Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 11:03 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But those who gave me the price in Paris The PRIZE K -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 Apr 2015, at 09:15, Bruce Kellett wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: snip Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. If you study a proof, you should not add an hypothesis. We don't assume quantum mechanics (indeed we have to derive it from comp, assuming QM is correct empirically). Anyway, at step seven, you can already understand that non cloning is predicted by computationalism, so QM non-cloning confirms computationalism. The argument works even if the brain is a quantum computer. It works for anything not violating Church's thesis. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 18 Apr 2015, at 04:45, meekerdb wrote: On 4/17/2015 12:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 21:54, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? By associating it with different token of the machinery implementing it. Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? No, it can't, in the 1-view, but it can in the 3-1 view. OK? I'm not sure what 3-1 view means, It is the content of the diary of the observer outside the box (like in sane04), but on the consciousness of the copies involved. This is for the people who say that they will be conscious in W and M. That is true, but the pure 1-view is that they will be conscious in only one city (even if that happens in both cities). In the math part, this is captured by [1][0]A, with [0]A = the usual bewesibar of Gödel, and [1]A = [0]A A (Theaetetus). but if you mean in the sense of running on two different machines then I agree. OK. That means duplication of consciousness/computation depends on distinguishability of the physical substrate with no distinction in the consciousness/computation. OK. Like when the guy has already been multiplied in W and M, but has not yet open the door. We assume of course that the two boxes are identical from inside, no windows, and the air molecules at the same place (for example). That can be made absolutely identical in the step 6, where the reconstitutions are made in a virtual environment. But is that the duplication envisioned in the M-W thought experiment? Yes, at different steps. I find I'm confused about that. In our quantum-mechanical world it is impossible to duplicate something in an unknown state. One could duplicate a human being in the rough classical sense of structure at the molecular composition level, but not the molecular states. Such duplicates would be similar as I'm similar to myself of yesterday - but they would instantly diverge in thoughts, even without seeing Moscow or Washington. In practice, yes. Assuming the duplication is done in a real world, and assuming QM. But in step six, you can manage the environments to be themselves perfectly emulated and 100% identical. That is all what is needed for the reasoning. Yet it seems Bruno's argument is based on deterministic computation At my substitution level. But this will entail that the real world, whatever it can be, is non deterministic. We WM duplicate on all the different computations in the UD* (in arithmetic) which go through my local current state. and requires the duplication and subsequent thoughts to be duplicates at a deterministic classcial level so that the M-man and W-man on diverge in thought when they see different things in their respective cities. Yes. That is why the H-man cannot predict which divergence he will live. But sometimes we mention the state of the person before he or she open the doors, for example to address a question like would a tiny oxygen atom in the box makes a difference in the measure or not, Here there is almost a matter of convention to say that there are two or one consciousness. We can ascribe consciousness to the different people in the different box, but that is a 3-1 view. The 1-views feels to be in once city, and not in the other. No, things like radioactive decay of K40 atoms is the blood will very quickly cause the W-man and M-man to diverge no matter how precisely the duplicate recievers are made. I agree. But I'm not sure why this would matter to your argument? Is it important to the argument that they diverge *only* because of a difference in perception? Normally they should diverge, if they have a different future (despite having the same perception before the divergence), by the rule Y = II. But it is an open problem, and I use the self-reference logic to go around that problem, and to avoid question like that. I will think about finding a thought experience which leads to different answers for the probability if we accept or not the Y = II. I have some in my note, but I have not really the time now. (The deadline for my paper is Monday, but I have my course today, + some paper to review, also. In few days I will have more time). It is not very important for the present threadwe have discussed this a long time ago: as long as the perception is identical, you can fuse the person again, and I want to avoid something like making the measure dependent of the diameter of the neuron axons). Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 18 Apr 2015, at 06:07, meekerdb wrote: On 4/17/2015 5:35 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote: If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. If that is your goal, then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. But the goal is not to emulate an existing physical world, it's to instantiate a physical world as a computation. Well, to recover the apperance of a physical worlds and its ability from a sum on computations in the UD. There's no requirement to measure a quantum state and reproduce it. The UD go through all digital quantum state. The UD prepares all quantum states, and is not obliged to duplicate them in the relative way. This can be used to derive non-cloning from arithmetic. If matter was duplicable, comp would be false. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 18 Apr 2015, at 06:53, meekerdb wrote: On 4/17/2015 12:38 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Comp explains why this is impossible. The finest details of physics are given by sum on many computations, the finer the details, the more there are. To get the numbers right up to infinite decimals, you need to run the entire dovetailer in a finite time. We can't do that. ?? The UD runs in Platonia, so what does a finite time refer to? In platonia, you can define a notion of time for a computation, by the number of steps done by that computation. But here I was referring to the physical time used by someone living in the physical reality, assuming comp works and recover such physical time, and trying to predict with infinite accuracy the result of some experience by computing it. To get all decimals correct, it has to do emulate the whole UD in that physical reality, (and, btw, to know his substitution level, which is impossible in practice, so he must use some bet on it, like the doctor did). Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 21:18, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 1:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 05:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Step 3 is basically to introduce the idea of FPI, and hence form a link with the MWI of quantum mechanics. This may not always have been made explicit, but the intention is clear. It is not made at all. people who criticize UDA always criticize what they add themselves to the reasoning. This is not valid. People who does that criticize only themselves, not the argument presented. Step 3 does not succeed in this because the inference to FPI depends on a flawed concept of personal identity. Step 3 leads to the FPI, and to see what happens next, there is step 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Then the translation in arithmetic show how to already extract the logic of the observable so that we might refute a form of comp (based on comp + the classical theory of knowledge). That main point there is that incompleteness refutes Socrates argument against the Theaetetus, Which argument do you refer to? Theaetetus puts forward several theories of knowledge which Socrates attempts to refute. That's true. I was referring to the definition of knowledge by true justified opinion: the passage from []A (rational opinion, justified proposition) to []A A (justified opinion which is also true). Incompleteness (the impossibility to prove []f - f) gives an arithmetical sense to that move, as the logic of []A, which is G, will obey to a different logic than the logic of []A A. []f does not imply f, from the machine's view, but []f f does trivially imply f. Bruno Brent and we can almost directly retrieve the Parmenides-Plotinus theology in the discourse of the introspecting universal (Löbian) machine. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. I leave it to Bruno to comment on whether this is a fair summary of his theory. I have difficulties with several of the points you list. But that aside, one has to ask exactly what has bee achieved, even if all of this goes through? I do not think it explains consciousness. It seems to stem from the idea that consciousness is a certain type of computation (that can be emulated in a universal Turing machine, or general purpose computer.) This is then developed as a form of idealism (2 above) to argue that the physical world and our perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs about that world, are also certain types of computations. But this is no nearer to an explanation of consciousness than the alternative model of assuming a primitive physical universe and arguing that consciousness supervenes on the physical structure of brains, and that mathematics is an inference from our physical experiences. Consciousness supervenes on computations? What sort of computation? Why on this sort and not any other sort? Similar questions arise in the physicalist account of course, but proposing a new theory that does not answer any of the questions posed by the original theory does not seem like an advance to me. At least physicalism has evolutionary arguments open to it as an explanation of consciousness The physicalist model has the advantage that it gives the physical world directly -- physics does not have to be constructed from some abstract computations in Platonia (even if such a concept can be given any meaning.) If you take the degree of agreement with observation as the measure of success of a theory, then physicalism wins hands down. Bruno's theory does not currently produce any real physics at all. The discussion of the detailed steps in the argument Bruno gives is merely a search for clarification. As I have said, many things seem open to philosophical discussion, and some of Bruno's definitions seem self-serving. When I seek clarification, the ground seems to move beneath me. The detailed argument is hard to pin down for these reasons. Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 20:24, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics Computed or not. and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. Well, better to talk in term of the continuations. The indeterminacy is relative, for the physics. There is another more geographical indterminacy, which is more Bayesian, like if there are carbon atoms, I have to find myself in a reality with carbon maker (like stars). That indeterminacy still requires a notion of normal (Gaussian) reality, and thus a solution to the general measure problem. Rather good summary Brent! Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. I leave it to Bruno to comment on whether this is a fair summary of his theory. I have difficulties with several of the points you list. But that aside, one has to ask exactly what has bee achieved, even if all of this goes through? I do not think it explains consciousness. It seems to stem from the idea that consciousness is a certain type of computation (that can be emulated in a universal Turing machine, or general purpose computer.) This is then developed as a form of idealism (2 above) to argue that the physical world and our perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs about that world, are also certain types of computations. But this is no nearer to an explanation of consciousness than the alternative model of assuming a primitive physical universe and arguing that consciousness supervenes on the physical structure of brains, and that mathematics is an inference from our physical experiences. Consciousness supervenes on computations? What sort of computation? Why on this sort and not any other sort? Similar questions arise in the physicalist account of course, but proposing a new theory that does not answer any of the questions posed by the original theory does not seem like an advance to me. At least physicalism has evolutionary arguments open to it as an explanation of consciousness The physicalist model has the advantage that it gives the physical world directly -- physics does not have to be constructed from some abstract computations in Platonia (even if such a concept can be given any meaning.) If you take the degree of agreement with observation as the measure of success of a theory, then physicalism wins hands down. Bruno's theory does not currently produce any real physics at all. The discussion of the detailed steps in the argument Bruno gives is merely a search for clarification. As I have said, many things seem open to philosophical discussion, and some of Bruno's definitions seem self-serving. When I seek clarification, the ground seems to move beneath me. The detailed argument is hard to pin down for these reasons. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 19:19, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. No one assume that. John Clark assumes this, Of course I assume it, it's the only logical conclusion and I assume that logic is more likely to find the truth than illogic, although Quinton has publicly stated other ideas on that subject. I have locally assume it too, but only to refute Clark argument. That might explain your confusion, But it doesn't explain my confusion, The post was addressed to Bruce. do you agree that both copies are equally the same person as the original or do you not? I do. They are the same person in the sense that I am the same person as yesterday. So we can say that the W-man and the M-man are both the H- man, but put in different cities. That is the reason of the indeterminacy lived by the H-man beore he pushes on the button: he knows (with the computationalist assumption and the default hypotheses) that he will be in both city, but that with a probability one he will feel, in both cities, to be in only one city. The H-man, when still in helsinki, can predict that when he will be reconstituted in the boxes, he will be unable to know if he will see M, or W, before opening the door. But he knows that after the door will be opened, he will see only once city. By a simple reasoning, he knows all this in advance, so he is aware of that indeterminacy before pushing the button. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. I leave it to Bruno to comment on whether this is a fair summary of his theory. I have difficulties with several of the points you list. But that aside, one has to ask exactly what has bee achieved, even if all of this goes through? I do not think it explains consciousness. It seems to stem from the idea that consciousness is a certain type of computation (that can be emulated in a universal Turing machine, or general purpose computer.) This is then developed as a form of idealism (2 above) to argue that the physical world and our perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs about that world, are also certain types of computations. But this is no nearer to an explanation of consciousness than the alternative model of assuming a primitive physical universe and arguing that consciousness supervenes on the physical structure of brains, and that mathematics is an inference from our physical experiences. Consciousness supervenes on computations? What sort of computation? Why on this sort and not any other sort? Similar questions arise in the physicalist account of course, but proposing a new theory that does not answer any of the questions posed by the original theory does not seem like an advance to me. At least physicalism has evolutionary arguments open to it as an explanation of consciousness The physicalist model has the advantage that it gives the physical world directly -- physics does not have to be constructed from some abstract computations in Platonia (even if such a concept can be given any meaning.) If you take the degree of agreement with observation as the measure of success of a theory, then physicalism wins hands down. Bruno's theory does not currently produce any real physics at all. The discussion of the detailed steps in the argument Bruno gives is merely a search for clarification. As I have said, many things seem open to philosophical discussion, and some of Bruno's definitions seem self-serving. When I seek clarification, the ground seems to move beneath me. The detailed argument is hard to pin down for these reasons. Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 21:18, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 1:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 02:52, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:29 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? I don't think it's specific enough because it isn't clear whether computational process means a physical process or an abstract one. If you take computational process to be the abstract process in Platonia then it would not be duplicable; ? The UD copied the abstract process an infinity of times. It might appear in phi_567_(29)^45, phi_567_(29)^46, phi_567_(29)^47, phi_567_(29)^48, phi_567_(29)^49, phi_567_(29)^50, ... and in phi_8999704_(0)^89, phi_8999704_(0)^90, phi_8999704_(0)^91, phi_8999704_(0)^92, phi_8999704_(0)^93, I don't understand your notation here. Does phi_i(x) refer to the ith function in some list of all functions? Yes. The computably enumerable (with repetitions) list of the partial computable functions. You get one, you choose your favorite universal programming language, and order the programs lexicographically. This determines a list of the phi_i. And does the exponent refer to repeated iteration: phi_i(x)^n+1 := phi_i(phi_i(x)^n)? No. phi_i(x)^n represents the nth first step of the computation. A universal dovetailer is given by the following program: FOR ALL x, y, z compute phi_x(y)^z END Here the dovetailing is managed by the infinite FOR ALL. Bruno every copy would just be a token of the same process. I think that's what Bruno means. The consciousness will be the same, but it is multiplied (in some 3-1 sense) in UD* (sigma_1 truth). Are you saying that identity of indiscernibles doesn't apply to these computations? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 21:54, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? By associating it with different token of the machinery implementing it. Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? No, it can't, in the 1-view, but it can in the 3-1 view. OK? I'm not sure what 3-1 view means, It is the content of the diary of the observer outside the box (like in sane04), but on the consciousness of the copies involved. This is for the people who say that they will be conscious in W and M. That is true, but the pure 1-view is that they will be conscious in only one city (even if that happens in both cities). In the math part, this is captured by [1][0]A, with [0]A = the usual bewesibar of Gödel, and [1]A = [0]A A (Theaetetus). but if you mean in the sense of running on two different machines then I agree. OK. That means duplication of consciousness/computation depends on distinguishability of the physical substrate with no distinction in the consciousness/computation. OK. Like when the guy has already been multiplied in W and M, but has not yet open the door. We assume of course that the two boxes are identical from inside, no windows, and the air molecules at the same place (for example). That can be made absolutely identical in the step 6, where the reconstitutions are made in a virtual environment. But is that the duplication envisioned in the M-W thought experiment? Yes, at different steps. I find I'm confused about that. In our quantum-mechanical world it is impossible to duplicate something in an unknown state. One could duplicate a human being in the rough classical sense of structure at the molecular composition level, but not the molecular states. Such duplicates would be similar as I'm similar to myself of yesterday - but they would instantly diverge in thoughts, even without seeing Moscow or Washington. In practice, yes. Assuming the duplication is done in a real world, and assuming QM. But in step six, you can manage the environments to be themselves perfectly emulated and 100% identical. That is all what is needed for the reasoning. Yet it seems Bruno's argument is based on deterministic computation At my substitution level. But this will entail that the real world, whatever it can be, is non deterministic. We WM duplicate on all the different computations in the UD* (in arithmetic) which go through my local current state. and requires the duplication and subsequent thoughts to be duplicates at a deterministic classcial level so that the M-man and W-man on diverge in thought when they see different things in their respective cities. Yes. That is why the H-man cannot predict which divergence he will live. But sometimes we mention the state of the person before he or she open the doors, for example to address a question like would a tiny oxygen atom in the box makes a difference in the measure or not, Here there is almost a matter of convention to say that there are two or one consciousness. We can ascribe consciousness to the different people in the different box, but that is a 3-1 view. The 1- views feels to be in once city, and not in the other. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 23:23, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 6:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 13:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, This is an acceptable terming for some argument, but at some point you might understand that this is not really the case. Comp assumes only that we can survive ith a digital brain, in the quasi-operational meaning of the yes doctor scenario. Consciousness is a first person notion, and that is not Turing emulable per se, in fact that is not even definable in any 3p term. That is part of the difficulty of the concept. In COMP(2013) you write: The digital mechanist thesis (or computationalism, or just comp) is then equivalent to the hypothesis that there is a level of description of that part of reality in which my consciousness remains invariant through a functional digital emulation of that generalized brain at that particular level. I think this is saying that human consciousness is Turing emulable. Only by using an identity thesis, which later will need to be abandonned. My consciousness is in Platonia, out of time and space, and might rely on infinities of computations. What the brain does consists in making it possible for that consciousness to manifest itself. That seems problematic. What is a consciousness conscious of when it is not manifesting itself? It means it manifest itself elsewhere. It can be in a dream, like a sleepy person, or in a parallel universe, or in heaven or God knows what. It can also be conscious of nothing, like with some powerful amnesia drug, like Salvia, which put yourself in the state of a sort of baby having not yet live any experience, but this is not needed to get the points, so I would prefer not insist on this in this thread, as it mention a consciousness state in which I would not have believed before trying salvia. We can indeed be conscious, and highly conscious, yet without any memory. That is even more spectacular with only a dissociative state, where you keep your memory, but stop completely to identify yourself with those memory. In that state, you get the higher self experience: where your memories, and your body appears to be like a window through which the real person you are can observe a world, but knows that such meories are just contingent and play no part in defining what you are (the Plotinus and mystic notion of inner god). To whom does it manifest itself when it is manifest? ISTM it's only manifest to itself - which on your theory wouldn't require a brain. You alway need a relative brain to manifest yourself with respect to some other universal number (a physical universe, a friend, a correspondent on a list, etc.). But the real you need only the arithmetical reality, and you can dissociate yourself from your infinitely many brains in arithmetic, and get the consciousness state of the most elementary virgin (unprogrammed, unexperienced) universal numbers, which is common among all living organism. Here salvia is more amazing than comp, as it suggests intermediate realms, where that virgin consciousness can experience heaven or hellish sort of dreams. The most amazing thing is that you experience or hallucinate that this is your normal state, and that your live here was a sort of dream. The feeling of realness is vastly superior than the feeling of realness we usually experience in life, and this can be frightening for people who believe we can know that we are awake by introspection, like with the people who believe that reality is WYSIWYG. As a friend of mine said after a salvia experience, you get new doubts, new fears, etc. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 Apr 2015, at 07:12, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 06:34, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Discussion or fruitful argument assume mutual respect. The respect/ civility in the exchange is one-sided however, and has remained so for years. It's not an argument; closer to an experiment of John to see how often he can get away with airing personal issues clothed in sincerity of intellectual debate. This occupies too much bandwidth and is a turn off from where I'm sitting. I'd much rather see the comp related discussions go to address say Telmo's request for clarification in Bruno's use of phi_i, or G/G* distinctions, or pedagogical demonstrations on the work arithmetic existentially actualizes/gets done, clarification on Russell's use of robust, physicalist theories that don't eliminate consciousness etc. Good and interesting questions indeed. I, of course would be delighted if people try to really grasp the phi_i, the G/G* distinction, and the subtle but key point of the fact that the arithmetical reality simulates computations, as opposed to merely generates descriptions of them. I am bit buzy right now. Feel free to tell me which one of those point seems to you the more interesting, or funky. Funkiest would be arithmetical reality simulates computations aka free lunch :) OK, that is important, also. And it is is importantly related to the difference between a computation and a description of a computation, which is important in step 8, but also for the very meaning of what a computation can be. But I've picked up and guess that people seem to miss use of phi_i or Sigma 1 sentences and such terms. Are you sure? that is mathematics which frighten sometimes people. So, you thought you could offer me a hand and... I take the arm and more: 1 of those point = 3 + infinite possibility of other such terms. PGC- Zombie hunting armchair ninja of numbers. OK. Not today, as my deadline for the paper which has been asked by very nice people, is ... today. But I will create a thread on the first question above. A difficult point ... Liz, it is time to find back your notes, or buy a new diary :) Don't worry, Liz, I will try to annoy/shake everyone this time ... Thanks for the suggestion PGC, Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. I leave it to Bruno to comment on whether this is a fair summary of his theory. I have difficulties with several of the points you list. But that aside, one has to ask exactly what has bee achieved, even if all of this goes through? I do not think it explains consciousness. It seems to stem from the idea that consciousness is a certain type of computation (that can be emulated in a universal Turing machine, or general purpose computer.) This is then developed as a form of idealism (2 above) to argue that the physical world and our perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs about that world, are also certain types of computations. But this is no nearer to an explanation of consciousness than the alternative model of assuming a primitive physical universe and arguing that consciousness supervenes on the physical structure of brains, and that mathematics is an inference from our physical experiences. Consciousness supervenes on computations? What sort of computation? Why on this sort and not any other sort? Similar questions arise in the physicalist account of course, but proposing a new theory that does not answer any of the questions posed by the original theory does not seem like an advance to me. At least physicalism has evolutionary arguments open to it as an explanation of consciousness The physicalist model has the advantage that it gives the physical world directly -- physics does not have to be constructed from some abstract computations in Platonia (even if such a concept can be given any meaning.) If you take the degree of agreement with observation as the measure of success of a theory, then physicalism wins hands down. Bruno's theory does not currently produce any real physics at all. The discussion of the detailed steps in the argument Bruno gives is merely a search for clarification. As I have said, many things seem open to philosophical discussion, and some of Bruno's definitions seem self-serving. When I seek clarification, the ground seems to move beneath me. The detailed argument is hard to pin down for these reasons. Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. You can't copy an arbitrary quantum state, but you could copy it by emulating a series of quantum states. If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. You can't copy an arbitrary quantum state, but you could copy it by emulating a series of quantum states. ? If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. If that is your goal, then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. You can't copy an arbitrary quantum state, but you could copy it by emulating a series of quantum states. ? If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. If that is your goal, then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. Although you cannot clone an arbitrary quantum state, you might be able to simulate the set of all possible quantum states of which the unknown state is one. No cloning is needed. However, for Bruno's argument this level of simulation is not needed. What is needed is a level of simulation sufficient to reproduce consciousness, and this may be well above the quantum level. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: Even if the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric events would still not be time symmetrical if the initial condition was a state of minimum entropy because then any change in that state would lead to a increase in entropy, and the arrow of time would be born. In a deterministic, time-symmetric system there is no information loss with evolution either to the past or future. True there is no information loss, in fact there is a information increase and thus a entropy increase because it would take more information to describe the new more complex higher entropy state than the previous simpler state. Well OK I've over simplified a bit, when entropy gets high enough it actually takes less information to describe it, although the present universe is nowhere near that point yet. Maximum information is about midway between maximum and minimum entropy. Put some cream in a glass coffee cup and then very carefully put some coffee on top of it. For a short time the 2 fluids will remain segregated and the entropy will be low and the information needed to describe it would be low too, but then tendrils of cream will start to move into the coffee and all sorts of spirals and other complex patterns will form, the entropy is higher now and the information needed to describe it is higher, but after that the fluid in the cup will reach a dull uniform color that is darker than coffee but lighter than cream, the entropy has reached a maximum but it would take less information to describe it. Another example is smoke from a cigarette in a room with no air currents, it starts out as a simple smooth laminar flow but then turbulence kicks in and very complex patterns form, and after that it diffuses into uniform featureless fog. So the entropy is zero and stays zero That doesn't follow. If you knew all the information in the present state (but both Many Worlds and Copenhagen agree that can never happen) you could calculate from that the initial conditions of the original very low entropy state, but calculations are physical and calculations take energy give off heat and thus increase entropy. Yes you could use reversible computing and reduce the energy needed to perform a calculation to an arbitrarily low figure, but the less energy you use the slower the calculation is, so by the time you've finished the calculation about how to put things back to their original simple state the universe has kept on evolving and is now in a new much more complex state than when you started. So you'd have to start all over again. But all that is just hypothetical because although they think so for different reasons both Many Worlds and Copenhagen agree that you can never have complete information even in theory. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 Apr 2015, at 18:55, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. You can't copy an arbitrary quantum state, but you could copy it by emulating a series of quantum states. ? If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. If that is your goal, then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. Although you cannot clone an arbitrary quantum state, you might be able to simulate the set of all possible quantum states of which the unknown state is one. No cloning is needed. However, for Bruno's argument this level of simulation is not needed. What is needed is a level of simulation sufficient to reproduce consciousness, and this may be well above the quantum level. That is certainly needed for the first six steps, but at step seven, we can relax comp up to the quantum level, and below. The UD emulates all programs, including all quantum computer, because the quantum computer are Turing emulable, sure with an exponential slow down, but the UD does not care, as, in arithmetic, it has all the time. In fact, as I said to Bruce, at step seven, we can understand why matter cannot be duplicated exactly, because matter, in term of computation, is the result of the FPI on the whole work of the UD. Below your substitution level, you cannot entangle yourself with token facts, as they are not relevant for your most probable computational history, so you multiply yourself more and more on the details. Eventually, to get all the decimal exact, you need to run the entire dovetailing, which is impossible. Bruno -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 Apr 2015, at 14:35, Bruce Kellett wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Friday, April 17, 2015, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Physicalism reduces to computationalism if the physics in the brain is Turing emulable, and then if you follow Bruno's reasoning in the UDA computationalism leads to elimination of a primary physical world. But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. An exact copy of an unknown quantum state is not possible. It most certainly does mean that the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. Quantum mechanics is based on the incommensurability of pairs of conjugate variables. Because you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a quantum state to arbitrary precision simultaneously, we find that there are two complementary descriptions of the physical system -- the description in position space and the description in momentum space. These are related by Fourier transforms. Any complete description of the physical world must take this into account. You can't copy an arbitrary quantum state, but you could copy it by emulating a series of quantum states. ? If a quantum state could be duplicated, then you could measure position exactly on one copy and momentum on the other. Exact values for these two variables simultaneously contradicts the basis of quantum mechanics. And there are very good arguments for the view that the world is at base quantum: the classical picture only emerges from the quantum at some coarse-grained level of description. You cannot describe everything that happens in the physical world from this classical, coarse-grained perspective. If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. By the FPI on all computations. This will be a priori not computable. That the universe looks some much predictable is the mystery with comp. We must fight the white rabbits away. If that is your goal, The result is that we have to do that if we assume computationalism in the cognitive science. then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. Comp explains why this is impossible. The finest details of physics are given by sum on many computations, the finer the details, the more there are. To get the numbers right up to infinite decimals, you need to run the entire dovetailer in a finite time. We can't do that. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Same with comp. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. It might be part of the reality we live, but it might be explained by the arithmetical FPI on the computations seen from inside. IF QM is correct, and if comp is correct, QM has to be a theorem in comp, that is, the logic of []p t have to give a quantization on the sigma_1 arithmetical sentences. And that is the case. ([]p is Gödel's beweisbar(x), meaning provable(x), and t is the dual ~beweisbar('~(1=1)'). Don't confuse Digital physics (the universe is a machine) and comp (my body/brain is a machine), as they are incompatible (and as Digital physics entails comp, but comp entails ~Digital-physics, so digital physics entails ~digital physics, so digital physics is self- contradictory. With, or without comp, we are confronted to something non Turing emulable. No need to go outside arithmetic, as we know since Gödel,
