Does Google's quantum computer have the right stuff?

[Philip Thrift]

There are few details from Google about what the actual hardware and 
process is. Here is a range of possibilities:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-google-probably-made-the-quantum-supremacy-chip-296d5d321bbd

"Here’s a guess at the identity (and order) of our 14 lithography layers, 
followed by a general description of each layer’s purpose ..." etc.

recommended reading: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.06560


@philipthrift

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Re: Stuff it

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Aug 2019, at 15:39, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 7:42:00 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 14 Aug 2019, at 12:39, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 5:06:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 11:49, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> The Right Stuff
>>>>> Ned Markosian
>>>>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf 
>>>>> <https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf>
>>>>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/ 
>>>>> <https://markosian.net/online-papers/>
>>>>> 
>>>>> Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also 
>>>>> known as
>>>>> “matter” and “material.”
>>>>> 
>>>>> This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction
>>>>> between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>>>>> ontologies
>>>>> of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
>>>>> stuff
>>>>> ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
>>>>> defends
>>>>> the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
>>>>> things)
>>>>> in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four 
>>>>> of
>>>>> which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical
>>>>> positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections 
>>>>> to
>>>>> positing stuff are considered and rejected.
>>>> 
>>>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
>>>> things and stuff.
>>>> 
>>>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>>>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
>>>> experiences, etc.),
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>>>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>>>> 
>>>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not 
>>>> mentioning the existence of a  plumber !
>>>> 
>>>> Bruno
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
>>>> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
>>> 
>>> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made of 
>>> matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person 
>>> experience never proves anything, except the existence of that experience 
>>> for the one who remember it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
>>>> "real" like a plum-eating experience.
>>> 
>>> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come 
>>> from.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
>>>> it's the plum stuff that matters.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, not 
>>> with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in stuff, 
>>> but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find for 
>>> better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know that 
>>> they are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well sustained, 
>>> or that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes p-zombies.
>>> 
>>> Bruno
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, He

Re: Stuff it

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 7:42:00 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 14 Aug 2019, at 12:39, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 5:06:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 11:49, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *The Right Stuff*
>>>> Ned Markosian
>>>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
>>>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/
>>>>
>>>> *Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also 
>>>> known as*
>>>> *“matter” and “material.”*
>>>>
>>>> *This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The 
>>>> distinction*
>>>> *between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>>>> ontologies*
>>>> *of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a 
>>>> pure stuff*
>>>> *ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
>>>> defends*
>>>> *the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition 
>>>> to things)*
>>>> *in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and 
>>>> four of*
>>>> *which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain 
>>>> metaphysical*
>>>> *positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five 
>>>> objections to*
>>>> *positing stuff are considered and rejected.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction 
>>>> between things and stuff.
>>>>
>>>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>>>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, 
>>>> physical experiences, etc.),
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>>>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>>>>
>>>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not 
>>>> mentioning the existence of a  plumber !
>>>>
>>>> Bruno
>>>>
>>>>
>>>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
>>> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
>>>
>>>
>>> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made 
>>> of matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person 
>>> experience never proves anything, except the existence of that experience 
>>> for the one who remember it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
>>> "real" like a plum-eating experience.
>>>
>>>
>>> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come 
>>> from.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, 
>>> but it's the plum stuff that matters.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, 
>>> not with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in 
>>> stuff, but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find 
>>> for better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know 
>>> that they are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well 
>>> sustained, or that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes 
>>> p-zombies.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, Hedda 
>> Hassel Mørch‏, ... materialist panpsychist kind, not the idealist version 
>> of maybe a few) enterprise.
>>
>> Either:
>>
>> Mechanism is true.
>>
>>or
>>
>> Panpsychism is true.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why?
>>
>> It seems to me

Re: Stuff it

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 14 Aug 2019, at 12:39, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 5:06:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 11:49, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The Right Stuff
>>>> Ned Markosian
>>>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf 
>>>> <https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf>
>>>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/ 
>>>> <https://markosian.net/online-papers/>
>>>> 
>>>> Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also known 
>>>> as
>>>> “matter” and “material.”
>>>> 
>>>> This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction
>>>> between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>>>> ontologies
>>>> of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
>>>> stuff
>>>> ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper defends
>>>> the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
>>>> things)
>>>> in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four of
>>>> which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical
>>>> positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections to
>>>> positing stuff are considered and rejected.
>>> 
>>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
>>> things and stuff.
>>> 
>>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
>>> experiences, etc.),
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>>> 
>>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not mentioning 
>>> the existence of a  plumber !
>>> 
>>> Bruno
>>> 
>>> 
>>>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
>>> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
>> 
>> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made of 
>> matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person 
>> experience never proves anything, except the existence of that experience 
>> for the one who remember it.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
>>> "real" like a plum-eating experience.
>> 
>> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come from.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
>>> it's the plum stuff that matters.
>> 
>> 
>> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, not 
>> with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in stuff, 
>> but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find for 
>> better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know that 
>> they are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well sustained, 
>> or that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes p-zombies.
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, Hedda 
>> Hassel Mørch‏, ... materialist panpsychist kind, not the idealist version of 
>> maybe a few) enterprise.
>> 
>> Either:
>> 
>> Mechanism is true.
>> 
>>or
>> 
>> Panpsychism is true.
> 
> 
> Why?
> 
> It seems to me that if Mechanism is false, *many* different sorts of 
> non-mechanist theory can be true, including pure arithmetical one, or set 
> theoretical one.
> 
> With Non-Mechanism, weak materialism *might* become consistent, but that does 
> not (yet) make it  necessarily true.
> 
> Bruno
> 

Re: Stuff it

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 5:06:11 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 12 Aug 2019, at 11:49, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *The Right Stuff*
>>> Ned Markosian
>>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
>>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/
>>>
>>> *Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also 
>>> known as*
>>> *“matter” and “material.”*
>>>
>>> *This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The 
>>> distinction*
>>> *between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>>> ontologies*
>>> *of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
>>> stuff*
>>> *ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
>>> defends*
>>> *the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition 
>>> to things)*
>>> *in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and 
>>> four of*
>>> *which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain 
>>> metaphysical*
>>> *positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five 
>>> objections to*
>>> *positing stuff are considered and rejected.*
>>>
>>>
>>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
>>> things and stuff.
>>>
>>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, 
>>> physical experiences, etc.),
>>>
>>>
>>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>>>
>>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not 
>>> mentioning the existence of a  plumber !
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
>> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
>>
>>
>> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made 
>> of matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person 
>> experience never proves anything, except the existence of that experience 
>> for the one who remember it.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
>> "real" like a plum-eating experience.
>>
>>
>> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come 
>> from.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, 
>> but it's the plum stuff that matters.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, 
>> not with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in 
>> stuff, but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find 
>> for better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know 
>> that they are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well 
>> sustained, or that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes 
>> p-zombies.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
> This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, Hedda 
> Hassel Mørch‏, ... materialist panpsychist kind, not the idealist version 
> of maybe a few) enterprise.
>
> Either:
>
> Mechanism is true.
>
>or
>
> Panpsychism is true.
>
>
>
> Why?
>
> It seems to me that if Mechanism is false, *many* different sorts of 
> non-mechanist theory can be true, including pure arithmetical one, or set 
> theoretical one.
>
> With Non-Mechanism, weak materialism *might* become consistent, but that 
> does not (yet) make it  necessarily true.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
Basically, you replace mechanism with an experiential mechanism (
*e-mechanism*), where 

  *Φ+Ψ:* *both numbers (information) and [real!] qualia (experience) 
are processed*.

Now matter (in the panpsychist view) supplies *Φ+Ψ* but maybe there's an 
alternative.

It comes down to what real *Ψ *is.


A recent paper from Hedda Hassel Mørch here:

https://philpapers.org/archive/MRCTPP.pdf

A real *Ψ* vs an illusory or simulated *Ψ *is the key issue.

@philipthrift


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Re: Stuff it

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 12 Aug 2019, at 11:49, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The Right Stuff
>>> Ned Markosian
>>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf 
>>> <https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf>
>>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/ 
>>> <https://markosian.net/online-papers/>
>>> 
>>> Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also known 
>>> as
>>> “matter” and “material.”
>>> 
>>> This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction
>>> between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>>> ontologies
>>> of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
>>> stuff
>>> ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper defends
>>> the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
>>> things)
>>> in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four of
>>> which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical
>>> positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections to
>>> positing stuff are considered and rejected.
>> 
>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
>> things and stuff.
>> 
>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
>> experiences, etc.),
>> 
>> 
>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>> 
>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not mentioning 
>> the existence of a  plumber !
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
>> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
> 
> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made of 
> matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person experience 
> never proves anything, except the existence of that experience for the one 
> who remember it.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not "real" 
>> like a plum-eating experience.
> 
> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come from.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
>> it's the plum stuff that matters.
> 
> 
> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, not 
> with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in stuff, 
> but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find for 
> better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know that they 
> are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well sustained, or 
> that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes p-zombies.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, Hedda 
> Hassel Mørch‏, ... materialist panpsychist kind, not the idealist version of 
> maybe a few) enterprise.
> 
> Either:
> 
> Mechanism is true.
> 
>or
> 
> Panpsychism is true.


Why?

It seems to me that if Mechanism is false, *many* different sorts of 
non-mechanist theory can be true, including pure arithmetical one, or set 
theoretical one.

With Non-Mechanism, weak materialism *might* become consistent, but that does 
not (yet) make it  necessarily true.

Bruno





> 
> 
> @philipthrift
> 
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>  
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Re: Stuff it

[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 4:17:04 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> *The Right Stuff*
>> Ned Markosian
>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/
>>
>> *Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also 
>> known as*
>> *“matter” and “material.”*
>>
>> *This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction*
>> *between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>> ontologies*
>> *of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
>> stuff*
>> *ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
>> defends*
>> *the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition 
>> to things)*
>> *in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four 
>> of*
>> *which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain 
>> metaphysical*
>> *positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections 
>> to*
>> *positing stuff are considered and rejected.*
>>
>>
>> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
>> things and stuff.
>>
>> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
>> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
>> experiences, etc.),
>>
>>
>> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
>> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>>
>> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not 
>> mentioning the existence of a  plumber !
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.
>
>
> But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made 
> of matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person 
> experience never proves anything, except the existence of that experience 
> for the one who remember it.
>
>
>
>
> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
> "real" like a plum-eating experience.
>
>
> With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come 
> from.
>
>
>
>
> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
> it's the plum stuff that matters.
>
>
>
> Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, not 
> with materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in stuff, 
> but if digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find for 
> better are find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know that 
> they are invalid, but that shows that your intuition is not well sustained, 
> or that mechanism is false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes p-zombies.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
This is the whole panpsychism (here the Galen Stawson, Philip Goff, Hedda 
Hassel Mørch‏, ... materialist panpsychist kind, not the idealist version 
of maybe a few) enterprise.

Either:

Mechanism is true.

   or

Panpsychism is true.


@philipthrift

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Re: Stuff it

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 12 Aug 2019, at 00:16, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The Right Stuff
>> Ned Markosian
>> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf 
>> <https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf>
>> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/ 
>> <https://markosian.net/online-papers/>
>> 
>> Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also known as
>> “matter” and “material.”
>> 
>> This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction
>> between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
>> ontologies
>> of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure stuff
>> ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper defends
>> the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
>> things)
>> in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four of
>> which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical
>> positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections to
>> positing stuff are considered and rejected.
> 
> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
> things and stuff.
> 
> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
> experiences, etc.),
> 
> 
> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
> slowly) I am not  convinced.
> 
> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not mentioning 
> the existence of a  plumber !
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
>  I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
> experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.

But the experience of eating a plum is not a proof that the plum is made of 
matter. I dreamed a lot eating things, for example. A first person experience 
never proves anything, except the existence of that experience for the one who 
remember it.



> 
> 2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not "real" 
> like a plum-eating experience.

With mechanism, we do have an explanation of where such experience come from.



> 
> Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
> it's the plum stuff that matters.


Then mechanism is false. Maybe, but the evidences side with mechanism, not with 
materialism. Yes, language bewllders us in making us believe in stuff, but if 
digital mechanism is correct, all the argument you might find for better are 
find by your counterpart in arithmetic, and here we know that they are invalid, 
but that shows that your intuition is not well sustained, or that mechanism is 
false (and the “you” in arithmetic becomes p-zombies.

Bruno




> 
> @philipthrift
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Stuff it

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 1:07:02 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> *The Right Stuff*
> Ned Markosian
> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/
>
> *Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also 
> known as*
> *“matter” and “material.”*
>
> *This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction*
> *between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
> ontologies*
> *of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
> stuff*
> *ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
> defends*
> *the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
> things)*
> *in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four 
> of*
> *which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain 
> metaphysical*
> *positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections 
> to*
> *positing stuff are considered and rejected.*
>
>
> Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between 
> things and stuff.
>
> So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
> (Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
> experiences, etc.),
>
>
> Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read 
> slowly) I am not  convinced.
>
> I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not 
> mentioning the existence of a  plumber !
>
> Bruno
>
>
 I don't know about a plumb, but of a plum, I am more sure of any of my 
experiences of eating a plum than 2+2=4.

2+2=4 is a heuristic of mathematical language. Useful for us, but not 
"real" like a plum-eating experience.

Language bewilders us, and thus we talk and write and think of things, but 
it's the plum stuff that matters.

@philipthrift


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Re: Stuff it

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 9 Aug 2019, at 22:27, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> The Right Stuff
> Ned Markosian
> https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
> from https://markosian.net/online-papers/
> 
> Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also known as
> “matter” and “material.”
> 
> This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction
> between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
> ontologies
> of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure stuff
> ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper defends
> the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
> things)
> in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four of
> which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical
> positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections to
> positing stuff are considered and rejected.

Honest and clear defence of stuff!. I appreciate his distinction between things 
and stuff.

So with mechanism, we can say:  many things no stuff! 
(Many things like numbers, machines, persons,  physical objects, physical 
experiences, etc.),


Feel free to defend any of the eleven reason he gave. Up to now (I read slowly) 
I am not  convinced.

I am more sure that 2+2=4 than of the existence of plumb, .. not mentioning the 
existence of a  plumber !

Bruno




> 
> @philipthrift
> 
> 
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Stuff it

[Philip Thrift]

*The Right Stuff*
Ned Markosian
https://markosiandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/right-stuff.pdf
from https://markosian.net/online-papers/

*Things are also known as “objects” and “entities,” and stuff is also known 
as*
*“matter” and “material.”*

*This paper argues for including stuff in one’s ontology. The distinction*
*between things and stuff is first clarified, and then three different 
ontologies*
*of the physical universe are spelled out: a pure thing ontology, a pure 
stuff*
*ontology, and a mixed ontology of both things and stuff. (The paper 
defends*
*the latter.) Eleven different reasons for including stuff (in addition to 
things)*
*in one’s ontology are given (seven of which the author endorses and four 
of*
*which would be sensible reasons for philosophers with certain metaphysical*
*positions that the author does not happen to hold). Then five objections 
to*
*positing stuff are considered and rejected.*

@philipthrift

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 9:27:22 AM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>
> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 8:07:49 AM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> If *everything is matter* (against the idea that it's an illusion) then 
>> matter doesn't have its origin in anything.  
>>
>> People who say there is matter and something else have to say exactly 
>> what that immaterial "something else" is. There seems to be little 
>> "substance" to the claim that there is something else that's not matter.
>>
>> @philipthrift
>>
>
> There is energy that by E = mc^2 has an equivalence to mass. However, the 
> mass content of a particle or object is derived. The mass-gap of YM gauge 
> fields such as QCD and the role of the Higgs condensate in effect derives 
> the mass of particles at low energy. This is established physics.
>
> LC 
>


There is matter that has mass. There is matter that *has no mass*: Massless 
matter.

e.g.  *massless matter fermions*

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/349/1/012001/pdf

cf.
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/massless-particles-cant-be-stopped
 
@philipthrift

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 8:07:49 AM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 7:40:14 AM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>>
>> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 5:40:34 AM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 4:20:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 > On 2 Aug 2019, at 00:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
 everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote: 
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
 >> This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied 
 in the Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily 
 confronted 
 with things which are not only not computable, but not representable in 
 any 
 third person way. 
 >> The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined 
 by []p & p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable 
 reality accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de 
 force, made possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness 
 theorem, together with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and 
 Scott-Montague un-definability of knowledge theorem). 
 >> 
 >> Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically 
 real and explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness. 
 > 
 > But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things 
 (reflective relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine 
 does 
 not show they are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions 
 for 
 example, which are partly shareable. 

 We share only the number relations. Not the qualia itself. We only 
 projects ours on others, when enough similar to us. 

