-being that emerge from the bare presence of the One: i.e. 'getting-a-grip-on-Oneself'. Again, I do agree with you. Again you refer to knowability, a term on which philosophers fight since millenaries. The excluded middle principle is what you need to think and dream about what you build, and what can follow, and talk on it with others. You need it somehow to believe in another one. Also, it prevents not the falsity of solipsism, but the falsity of any doctrinal (3- communicable) solipsism. I'm not abandoning the principle, rather I was pointing to the fact that in analysis at this level, there is something deeply mysterious - apparently paradoxical in terms of mutually exclusive 'opposites' - about a 'seamless' unity nevertheless being 'differentiable'. Sure. Plotinus wrote many chapter on this. How could the ONE be responsible for the MANY without lying to its own nature. Difficult question. As a matter of personal psychological compulsion, I feel it necessary to point this out, to forestall someone else asking how can you claim that 'parts' ultimately subsist in the context of a 'seamless' whole? If you like, I consider myself to be a sort of dualist in this sense: that there seems to me ultimately to be an inescapable duality (meaning two irreducible ways of being) between intuitions of 'whole' and 'part'. You are right. My problem is that I have a theory, so I can provide answer in the frame of that theory. I can show that correct machine can guess ONE = MANY, and I can show they are bound to discover things like: (ONE = MANY) entails I will never be able to understand that (ONE = MANY). Once we have reasoned as far as we can in terms of 'ultimates', we're left with nothing to 'separate' the 'whole' into 'parts'. If we believe we can 'actually' *sever* the 'whole', what do we suppose 'lies between' the 'parts' (e.g. the old notion of 'atoms in the void')? Nothing? One may simply say that this of course is the well known tension between intuitions of the 'continuous' and the 'discrete'. But at this level of discourse, there seems to be something wrong that can't be fixed by invoking higher-order 'limit' theories unavailable even in principle at this depth of analysis. I think that you are right. But of course I can only say: I think your intuition fits well in the comp theory (when it is taken seriously). Nonetheless, the unknowable - unknowably - somehow resolves this
Re: Dreams and Machines
Bruno Marchal skrev: On 22 Jul 2009, at 14:12, Torgny Tholerus wrote: What do you think about the GoL-universes? You can look at some of those at http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/ . If you have an initial condition and you have an unlimited board, then you can compute what will happen in the future in that universe. What is an unlimited board for an ultrafinitist. (Ok, that was perhaps easy). An unlimited board is a board that is enough big. How far away you look, you will see no border of the board. These universes are universes with a two-dimensional space and a one-dimensional time. These GoL-universes are mathematial universes. They have an initial condition and a mathematical rule that defines how that universe will look like in the next moment, and the next next moment, and so on. Does this make sense for you? Those are not universes, but computational histories. What is wrong with computational histories? If you can explain everything in our universe with a computational history, why do you need anything more? Assuming comp there is a first person indeterminacy, which makes physical appearances or physical universe emerging from the infinity of such computational and universal computation. I suggest you read the UDA papers. I guess you were not yet on the list when I explained why Wolfram sort of computational physics, based on cellular automata, does not work. Yes, I was not on the list then. And all the time when I have been on the list, I have wondered what COMP is? And quantum mechanics confirms this by giving indirect but strong evidences on the existence of many statistically interfering computations. I do not believe in that quantum mechanics implies statistically interfering computations. I believe that quantum mechanics is deterministic. Microcosmos looks indeterministic just because we do not know yet what is happening at the Planck scale. You must think of that a quark is 100.000.000.000.000.000.000 times bigger than the Planch length, so many things can happen in that interval. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
2009/7/23 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I'm not sure I can even parse this paragraph. An I that is reflexive is one that refers to itself. So what is RITSIAR can refer to itself. So it implicitly entails a unity to refer to. Our is the unity the unity of perception, i.e. all my perceptions cohere so they are mine. They constitute a world being present to me from my point of view. Yes, more or less, so far as it goes. But my use of the term 'reflexive' was an attempt to characterise relationship with respect to something that can be in 'relation' only with itself because it exists uniquely. Consequently the relation of this unity to itself can be conceived only as self-encounter - or what I referred to as the paradox of the part and the whole, which we discussed before. The I of RITSIAR appears as a global self-reference of which 1-persons are subsets. If this is solipsism, then it is the solipsism of the whole, not the part, as I have previously remarked in this list. I suspect that the difficulty in 'parsing' results from my attempts to punctiliously restrict my claims to no more or less than what this implies, but this seems often to produce the opposite response. Sorry. 'Reflexive' because it is unique; Why would being unique imply it can refer to itself - or whatever reflexive means in this context (unconscious reaction?)? See above. 'personal' because it is the superset out of which 'persons' (subsets) emerge; 'present' because - given that such 1-persons self-assert 'presently' Does everything RITSIAR self-assert? I understand asserting proposition, i.e. assigning a value true to it. I don't understand self-assert. Yes, sorry to just spring this mode of speaking on you. I'm trying to say that we always and only discover the 1-person through its present-tense assertion (in the sense of personal 'assertiveness') of itself. Perhaps this is analogous to Heidegger's idea of 'throwness'. I'm just trying to say that whatever is RITSIAR must have these characteristics of being personal and present 'entirely through its own efforts'. I was trying to give a philosophically minimalistic justification of these terms in order that I could use them consistently at later stages of discourse. I hope we can iron this out through debate. - the background from which they can be said, for certain purposes, to distinguish themselves a fortiori constitutes a more inclusive 'presence'. ??? As the part, so the whole. The 1-person subsists in the presence (presentness?) of the unity from which it is temporarily distinguished. The idea of bare presence I'm using here is intended to support intuitions of the atemporal and aspatial - i.e. being at a level prior to the orderings of time and space through differentiation. Of course one can't know a falsehood. Or are you saying we can't know anything but ourselves (a step toward solipism). Or are you saying we can only know what we are through introspection (reflection)? As so often I get the feeling that it would be so much easier to communicate if we were all in the same room! Anyway, yes, I'm saying precisely that we can't know anything but ourselves, because knowing ourselves is indivisible from being ourselves. Therefore we know only what is constituted by our own way-of-being. Any other approach, AFAICS, inevitably leads straight to an infinite regress of 'observers' (sorry again about the scare quotes, but this denotes my questioning of the ordinary use of the terms). So let's be clear: I'm claiming that 'knowing' is nothing more or less than all the 'ways-of-being'; individual knowledge, specifically, is a way-of-being differentiated from the whole. We may think of perception and action arising indivisibly in the form of self-encounter at the 'boundaries' established foundationally by differentiation: our detailed self-intimacy comprising complexes of such encounters. In summary, I'm saying that 'existence' (all the foregoing stems from my being asked to say what I meant by this term) equates to a personally present self-intimacy, and 1-person existence is a subset of this (hence avoiding solipsism at the level of the individual, but embracing it at the level of the whole). And I'm also saying that everything that exists does so in this way *only*: all other notions of 'existence' are parasitic on these intuitions, including - IMHO - COMP and other platonic schemas. This is no doubt quite a large claim (though I think it's implied, and sometimes explicit, in all the metaphysical systems I've referred to - and others) but I'd be happy to attempt to defend it in any specific instance: indeed, this is the purpose of my taking pains to establish these foundational points of departure. To many scare quotes. I know, and as I've already said, I'm sorry. If we were in the same room, perhaps we could just waggle our fingers. The point of this whole exposition is to ground notions of existence and
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 23 July, 05:23, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You are asserting monism. But the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable. So when we place ourselves in the world it is by making distinctions within the unity. To become distinct from the background (the One) is what it means to be RITSIAR. Right? Sorry, I meant to respond to this. Yes, I think I broadly agree with your formulation. Nonetheless, the One is already in some minimal but irreducible sense RITSIAR prior to distinction, and indeed we ourselves could not be RITSIAR without subsisting in such a foundational personal presence. This is what, I think, rescues the intuition of the One from a mere functionless substrate: it stands for the foundational intuition of a continuously present and personal whole, prior to any notions of differentiation whatsoever. David David Nyman wrote: 2009/7/23 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: If I understand you correctly, this is similar to the explication of I by Thomas Metzinger in his book The Ego Tunnel. He expresses it as the self being transparent. We look *through* it but not *at* it, and necessarily so. Well, I haven't read it, but yes, what I've been saying certainly implies this. This paradox arises in quantum cosmogony. The universe (or multiverse) evolves as the rotation of a single ray in Hilbert space. But relativistic horizons separate different local projections so that we see decohered, classical objects (and we are such objects). At least that's the speculation - there is both unity and diversity: different aspects of the wave-function of the universe which is unknowable. Yes, the wave function indeed expresses just such 'paradoxical partness in wholeness'. You make the self fundamental, but is it so. Maybe the self is a mathematical construct or a statistical ensemble or experiences. RITSIAR may not be real in the ontology of the best theory. No, I emphatically do not make 'the self' fundamental. In fact, taking my lead from Plotinus, Vedanta et al, I would deny the existence or necessity of any such independent existent as 'the self'. The I that I take to be real in RITSIAR is the reflexive I of the 'personally present' unity. I'm not sure I can even parse this paragraph. An I that is reflexive is one that refers to itself. So what is RITSIAR can refer to itself. So it implicitly entails a unity to refer to. Our is the unity the unity of perception, i.e. all my perceptions cohere so they are mine. They constitute a world being present to me from my point of view. 'Reflexive' because it is unique; Why would being unique imply it can refer to itself - or whatever reflexive means in this context (unconscious reaction?)? 'personal' because it is the superset out of which 'persons' (subsets) emerge; 'present' because - given that such 1-persons self-assert 'presently' Does everything RITSIAR self-assert? I understand asserting proposition, i.e. assigning a value true to it. I don't understand self-assert. - the background from which they can be said, for certain purposes, to distinguish themselves a fortiori constitutes a more inclusive 'presence'. ??? Hence I claim that 'the best theory' - whatever else it encompasses - can't help but be ontologically RITSIAR. But that's where I would appeal to two different senses of basic. Basic to epistemology is perception/intuition/experience/cognition. But based on that knowledge one may develop theory in which the ontology is different. No, I emphatically think not. This is the point of my 'collapse' of epistemology and ontology. My claim is that 'knowing' and 'being' are cognates - more specifically, 'knowing' is a 'way-of-being'. We can only know - reflexively - what we are and we can't know what we aren't. Of course one can't know a falsehood. Or are you saying we can't know anything but ourselves (a step toward solipism). Or are you saying we can only know what we are through introspection (reflection)? AFAICS this is the only way to avoiding the otherwise infinite regress between 'observer' and 'observed'. Furthermore, through the intuition or insight that 'ways-of-being' are equivalent to instances of 'self-motivated-relativisation' of the One, we situate 'causal closure' inescapably in an indivisible unity of reflexive 'perception' and 'action'. The consequence of this of course is 'no brains without minds, and vice-versa'. These are the minimal requirements, IMO, of any foundational ontology capable of going on to account for a 'mind' or 'body' that is RITSIAR - as opposed to being the kind of 'Cheshire Cat' or 'arm's length' abstraction that can't help conjuring 'philosophical zombie worlds' and other such monstrosities. To many scare quotes. Physics gains knowledge from physicists looking at records and
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 23 July, 05:38, Brian Tenneson tenn...@gmail.com wrote: You have written about it, and at least two of its properties, and so it is not completely ineffable, yes? So I think it is effable even if it is exceedingly difficult to describe fully. What I'm having trouble believing is that it is unknowable. Yes, but the effing is in the knowing, and the knowing is in the differentiation of the whole. So the whole itself can't eff-as-a- whole, and hence in that sense can't know itself in its entirety. Put more simply, the One can't get outside itself and hence has no point of view as a whole. There isn't a 'view from nowhere'. Nonetheless, as I remarked to Brent, the intuition of the One represents what is both personal and present prior to any intuitions of differentiation - whether spatial, temporal, or any other distinction whatsoever. David Hi Brent, You are asserting monism. But the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable. So when we place ourselves in the world it is by making distinctions within the unity. To become distinct from the background (the One) is what it means to be RITSIAR. Right? Brent How do you know that the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable? If your being, for example, was the ur-stuff (I assume you mean akin to urelements in set theory), then it is effable and knowable. You have written about it, and at least two of its properties, and so it is not completely ineffable, yes? So I think it is effable even if it is exceedingly difficult to describe fully. What I'm having trouble believing is that it is unknowable. Cheers Brian --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
2009/7/17 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: You are correct about truth and provability. You may have insisted a bit more on the first person/third person important , and still unsolved, to be sure, relationship, and the first person indeterminacy which follows. You certainly motivate me to explain better AUDA and its relation with UDA. I thought I'd say a bit more about this. As you know from my earliest posts here I'm a stickler for the 1-person/3-person distinction as being at the root of confusions in the whole mind-body topic. Indeed, a reversal such as you stipulate for COMP is equally implied in the relation between the foundational intuitions of 'internal' and 'external', We can see these as polarised abstractions parasitic on the duality-in-unity of part-whole reflexivity that I've presented in the analysis of RITSIAR. The 1-person viewpoint subsists in a subject/object polarity that forces us to 'observe' an 'externalised reality'. It's really quite funny to watch 'dual aspect' theorists or 'property dualists' speculating about mind as the 'inside' of brains, since brains so manifestly don't possess an 'inside'. Dig as you might into a brain, you will discover, and that somewhat messily, only more 'outsides', but never an 'inside'. As to 1-person indeterminacy, from being a kid I was intrigued by the Star-Trek notion of teleportation, which at first I saw as a kind of suicide machine (what if I never 'arrived'?) Then, somewhat on the basis of the UDA thought experiments, I realised to my surprise that I was already teleporting into the future moment by moment. If you add AR and the consequent dovetailed infinities of computational histories to the mix, this 'merely' adds the implication that my present 'state' entails a myriad of multi-threaded teleportation destinations and points of departure. David Hi David, I comment your post with an apology to Kim and Marty, then I make a comment to Marty, and then I comment your (very nice) post. Kim, Marty, I apologize for my bad sense of humor. Rereading some post, I realize some nuance in the tone does not go through mailings. Please indulge professional deformation of an old math teacher ... On 17 Jul 2009, at 03:12, m.a. wrote: David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, Marty, I can understand you. At the same time, many discussion have been more philosophical, and the problem here, is that without some amount of math, and of computer science, things will look like a crackpot-like thing. It is almost in the nature of the subject. Big statements needs big arguments, and at least enough precise pointers toward the real thing. You can have a still more passive understanding of the UDA, if you understand the first sixth steps. Then for the seventh, it is enough to believe in the existence of universal dovetailer (itself a quasi direct consequence of the existence of a universal machine). Then the 8th step alone can help you to have an idea why the Universal dovetailer is immaterial, so that physics has to be reduced to math and machine psuchology/theology. But then, I will not been able to answer some remark which have been done by Stathis, Russell, Brent and some others, and which are relalted to the difference between a computation (be it mathematical or physical) and a description of a computation (be it mathematical or physical), and this is the key for understanding that when we assume brain are digitalizable, eventually we have to abandon the idea that consciousness supervene on physical computations, and to accept that it supervenes on mathematical computations. You know, the discovery of the universal machine is the real (creative) bomb here. I could say that nature has never stopped to invent it and reinvent it, like with the apparition of brain, of life and the possible other many big bangs. Then, it is hard to explain, without learning a bit on numbers, functions, sets and mathematical structures, that arithmetic, simple elementary arithmetic, already describes that universal thing which can't help itself to reinvent hitself again and again and again, and this in an atemporal, aspatial frames. Sri Aurobindo made once a nice summary: What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task Well said! of working towards an elementary grasp