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 Apr 2015, at 08:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. I leave it to Bruno to comment on whether this is a fair summary of his theory. It is not a theory. It is an argument. it is dangerous to sum it by thought = computation . The only axiom is that consciousness is locally invariant for a digital substitution made at some level. It is a very weak version of Descartes Mechanism. It implies all form of mechanism and computationalism studied in the literature. It is my theory if you want, but my theory is believed by basically all rationalists by default. Only precise and rare people, usually philosophers, but also some scientists, like Penrose, defends different theory. What makes it stronger than the STRONG AI thesis, is that it is supposed to apply to us. What makes it weaker than most computationalist thesis, is that there is no bound delimited for the substitution level. Then, I argue that this leads to the fact that all first order specification of any universal machine/program/number gives a TOE. In particular the laws of physics have to de derived in any of those TOEs. It gives actually much more and the whole stuff I like to call it theology, because it is arguably isomorphic to Proclus theology, and Plotinus, Plato. But all this are in the results. The theory is only that I am Turing emulable. Even if the brain is a quantum computer (which I doubt), I remain Turing emulable, (see the paper of Deutsch). I have difficulties with several of the points you list. But that aside, one has to ask exactly what has bee achieved, even if all of this goes through? Everyone knows that Aristotle physics has been refuted. Already by Galilee. The achievement here is a refutation of Aristotle's theology, in computationalist frame (the one believed usually by materialist, atheists, but also many religious people). I do not think it explains consciousness. That was not the goal. But yet, I can argue that 99% of the conceptual problem is solved, and that the remaining 1% is simply unsolvable. But for the origin of matter appearances, the explanation is conceptually 100% solved. In that frame, and assuming it true, as the result is also that this can be tested. It seems to stem from the idea that consciousness is a certain type of computation (that can be emulated in a universal Turing machine, or general purpose computer.) Not really. Consciousness is 1p, and it the math explains why consciousness, like truth, are not definable in arithmetic, unlike computations. In fact consciousness is not definable in any third person way. It certainly does not ring right, that consciousness would be a computation, and already the FPI suggests that consciousness is related to infinities of computations, and in the meaning or semantic of those computation, which the machine are unable to define entirely by themselves. This is then developed as a form of idealism (2 above) to argue that the physical world and our perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs about that world, are also certain types of computations. Not at all. It is just that if your brain is Turing emulable, it is Turing emulated infinitely often in arithmetic (in a tiny part of the standard
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/17/2015 5:35 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote: If you had an actual Turing machine and unlimited time, you could by brute force emulate everything. However, that is not the point. If you car needs a part replaced, you don't need to get a replacement exactly the same down to the quantum level. This is the case every machine, and there is no reason to believe biological machines are different: infinite precision parts would mean zero robustness. I think you miss the point. If you want to emulate a car or a biological machine, then some classical level of exactness would suffice. But the issue is the wider program that wants to see the physical world in all its detail emerge from the digital computations of the dovetailer. If that is your goal, then you need to emulate the finest details of quantum mechanics. This latter is not possible on a Turing machine because of the theorem forbidding the cloning of a quantum state. Quantum mechanics is, after all, part of the physical world we observe. But the goal is not to emulate an existing physical world, it's to instantiate a physical world as a computation. There's no requirement to measure a quantum state and reproduce it. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/17/2015 12:38 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Comp explains why this is impossible. The finest details of physics are given by sum on many computations, the finer the details, the more there are. To get the numbers right up to infinite decimals, you need to run the entire dovetailer in a finite time. We can't do that. ?? The UD runs in Platonia, so what does a finite time refer to? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/17/2015 12:35 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. The no-cloning theorem doesn't say you can't produce a copy, it says you can't get the information in order to know what the copy should be. You could make a copy by accident, by guess, but you couldn't know it was a correct copy. It doesn't have anything to do with discrete vs continuous. If consciousness depends on quantum level states then Bruno's duplication machine will necessarily introduce a gap or discontinuity in consciousness - but then so does a concussion. And there are good reasons (c.f. Tegmark) to think that, even on a supervenience theory, consciousness is a classical phenomenon. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/17/2015 12:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 21:54, meekerdb wrote: On 4/16/2015 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? By associating it with different token of the machinery implementing it. Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? No, it can't, in the 1-view, but it can in the 3-1 view. OK? I'm not sure what 3-1 view means, It is the content of the diary of the observer outside the box (like in sane04), but on the consciousness of the copies involved. This is for the people who say that they will be conscious in W and M. That is true, but the pure 1-view is that they will be conscious in only one city (even if that happens in both cities). In the math part, this is captured by [1][0]A, with [0]A = the usual bewesibar of Gödel, and [1]A = [0]A A (Theaetetus). but if you mean in the sense of running on two different machines then I agree. OK. That means duplication of consciousness/computation depends on distinguishability of the physical substrate with no distinction in the consciousness/computation. OK. Like when the guy has already been multiplied in W and M, but has not yet open the door. We assume of course that the two boxes are identical from inside, no windows, and the air molecules at the same place (for example). That can be made absolutely identical in the step 6, where the reconstitutions are made in a virtual environment. But is that the duplication envisioned in the M-W thought experiment? Yes, at different steps. I find I'm confused about that. In our quantum-mechanical world it is impossible to duplicate something in an unknown state. One could duplicate a human being in the rough classical sense of structure at the molecular composition level, but not the molecular states. Such duplicates would be similar as I'm similar to myself of yesterday - but they would instantly diverge in thoughts, even without seeing Moscow or Washington. In practice, yes. Assuming the duplication is done in a real world, and assuming QM. But in step six, you can manage the environments to be themselves perfectly emulated and 100% identical. That is all what is needed for the reasoning. Yet it seems Bruno's argument is based on deterministic computation At my substitution level. But this will entail that the real world, whatever it can be, is non deterministic. We WM duplicate on all the different computations in the UD* (in arithmetic) which go through my local current state. and requires the duplication and subsequent thoughts to be duplicates at a deterministic classcial level so that the M-man and W-man on diverge in thought when they see different things in their respective cities. Yes. That is why the H-man cannot predict which divergence he will live. But sometimes we mention the state of the person before he or she open the doors, for example to address a question like would a tiny oxygen atom in the box makes a difference in the measure or not, Here there is almost a matter of convention to say that there are two or one consciousness. We can ascribe consciousness to the different people in the different box, but that is a 3-1 view. The 1-views feels to be in once city, and not in the other. No, things like radioactive decay of K40 atoms is the blood will very quickly cause the W-man and M-man to diverge no matter how precisely the duplicate recievers are made. But I'm not sure why this would matter to your argument? Is it important to the argument that they diverge *only* because of a difference in perception? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Saturday, April 18, 2015, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/17/2015 12:35 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But physics itself is not Turing emulable. The no-cloning theorem of quantum physics precludes it. Do you mean because you can't exactly copy a given physical state? That doesn't necessarily mean the physical world as a whole cannot be emulated. And if it turns out that physics is continuous rather than than discrete you could still come arbitrarily close with digital models of the brain; if that was not good enough you would be saying that the brain is a machine with components of zero engineering tolerance. The no-cloning theorem doesn't say you can't produce a copy, it says you can't get the information in order to know what the copy should be. You could make a copy by accident, by guess, but you couldn't know it was a correct copy. It doesn't have anything to do with discrete vs continuous. Yes, that's what I meant. You might not be able to copy a quantum state but you could create it by creating every possible quantum state. Analogously, you might not be able to copy a classical system due to chaotic effects but you could make a similar chaitic system. The difficulty of copying a brain exactly is sometimes raised as an argument against computationalism but this is due to a misapprehension. If consciousness depends on quantum level states then Bruno's duplication machine will necessarily introduce a gap or discontinuity in consciousness - but then so does a concussion. And there are good reasons (c.f. Tegmark) to think that, even on a supervenience theory, consciousness is a classical phenomenon. And the same consideration applies for classical copying. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Telmo Menezes wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. The conclusion of the UDA is that comp and materialism are incompatible. Can you formulate a protocol where the copies sit down for a chat and arrive at a contradiction of the UDA's conclusion? Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. It's just a simple way to label the two duplicates: Moscow man and Washington man. You could have the two reconstructions in the same room and label them as machine-A man and machine-B man and let them interact immediately. It wouldn't change the conclusion, because the conclusion does not depend on the copies having a chat or not. It would just make the argument harder to follow. No, the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. It is that illusion that is hard to maintain if they have a chat and realize that they are different people. The real issue is personal identity through time, and in the case of ties for closest follower, as in this case, it fits better with the notions of personal identity to say that the copies are both new persons -- inheriting a lot from the original of course, but the original single person has not become two of the *same* person. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 April 2015 at 19:58, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno, I can go back as far as 2008 for such discussions with John Clark in my gmail archives about step 3... it's useless to continue to answer him (at least on your work, and surely on anything else), he will never accept anything, and will never go beyond that point, he doesn't want to have a genuine discussion... it will go back in circle again, he will mock your acronyms, he will say, he doesn't know what step 1,2 are, he will do biased comparisons, he will say it's stupid, or false or stupid again etc etc etc... you give him hours of your live that he doesn't deserve... Jeez, I had no idea. I'd have given up long ago if I was him... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 18:16, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. Of course it would be, but no one is assuming that. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto: johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. The conclusion of the UDA is that comp and materialism are incompatible. Can you formulate a protocol where the copies sit down for a chat and arrive at a contradiction of the UDA's conclusion? Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. It's just a simple way to label the two duplicates: Moscow man and Washington man. You could have the two reconstructions in the same room and label them as machine-A man and machine-B man and let them interact immediately. It wouldn't change the conclusion, because the conclusion does not depend on the copies having a chat or not. It would just make the argument harder to follow. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 05:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Step 3 is basically to introduce the idea of FPI, and hence form a link with the MWI of quantum mechanics. This may not always have been made explicit, but the intention is clear. It is not made at all. people who criticize UDA always criticize what they add themselves to the reasoning. This is not valid. People who does that criticize only themselves, not the argument presented. Step 3 does not succeed in this because the inference to FPI depends on a flawed concept of personal identity. Step 3 leads to the FPI, and to see what happens next, there is step 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Then the translation in arithmetic show how to already extract the logic of the observable so that we might refute a form of comp (based on comp + the classical theory of knowledge). That main point there is that incompleteness refutes Socrates argument against the Theaetetus, and we can almost directly retrieve the Parmenides-Plotinus theology in the discourse of the introspecting universal (Löbian) machine. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 Apr 2015, at 09:58, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 9:35 GMT+02:00 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be: On 15 Apr 2015, at 00:15, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: I predict that I will win 1 million dollar by tomorrow. I know my prediction is correct because this will happen in one of the branches of the multiverse. Do you agree with this statement? No I do not agree because matter duplicating machines do not exist yet so if I check tomorrow the laws of physics will allow me to find only one chunk of matter that fits the description of Mr. I (that is a chunk of matter that behaves in a Telmomenezesian way), and that particular chunk of matter does not appear to have a million dollars. However if the prediction was tomorrow Telmo Menezes will win a million dollars then I would agree, provided of course that the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is true. You are trying to play a game that is absurd, which is to deny the first person view. That is ridiculous, only a fool would deny the first person view and John Clark is not a fool. Mr.I can always look to the past and see one unique linear sequence of Mr.I's leading up to him, and Mr. I can remember being every one of them. But things are very different looking to the future, nothing is unique and far from being linear things could hardly be more parallel with a astronomical and possibly infinite number of branching, and Mr. I can't remember being any of them. And that is why the sense of first person identity has nothing to do with our expectations of the future but is only a function of our memories of the past. Unfortunately, prediction and probabilities concerns the future. You use your crusade against pronouns If Telmo Menezes thinks that any objection in the use of personal pronouns in thought experiments designed to illuminate the fundamental nature of personal identity No, we agree on the personal identity before asking the prediction question. The duplication experiement is not designed to illuminate the nature of personal identity, which is made clear beforehand, with the 1p and 3p diaries. You often says this, and never reply to the fact that this has been debunked. is absurd then call John Clark's bluff and simply stop using them; then if Telmo Menezes can still express ideas on this subject clearly and without circularity it would prove that John Clark's concern that people who used such pronouns were implicitly stating what they were trying to prove were indeed absurd. You say that you accept the notion of first person, but what telmo meant is that you stop using it in the WM-prediction, where you agree that you will be in the two places in the 3p view, with unique 1p, so the P = 1/2 is just obvious. It is not deep: to this why it will be deep, you need to move on step 4, step 5, etc. Monty Hall knows that when the Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow opens the door and sees Moscow the Moscow Man will be born from the ashes of the Helsinki Man, The Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow knows that too. He was fully informed of the protocol of the experiment. OK but it doesn't matter if he knows the protocol of the experiment or not, regardless of where he is until The Helsinki Man sees Moscow or Moscow the Helsinki Man will remain The Helsinki Man. So who will become the Moscow Man? The one who sees Moscow will become the Moscow Man. Yes, but that is the H-man too, with the 3-1 view. Nothing is ambiguous, once we understand and APPLY the 1/3 distinction. That is what you never seem to do. Oh well, the good thing about tautologies is that they're always true. Verb tenses also become problematic if you introduce time machines. Douglas Adams had something to say about this in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Yes, I love it too. Doesn't it worry you a bit that your grammatical argument is so similar to one found in an absurdist work of fiction? No because if time machines actually existed then it wouldn't be absurd at all, the English language really would need a major overhaul in the way it uses verb tenses. And if matter duplicating machines existed the English language really would need a major overhaul about the way it uses personal pronouns. The only difference is that if the laws of physics are what we think they are then time machines are NOT possible, but if the laws of physics are what we think they are then matter duplicating machines ARE possible. Show me how to do it. Describe quantum uncertainty according to the MWI without personal pronouns. I know you will be able to do it because: a) you like the MWI b) you hate personal pronouns CASE #1 Telmo Menezes shoots one photon at 2 slits with a photographic plate behind the slits. As the photon approaches the