 The machine qualia are not just non computable, they are non definable 
 and obey to a logic of qualia known before we found it in the discourse of 
 the machines.  They have a conical perceive field associated with them. A 
 good paper is the paper on quantum logic by John Bell (not the physicists, 
 but the logician). There are some mistake in that paper, but not relevant 
 here. 

 Bell, J. L. (1986). A new approach to quantum logic. Brit. J. Phil. 
 Sci., 37:83-99. 

 Bruno 



>>> If qualia are not "number relations" then they must be substances on 
>>> their own.
>>>
>>> And what is substance that is (at least partly) non-numerical: matter.
>>>
>>> @philipthrift 
>>>
>>
>> Matter has its origin in either the condensate interaction of 
>> Goldstone-Higgs bosons or with strong asymptotic QCD. With the Goldstone 
>> bosons the degree of freedom of the scalar fields enters into a 
>> longitudinal degree of freedom in weak flavor changing or isospin fields or 
>> in fermions. With QCD the interaction is strong so there is no possible 
>> escape for a the massless gauge boson or gluon. So one can think of these 
>> as a situation where a massless particle is trapped in some small volume so 
>> from a large scale it appears to be a massive particle with a timelike 
>> direction. There really is not anything else to it.
>>
>> LC
>>  
>>
>
>
> If *everything is matter* (against the idea that it's an illusion) then 
> matter doesn't have its origin in anything.  
>
> People who say there is matter and something else have to say exactly what 
> that immaterial "something else" is. There seems to be little "substance" 
> to the claim that there is something else that's not matter.
>
> @philipthrift
>

There is energy that by E = mc^2 has an equivalence to mass. However, the 
mass content of a particle or object is derived. The mass-gap of YM gauge 
fields such as QCD and the role of the Higgs condensate in effect derives 
the mass of particles at low energy. This is established physics.

LC 

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 7:40:14 AM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>
> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 5:40:34 AM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 4:20:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> > On 2 Aug 2019, at 00:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
>>> everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote: 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
>>> >> This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied 
>>> in the Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily confronted 
>>> with things which are not only not computable, but not representable in any 
>>> third person way. 
>>> >> The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined 
>>> by []p & p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable 
>>> reality accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de 
>>> force, made possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness 
>>> theorem, together with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and 
>>> Scott-Montague un-definability of knowledge theorem). 
>>> >> 
>>> >> Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically 
>>> real and explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness. 
>>> > 
>>> > But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things 
>>> (reflective relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine does 
>>> not show they are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions for 
>>> example, which are partly shareable. 
>>>
>>> We share only the number relations. Not the qualia itself. We only 
>>> projects ours on others, when enough similar to us. 
>>>
>>> The machine qualia are not just non computable, they are non definable 
>>> and obey to a logic of qualia known before we found it in the discourse of 
>>> the machines.  They have a conical perceive field associated with them. A 
>>> good paper is the paper on quantum logic by John Bell (not the physicists, 
>>> but the logician). There are some mistake in that paper, but not relevant 
>>> here. 
>>>
>>> Bell, J. L. (1986). A new approach to quantum logic. Brit. J. Phil. 
>>> Sci., 37:83-99. 
>>>
>>> Bruno 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> If qualia are not "number relations" then they must be substances on 
>> their own.
>>
>> And what is substance that is (at least partly) non-numerical: matter.
>>
>> @philipthrift 
>>
>
> Matter has its origin in either the condensate interaction of 
> Goldstone-Higgs bosons or with strong asymptotic QCD. With the Goldstone 
> bosons the degree of freedom of the scalar fields enters into a 
> longitudinal degree of freedom in weak flavor changing or isospin fields or 
> in fermions. With QCD the interaction is strong so there is no possible 
> escape for a the massless gauge boson or gluon. So one can think of these 
> as a situation where a massless particle is trapped in some small volume so 
> from a large scale it appears to be a massive particle with a timelike 
> direction. There really is not anything else to it.
>
> LC
>  
>


If *everything is matter* (against the idea that it's an illusion) then 
matter doesn't have its origin in anything.  

People who say there is matter and something else have to say exactly what 
that immaterial "something else" is. There seems to be little "substance" 
to the claim that there is something else that's not matter.

@philipthrift

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 2 Aug 2019, at 12:40, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 4:20:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> > On 2 Aug 2019, at 00:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> > > wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
> >> This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied in the 
> >> Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily confronted with 
> >> things which are not only not computable, but not representable in any 
> >> third person way. 
> >> The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined by []p 
> >> & p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable reality 
> >> accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de force, made 
> >> possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness theorem, together 
> >> with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and Scott-Montague 
> >> un-definability of knowledge theorem). 
> >> 
> >> Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically real and 
> >> explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness. 
> > 
> > But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things (reflective 
> > relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine does not show 
> > they are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions for example, 
> > which are partly shareable. 
> 
> We share only the number relations. Not the qualia itself. We only projects 
> ours on others, when enough similar to us. 
> 
> The machine qualia are not just non computable, they are non definable and 
> obey to a logic of qualia known before we found it in the discourse of the 
> machines.  They have a conical perceive field associated with them. A good 
> paper is the paper on quantum logic by John Bell (not the physicists, but the 
> logician). There are some mistake in that paper, but not relevant here. 
> 
> Bell, J. L. (1986). A new approach to quantum logic. Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 
> 37:83-99. 
> 
> Bruno 
> 
> 
> 
> If qualia are not "number relations" then they must be substances on their 
> own.

Why should something be either “number relation” or substance?

When a digital machine introspect itself, it is confronted with some truth 
concerning both numerical (or numericalisable) aspect of itself, and non 
numerical aspect of itself, which are semantical and related to the 
arithmetical truth (itself a non numericalisable reality). The arithmetical 
reality is full of semantical notions which are non numerical, when seen from 
inside.  The arithmetical truth itself is non numerical. To model it, we use 
the assertion themselves. Today that “1+1=2” we can say simply that 1+1=2, but 
we cannot translate “true(“1+1=2”) in any numerical way that the machine 
concerned would make sense of, unless “true” is a restricted truth predicate, 
not working for all proposition that the machine can assert.

All the self-modes involving the conjunction “& p”, like []p & p, or []p & <>t 
& p”, or just “p” itself are not definable in the language of the machine. They 
are necessarily not numerical for the machine, but the machine can bet that 
they correspond to complex set of sentences/numbers once she postulates the 
Mechanist hypothesis. That asks for a big leap of faith fr the machine, as []p 
& p, for example, describes a non numerical subject. The machine is born “non 
mechanist”, somehow. It *is* (and has to be) counter-intuitive.

Bruno



> 
> And what is substance that is (at least partly) non-numerical: matter.
> 
> @philipthrift 
> 
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>  
> .

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, August 2, 2019 at 4:20:58 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> > On 2 Aug 2019, at 00:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
> everyth...@googlegroups.com > wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 
> >> This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied in 
> the Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily confronted 
> with things which are not only not computable, but not representable in any 
> third person way. 
> >> The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined by 
> []p & p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable 
> reality accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de 
> force, made possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness 
> theorem, together with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and 
> Scott-Montague un-definability of knowledge theorem). 
> >> 
> >> Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically real 
> and explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness. 
> > 
> > But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things (reflective 
> relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine does not show 
> they are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions for example, 
> which are partly shareable. 
>
> We share only the number relations. Not the qualia itself. We only 
> projects ours on others, when enough similar to us. 
>
> The machine qualia are not just non computable, they are non definable and 
> obey to a logic of qualia known before we found it in the discourse of the 
> machines.  They have a conical perceive field associated with them. A good 
> paper is the paper on quantum logic by John Bell (not the physicists, but 
> the logician). There are some mistake in that paper, but not relevant here. 
>
> Bell, J. L. (1986). A new approach to quantum logic. Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 
> 37:83-99. 
>
> Bruno 
>
>
>
If qualia are not "number relations" then they must be substances on their 
own.

And what is substance that is (at least partly) non-numerical: matter.

@philipthrift 

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 2 Aug 2019, at 00:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied in the 
>> Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily confronted with 
>> things which are not only not computable, but not representable in any third 
>> person way.
>> The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined by []p & 
>> p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable reality 
>> accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de force, made 
>> possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness theorem, together 
>> with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and Scott-Montague 
>> un-definability of knowledge theorem).
>> 
>> Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically real and 
>> explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness.
> 
> But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things (reflective 
> relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine does not show they 
> are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions for example, which 
> are partly shareable.

We share only the number relations. Not the qualia itself. We only projects 
ours on others, when enough similar to us.

The machine qualia are not just non computable, they are non definable and obey 
to a logic of qualia known before we found it in the discourse of the machines. 
 They have a conical perceive field associated with them. A good paper is the 
paper on quantum logic by John Bell (not the physicists, but the logician). 
There are some mistake in that paper, but not relevant here.

Bell, J. L. (1986). A new approach to quantum logic. Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 
37:83-99.

Bruno

> 
> Brent
> 
> 
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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 8/1/2019 5:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied in 
the Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily 
confronted with things which are not only not computable, but not 
representable in any third person way.
The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined by 
[]p & p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable 
reality accessed by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de 
force, made possible tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness 
theorem, together with Tarski un-definability of truth theorem  (and 
Scott-Montague un-definability of knowledge theorem).


Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically real 
and explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness.


But this is not at all convincing.  Just because some things (reflective 
relations) are not computable by the prefect logic machine does not show 
they are models or instances of qualia. Qualia are perceptions for 
example, which are partly shareable.


Brent


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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 1 Aug 2019, at 12:42, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 3:51:45 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 31 Jul 2019, at 09:25, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> If it isn't stuff (at the bottom of it), it it isn't real.
>> 
>> Otherwise, it is idealism, which physics (as today's "popular" physicists 
>> present it to the public) has become today.
>> 
>> In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that 
>> assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally 
>> mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.
> 
> 
> In a first approximation, this can help. But, at some point,  it might be 
> handy to distinguish between
> 
> - human idealism (what you describe by “ that assert that reality, or reality 
> as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed”)
> 
> -universal idealism (the same with “human” replace by digital machine or 
> (intensional) number (I will lake this notion clear in the glossary that I 
> have promised).
> 
> - immaterialism (the belief in a Turing universal system and in no more than 
> that for the ontology).
> 
> The last case is more a neutral monism than an idealism, as the ideas are not 
> really primitive, they occur in the mind of numbers, which are taken as the 
> “independent ontology” that we assume.
> 
> Metter is not “just” an idea in the mind of some numbers: it is a 
> phenomenological reality that *all* universal number encounter. The physical 
> reality is a deep invariant sharable by all machine/number, and which has for 
> them also a non sharable part (the qualia, the immediate consciousness, …).
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> To identify qualia themselves with purely numerical entities is the question.
> 
> If qualia are nonnumerical, and assuming they are real (which I do), then 
> they must be nonnumerical (or non-"physical") material constituents of nature.

The machine can define “[]p” numerically, like a “machine’s body” or “machine’s 
relative code”. 
The machine cannot be sure it is really its own code, but by betting on 
mechanism and on the doctor choice of substitution level, she can conceive that 
such a code exists, and reason from this..

BUT...

…the machine can’t define “[]p & p” numerically at all. It is logically 
impossible. The machine’s soul know that she is not a machine (except perhaps 
from God’s point of view, but she knows that she can’t have that view, or 
assess it publicly).

This is the tour de force of the Theaetetus definition when applied in the 
Mechanist frame: it explains why machines are necessarily confronted with 
things which are not only not computable, but not representable in any third 
person way.
The corresponding logic (the modal logic of [1]p, with [1]p defined by []p & 
p), i.e. S4Grz is a formal logic describing a non formalisable reality accessed 
by all (sound) machine. Yes, that is a (meta- tour de force, made possible 
tanks to Gödel completeness and Incompleteness theorem, together with Tarski 
un-definability of truth theorem  (and Scott-Montague un-definability of 
knowledge theorem). 

Qualia are non physical and non numerical, yet phenomenologically real and 
explained or “meta-explained”, like for consciousness.

“We” can meta-define knowledge and qualia, by referring to the “simple” god of 
mechanism: some notion of arithmetical truth, and the truth of Mechanism which 
is assumed. We can also understand intuitively that we cannot really define the 
notion of arithmetical truth, and indeed, that is why logicians have invented 
“first order logic”, which gives a way to talk and reason on things that we 
cannot define (but that we can approximate).

Concerning the definability of the self-mode we have, from the machine’s public 
opinion:

 p  undefinable,
 []pdefinable,
 []p & pundefinable,
 []p & <>t  definable,
 []p & <>t & p  undefinable


Bruno







> 
> @philipthrift
> 
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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 3:51:45 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 31 Jul 2019, at 09:25, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
> If it isn't stuff (at the bottom of it), it it isn't real.
>
> Otherwise, it is idealism, which physics (as today's "popular" physicists 
> present it to the public) has become today.
>
> *In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that 
> assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally 
> mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.*
>
>
>
> In a first approximation, this can help. But, at some point,  it might be 
> handy to distinguish between
>
> - human idealism (what you describe by “ that assert that reality, or 
> reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally 
> constructed”)
>
> -universal idealism (the same with “human” replace by digital machine or 
> (intensional) number (I will lake this notion clear in the glossary that I 
> have promised).
>
> - immaterialism (the belief in a Turing universal system and in no more 
> than that for the ontology).
>
> The last case is more a neutral monism than an idealism, as the ideas are 
> not really primitive, they occur in the mind of numbers, which are taken as 
> the “independent ontology” that we assume.
>
> Metter is not “just” an idea in the mind of some numbers: it is a 
> phenomenological reality that *all* universal number encounter. The 
> physical reality is a deep invariant sharable by all machine/number, and 
> which has for them also a non sharable part (the qualia, the immediate 
> consciousness, …).
>
> Bruno
>
>
> *To identify qualia themselves with purely numerical entities* is the 
question.

If qualia are nonnumerical, and assuming they are real (which I do), then 
they must be nonnumerical (or non-"physical") material constituents of 
nature.

@philipthrift

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 31 Jul 2019, at 09:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> If it isn't stuff (at the bottom of it), it it isn't real.
> 
> Otherwise, it is idealism, which physics (as today's "popular" physicists 
> present it to the public) has become today.
> 
> In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that assert 
> that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, 
> mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.


In a first approximation, this can help. But, at some point,  it might be handy 
to distinguish between

- human idealism (what you describe by “ that assert that reality, or reality 
as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed”)

-universal idealism (the same with “human” replace by digital machine or 
(intensional) number (I will lake this notion clear in the glossary that I have 
promised).

- immaterialism (the belief in a Turing universal system and in no more than 
that for the ontology).

The last case is more a neutral monism than an idealism, as the ideas are not 
really primitive, they occur in the mind of numbers, which are taken as the 
“independent ontology” that we assume.

Metter is not “just” an idea in the mind of some numbers: it is a 
phenomenological reality that *all* universal number encounter. The physical 
reality is a deep invariant sharable by all machine/number, and which has for 
them also a non sharable part (the qualia, the immediate consciousness, …).

Bruno



> 
> @philipthrift
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 3:09:51 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
> There may not be any stuff that is quantum. The paper looks to be a further 
> extension of weak measurements devised by Aharonov.
> 
> LC
> 
> On Monday, July 29, 2019 at 2:18:02 PM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> But this is interesting:
> 
> [ via 
> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
>  
> <http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html>
>  ]
> 
> 
> 
> The Weak Reality That Makes Quantum Phenomena More Natural: Novel Insights 
> and Experiments
> Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, Mordecai Waegell, and Avshalom C. Elitzur
> November 7, 2018
> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm 
> <https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm>
> 
> Abstract: While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, the 
> Two-State Vector Formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing 
> between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical 
> values emerge. This unusual picture calls for a deeper study. Instead of the 
> common, wave-based picture of quantum mechanics, we suggest a new, 
> particle-based perspective: Each particle possesses a definite location 
> throughout its evolution, while some of its physical variables (characterized 
> by deterministic operators, some of which obey nonlocal equations of motion) 
> are carried by “mirage particles” accounting for its unique behavior. Within 
> the time interval between pre- and post-selection, the particle gives rise to 
> a horde of such mirage particles, of which some can be negative. What appears 
> to be “no-particle”, known to give rise to interaction-free measurement, is 
> in fact a self-canceling pair of positive and negative mirage particles, 
> which can be momentarily split and cancel out again. Feasible experiments can 
> give empirical evidence for these fleeting phenomena. In this respect, the 
> Heisenberg ontology is shown to be conceptually advantageous compared to the 
> Schrödinger picture. We review several recent advances, discuss their 
> foundational significance and point out possible directions for future 
> research.
> 
> @philipthrift
> 
> -- 
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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

If it isn't stuff (at the bottom of it), it it isn't real.