Re: Dreams and Machines
of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task Well said! of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP-mechanics' in order to attempt a better personal grasp of what it might mean as a metaphysics. As always, I need help, so here goes for starters. This points to another problem I have. The UDA, and probably even more the AUDA, has deeply changed my philosophy, up to a point where I think that philosophy and metaphysics can be handled with the doubting attitude of the (ideal) scientist, and that this attitude is a vaccine against the most inhuman aspect of human science. But then I have reason to suggest that everything becomes far more clearer if we drop the expression fundamental science, philosophy, metaphysics (unless we use them in their original greek senses) and come back to the expression theology. If you want, assuming comp, metaphysics becomes a theology, with its communicable and non communicable parts. Assuming comp we can already listen to the course on machine theology provided by the machines. But then I know that I look over-provocative. At the same time, I feel that this is important, because, I don't see how we could ever win the war against authoritative arguments and fundamentalism of all kinds without bringing back modesty (that is science) in that field. When you grasp comp, you can understand that those scientist who pretend not doing theology are those who take Aristotle theology for granted. (Actually even a simplification of Aristotle. Aristotle was more Platonist than we usually imagine). Bruno has sometimes remarked (if I'm not misrepresenting him) that COMP introduces us to machines and their dreams and I find this metaphor very cogent and suggestive. You don't misrepresent me ... too much. Just that dreams is no more really use as a metaphor, but as a literal thing. It is a point of using digital mechanism, and assuming it clearly, and not just a vague mechanist intuition, which is already at play in all rationalist approach to inquiry. If someone accept an artificial heart, he/she does not got a metaphor in his/her thorax. It is the same for an artificial brain, and eventually for a purely arithmetical one. Certainly it seems to me that my present state could coherently be characterised as a peculiarly consistent dream - one that I nonetheless assume to be correlated systematically with features of some otherwise unreachable 'elsewhere'. So you are a critical realist. A believer in the large open minded sense. Nice. The key lesson of UDA here is that, although you are right to bet that your present state belongs to a consistent dream, the 'truth' (a theorem in comp) is that there is an infinity of consistent dreams matching your observations, and there is a sense in which you (first person you) actually belong to an infinity of them. It is the many dreams aspect of the comp theory, partially confirmed by the quantum empirical MW observations. In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). Given this point of departure, Well the point of departure is really that I can survive with an artificial physical brain. And the result is that physical can no more be a primitive notion, and that the physical appearance has to be explained from the numbers, and indeed from their relative self-reference modalities. This leads to the arithmetical 'hypostases'. it follows that machines so instantiated would be capable of implementing any computable 'dream' whatsoever - including dreams instantiating yet further levels of machines and their dreams. With an additional dovetailing assumption, we find ourselves in a position to construct a sort of hyper
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 23 Jul 2009, at 13:31, Torgny Tholerus wrote:
These universes are
universes with a two-dimensional space and a one-dimensional time.
These GoL-universes are mathematial universes. They have an initial
condition and a mathematical rule that defines how that universe
will
look like in the next moment, and the next next moment, and so on.
Does this make sense for you?
Those are not universes, but computational histories.
What is wrong with computational histories? If you can explain
everything in our universe with a computational history, why do you
need
anything more?
First, conceptually, there is that idea at the base of the
everything list, which is that an ontology of everything is
conceptually simpler that any something.
Second, there is some empirical facts sustaining that nature
superposes the physical states and physical histories. This needs
explanations.
Third there is an argument showing that any rational agent believing
in its own Turing emulability will believe, soon or later, that if it
is so, it will detect the parallel histories when observing its
neighborhood sufficiently closely (that is: below its level of
substitution).
If you take the first person into account, you can understand that NO
universal machine can known in which computational history or
histories she belongs too. But things are more complex than that, all
universal machine can know that there is a sense to say that she
belongs simultaneously to ALL computational histories responsible
for what happens below their substitution level.
The Universal Dovetailer Argument is a step by step reasoning intended
to show what can possible be a physical universe from a universal
machine point-of-view.
It is an easy exercise to prove that all humans are universal machine
(at least). Comp is somehow the thesis that we are not more than that,
except for our current mental constructs.
Assuming comp there is a first person indeterminacy, which makes
physical appearances or physical universe emerging from the
infinity of such computational and universal computation. I suggest
you read the UDA papers. I guess you were not yet on the list when I
explained why Wolfram sort of computational physics, based on
cellular automata, does not work.
Yes, I was not on the list then. And all the time when I have been on
the list, I have wondered what COMP is?
You can ask or better consult:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
The first six steps are rather easy, so read, ask question if you
don't understand, I am doing the step seven in its mathematical
precise form, slowly, you can take the train up to enlightenment :)
Comp is the hypothesis that I (you) am (are) a digitalisable
machine. It is a stronger thesis than the strong AI thesis,
(machine could think without us being machine) but it is very weaker
version than the comp used by neurophilosophers, which assume brains
are enough for consciousness. I or we could be the entire galaxy,
or even the entire physical universe (the day this got some meaning)
for example, but this appears at the seventh step of UDA.
If we are physically analog machines, comp can still be true. To make
comp false you have to introduce in the brain (whatever it is)
something non turing emulable, like an actual infinite analog design
playing a role in the computation (it is much more than an oracle).
And quantum mechanics confirms this by giving indirect but strong
evidences on the existence of many statistically interfering
computations.
I do not believe in that quantum mechanics implies statistically
interfering computations.
?
I believe that quantum mechanics is
deterministic.
From the 3-person view, me too. But Schroedinger Equation predicts
that if I look, in the base {up, down} an electron which I have
prepared in the state 1/sqrt(2) (up+down) that I cannot predict in any
way which of up or down I will see.
Exactly like in the self-duplication experiment.
Microcosmos looks indeterministic just because we do not
know yet what is happening at the Planck scale. You must think of
that
a quark is 100.000.000.000.000.000.000 times bigger than the Planch
length, so many things can happen in that interval.
I can return that argument: the way the arithmetical computations
interfere makes it obviously still open today if machine's
consciousness singularize or not the physical reality. I strongly
doubt it, but it is not an important question for me. Up to know comp
predict even too much indeterminacy.
The key point is that if we are machine, physics can no more be the
fundamental science. Mathematics becomes more fundamental,
mathematical theology even more. And I try to explain how the
explicit assumption of being machine makes possible to get a
mathematical formulation of the mind body problem, which leads to see
physics as a sort
Re: Dreams and Machines
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: The way I look at it there is knowledge we gain from perception, including the inner perception of logical and mathematical facts. We make up theories that unify and explain these perceptions and which extend beyond what we perceive. Sounds reasonable enough. In what way, exactly, does logico-mathematical existence differ from quark existence? You can kick quarks and they kick back. So they differ in how we perceive them, and the way we interact with them. We experience them differently. Certainly many mathematical objects can be illustrated because they were invented to describe something we could perceive - like spheres or symmetries. Is that the history of something like Bruno's beloved Mandelbrot set? I honestly don't know, but your rather broad claim sounds somewhat weak to me. But I don't see how you would visualize Shannon information H-BloX is a web-based JavaScript application that allows the calculation and visualization of Shannon information content or relative entropy (Kullback-Leibler ‘distance’) within sequence alignment blocks. So obviously different types of visualizations would be useful in different situations, and some visualizations might be possible but not useful at all. But it would seem to me that nearly anything can be represented visually in one way or another. or strings in ten dimensional space. Well, given that strings aren't logico-mathematical objects, but instead inferred (though not experimentally confirmed) physical objects like quarks, I'm not sure what you're saying here. BUT, since you brought it up, here: http://bccp.lbl.gov/Images/calabi-grid.gif I don't think that's good example. Synesthesia comes from cross coupling in the brain of concepts that are usually separate. I synesthesia were like perception then all synesthesists would see the same numbers as having the same color, etc. The main thing that causes us to attribute a form of existence to mathematical objects is that everyone who understands them agrees on their properties. If a race of synesthetes had evolved with a common cross-coupling (shaped by natural selection), then they would have a shared perception of numbers. Possibly combining the various types of synesthesia. So to these synesthetes numbers would have color, shapes, textures, and spatial locations (using the examples from the wikipedia article). When the synesthetes began to develop physics, they would no doubt notice a correlation between the numeric world and the physical world. What kind of conclusions they would draw from the correlations, I've no idea, but it seems reasonable to speculate that they might be puzzled in the same way that we are puzzled by wave-particle duality or the nature of time. They might even conclude that the physical world is caused by the very tangible (to them) mathematics that describe it. So, since we KNOW that it is possible humans to perceive numbers in this way (from synethesia), then there is no reason to think that it's impossible to breed it into a population, which would then accept it as the norm, and who would then have a different view of the reality of numbers. I think we can say (again, speaking in materialist/physicalist terms) that it's purely an accident of evolution that numbers don't seem as intuitively real to us as chairs, or colors, or love, or free will (ha!). But numbers don't cause anything and they are not caused by other things. So it's not an accident. My point is that we could have evolved with synethesia being a common condition. What type of selection pressures would have resulted in that? I don't know. Some survival requirement that is satisfied by those havin an intuitive feel for numbers I suppose. I assume your point is that since numbers are acausal, they couldn't have contributed to those selection pressures in any direct way? True enough. It is more than just perceiving them differently. For example mathematical objects are not located in space or time. They exist timelessly and in no particular place. Okay, I'll grant you that. Though it doesn't directly affect the point I was making. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
Rex Allen wrote: Brent, So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it that email got too big and sprawling I thought. So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your post. If you think there was some other point that I should have addressed, let me know. So, key passage: Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables and chairs, or quarks and electrons. So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental? Which is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or are they separate but equal kinds of existence? The way I look at it there is knowledge we gain from perception, including the inner perception of logical and mathematical facts. We make up theories that unify and explain these perceptions and which extend beyond what we perceive. These theories have ontologies: things they assume to exist - within the domain of the theory. There's no way to say that one is more fundamental than the other so long as they are in separate theories. Only if they are subsumed within one theory can there be some sense in which one is more fundamental than the other. I don't think we have such a theory yet. And note that even if we have theory including both mathematical and physical objects in its ontology it may turn out that either one can be used to explain the other; so it's not necessarily the case that one is more fundmental. In what way, exactly, does logico-mathematical existence differ from quark existence? You can kick quarks and they kick back. Is logico-mathematical existence a lesser kind of existence? Is logico-mathematical existence derivative of and dependant on quark existence? See above. Further, do tables and chairs even have the same kind of existence as quarks and electrons? Although the explanation of the macroscopic world from the quantum world is not worked out it is generally supposed that tables and chairs will eventually be explained in terms of quarks and electrons. The interesting thing is that from the standpoint of epistemology, the tables and chairs are more fundamental, while the theory makes the quarks and electrons more fundamental to the ontology. So there are different senses of fundamental too. A table is something that we perceive visually, but we intellectually take tables to be ultimately and fully reducible to quarks and electrons. So chairs and quarks certainly exist at different levels. Quarks would seem to be more fundamental than chairs. But obviously we don't actually perceive quarks or electrons...instead we infer their existence from our actual perceptions of various types of experimental equipment and from there associate them back with tables. As for our experience of logico-mathematical objects, we certainly can translate them into more chair-like perceptions by visualization via computer programs, right? I'm doubtful of that. Certainly many mathematical objects can be illustrated because they were invented to describe something we could perceive - like spheres or symmetries. But I don't see how you would visualize Shannon information or strings in ten dimensional space. This would put them very much on similar footing with our experience of quarks and electrons at least, which we also only visualize via computer reconstructions. But there's more than visualization. We can also manipulate and use quarks and electrons, i.e. we can make them kick each other and us. And, presumably it is possible for a human with exceptional visualization abilities to experience logico mathematical objects in a way that is even more chair-like than that. For instance, there are people with Synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia), for whom some letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, or for whom numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be farther away than 1990). I don't think that's good example. Synesthesia comes from cross coupling in the brain of concepts that are usually separate. I synesthesia were like perception then all synesthesists would see the same numbers as having the same color, etc. The main thing that causes us to attribute a form of existence to mathematical objects is that everyone who understands them agrees on their properties. But what if this type of synesthesia had some use that strongly aided in human survival and reproduction? Then (speaking in materialist terms) as we evolved synesthesia would have become a standard feature for humans and would now be considered just part of our normal sensory apparatus. We would be able to sense numbers in a way similar to how we sense chairs. In this case we would almost certainly consider numbers to be unquestionably objectively real and existing.