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 02:52, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:29 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? I don't think it's specific enough because it isn't clear whether computational process means a physical process or an abstract one. If you take computational process to be the abstract process in Platonia then it would not be duplicable; ? The UD copied the abstract process an infinity of times. It might appear in phi_567_(29)^45, phi_567_(29)^46, phi_567_(29)^47, phi_567_(29)^48, phi_567_(29)^49, phi_567_(29)^50, ... and in phi_8999704_(0)^89, phi_8999704_(0)^90, phi_8999704_(0)^91, phi_8999704_(0)^92, phi_8999704_(0)^93, every copy would just be a token of the same process. I think that's what Bruno means. The consciousness will be the same, but it is multiplied (in some 3-1 sense) in UD* (sigma_1 truth). Bruno But I think Stathis is thinking of a copy of an AI, not just a particular computation by that AI. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 08:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. Are you doing this on purpose? The fact that primary materialism is epistemologically contradictory is the *result* of the UD Argument (UDA). It is not an assumption. It is what the whole UDA reasoning is for. You assume a primary physical universe. You have to explain how primary matter makes it possible for a machine to distinguish a physical computation from an arithmetical one, and this without abandoning comp, to make your point. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 04:43, LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). Good remark, but apparently Bruce did not hear it. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 02:50, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 4:51 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Don't you then run into the problem of the identity of indiscernibles? The programs may be run on different computers in our world, and thus discernible, but from inside the program there is only one consciousness. Just the same as if you ran the program at different times on the same computer. Same inputs -- same outputs. Not different from the point of view of the simulation. Good. But that applies also in the computation emulated by the sigma_1 truth, which is not physical. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 10:03 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. The conclusion of the UDA is that comp and materialism are incompatible. Can you formulate a protocol where the copies sit down for a chat and arrive at a contradiction of the UDA's conclusion? Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. It's just a simple way to label the two duplicates: Moscow man and Washington man. You could have the two reconstructions in the same room and label them as machine-A man and machine-B man and let them interact immediately. It wouldn't change the conclusion, because the conclusion does not depend on the copies having a chat or not. It would just make the argument harder to follow. No, the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. It is that illusion that is hard to maintain if they have a chat and realize that they are different people. The argument is that the two copies share the same personal diary pre-duplication, nothing more. A chat will only confirm this. The real issue is personal identity through time, and in the case of ties for closest follower, as in this case, it fits better with the notions of personal identity to say that the copies are both new persons -- inheriting a lot from the original of course, I think it's important to avoid mushiness. The copies inherit *everything* from the original because we assume comp (the hypothesis that there is some level of substitution at which a mind can be replaced with an equivalent computation). The moment immediately after the duplication the copies start diverging -- it is not longer the same computation. But they will share all memories before the duplication event. but the original single person has not become two of the *same* person. This is never claimed. Telmo. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
My problem with any view based on entropy is that entropy doesn't appear to be fundamental to physics; it is the statistically likely result when objects are put in a certain configuration and allowed to evolve randomly. There is, however, an interesting parallel to be made with Shannon's entropy, which is a measure of information content and not just a statistical effect. Once in the realm of digital physics, it becomes questionable if physical entropy and information entropy are separate things. Yes, and there is also black hole entropy. It's POSSIBLE that Boltzmann stumbled on something fundamental via a route that doesn't lead via fundamental physics (B's entropy is only apparent to macroscopic beings) I don't know if the jury has come down in favour of entropy being in some way fundamental to the universe, but it's certainly possible. (Though not the thermodynamic sort.) I find that this fundamental physics business begs the question. It assumes that particles and forces are fundamental and then works from there. Interestingly, particles themselves can only be observed in the macro world by way of statistical measures (I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong). Here I agree with John. Labelling particles as fundamental and mechanisms like there are more ways to be complicated than simple as non-fundamental seems arbitrary. However the laws of physics are (mainly) time-symmetric, with the definite exception of neutral kaon decay and the possible exception of wave-function collapse, and an ordered state could evolve to become more disordered towards the past (although that would make the past appear the future for any beings created within that ordered state). Yet we never see that happening, and there is an elephant in the cosmic room, namely the expansion of the universe, which (istm) must always proceed in the direction of the AOT. What if the AOT is a purely 1p phenomena? Well, it's clearly a 3p phenomenon in that we all agree that things age etc. But it's perhaps purely a macroscopic creature phenomenon Ok, this is what I meant. I was going for a multiverse-3p, not just the all the things we can agree on-3p. Hence the appeal to boundary conditions. If something forces the universe to have zero (or very low) radius at one time extremity but not at the other, this asymmetry could be sufficient to drive the arrow of time in a particular direction. I've (as it were) expanded on this idea before, however, so I won't go on at length about it again. I'll search the archives when I have a bit of time. Briefly, the boundary condition on the universe appears to be that it has a big bang at one time extremity (or something like one) but not a corresponding crunch at the other. This alone means that the density of the contents of the universe is constrained to decrease globally along the time axis as you move away from the BB, and my contention is that this is probably enough to create an AOT even with the laws of physics operating - by assumption - time-symmetrically, when you look at the various processes that result from a decrease in density (and temperature, effectively, since particles tend to move until they reach a patch of the background fluid which is moving at their speed). Such outcomes include the formation of nuclei, atoms, and eventually gravitationally bound states like galactic clusters etc. Thanks Liz. Yes, I think this makes a lot of sense. I would point out that you are talking about entropy, even though you don't call it by name. Telmo. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 Apr 2015, at 21:47, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 20:51 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 11:29 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 4:53 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 12:48 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: No, a miracle cannot be logically contradictory. God cannot make a married bachelor. Yes it can.. that's the whole point of what is a miracle and God. God is not bound to logic, what you can't conceive is your prejudice... and using miracles to justify your thinking is a logical fallacy... you can with that same argument *justify anything*. That makes no sense. Even theologians can't bring themselves to say that God can do something self-contradictory. Suppose God did Y=(X and not-X), what would Y consist of? I don't know we as human cannot do it... But I don't see why not, and that's false that theologians (at least some) never say that god can't do self-contradictory thing... have you never heard god is not bound to logic Yes, from people who don't know what logic is. So logic is above God... that's not the common believe in God... Only in some popularization of the idea of God. Augustin, St-Thomas, and most theologian since agree that truth and logic is above God, although they would say this differently. Al Gazhali did the same for Islam, and Jean-Paul II repeated this recently. I don't think you will find one theologian believing the contrary. But I agree that the religious institution, like the health institutation are inconsistent, and indeed are blaspheming, using their own notion of blasphem, and that is what happen when a religion, or even a science or an art (like health) is put in the hand of politics (be it by force like with Islam and christianismm, or by financial lobbying (and propaganda) with politics. what about what you think is logical is in fact illogical because God made you so that you can transcend that... If God is all, and transcend everything then logic is nothing. I don't believe in God be it bound or not to logic. For the greek, God is by definition the reality at the origin of your conscience. The idea to use fairy tales does not come from theologian, but from dishonest politicians, which use the notion as a mean of power and violence. It is the opposite of religion, as defined originally. But an unthinkable all powerfull thing that cant transcend everything can surely do anything, and be bound and not bound and whatever to logic as anything. For the greeks God has no power. It is the explanation that we search. The debate God/Not-God is a fake debate among aristotelian to hide the real question: PrimaryUniverse/Not-primary-Universe. Bruno and for example, god could create two universe, one where he destroys the earth, one where he does not... But that's not a logical contradiction. It would be in a one world view where it happens and it does not. It's making two things and destroying one of them. A contradiction would be for him to both create the Earth and not create the Earth. I'm afraid you're one of those theologians who doesn't know what logic is. (but that something we human could comprehend). I *don't* believe in god, but I can imagine such a being with no limit in power if it existed, and that could transcend *everything*, after all he's god !. Really? You can imagine a being who can do Y where X=fly and Y=(X and not-X)? I don't think so. I cannot image it does it, I can image a being who transcend anything and I could not comprehend and so it's meaningless for me to ascribe anything on it. Logical contradiction is a matter of language; it can't refer because it has no meaning. If there is a god, meaning comes from god, not from the language or from you. god transcend reality. Nonsense. You don't believe in God, I don't too, so yes it's nonsense... I starting to thing you can't read what I'm saying... Some conception of god is a thing who transcend everything, if the reality is an emanation of that thing, so is your language, so is your thoughts, so is your ability to comprehend the reality, so is your ability to comprehend that thing who transcend everything... I understand you don't believe in such god... **I DON'T TOO** **I'M NOT STATING HERE WHAT I BELIEVE** Language is words we make up Not in a reality who would be an emanation of an all transcending being, word like you like everything else even what is not, would be from that god. and so we give them what ever meaning they have. A contradiction is a relation between two propositions. You can't have a contradiction without language. A miracle is ordinarily understood as an occurrence which is *nomologically* impossible. A miracle is understood as a miracle, it could be anything not possible without it... like *magic*. Not possible means nomologically impossible; not
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, This is an acceptable terming for some argument, but at some point you might understand that this is not really the case. Comp assumes only that we can survive ith a digital brain, in the quasi-operational meaning of the yes doctor scenario. Consciousness is a first person notion, and that is not Turing emulable per se, in fact that is not even definable in any 3p term. That is part of the difficulty of the concept. which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. OK. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. That will not work on a virtual AI, which are purely deterministic. That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. That is equivalent with saying that you would not die if teleported from here to 2 mm away, but would die from teleportation from here to mars, so you reject step 2. This does not make sense with computationalism, as the brain would notice a difference that a computer could not notice by construction, unless you add releveant but non Turing emulable magical properties in the wires. This differs from MWI UDA is not about the MWI. It is just that in list of people supposed to accept the MWI, the MWI can be used to illustrate a special case of self-multiplication. Bruno in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. In each world there is a unique closest continuer and the ambiguity doesn't arise. Worlds, by definition, don't interfere. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 Apr 2015, at 21:00, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Apr 2015, at 01:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Apr 2015, at 03:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: It's stubborn, even if an illusion, eh? If you were duplicated, would you be prepared to kill your duplicate? Who would you kill? It can be shown that, indeed, killing someone with comp is equivalent with an amnesia. Dying is forgetting or refreshing memories. If you decide to kill a copy, you have to cautiously agree (with yourself) on the procedure (and who will be killed) before the duplication. After the duplication, it is preferable to treat the copy as a new person, for all practical and ethical purposes. I think there are even stronger reasons for treating copies as new persons. In practical terms, if it came to ethical and legal matters, the law is currently no able to recognize the existence of two separate bodies as the same person. And physically, I think the divergence necessitated by different physical bodies in different spatial locations is going to lead to significant divergence sufficiently rapidly for the concept of 'the same person' to cease to be applicable after an extremely short time. The effects of simple thermal noise would be sufficient for the 'persons' to decohere within milliseconds. No problem with this. I think that the discussion between Stathis and Quentin relies on a confusion between the 3-1 views and the 1-views. We cannot duplicate the 1-views (= the 1-1-views = the 1-1-1-views): we feel always unique. But in the 3-1 view we can ascribe the same consciousness to (identical) exemplars, and this can play a rôle in the measure problem, although this needs some later differentiation and the rule Y = II. In practice, thermal noise will indeed decohere the consciousness very quickly. I use quote as we are not in the quantum setting here, but it is (here) the same thing. But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. I just said that IF you take the M and W man as being the same person, then we are all the same person. Nothing more. Personal identity is not in my topics here. I am interested in that topic, but I avoid it in the whole work, as it is difficult, and the result are quite counter-intuitive. Fortunately we don't need them at all to get the fact that if comp is true, physics has to emerge from addition and multiplication, without adding anything. Bruno Brent Here there is a matter of almost conventional decision, to relate or not individuality to personal identity. With comp and AUDA, we can say we are all the universal baby describes by the 8 arithmetical hypostases, so we are the same person, put in (quite) different context (the genes, the culture, ...). We are all the same amoeba, in that case. If Aliens exist, we are them too. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 Apr 2015, at 21:30, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Apr 2015, at 05:12, meekerdb wrote: On 4/14/2015 9:47 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-14 18:40 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. It seems that's what I was explaining... or are you answering to Stathis ? No, it's not clear to me what definition of consciousness you're using. Are you supposing that two streams of thought which are identical would constitute two different consciousness'es? In the 1-view (or 1-1-view, ...) : the answer is no. I agree. In the 3--1 view, we can say yes, as we can see the diverging conditions, like knowing that each duplicated H-man will diverge once opening their reconstitution box. But in that case we've duplicated the machinery of consciousness, e.g. the AI program that instaniated the consciousness. It can bethe same program which is now running in two different machines and is diverging because of spacetime and environmental differences. Right. Like it can be different programs in the UD, but doing the same relevant activity with respect to my personal experience, and it can diverge, or not. So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? By associating it with different token of the machinery implementing it. Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? No, it can't, in the 1-view, but it can in the 3-1 view. OK? Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 02:53, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I did not even knew the existence of the MWI when I got the idea 40 years ago, when trying to figure out what it is like to be an amoeba. You would have studied the reasoning up to step seven, you would understand the non relevance of your point. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 10:03, Bruce Kellett wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. The conclusion of the UDA is that comp and materialism are incompatible. Can you formulate a protocol where the copies sit down for a chat and arrive at a contradiction of the UDA's conclusion? Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. It's just a simple way to label the two duplicates: Moscow man and Washington man. You could have the two reconstructions in the same room and label them as machine-A man and machine-B man and let them interact immediately. It wouldn't change the conclusion, because the conclusion does not depend on the copies having a chat or not. It would just make the argument harder to follow. No, the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. No one assume that. John Clark assumes this, and in that case, I have locally assume it too, but only to refute Clark argument. That might explain your confusion, but it is better to stick to the original proof, instead of speculating from local answer to local refutation. We assume only that the (generalized) brain is Turing emulable at some level such that consciousness remains invariant. Bruno It is that illusion that is hard to maintain if they have a chat and realize that they are different people. The real issue is personal identity through time, and in the case of ties for closest follower, as in this case, it fits better with the notions of personal identity to say that the copies are both new persons -- inheriting a lot from the original of course, but the original single person has not become two of the *same* person. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, This is an acceptable terming for some argument, but at some point you might understand that this is not really the case. Comp assumes only that we can survive ith a digital brain, in the quasi-operational meaning of the yes doctor scenario. Consciousness is a first person notion, and that is not Turing emulable per se, in fact that is not even definable in any 3p term. That is part of the difficulty of the concept. In COMP(2013) you write: The digital mechanist thesis (or computationalism, or just comp) is then equivalent to the hypothesis that there is a level of description of that part of reality in which my consciousness remains invariant through a functional digital emulation of that generalized brain at that particular level. I think this is saying that human consciousness is Turing emulable. A consequence of this is, of course, that we can survive in a digital brain: ...I can survive, in the usual clinical sense, with an artificial digital (generalized) brain. I think you are just shuffling words when you then say that consciousness is not Turing emulable per se. which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. OK. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. That will not work on a virtual AI, which are purely deterministic. But the copies are in different environments, even in virtual worlds. That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. That is equivalent with saying that you would not die if teleported from here to 2 mm away, but would die from teleportation from here to mars, so you reject step 2. I don't know what you are talking about. The distance of the teleportation is not an issue. If you take the closest continuer notion of personal identity, then the being reconstructed from the teleported AI program corresponding to me will be my unique closest continuer. This remains true even if there is a time delay of centuries before the reconstruction. The only requirement is that there is no closer continuer of my person, and no closer predecessor of the new reconstruction than the original me. If you continue this to step 5, where you take the copy and install that in a new body without destroying the original, then there is a unique continuer -- the continuing body and mind. The copy is a new person. Similarly, if you reconstruct now a copy of me taken a year ago, that copy bears even less relation to the /me/ of now than one reconstructed from a recent copy. Closer continuer theory makes sense of these permutations. The only stipulation is that in the case of ties for closest continuer, totally new persons are created. Using shared memories as your only criterion for personhood leads to many difficulties. This does not make sense with computationalism, as the brain would notice a difference that a computer could not notice by construction, unless you add releveant but non Turing emulable magical properties in the wires. I don't see this at all. We are talking about emulating people, which includes sense data inputs from an external world with which the person can interact. This can be a physical world or a virtual world, but such a world is required for your talk about consciousness to make sense. Remember, you assured me that there was no sensory deprivation involved in any of this. External worlds tend to have calendars, clocks, and geography -- we can readily tell if we have been transported through space and/or time. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 11:55, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 19:58, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Bruno, I can go back as far as 2008 for such discussions with John Clark in my gmail archives about step 3... it's useless to continue to answer him (at least on your work, and surely on anything else), he will never accept anything, and will never go beyond that point, he doesn't want to have a genuine discussion... it will go back in circle again, he will mock your acronyms, he will say, he doesn't know what step 1,2 are, he will do biased comparisons, he will say it's stupid, or false or stupid again etc etc etc... you give him hours of your live that he doesn't deserve... Jeez, I had no idea. I'd have given up long ago if I was him... ... and it started a long time before on the FOR list. I suggested to John to continue the discussion on the everything-list. I should have avoided that proposition, perhaps. The problem is that when you don't debunk lies and rhetorical hand waving, they can stay for a very long time. The lies started in 1973. The price LE MONDE made them spreading since 1998. A part of the academical world does not appreciate I have witnessed the existence of moral harassment in university. But those who gave me the price in Paris insisted that I describe this in a book, as they knew it is a real big problem in many social and professional circles. Things have progressed, as now moral harassment is legally punishable, and some people have won trial in my country. In most academies, like in the church, such moral and sexual harassment remains taboo, and frequent. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 06:34, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Discussion or fruitful argument assume mutual respect. The respect/ civility in the exchange is one-sided however, and has remained so for years. It's not an argument; closer to an experiment of John to see how often he can get away with airing personal issues clothed in sincerity of intellectual debate. This occupies too much bandwidth and is a turn off from where I'm sitting. I'd much rather see the comp related discussions go to address say Telmo's request for clarification in Bruno's use of phi_i, or G/G* distinctions, or pedagogical demonstrations on the work arithmetic existentially actualizes/gets done, clarification on Russell's use of robust, physicalist theories that don't eliminate consciousness etc. Good and interesting questions indeed. I, of course would be delighted if people try to really grasp the phi_i, the G/G* distinction, and the subtle but key point of the fact that the arithmetical reality simulates computations, as opposed to merely generates descriptions of them. I am bit buzy right now. Feel free to tell me which one of those point seems to you the more interesting, or funky. My problem is that the difficulties reside here in the logic-branch-of- math, not really in my work, and attempt to dig in the math on a forum is difficult. Bruno I enjoy when the list gets funky in such direction, and even though I am invested in environmental sector professionally, perhaps some of the climate change stuff is a bit out of topic. This as pure opinion. Nobody gets two cents from me as I'd be poor if consistent ;-) PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thursday, April 16, 2015, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 19:58, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','allco...@gmail.com'); wrote: Bruno, I can go back as far as 2008 for such discussions with John Clark in my gmail archives about step 3... it's useless to continue to answer him (at least on your work, and surely on anything else), he will never accept anything, and will never go beyond that point, he doesn't want to have a genuine discussion... it will go back in circle again, he will mock your acronyms, he will say, he doesn't know what step 1,2 are, he will do biased comparisons, he will say it's stupid, or false or stupid again etc etc etc... you give him hours of your live that he doesn't deserve... Jeez, I had no idea. I'd have given up long ago if I was him... There's something about participants in lists like this: they tend to have a far, far greater tolerance for debating the same thing over and over. It's a bit like gamblers - they may know rationally they probably won't win, but they do it anyway. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. No one assume that. John Clark assumes this, Of course I assume it, it's the only logical conclusion and I assume that logic is more likely to find the truth than illogic, although Quinton has publicly stated other ideas on that subject. I have locally assume it too, but only to refute Clark argument. That might explain your confusion, But it doesn't explain my confusion, do you agree that both copies are equally the same person as the original or do you not? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric Even if the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric events would still not be time symmetrical if the initial condition was a state of minimum entropy because then any change in that state would lead to a increase in entropy, and the arrow of time would be born. From a Copenhagen perspective QM prevents us from ever having complete information And from a Many Worlds perspective too. Copenhagen says the information just does not exist and Many Worlds says the information exists but we can never have access to it even in theory. Either way we will never have the information and because it makes no operational difference who is right explains why so many physicists are uninterested in the Copenhagen / Many Worlds debate. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 Apr 2015, at 13:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, This is an acceptable terming for some argument, but at some point you might understand that this is not really the case. Comp assumes only that we can survive ith a digital brain, in the quasi- operational meaning of the yes doctor scenario. Consciousness is a first person notion, and that is not Turing emulable per se, in fact that is not even definable in any 3p term. That is part of the difficulty of the concept. In COMP(2013) you write: The digital mechanist thesis (or computationalism, or just comp) is then equivalent to the hypothesis that there is a level of description of that part of reality in which my consciousness remains invariant through a functional digital emulation of that generalized brain at that particular level. I think this is saying that human consciousness is Turing emulable. Only by using an identity thesis, which later will need to be abandonned. My consciousness is in Platonia, out of time and space, and might rely on infinities of computations. What the brain does consists in making it possible for that consciousness to manifest itself. Saying that consciousness is Turing emulable is only a way to sum up the idea, but taken too much literally, it will create a problem later. A consequence of this is, of course, that we can survive in a digital brain: ...I can survive, in the usual clinical sense, with an artificial digital (generalized) brain. I think you are just shuffling words when you then say that consciousness is not Turing emulable per se. Read further. You don't act like someone trying to understand, but like someone wanting to not understand. which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. OK. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. That will not work on a virtual AI, which are purely deterministic. But the copies are in different environments, even in virtual worlds. In virtual worlds, we can make the environment identical, for some times. That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. That is equivalent with saying that you would not die if teleported from here to 2 mm away, but would die from teleportation from here to mars, so you reject step 2. I don't know what you are talking about. The distance of the teleportation is not an issue. If you take the closest continuer notion of personal identity, then the being reconstructed from the teleported AI program corresponding to me will be my unique closest continuer. This remains true even if there is a time delay of centuries before the reconstruction. The only requirement is that there is no closer continuer of my person, and no closer predecessor of the new reconstruction than the original me. If you continue this to step 5, where you take the copy and install that in a new body without destroying the original, then there is a unique continuer -- the continuing body and mind. The copy is a new person. Similarly, if you reconstruct now a copy of me taken a year ago, that copy bears even less relation to the /me/ of now than one reconstructed from a recent copy. Closer continuer theory makes sense of these permutations. The only stipulation is that in the case of ties for closest continuer, totally new persons are created. Using shared memories as your only criterion for personhood leads to many difficulties. So in step 4, where a delay of reconstitution is introduced in Moscow, you say that the probability is higher to be the person reconstituted in W than in Moscow? This does not make sense with computationalism, as the brain would notice a difference that a computer could not notice by construction, unless you add releveant but non Turing emulable magical properties in the wires. I don't see this at all. We are talking about
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 1:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? By associating it with different token of the machinery implementing it. Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? No, it can't, in the 1-view, but it can in the 3-1 view. OK? I'm not sure what 3-1 view means, but if you mean in the sense of running on two different machines then I agree. That means duplication of consciousness/computation depends on distinguishability of the physical substrate with no distinction in the consciousness/computation. But is that the duplication envisioned in the M-W thought experiment? I find I'm confused about that. In our quantum-mechanical world it is impossible to duplicate something in an unknown state. One could duplicate a human being in the rough classical sense of structure at the molecular composition level, but not the molecular states. Such duplicates would be similar as I'm similar to myself of yesterday - but they would instantly diverge in thoughts, even without seeing Moscow or Washington. Yet it seems Bruno's argument is based on deterministic computation and requires the duplication and subsequent thoughts to be duplicates at a deterministic classcial level so that the M-man and W-man on diverge in thought when they see different things in their respective cities. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 1:03 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote: Telmo Menezes wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. The conclusion of the UDA is that comp and materialism are incompatible. Can you formulate a protocol where the copies sit down for a chat and arrive at a contradiction of the UDA's conclusion? Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. It's just a simple way to label the two duplicates: Moscow man and Washington man. You could have the two reconstructions in the same room and label them as machine-A man and machine-B man and let them interact immediately. It wouldn't change the conclusion, because the conclusion does not depend on the copies having a chat or not. It would just make the argument harder to follow. No, the argument is that both copies are equally the same person as the original. It is that illusion that is hard to maintain if they have a chat and realize that they are different people. The real issue is personal identity through time, and in the case of ties for closest follower, as in this case, it fits better with the notions of personal identity to say that the copies are both new persons -- inheriting a lot from the original of course, but the original single person has not become two of the *same* person. It just seems like a semantic problem to me. We use same in two different senses. I'm the same-1 person I was yesterday, but I'm not identical, same-2, with that person. So the M-man and W-man are the same-1 person as the H-man, but they are not the same-2 as each other. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 1:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 02:52, meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:29 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? I don't think it's specific enough because it isn't clear whether computational process means a physical process or an abstract one. If you take computational process to be the abstract process in Platonia then it would not be duplicable; ? The UD copied the abstract process an infinity of times. It might appear in phi_567_(29)^45, phi_567_(29)^46, phi_567_(29)^47, phi_567_(29)^48, phi_567_(29)^49, phi_567_(29)^50, ... and in phi_8999704_(0)^89, phi_8999704_(0)^90, phi_8999704_(0)^91, phi_8999704_(0)^92, phi_8999704_(0)^93, I don't understand your notation here. Does phi_i(x) refer to the ith function in some list of all functions? And does the exponent refer to repeated iteration: phi_i(x)^n+1 := phi_i(phi_i(x)^n)? every copy would just be a token of the same process. I think that's what Bruno means. The consciousness will be the same, but it is multiplied (in some 3-1 sense) in UD* (sigma_1 truth). Are you saying that identity of indiscernibles doesn't apply to these computations? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 1:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 05:33, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Step 3 is basically to introduce the idea of FPI, and hence form a link with the MWI of quantum mechanics. This may not always have been made explicit, but the intention is clear. It is not made at all. people who criticize UDA always criticize what they add themselves to the reasoning. This is not valid. People who does that criticize only themselves, not the argument presented. Step 3 does not succeed in this because the inference to FPI depends on a flawed concept of personal identity. Step 3 leads to the FPI, and to see what happens next, there is step 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Then the translation in arithmetic show how to already extract the logic of the observable so that we might refute a form of comp (based on comp + the classical theory of knowledge). That main point there is that incompleteness refutes Socrates argument against the Theaetetus, Which argument do you refer to? Theaetetus puts forward several theories of knowledge which Socrates attempts to refute. Brent and we can almost directly retrieve the Parmenides-Plotinus theology in the discourse of the introspecting universal (Löbian) machine. Bruno Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 6:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 13:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 01:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, This is an acceptable terming for some argument, but at some point you might understand that this is not really the case. Comp assumes only that we can survive ith a digital brain, in the quasi-operational meaning of the yes doctor scenario. Consciousness is a first person notion, and that is not Turing emulable per se, in fact that is not even definable in any 3p term. That is part of the difficulty of the concept. In COMP(2013) you write: The digital mechanist thesis (or computationalism, or just comp) is then equivalent to the hypothesis that there is a level of description of that part of reality in which my consciousness remains invariant through a functional digital emulation of that generalized brain at that particular level. I think this is saying that human consciousness is Turing emulable. Only by using an identity thesis, which later will need to be abandonned. My consciousness is in Platonia, out of time and space, and might rely on infinities of computations. What the brain does consists in making it possible for that consciousness to manifest itself. That seems problematic. What is a consciousness conscious of when it is not manifesting itself? To whom does it manifest itself when it is manifest? ISTM it's only manifest to itself - which on your theory wouldn't require a brain. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/16/2015 9:54 AM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric Even if the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric events would still not be time symmetrical if the initial condition was a state of minimum entropy because then any change in that state would lead to a increase in entropy, and the arrow of time would be born. In a deterministic, time-symmetric system there is no information loss with evolution either to the past or future. So the entropy is zero and stays zero - unless you choose some incomplete/approximate specification of the initial condition. But of course that won't be a state of minimum entropy because the minimum was zero. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Apr 2015, at 06:34, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Discussion or fruitful argument assume mutual respect. The respect/civility in the exchange is one-sided however, and has remained so for years. It's not an argument; closer to an experiment of John to see how often he can get away with airing personal issues clothed in sincerity of intellectual debate. This occupies too much bandwidth and is a turn off from where I'm sitting. I'd much rather see the comp related discussions go to address say Telmo's request for clarification in Bruno's use of phi_i, or G/G* distinctions, or pedagogical demonstrations on the* work* arithmetic existentially *actualizes/gets done*, clarification on Russell's use of robust, physicalist theories that don't eliminate consciousness etc. Good and interesting questions indeed. I, of course would be delighted if people try to really grasp the phi_i, the G/G* distinction, and the subtle but key point of the fact that the arithmetical reality simulates computations, as opposed to merely generates descriptions of them. I am bit buzy right now. Feel free to tell me which one of those point seems to you the more interesting, or funky. Funkiest would be arithmetical reality simulates computations aka free lunch :) But I've picked up and guess that people seem to miss use of phi_i or Sigma 1 sentences and such terms. So, you thought you could offer me a hand and... I take the arm and more: 1 of those point = 3 + infinite possibility of other such terms. PGC- Zombie hunting armchair ninja of numbers. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 17 April 2015 at 04:54, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: If the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric Even if the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric events would still not be time symmetrical if the initial condition was a state of minimum entropy because then any change in that state would lead to a increase in entropy, and the arrow of time would be born. Yes you also have to consider global boundary conditions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 11:16 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue /against /Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) And the contrary, that primary materialism is false, is just as much an unevidenced metaphysical assumption. But it's not an assumption in Bruno's argument. As I understand it, his theory in outline is: 1. All our thoughts are certain kinds of computations. 2. The physical world is an inference from our thoughts. 3. Computations are abstract relations among mathematical objects. 4. The physical world is instantiated by those computations that correspond to intersubjective agreement in our thoughts. 5. Our perceptions/thoughts/beliefs about the world are modeled by computed relations between the computed physics and our computed thoughts. 6. The UD realizes (in Platonia) all possible computations and so realizes the model 1-5 in all possible ways and this produces the multiple-worlds of QM, plus perhaps infinitely many other worlds which he hopes to show have low measure. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: there a difference between the past and the future and if Many Worlds is correct then unlike the past there is nothing linear and nothing unique about Mr.You's future. Except the disciples of MWI insist that the SWE (without collapse) includes the totality of physical evolution. Since the SWE is time reversible this implies that the past is just as branching as the future. Yes there are a astronomical and possibly infinite number of branches in the past, but only one of them led to Mr. You. Mr. You can remember everything in one particular path and absolutely nothing in any of the others, so one path is unique and as far as Mr. You is concerned the past is one and only one linear sequence. But the future is massively parallel not linear and Mr. You can't remember anything in any of them so none of them are unique. John k Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/14/2015 11:29 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 4:53 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 12:48 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: No, a miracle cannot be logically contradictory. God cannot make a married bachelor. Yes it can.. that's the whole point of what is a miracle and God. God is not bound to logic, what you can't conceive is your prejudice... and using miracles to justify your thinking is a logical fallacy... you can with that same argument *justify anything*. That makes no sense. Even theologians can't bring themselves to say that God can do something self-contradictory. Suppose God did Y=(X and not-X), what would Y consist of? I don't know we as human cannot do it... But I don't see why not, and that's false that theologians (at least some) never say that god can't do self-contradictory thing... have you never heard god is not bound to logic Yes, from people who don't know what logic is. and for example, god could create two universe, one where he destroys the earth, one where he does not... But that's not a logical contradiction. It's making two things and destroying one of them. A contradiction would be for him to both create the Earth and not create the Earth. I'm afraid you're one of those theologians who doesn't know what logic is. (but that something we human could comprehend). I *don't* believe in god, but I can imagine such a being with no limit in power if it existed, and that could transcend *everything*, after all he's god !. Really? You can imagine a being who can do Y where X=fly and Y=(X and not-X)? I don't think so. Logical contradiction is a matter of language; it can't refer because it has no meaning. If there is a god, meaning comes from god, not from the language or from you. god transcend reality. Nonsense. Language is words we make up and so we give them what ever meaning they have. A contradiction is a relation between two propositions. You can't have a contradiction without language. A miracle is ordinarily understood as an occurrence which is *nomologically* impossible. A miracle is understood as a miracle, it could be anything not possible without it... like *magic*. Not possible means nomologically impossible; not self-contradictory. Using miracles or magics to say a logical reasoning is correct, is a fallacy... I won't agree it's correct reasoning to do that. I can't even parse that. One can logical reasoning is *valid* without reference to anything else. I don't know how miracles or magic could contribute? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Apr 2015, at 01:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Apr 2015, at 03:26, Bruce Kellett wrote: It's stubborn, even if an illusion, eh? If you were duplicated, would you be prepared to kill your duplicate? Who would you kill? It can be shown that, indeed, killing someone with comp is equivalent with an amnesia. Dying is forgetting or refreshing memories. If you decide to kill a copy, you have to cautiously agree (with yourself) on the procedure (and who will be killed) before the duplication. After the duplication, it is preferable to treat the copy as a new person, for all practical and ethical purposes. I think there are even stronger reasons for treating copies as new persons. In practical terms, if it came to ethical and legal matters, the law is currently no able to recognize the existence of two separate bodies as the same person. And physically, I think the divergence necessitated by different physical bodies in different spatial locations is going to lead to significant divergence sufficiently rapidly for the concept of 'the same person' to cease to be applicable after an extremely short time. The effects of simple thermal noise would be sufficient for the 'persons' to decohere within milliseconds. No problem with this. I think that the discussion between Stathis and Quentin relies on a confusion between the 3-1 views and the 1-views. We cannot duplicate the 1-views (= the 1-1-views = the 1-1-1-views): we feel always unique. But in the 3-1 view we can ascribe the same consciousness to (identical) exemplars, and this can play a rôle in the measure problem, although this needs some later differentiation and the rule Y = II. In practice, thermal noise will indeed decohere the consciousness very quickly. I use quote as we are not in the quantum setting here, but it is (here) the same thing. But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. Brent Here there is a matter of almost conventional decision, to relate or not individuality to personal identity. With comp and AUDA, we can say we are all the universal baby describes by the 8 arithmetical hypostases, so we are the same person, put in (quite) different context (the genes, the culture, ...). We are all the same amoeba, in that case. If Aliens exist, we are them too. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 12:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Apr 2015, at 08:33, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 5:12 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 9:47 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-14 18:40 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. It seems that's what I was explaining... or are you answering to Stathis ? No, it's not clear to me what definition of consciousness you're using. Are you supposing that two streams of thought which are identical would constitute two different consciousness'es? I have don't have to have one, I don't pretend anything about consciousness, I'm saying Stathis does have one *to pretend* consciousness is duplicable; and that his statement consciousness is duplicable is rooted in a metaphysical commitment to one (o r more) theorie(s) about reality, without that commitment consciousness is duplicable has no meaning by itself and is not an absolute truth... are you really reading what I write, or only what you want to read ? Consciousness is pure 1p view, and as such is not duplicable, nor localizable. It is not in the brain, nor in the physical activity of a brain, but in the (infinity) of the relevant number relations. But we are used to ascribe consciousness to bodies (which don't really exist), and so we can say in the local 3-1 view, that a consciousness has been duplicated. That will just means that the relative conditions in which that consciousness can manifest itself have been duplicated, like there are infinitely multiplied and distributed in arithmetic. In fact if we refer to bodies, the 3p is here a 1p-plural-1p-singular view, really, but this is not relevant (especially if the discussion is on a point before step 8/MGA). If we think of an AI, which can be run on different hardware, then when it is running on different hardware in different circumstances it will have different thoughts and if it is conscious will have different qualia. But in a sense it will be the same consciousness, i.e. the same person, just in different environments. Brent I don't remember the motivation of the discussion, to see if the difference of terming is relevant or not. Bruno Quentin Computationalism would say that a brain is duplicable, but as soon as the copy had a different thought there would be two different consciousnesses. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 12:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Apr 2015, at 05:12, meekerdb wrote: On 4/14/2015 9:47 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-14 18:40 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. It seems that's what I was explaining... or are you answering to Stathis ? No, it's not clear to me what definition of consciousness you're using. Are you supposing that two streams of thought which are identical would constitute two different consciousness'es? In the 1-view (or 1-1-view, ...) : the answer is no. I agree. In the 3--1 view, we can say yes, as we can see the diverging conditions, like knowing that each duplicated H-man will diverge once opening their reconstitution box. But in that case we've duplicated the machinery of consciousness, e.g. the AI program that instaniated the consciousness. It can be the same program which is now running in two different machines and is diverging because of spacetime and environmental differences. So consciousness is not 1-duplicable, but can be considered as having been duplicated in some 3-1-view, even before it diverges. How can it be considered duplicated before it diverges? Are you assuming consciousness is physical and so having different spacetime location can distinguish two otherwise indiscernible set of thoughts? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
2015-04-15 20:55 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 11:33 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 5:12 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 9:47 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-14 18:40 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. It seems that's what I was explaining... or are you answering to Stathis ? No, it's not clear to me what definition of consciousness you're using. Are you supposing that two streams of thought which are identical would constitute two different consciousness'es? I have don't have to have one, I don't pretend anything about consciousness, I'm saying Stathis does have one *to pretend* consciousness is duplicable; and that his statement consciousness is duplicable is rooted in a metaphysical commitment to one (o r more) theorie(s) about reality, I agree that Stathis must be using some unexpressed definition in order to assert that consciousness is duplicable. But also that you must being using some different definition to assert that it is not. Here I'm sure you don't read what I'm writing, so I will put it in CAPS I DON'T PRETEND THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS DUPLICABLE OR NOT DUPLICABLE, STATHIS PRETEND IT IS AND THAT ANY THEORIES WHO WOULD SAY IT IS NOT MUST BE LOGICALLY INCONSISTENT.. I REPEAT ***I*** DON'T PRETEND THAT CONSCIOUSNESS *IS* DUPLICABLE *OR IS NOT* DUPLICABLE... IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I BELIEVE I WOULD TEND TOWARD IT IS DUPLICABLE BECAUSE I BELIEVE COMPUTATIONALISM TO BE TRUE, SO I WOULD CERTAINLY NOT HOLD THE THEORY THAT IT IS NOT DUPLICABLE BUT ALSO I DON'T SAY LIKE STATHIS DOES THAT THE POSSIBILITY THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS DUPLICABLE IS TRUE WHATEVER METAPHYSICAL ASSUMPTION YOU MAKE ABOUT REALITY, BECAUSE THAT'S THAT ASSUMPTION THAT MAKE THE STATEMENT 'CONSCIOUSNESS IS DUPLICABLE' MEANINGFUL OR NOT. SO I REPEAT I'M NOT USING SOME DEFINITION ON CONSCIOUSNESS TO PRETEND IT IS OR IT IS NOT DUPLICABLE, I'M SAYING THAT THE MEANINGFULNESS OF THE STATEMENT DEPEND ON AN UNSTATED ASSUMPTION STATHIS IS MAKING. Quentin So I'm asking which one you are using? Brent without that commitment consciousness is duplicable has no meaning by itself and is not an absolute truth... are you really reading what I write, or only what you want to read ? Quentin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/14/2015 11:33 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 5:12 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 9:47 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-14 18:40 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. It seems that's what I was explaining... or are you answering to Stathis ? No, it's not clear to me what definition of consciousness you're using. Are you supposing that two streams of thought which are identical would constitute two different consciousness'es? I have don't have to have one, I don't pretend anything about consciousness, I'm saying Stathis does have one *to pretend* consciousness is duplicable; and that his statement consciousness is duplicable is rooted in a metaphysical commitment to one (o r more) theorie(s) about reality, I agree that Stathis must be using some unexpressed definition in order to assert that consciousness is duplicable. But also that you must being using some different definition to assert that it is not. So I'm asking which one you are using? Brent without that commitment consciousness is duplicable has no meaning by itself and is not an absolute truth... are you really reading what I write, or only what you want to read ? Quentin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