Otherwise, it is idealism, which physics (as today's "popular" physicists 
present it to the public) has become today.

*In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that 
assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally 
mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.*

@philipthrift


On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 3:09:51 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>
> There may not be any stuff that is quantum. The paper looks to be a 
> further extension of weak measurements devised by Aharonov.
>
> LC
>
> On Monday, July 29, 2019 at 2:18:02 PM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>> But this is interesting:
>>
>> [ via 
>> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
>>  ]
>>
>>
>>
>> *The Weak Reality That Makes Quantum Phenomena More Natural: Novel 
>> Insights and Experiments*
>> Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, Mordecai Waegell, and Avshalom C. Elitzur
>> November 7, 2018
>> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm
>>
>> *Abstract*: While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, 
>> the Two-State Vector Formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing 
>> between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical 
>> values emerge. This unusual picture calls for a deeper study. Instead of 
>> the common, wave-based picture of quantum mechanics, we suggest a new, 
>> particle-based perspective: Each particle possesses a definite location 
>> throughout its evolution, while some of its physical variables 
>> (characterized by deterministic operators, some of which obey nonlocal 
>> equations of motion) are carried by “mirage particles” accounting for its 
>> unique behavior. Within the time interval between pre- and post-selection, 
>> the particle gives rise to a horde of such mirage particles, of which some 
>> can be negative. What appears to be “no-particle”, known to give rise to 
>> interaction-free measurement, is in fact a self-canceling pair of positive 
>> and negative mirage particles, which can be momentarily split and cancel 
>> out again. Feasible experiments can give empirical evidence for these 
>> fleeting phenomena. In this respect, the Heisenberg ontology is shown to be 
>> conceptually advantageous compared to the Schrödinger picture. We review 
>> several recent advances, discuss their foundational significance and point 
>> out possible directions for future research.
>>
>> @philipthrift
>>
>

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Lawrence Crowell]

There may not be any stuff that is quantum. The paper looks to be a further 
extension of weak measurements devised by Aharonov.

LC

On Monday, July 29, 2019 at 2:18:02 PM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
> But this is interesting:
>
> [ via 
> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
>  ]
>
>
>
> *The Weak Reality That Makes Quantum Phenomena More Natural: Novel 
> Insights and Experiments*
> Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, Mordecai Waegell, and Avshalom C. Elitzur
> November 7, 2018
> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm
>
> *Abstract*: While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, the 
> Two-State Vector Formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing 
> between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical 
> values emerge. This unusual picture calls for a deeper study. Instead of 
> the common, wave-based picture of quantum mechanics, we suggest a new, 
> particle-based perspective: Each particle possesses a definite location 
> throughout its evolution, while some of its physical variables 
> (characterized by deterministic operators, some of which obey nonlocal 
> equations of motion) are carried by “mirage particles” accounting for its 
> unique behavior. Within the time interval between pre- and post-selection, 
> the particle gives rise to a horde of such mirage particles, of which some 
> can be negative. What appears to be “no-particle”, known to give rise to 
> interaction-free measurement, is in fact a self-canceling pair of positive 
> and negative mirage particles, which can be momentarily split and cancel 
> out again. Feasible experiments can give empirical evidence for these 
> fleeting phenomena. In this respect, the Heisenberg ontology is shown to be 
> conceptually advantageous compared to the Schrödinger picture. We review 
> several recent advances, discuss their foundational significance and point 
> out possible directions for future research.
>
> @philipthrift
>

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Re: No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 29 Jul 2019, at 21:18, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> But this is interesting:
> 
> [ via 
> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
>  
> <http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html>
>  ]
> 
> 
> 
> The Weak Reality That Makes Quantum Phenomena More Natural: Novel Insights 
> and Experiments
> Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, Mordecai Waegell, and Avshalom C. Elitzur
> November 7, 2018
> https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm
> 
> Abstract: While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, the 
> Two-State Vector Formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing 
> between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical 
> values emerge. This unusual picture calls for a deeper study. Instead of the 
> common, wave-based picture of quantum mechanics, we suggest a new, 
> particle-based perspective: Each particle possesses a definite location 
> throughout its evolution, while some of its physical variables (characterized 
> by deterministic operators, some of which obey nonlocal equations of motion) 
> are carried by “mirage particles” accounting for its unique behavior. Within 
> the time interval between pre- and post-selection, the particle gives rise to 
> a horde of such mirage particles, of which some can be negative. What appears 
> to be “no-particle”, known to give rise to interaction-free measurement, is 
> in fact a self-canceling pair of positive and negative mirage particles, 
> which can be momentarily split and cancel out again. Feasible experiments can 
> give empirical evidence for these fleeting phenomena. In this respect, the 
> Heisenberg ontology is shown to be conceptually advantageous compared to the 
> Schrödinger picture. We review several recent advances, discuss their 
> foundational significance and point out possible directions for future 
> research.

I have not the time to read the paper, but it seems, from the abstract that 
this run into a similar problem than with Bohm-Debroglie type of theories. We 
could in principle build a mirage observer, and with mechanism, it cannot be a 
zombie. So, it is like introducing “stuff” to select a reality, which is 
incompatible with digital mechanism.
So this goes outside the frame of my hypothesis, and this move, like Bohm, 
calls for a non computationalist theory of mind (like actually Bohm advocated).

Bruno



> 
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> 
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No one knows what the stuff is of QM!

[Philip Thrift]

But this is interesting:

[ via 
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
 ]



*The Weak Reality That Makes Quantum Phenomena More Natural: Novel Insights 
and Experiments*
Yakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, Mordecai Waegell, and Avshalom C. Elitzur
November 7, 2018
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854/htm

*Abstract*: While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, the 
Two-State Vector Formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing 
between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical 
values emerge. This unusual picture calls for a deeper study. Instead of 
the common, wave-based picture of quantum mechanics, we suggest a new, 
particle-based perspective: Each particle possesses a definite location 
throughout its evolution, while some of its physical variables 
(characterized by deterministic operators, some of which obey nonlocal 
equations of motion) are carried by “mirage particles” accounting for its 
unique behavior. Within the time interval between pre- and post-selection, 
the particle gives rise to a horde of such mirage particles, of which some 
can be negative. What appears to be “no-particle”, known to give rise to 
interaction-free measurement, is in fact a self-canceling pair of positive 
and negative mirage particles, which can be momentarily split and cancel 
out again. Feasible experiments can give empirical evidence for these 
fleeting phenomena. In this respect, the Heisenberg ontology is shown to be 
conceptually advantageous compared to the Schrödinger picture. We review 
several recent advances, discuss their foundational significance and point 
out possible directions for future research.

@philipthrift

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Re: The graph-theoretic stuff of consciousness

[meekerdb]

It also seems to comport with Jeff Hawkins theory that consciousness arises from a failure 
of prediction at the subconscious level and corresponds to a brain-wide search for 
resolution between prediction and perception.


Brent

On 3/12/2015 9:19 AM, yon wrote:



On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 5:48:24 AM UTC-4, pt wrote:



http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/03/213466/ 
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/03/213466/
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/09/1414466112
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/09/1414466112

/How the brain begets conscious awareness has been one of the most 
fundamental and
elusive problems in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. 
Correspondingly, this
problem has spawned a remarkably large number of theories that differ by the
proposed extent of cortical and subcortical changes associated with 
awareness,
ranging from local to global changes in functional connectivity. Graph 
theoretical
techniques, in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging, 
provide a
well-suited tool to adjudicate between these disparate theories by 
characterizing
whole-brain patterns of communication. In this paper, we demonstrate 
large-scale
differences in functional connections with awareness of a visual target, 
consistent
with global models of awareness./

- pt



This is essentially Bernard Baar's Global Workspace theory of consciousness. This model 
was proposed many years ago, but has received considerable experimental support in 
recent years.


Yon

Front Psychol. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23974723#2013 May 28;4:200. doi: 
10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00200. eCollection 2013.



  Global workspace dynamics: cortical binding and propagation enables 
conscious contents.

Baars BJ 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Baars%20BJ%5BAuthor%5Dcauthor=truecauthor_uid=239747231, 
Franklin S 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Franklin%20S%5BAuthor%5Dcauthor=truecauthor_uid=23974723, 
Ramsoy TZ 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Ramsoy%20TZ%5BAuthor%5Dcauthor=truecauthor_uid=23974723.



  Author informationhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23974723#


  Abstract

A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub of binding and propagation in a population 
of loosely coupled signaling elements. In computational applications, GW architectures 
recruit many distributed, specialized agents to cooperate in resolving focal 
ambiguities. In the brain, conscious experiences may reflect a GW function. For animals, 
the natural world is full of unpredictable dangers and opportunities, suggesting a 
general adaptive pressure for brains to resolve focal ambiguities quickly and 
accurately. GW theory aims to understand the differences between conscious and 
unconscious brain events. In humans and related species the cortico-thalamic (C-T) core 
is believed to underlie conscious aspects of perception, thinking, learning, feelings of 
knowing (FOK), felt emotions, visual imagery, working memory, and executive control. 
Alternative theoretical perspectives are also discussed. The C-T core has many 
anatomical hubs, but conscious percepts are unitary and internally consistent at any 
given moment. Over time, conscious contents constitute a very large, open set. This 
suggests that a brain-based GW capacity cannot be localized in a single anatomical hub. 
Rather, it should be sought in a functional hub - a dynamic capacity for binding and 
propagation of neural signals over multiple task-related networks, a kind of neuronal 
cloud computing. In this view, conscious contents can arise in any region of the C-T 
core when multiple input streams settle on a winner-take-all equilibrium. The resulting 
conscious gestalt may ignite an any-to-many broadcast, lasting ∼100-200 ms, and trigger 
widespread adaptation in previously established networks. To account for the great range 
of conscious contents over time, the theory suggests an open repertoire of binding 
coalitions that can broadcast via theta/gamma or alpha/gamma phase coupling, like radio 
channels competing for a narrow frequency band. Conscious moments are thought to hold 
only 1-4 unrelated items; this small focal capacity may be the biological price to pay 
for global access. Visuotopic maps in cortex specialize in features like color, retinal 
size, motion, object identity, and egocentric/allocentric framing, so that a binding 
coalition for the sight of a rolling billiard ball in nearby space may resonate among 
activity maps of LGN, V1-V4, MT, IT, as well as the dorsal stream. Spatiotopic activity 
maps can bind into coherent gestalts using adaptive resonance (reentry). Single neurons 
can join a dominant coalition by phase tuning to regional oscillations in the 4-12 Hz 
range. Sensory percepts may bind and broadcast from posterior cortex, while non-sensory 
FOKs may involve prefrontal and frontotemporal areas. The anatomy and physiology of the 
hippocampal complex 

Re: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[Roger]

Hi meekerdb 

Excellent point. My only answer is that the self or agent has to be a monad.

because only monads can perceive (although indirectly).


Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/14/2012 
- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-08-11, 18:22:55
Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?


On 8/11/2012 6:00 AM, Roger wrote: 
Hi meekerdb 


No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial.
It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime. 
Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed).

Maybe.  But wherever 'the agent' is, it is a non-explanation of agency.  If 
you're going to explain something you have to explain it in terms of something 
else that is better understood.  So to 'explain' mind as being an immaterial 
agent is vacuous.

Brent




Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/11/2012 
- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-08-10, 15:16:55
Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?


On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote: 
Hi Russell Standish 

But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.

If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything -  he would have 
just pushed the problem off into the agent.



To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.

But that's Dennett's point.  Humans aren't that way.  They may do something 
because of X and yet think they did it because of Y.  This is blatant in split 
brain experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable 
decision based on the information available to it; while the other side, which 
doesn't have that information, confabulates a completely different story about 
the decision.  This is most obvious in split brain patients, but it happens to 
the rest of us too.  There is only one action because a physical body can't do 
two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the person is not 
of two minds.

Brent



Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.



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Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[meekerdb]

Oh. Monads.  Well I'm glad we didn't leave the explanation in terms of something poorly 
understood like 'agency'.


Brent

On 8/14/2012 10:34 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi meekerdb
Excellent point. My only answer is that the self or agent has to be a monad.
because only monads can perceive (although indirectly).
Roger , rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
8/14/2012

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net
*Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Time:* 2012-08-11, 18:22:55
*Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of 
stuff ?

On 8/11/2012 6:00 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi meekerdb
No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial.
It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime.
Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed).


Maybe.  But wherever 'the agent' is, it is a non-explanation of agency.  If 
you're
going to explain something you have to explain it in terms of something 
else that is
better understood.  So to 'explain' mind as being an immaterial agent is 
vacuous.

Brent


Roger , rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
8/11/2012

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net
*Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Time:* 2012-08-10, 15:16:55
*Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware 
of stuff ?

On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi Russell Standish
But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.


If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything -  he would 
have
just pushed the problem off into the agent.


To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of 
focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.


But that's Dennett's point.  Humans aren't that way.  They may do 
something
because of X and yet think they did it because of Y.  This is blatant 
in split
brain experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a 
reasonable
decision based on the information available to it; while the other 
side, which
doesn't have that information, confabulates a completely different 
story about
the decision.  This is most obvious in split brain patients, but it 
happens to
the rest of us too.  There is only one action because a physical body 
can't do
two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the person 
is not
of two minds.

Brent


Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.


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Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Aug 2012, at 14:53, Roger wrote:


Hi Russell Standish

But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.

To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of  
focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/ 
neurophilosophy.


I insist. The self is what computer science handles the best.

I agree with you that it is immaterial, and beyond space and time,  
which are construct of souls






Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory.


It is factually contradictory. Leibniz is coherent as he seems to  
recognize changing his mind on that issue.
Different theories are not necessarily contradictory, when they are  
not mixed together. On the contrary Leibniz is rather very coherent in  
each of its different approach, but some followers mix them.





That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.


But not in computer science, which is indeed not very well known by  
neuroscientists.


Bruno






Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/10/2012
- Receiving the following content -
From: Russell Standish
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-10, 08:04:44
Subject: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote:

 
 It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or
 unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of  
the

 total.

 This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point
 which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including
 mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts,
 you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea
 of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be
 realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have
 stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think
 that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'.


With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow,
I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his
pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious
process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems
at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of
consciousness is to select from among the course of action
presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly
consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying
(aka reductive) process may be sufficient.

The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian
process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution
is the key to any form of creative process.

Cheers

--


Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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



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Re: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[Roger]

Hi meekerdb 


No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial.
It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime. 
Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed).
 

Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/11/2012 
- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-08-10, 15:16:55
Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?


On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote: 
Hi Russell Standish 

But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.

If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything -  he would have 
just pushed the problem off into the agent.



To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.

But that's Dennett's point.  Humans aren't that way.  They may do something 
because of X and yet think they did it because of Y.  This is blatant in split 
brain experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable 
decision based on the information available to it; while the other side, which 
doesn't have that information, confabulates a completely different story about 
the decision.  This is most obvious in split brain patients, but it happens to 
the rest of us too.  There is only one action because a physical body can't do 
two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the person is not 
of two minds.

Brent



Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.

-- 
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Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[meekerdb]

On 8/11/2012 6:00 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi meekerdb
No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial.
It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime.
Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed).


Maybe.  But wherever 'the agent' is, it is a non-explanation of agency.  If you're going 
to explain something you have to explain it in terms of something else that is better 
understood.  So to 'explain' mind as being an immaterial agent is vacuous.


Brent


Roger , rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net
8/11/2012

- Receiving the following content -
*From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net
*Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Time:* 2012-08-10, 15:16:55
*Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of 
stuff ?

On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi Russell Standish
But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.


If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything -  he would 
have just
pushed the problem off into the agent.


To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.


But that's Dennett's point.  Humans aren't that way.  They may do something 
because
of X and yet think they did it because of Y.  This is blatant in split brain
experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable 
decision based
on the information available to it; while the other side, which doesn't 
have that
information, confabulates a completely different story about the decision.  
This is
most obvious in split brain patients, but it happens to the rest of us too. 
 There
is only one action because a physical body can't do two different things at 
the same
time; but that doesn't mean the person is not of two minds.

Brent


Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.


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Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[Roger]

Hi Russell Standish 

But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.

To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.

Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.

Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/10/2012 
- Receiving the following content - 
From: Russell Standish 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-08-10, 08:04:44
Subject: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!


On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote:
 
 
 It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or
 unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the
 total.
 
 This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point
 which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including
 mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts,
 you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea
 of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be
 realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have
 stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think
 that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'.
 