Re: Dreams and Machines
Rex Allen skrev: Brent, So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it that email got too big and sprawling I thought. So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your post. If you think there was some other point that I should have addressed, let me know. So, key passage: Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables and chairs, or quarks and electrons. So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental? Which is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or are they separate but equal kinds of existence? The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible existing universes. The inside of a specific universe constitutes an other form of existence. In a specific universe there are objects inside that universe. In the Game of Life universe, you have the Glider object, the Glider gun object, the Exploder object, the Tumbler object, etc. In a specific instance of the GoL-universe, there exist some objects and some objects does not exist there. In our own universe, there exist tables and chairs and quarks and electrons. This is the specific form of existence. But the mathematical objects does not exist in our universe, in this form of existence. You can not find the 17 object anywhere inside our universe. Then we have the general form of existence saying that our universe exists because it is a mathematical possibility. -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
Hi,
Ma connection at home is no functioning. So I am temporarily
disconnected. I hope I will be able to solve that problem. I am sending
here some little comments from my office.
I include some more material for Kim and Marty, and others, just to
think about, in case I remain disconnected for some time. Sorry.
Bruno
Le 22-juil.-09, à 10:27, Torgny Tholerus a écrit :
Rex Allen skrev:
Brent,
So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it that
email got too big and sprawling I thought.
So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your
post. If you think there was some other point that I should have
addressed, let me know.
So, key passage:
Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have
logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables and
chairs, or quarks and electrons.
So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental? Which
is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or
are they separate but equal kinds of existence?
The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible
universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible
existing universes.
This is non sense. Proof: see UDA. Or interrupt me when you have an
objection in the current explanation. I have explained this many times,
but the notion of universe or mathematical universe just makes no
sense. The notion of our universe is too far ambiguous for just
making even non sense.
I could say the same to Brent. First I don't think it makes sense to
say that epistemology comes before ontology, given that the ontology,
by definition, in concerned with what we agree exist independently of
the observer/knower ... Then what you say contradict the results in the
computationalist theory, where the appearances of universe emerges from
the collection of all computations
BTW, thanks to Brent for helping Marty.
Rex, when you say:
I would say that most people PERCEIVE logico-mathematical objects
differently than they perceive tables and chairs, or quarks and
electrons. But this doesn't tell us anything about whether these
things really have different kinds of existence. That we perceive
them differently is just an accident of fate.
We perceive them differently because observation is a different
modality of self-reference than proving. It has nothing to do with
accident or fate. The comp physics is defined by what is invariant,
from the observation point of view of universal machine. Later this
will shown to be given by the 3th, 4th, and 5th hypostases.
math lesson (2 posts):
Hi,
I wrote:
The cardinal of { } = 0. All singletons have cardinal one. All pairs,
or doubletons, have cardinal two.
Problem 1 has been solved. They have the same cardinal, or if you
prefer, they have the same number of elements. The set of all subsets
of a set with n elements has the same number of elements than the set
of all strings of length n.
Let us write B_n for the sets of binary strings of length n. So,
B_0 = { }
B_1 = {0, 1}
B_2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}
B_3 = {000, 010, 100, 110, 001, 011, 101, 111}
We have seen, without counting, that the cardinal of the powerset of a
set with cardinal n is the same as the cardinal of B_n.
And now the killing question by the sadistic math teacher:
What is the cardinal, that is, the number of element, of B_0, that is
the set of strings of length 0.
The student: let see, you wrote above B_0 = { },, and you were kind
enough to recall that the cardinal of { } is zero (of course, there is
zero element in the empty set). So the cardinal of B_0 is zero. 'zero
said the student.
'zero' indeed, said the teacher, but it is your note. You are wrong.
B_0 is not empty! It *looks* empty, but beware the appearance, it looks
empty because it contains the empty string, which, if you remember some
preceding post is invisible (even under the microscope, telescope,
radioscope, ..).
A solution could have been to notate the empty string by a symbol like
_, and write all sequences 0111000100 starting from _:
_0111000100, with rules __ = _, etc. Then B_0 = { _ }, B_1 = {_0,
_1}, etc. But this is too much notation.
And now the time has come for contrition when the teacher feels guilty!
Ah..., I should have written directly something like
B_0 = { _ }, with _ representing the empty sequence.
B_1 = {0, 1}
B_2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}
B_3 = {000, 010, 100, 110, 001, 011, 101, 111}
OK?
Remember we have seen that the cardinal of the powerset of a set with n
elements is equal to the cardinal of B_n, is equal to 2^n.
The cardinal of B_0 has to be equal to to 2^0, which is equal to one.
Why?
if a is a number, usually, a^n is the result of effectuating (a times a
times a time a ... times a), with n occurences of a. For example: 2^3 =
2x2x2 = 8.
so a^n times a^m is equal to a^(n+m)
This extends to the rational by defining a^(-n) by 1/a^n. In that case
Re: Dreams and Machines
Bruno Marchal skrev:
Le 22-juil.-09, à 10:27, Torgny Tholerus a écrit :
Rex Allen skrev:
Brent:
Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they
have
logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as
tables and
chairs, or quarks and electrons.
So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental?
Which
is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or
are they separate but equal kinds of existence?
The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible
universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible
existing universes.
This is non sense. Proof: see UDA. Or interrupt me when you have an
objection in the current explanation. I have explained this many
times, but the notion of universe or mathematical universe just makes
no sense. The notion of our universe is too far ambiguous for just
making even non sense.
What do you think about the GoL-universes? You can look at some of
those at http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/ . If you have an initial
condition and you have an unlimited board, then you can compute what
will happen in the future in that universe. These universes are
universes with a two-dimensional space and a one-dimensional time.
These GoL-universes are mathematial universes. They have an initial
condition and a mathematical rule that defines how that universe will
look like in the next moment, and the next next moment, and so on.
Does this make sense for you?
Now look at a mathematical universe that have somewhat more complicated
rules, and that mathematical universe looks exactly the same as our
universe. The same things happens as in our universe, and there is an
object there that is calling himself Bruno, and there is another object
calling himself Torgny...
(By the way, I think it is better to use the notion 010110 for
strings. Then B_1 will be {0, 1}, and B_0 will be {}. Then it is
more clear that B_0 contains one element.)
--
Torgny
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Re: Dreams and Machines
Ma connection at home is again functioning. I am happy to have solved
the problem rather quickly.
On 22 Jul 2009, at 13:54, David Nyman wrote:
2009/7/22 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
Ma connection at home is no functioning.
As a linguistic aside, Bruno has cleverly expressed the above
statement in perfect Glaswegian (i.e. the spoken tongue of Glasgow,
Scotland - my home town).
Indeed I am following an intense summer school in Glaswegian.
You thought you could make fun of the poor disconnected one?
Other well-known examples are: Is'arra
marra on yer barra Clarra? (Is that large vegetable on your barrow a
marrow, Clara?); and Gie's'a sook on yer soor ploom (Let me taste
the sour plum (a globular sweet-sour confection) that you are
presently sucking).
Perhaps he intends to continue further in this vein?
Once, on a list, someone thought I was using slang from New-York! Now
Glaswegian!
I am afraid I am just writing to quickly, and then when I read myself
I concentrate so much on the meaning ...
Most of the time I see the spelling errors when I read my mail, never
when I send it.
Sorry sorry sorry ...
Take care of the sense and the spelling will take care of itself. Well
*that* does not work!
Bruno
David ;-)
Hi,
Ma connection at home is no functioning. So I am temporarily
disconnected. I hope I will be able to solve that problem. I am
sending
here some little comments from my office.
I include some more material for Kim and Marty, and others, just to
think about, in case I remain disconnected for some time. Sorry.
Bruno
Le 22-juil.-09, à 10:27, Torgny Tholerus a écrit :
Rex Allen skrev:
Brent,
So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it
that
email got too big and sprawling I thought.
So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your
post. If you think there was some other point that I should have
addressed, let me know.
So, key passage:
Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have
logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables
and
chairs, or quarks and electrons.
So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental?
Which
is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or
are they separate but equal kinds of existence?
The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible
universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible
existing universes.
This is non sense. Proof: see UDA. Or interrupt me when you have an
objection in the current explanation. I have explained this many
times,
but the notion of universe or mathematical universe just makes no
sense. The notion of our universe is too far ambiguous for just
making even non sense.
I could say the same to Brent. First I don't think it makes sense to
say that epistemology comes before ontology, given that the ontology,
by definition, in concerned with what we agree exist independently of
the observer/knower ... Then what you say contradict the results in
the
computationalist theory, where the appearances of universe emerges
from
the collection of all computations
BTW, thanks to Brent for helping Marty.
Rex, when you say:
I would say that most people PERCEIVE logico-mathematical objects
differently than they perceive tables and chairs, or quarks and
electrons. But this doesn't tell us anything about whether these
things really have different kinds of existence. That we perceive
them differently is just an accident of fate.
We perceive them differently because observation is a different
modality of self-reference than proving. It has nothing to do with
accident or fate. The comp physics is defined by what is invariant,
from the observation point of view of universal machine. Later this
will shown to be given by the 3th, 4th, and 5th hypostases.
math lesson (2 posts):
Hi,
I wrote:
The cardinal of { } = 0. All singletons have cardinal one. All pairs,
or doubletons, have cardinal two.
Problem 1 has been solved. They have the same cardinal, or if you
prefer, they have the same number of elements. The set of all subsets
of a set with n elements has the same number of elements than the set
of all strings of length n.
Let us write B_n for the sets of binary strings of length n. So,
B_0 = { }
B_1 = {0, 1}
B_2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}
B_3 = {000, 010, 100, 110, 001, 011, 101, 111}
We have seen, without counting, that the cardinal of the powerset
of a
set with cardinal n is the same as the cardinal of B_n.
And now the killing question by the sadistic math teacher:
What is the cardinal, that is, the number of element, of B_0, that is
the set of strings of length 0.
The student: let see, you wrote above B_0 = { },, and you were kind
enough to recall that the cardinal of { } is zero (of course, there
is
zero element in the empty set). So the cardinal of B_0 is
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 22 Jul 2009, at 14:12, Torgny Tholerus wrote: The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible existing universes. This is non sense. Proof: see UDA. Or interrupt me when you have an objection in the current explanation. I have explained this many times, but the notion of universe or mathematical universe just makes no sense. The notion of our universe is too far ambiguous for just making even non sense. What do you think about the GoL-universes? You can look at some of those at http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/ . If you have an initial condition and you have an unlimited board, then you can compute what will happen in the future in that universe. What is an unlimited board for an ultrafinitist. (Ok, that was perhaps easy). These universes are universes with a two-dimensional space and a one-dimensional time. These GoL-universes are mathematial universes. They have an initial condition and a mathematical rule that defines how that universe will look like in the next moment, and the next next moment, and so on. Does this make sense for you? Those are not universes, but computational histories. Assuming comp there is a first person indeterminacy, which makes physical appearances or physical universe emerging from the infinity of such computational and universal computation. I suggest you read the UDA papers. I guess you were not yet on the list when I explained why Wolfram sort of computational physics, based on cellular automata, does not work. And quantum mechanics confirms this by giving indirect but strong evidences on the existence of many statistically interfering computations. The question about the existence of a mathematical structure describing the physical appearance is open, but we know already it is not a structure such that it makes sense to say I belong to it, even if it makes sense to say he belongs to it. But he, from his first person point of view belongs to an infinity of such history (or comp is false, which is the case normally for an ultrafinitist). 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: Dreams and Machines
2009/7/19 Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com: In your view, Bruno (or David, or anyone else who has an opinion), what kinds of things actually exist? What does it mean to say that something exists? This is naturally the $64k question for this list - or any other, for that matter (pun intended). I don't know the 'answer' - of course - but it doesn't stop me banging on about it interminably, here and elsewhere. Anyway, I'll have another go, but naturally only on the basis that anything that follows is just a 'way of speaking' that might - or mightn't - be helpful in resolving apparent puzzles stemming from linguistic or logical confusions. Personally, I find it useful to start from a more primitive position prior to speculating about the status of say, mathematical formalisms. Like Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Schrodinger and very many others, I find dualism to founder hopelessly on the rock of interaction and explanatory redundancy. Hence I'm a monist (or a non-dualist) who - given the singular incorrigibility of first-person 'experiential reality' - concludes that though whatever underlies remains forever *unknowable* it must nonetheless perforce be 'real in the sense that I am real' (RITSIAR - a gnomic acronym that has surfaced before on this list). Other primitive intuitions are founded on this: 1) The unknowable is singular (i.e symmetrical, holistic, indivisible: e.g. Plotinus' One) 2) The unknowable is pluralistic (asymmetrical, differentiated: i.e. pattern and order manifested within the One) 3) 1 and 2 taken together are of course 'paradoxical' in the light of the logic of the 'excluded middle'. This, I believe, is not vicious, but rather points virtuously towards the limit of such logics. It situates an unresolvable mystery appropriately, rather than attempting speciously to dispel it or ignore it. 4) 1 and 2 taken together must be RITSIAR. For me, this comprises the intuition that 'existence' is fundamentally - and only - a 'personal and present way of being'. To put it another way, epistemology and ontology are enfolded into the unmediated intuition of 'the way one is' as follows: 5) 1 (uniqueness, symmetry) - relating to an intuition of bare 'reflexive presence' (i.e. the whole is 'present-to-self', as I am). 6) 2 (asymmetry, differentiation) - relating to orderings of 'motivated self-access' (i.e. an intuition that 'presence' manifests in recursive orders of reflexively-intimate self-relativisation. Note that this vitiates and replaces the notions of 'observation' and 'action' and thereby collapses otherwise infinite regresses. It also welds 'causal closure' to an indivisible primitive intuition that enfolds - of necessity - both 'perception' and 'intention'. 7) All subsets of being, as it were - including the first-personal - emerge as a consequence of the 'superset of being' (the '0-personal') 'getting a grip on itself' (or better: *oneself*). 8) Taken together, 5, 6 and 7 collapse into a basic intuition of existence as - always and everywhere - constituted by a 'personal self-actualisation' which is posited to be characteristic of reality 'from the ground up'. The foregoing treatment attempts to summarise a (well-known: e.g. Plotinus, Vedanta, etc.) set of intuitions intended to underpin other notions of 'existence' in all its forms - i.e. any other postulation of 'existence' whatsoever is parasitic on the 'master' intuition that whatever 'exists' must be 'personally present as an actualised way-of-being'. So, in this light, what of the 'existence' of mathematics, 'possible' worlds, and other such 'abstractions'? Well, they indeed qualify in this sense (trivially) in the form of our shared 'mental constructions'. But are they additionally present - in some other form - *in-their-own-right*? One's view on this will clearly depend on the way one's theories (implicit or explicit) posit how the particular zoo of worlds, universes etc. one favours emerges from the ground outlined above. I would dichotomise such views into two camps: necessitist and contingentist. COMP, I think (but I may be off-beam here: see below) falls into the first camp. As far as 'reality' goes in COMP, I'm reasonably sure that what Bruno (conceding that he is almost always way ahead of me on any of this) implies in the metaphysics (or theology) of COMP, is that 'arithmetical reality' should be regarded as 'real' and 'present' in more or less the sense of 'RITSIAR'. Hence, the 'Platonic existence' that underpins COMP is RITSIAR. By this I don't mean the 'numbers' and 'operators' that we denote verbally or in writing - these of course are just a 'way of speaking' - a language. Rather these symbols gesture towards an unknowable domain that nonetheless possesses these characteristics in some (rigorously definable?) sense. And this domain is inescapably 'personal' - it is 'us', and it is everything else, too. One astonishing consequence of this schema is that any 'possible world' derivable from such a
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 22 July, 16:01, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
Ma connection at home is again functioning. I am happy to have solved
the problem rather quickly.