2015-04-15 20:51 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 11:29 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2015-04-15 4:53 GMT+02:00 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 4/14/2015 12:48 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: No, a miracle cannot be logically contradictory. God cannot make a married bachelor. Yes it can.. that's the whole point of what is a miracle and God. God is not bound to logic, what you can't conceive is your prejudice... and using miracles to justify your thinking is a logical fallacy... you can with that same argument *justify anything*. That makes no sense. Even theologians can't bring themselves to say that God can do something self-contradictory. Suppose God did Y=(X and not-X), what would Y consist of? I don't know we as human cannot do it... But I don't see why not, and that's false that theologians (at least some) never say that god can't do self-contradictory thing... have you never heard god is not bound to logic Yes, from people who don't know what logic is. So logic is above God... that's not the common believe in God... what about what you think is logical is in fact illogical because God made you so that you can transcend that... If God is all, and transcend everything then logic is nothing. I don't believe in God be it bound or not to logic. But an unthinkable all powerfull thing that cant transcend everything can surely do anything, and be bound and not bound and whatever to logic as anything. and for example, god could create two universe, one where he destroys the earth, one where he does not... But that's not a logical contradiction. It would be in a one world view where it happens and it does not. It's making two things and destroying one of them. A contradiction would be for him to both create the Earth and not create the Earth. I'm afraid you're one of those theologians who doesn't know what logic is. (but that something we human could comprehend). I *don't* believe in god, but I can imagine such a being with no limit in power if it existed, and that could transcend *everything*, after all he's god !. Really? You can imagine a being who can do Y where X=fly and Y=(X and not-X)? I don't think so. I cannot image it does it, I can image a being who transcend anything and I could not comprehend and so it's meaningless for me to ascribe anything on it. Logical contradiction is a matter of language; it can't refer because it has no meaning. If there is a god, meaning comes from god, not from the language or from you. god transcend reality. Nonsense. You don't believe in God, I don't too, so yes it's nonsense... I starting to thing you can't read what I'm saying... Some conception of god is a thing who transcend everything, if the reality is an emanation of that thing, so is your language, so is your thoughts, so is your ability to comprehend the reality, so is your ability to comprehend that thing who transcend everything... I understand you don't believe in such god... **I DON'T TOO** **I'M NOT STATING HERE WHAT I BELIEVE** Language is words we make up Not in a reality who would be an emanation of an all transcending being, word like you like everything else even what is not, would be from that god. and so we give them what ever meaning they have. A contradiction is a relation between two propositions. You can't have a contradiction without language. A miracle is ordinarily understood as an occurrence which is *nomologically* impossible. A miracle is understood as a miracle, it could be anything not possible without it... like *magic*. Not possible means nomologically impossible; not self-contradictory. No, not possible, is anything. Using miracles or magics to say a logical reasoning is correct, is a fallacy... I won't agree it's correct reasoning to do that. I can't even parse that. One can logical reasoning is *valid* without reference to anything else. For *god* sake.. I'm not the one who use *miracles* in the argument... It's *Stathis*, do you read the thread or only your own mind and what you want to read... ? I don't know how miracles or magic could contribute? *THAT'S STATHIS ARGUMENT* Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 4:51 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. Right. They could only remain the same if they were in separate but identical worlds, as would be possible for AI's in simulated worlds. That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Brent In each world there is a unique closest continuer and the ambiguity doesn't arise. Worlds, by definition, don't interfere. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: that's false that theologians (at least some) never say that god can't do self-contradictory thing. I think you're right, theologians do say such things. Have you even wondered why Thomas Jefferson insisted that the new university he founded should NOT have a school of theology? Theology and theologians are stupid that is why. If God is all, and transcend everything then logic is nothing. Logic is nothing and yet you used logic (or rather tried to use logic) to deduce a if-then logical statement. You failed rather spectacularly but logic is nothing so why did you even try to use it? an unthinkable all powerfull thing that cant transcend everything can surely do anything Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it? I can image a being who transcend anything Wow, you can imagine that! I can't do it but you can use your imagination to visualize the above scenario, so you must know the answer. So what is it, can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it or can He not? Some conception of god is a thing who transcend everything, God can even transcend everyday stupidity and enter the realm if hyper-mega-stupidity. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. In each world there is a unique closest continuer and the ambiguity doesn't arise. Worlds, by definition, don't interfere. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 3:37 PM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com mailto:allco...@gmail.com wrote: .. Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it? I can image a being who transcend anything Wow, you can imagine that! I can't do it but you can use your imagination to visualize the above scenario, so you must know the answer. So what is it, can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it or can He not? Quentin's god can make a rock so heavy that he can lift it and not lift it at the same time - which must be interesting to witness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You have to follow the rest of the argument to find out what Bruno is claiming. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 5:33 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 05:40, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: My problem with any view based on entropy is that entropy doesn't appear to be fundamental to physics; it is the statistically likely result when objects are put in a certain configuration and allowed to evolve randomly. There is, however, an interesting parallel to be made with Shannon's entropy, which is a measure of information content and not just a statistical effect. Once in the realm of digital physics, it becomes questionable if physical entropy and information entropy are separate things. I think the second law of thermodynamics is the most fundamental law of physics, in fact it's almost a law of logic rather than physics; entropy will always increase just says that there are more ways to be complicated than simple, so any change in a system will probably make it more complicated and not simpler. Or to put it in Shannon's language, it takes more information to describe a complicated thing than a simple thing. This is my point - it is not a law of physics, it's a law of logic. To be exact, the second law will almost certainly exist in any universe with any laws of physics that allow for the existence of complex structures, bound systems, etc. The second law depends on approximation and ignorance as well as complexity. If the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric (as MWI advocates suppose) then the second law works because we never have perfect information (and often we don't even want to use all the information we have; we're happy with an approximation) so from the information we have we can only predict statistical regularities. From a Copenhagen perspective QM prevents us from ever having complete information of the state and so we only have statistical prediction and retrodiction. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 14:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 09:51, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. A rigorous philosophical analysis usually starts with a definition, I disagree. Philosophical discussion will often start from a loosely defined or understood concept, such as 'personal identity', and seek, by detailed analysis, to tease out the possible meanings of this term and how we can make it more precise. Definitions do not necessarily play a substantial role in this. Bruno claims in the 2013 paper that comp is science, not philosophy (it starts from some definitions and assumptions, and proceeds to build a theory with testable consequences). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Discussion or fruitful argument assume mutual respect. The respect/civility in the exchange is one-sided however, and has remained so for years. It's not an argument; closer to an experiment of John to see how often he can get away with airing personal issues clothed in sincerity of intellectual debate. This occupies too much bandwidth and is a turn off from where I'm sitting. I'd much rather see the comp related discussions go to address say Telmo's request for clarification in Bruno's use of phi_i, or G/G* distinctions, or pedagogical demonstrations on the* work* arithmetic existentially *actualizes/gets done*, clarification on Russell's use of robust, physicalist theories that don't eliminate consciousness etc. I enjoy when the list gets funky in such direction, and even though I am invested in environmental sector professionally, perhaps some of the climate change stuff is a bit out of topic. This as pure opinion. Nobody gets two cents from me as I'd be poor if consistent ;-) PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Le 16 avr. 2015 01:04, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net a écrit : On 4/15/2015 3:37 PM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: .. Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it? I can image a being who transcend anything Wow, you can imagine that! I can't do it but you can use your imagination to visualize the above scenario, so you must know the answer. So what is it, can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it or can He not? Quentin's god That's not my god, I have no god. But yes, if such a god is, then everything is possible, and that means what we're writing here about it using deduction and logic is gibberish, but that idra of god I can imagine it. Quentin can make a rock so heavy that he can lift it and not lift it at the same time - which must be interesting to witness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 12:52, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:29 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? I don't think it's specific enough because it isn't clear whether computational process means a physical process or an abstract one. If you take computational process to be the abstract process in Platonia then it would not be duplicable; every copy would just be a token of the same process. I think that's what Bruno means. But I think Stathis is thinking of a copy of an AI, not just a particular computation by that AI. If I understand correctly, comp starts by assuming that the process is physical, but eventually deduces that it has to be abstract. Hence you can assume physical for the steps up to the MGA, I think. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 12:59, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:33 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 05:40, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: My problem with any view based on entropy is that entropy doesn't appear to be fundamental to physics; it is the statistically likely result when objects are put in a certain configuration and allowed to evolve randomly. There is, however, an interesting parallel to be made with Shannon's entropy, which is a measure of information content and not just a statistical effect. Once in the realm of digital physics, it becomes questionable if physical entropy and information entropy are separate things. I think the second law of thermodynamics is the most fundamental law of physics, in fact it's almost a law of logic rather than physics; entropy will always increase just says that there are more ways to be complicated than simple, so any change in a system will probably make it more complicated and not simpler. Or to put it in Shannon's language, it takes more information to describe a complicated thing than a simple thing. This is my point - it is not a law of physics, it's a law of logic. To be exact, the second law will almost certainly exist in any universe with any laws of physics that allow for the existence of complex structures, bound systems, etc. The second law depends on approximation and ignorance as well as complexity. If the laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric (as MWI advocates suppose) then the second law works because we never have perfect information (and often we don't even want to use all the information we have; we're happy with an approximation) so from the information we have we can only predict statistical regularities. From a Copenhagen perspective QM prevents us from ever having complete information of the state and so we only have statistical prediction and retrodiction. True. I just didn't want to get bogged down with too many details (unless Mr Clark still didn't get the point about it not being a law of physics). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 April 2015 at 04:39, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi Liz, Ok. I have an idea about that, it is probably not original. Tell me what you think: The universe was not created. All possible states just exist. The moment of the big bang is one of the many possible states. What we call the past is a sequence of steps in the state graph that are coherent predecessor of each other, in the sense that they contain less and less information. Given that the moment of the big bang is the lowest entropy state conceivable, all history lines will originate there. My problem with any view based on entropy is that entropy doesn't appear to be fundamental to physics; it is the statistically likely result when objects are put in a certain configuration and allowed to evolve randomly. There is, however, an interesting parallel to be made with Shannon's entropy, which is a measure of information content and not just a statistical effect. Once in the realm of digital physics, it becomes questionable if physical entropy and information entropy are separate things. Yes, and there is also black hole entropy. It's POSSIBLE that Boltzmann stumbled on something fundamental via a route that doesn't lead via fundamental physics (B's entropy is only apparent to macroscopic beings) I don't know if the jury has come down in favour of entropy being in some way fundamental to the universe, but it's certainly possible. (Though not the thermodynamic sort.) However the laws of physics are (mainly) time-symmetric, with the definite exception of neutral kaon decay and the possible exception of wave-function collapse, and an ordered state could evolve to become more disordered towards the past (although that would make the past appear the future for any beings created within that ordered state). Yet we never see that happening, and there is an elephant in the cosmic room, namely the expansion of the universe, which (istm) must always proceed in the direction of the AOT. What if the AOT is a purely 1p phenomena? Well, it's clearly a 3p phenomenon in that we all agree that things age etc. But it's perhaps purely a macroscopic creature phenomenon Hence the appeal to boundary conditions. If something forces the universe to have zero (or very low) radius at one time extremity but not at the other, this asymmetry could be sufficient to drive the arrow of time in a particular direction. I've (as it were) expanded on this idea before, however, so I won't go on at length about it again. I'll search the archives when I have a bit of time. Briefly, the boundary condition on the universe appears to be that it has a big bang at one time extremity (or something like one) but not a corresponding crunch at the other. This alone means that the density of the contents of the universe is constrained to decrease globally along the time axis as you move away from the BB, and my contention is that this is probably enough to create an AOT even with the laws of physics operating - by assumption - time-symmetrically, when you look at the various processes that result from a decrease in density (and temperature, effectively, since particles tend to move until they reach a patch of the background fluid which is moving at their speed). Such outcomes include the formation of nuclei, atoms, and eventually gravitationally bound states like galactic clusters etc. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 5:50 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 4:51 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Don't you then run into the problem of the identity of indiscernibles? The programs may be run on different computers in our world, and thus discernible, but from inside the program there is only one consciousness. Just the same as if you ran the program at different times on the same computer. Same inputs -- same outputs. Not different from the point of view of the simulation. Yes, you're right. I should have said like AI's in separate worlds that are identical except for the observation that split the MW. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 09:51, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au javascript:; wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 12:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: But the question of the number of person is a different discussion. If you agree that the W-guy, who stays in W and marries a girl in W, is the same person as the guy in M, who marries a woman in M, are the same person ... as the H-guy, the, I claim, we are already all the same person, despite different lives and consciousness. But then you're just mucking up the meaning of the same person, giving it a special metaphorical poetic meaning, unrelated to common usage. Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. A rigorous philosophical analysis usually starts with a definition, but it's very difficult to define consciousness. However, you can have a quite fruitful discussion about consciousness without explicitly defining, implicitly using a minimal operational definition: you know it if you have it. Surprisingly, even the consciousness deniers and consciousness eliminators seem to know exactly what it is we are talking about! Computationalism is based on the idea that human consciousness is Turing emulable, which just says that human-like AI is possible on a sufficiently sophisticated computer. But,as Bruno says, consciousness is not duplicable -- we cannot know, for ourselves, what another's consciousness is, so we cannot know whether it is a duplicate or not. That we cannot know does not mean it isn't possible. We cannot know that a world exists outside our minds, but it is still possible. That aside, we *can* know, from our own introspection, that the brain replacement has worked to the same extent that we can know we are the same person from moment to moment. It's unreasonable to require a higher standard of proof than this. My feeling is that even a digital copy from a computer-based AI will diverge so rapidly from the original once it is installed and run on another computer that there is no sense in which it is ever the 'same' consciousness. You could run the AI in a virtual environment with the same starting parameters and no external inputs and be confident that it will have the same consciousness. Also, in a large enough universe a finite consciousness (implemented on a finite state machine) will repeat. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Don't you then run into the problem of the identity of indiscernibles? Yes exactly, that idea of Leibniz has proved to be amazingly useful. If you exchanged the position of the 2 AI's nothing in either world would notice any difference because the AI's are identical, and the AI's themselves would notice no difference because the worlds are identical. So if subjectively it make no difference and objectively it makes no difference I think it's safe to say there is no difference. So there may be 2 identical computers running the same AI program but there is only one AI individual, and if you destroyed one computer the AI individual would not die, he wouldn't even notice anything had changed. If 2 phonographs are playing the same symphony and you destroy one machine the music would not stop. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. No, because as I argued elsewhere, the two 'copies' would not agree that they were the same person. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). In the protracted arguments with John Clark, the point was repeated made that he accepted FPI for MWI, so why not for Step 3. Step 3 is basically to introduce the idea of FPI, and hence form a link with the MWI of quantum mechanics. This may not always have been made explicit, but the intention is clear. Step 3 does not succeed in this because the inference to FPI depends on a flawed concept of personal identity. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 15:37, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. Yes, of course. I don't think anyone is denying that - quite the reverse, people who argue *against *Bruno often do so on the basis of unexamined metaphysical assumptions (like primary materialism) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 5:29 PM, LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 04:40, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/13/2015 11:31 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le 14 avr. 2015 08:04, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com mailto:stath...@gmail.com a écrit : Certainly some theories of consciousness might not allow copying, but that cannot be a logical requirement. To claim that something is logically impossible is to claim that it is self-contradictory. I don't see why a theory saying like I said in the upper paragraph that consciousness could not be copied would be selfcontradictory... You have to see that when you say consciousness is duplicatable, you assume a lot of things about the reality and how it is working, and that you're making a metaphysical commitment, a leap of faith concerning what you assume the real to be and the reality itself. That's all I'm saying, but clearly if computationalism is true consciousness is obviously duplicatable. Quentin In order to say what duplication of consciousness is and whether it is non-contradictory you need some propositional definition of it. Not just, an instrospective well everybody knows what it is. Comp assumes it's an outcome of computational processes, at some level. Is that enough to be a propositional definition? I don't think it's specific enough because it isn't clear whether computational process means a physical process or an abstract one. If you take computational process to be the abstract process in Platonia then it would not be duplicable; every copy would just be a token of the same process. I think that's what Bruno means. But I think Stathis is thinking of a copy of an AI, not just a particular computation by that AI. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 April 2015 at 04:36, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: If I commit suicide the illusion of persisting through time is destroyed. Whenever somebody says X is an illusion the first question that should be asked is how would things be different if X were not an illusion; so how would things be different if persisting through time were not an illusion? I answered that question a while back. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 4:51 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Don't you then run into the problem of the identity of indiscernibles? The programs may be run on different computers in our world, and thus discernible, but from inside the program there is only one consciousness. Just the same as if you ran the program at different times on the same computer. Same inputs -- same outputs. Not different from the point of view of the simulation. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 5:50 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 4/15/2015 4:51 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: That then leads to the questions of personal identity. As a person, my consciousness changes from moment to moment with changing thoughts and external stimuli, but I remain the same person. Can two spatially distinct consciousnesses ever be the same person? I don't think so, even if they stem from the same digital copy at some point. M-man and W-man are different persons, and neither is the unique closest continuer of H-man, so it is not that H-man is uncertain of his future -- he doesn't have one. This differs from MWI in that, in MWI, the continuers are in different worlds. Right. Like AI's in separate but identical worlds. Don't you then run into the problem of the identity of indiscernibles? The programs may be run on different computers in our world, and thus discernible, but from inside the program there is only one consciousness. Just the same as if you ran the program at different times on the same computer. Same inputs -- same outputs. Not different from the point of view of the simulation. Yes, you're right. I should have said like AI's in separate worlds that are identical except for the observation that split the MW. It's not really the observation itself that splits the worlds in MWI -- it is decoherence and irreversibility: the multiple independent records of the experimental result in the environment suggested by Zurek's einvariance. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
LizR wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 14:44, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 09:51, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. A rigorous philosophical analysis usually starts with a definition, I disagree. Philosophical discussion will often start from a loosely defined or understood concept, such as 'personal identity', and seek, by detailed analysis, to tease out the possible meanings of this term and how we can make it more precise. Definitions do not necessarily play a substantial role in this. Bruno claims in the 2013 paper that comp is science, not philosophy (it starts from some definitions and assumptions, and proceeds to build a theory with testable consequences). Bruno has said to me that one cannot refute a scientific finding by philosophy. One cannot, of course, refute a scientific observation by philosophy, but one can certainly enter a philosophical discussion of the meaning and interpretation of an observation. In an argument like Bruno's, one can certainly question the metaphysical and other presumptions that go into his discourse. So philosophy is important, even if just to keep the protagonists honest in the terms they are using. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 16 April 2015 at 12:53, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto: johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. That doesn't make any difference to the argument. Will I be the copy sitting in the chair on the left? is less dramatic than Will I be transported to Moscow or Washington? and hence, I suspect, might not make the point so clearly. But otherwise the argument goes through either way. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. I don't know where Bruno says he's mimicking the MWI (at this stage) ? This is a classical result, assuming classical computation (which according to Max Tegmark is a reasonable assumption for brains). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 16 April 2015 at 09:51, Bruce Kellett bhkell...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Yes. I think that Bruno's treatment sometimes lacks philosophical sophistication. A rigorous philosophical analysis usually starts with a definition, I disagree. Philosophical discussion will often start from a loosely defined or understood concept, such as 'personal identity', and seek, by detailed analysis, to tease out the possible meanings of this term and how we can make it more precise. Definitions do not necessarily play a substantial role in this. but it's very difficult to define consciousness. However, you can have a quite fruitful discussion about consciousness without explicitly defining, implicitly using a minimal operational definition: you know it if you have it. Surprisingly, even the consciousness deniers and consciousness eliminators seem to know exactly what it is we are talking about! It is such a discussion based on the fact that we all imagine that we are conscious that is the basis of a philosophical analysis. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
LizR wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 10:15, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Yes but I'm confused, I though you were the one arguing that Bruno had discovered something new under the sun, a new sort of uncertainty That's hardly what Bruno is claiming. Step 3 is only a small step in a logical argument. It shows that if our normal everyday consciousness is the result of computation, then it can be duplicated (in principle - if you have a problem with matter duplicators, consider an AI programme) and that this leads to what looks like uncertainty from one person's perspective. You only get that impression because in Bruno's treatment of the case -- the two copies are immediately separated by a large distance and don't further interact. You might come to a different conclusion if you let the copies sit down together and have a chat. Separating them geographically was meant to mimic the different worlds idea from MWI. But I think that is a bit of a cheat. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 4/15/2015 9:02 AM, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: there a difference between the past and the future and if Many Worlds is correct then unlike the past there is nothing linear and nothing unique about Mr.You's future. Except the disciples of MWI insist that the SWE (without collapse) includes the totality of physical evolution. Since the SWE is time reversible this implies that the past is just as branching as the future. Yes there are a astronomical and possibly infinite number of branches in the past, but only one of them led to Mr. You. That's simply your assumption. A virtually infinite number of past histories from the big bang to now could have led to me. Most of the very recent ones would be macroscopically indistinquishable, but quite different microscopically Mr. You can remember everything in one particular path I don't know who this Chinese wonder is, but I have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast last week and nothing at all prior to WW2. and absolutely nothing in any of the others, so one path is unique and as far as Mr. You is concerned the past is one and only one linear sequence. But the future is massively parallel not linear and Mr. You can't remember anything in any of them so none of them are unique. If they are different then each of them is unique. Brent Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else. --- Lily Tomlin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness
On 15 Apr 2015, at 00:15, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: I predict that I will win 1 million dollar by tomorrow. I know my prediction is correct because this will happen in one of the branches of the multiverse. Do you agree with this statement? No I do not agree because matter duplicating machines do not exist yet so if I check tomorrow the laws of physics will allow me to find only one chunk of matter that fits the description of Mr. I (that is a chunk of matter that behaves in a Telmomenezesian way), and that particular chunk of matter does not appear to have a million dollars. However if the prediction was tomorrow Telmo Menezes will win a million dollars then I would agree, provided of course that the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is true. You are trying to play a game that is absurd, which is to deny the first person view. That is ridiculous, only a fool would deny the first person view and John Clark is not a fool. Mr.I can always look to the past and see one unique linear sequence of Mr.I's leading up to him, and Mr. I can remember being every one of them. But things are very different looking to the future, nothing is unique and far from being linear things could hardly be more parallel with a astronomical and possibly infinite number of branching, and Mr. I can't remember being any of them. And that is why the sense of first person identity has nothing to do with our expectations of the future but is only a function of our memories of the past. Unfortunately, prediction and probabilities concerns the future. You use your crusade against pronouns If Telmo Menezes thinks that any objection in the use of personal pronouns in thought experiments designed to illuminate the fundamental nature of personal identity No, we agree on the personal identity before asking the prediction question. The duplication experiement is not designed to illuminate the nature of personal identity, which is made clear beforehand, with the 1p and 3p diaries. You often says this, and never reply to the fact that this has been debunked. is absurd then call John Clark's bluff and simply stop using them; then if Telmo Menezes can still express ideas on this subject clearly and without circularity it would prove that John Clark's concern that people who used such pronouns were implicitly stating what they were trying to prove were indeed absurd. You say that you accept the notion of first person, but what telmo meant is that you stop using it in the WM-prediction, where you agree that you will be in the two places in the 3p view, with unique 1p, so the P = 1/2 is just obvious. It is not deep: to this why it will be deep, you need to move on step 4, step 5, etc. Monty Hall knows that when the Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow opens the door and sees Moscow the Moscow Man will be born from the ashes of the Helsinki Man, The Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow knows that too. He was fully informed of the protocol of the experiment. OK but it doesn't matter if he knows the protocol of the experiment or not, regardless of where he is until The Helsinki Man sees Moscow or Moscow the Helsinki Man will remain The Helsinki Man. So who will become the Moscow Man? The one who sees Moscow will become the Moscow Man. Yes, but that is the H-man too, with the 3-1 view. Nothing is ambiguous, once we understand and APPLY the 1/3 distinction. That is what you never seem to do. Oh well, the good thing about tautologies is that they're always true. Verb tenses also become problematic if you introduce time machines. Douglas Adams had something to say about this in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Yes, I love it too. Doesn't it worry you a bit that your grammatical argument is so similar to one found in an absurdist work of fiction? No because if time machines actually existed then it wouldn't be absurd at all, the English language really would need a major overhaul in the way it uses verb tenses. And if matter duplicating machines existed the English language really would need a major overhaul about the way it uses personal pronouns. The only difference is that if the laws of physics are what we think they are then time machines are NOT possible, but if the laws of physics are what we think they are then matter duplicating machines ARE possible. Show me how to do it. Describe quantum uncertainty according to the MWI without personal pronouns. I know you will be able to do it because: a) you like the MWI b) you hate personal pronouns CASE #1 Telmo Menezes shoots one photon at 2 slits with a photographic plate behind the slits. As the photon approaches the slits the entire universe splits into 2 with the photon going through the left slit in one universe and the right slit