With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow,
I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his
pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious
process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems
at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of 
consciousness is to select from among the course of action
presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly
consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying
(aka reductive) process may be sufficient.

The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian
process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution
is the key to any form of creative process.

Cheers

-- 


Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au


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Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[meekerdb]

On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote:

Hi Russell Standish
But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals.
To perceive. To judge. To cause action.


If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything -  he would have just pushed 
the problem off into the agent.



To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus--
and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy.


But that's Dennett's point.  Humans aren't that way.  They may do something because of X 
and yet think they did it because of Y.  This is blatant in split brain experiments where 
the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable decision based on the information 
available to it; while the other side, which doesn't have that information, confabulates a 
completely different story about the decision.  This is most obvious in split brain 
patients, but it happens to the rest of us too.  There is only one action because a 
physical body can't do two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the 
person is not of two minds.


Brent


Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.


--
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Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?

[Stephen P. King]

Hi Roger,

I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks 
about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony?



On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote:

Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.



--
Onward!

Stephen

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
~ Francis Bacon

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Evolution, entropy, and stuff

[Craig Weinberg]

Thought you all might get something out of this:

I’m not so familiar with some of these concepts, so this is more of me
trying to understand them for the first time than an attempt to relate
something that I think I’ve already made sense of, so please excuse
any gross misunderstandings.

Reproduction can be thought of as a strategy for cheating entropy.
It’s a way of accumulating invariance over time through variation and
accumulating variation through invariance across space. Something
‘improbable’ like a species of cat can have it’s definition of catness
extended (or feline phenomes) through variations on it’s theme.
Something like a rock is relatively probable so it’s ubiquity
literally compensates for it’s lack of evolution. Reproduction is a
way for improbable structures to sustain their essential qualities as
a bulwark (or bastion) against the waveform cancellation of entropy.
This is the engine of significance itself.

Going back to my etymological riffs on wag and wegh, there is a notion
of motion which cancels itself out (by waving, weaving, wagging, or
rocking back and forth) verses energy that nets some sort of forward
progress. Wegh - to move along a path or road, to weigh as in carry
something down a path, also to wake or watch, to attend, which relates
to tend and tendon, nerve and fiber. There is an amazing thread (also
a fiber) in here which unites the literal mechanics of electromagnetic
frequency and power with figurative experiential dynamics - relaxing
to sleep (rocking the cradle) versus a sort of pulling oneself
together to become aware (waking up).

There is a relation here of one to many (relaxation into sensory
ambiguity and self annihilation) and many to one (contracting the
oneself into a coherent and telegraphically self propelled motive. You
figure out what you need to do and in what order. You attend to
things. You watch and worry. You carry this burden of significance,
the investment of a lifetime into action in the now.

If you have a quantum wave function by itself, half of it’s possible
states cancel out the other half (is that sort of right?). When you
have multiple quantum wave functions, you have possibilities of
unequal probabilities, as each waveform interacts with the others such
that they share overlapping commonalities and do not share other
underlapping possibilites. The intersection of possible states
constrains a probability set to a finite value within that set, the so
called waveform collapse, which makes the difference between
unrealized probability (or superposition) and realization.

Maybe the process of narrowing a range of possibility to a range of
probability is the figurative extension or ‘potential energy’ of the
literal realization, which would be what we call kinetic energy or ‘a
change event perceived as ‘happening’ now’. Somehow this all has to do
with differential vs integral calculus and the one to many vs many to
one.

Sensory input pulls wholes from the holes - that is, it qualitatively
extracts one (rich, deep, complex) gestalt experience at a time from
many quantitatively separate experiences, thus compressing events and
leapfrogging the spatiotemporal separations between them. It pulls
together our world.

Motive output pushes holes through the whole. It exploits
possibilities and chooses how and when to project energy in the form
of effort or work; power. It compresses the sense of the self and it’s
relation to it’s niche to yield a productive force for the interests
of the self, or that which qualifies as significant to the self.

What is left uncancelled after quantum waveforms collide again and
again represents a sequence of invariance - a souvenir or record of
the string of events which survived the whips and scorns of time; the
life that has cheated death. Rocks don’t play the death game, so they
never accumulate the same kind of significance that living organisms
do. Biology accumulates significance more effectively because it
submits itself again and again to extinction. Extinction of the
individual self and the species. It takes a risk and the survivors get
the reward (or suffer the consequences of having their significance
devalued by the competitors)

Evolution then is how significance compensates for an improbable event
to even out the playing field against the entropic negation of the
probable. Evolution is the method of significance and significance is
the purpose of evolution - but they are not the same thing. Evolution
is a passive teleonomy of circumstance. Chance and mutation.
Meaningless clots in the stream of entropy. Significance is the
victorious feeling of life over death, signal over noise, good over
evil, quality over quantity, rebels over empire, and on and on.

It is the growth of subjective, sensorimotive perception over ‘time’.
This defines what life or consciousness is as much as any objective
measure of reproduction or energy seeking, although reproduction is of
course the primary strategy of achieving 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 31 Aug, 21:31, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 31 Aug 2009, at 19:31, Flammarion wrote:





  On 28 Aug, 16:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote:

  On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote:

  1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or
  generated
  by something else that does
  2. I ontologically exist
  3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
  4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

  Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
  to here

   5. But the UD exists only mathematically.

  Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence.

  There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
  of mathematics.

  For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a
  general mathematical agreement.

  No there isn't.

  What is the disagreement?

  The age old debate about whether numbers exist

 You confuse the use of number in physics, and in cognitive science,
 and in computer science, with metaphysical discussion I do avoid. When
 I say that there is no disagreement about the numbers, I mean that
 most scientist agree on the use of the classical tautologies in
 arithmetic. Nothing more. Or show me where.

tautologies don't buy you a UD. Unicorns=unicorns doesn;t mean
there are any unicorns.

  There may be no philosophical
  argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non
  philosophical
  reasoning.

  Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons
  with mathematical proofs.

  Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive-
  science/philosophy/theology.

  No. *CTM* is. Comp* is your own fusion of CTM with
  Platonism

 Comp is CTM + 2+2 is equal to 4 or 2+2 is not equal to 4.

AR qua truth does nto buy you a UD either

 Wait I explain CT, you will see what I mean more easily.




  It is an assumption that a form of
  reincarnation is possible.

  This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs
  to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not
  purely
  mathematical.

  It is not going anywhere without some ontological
  assumptions either. since it has an ontological conclusion.

 I am using the hypothesis that my consciousness will be relatively
 preserved by a transformation of my brain, and Church thesis. And the
 conclusion is epistemological: comp - physics is a branch of number
 theory, but with a gift: that physics is part of a larger thing (and
 splits into qualia and quanta). I don't make publicly ontological
 commitment. I give a theory, theorems, and a practical way to test the
 consequence of the theory.


The fact that you don't majke your ontological assumptions
explicit is just the problem.

  You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
  and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
  and defending Platonism and other approaches?

  Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as
  something
  far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all
  mathematicians agree.

  I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist.

  So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise
  a doubt about the existence of seven?

  No. A doubt about the ontological existence of seven leads
  to a doubt about the rest.

 A doubt on seven, would destroy the argument. Indeed!
 I personally don't believe in ontological seven, as far as I can make
 a sense on that.

Well, if the UD isn't ontological either, I am not being simulated on
it.


  I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any
  difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist.
  Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues
  of
  showing what they miss in the argument.

  Hmm. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you.

 I was thinking of you, and some old friends. But at least, you make
 the dodging in public, my friends never did. I thank you for that.


  My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it
  has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician,
  computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!).

  But it is a philosophical thesis, since its conclusion is the nature
  of existence.

 Not at all. I see the bigness of the misunderstanding here. I just use
 the scientific way to proceed in theology.

Theology is philosophy and then some

 This is what I like with the Church Turing thesis, it makes possible
 to keep the agnostic scientific attitude in very deep question, and to
 proceed by theories and verification, and this in a field that
 atheists like to relegate to religious crackpot.
 Atheists and other religious fundamentailist hates this work, but that
 is normal. My work shows atheism and some religion are very close
 compared to the abysse between atheism and agnosticism (be it on mind,
 matter, god, or 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 28 Aug, 16:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote:





  On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote:

  1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or  
  generated
  by something else that does
  2. I ontologically exist
  3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
  4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

  Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
  to here

   5. But the UD exists only mathematically.

  Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence.

  There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
  of mathematics.

  For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a
  general mathematical agreement.

  No there isn't.

 What is the disagreement?

The age old debate about whether numbers exist

  There may be no philosophical
  argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non  
  philosophical
  reasoning.

  Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons
  with mathematical proofs.

 Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive-
 science/philosophy/theology.

No. *CTM* is. Comp* is your own fusion of CTM with
Platonism

 It is an assumption that a form of  
 reincarnation is possible.

 This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs  
 to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not purely  
 mathematical.

It is not going anywhere without some ontological
assumptions either. since it has an ontological conclusion.

  You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
  and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
  and defending Platonism and other approaches?

  Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as something
  far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all
  mathematicians agree.

  I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist.

 So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise  
 a doubt about the existence of seven?

No. A doubt about the ontological existence of seven leads
to a doubt about the rest.

 I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any  
 difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist.  
 Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues of  
 showing what they miss in the argument.

Hmm. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you.

 My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it  
 has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician,  
 computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!).

But it is a philosophical thesis, since its conclusion is the nature
of existence.

  The point remains: there *is* a debate so there is *not* a standard
  ontology.

  It is believed explcitly by many physicists too,
  like David Deutsch, Roger Penrose, and those who use math in physics.

  I never said no-on beliieves Platonism. I said some
  people belive other things. Therefore it is contentious,
  therefore it is needs jsutification.

 It is more efficacious to see if the consequence of comp, believed by  
 many, are verified by nature.


It's the consequences of CTM+Platonism

  By comp, the  ontic
  theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can
  represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson  
  Arithmetic
  is already enough.

  I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist.

  This may be the root of your problem.

  comp = CTM.

  It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in
  your SANE paper.

  All right. As I said: comp is CTM + 2 + 2 =  4.

  Nope, mere truth does not buy the immaterial existence of a UD

 But from 2+2 = 4 and  CT, you can derive the existence of UD.

Only the mathematical existence.

  Classical logic is just a formal rule.

  It depends on the realm in which you apply classical logic. In
  computer science people admit that a running program will either  
  halt,
  or not halt, even in case we don't know. This is a non formal use of
  classical logic.

  It still does not demonstrate the immaterial existence of computers
  no-one has built.

 No one has ever build the prime numbers.

No. They were not built. they did not spontaneously spring
into being, they do not exist at all.

  Bivalence is not Platonism

  Exactly. This is one more reason to distinguish carefully
  arithmetical realism (bivalence in the realm of numbers), and
  Platonism (something huge in philosophy and theology).

  Even more reason to distinguish between AR qua truth and AR qua
  existence.

 Yes, and I use only AR qua truth.

Then you cannot come to any valid conclusion about my existence.

 I may ask you what are your evidence for a primary matter, or for your  
 notion of AR qua physical existence.

You dismiss matterial existence assuming Platonic existence

I dismiss Platonic existene assuming material existence.

I may not 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 28 Aug, 15:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 28 Aug 2009, at 13:47, Flammarion wrote:



  On 21 Aug, 20:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote:

   I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that
  non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical
  possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first
  person point of view).

  There is no UD.

 You are meaning no physical UD. I don't need a physical UD in the
 reasoning.

I mean no existent UD, material or immaterial

  Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that
  indeed platonism is not part of it.

  It is a version of Platonism

  The wording is not important.

  Maybe you could flag the wording that we are supposed
  to take serioulsy.

 I have explained to you why it is preferable to avoid the term
 Platonism for the belief that classical logic can be applied in
 arithmetic

I think the term Arithmetical Realism should be avoided when it is not
clear whether it is a claim about truth or about existence.

. Even mathematicians does not call that Platonism, which
 they use for the general idea that classical logic applies to a much
 larger part of math.  Arithmetical realism is better: it is the belief
 that the truth of arithmetical sentence exists independently of any
 means (humans, theories, machines, universes, ...) to study them.



  The point is that in the assumption of
  CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith),  I am using that version of
  platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be
  applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we
  have to abandon weak materialism or CTM.

  Nope. Assumptions about truth don't get you a UD which is capable of
  simulating me. You need
  a claim about existence.

 You told me this before, and I did explain that I am use the truth of
 the existential statement in arithmetic, as my unique claim about
 existence.

And I put forward the counterargument that you can have
true statements about existence, where the existence in question
is not literal ontological existence. You need to argue that backwards-
E
means RITSIAR, and not just existence in some fictional or formal
structure.

  You argument is either based on Platonism or
  invalid

 Yes, it based on Turing theorem, which with CT can be sump up by
 universal digital machines exist.



  Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all.

  The CT thesis requires some mathematical
  claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist

  I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they
  exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential
  arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence
  or
  not of a material world.

  There is no usual interpretation, it is disputed.

 For set theoretical realism. Not for the natural numbers.

Yes, for natural numbers. Even the existence of the number
one is disputed among philosophers

 I mean
 nobody, except you and ultrafinitist, doubt about the mathematical
 existence of natural numbers. They can doubt about deeper existence of
 those numbers, but I am not using this. Are you criticizing all
 theories using natural numbers (from economy to physics)?.

As I have pointed out endlessly, I think the standard
backwads-E statements of arithmetic are *true* , I just don't think
backwards-E *means* ontological existence.

  Formalists don't
  think
  backeards-E has any existential implications at all

 Formalist does not believe in primary matter either.

I think most of them do. That claim requires some support
at least.

 And they do
 believe in formal systems,

which *doesn't* mean immaterial systems. Formal systems exist
in mathematician's brain, books, and blackboards for
materialists+formalists.

which have sense only through naïve
 arithmetic. This dodge the issue, nevertheless, because you can add
 formal to all existential quantifier in the reasoning without
 changing the conclusion: formal physics has to be reduced to formal
 number theory.

It does change the conclusions. If the UD does not exist
immaterially, or materially, it does not exist, and therefore I and
physics
are not being simulated on it. You cannot valldly derive an
existential
conclusion without making existential assumptions.

  Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang
  never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and
  aspatially true or false.

  Truth and falsehood don't buy you an immaterial computer simulating me
  and eveything I see.

 Fortunately numbers and math are still free. If CTM is correct, you
 are emulated infinitely often in the UD*. It exists (mathematically)
 like PI and square-root of two.

Which  is to say, it does not really exist at all, and is merely
said to exist in a formal game.

  Get the feeling you have change your mind 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2009, at 19:15, Flammarion wrote:


 When discussing fundamental science, no use of the word exist  
 should
 be taken literally.


 Fine. Then I am not literally being simulated by an immateial UD.


If you want. But my point is that NO use of the word exist should be  
taken literally.





 It would help much more if you were able to say I don't understand
 this or that in the reasoning, and give explicit reference to the
 paper or posts.

 The argumetn I am actually making is that your arguemnt is either
 invalid or has an imiplict premise. How am I supposed ot
 point to an implicit premise.

 By pointing on a step in the reasoning where you think I am using  
 that
 implicit premise.

 That's where you tell me I am being simulated by an immaterial UD


I say this, but only in the following precise sense. Once you say yes  
to the doctor, and if comp is true, you can survive by having your  
instantaneous digital state of your generalized brain encoded in a  
number, and reconstituted later. Then, that computational state, and  
an infinity of more fine grained equivalent one, assuming your doctor  
has chosen a correct substitution level,  belong to an infinity of  
computational histories. By Church thesis, the UD generates and  
executes all computational histories (computations), notably all those  
going through the state S, with and/or without oracles.
When I say you are simulated in the UD, I am making a shorthand for  
saying this. And quickly your solipsitic 1-you is distributed  
densely on the border of the infinite UD*, concrete in the 7th step,  
arithmetical in the 8th step.
After MGA, you can understand that, saying yes to the doctor, makes  
your consciousness not attributable to ANY particular universal  
machine, but a more complex mathematical structure related to that  
border, and which justifies also the observable, by the machine,  
physical laws. And this make comp empirically refutable.

By MGA, your notion of literal ontological existence does not make  
sense with comp. It is so much propertyless, than it cannot be used to  
reify a notion of existence more than the apparent matter (given by  
the 4th and 5th hypostases) stabilizes the histories in the UD. real  
matter has no epistemological impact (with comp), it adds nothing to  
any theory of matter consistent with digital mechanism. Let us discuss  
MGA to see where is the problem. Or wait 'tilI I explain more the UD.  
Have you understand the step seven? Have you see that the reversal  
occur with the concrete UD, even if PM is needed? In the seventh step,  
the UD is still material in *any* sense, including the primary  
materialist one, if he desires.
Also, with a stronger form of Occam razor, and using AUDA, you can  
bypass MGA.