On 22 Jul 2009, at 13:54, David Nyman wrote:
2009/7/22 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
You thought you could make fun of the poor disconnected one?
Dinna fash yursel laddie, ah was'na makin sport o' ye. It wus a
compliment!
Further lessons available on application.
Hoots mon
David -;
Ma connection at home is no functioning.
As a linguistic aside, Bruno has cleverly expressed the above
statement in perfect Glaswegian (i.e. the spoken tongue of Glasgow,
Scotland - my home town).
Indeed I am following an intense summer school in Glaswegian.
You thought you could make fun of the poor disconnected one?
Other well-known examples are: Is'arra
marra on yer barra Clarra? (Is that large vegetable on your barrow a
marrow, Clara?); and Gie's'a sook on yer soor ploom (Let me taste
the sour plum (a globular sweet-sour confection) that you are
presently sucking).
Perhaps he intends to continue further in this vein?
Once, on a list, someone thought I was using slang from New-York! Now
Glaswegian!
I am afraid I am just writing to quickly, and then when I read myself
I concentrate so much on the meaning ...
Most of the time I see the spelling errors when I read my mail, never
when I send it.
Sorry sorry sorry ...
Take care of the sense and the spelling will take care of itself. Well
*that* does not work!
Bruno
David ;-)
Hi,
Ma connection at home is no functioning. So I am temporarily
disconnected. I hope I will be able to solve that problem. I am
sending
here some little comments from my office.
I include some more material for Kim and Marty, and others, just to
think about, in case I remain disconnected for some time. Sorry.
Bruno
Le 22-juil.-09, à 10:27, Torgny Tholerus a écrit :
Rex Allen skrev:
Brent,
So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it
that
email got too big and sprawling I thought.
So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your
post. If you think there was some other point that I should have
addressed, let me know.
So, key passage:
Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have
logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables
and
chairs, or quarks and electrons.
So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental?
Which
is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or
are they separate but equal kinds of existence?
The most general form of existence is: All mathematical possible
universes exist. Our universe is one of those mathematical possible
existing universes.
This is non sense. Proof: see UDA. Or interrupt me when you have an
objection in the current explanation. I have explained this many
times,
but the notion of universe or mathematical universe just makes no
sense. The notion of our universe is too far ambiguous for just
making even non sense.
I could say the same to Brent. First I don't think it makes sense to
say that epistemology comes before ontology, given that the ontology,
by definition, in concerned with what we agree exist independently of
the observer/knower ... Then what you say contradict the results in
the
computationalist theory, where the appearances of universe emerges
from
the collection of all computations
BTW, thanks to Brent for helping Marty.
Rex, when you say:
I would say that most people PERCEIVE logico-mathematical objects
differently than they perceive tables and chairs, or quarks and
electrons. But this doesn't tell us anything about whether these
things really have different kinds of existence. That we perceive
them differently is just an accident of fate.
We perceive them differently because observation is a different
modality of self-reference than proving. It has nothing to do with
accident or fate. The comp physics is defined by what is invariant,
from the observation point of view of universal machine. Later this
will shown to be given by the 3th, 4th, and 5th hypostases.
math lesson (2 posts):
Hi,
I wrote:
The cardinal of { } = 0. All singletons have cardinal one. All pairs,
or doubletons, have cardinal two.
Problem 1 has been solved. They have the same cardinal, or if you
prefer, they have the same number of elements. The set of all subsets
of a set with n elements has the same number of elements than the set
of all strings of length n.
Let us write B_n for the sets of binary strings of length n. So,
B_0 = { }
B_1 = {0, 1}
B_2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}
B_3 = {000, 010, 100, 110, 001, 011, 101, 111}
We have seen, without counting, that the cardinal of the powerset
of a
set with cardinal n is the same as the cardinal of B_n.
And now the killing
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 22 Jul 2009, at 17:56, David Nyman wrote:
2009/7/19 Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com:
In your view, Bruno (or David, or anyone else who has an opinion),
what kinds of things actually exist? What does it mean to say that
something exists?
This is naturally the $64k question for this list - or any other, for
that matter (pun intended). I don't know the 'answer' - of course -
but it doesn't stop me banging on about it interminably, here and
elsewhere. Anyway, I'll have another go, but naturally only on the
basis that anything that follows is just a 'way of speaking' that
might - or mightn't - be helpful in resolving apparent puzzles
stemming from linguistic or logical confusions.
Personally, I find it useful to start from a more primitive position
prior to speculating about the status of say, mathematical formalisms.
Like Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Schrodinger and very many others, I find
dualism to founder hopelessly on the rock of interaction and
explanatory redundancy. Hence I'm a monist (or a non-dualist) who -
given the singular incorrigibility of first-person 'experiential
reality' - concludes that though whatever underlies remains forever
*unknowable* it must nonetheless perforce be 'real in the sense that I
am real' (RITSIAR - a gnomic acronym that has surfaced before on this
list).
Hmm... OK. Nice. Not completely convinced yet.
Other primitive intuitions are founded on this:
1) The unknowable is singular (i.e symmetrical, holistic, indivisible:
e.g. Plotinus' One)
unknowable?
or unprovable, uncommunicable, that is unbelievable, unjustifiable.
2) The unknowable is pluralistic (asymmetrical, differentiated: i.e.
pattern and order manifested within the One)
3) 1 and 2 taken together are of course 'paradoxical' in the light of
the logic of the 'excluded middle'. This, I believe, is not vicious,
but rather points virtuously towards the limit of such logics. It
situates an unresolvable mystery appropriately, rather than attempting
speciously to dispel it or ignore it.
Hmm... The excluded middle is what makes us modest.
It makes possible to prove the existence of some object x by showing
that x belongs to {a, b, c} , without any means to decide which of a,
b and c x is.
The excluded middle principle is what you need to recognize unknowns
and capture them in some set, hopefully not to big.
In the theoretical computer science, and especially in theoretical
learning many theorems are necessarily non constructive.
You abandon the excluded middle principle when you want to build
something, or extend yourself, with the exclusion of the other.
The excluded middle principle is what you need to think and dream
about what you build, and what can follow, and talk on it with others.
You need it somehow to believe in another one. Also, it prevents not
the falsity of solipsism, but the falsity of any doctrinal (3-
communicable) solipsism.
4) 1 and 2 taken together must be RITSIAR. For me, this comprises the
intuition that 'existence' is fundamentally - and only - a 'personal
and present way of being'. To put it another way, epistemology and
ontology are enfolded into the unmediated intuition of 'the way one
is' as follows:
5) 1 (uniqueness, symmetry) - relating to an intuition of bare
'reflexive presence' (i.e. the whole is 'present-to-self', as I am).
6) 2 (asymmetry, differentiation) - relating to orderings of
'motivated self-access' (i.e. an intuition that 'presence' manifests
in recursive orders of reflexively-intimate self-relativisation. Note
that this vitiates and replaces the notions of 'observation' and
'action' and thereby collapses otherwise infinite regresses. It also
welds 'causal closure' to an indivisible primitive intuition that
enfolds - of necessity - both 'perception' and 'intention'.
7) All subsets of being, as it were - including the first-personal -
emerge as a consequence of the 'superset of being' (the '0-personal')
'getting a grip on itself' (or better: *oneself*).
Nicely said.
8) Taken together, 5, 6 and 7 collapse into a basic intuition of
existence as - always and everywhere - constituted by a 'personal
self-actualisation' which is posited to be characteristic of reality
'from the ground up'.
? This belongs to the incommunicable part. If you communicate it, you
bet on the existence of someone else, and on something sharable. But
then you do science, and in honest science you share only doubts.
Do you see what I see?
Do you believe what I believe?
The foregoing treatment attempts to summarise a (well-known: e.g.
