Re: It's a mad mad mad world (was computationalism and supervenience)]

2006-08-23 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 21-août-06, à 22:01, George Levy a écrit :

Slight correction:

If you are sane then you're not sure that you are sane, 

OK.



then you would have to be crazy to say Yes Doctor...


Why? You can hope. Like you can hope you are sane, and that you will remain sane after a comp-substitution. You would only be crazy if you believe you can communicate, in some thrid person way, that you will survive, or that you have survived such a substitution. You would be crazy if you belief that science has shown the human brain is a machine. You would be crazy if you forget that comp is a (meta) religion 


...yet a man could say it but not a sane machine.


?



Bruno's quest based on machine psychology runs the risk of leaving unanswered the really big quest based on human psychology.

Human psychology is interesting, but if comp is correct it is just a sub-branch of machine psychology.

Bruno

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


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It's a mad mad mad world (was computationalism and supervenience)

2006-08-21 Thread George Levy




If you're not sure that you are sane, then you must be crazy to say
"Yes Doctor."..
...yet a man could say it but not a "sane" machine.

Bruno's quest based on machine psychology runs the risk of leaving
unanswered the really big quest based on human psychology.

George



Bruno Marchal wrote:

  
Le 21-aot-06,  07:11, Stathis Papaioannou a crit :

  
  
It seems to me that there are two main sticking points in the 
discussions on
several list threads in recent weeks. One is computationalism: is it 
right or wrong?
This at least is straightforward in that it comes down to a question 
of faith, in the
final analysis, as to whether you would accept a digital replacement 
brain or not
(Bruno's "yes doctor" choice).

  
  
Yes. Unfortunately this gives not a purely operational definition of 
comp.
Someone could say yes to the doctor, just thinking that God exists, and 
that God is infinitely Good so that he will manage to resuscitate him 
through the reconstitution (he believes also God is infinitely 
powerful).
So comp is really the belief that you can survive with an artificial 
brain *qua computatio", that is, through the respect of some digital 
relation only.



  
  
The other sticking point is, given computationalism
is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have 
been arguments
that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, 
Searle, Moravec)
and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal).

  
  


OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like 
me) that we have:

NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE

But apparently Maudlin want to keep physical supervenience, and thus 
concludes there is a problem with comp. I keep comp, and thus I 
conclude there is a problem with physical supervenience.
Actually I just abandon the thesis of the physical supervenience, to 
replace it by a thesis of number-theoretical supervenience.


  
  
The discussion about Platonism
and the ontological status of mathematical structures, in particular, 
relates to this
second issue. Bruno alludes to it in several papers and posts, and 
also alludes to his
"movie graph argument", but as far as I can tell that argument in its 
entirety is only
available in French.

  
  

That's true. I should do something about that. I don't feel it is so 
urgent in the list because there are more simple problem to tackle 
before, and also, most "MWI", or "Everything"-people can easily imagine 
the UD doesn't need to be run. But this is a subtle problem for those 
who have faith in their uniqueness or in the uniqueness of the world. 
Still you are right, I should write an english version of the movie 
graph.

Bruno


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





  



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It's a mad mad mad world (was computationalism and supervenience)]

2006-08-21 Thread George Levy




Slight correction:



If you are sane then you're not sure that you are sane, then you would
have to be crazy to say
"Yes Doctor."..
...yet a man could say it but not a "sane" machine.

Bruno's quest based on machine psychology runs the risk of leaving
unanswered the really big quest based on human psychology.

George



Bruno Marchal wrote:

  Le 21-aot-06,  07:11, Stathis Papaioannou a crit :

  
  
It seems to me that there are two main sticking points in the 
discussions on
several list threads in recent weeks. One is computationalism: is it 
right or wrong?
This at least is straightforward in that it comes down to a question 
of faith, in the
final analysis, as to whether you would accept a digital replacement 
brain or not
(Bruno's "yes doctor" choice).

  
  
Yes. Unfortunately this gives not a purely operational definition of 
comp.
Someone could say yes to the doctor, just thinking that God exists, and 
that God is infinitely Good so that he will manage to resuscitate him 
through the reconstitution (he believes also God is infinitely 
powerful).
So comp is really the belief that you can survive with an artificial 
brain *qua computatio", that is, through the respect of some digital 
relation only.



  
  
The other sticking point is, given computationalism
is right, what does it take to implement a computation? There have 
been arguments
that a computation is implemented by any physical system (Putnam, 
Searle, Moravec)
and by no physical system (Maudlin, Bruno Marchal).

  
  


OK. To be sure Maudlin would only partially agree. Maudlin shows (like 
me) that we have:

NOT COMP or NOT PHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE

But apparently Maudlin want to keep physical supervenience, and thus 
concludes there is a problem with comp. I keep comp, and thus I 
conclude there is a problem with physical supervenience.
Actually I just abandon the thesis of the physical supervenience, to 
replace it by a thesis of number-theoretical supervenience.


  
  
The discussion about Platonism
and the ontological status of mathematical structures, in particular, 
relates to this
second issue. Bruno alludes to it in several papers and posts, and 
also alludes to his
"movie graph argument", but as far as I can tell that argument in its 
entirety is only
available in French.

  
  

That's true. I should do something about that. I don't feel it is so 
urgent in the list because there are more simple problem to tackle 
before, and also, most "MWI", or "Everything"-people can easily imagine 
the UD doesn't need to be run. But this is a subtle problem for those 
who have faith in their uniqueness or in the uniqueness of the world. 
Still you are right, I should write an english version of the movie 
graph.

Bruno


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





  





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