Or if you invoke a degree zero of virtualisation (the metal), then  
again, just say no to the digital surgeon. (thinking about some things  
you said in another posts today).

Bruno

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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2009, at 19:31, Flammarion wrote:




 On 28 Aug, 16:08, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote:





 On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote:

 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or
 generated
 by something else that does
 2. I ontologically exist
 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

 Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
 to here

  5. But the UD exists only mathematically.

 Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence.

 There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
 of mathematics.

 For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a
 general mathematical agreement.

 No there isn't.

 What is the disagreement?

 The age old debate about whether numbers exist


You confuse the use of number in physics, and in cognitive science,  
and in computer science, with metaphysical discussion I do avoid. When  
I say that there is no disagreement about the numbers, I mean that  
most scientist agree on the use of the classical tautologies in  
arithmetic. Nothing more. Or show me where.




 There may be no philosophical
 argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non
 philosophical
 reasoning.

 Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons
 with mathematical proofs.

 Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive-
 science/philosophy/theology.

 No. *CTM* is. Comp* is your own fusion of CTM with
 Platonism

Comp is CTM + 2+2 is equal to 4 or 2+2 is not equal to 4.
Wait I explain CT, you will see what I mean more easily.



 It is an assumption that a form of
 reincarnation is possible.

 This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs
 to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not  
 purely
 mathematical.

 It is not going anywhere without some ontological
 assumptions either. since it has an ontological conclusion.


I am using the hypothesis that my consciousness will be relatively  
preserved by a transformation of my brain, and Church thesis. And the  
conclusion is epistemological: comp - physics is a branch of number  
theory, but with a gift: that physics is part of a larger thing (and  
splits into qualia and quanta). I don't make publicly ontological  
commitment. I give a theory, theorems, and a practical way to test the  
consequence of the theory.




 You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
 and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
 and defending Platonism and other approaches?

 Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as  
 something
 far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all
 mathematicians agree.

 I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist.

 So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise
 a doubt about the existence of seven?

 No. A doubt about the ontological existence of seven leads
 to a doubt about the rest.


A doubt on seven, would destroy the argument. Indeed!
I personally don't believe in ontological seven, as far as I can make  
a sense on that.





 I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any
 difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist.
 Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues  
 of
 showing what they miss in the argument.

 Hmm. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you.

I was thinking of you, and some old friends. But at least, you make  
the dodging in public, my friends never did. I thank you for that.



 My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it
 has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician,
 computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!).

 But it is a philosophical thesis, since its conclusion is the nature
 of existence.


Not at all. I see the bigness of the misunderstanding here. I just use  
the scientific way to proceed in theology.
This is what I like with the Church Turing thesis, it makes possible  
to keep the agnostic scientific attitude in very deep question, and to  
proceed by theories and verification, and this in a field that  
atheists like to relegate to religious crackpot.
Atheists and other religious fundamentailist hates this work, but that  
is normal. My work shows atheism and some religion are very close  
compared to the abysse between atheism and agnosticism (be it on mind,  
matter, god, or whatever).
Is that the problem?





 The point remains: there *is* a debate so there is *not* a standard
 ontology.

 It is believed explcitly by many physicists too,
 like David Deutsch, Roger Penrose, and those who use math in  
 physics.

 I never said no-on beliieves Platonism. I said some
 people belive other things. Therefore it is contentious,
 therefore it is needs jsutification.

 It is more efficacious to see if 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 21 Aug, 20:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote:





  On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote:

  Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process
  at
  all. I don't see any evidence for that

  I am explaining this right now.

  Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter.

  The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by
  Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the
  discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory.

  The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical
  computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David
  Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch
  reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a
  different thesis.

  Of course you can have theoretical
  truths about computation

  But show me something that has been computed by
  an immaterial computer.

 A Schmidhuberian computationalist would probably answer: look around
 you. But I have explained why this is not enough, and why a prori comp
 makes the observable reality not the output of one program (but a view
 from inside from all execution of all programs).

   I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that
 non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical
 possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first
 person point of view).

There is no UD.

 Comp, or CTM, leads to a many types no token view of reality. Token
 are seen as such by being appearances from the point of view of an
 abstract subject coupled to an (infinity of) abstract computations.



  CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work.

  CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use
  incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA,
  including MGA, shows why this fails.

  What is in MGA which does not work?

  It's a reductio of the idea that mental states
  supervene on computational states.
  CTM must be cast as the claim
  that mental activity supervenes on computational
  activity.

 I agree. Consciousness is attached to computation (and not to
 computational states), even at the starting of the reasoning, and also
 when the physical supervenience is introduced in MGA for the reductio
 ad absurdum.
 Then, eventually, keeping CTM, and thus abandoning (weak) materialism,
 consciousness is related to, well not just a computation, but to an
 infinite sheaves of computations. Consciousness is a first person
 notion, and as such, is dependent on the first person uncertainty
 measure brought by the first person indeterminacy.
 This is why I take time to explain what is a computation, or a
 computational activity, in purely arithmetical terms. A computation is
 not just a sequence of computational states, it is a sequence of
 computational states related by at least one universal machine (and
 then an infinity of them, from the point of view of the conscious
 being, observably so when he/she looks below its substitution level).
 Classical physics become the study of our most probable computations,
 which emerge from the statistical interference of all computations
 going through my relevant states (the relevance being dependent of the
 observer's comp-substitution level).

  Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that
  indeed platonism is not part of it.

  It is a version of Platonism

 The wording is not important.

Maybe you could flag the wording that we are supposed
to take serioulsy.

 The point is that in the assumption of
 CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith),  I am using that version of
 platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be
 applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we
 have to abandon weak materialism or CTM.

Nope. Assumptions about truth don't get you a UD which is capable of
simulating me. You need
a claim about existence. You argument is either based on Platonism or
invalid

  Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all.

  The CT thesis requires some mathematical
  claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist

 I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they
 exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential
 arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence or
 not of a material world.

There is no usual interpretation, it is disputed. Formalists don't
think
backeards-E has any existential implications at all

 Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang
 never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and
 aspatially true or false.

Truth and falsehood don't buy you an immaterial computer simulating me
and eveything I see.

  Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a
  proposition 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 22 Aug, 00:38, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 21 Aug, 19:04, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as
explaining away qua elimination.

   Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out
   below.  But it's a false distinction, as I point out below.

 But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
 I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
 eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
 this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
 bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
 the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
 Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
 still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
 as though nothing had happened!

The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind
(with the possible exception of qualia)
in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the
sense of Reductive materialism.

   What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia!  The whole
   point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of
   the account you're an eliminativist.  Qualia are precisely what is
   being eliminated.

  He is a selective eliminativist. He is not being
  inconsistent. Having eiminated qualia, he deosn;t
  continue to talk about them. He does continue to talk
  about memory, thought and perception, but then he
  hasn't eilminated them.

 In other words, his position is
 inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!

In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is.

   What do you mean?  Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto-
   dualist?  Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative
   reductive materialism is something different than either of these?

  he is eliminativist about qualia and reductionist about everything
  else.

 In that case he's an eliminativist about consciousness..




 So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
 of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
 understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
 *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
 no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
 is eliminable per Qine.

No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased
as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that
water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated
as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it).
EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept
eliminated should never subsequently be used even as
a place-holder or shrothand

   Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be
   paraphrased as a specific physical process.  This means that this
   computation is identical to that physical process.  'Computation' is
   therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense).
   Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere
   shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or
   alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever.

  Yes, yes, and yes. Why would that be a problem?

 Well, if now you think there's no problem, perhaps you'd like to
 reconsider what you meant by no above.  I try my best to respond to
 your comments, but it seems to me that you react as though you had
 never made them.

I mean it is false that:
Under the assumption that there is
*only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
no appeal to such a notion as computation,


Because instances of compuitation are not eleiminated, they are
*identified*
with physical processes.

   Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that
   'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this.

  Uh-huh. And where are you getting your information
  on eliminativism from?

  This would
   be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would
   be struck dumb.

  Only if we eliminated everything,. and only if we did not have
  substitute theory. Elimiativists think terms like thought will
  simply be abandoned as part of a failed theory,
  (like phlosgiston), rather than continuing as convenient
  but not entirely accurate shorthand. But they don't expect
  this to happen until the replacement theories are
  perfected. So they don't expect to be struck dumb.

 In that case they're 'replacementists' rather than 'eliminativists',
 wouldn't you say?

It doesn't help to re-arrange the vocabulary

They just want to replace one shorthand with
 another.

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 25 Aug, 08:22, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:38, Flammarion wrote:



  That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
  with the full force of necessity --

  I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so.
  Where?

  Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find  a trace.

 I wake up this morning realizing this was not your usual statement
 that I am implicitly assuming what I am proving.

 So actually you may be right, I do believe that PM has to be argued.

The key phrase is:
with the full force of necessity

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Aug 2009, at 14:46, Flammarion wrote:




 On 22 Aug, 08:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote:

 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or  
 generated
 by something else that does
 2. I ontologically exist
 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

 Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
 to here

  5. But the UD exists only mathematically.

 Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence.

 There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
 of mathematics.

 For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a
 general mathematical agreement.

 No there isn't.


What is the disagreement?



 There may be no philosophical
 argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non  
 philosophical
 reasoning.

 Ontology is philosophy. You can't settle ontological quesitons
 with mathematical proofs.

Philosophy, or theology. OK. But comp is an assumption in cognitive- 
science/philosophy/theology. It is an assumption that a form of  
reincarnation is possible. This is not pure mathematics. UDA belongs  
to the intersection of cognitive and physic science. UDA is not purely  
mathematical.




 You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
 and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
 and defending Platonism and other approaches?

 Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as something
 far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all
 mathematicians agree.

 I am not concerned with argument about how many pixies exist.

So a doubt about the existence of a large cardinal in set theory rise  
a doubt about the existence of seven?
I have use arithmetical realism, because I have never met any  
difficulty, among mathematicians, physicians and computer scientist.  
Nor even with philosophers, except some which just dodge the issues of  
showing what they miss in the argument.
My work has been indeed rejected in Brussels, by philsophers. But it  
has been defended a s a PhD thesis by a jury with mathematician,  
computer scientist, physician (yes, not physicist, but doctor!).



 The point remains: there *is* a debate so there is *not* a standard
 ontology.

 It is believed explcitly by many physicists too,
 like David Deutsch, Roger Penrose, and those who use math in physics.

 I never said no-on beliieves Platonism. I said some
 people belive other things. Therefore it is contentious,
 therefore it is needs jsutification.


It is more efficacious to see if the consequence of comp, believed by  
many, are verified by nature.




 By comp, the  ontic
 theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can
 represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson  
 Arithmetic
 is already enough.

 I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist.

 This may be the root of your problem.

 comp = CTM.

 It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in
 your SANE paper.

 All right. As I said: comp is CTM + 2 + 2 =  4.

 Nope, mere truth does not buy the immaterial existence of a UD


But from 2+2 = 4 and  CT, you can derive the existence of UD.




 Classical logic is just a formal rule.

 It depends on the realm in which you apply classical logic. In
 computer science people admit that a running program will either  
 halt,
 or not halt, even in case we don't know. This is a non formal use of
 classical logic.

 It still does not demonstrate the immaterial existence of computers
 no-one has built.


No one has ever build the prime numbers.



 Bivalence is not Platonism

 Exactly. This is one more reason to distinguish carefully
 arithmetical realism (bivalence in the realm of numbers), and
 Platonism (something huge in philosophy and theology).

 Even more reason to distinguish between AR qua truth and AR qua
 existence.

Yes, and I use only AR qua truth.

I may ask you what are your evidence for a primary matter, or for your  
notion of AR qua physical existence.



 So what? If I am material the reasoning is correct. Since the
 alternatives
 to my being material are inherently unlikely, my reasoning is still
 *probably* correct.

 You are telling me that if you are material, then you are material.

 I am telling you I do not have to give equal weight to
 every hypothesis.

 I begin to believe what Jesse and David says: you are dodging the
 issue.

 What issue?

 CTM and weak materialism are epistemologically incompabible.

 Not demonstrated.


You have pointed on invisible or implicit errors only, up to now.
In your preceding post, you even argue somehow that you cannot show me  
the errors because they are invisible.

At least you don't argue against the first person indeterminacy  
(unlike Chalmers who pretends that after a duplication between W and M  
you feel yourself to be simultaneously at the two places).

I think you have difficulties with MGA, but if you are interested we  

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Aug 2009, at 13:47, Flammarion wrote:




 On 21 Aug, 20:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote:

  I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that
 non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical
 possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first
 person point of view).

 There is no UD.


You are meaning no physical UD. I don't need a physical UD in the  
reasoning.




 Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that
 indeed platonism is not part of it.

 It is a version of Platonism

 The wording is not important.

 Maybe you could flag the wording that we are supposed
 to take serioulsy.


I have explained to you why it is preferable to avoid the term  
Platonism for the belief that classical logic can be applied in  
arithmetic. Even mathematicians does not call that Platonism, which  
they use for the general idea that classical logic applies to a much  
larger part of math.  Arithmetical realism is better: it is the belief  
that the truth of arithmetical sentence exists independently of any  
means (humans, theories, machines, universes, ...) to study them.




 The point is that in the assumption of
 CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith),  I am using that version of
 platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be
 applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we
 have to abandon weak materialism or CTM.

 Nope. Assumptions about truth don't get you a UD which is capable of
 simulating me. You need
 a claim about existence.

You told me this before, and I did explain that I am use the truth of  
the existential statement in arithmetic, as my unique claim about  
existence.




 You argument is either based on Platonism or
 invalid

Yes, it based on Turing theorem, which with CT can be sump up by  
universal digital machines exist.




 Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all.

 The CT thesis requires some mathematical
 claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist

 I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they
 exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential
 arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence  
 or
 not of a material world.

 There is no usual interpretation, it is disputed.


For set theoretical realism. Not for the natural numbers. I mean  
nobody, except you and ultrafinitist, doubt about the mathematical  
existence of natural numbers. They can doubt about deeper existence of  
those numbers, but I am not using this. Are you criticizing all  
theories using natural numbers (from economy to physics)?.




 Formalists don't
 think
 backeards-E has any existential implications at all


Formalist does not believe in primary matter either. And they do  
believe in formal systems, which have sense only through naïve  
arithmetic. This dodge the issue, nevertheless, because you can add  
formal to all existential quantifier in the reasoning without  
changing the conclusion: formal physics has to be reduced to formal  
number theory.





 Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang
 never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and
 aspatially true or false.

 Truth and falsehood don't buy you an immaterial computer simulating me
 and eveything I see.


Fortunately numbers and math are still free. If CTM is correct, you  
are emulated infinitely often in the UD*. It exists (mathematically)  
like PI and square-root of two.





 Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a
 proposition like the statement that there is no biggest prime  
 number
 has something to do with physics. In which physical theory you  
 prove
 that statement, and how?

 Its truth is not  a physical truth. The existence or non-existence
 asserted is not any kind of real existence

 OK, in your theory real existence = physical existence.

 There are two claim here:

 real existence = physical existence.
 and
 mathemaical existence != real existence.

 they are argued separately.


Please, define real.




 But if the
 UDA is valid it would be better to write consensual reality =
 physical reality, and ontic or basic 3- existence = arithmetical
 existence, or to abandon CTM. If UDA is non valid, it would be nice  
 to
 point where is the error. You said that the error is in step 0,
 because I would have pretended something like the number seven
 actually exists. My answer is that I don't see where I say so. I  
 just
 say that the number seven exists, in the sense used by  
 mathematicians.
 I limit my platonism to arithmetic to avoid the problem of
 platonism in set theory or analysis, and the CTM explains why
 realism on natural numbers in both necessary and sufficient.

 I am not denying nay truths, only the interpretation of backwards-E
 as actual existence

 I am using a fairly common notion 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:38, Flammarion wrote:

 That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
 with the full force of necessity --

 I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so.  
 Where?

 Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find  a trace.


I wake up this morning realizing this was not your usual statement  
that I am implicitly assuming what I am proving.

So actually you may be right, I do believe that PM has to be argued.  
No doubt that many millennia of evolution make us believe in the  
solidity of our environment, and many years of atomism have made us  
believe that the idea that matter has ultimate constituents is very  
plausible, as the term atom and elementary particles are witnessing.

I have never been much happy with such a notion, which reminds me of  
the material point of classical physics. Does such elementary  
constituents have any spatial shape, and what are they made from. With  
quantum mechanics, from quantum fields to superstrings,  I thought  
people would understand that the atomism question was not settled,  
and that fields and waves, and quantum logic, were somehow questioning  
at least the simplicity or naivety of such a conception of matter.  
Loop gravity and string theory addressed that fundamental point in a  
very different way.