Plotinus, Vedanta, etc.) set of intuitions intended to underpin other
notions of 'existence' in all its forms - i.e. any other postulation
of 'existence' whatsoever is parasitic on the 'master' intuition that
whatever 'exists' must be 'personally present as an actualised
way-of-being'. So, in this light, what of the 'existence' of
mathematics, 'possible' worlds, and
Re: Dreams and Machines
2009/7/22 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: explanatory redundancy. Hence I'm a monist (or a non-dualist) who - given the singular incorrigibility of first-person 'experiential reality' - concludes that though whatever underlies remains forever *unknowable* it must nonetheless perforce be 'real in the sense that I am real' (RITSIAR - a gnomic acronym that has surfaced before on this list). Hmm... OK. Nice. Not completely convinced yet. Let's try to be clear(!) I don't intend 'RITSIAR' to refer merely to the 1-person, but to the 0-person and all the other persons you can think of. Why? Because given that I am indubitably RITSIAR, then whatever I emerge from must also subsist in a status that is also RITSIAR in some uneliminable *ontological* sense. Naturally I don't intend by this that either the One, or 3-person descriptions, literally call themselves I, but rather that what is ontologically RITSIAR in the 1-person is irreducibly so in the whole, and vice versa. As an analogy, if - merely for the sake of argument - we were to choose to ascribe fundamental 'materiality' to the world', then we also must consistently hold that all and any constituent parts and sub-wholes subsist in ontological 'materiality' by the same token. Not to do this would be equivalent to accepting sudden non-linear step-changes in *ontological* status merely as a function of scale - which AFAICS is incoherent - i.e. I wouldn't have a clue what this could possibly mean. I don't want us to talk past each other merely on the basis of incommensurable jargon - if there's anything I can do to make this point clearer, I'll go on trying. 1) The unknowable is singular (i.e symmetrical, holistic, indivisible: e.g. Plotinus' One) unknowable? or unprovable, uncommunicable, that is unbelievable, unjustifiable. Here I'm saying that the *undifferentiated* One is unknowable, because 'knowing' is here posited precisely to subsist in differentiated ways-of-being adopted by the One *posterior* to its bare, undifferentiated 'presence'. Hence, this 'bare presence' or personal ground is a priori both unknowing and unknowable. 'Knowledge' subsists in the multiplicity of distinguished ways-of-being that emerge from the bare presence of the One: i.e. 'getting-a-grip-on-Oneself'. The excluded middle principle is what you need to think and dream about what you build, and what can follow, and talk on it with others. You need it somehow to believe in another one. Also, it prevents not the falsity of solipsism, but the falsity of any doctrinal (3- communicable) solipsism. I'm not abandoning the principle, rather I was pointing to the fact that in analysis at this level, there is something deeply mysterious - apparently paradoxical in terms of mutually exclusive 'opposites' - about a 'seamless' unity nevertheless being 'differentiable'. As a matter of personal psychological compulsion, I feel it necessary to point this out, to forestall someone else asking how can you claim that 'parts' ultimately subsist in the context of a 'seamless' whole? If you like, I consider myself to be a sort of dualist in this sense: that there seems to me ultimately to be an inescapable duality (meaning two irreducible ways of being) between intuitions of 'whole' and 'part'. Once we have reasoned as far as we can in terms of 'ultimates', we're left with nothing to 'separate' the 'whole' into 'parts'. If we believe we can 'actually' *sever* the 'whole', what do we suppose 'lies between' the 'parts' (e.g. the old notion of 'atoms in the void')? Nothing? One may simply say that this of course is the well known tension between intuitions of the 'continuous' and the 'discrete'. But at this level of discourse, there seems to be something wrong that can't be fixed by invoking higher-order 'limit' theories unavailable even in principle at this depth of analysis. Nonetheless, the unknowable - unknowably - somehow resolves this paradox. But maybe I'm the only one who cares about this. Or maybe it's just gibberish. 8) Taken together, 5, 6 and 7 collapse into a basic intuition of existence as - always and everywhere - constituted by a 'personal self-actualisation' which is posited to be characteristic of reality 'from the ground up'. ? This belongs to the incommunicable part. If you communicate it, you bet on the existence of someone else, and on something sharable. But then you do science, and in honest science you share only doubts. Do you see what I see? Do you believe what I believe? Hm, I think there may be a misstep in emphasis here. The key intuition, which I was deriving step-by-step up to that point, is that whatever it is that we take to be 'real' or 'existent' - and by that token fundamentally RITSIAR - must thereby be both 'personally present' and 'self-actualising'. In my terms, this would have to be so whether we take RITSIAR to be based on Number, 'matter' or spiritual green cheese. I agree this isn't science, and hence is
Re: Dreams and Machines
David Nyman wrote: 2009/7/22 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: explanatory redundancy. Hence I'm a monist (or a non-dualist) who - given the singular incorrigibility of first-person 'experiential reality' - concludes that though whatever underlies remains forever *unknowable* it must nonetheless perforce be 'real in the sense that I am real' (RITSIAR - a gnomic acronym that has surfaced before on this list). Hmm... OK. Nice. Not completely convinced yet. Let's try to be clear(!) I don't intend 'RITSIAR' to refer merely to the 1-person, but to the 0-person and all the other persons you can think of. Why? Because given that I am indubitably RITSIAR, then whatever I emerge from must also subsist in a status that is also RITSIAR in some uneliminable *ontological* sense. Naturally I don't intend by this that either the One, or 3-person descriptions, literally call themselves I, but rather that what is ontologically RITSIAR in the 1-person is irreducibly so in the whole, and vice versa. As an analogy, if - merely for the sake of argument - we were to choose to ascribe fundamental 'materiality' to the world', then we also must consistently hold that all and any constituent parts and sub-wholes subsist in ontological 'materiality' by the same token. Not to do this would be equivalent to accepting sudden non-linear step-changes in *ontological* status merely as a function of scale - which AFAICS is incoherent - i.e. I wouldn't have a clue what this could possibly mean. I don't want us to talk past each other merely on the basis of incommensurable jargon - if there's anything I can do to make this point clearer, I'll go on trying. 1) The unknowable is singular (i.e symmetrical, holistic, indivisible: e.g. Plotinus' One) unknowable? or unprovable, uncommunicable, that is unbelievable, unjustifiable. Here I'm saying that the *undifferentiated* One is unknowable, because 'knowing' is here posited precisely to subsist in differentiated ways-of-being adopted by the One *posterior* to its bare, undifferentiated 'presence'. Hence, this 'bare presence' or personal ground is a priori both unknowing and unknowable. If I understand you correctly, this is similar to the explication of I by Thomas Metzinger in his book The Ego Tunnel. He expresses it as the self being transparent. We look *through* it but not *at* it, and necessarily so. 'Knowledge' subsists in the multiplicity of distinguished ways-of-being that emerge from the bare presence of the One: i.e. 'getting-a-grip-on-Oneself'. The excluded middle principle is what you need to think and dream about what you build, and what can follow, and talk on it with others. You need it somehow to believe in another one. Also, it prevents not the falsity of solipsism, but the falsity of any doctrinal (3- communicable) solipsism. I'm not abandoning the principle, rather I was pointing to the fact that in analysis at this level, there is something deeply mysterious - apparently paradoxical in terms of mutually exclusive 'opposites' - about a 'seamless' unity nevertheless being 'differentiable'. As a matter of personal psychological compulsion, I feel it necessary to point this out, to forestall someone else asking how can you claim that 'parts' ultimately subsist in the context of a 'seamless' whole? This paradox arises in quantum cosmogony. The universe (or multiverse) evolves as the rotation of a single ray in Hilbert space. But relativistic horizons separate different local projections so that we see decohered, classical objects (and we are such objects). At least that's the speculation - there is both unity and diversity: different aspects of the wave-function of the universe which is unknowable. If you like, I consider myself to be a sort of dualist in this sense: that there seems to me ultimately to be an inescapable duality (meaning two irreducible ways of being) between intuitions of 'whole' and 'part'. Once we have reasoned as far as we can in terms of 'ultimates', we're left with nothing to 'separate' the 'whole' into 'parts'. If we believe we can 'actually' *sever* the 'whole', what do we suppose 'lies between' the 'parts' (e.g. the old notion of 'atoms in the void')? Nothing? One may simply say that this of course is the well known tension between intuitions of the 'continuous' and the 'discrete'. But at this level of discourse, there seems to be something wrong that can't be fixed by invoking higher-order 'limit' theories unavailable even in principle at this depth of analysis. Nonetheless, the unknowable - unknowably - somehow resolves this paradox. But maybe I'm the only one who cares about this. Or maybe it's just gibberish. 8) Taken together, 5, 6 and 7 collapse into a basic intuition of existence as - always and everywhere - constituted by a 'personal self-actualisation' which is posited to be characteristic of reality 'from the ground up'.
Re: Dreams and Machines
David Nyman wrote: 2009/7/23 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: If I understand you correctly, this is similar to the explication of I by Thomas Metzinger in his book The Ego Tunnel. He expresses it as the self being transparent. We look *through* it but not *at* it, and necessarily so. Well, I haven't read it, but yes, what I've been saying certainly implies this. This paradox arises in quantum cosmogony. The universe (or multiverse) evolves as the rotation of a single ray in Hilbert space. But relativistic horizons separate different local projections so that we see decohered, classical objects (and we are such objects). At least that's the speculation - there is both unity and diversity: different aspects of the wave-function of the universe which is unknowable. Yes, the wave function indeed expresses just such 'paradoxical partness in wholeness'. You make the self fundamental, but is it so. Maybe the self is a mathematical construct or a statistical ensemble or experiences. RITSIAR may not be real in the ontology of the best theory. No, I emphatically do not make 'the self' fundamental. In fact, taking my lead from Plotinus, Vedanta et al, I would deny the existence or necessity of any such independent existent as 'the self'. The I that I take to be real in RITSIAR is the reflexive I of the 'personally present' unity. I'm not sure I can even parse this paragraph. An I that is reflexive is one that refers to itself. So what is RITSIAR can refer to itself. So it implicitly entails a unity to refer to. Our is the unity the unity of perception, i.e. all my perceptions cohere so they are mine. They constitute a world being present to me from my point of view. 'Reflexive' because it is unique; Why would being unique imply it can refer to itself - or whatever reflexive means in this context (unconscious reaction?)? 'personal' because it is the superset out of which 'persons' (subsets) emerge; 'present' because - given that such 1-persons self-assert 'presently' Does everything RITSIAR self-assert? I understand asserting proposition, i.e. assigning a value true to it. I don't understand self-assert. - the background from which they can be said, for certain purposes, to distinguish themselves a fortiori constitutes a more inclusive 'presence'. ??? Hence I claim that 'the best theory' - whatever else it encompasses - can't help but be ontologically RITSIAR. But that's where I would appeal to two different senses of basic. Basic to epistemology is perception/intuition/experience/cognition. But based on that knowledge one may develop theory in which the ontology is different. No, I emphatically think not. This is the point of my 'collapse' of epistemology and ontology. My claim is that 'knowing' and 'being' are cognates - more specifically, 'knowing' is a 'way-of-being'. We can only know - reflexively - what we are and we can't know what we aren't. Of course one can't know a falsehood. Or are you saying we can't know anything but ourselves (a step toward solipism). Or are you saying we can only know what we are through introspection (reflection)? AFAICS this is the only way to avoiding the otherwise infinite regress between 'observer' and 'observed'. Furthermore, through the intuition or insight that 'ways-of-being' are equivalent to instances of 'self-motivated-relativisation' of the One, we situate 'causal closure' inescapably in an indivisible unity of reflexive 'perception' and 'action'. The consequence of this of course is 'no brains without minds, and vice-versa'. These are the minimal requirements, IMO, of any foundational ontology capable of going on to account for a 'mind' or 'body' that is RITSIAR - as opposed to being the kind of 'Cheshire Cat' or 'arm's length' abstraction that can't help conjuring 'philosophical zombie worlds' and other such monstrosities. To many scare quotes. Physics gains knowledge from physicists looking at records and instrument readings. But the theory built on this knowledge is in terms of elementary particles and fields. The positivists wanted to build physics on an ontology of perceptions and instrument readings, but it was not at all fruitful and has been abandoned. The trouble here, I'm convinced, is the attempt to ground the argument at a level of analysis that is already much too 'sophisticated' - what one author recently called an 'adultocentric' viewpoint. What I'm trying to do by contrast is to base my foundational theorising solely on what a 'philosophical neonate' would be able - or need - to lay claim to: IOW, the simplest and most irreducible logical pre-requisites necessary to justify the 'appearances' that our later theorising will rely on. You are concerned that RITSIAR can't be recovered if it's not asserted in the beginning, but the alternative is that the ontology of the world is real in a
Re: Dreams and Machines
Hi Brent, You are asserting monism. But the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable. So when we place ourselves in the world it is by making distinctions within the unity. To become distinct from the background (the One) is what it means to be RITSIAR. Right? Brent How do you know that the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable? If your being, for example, was the ur-stuff (I assume you mean akin to urelements in set theory), then it is effable and knowable. You have written about it, and at least two of its properties, and so it is not completely ineffable, yes? So I think it is effable even if it is exceedingly difficult to describe fully. What I'm having trouble believing is that it is unknowable. Cheers Brian --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
Brian Tenneson wrote: Hi Brent, You are asserting monism. But the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable. So when we place ourselves in the world it is by making distinctions within the unity. To become distinct from the background (the One) is what it means to be RITSIAR. Right? Brent How do you know that the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable? If your being, for example, was the ur-stuff (I assume you mean akin to urelements in set theory), then it is effable and knowable. You have written about it, and at least two of its properties, and so it is not completely ineffable, yes? So I think it is effable even if it is exceedingly difficult to describe fully. What I'm having trouble believing is that it is unknowable. In the above I was trying to paraphrase what David wrote. I don't have a final theory, but if I did it would include some ontology and that would be effable (no point in having a theory you can't use to theorize). But even if I did I don't think it would be possible to *know* that it was the final theory. So it's unknowable in that sense. 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: Dreams and Machines
Brent Meeker wrote: Brian Tenneson wrote: Hi Brent, You are asserting monism. But the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable. So when we place ourselves in the world it is by making distinctions within the unity. To become distinct from the background (the One) is what it means to be RITSIAR. Right? Brent How do you know that the One, the ur-stuff, is ineffable/unknowable? If your being, for example, was the ur-stuff (I assume you mean akin to urelements in set theory), then it is effable and knowable. You have written about it, and at least two of its properties, and so it is not completely ineffable, yes? So I think it is effable even if it is exceedingly difficult to describe fully. What I'm having trouble believing is that it is unknowable. In the above I was trying to paraphrase what David wrote. I don't have a final theory, but if I did it would include some ontology and that would be effable (no point in having a theory you can't use to theorize). But even if I did I don't think it would be possible to *know* that it was the final theory. So it's unknowable in that sense. Brent That's a very interesting point. The way science goes is that it continually doubts itself and consequently revises itself when new data come in, even if that data is paradigm-shattering. They'll gleefully justify starting a new theory that is closer to the final theory. Due to this aspect of the nature of science, science would never be able to prove its own final theory /is /a final theory. Someone like me would say, no new data has contradicted our final theory for a thousand years does *not* imply there will be a need for revision after 1,001 years. That's a form of scientific uncertainty. This uncertainty among the scientific community (ie science can't prove final theory is final) could possibly yield to other avenues of investigation such as AI, math, philosophy, and perhaps some theoretical physics (eg Tegmark). Perhaps the final theory will be completely mathematical in nature, like how mathematical M-theory is now. Then it stands to reason that the only people who could prove it is final are the mathematicians, the cog sci people, the AI computer science people, etc.. Whether it could be proven final depends on that final theory; ie the final theory should make as one of its predictions that it is the final theory. Then mathematicians (and whoever else) try to prove that theory is satisfiable which would mean it (the theory) is consistent. However, something surprising might be true, that the final theory is undecidable in the following sense: for the final theory, along with This theory is final as a statement in the theory, there is no effective procedure for determining if a generic statement is true or false. Consistency combined with undecidability is an interesting for a set of formulas (like the final theory), because while every statement is either true (or false), it may very well be that it is true (or false) and no matter how clever you are, you won't prove it true (or false, as the case may be). If knowable means you have to know the proof, then there are some statements are true but you'll never have a proof that it is true. However, there still might be an escape from not knowing:: an omniscient thing (like a perfect Turing-like machine) explaining to you how to know what was previously not known. An answer key, if you will, on any statement. You can ask what is God or what is my purpose and it will tell you something that is true but there is no proof for. But... You can't prove the answer key is the answer key. Then it becomes a question of doubt: why should I believe the answer key before me is correct? IDK, I think I'm going off on wild tangents now. My apologies. -Brian --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
On 21 Jul 2009, at 07:22, Rex Allen wrote: Brent, I intend to reply more directly to your post soon, as I think there's a lot to be said in response. I agree! I let you comment first. But in the meantime: So I just finished reading David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, and I'm curious what you (Brent, Bruno, and anyone else) make of the following passage at the end of chapter 10, The Nature of Mathematics. The first paragraph is at least partly applicable to Brent's recent post, and the second seems relevant to Bruno's last response. It makes one wonder what other darkly esoteric abstractions may stalk the abyssal depths of Platonia??? The passage: Mathematical entities are part of the fabric of reality because they are complex and autonomous. The sort of reality they form is in some ways like the realm of abstractions envisaged by Plato or Penrose: although they are by definition intangible, they exist objectively and have properties that are independent of the laws of physics. OK. Note that assuming comp, the laws of physics are dependent of the math. However, it is physics that allows us to gain knowledge of this realm. This is a physicalist assumption. And it imposes stringent constraints. Assuming comp, those constraints are themselves a mathematical origin. Whereas everything in the physical reality is comprehensible, Everything? This is an assumption (and is probably wrong in the comp frame). the comprehensible mathematical truths are precisely the infinitesimal minority which happen to correspond exactly to some physical truth - like the fact that if certain symbols made of ink on paper are manipulated in certain ways, certain other symbols appear. That is, they are the truths that can be rendered in virtual reality. This follows from comp. We have no choice but to assume that the incomprehensible mathematical entities are real too, because they appear inextricably in our explanations of the comprehensible ones. They appear in the mind or dreams of the universal machine. Here the comp hyp. makes possible to distinguish ontological mathematics (no need to take more than a tiny part of arithmetic), and the epistemological mathematics, which has no mathematically definable bound. There are physical objects - such as fingers, computers and brains - whose behaviour can model that of certain abstract objects. In this way the fabric of physical reality provides us with a window on the world of abstractions. Physicalist assumption. With comp the physical world emerges itself from a statistical sum on infinitely many computations. It is a very narrow window and gives us only a limited range of perspectives. Some of the structures that we see out there, such as the natural numbers or the rules of inference of classical logic, seem to be important or 'fundamental' to the abstract world, in the same way as deep laws of nature are fundamental to the physical world. Yes. Comp explains this, and exploits this. But that could be a misleading appearance. For what we are really seeing is only that some abstract structures are fundamental to our understanding of abstractions. We have no reason to suppose that those structures are objectively significant in the abstract world. Comp does make them significant. It is merely that some abstract entities are nearer and more easily visible from our window than others. Comp explains this. I appreciate very much the FOR book, but Deutsch does not take into account the fact that if we are digitalizable machines, our predictions have to rely eventually on the infinitely many relations between numbers. From the first person point of view, those relations rely themselves on many infinities which goes beyond elementary arithmetic. With the comp assumption, we have a simple theory of everything: elementary arithmetic (without the induction axioms). In that theory we can prove the existence of universal machine, and their (finite) pieces of dreams, and why those machines will, from their own point of view infer the induction axioms and glue their dreams in projecting physical universe. Comp makes a tiny part of arithmetic a virtual matrix or video game, which viewed from inside, will seem as a locally concrete reality. Problem: there could be too much white rabbits, and other non computable manifestations predictable in our neighborhood. It could be no more than the 'quantum indeterminacy', but this remain to be completely proved (a part of this has been verified though). Note that the epistemology is far richer than the ontology. The 'first person plenitude' (cf George Levy) is MUCH bigger than the minimal third person reality we need to explain the origin of the appearances. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are
Re: Dreams and Machines
Brent, So my first draft addressed many of the points you made, but it that email got too big and sprawling I thought. So I've focused on what seems to me like the key passage from your post. If you think there was some other point that I should have addressed, let me know. So, key passage: Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables and chairs, or quarks and electrons. So which kind of existence do you believe is more fundamental? Which is primary? Logico-mathematical existence, or quark existence? Or are they separate but equal kinds of existence? In what way, exactly, does logico-mathematical existence differ from quark existence? Is logico-mathematical existence a lesser kind of existence? Is logico-mathematical existence derivative of and dependant on quark existence? Further, do tables and chairs even have the same kind of existence as quarks and electrons? A table is something that we perceive visually, but we intellectually take tables to be ultimately and fully reducible to quarks and electrons. So chairs and quarks certainly exist at different levels. Quarks would seem to be more fundamental than chairs. But obviously we don't actually perceive quarks or electrons...instead we infer their existence from our actual perceptions of various types of experimental equipment and from there associate them back with tables. As for our experience of logico-mathematical objects, we certainly can translate them into more chair-like perceptions by visualization via computer programs, right? This would put them very much on similar footing with our experience of quarks and electrons at least, which we also only visualize via computer reconstructions. And, presumably it is possible for a human with exceptional visualization abilities to experience logico mathematical objects in a way that is even more chair-like than that. For instance, there are people with Synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia), for whom some letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, or for whom numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be farther away than 1990). But what if this type of synesthesia had some use that strongly aided in human survival and reproduction? Then (speaking in materialist terms) as we evolved synesthesia would have become a standard feature for humans and would now be considered just part of our normal sensory apparatus. We would be able to sense numbers in a way similar to how we sense chairs. In this case we would almost certainly consider numbers to be unquestionably objectively real and existing. Though maybe we would ponder their peculiar qualities, in the same way we now puzzle over the strangeness of quantum mechanics. A further example: Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. Q. But how do you visualise a number? In the same way that I visualise a giraffe? A. Every number has a texture. If it is a lumpy number, then immediately my mind will relate it to other numbers which are lumpy - the lumpiness will tell me there is a relationship, there is a common divisor, or a pattern between the digits. Q. Can you give an example of a lumpy number? A. For me, the ideal lumpy number is 37. It's like porridge. So 111, a very pretty number, which is 3 times 37, is lumpy but it is also round. It takes on the properties of both 37 and 3, which is round. It's an intuitive and visual way of doing maths and thinking about numbers. For me, the ideal lumpy number is 37. It's like porridge. I think we can say (again, speaking in materialist/physicalist terms) that it's purely an accident of evolution that numbers don't seem as intuitively real to us as chairs, or colors, or love, or free will (ha!). Speaking in platonist terms, it's an accident of our particular mental/symbolic structure that numbers don't seem as intuitively real to us as chairs, or colors, or love, or free will (ha!). Speaking in computationalist terms, it's an accident of our causal/representational/algorithmic structure that numbers don't seem as intuitively real to us as chairs, or colors, or love, or free will (ha!). But, no matter what terms you use, it's conceivable, and we have significant evidence that points to the possibility, that our conscious perceptions could be modified in a way such that numbers and other abstractions would seem much more substantial and real than they do currently, even as substantial and real as chairs and tables. And this wouldn't require any change in what actually exists or how these things exists (logico-mathematical or otherwise). So based on all of the above, returning to your original
Re: Dreams and Machines
Brent, I intend to reply more directly to your post soon, as I think there's a lot to be said in response. But in the meantime: So I just finished reading David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, and I'm curious what you (Brent, Bruno, and anyone else) make of the following passage at the end of chapter 10, The Nature of Mathematics. The first paragraph is at least partly applicable to Brent's recent post, and the second seems relevant to Bruno's last response. It makes one wonder what other darkly esoteric abstractions may stalk the abyssal depths of Platonia??? The passage: Mathematical entities are part of the fabric of reality because they are complex and autonomous. The sort of reality they form is in some ways like the realm of abstractions envisaged by Plato or Penrose: although they are by definition intangible, they exist objectively and have properties that are independent of the laws of physics. However, it is physics that allows us to gain knowledge of this realm. And it imposes stringent constraints. Whereas everything in the physical reality is comprehensible, the comprehensible mathematical truths are precisely the infinitesimal minority which happen to correspond exactly to some physical truth - like the fact that if certain symbols made of ink on paper are manipulated in certain ways, certain other symbols appear. That is, they are the truths that can be rendered in virtual reality. We have no choice but to assume that the incomprehensible mathematical entities are real too, because they appear inextricably in our explanations of the comprehensible ones. There are physical objects - such as fingers, computers and brains - whose behaviour can model that of certain abstract objects. In this way the fabric of physical reality provides us with a window on the world of abstractions. It is a very narrow window and gives us only a limited range of perspectives. Some of the structures that we see out there, such as the natural numbers or the rules of inference of classical logic, seem to be important or 'fundamental' to the abstract world, in the same way as deep laws of nature are fundamental to the physical world. But that could be a misleading appearance. For what we are really seeing is only that some abstract structures are fundamental to our understanding of abstractions. We have no reason to suppose that those structures are objectively significant in the abstract world. It is merely that some abstract entities are nearer and more easily visible from our window than others. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
On 19 Jul 2009, at 04:43, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am OK with all this. It has to be like this if we take the comp hyp So what are your thoughts on my question as to whether abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? For example, the idea of red? Numbers are not enough. Even assuming first order logic. Then assuming we are digitalizable machine, this can be proved: Numbers are not enough. Numbers together with addition and multiplication are enough, and it is absolutely undecidable (for us, and us = any universal machine/ number) if there is any richer ontology. Numbers and addition + multiplication is a structure already Turing universal. With addition and multiplication (and logic) you can already define the computational states and the pieces of histories going through them. You can understand that if you assume comp, all the computations going through the state of self-introspecting agent imagining red already exists as much as numbers. All the proposition of the shape the machine i goes through states S are, when true, elementary theorem of arithmetic, and they are accompagnying by dense sets of proofs or relative realisations). In the arithmetical Platonia, you already have all universal machines, and all their computations, which makes already place for big amount of abstract concept existing platonically (= like the numbers). And then you can define the modalities or point of view of those machines, by realizing that they will be aware (they have access too) the gap between platonist truth and what they can prove, and ... You may read the paper on Plotinus here, i.e. click on pdf on the right of A purely arithmetical, yet empirically falsifiable, intepretation of Plotinus on my url http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ You can see, well, not my thought on the subject, but the thought of the universal platonist machine. A machine is platonist when she believes, proves, asserts, the instanciations of the principle of excluded middle principle. So obviously we can cast everything as numbers and say, In this program, 0xff00 represents red. But RED is what we're really talking about here, and 0xff00 is just a place holder...a symbol for what actually exists. Probably so. In your view, Bruno (or David, or anyone else who has an opinion), what kinds of things actually exist? What does it mean to say that something exists? Assuming comp, something S exists ontologically when you can prove that S exists in Robinson Arithmetic (a very weak, yet universal, theory), And something S exists epistemologically when, let us say, you can prove in Robinson Arithmetic that there is a universal machine mentioning S. Technically it is far more elegant and sophisticate. See the eight hypostases (points of view) in the plotinus paper (or look for Plotinus or hypostases in the archive of the list). Instead of Robinson Arithmetic, you can take any first order specification of any universal system, machine or lnaguage (be it Conway's Game of Life, FORTRAN, LISP, prolog, Basic, c++, ... up to modular functor from quantum topology or knot theory, or number theory itself. It seems to me that maybe consciousness is actually very simple. It is just a group of platonic ideals, like red, that are related to each other by a point of view: I like red, or I see a red sphere. Yes. Maybe what is complicated is constructing or identifying a causal structure (e.g., a machine, a brain, a program, etc) whose evolving state can be interpreted as representing a series of connected or related instances of consciousness. Yes. The difficulty is that consciousness, from its internal view, can only be related to an infinity of states belonging to high infinities of infinite computations. Third person consciousness, like the consciousness of my friend, is locally attachable (by guess) to a brain. My consciousness is not attachable to a brain, only to an enumerable infinity of brains/machines/numbers weighted by non enumerable infinite histories. But the machine (physical or otherwise) is NOT that consciousness, the machine just represents that consciousness. Indeed. The machine can represent 3-consciousness, like my identity cart can represent myself. 1-consciousness is related to a continuum of machines. This follows form the UDA. 1-consciousness is ignorant which places it occupies among continuum of histories. In this view, consciousness itself consists directly of the abstract platonic ideals that form the contents of a given moment of consciousness. Not directly. It needs a self-reference, that is no more than two diagonalisations. Computer science suggests, and arguably forces entities to relate to themselves relatively to most probable local universal history. This needs already
Re: Dreams and Machines
Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am OK with all this. It has to be like this if we take the comp hyp So what are your thoughts on my question as to whether abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? For example, the idea of red? So obviously we can cast everything as numbers and say, In this program, 0xff00 represents red. But RED is what we're really talking about here, and 0xff00 is just a place holder...a symbol for what actually exists. In your view, Bruno (or David, or anyone else who has an opinion), what kinds of things actually exist? What does it mean to say that something exists? Well, since you asked, I think exist is always relative to some domain; so we should use exist in different senses. First of all I think epistemology precedes ontology. We first get knowledge of some facts and then we create an ontology as part of a theory to explain these facts. Facts are obtained in different ways. Chairs and tables and people exist at the most basic level of epistemology, i.e. we directly perceive them. Sometimes it is argued that we don't really see tables and chairs, we see 2-D patches of color and infer tables and chairs. This is the error of the misplaced concrete. Perhaps as infants we saw patches of color, but as adults our brain processes information differently and we directly perceive 3D objects. That we have theories of vision that tells us we're really experience certain excitations of the visual cortex or that tables and chairs are really quarks and electrons with lots of empty space are beside the point. Those are ontologies built on other theories that were inferred from perception of macroscopic 3D objects. Something similar happens with mathematical objects. We learn language intuitively and built into language are certain logical and mathematical structures so that we come to perceive conjunction and disjunction and the natural numbers and some other concepts directly. Do these mathematical objects really exist? I'd say they have logico-mathematical existence, not the same existence as tables and chairs, or quarks and electrons. Similarly we may, in another domain, say that Sherlock Holmes violin exists but Sherlock Holmes tuba does not, based on the reading of Conan Doyle. Brent Meeker It seems to me that maybe consciousness is actually very simple. It is just a group of platonic ideals, like red, that are related to each other by a point of view: I like red, or I see a red sphere. Maybe what is complicated is constructing or identifying a causal structure (e.g., a machine, a brain, a program, etc) whose evolving state can be interpreted as representing a series of connected or related instances of consciousness. But the machine (physical or otherwise) is NOT that consciousness, the machine just represents that consciousness. In this view, consciousness itself consists directly of the abstract platonic ideals that form the contents of a given moment of consciousness. It remains to explain the relative stability of that illusion. How and why some dreams glue, in a way sufficiently precise for making predictions about them. Maybe unstable illusions exist, but, being unstable, don't ponder such questions? Obviously we have such conscious beings here in this world, with schizophrenics and the like. So your questions about why are my perceptions so orderly, would NOT be universally valid questions, because there are conscious entities whose perceptions are NOT orderly. And I would say that even my perceptions are not consistently orderly, as when I dream I often experience strange scenarios. To say that dreaming and hallucinating are special cases I think is to make an unfounded assumption. It would seem to me that orderly perceptions are the special case, and dream-logic realities would be the norm. If consciousness is in some way a result of computation, then a program that generates all possible mind-simulations will surely result in the vast majority of resulting minds experiencing dream-logic realities, not law-and-order realities like ours. I think Sean Carroll (who I'm reasonably sure would disagree with everything I've proposed above, but still) had a pretty good point on such counter-intuitive predictions: The same logic applies, for example, to the highly contentious case of the multiverse. The multiverse isn’t, by itself, a theory; it’s a prediction of a certain class of theories. If the idea were simply “Hey, we don’t know what happens outside our observable universe, so maybe all sorts of crazy things happen,” it would be laughably uninteresting. By scientific standards, it would fall woefully short. But the point is that various theoretical attempts to explain phenomena that we directly observe right in front of us — like gravity, and quantum
Re: Dreams and Machines
On 17 Jul 2009, at 09:08, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 8:38 PM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). So it occurs to me to ask: do abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? What about red, for example? Does the concept of red exist in a way that is similar to the concept of 3? So if I write a computer program that deals with colors, red might be represented by the hex number 0xff00. The hex number itself is represented in memory by a sequence of 32 bits. Each bit is physically represented by some electrons and atoms in a microchip being in some specific state. But ultimately what is being represented is the idea of red. So in this particular example, does this not make red a more fundamental concept than the number that is used to represent it in the computer program? Is not red the MOST fundamental concept in this scenario? So the typical materialist view is that we are in some way made from atoms, though they don't usually go so far as to say that we ARE those atoms. Rather we are the information that is stored by virtue of the atoms being in a particular configuration. The actually existing atoms of our body form a vessel for our information, and thus for our consciousness. But in their view, we exist only because the atoms exist. When the vessel is destroyed, so are we. The atoms are fundamental, our consciousness is derivative. But taking a more platonic view, abstract concepts also exist. And if this is so, could we not just as well say that our conscious subjective experience is formed from particular configurations of these platonically existing abstract concepts? In this view, these abstract concepts stand in specific relations to one another, like symbols on a map, representing the layout (the landscape) of a particular moment of consciousness. And such subjective conscious experiences would include (but are not limited to) those that lead us to mistakenly infer the actual existence of an external world whose fundamental constituents are electrons and atoms and photons and all the rest. I am OK with all this. It has to be like this if we take the comp hyp (this is not trivial). It remains to explain the relative stability of that illusion. How and why some dreams glue, in a way sufficiently precise for making predictions about them. Computer science provides hints. 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: Dreams and Machines
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I am OK with all this. It has to be like this if we take the comp hyp So what are your thoughts on my question as to whether abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? For example, the idea of red? So obviously we can cast everything as numbers and say, In this program, 0xff00 represents red. But RED is what we're really talking about here, and 0xff00 is just a place holder...a symbol for what actually exists. In your view, Bruno (or David, or anyone else who has an opinion), what kinds of things actually exist? What does it mean to say that something exists? It seems to me that maybe consciousness is actually very simple. It is just a group of platonic ideals, like red, that are related to each other by a point of view: I like red, or I see a red sphere. Maybe what is complicated is constructing or identifying a causal structure (e.g., a machine, a brain, a program, etc) whose evolving state can be interpreted as representing a series of connected or related instances of consciousness. But the machine (physical or otherwise) is NOT that consciousness, the machine just represents that consciousness. In this view, consciousness itself consists directly of the abstract platonic ideals that form the contents of a given moment of consciousness. It remains to explain the relative stability of that illusion. How and why some dreams glue, in a way sufficiently precise for making predictions about them. Maybe unstable illusions exist, but, being unstable, don't ponder such questions? Obviously we have such conscious beings here in this world, with schizophrenics and the like. So your questions about why are my perceptions so orderly, would NOT be universally valid questions, because there are conscious entities whose perceptions are NOT orderly. And I would say that even my perceptions are not consistently orderly, as when I dream I often experience strange scenarios. To say that dreaming and hallucinating are special cases I think is to make an unfounded assumption. It would seem to me that orderly perceptions are the special case, and dream-logic realities would be the norm. If consciousness is in some way a result of computation, then a program that generates all possible mind-simulations will surely result in the vast majority of resulting minds experiencing dream-logic realities, not law-and-order realities like ours. I think Sean Carroll (who I'm reasonably sure would disagree with everything I've proposed above, but still) had a pretty good point on such counter-intuitive predictions: The same logic applies, for example, to the highly contentious case of the multiverse. The multiverse isn’t, by itself, a theory; it’s a prediction of a certain class of theories. If the idea were simply “Hey, we don’t know what happens outside our observable universe, so maybe all sorts of crazy things happen,” it would be laughably uninteresting. By scientific standards, it would fall woefully short. But the point is that various theoretical attempts to explain phenomena that we directly observe right in front of us — like gravity, and quantum field theory — lead us to predict that our universe should be one of many, and subsequently suggest that we take that situation seriously when we talk about the “naturalness” of various features of our local environment. The point, at the moment, is not whether there really is or is not a multiverse; it’s that the way we think about it and reach conclusions about its plausibility is through exactly the same kind of scientific reasoning we’ve been using for a long time now. Science doesn’t pass judgment on phenomena; it passes judgment on theories. So, I could continue further and go into a lengthy defense of why I think this supports what I'm saying, BUT maybe you'll come to the same conclusion I have and I can save myself a lot of typing! So, I'll just try that approach first. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 8:38 PM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). So it occurs to me to ask: do abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? What about red, for example? Does the concept of red exist in a way that is similar to the concept of 3? So if I write a computer program that deals with colors, red might be represented by the hex number 0xff00. The hex number itself is represented in memory by a sequence of 32 bits. Each bit is physically represented by some electrons and atoms in a microchip being in some specific state. But ultimately what is being represented is the idea of red. So in this particular example, does this not make red a more fundamental concept than the number that is used to represent it in the computer program? Is not red the MOST fundamental concept in this scenario? So the typical materialist view is that we are in some way made from atoms, though they don't usually go so far as to say that we ARE those atoms. Rather we are the information that is stored by virtue of the atoms being in a particular configuration. The actually existing atoms of our body form a vessel for our information, and thus for our consciousness. But in their view, we exist only because the atoms exist. When the vessel is destroyed, so are we. The atoms are fundamental, our consciousness is derivative. But taking a more platonic view, abstract concepts also exist. And if this is so, could we not just as well say that our conscious subjective experience is formed from particular configurations of these platonically existing abstract concepts? In this view, these abstract concepts stand in specific relations to one another, like symbols on a map, representing the layout (the landscape) of a particular moment of consciousness. And such subjective conscious experiences would include (but are not limited to) those that lead us to mistakenly infer the actual existence of an external world whose fundamental constituents are electrons and atoms and photons and all the rest. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
On 17 July, 08:08, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: But taking a more platonic view, abstract concepts also exist. And if this is so, could we not just as well say that our conscious subjective experience is formed from particular configurations of these platonically existing abstract concepts? In this view, these abstract concepts stand in specific relations to one another, like symbols on a map, representing the layout (the landscape) of a particular moment of consciousness. And such subjective conscious experiences would include (but are not limited to) those that lead us to mistakenly infer the actual existence of an external world whose fundamental constituents are electrons and atoms and photons and all the rest. Yes, just so. This is more or less what I was trying to convey in my sally on 'what is real? (in the sense that I am real)'. Finally - 'in some sense' - we needs must ground any such discourse about the number realm in 'my-existence-in-the-world': i.e. no longer 'abstracted', but centred on the self. Consequently any attempt at a non-dual account must be reflexive or self-referential - i.e. I am the singular mysterious qualitative referent of this abstracted set of entities and their relations. I suppose this 'embedded' account - the unknowable ground of our being - could be thought of, if only poetically, as the true, ontic, or implicit 'language of the dreaming machines', towards which any explicit version can gesture only partially and indicatively. David On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 8:38 PM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). So it occurs to me to ask: do abstract concepts other than numbers also exist in a platonic sense? What about red, for example? Does the concept of red exist in a way that is similar to the concept of 3? So if I write a computer program that deals with colors, red might be represented by the hex number 0xff00. The hex number itself is represented in memory by a sequence of 32 bits. Each bit is physically represented by some electrons and atoms in a microchip being in some specific state. But ultimately what is being represented is the idea of red. So in this particular example, does this not make red a more fundamental concept than the number that is used to represent it in the computer program? Is not red the MOST fundamental concept in this scenario? So the typical materialist view is that we are in some way made from atoms, though they don't usually go so far as to say that we ARE those atoms. Rather we are the information that is stored by virtue of the atoms being in a particular configuration. The actually existing atoms of our body form a vessel for our information, and thus for our consciousness. But in their view, we exist only because the atoms exist. When the vessel is destroyed, so are we. The atoms are fundamental, our consciousness is derivative. But taking a more platonic view, abstract concepts also exist. And if this is so, could we not just as well say that our conscious subjective experience is formed from particular configurations of these platonically existing abstract concepts? In this view, these abstract concepts stand in specific relations to one another, like symbols on a map, representing the layout (the landscape) of a particular moment of consciousness. And such subjective conscious experiences would include (but are not limited to) those that lead us to mistakenly infer the actual existence of an external world whose fundamental constituents are electrons and atoms and photons and all the rest. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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: Dreams and Machines
Hi David, I comment your post with an apology to Kim and Marty, then I make a comment to Marty, and then I comment your (very nice) post. Kim, Marty, I apologize for my bad sense of humor. Rereading some post, I realize some nuance in the tone does not go through mailings. Please indulge professional deformation of an old math teacher ... On 17 Jul 2009, at 03:12, m.a. wrote: David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, Marty, I can understand you. At the same time, many discussion have been more philosophical, and the problem here, is that without some amount of math, and of computer science, things will look like a crackpot-like thing. It is almost in the nature of the subject. Big statements needs big arguments, and at least enough precise pointers toward the real thing. You can have a still more passive understanding of the UDA, if you understand the first sixth steps. Then for the seventh, it is enough to believe in the existence of universal dovetailer (itself a quasi direct consequence of the existence of a universal machine). Then the 8th step alone can help you to have an idea why the Universal dovetailer is immaterial, so that physics has to be reduced to math and machine psuchology/theology. But then, I will not been able to answer some remark which have been done by Stathis, Russell, Brent and some others, and which are relalted to the difference between a computation (be it mathematical or physical) and a description of a computation (be it mathematical or physical), and this is the key for understanding that when we assume brain are digitalizable, eventually we have to abandon the idea that consciousness supervene on physical computations, and to accept that it supervenes on mathematical computations. You know, the discovery of the universal machine is the real (creative) bomb here. I could say that nature has never stopped to invent it and reinvent it, like with the apparition of brain, of life and the possible other many big bangs. Then, it is hard to explain, without learning a bit on numbers, functions, sets and mathematical structures, that arithmetic, simple elementary arithmetic, already describes that universal thing which can't help itself to reinvent hitself again and again and again, and this in an atemporal, aspatial frames. Sri Aurobindo made once a nice summary: What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task Well said! of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP-mechanics' in order to attempt a better personal grasp of what it might mean as a metaphysics. As always, I need help, so here goes for starters. This points to another problem I have. The UDA, and probably even more the AUDA, has deeply changed my philosophy, up to a point where I think that philosophy and metaphysics can be handled with the doubting attitude of the (ideal) scientist, and that this attitude is a vaccine against the most inhuman aspect of human science. But then I have reason to suggest that everything becomes far more clearer if we drop the expression fundamental science, philosophy, metaphysics (unless we use them in their original greek senses) and come back to the expression theology. If you want, assuming comp, metaphysics becomes a theology, with its communicable and non communicable parts. Assuming comp we can already listen to the course on machine theology provided by the machines. But then I know that I look over-provocative. At the same time, I feel that this is important, because, I don't see how we could ever win the war against
Re: Dreams and Machines