But anyway, the idea that physics, not matter, is fundamental is a  
prejudice of (simplified) Aristotelianism, and not a statement of any  
physical theories, and given the lack of success of (weak) materialism  
with respect to the mind-body or consciousness-reality problem, I tend  
to assume among honest scientists some agnosticism here. But I do have  
underestimated the materialist prejudice.

So I guess you are right on this: I should insist that PM has never  
been proved nor really been addressed in modern science. It is  
always implicit in the background. I thought for long that people were  
aware that it is a methodological simplification, quite similar to the  
material point, but I am wrong on this.

Comp does not entail the non existence of particles, but eventually  
reduce them to pure mathematical symmetries conjugated to the observer  
self-multiplications. If elementary, really elementary particles,  
exist, then comp *has to* justify them from a pure theory of mind  
(computer science/number theory).

Bruno



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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:38, Flammarion wrote:

 That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
 with the full force of necessity --

 I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so.  
 Where?

 Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find  a trace.


If I use this tacitly, you could still help in saying where I am using  
this, even tacitly.




 Other than that. all pointing out that I might be in a UDA
 and therefore wrong doesn't mean I am wrong now. only
 that I am not necessarily right.

If your context independent reasoning is wrong, then it is wrong  
everywhere.
If your reasoning depends on the context (being real/material), then  
it presupposes what it was supposed to show.




 If you don't think the UDA is meant to show that
 I am not necessarily right, maybe you could say what
 it is meant to show


To show that you are necessarily false. UDA shows that the notion of  
primitive matter is non sensical, given that it shows that you can use  
it to related it with any conscious observation.




 although your own argument does
 not have that force.

 If there is a weakness somewhere, tell us where.

 The conclusion of your argument *is* a necessary truth?

Yes. It shows the necessity that comp entails no primitive matter  
available for the physical science.
It does not show the necessity of no primitive matter available for  
the physical science; only that this necessarily follows from the  
computationalist hypothesis in the cognitive science.
You remain free to abandon comp. But then you go back to the usual  
formulation of the mind-body problem with the information that you  
have to introduce actual infinities in both matter and mind.





 In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more
 plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true  
 because of
 sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of
 them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM
 is not impacted much

 ?  Ex(x = UD) is a theorem of elementary arithmetic.

 backwards-E x=UD is indeed true. Schools should not
 be teaching that backwards-E means ontological existence,
 since that is an open question among philosophers.


I am not sure I understand your expression backwards-E. I only use  
the notion of arithmetical existence. Indeed what UDA shows is that  
physical existence has to be reduced to some sophisticated use of  
arithmetical existence. Indeed physical existence become a mode of  
self-reference (in AUDA).




 I have been taught elementary arithmetic in school, and I don't think
 such a theory has been refuted since.

 You will tell me that mathematical existence = non existence at all.
 You are the first human who says so.

 I am not the first formalist.

You may be the last. But even formalist have no problem with  
arithmetical existence, only with set and real numbers (or infinite  
objects).
And also, AUDA works perfectly well in the formalist setting. Well,  
UDA could probably not satisfy a formalist who says no the doctor,  
but you can recast it easily so that it works for a formalist studying  
the discourse of those who say yes to the doctor. The formalist will  
prove formally that they believe that matter must be explained through  
numbers.


Bruno

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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 15:16, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:33, Flammarion wrote:





  On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote:

  Bruno Marchal wrote:

  This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
  argumentation that you are material, and that what we see  
  around us
  is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a
  correct
  argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
  material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
  reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course.
  But
  then your reasoning has to be false too.
  The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
  Turing-emulable,

  Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated?  It seems that your
  argument uses MGA to
  conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing-
  emulable=Turing-emulated.  It
  seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have
  a correct argument
  showing they are material.  But this is already well known from
  brain in a vat thought
  experiments.

  OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning
  leading to our primitive materiality.
  If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being
  published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the
  UD*. I did not use MGA here.

  That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
  with the full force of necessity --

 I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so. Where?

Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find  a trace.

Other than that. all pointing out that I might be in a UDA
and therefore wrong doesn't mean I am wrong now. only
that I am not necessarily right.

If you don't think the UDA is meant to show that
I am not necessarily right, maybe you could say what
it is meant to show


  although your own argument does
  not have that force.

 If there is a weakness somewhere, tell us where.

The conclusion of your argument *is* a necessary truth?

  In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more
  plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of
  sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of
  them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM
  is not impacted much

 ?  Ex(x = UD) is a theorem of elementary arithmetic.

backwards-E x=UD is indeed true. Schools should not
be teaching that backwards-E means ontological existence,
since that is an open question among philosophers.

 I have been taught elementary arithmetic in school, and I don't think  
 such a theory has been refuted since.

 You will tell me that mathematical existence = non existence at all.  
 You are the first human who says so.

I am not the first formalist.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Aug 2009, at 10:28, Flammarion wrote:

 1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or generated
 by something else that does
 2. I ontologically exist
 3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
 4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

 Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
 to here

  5. But the UD exists only mathematically.

Thus, ontological existence = mathematical existence.

 There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
 of mathematics.

For sets and functions, you may be right. For numbers, there is a  
general mathematical agreement. There may be no philosophical  
argument, but this is not relevant to undersatnd the non philosophical  
reasoning.



 You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
 and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
 and defending Platonism and other approaches?

Platonism is used by both philosopher and mathematician as something  
far more general than arithmetical realism, on which all  
mathematicians agree. It is believed explcitly by many physicists too,  
like David Deutsch, Roger Penrose, and those who use math in physics.



 By comp, the  ontic
 theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can
 represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson Arithmetic
 is already enough.

 I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist.


This may be the root of your problem.


 comp = CTM.

 It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in
 your SANE paper.

All right. As I said: comp is CTM + 2 + 2 =  4.


 Classical logic is just a formal rule.

It depends on the realm in which you apply classical logic. In  
computer science people admit that a running program will either halt,  
or not halt, even in case we don't know. This is a non formal use of  
classical logic.


 Bivalence is not Platonism

Exactly. This is one more reason to distinguish carefully  
arithmetical realism (bivalence in the realm of numbers), and  
Platonism (something huge in philosophy and theology).


 So what? If I am material the reasoning is correct. Since the
 alternatives
 to my being material are inherently unlikely, my reasoning is still
 *probably* correct.

You are telling me that if you are material, then you are material.




 I begin to believe what Jesse and David says: you are dodging the
 issue.

 What issue?

CTM and weak materialism are epistemologically incompabible.

Bruno


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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:26, Flammarion wrote:


 I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your
 defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true.
 Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim?

 OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
 activity.


This could be a critic to Maudlin's Olympia argument, it does not  
apply to MGA. Precisely, it does not apply to MGA1+MGA2 (see the MGA  
thread). MGA3 makes a link between Olympia and MGA, but is not needed.

MGA1+MGA2 shows that if we accept the physical supervenience thesis,  
then we have to accept that consciousness supervenes in real time on  
the movie of a computation, which, I think, is already ridiculous. In  
MGA3 the stroboscope illustrates this, without reducing any physical  
activity at all.

Bruno

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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Brent Meeker]

Flammarion wrote:
...
 We might call these three notions of existence Q-existence, M-
 existence and C-existence for short. My argument with you has been
 that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, M-existence is
 an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all we
 need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible
 universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence.

 The M-existence hypothesis is supported by the whole of science, and,
 unlike the C-existence hypothesis, is in line
 with the scientific claim that there was a long period when there was
 no consciousness in the universe.
   
I'm confused by these last two paragraphs.  Did Peter write both of 
them?  The first seems to be against M-existence and the second for 
M-existence...or maybe I misunderstand?

Brent

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RE: Emulation and Stuff

[Jesse Mazer]

 Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:13:54 -0700
 From: meeke...@dslextreme.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
 
 
 Flammarion wrote:
 ...
  We might call these three notions of existence Q-existence, M-
  existence and C-existence for short. My argument with you has been
  that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, M-existence is
  an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all we
  need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible
  universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence.
 
  The M-existence hypothesis is supported by the whole of science, and,
  unlike the C-existence hypothesis, is in line
  with the scientific claim that there was a long period when there was
  no consciousness in the universe.

 I'm confused by these last two paragraphs.  Did Peter write both of 
 them?  The first seems to be against M-existence and the second for 
 M-existence...or maybe I misunderstand?
 

The first of those paragraphs was from me. 

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote:



  Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at
  all. I don't see any evidence for that

 I am explaining this right now.

  Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter.

 The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by
 Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the
 discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory.

 The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical
 computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David
 Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch
 reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a
 different thesis.

Of course you can have theoretical
truths about computation

But show me something that has been computed by
an immaterial computer.

  CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work.

 CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use
 incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA,
 including MGA, shows why this fails.

 What is in MGA which does not work?

It's a reductio of the idea that mental states
supervene on computational states.
CTM must be cast as the claim
that mental activity supervenes on computational
activity.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 01:00, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/19 Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com:

 So someone else noticed Peter dodging the consequences of what he
 originally claimed with respect to Quinean paraphrase!  Thanks.

What consequence was that?
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 00:43, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:59, Flammarion wrote:





  On 19 Aug, 15:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Flammarion wrote:

  On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

  Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e.  
  CTM
  and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've  
  also
  argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I  
  think
  is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM  
  are
  compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
  seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
  argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the  
  topic
  currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable  
  or
  disprovable on purely logical grounds.

  I for one am unclear on what
  basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong
  grounds
  for this?

  Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical
  conclusion--
  in this
  case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
  metaphysical assumption.

  I completely agree with that point, but I don't see the relevance.
  Comp, alias CTM,

  CTM does not have Platonism tacked on as a sub-hypothesis

  Classical Digital mechanism, or Classical Computationalism, or just
  comp, is the conjunction of the following three sub-hypotheses:

  1)      The yes doctor hypothesis: It is the assumption, in cognitive
  science, that it exists a level of description of my parts (whatever I
  consider myself to be[2]) such that I would not be aware of any
  experiential change in the case where a functionally correct digital
  substitution is done of my parts at that level. We call that level the
  substitution level. More simply said it is the act of faith of those
  willing to say yes to their doctor for an artificial brain or an
  artificial body graft made from some description at some level. We
  will see such a level is unknowable. Note that some amount of folk or
  grand-mother psychology has been implicitly used under the  
  granting
  of the notion of (self) awareness[3].

  2)      Church Thesis. A modern version is that all digital universal
  machines are equivalent with respect to the class of functions (from
  the natural numbers to the natural numbers) they can compute[4]. It
  can be shown that this entails such machines compute the same
  functions, but also they can compute them in similar ways, i.e.
  following similar algorithm. So, the thesis says, making abstraction
  of computation time, all digital universal machine can simulate each
  other exactly (I will say emulate each other).

  3)      Arithmetical Realism (AR). This is the assumption that
  arithmetical proposition, like 1+1=2, or Goldbach conjecture,  
  or the
  inexistence of a bigger prime, or the statement that some digital
  machine will stop, or any Boolean formula bearing on numbers, are true
  independently of me, you, humanity, the physical universe (if that
  exists), etc. It is a version of Platonism limited at least to
  arithmetical truth. It should not be confused with the much stronger
  Pythagorean form of AR, AR+, which asserts that only natural numbers
  exist together with their nameable relations: all the rest being
  derivative from those relations.

 Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that  
 indeed platonism is not part of it.

It is a version of Platonism

 Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all.

The CT thesis requires some mathematical
claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist

 This  
 should be made clear in the seventh step series thread.

 You told us that you are OK with AR some post ago, but now I have no  
 more clue at all about what do you assume or not.

I may well have subscribed to some truth claims

 Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a  
 proposition like the statement that there is no biggest prime number  
 has something to do with physics. In which physical theory you prove  
 that statement, and how?

Its truth is not  a physical truth. The existence or non-existence
asserted is not any kind of real existence

 Actually the most you go deep in fundamental physics, the more you  
 need deep results in number theory.

I am not denying nay truths, only the interpretation of backwards-E
as actual existence

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Quentin Anciaux]

2009/8/21 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:



 On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote:



  Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at
  all. I don't see any evidence for that

 I am explaining this right now.

  Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter.

 The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by
 Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the
 discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory.

 The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical
 computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David
 Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch
 reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a
 different thesis.

 Of course you can have theoretical
 truths about computation

 But show me something that has been computed by
 an immaterial computer.

  CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work.

 CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use
 incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA,
 including MGA, shows why this fails.

 What is in MGA which does not work?

 It's a reductio of the idea that mental states
 supervene on computational states.
 CTM must be cast as the claim
 that mental activity supervenes on computational
 activity.

If physicalism is true... in the end it supervenes on physical state
only as for physicalism, computations do not exists unless they are
being instantiated physically.

Also a computation is implementation agnostic... how can you explain
that with physicalism and denying any existence to computation ?

Regards,
Quentin


 




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 02:23, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:





  On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

  It doesn't.  It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it
  is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language
  - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by
  rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual
  reduction.  MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the
  conjunction of CTM and PM.  Of course, CTM on the basis of
  arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from
  physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification.

  Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation.
  The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering,

  I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your
  defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true.
  Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim?

  OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
  activity.

 But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA
 proposes.  MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is
 implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical
 activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going
 on', then it can't be attached to physical activity.

I don't; want to claim there is computation still going on

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 11:31, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 20 Aug 2009, at 10:46, Flammarion wrote:


 Indeed, you don't believe in the number seven. But sometimes you seem  
 to believe in their mathematical existence, and that is all what I  
 need.

No. I always qualify mathematical existence as a mere
truth claim that adds up to nothing ontologically.

The UD exists in the same sense than the number seven.
 If you don't believe in the mathematical existence of the number  
 seven,

I believe in backwards-E 7. I don't believe that
is enough to generate RITSTIAR. THat would be
like a fictional character coming to life

then indeed you cannot go farther than step zero.
 I let you know you are the first person on this planet who does not  
 believe in the mathematical existence of the number seven.

  I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence,

  It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny

 Formalist accept arithmetical existence. They reject set theoretical  
 existence.
 They need arithmetical existence to define their formal systems.

Not at all. That is more like intuitionism or something


  I have explained this over and over. I accept that
  true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E
  means ontological existence.

 When science tackle fundamental question, it is better to be agnostic  
 and abandon any ontological commitment.
 Your ontological, and philosophical commitment, seems to prevent you  
 to even read the reasoning.

You have as much ontological commitment as I.

  Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything.

  UD exists like PI exists.

  That doesn't exist ontologically either

 The point is that the proof goes on with such form on not necessarily  
 ontological existence, or you have to show where in the reasoning  
 things get wrong.

1. Something that ontologically exists can only be caused or generated
by something else that does
2. I ontologically exist
3. According to you, I am generated by the UD
4. Therefore the UD must ontologically exist.

Step 4 is really step 0 which I have worked backwards
to here


  That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
  You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
  ontological RITISAR existence.

  I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first
  person is real or real as my body is real.
  You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept
  this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning  
  of
  RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body.
  After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies
  (like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between
  those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger.

  UDA proves nothing without an argument of the actual, if non-physical,
  existence of numbers.

 I need the usual mathematical existence of number.

There is no usual one, since there is no one agreed ontology
of mathematics. You are aware. are you not, that philosophers
and mathematicians are still writing books and papers attacking
and defending Platonism and other approaches?

There is of course a standard set of backwards-E claims

By comp, the  ontic  
 theory of everything is shown to be any theory in which I can  
 represent the computable function. The very weak Robinson Arithmetic  
 is already enough.

I am not interested in haggling over which pixies exist.


  The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
  are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
  for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no
  certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest
  plausibility.

  I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive argument. A  
  proof,
  that COMP = physics has to emerge from numbers.

  But I have also evidences for comp, in the sense that the physics
  which emerge from numbers is a multiversial physics, and the quantum
  reality makes many people to consider that we may live in a
  multiversial reality. And I have also more technical evidences coming
  from the Arithmetical UDA. That are evidence for comp.

  I can't be in something that has merely mathematical existence,  
  any
  more than I can be in Nanrnia

  ... then CTM (comp) is false, and you should help us to find the  
  error

  comp is false because comp=CTM+CTT+AR
  CTM is not falsified.

 comp = CTM.

It clearly isn't by the defintiion you gave in
your SANE paper.