Bruno, Be assured that I still fully intend to follow the logic of UDA as far as I can. And I'm grateful for your frequent efforts to suggest its meaning in words and to explain why words alone are inadequate. I wonder if you could clarify your use of the term supervene in the context below and elsewhere. How can consciousness supervene on the mathematical computations that produce that consciousness? Is this the ultimate in self-referential authoring? Best wishes, marty a. - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 8:00 AM Subject: Re: Dreams and Machines Hi David, I comment your post with an apology to Kim and Marty, then I make a comment to Marty, and then I comment your (very nice) post. Kim, Marty, I apologize for my bad sense of humor. Rereading some post, I realize some nuance in the tone does not go through mailings. Please indulge professional deformation of an old math teacher ... On 17 Jul 2009, at 03:12, m.a. wrote: David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, Marty, I can understand you. At the same time, many discussion have been more philosophical, and the problem here, is that without some amount of math, and of computer science, things will look like a crackpot-like thing. It is almost in the nature of the subject. Big statements needs big arguments, and at least enough precise pointers toward the real thing. You can have a still more passive understanding of the UDA, if you understand the first sixth steps. Then for the seventh, it is enough to believe in the existence of universal dovetailer (itself a quasi direct consequence of the existence of a universal machine). Then the 8th step alone can help you to have an idea why the Universal dovetailer is immaterial, so that physics has to be reduced to math and machine psuchology/theology. But then, I will not been able to answer some remark which have been done by Stathis, Russell, Brent and some others, and which are relalted to the difference between a computation (be it mathematical or physical) and a description of a computation (be it mathematical or physical), and this is the key for understanding that when we assume brain are digitalizable, eventually we have to abandon the idea that consciousness supervene on physical computations, and to accept that it supervenes on mathematical computations. You know, the discovery of the universal machine is the real (creative) bomb here. I could say that nature has never stopped to invent it and reinvent it, like with the apparition of brain, of life and the possible other many big bangs. Then, it is hard to explain, without learning a bit on numbers, functions, sets and mathematical structures, that arithmetic, simple elementary arithmetic, already describes that universal thing which can't help itself to reinvent hitself again and again and again, and this in an atemporal, aspatial frames. Sri Aurobindo made once a nice summary: What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task Well said! of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP
Re: Dreams and Machines
2009/7/17 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: You are correct about truth and provability. You may have insisted a bit more on the first person/third person important , and still unsolved, to be sure, relationship, and the first person indeterminacy which follows. You certainly motivate me to explain better AUDA and its relation with UDA. I am glad that Marty enjoy your post. At the same time, the point of my work did consist in making this utterly clear (if not shocking for those Aristotelian fundamentalist). Clarity in an hot field has to be technical or it looks too much provocative. Thanks for this very clear post. You have a good intuition of the ultimate consequences of the comp hyp, I think. Bruno, many thanks for your helpful commentary on my post - many of your points are well taken and will help me amplify and clarify my views. I'm just off for a long weekend in Oxford, but I'll muse further and try to respond on some of your points on my return mid-week. David Hi David, I comment your post with an apology to Kim and Marty, then I make a comment to Marty, and then I comment your (very nice) post. Kim, Marty, I apologize for my bad sense of humor. Rereading some post, I realize some nuance in the tone does not go through mailings. Please indulge professional deformation of an old math teacher ... On 17 Jul 2009, at 03:12, m.a. wrote: David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, Marty, I can understand you. At the same time, many discussion have been more philosophical, and the problem here, is that without some amount of math, and of computer science, things will look like a crackpot-like thing. It is almost in the nature of the subject. Big statements needs big arguments, and at least enough precise pointers toward the real thing. You can have a still more passive understanding of the UDA, if you understand the first sixth steps. Then for the seventh, it is enough to believe in the existence of universal dovetailer (itself a quasi direct consequence of the existence of a universal machine). Then the 8th step alone can help you to have an idea why the Universal dovetailer is immaterial, so that physics has to be reduced to math and machine psuchology/theology. But then, I will not been able to answer some remark which have been done by Stathis, Russell, Brent and some others, and which are relalted to the difference between a computation (be it mathematical or physical) and a description of a computation (be it mathematical or physical), and this is the key for understanding that when we assume brain are digitalizable, eventually we have to abandon the idea that consciousness supervene on physical computations, and to accept that it supervenes on mathematical computations. You know, the discovery of the universal machine is the real (creative) bomb here. I could say that nature has never stopped to invent it and reinvent it, like with the apparition of brain, of life and the possible other many big bangs. Then, it is hard to explain, without learning a bit on numbers, functions, sets and mathematical structures, that arithmetic, simple elementary arithmetic, already describes that universal thing which can't help itself to reinvent hitself again and again and again, and this in an atemporal, aspatial frames. Sri Aurobindo made once a nice summary: What, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this ... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged into numberless trillions of forms So that it might Find Itself Innumerably - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task Well said! of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP-mechanics' in order to attempt a better personal grasp of what it might mean as a metaphysics. As always, I need help, so here
Re: Dreams and Machines
Marty, Be assured that I still fully intend to follow the logic of UDA as far as I can. And I'm grateful for your frequent efforts to suggest its meaning in words and to explain why words alone are inadequate. I wonder if you could clarify your use of the term supervene in the context below and elsewhere. The term comes from philosophy of mind. It designates usually the idea that consciousness is related to the physical activity of a brain. Consciousness is not necessarily seen as being produced than as being concomitant, so that supervenience can be used in both dualist and monist philosophies. But such supervenience needs weak materialism, i.e. the assumption that there is a physical activity, on which consciousness could supervene on. In french I used to say vehiculated by instead of supervene on. Note also that the supervenience thesis is not obvious to picture in some many worlds theories. Is it one consciousnessone brain, one consciousness---an infinity of brains, or what ? tricky question. I call this notion of supervenience the physical supervenience, to distinguish it from what I call the computational supervenience. With the computational supervenience, consciousness is associated with all the computations going through a computational state. Those computational states, and the pieces of computations going through them are well defined mathematical objects, even arithmetical objects. So computational supervenience is mathematicalist, even arithmeticalist. You can see the UD Argument has an argument showing that comp, which in appearance needs weak materialism, implies the computational supervenience. How can consciousness supervene on the mathematical computations that produce that consciousness? Is this the ultimate in self- referential authoring? How can consciousness supervene on the physical computations that produce that consciousness? The difficulty is the same, except that consciousness is typically not material, and seems to be more informational, if not psychological, or even spiritual. An entity is conscious when it believes in a reality. Then there is a ladder of higher consciousness and knowledge states, but their self- referential logics converge quickly. A theory as simple as Peano arithmetic, is already as introspective as any possible machine can be, and already very wise: she stays mute on the question do you believe in a reality?, but Peano Arithmetic can already explain why it has to be so, if we provide the information that she is Peano Arithmetic (Peano's arithmetic version of the yes doctor). Peano Arithmetic is already a Löbian machine. Universal machine which believes in any Peano-like induction principle can know, in a technical, but very weak sense, that they are universal, and when they know that they are Löbian. Peano induction is the principle that IF you have an infinity of dominoes ranged in a infinite row, then if the first fall, then all dominoes will fall. (or if you prefer: each domino will fall, soon or later). P(0) and for all n (P(n) - P(n+1)) implies that for all n we have P(n). I stop because I get technical and we are in AUDA here ... we will come back on this. Hope this help, but ask any precision, or summary, of what has been said, or of what will be said. Best, Bruno - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 8:00 AM Subject: Re: Dreams and Machines Hi David, I comment your post with an apology to Kim and Marty, then I make a comment to Marty, and then I comment your (very nice) post. Kim, Marty, I apologize for my bad sense of humor. Rereading some post, I realize some nuance in the tone does not go through mailings. Please indulge professional deformation of an old math teacher ... On 17 Jul 2009, at 03:12, m.a. wrote: David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, Marty, I can understand you. At the same time, many discussion have been more philosophical, and the problem here, is that without some amount of math, and of computer science, things will look like a crackpot-like thing. It is almost in the nature of the subject. Big statements needs big arguments, and at least enough precise pointers toward the real thing. You can have a still more passive understanding of the UDA, if you understand the first sixth steps. Then for the seventh, it is enough to believe in the existence of universal dovetailer (itself a quasi direct consequence of the existence of a universal machine). Then the 8th step alone can help you to have an idea why the Universal dovetailer is immaterial, so that physics has
Dreams and Machines
With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP-mechanics' in order to attempt a better personal grasp of what it might mean as a metaphysics. As always, I need help, so here goes for starters. Bruno has sometimes remarked (if I'm not misrepresenting him) that COMP introduces us to machines and their dreams and I find this metaphor very cogent and suggestive. Certainly it seems to me that my present state could coherently be characterised as a peculiarly consistent dream - one that I nonetheless assume to be correlated systematically with features of some otherwise unreachable 'elsewhere'. In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). Given this point of departure, it follows that machines so instantiated would be capable of implementing any computable 'dream' whatsoever - including dreams instantiating yet further levels of machines and their dreams. With an additional dovetailing assumption, we find ourselves in a position to construct a sort of hyper-threaded layer-cake of dreaming where, from any arbitrary level, recursively nested dreams disappear towards infinity both 'upwards' and 'downwards'. As we 'drill down' into this gateau, we are looking for emergent patterns of invariance representing the self-referential viewpoints of layers of 'dreaming machines' - their experience and their 'external reality'. The lowest level of recursion that any particular system of dreaming requires for its instantiation is taken to constitute its 'substitution level'. Since which layer of the cake this corresponds to must be unknowable from the viewpoint of any level we currently occupy, we ineluctably take a gamble if we say 'yes' to any doctor who claims to know what he's about. BTW, on this topic, I would refer you to an interesting analogy that I append as a footnote below. So, what can we take 'reality' (i.e. real, as you will recall, in the sense that I am real) to mean in this schema? We cannot know, but we do want to say that it corresponds self-referentially - in some sense - to the number realm, and that the true language of the dreaming machines therefore corresponds - also in some self-referential sense - to numbers and their inter-relations. This 'sense of correspondence' can be defined in two ways: 'truth', which is taken to correspond self-referentially to the unknowably 'real', and 'provability', which is taken to correspond to what this reality can consistently claim, express, or represent to itself. This is about as far as I've got, and broad as it is, it seems to point more or less in the direction of a detailed research programme such as Bruno has outlined. I can see that stipulations on 'reality' such as universal computability make implicit claims that are empirically falsifiable in principle, which is most encouraging. Also, this general approach seems to me to have striking resonances with metaphysics such as Bohm's notions of implication and explication, as well as MWI. Anyway - Bruno, I would be grateful as ever - when you have a moment - if you would tell me which end of what wrong stick I've got hold of this time. Footnote: http://www.getyourowndirt.com/ One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost. God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest. To which the scientist replied, OK, great! But God added, Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam. The scientist said, Sure, no problem and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God just looked at him
Re: Dreams and Machines
David, I appreciated this post because I'm more interested in the philosophical implications (which I'm hoping to find at the end of Bruno's UDA bridge to Valhalla) of these goings-on ...than in the mathematical ones. Best, marty a. - Original Message - From: David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:38 PM Subject: Dreams and Machines With Bruno and his mighty handful engaged in the undodgeable (though constantly dodged) task of working towards an elementary grasp of the technical underpinnings of COMP, and patently lacking the fortitude of these valorous Stakhanovites, I have been spending my time lurking, reading and musing. My philosophical position on possible relations between computation and mind has long (well before this list) been that it would indeed require something like Bruno's reversal of the 'normal' relationship between computation and physics, so that mind could emerge in some at least comprehensible manner; certainly not - per impossibile - in the ghostly shrouds of the 'deus ex machina' of 'computational materialism'. Consequently, parallel to the strenuous effort ongoing in the other thread, I have been wrapping my mind more loosely around 'interpretations of COMP-mechanics' in order to attempt a better personal grasp of what it might mean as a metaphysics. As always, I need help, so here goes for starters. Bruno has sometimes remarked (if I'm not misrepresenting him) that COMP introduces us to machines and their dreams and I find this metaphor very cogent and suggestive. Certainly it seems to me that my present state could coherently be characterised as a peculiarly consistent dream - one that I nonetheless assume to be correlated systematically with features of some otherwise unreachable 'elsewhere'. In COMP, the 'mechanism and language of dreams' is posited to be those elements of the number realm and its operators that are deemed necessary to instantiate a 'universal TM' (i.e. one that - assuming CT to be true - is capable of computing any computable function). Given this point of departure, it follows that machines so instantiated would be capable of implementing any computable 'dream' whatsoever - including dreams instantiating yet further levels of machines and their dreams. With an additional dovetailing assumption, we find ourselves in a position to construct a sort of hyper-threaded layer-cake of dreaming where, from any arbitrary level, recursively nested dreams disappear towards infinity both 'upwards' and 'downwards'. As we 'drill down' into this gateau, we are looking for emergent patterns of invariance representing the self-referential viewpoints of layers of 'dreaming machines' - their experience and their 'external reality'. The lowest level of recursion that any particular system of dreaming requires for its instantiation is taken to constitute its 'substitution level'. Since which layer of the cake this corresponds to must be unknowable from the viewpoint of any level we currently occupy, we ineluctably take a gamble if we say 'yes' to any doctor who claims to know what he's about. BTW, on this topic, I would refer you to an interesting analogy that I append as a footnote below. So, what can we take 'reality' (i.e. real, as you will recall, in the sense that I am real) to mean in this schema? We cannot know, but we do want to say that it corresponds self-referentially - in some sense - to the number realm, and that the true language of the dreaming machines therefore corresponds - also in some self-referential sense - to numbers and their inter-relations. This 'sense of correspondence' can be defined in two ways: 'truth', which is taken to correspond self-referentially to the unknowably 'real', and 'provability', which is taken to correspond to what this reality can consistently claim, express, or represent to itself. This is about as far as I've got, and broad as it is, it seems to point more or less in the direction of a detailed research programme such as Bruno has outlined. I can see that stipulations on 'reality' such as universal computability make implicit claims that are empirically falsifiable in principle, which is most encouraging. Also, this general approach seems to me to have striking resonances with metaphysics such as Bohm's notions of implication and explication, as well as MWI. Anyway - Bruno, I would be grateful as ever - when you have a moment - if you would tell me which end of what wrong stick I've got hold of this time. Footnote: http://www.getyourowndirt.com/ One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way