 You may repeat the contrary as much as you want, but comp  
 is CTM. You are the one who has invented a sequence of notion like  
 seven needs to have actual or ontological existence for the reasoning  
 to go through, but you have never show where in the reasoning I am  
 using such actuality or ontologicalness.




  in UDA, instead of just denying existence for what almost everybody
  accepts to 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 21 Aug, 09:37, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  Yes, of course you're right - perhaps I didn't phrase my response to
  Jesse clearly enough.  In my discussion with Peter about Quinean
  'eliminative paraphrasing', I was pursuing the same conclusion that
  you attribute to Dennett as an 'honest materialist'.  That is, under
  materialism, that persons, consciousness - and computation - must in
  the end be explained away, or conceptually *eliminated*.

 Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as
 explaining away qua elimination.

Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out
below.  But it's a false distinction, as I point out below.

  But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
  I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
  eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
  this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
  bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
  the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
  Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
  still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
  as though nothing had happened!

 The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind
 (with the possible exception of qualia)
 in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the
 sense of Reductive materialism.

What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia!  The whole
point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of
the account you're an eliminativist.  Qualia are precisely what is
being eliminated.

  In other words, his position is
  inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!

 In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is.

What do you mean?  Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto-
dualist?  Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative
reductive materialism is something different than either of these?


  So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
  without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
  of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
  understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
  *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
  no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
  is eliminable per Qine.

 No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased
 as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that
 water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated
 as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it).
 EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept
 eliminated should never subsequently be used even as
 a place-holder or shrothand

Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be
paraphrased as a specific physical process.  This means that this
computation is identical to that physical process.  'Computation' is
therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense).
Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere
shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or
alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever.

Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that
'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this.  This would
be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would
be struck dumb.  There is no problem with using the 'eliminated'
concept as a shorthand (indeed this is explicitly proposed in the
Quinean excerpt you commented).  The principle is to be able to put it
aside whenever required, by means of an appeal to the underlying
fundamental reduction.

David
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 21 Aug, 17:25, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 21 Aug, 09:37, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   Yes, of course you're right - perhaps I didn't phrase my response to
   Jesse clearly enough.  In my discussion with Peter about Quinean
   'eliminative paraphrasing', I was pursuing the same conclusion that
   you attribute to Dennett as an 'honest materialist'.  That is, under
   materialism, that persons, consciousness - and computation - must in
   the end be explained away, or conceptually *eliminated*.

  Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as
  explaining away qua elimination.

 Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out
 below.  But it's a false distinction, as I point out below.

   But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
   I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
   eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
   this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
   bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
   the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
   Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
   still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
   as though nothing had happened!

  The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind
  (with the possible exception of qualia)
  in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the
  sense of Reductive materialism.

 What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia!  The whole
 point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of
 the account you're an eliminativist.  Qualia are precisely what is
 being eliminated.

He is a selective eliminativist. He is not being
inconsistent. Having eiminated qualia, he deosn;t
continue to talk about them. He does continue to talk
about memory, thought and perception, but then he
hasn't eilminated them.

   In other words, his position is
   inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!

  In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is.

 What do you mean?  Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto-
 dualist?  Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative
 reductive materialism is something different than either of these?

he is eliminativist about qualia and reductionist about everything
else.

   So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
   without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
   of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
   understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
   *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
   no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
   is eliminable per Qine.

  No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased
  as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that
  water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated
  as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it).
  EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept
  eliminated should never subsequently be used even as
  a place-holder or shrothand

 Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be
 paraphrased as a specific physical process.  This means that this
 computation is identical to that physical process.  'Computation' is
 therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense).
 Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere
 shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or
 alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever.

Yes, yes, and yes. Why would that be a problem?

 Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that
 'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this.

Uh-huh. And where are you getting your information
on eliminativism from?

This would
 be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would
 be struck dumb.

Only if we eliminated everything,. and only if we did not have
substitute theory. Elimiativists think terms like thought will
simply be abandoned as part of a failed theory,
(like phlosgiston), rather than continuing as convenient
but not entirely accurate shorthand. But they don't expect
this to happen until the replacement theories are
perfected. So they don't expect to be struck dumb.

 There is no problem with using the 'eliminated'
 concept as a shorthand (indeed this is explicitly proposed in the
 Quinean excerpt you commented).

Says who? Eliminativists argue that there is.
You may not agree, but you cannot conclude
that no-one holds those views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminativism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Aug 2009, at 09:33, Flammarion wrote:




 On 20 Aug, 00:28, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:21, Flammarion wrote:



 Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process  
 at
 all. I don't see any evidence for that

 I am explaining this right now.

 Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter.

 The notion of computation and computability have been discovered by
 Mathematicians working around the foundation crisis of math after the
 discovery by Cantor and others of paradoxes in set theory.

 The idea is that computation should be redefined as physical
 computation is a very recent one, and is due to people like David
 Deustch and Landauer. And it does not really work as such. Deutsch
 reconstruction of the Post-Church-Turing thesis is really a
 different thesis.

 Of course you can have theoretical
 truths about computation

 But show me something that has been computed by
 an immaterial computer.

A Schmidhuberian computationalist would probably answer: look around  
you. But I have explained why this is not enough, and why a prori comp  
makes the observable reality not the output of one program (but a view  
from inside from all execution of all programs).

  I can only hope you will work on the UDA+MGA, and understand that  
non-theoretical truth have to be redefined as theoretical  
possibilities (consistencies) observed from inside (from some first  
person point of view).

Comp, or CTM, leads to a many types no token view of reality. Token  
are seen as such by being appearances from the point of view of an  
abstract subject coupled to an (infinity of) abstract computations.



 CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work.

 CTM is neutral on materialism, even if many materialist use
 incorrectly comp to put the mind body problem under the rug. UDA,
 including MGA, shows why this fails.

 What is in MGA which does not work?

 It's a reductio of the idea that mental states
 supervene on computational states.
 CTM must be cast as the claim
 that mental activity supervenes on computational
 activity.

I agree. Consciousness is attached to computation (and not to  
computational states), even at the starting of the reasoning, and also  
when the physical supervenience is introduced in MGA for the reductio  
ad absurdum.
Then, eventually, keeping CTM, and thus abandoning (weak) materialism,  
consciousness is related to, well not just a computation, but to an  
infinite sheaves of computations. Consciousness is a first person  
notion, and as such, is dependent on the first person uncertainty  
measure brought by the first person indeterminacy.
This is why I take time to explain what is a computation, or a  
computational activity, in purely arithmetical terms. A computation is  
not just a sequence of computational states, it is a sequence of  
computational states related by at least one universal machine (and  
then an infinity of them, from the point of view of the conscious  
being, observably so when he/she looks below its substitution level).  
Classical physics become the study of our most probable computations,  
which emerge from the statistical interference of all computations  
going through my relevant states (the relevance being dependent of the  
observer's comp-substitution level).


 Thanks for quoting my sane2004 definition of comp, and showing that
 indeed platonism is not part of it.

 It is a version of Platonism

The wording is not important. The point is that in the assumption of  
CTM, (CT+ the theological act of faith),  I am using that version of  
platonism only, which is just the idea that classical logic can be  
applied to arithmetical sentences, and in the conclusion, only, we  
have to abandon weak materialism or CTM.


 Just arithmetical realism without which CT has no meaning at all.

 The CT thesis requires some mathematical
 claims to be true. it doesn't require numbers to actually exist


I have never asserted that numbers actually exist. Just that they  
exist in the sense of the usual interpretation of existential  
arithmetical statement are independent of me, you, or the existence or  
not of a material world.

Would the two cosmic branes never have collided, and the big bang  
never occurred, the Rieman hypothesis would still be atemporally and  
aspatially true or false.


 Get the feeling you have change your mind on AR. You believe that a
 proposition like the statement that there is no biggest prime number
 has something to do with physics. In which physical theory you prove
 that statement, and how?

 Its truth is not  a physical truth. The existence or non-existence
 asserted is not any kind of real existence

OK, in your theory real existence = physical existence. But if the  
UDA is valid it would be better to write consensual reality =  
physical reality, and ontic or basic 3- existence = arithmetical  
existence, or to abandon CTM. If UDA is non valid, it would be nice to  
point 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 21 Aug, 19:04, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   Explaining away qua reduction is nto the same as
   explaining away qua elimination.

  Well, either way he's explaining away, as you yourself point out
  below.  But it's a false distinction, as I point out below.

But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
as though nothing had happened!

   The upshot of which is that he *hasn't* eliminated the mind
   (with the possible exception of qualia)
   in the sense of Eliminative Materialism, only reduced it in the
   sense of Reductive materialism.

  What do you mean with the possible exception of qualia!  The whole
  point is that if you think you can leave qualitative experience out of
  the account you're an eliminativist.  Qualia are precisely what is
  being eliminated.

 He is a selective eliminativist. He is not being
 inconsistent. Having eiminated qualia, he deosn;t
 continue to talk about them. He does continue to talk
 about memory, thought and perception, but then he
 hasn't eilminated them.

In other words, his position is
inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!

   In other words, his position isn't what you have decided it is.

  What do you mean?  Are you saying he's an eliminativist or a crypto-
  dualist?  Or are you implying that (possibly!) non-qualitative
  reductive materialism is something different than either of these?

 he is eliminativist about qualia and reductionist about everything
 else.

In that case he's an eliminativist about consciousness..

So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
*only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
is eliminable per Qine.

   No. Paraphrase indicates identity. Water can be paraphrased
   as H2O. That means water is identical to H2O. not that
   water does not and cannot exist. Water is only eliminated
   as *fundamental* (eg. the way the Greeks thought of it).
   EliminativISM is a much stronger claim, that the concept
   eliminated should never subsequently be used even as
   a place-holder or shrothand

  Yes, so following your recipe above, a given computation can be
  paraphrased as a specific physical process.  This means that this
  computation is identical to that physical process.  'Computation' is
  therefore eliminated as something fundamental (in the Greek sense).
  Consequently, this leaves CTM+PM with 'computation' as a mere
  shorthand for an appeal to the fundamental physical processes, or
  alternatively with no appeal to anything fundamental whatsoever.

 Yes, yes, and yes. Why would that be a problem?

Well, if now you think there's no problem, perhaps you'd like to
reconsider what you meant by no above.  I try my best to respond to
your comments, but it seems to me that you react as though you had
never made them.

  Further, I can't possibly agree with your contention that
  'eliminativism' is any other or stronger claim than this.

 Uh-huh. And where are you getting your information
 on eliminativism from?

 This would
  be absurd, as well as unnecessary, because it would mean that we would
  be struck dumb.

 Only if we eliminated everything,. and only if we did not have
 substitute theory. Elimiativists think terms like thought will
 simply be abandoned as part of a failed theory,
 (like phlosgiston), rather than continuing as convenient
 but not entirely accurate shorthand. But they don't expect
 this to happen until the replacement theories are
 perfected. So they don't expect to be struck dumb.

In that case they're 'replacementists' rather than 'eliminativists',
wouldn't you say?  They just want to replace one shorthand with
another.  Either way, talking in 'reducese' won't get you much
conversation.

  There is no problem with using the 'eliminated'
  concept as a shorthand (indeed this is explicitly proposed in the
  Quinean excerpt you commented).

 Says who? Eliminativists argue that there is.
 You may not agree, but you cannot conclude
 that no-one holds those views.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminativism

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/

Like I said, they 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 16:41, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from
  contingent
  structures and still pretend that matter is primitive.

  I am saying that material existence *is* contingent
  existence. It is not a structure of anything.

  Plotinus says that too! Me too.
  With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not-
  computable or not-provable, or some relativizations.

  You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number.
  It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box..

 If you believe that a deduction is not valid, you have to say where,
 and why.


1. Somehting X is non-computable
2. Everything is mathematical
3. Therefore X is a non-computable number.

The conclusion is valid. But (2) is a belief of yours that
I don't share. Hence *I* don't agree PM is a non-computable number


  Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the
  existence of primitive matter.

  Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each
  other.

  In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below.

  

  In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve
  them.

 If comp is assumed, some computation correspond to dream, and their
 existence can be proved in arithmetic.

Mathematics cannot prove metaphysical claims.
Backwards-E is metaphysically non-commital.

 And the MGA argument shows that no machine can make the difference
 between real, virtual and arithmetical.

  There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
  my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

 Meaning: UDA is non valid. I am still waiting your argument.

I don't grant step 0 -- the immaterial existence of a UD
or any other mathematical structure.

  You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used
  by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
  which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

  No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
  mathematical
  existence is ontological existence.

 I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence,

It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny

 except
 physical existence, but this beg the question.
 If you don't deny the arithmetical truth, you accept arithmetical
 realism, and you cannot deny the UD, so you should be able to follow
 the argument. And if you believe the conclusion is wrong, you should
 say where.

I have explained this over and over. I accept that
true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E
means ontological existence.

  Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything.

 UD exists like PI exists.

That doesn't exist ontologically either

 The rest is taken into account in the
 argument that I am referring to.
 Don't say that PI and circle does not exists. Say that PI and circles
 does not exist physically. It is quite different.

Even Platonists regard them as existing non-physcially. If you don't
understand what the debate between Platonists, formalists ,
intuiotionists (etc)
is about, you need to read the literature.



  That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
  You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
  ontological RITISAR existence.

 I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first
 person is real or real as my body is real.
 You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept
 this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning of
 RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body.
 After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies
 (like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between
 those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger.

UDA proves nothing without an argument of the actual, if non-physical,
existence of numbers.

  See conscience  mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running
  mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
  materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.

  So? It hasn't been.

 It has been implemented, and it has run for a week in 1991. This is
 anecdotical. Just to say that the UD is a concrete program.

But it is hardly going to contain vast infinities after a week.

  The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
  are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
  for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no
  certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest
  plausibility.

 I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive argument. A proof,
 that COMP = physics has to emerge from numbers.

 But I have also evidences for comp, in the sense that the physics
 which emerge from numbers is a multiversial physics, and the quantum
 reality makes many people to consider that 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 21:49, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote:
  Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:19 -0700
  Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
  From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com
  To: everything-list@googlegroups.com

  On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
   009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
*any* human concept is *eliminable*

No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

   Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
   precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
   can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
   'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.

  Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation
  by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination.

 Of course it is--*according to the Quinean definition of ontology*. The 
 strange thing about your mode of argument is that you talk as though a word 
 like existence has some single true correct meaning, and that anyone who 
 uses it differently is just wrong--do you disagree with the basic premise 
 that the meaning of words is defined solely by usage and/or definitions? If 
 so, do you agree that there are in fact different ways this word is defined 
 by real people, even if we restrict our attention to the philosophical 
 community?

Note that I actually argued the point that paraphrase is not
elimination

 Provided you agree with that, your posts would be a lot less confusing if you 
 would distinguish between different definitions and state which one you meant 
 at a given time--for example, one might say I agree numbers have Quinean 
 existence but I think they lack material existence, or existence in the sense 
 that intelligent beings that appear in mathematical universes are actually 
 conscious beings with their own qualia.
We might call these three notions of existence Q-existence, M-
existence and C-existence for short. My argument with you has been
that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, M-existence is
an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all we
need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible
universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence.

The M-existence hypothesis is supported by the whole of science, and,
unlike the C-existence hypothesis, is in line
with the scientific claim that there was a long period when there was
no consciousness in the universe.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Aug 2009, at 02:07, David Nyman wrote:


 2009/8/19 Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com:

 I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation  
 is a
 physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.   
 The
 paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts  
 that
 *any* human concept is *eliminable*

 No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

 Not in this instance. The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
 precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
 can be *eliminated* from the explanation. You can do this with
 'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.
 Well, not if you believe there are objective truths about  
 computations that
 are never actually carried out in the physical world, like whether  
 some
 program with an input string a googolplex digits long ever halts or  
 not.

 Yes, but here - in connection with Peter's apparent support for the
 Quinean concept-reduction argument - I was specifically commenting on
 the status of 'computation' **if** you assume primitive matter.  In
 that case, I'm not sure what never actually carried out in the
 physical world would mean.

On the contrary. If you assume there is a primitive material reality,  
a primitive physical universe, then it makes sense to talk about the  
computations which are carried out in the physical universe, like the  
one done by this or that computer or brains, and the computations  
which are not done in that universe, like some possible  
counterfactuals (the computations carried out by Julius Caesar meeting  
Napoleon), or some extravagant computations like the computation of  
the 10^(10^1000) digit of the square root of two. Of course in the  
special case of a large multiverse, or in the concrete ever expanding  
universe assumed in step seven, the universal dovetailing is  
integrally executed so that in such a universe all the computations  
are carried out.


 I don't have a problem with step 8 on the basis of the Olympia
 argument, as I've tried to demonstrate - is there some other aspect of
 computational supervenience that you feel I'm missing?


 May be you don't want to do the math? The math for UDA are really
 basic compared to the math needed for AUDA.


 I'm trying to follow the math as you go through it, although I still
 haven't really fathomed where it's leading.


Your second sentence answers the first one. Your paragraph above also.  
The current seventh step series is leading to the understanding of  
what is a computation, and a machine, for a mathematician. With or  
without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion  
of computation and of computability. This is amazing, because Cantor  
discovered a technic which is capable of demolishing most attempt to  
define a real universal thing in math, but as Gödel will eventually  
realize, the set of computable functions remains closed for that  
technic. Gödel described this as a kind of miracle, and was very  
skeptical about it. That miracle is Church thesis. Gödel, on its own  
saying, missed it, despite he invented one of the candidate for a  
definition of what are computations, and what means computable.

The notion of computation does not rely on anything physical.  
Computation and computability theory are branch of mathematics, and in  
my youth those branches were taught in the pure mathematics  
courses., not in applied mathematics course. And in some  
universities this remains so. In informatics applied computer  
science, such course on the mathematical computation are not taught:  
you have to do pure math to study it, and if you dare to pretend there  
could be relations between them, you are consider as a betrayer of  
pure math!

I think that what remains unclear in step seven is due to the lack of  
knowledge of that purely mathematical notion of computation. You  
need it to justify why Universal Machine and Universal Dovetailer  
exist and in what sense they are truly universal.

The notion of physical computation *today* is quantum computation, and  
this is a priori something else, except it can be shown defining the  
same class of computable functions.

A big problem for the comp hyp. consists in explaining why apparently  
everything we can touch and smell is described only by quantum  
computation. Why in UD* (the infinite execution of the UD, or of any  
UD) does the quantum computation wins the measure battle, at least  
from the first person (plural) points of view. Of course the first  
person plural indeterminacy explains why, but we have to recover the  
detail. The apparent primitive matter that we recover from comp is a  
priori too much powerful, and leads to too much white rabbits. Only  
pure mathematical computer science explains why this is not trivial at  
all.

Bruno


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




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You received 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 02:23, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:





  On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

  It doesn't.  It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it
  is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language
  - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by
  rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual
  reduction.  MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the
  conjunction of CTM and PM.  Of course, CTM on the basis of
  arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from
  physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification.

  Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation.
  The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering,

  I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your
  defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true.
  Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim?

  OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
  activity.

 But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA
 proposes.  MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is
 implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical
 activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going
 on', then it can't be attached to physical activity.  Are you
 questioning that MGA constitutes a valid instantiation of a physical
 TM?  What about Olympia?

I should have added that you can;t have computaton with zero
computational activity.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Aug 2009, at 10:46, Flammarion wrote:




 On 19 Aug, 16:41, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from
 contingent
 structures and still pretend that matter is primitive.

 I am saying that material existence *is* contingent
 existence. It is not a structure of anything.

 Plotinus says that too! Me too.
 With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not-
 computable or not-provable, or some relativizations.

 You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number.
 It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box..

 If you believe that a deduction is not valid, you have to say where,
 and why.


 1. Somehting X is non-computable
 2. Everything is mathematical
 3. Therefore X is a non-computable number.

 The conclusion is valid. But (2) is a belief of yours that
 I don't share. Hence *I* don't agree PM is a non-computable number

You have really decide to attack me without reading me.

I have send at least 5 posts where I explain why I am very dubious  
about 2.




 Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the
 existence of primitive matter.

 Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming  
 each
 other.

 In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below.

 

 In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve
 them.

 If comp is assumed, some computation correspond to dream, and their
 existence can be proved in arithmetic.

 Mathematics cannot prove metaphysical claims.


If comp is assume we are doing an hypothesis which is metaphysical,  
or theological. It is a belief in a form of reincarnation.
You attacks me perpetually on statements which I never uttered.



 Backwards-E is metaphysically non-commital.

?




 And the MGA argument shows that no machine can make the difference
 between real, virtual and arithmetical.

 There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
 my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

 Meaning: UDA is non valid. I am still waiting your argument.

 I don't grant step 0 -- the immaterial existence of a UD
 or any other mathematical structure.

Indeed, you don't believe in the number seven. But sometimes you seem  
to believe in their mathematical existence, and that is all what I  
need. The UD exists in the same sense than the number seven.
If you don't believe in the mathematical existence of the number  
seven, then indeed you cannot go farther than step zero.
I let you know you are the first person on this planet who does not  
believe in the mathematical existence of the number seven.



 You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are  
 used
 by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
 which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

 No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
 mathematical
 existence is ontological existence.

 I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence,

 It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny

Formalist accept arithmetical existence. They reject set theoretical  
existence.
They need arithmetical existence to define their formal systems.



 except
 physical existence, but this beg the question.
 If you don't deny the arithmetical truth, you accept arithmetical
 realism, and you cannot deny the UD, so you should be able to follow
 the argument. And if you believe the conclusion is wrong, you should
 say where.

 I have explained this over and over. I accept that
 true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E
 means ontological existence.

When science tackle fundamental question, it is better to be agnostic  
and abandon any ontological commitment.
Your ontological, and philosophical commitment, seems to prevent you  
to even read the reasoning.





 Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything.

 UD exists like PI exists.

 That doesn't exist ontologically either

The point is that the proof goes on with such form on not necessarily  
ontological existence, or you have to show where in the reasoning  
things get wrong.




 The rest is taken into account in the
 argument that I am referring to.
 Don't say that PI and circle does not exists. Say that PI and circles
 does not exist physically. It is quite different.

 Even Platonists regard them as existing non-physically.

But this is what I was saying. You don't read the post either  
apparently.

Here I was asking you to say that seven does not exist physically  
instead of your usual seven does not exist.








 That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
 You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
 ontological RITISAR existence.

 I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first
 person is real or real as my body is real.
 You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept
 this 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 20 Aug, 10:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 20 Aug 2009, at 02:07, David Nyman wrote:





  2009/8/19 Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com:

  I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation  
  is a
  physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  
  The
  paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts  
  that
  *any* human concept is *eliminable*

  No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

  Not in this instance. The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
  precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
  can be *eliminated* from the explanation. You can do this with
  'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.
  Well, not if you believe there are objective truths about  
  computations that
  are never actually carried out in the physical world, like whether  
  some
  program with an input string a googolplex digits long ever halts or  
  not.

  Yes, but here - in connection with Peter's apparent support for the
  Quinean concept-reduction argument - I was specifically commenting on
  the status of 'computation' **if** you assume primitive matter.  In
  that case, I'm not sure what never actually carried out in the
  physical world would mean.

 On the contrary. If you assume there is a primitive material reality,  
 a primitive physical universe, then it makes sense to talk about the  
 computations which are carried out in the physical universe, like the  
 one done by this or that computer or brains, and the computations  
 which are not done in that universe, like some possible  
 counterfactuals (the computations carried out by Julius Caesar meeting  
 Napoleon), or some extravagant computations like the computation of  
 the 10^(10^1000) digit of the square root of two.

Yes, of course you're right - perhaps I didn't phrase my response to
Jesse clearly enough.  In my discussion with Peter about Quinean
'eliminative paraphrasing', I was pursuing the same conclusion that
you attribute to Dennett as an 'honest materialist'.  That is, under
materialism, that persons, consciousness - and computation - must in
the end be explained away, or conceptually *eliminated*.  I'm not
saying that I hold these views (I emphatically do not), only that
anyone who honestly and rigorously adheres to materialism must see
that  they are entailed by this position.

Of course, under materialism, there is a *physical process*
corresponding to 'computation'; consequently, as both you and Jesse
point out, one can of course envisage non-occurring, or
counterfactual, processes with respect to these.  But I don't see how
that would change the conclusion of the eliminativist argument I was
pursuing (as devil's advocate) - as indeed Jesse pointed out to Peter.

  I don't have a problem with step 8 on the basis of the Olympia
  argument, as I've tried to demonstrate - is there some other aspect of
  computational supervenience that you feel I'm missing?

  May be you don't want to do the math? The math for UDA are really
  basic compared to the math needed for AUDA.

  I'm trying to follow the math as you go through it, although I still
  haven't really fathomed where it's leading.

 Your second sentence answers the first one. Your paragraph above also.  
 The current seventh step series is leading to the understanding of  
 what is a computation, and a machine, for a mathematician. With or  
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion  
 of computation and of computability.

Ah.  Well, tell me if you still want to make the point about my
'paragraph above', after my response on this.  But on the issue of the
understanding of what is computation, I must concede that I have much
to learn technically - so I will be humble and try to study.

But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
as though nothing had happened!  In other words, his position is
inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!

So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
*only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
is eliminable per Qine.  Don't misunderstand me - this 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 20 Aug, 13:30, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 20 Aug, 10:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
 I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
 eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
 this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
 bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
 the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
 Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
 still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
 as though nothing had happened!  In other words, his position is
 inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!


Nope. He is a reductionist, not an eliminativist.

 So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
 of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
 understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
 *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
 no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
 is eliminable per Qine.

That isn't elimination in the sense of eliminativism.

Don't misunderstand me - this is what is
 *wrong* with material monism - because to be consistent, one is either
 honestly forced to such an eliminativist conclusion (but then you must
 deny your own consciousness and all mental concepts), or you tacitly
 accept a form of dualism (but again without noticing!)  So I suppose
 that when you say with primitive matter that you don't mean
 **only** with primitive matter, but rather with primitive matter +
 computation - which is in effect a dualistic assumption.  Again,
 please don't misunderstand me - I regard comp as a coherent *monistic*
 approach to both mind and matter that seeks to 'eliminate' neither,
 and which brings the mind-body issues into full focus. But the
 assumption of PM *in addition* would transform it into a type of
 epiphenomenal dualism.

You are still confusing reduciton/identity with elimination

--

Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two
different notions of the sort of elimination that the term
eliminative materialism entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the
cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account
of the workings of the mind will not employ terms that refer to common-
sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be
part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science.[4][5] But critics
immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the
identity theory of mind.[1][13] Quine himself wondered what exactly
was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all:
“   Is physicalism a repudiation of mental objects after all, or a
theory of them? Does it repudiate the mental state of pain or anger in
favor of its physical concomitant, or does it identify the mental
state with a state of the physical organism (and so a state of the
physical organism with the mental state)? [14]  ”

On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-
sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that
eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist
and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level
neurophysiological processes or they do not.[1][13] Modern
eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental
phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from
people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have
been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and
psychopathology.[3]
-

WP
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RE: Emulation and Stuff

[Jesse Mazer]

 Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:56:27 -0700
 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
 From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 
 
 
 On 19 Aug, 21:49, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote:
   Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:19 -0700
   Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
   From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com
   To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
   On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
 
 I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
 physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
 paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
 *any* human concept is *eliminable*
 
 No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.
 
Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.
 
   Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation
   by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination.
 
  Of course it is--*according to the Quinean definition of ontology*. The 
  strange thing about your mode of argument is that you talk as though a word 
  like existence has some single true correct meaning, and that anyone who 
  uses it differently is just wrong--do you disagree with the basic premise 
  that the meaning of words is defined solely by usage and/or definitions? If 
  so, do you agree that there are in fact different ways this word is defined 
  by real people, even if we restrict our attention to the philosophical 
  community?
 
 Note that I actually argued the point that paraphrase is not
 elimination

Do you agree that it is in the Quinean definition of ontology? If you're going 
to define existence in terms of things that there are objective truths about 
like Quine wanted to, you need something like elimination-by-paraphrase if you 
want to avoid the implication that unicorns are real because the statement 
unicorns have a single horn is true given our definitions.

Also, you didn't answer my question--regardless of what *you* think is the most 
sensible way to define existence, do you agree that different people define it 
differently, so there is no single correct usage? If so it would behoove you 
to distinguish the different senses in your posts, for example to drop the 
totally false suggestion that being a mathematical platonist implies you must 
believe mathematical structures have existence in the sense of M-existence or 
C-existence (Bruno may think mathematical structures have C-existence and I'm 
inclined to think so myself, but plenty of mathematical platonists do not)


  Provided you agree with that, your posts would be a lot less confusing if 
  you would distinguish between different definitions and state which one you 
  meant at a given time--for example, one might say I agree numbers have 
  Quinean existence but I think they lack material existence, or existence in 
  the sense that intelligent beings that appear in mathematical universes are 
  actually conscious beings with their own qualia.
 We might call these three notions of existence Q-existence, M-
 existence and C-existence for short. My argument with you has been
 that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, M-existence is
 an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all we
 need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible
 universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence.
 
 The M-existence hypothesis is supported by the whole of science,

You can't say science supports the metaphysical hypothesis of M-existence 
unless you can define what M-existence actually means. And we would experience 
all the same experimental results in a universe that had Q-existence and 
C-existence but no M-existence, would we not? If so, then there is absolutely 
no way that scientific evidence can distinguish the hypothesis that the 
universe has C-existence alone from the one that it has both M-existence and 
C-existence, any argument for the latter must be metaphysical rather than 
empirical.

 and,
 unlike the C-existence hypothesis, is in line
 with the scientific claim that there was a long period when there was
 no consciousness in the universe.

The C-existence hypothesis need not say that unconscious things don't exist, 
C-existence can be defined in terms of the potential to influence the qualia of 
any conscious beings that are part of the same mathematical universe. On the 
other hand, one is also free to adopt some version of naturalistic panpsychism, 
like the one argued for by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind or the 
version discussed at http://www.hedweb.com/lockwood.htm#naturalistic



--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Aug 2009, at 14:30, David Nyman wrote:


 On 20 Aug, 10:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:





 Your second sentence answers the first one. Your paragraph above  
 also.
 The current seventh step series is leading to the understanding of
 what is a computation, and a machine, for a mathematician. With or
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical  
 notion
 of computation and of computability.

 Ah.  Well, tell me if you still want to make the point about my
 'paragraph above', after my response on this.  But on the issue of the
 understanding of what is computation, I must concede that I have much
 to learn technically - so I will be humble and try to study.

 But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
 I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
 eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
 this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
 bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
 the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
 Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
 still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
 as though nothing had happened!  In other words, his position is
 inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!


I agree. I think that Dennett agrees too, as he almost confesses at  
the end of his book on Consciousness Explained.




 So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
 of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
 understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
 *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
 no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
 is eliminable per Qine.  Don't misunderstand me - this is what is
 *wrong* with material monism - because to be consistent, one is either
 honestly forced to such an eliminativist conclusion (but then you must
 deny your own consciousness and all mental concepts), or you tacitly
 accept a form of dualism (but again without noticing!)  So I suppose
 that when you say with primitive matter that you don't mean
 **only** with primitive matter, but rather with primitive matter +
 computation - which is in effect a dualistic assumption.


Actually, once we assume some primitive matter, we are immediately  
confronted with what Jacques Mallah called (in this list) the  
implementation problem (also treated by Putnam and Chalmers). It is  
even made worse with quantum computations. There is a sense to say  
that the quantum vacuum implements all computations, and there is a  
real difficulty in relating particular computation and particular  
piece matter, and that is  a prerequisite to attach mind to matter for  
a partisan of PM+CTM.




 Again,
 please don't misunderstand me - I regard comp as a coherent *monistic*
 approach to both mind and matter that seeks to 'eliminate' neither,
 and which brings the mind-body issues into full focus. But the
 assumption of PM *in addition* would transform it into a type of
 epiphenomenal dualism.


Well I think that the addition of PM to CTM leads to contradiction or  
elimination of consciousness (not a reduction of consciousness to  
physical activity, but real elimination). What Peter seems to have  
some difficulty to understand or admit.
Now, with a theory which assumes that CTM is false, you can coherently  
define an identity thesis matter-mind (with enough actual infinities  
on both sides), and defend some epiphenomenal dualism. With CTM  
epiphenomenalism, for *primitive* matter, does not work.



 The notion of computation does not rely on anything physical.

 OK, with the caveats above.


And there is nothing metaphysical here, just a tremendous mathematical  
discovery made by Emil Post, the first, and rediscovered by Kleene,  
Turing, Markov and some others. (To be frank, I don't believe Church  
ever makes that discovery. It is really Kleene who realized that  
Church definition was a really a thesis. But since Kleene introduced  
the vocable Church's thesis, mathematical logicians are using it.  
Many call it Church-Turing thesis nowadays. But historically it is  
either Emil Post who made the discovery the first, or perhaps Babbage,  
who, when getting old, invented a language to describe his machine,  
and discovered that the language was already an universal beast as  
clever as his machine).




 I think that what remains unclear in step seven is due to the lack of
 knowledge of that purely mathematical notion of computation. You
 need it to justify why Universal Machine and Universal Dovetailer
 exist and in what sense they are truly universal.

 Point taken.  I will try to learn.

It is very kind to tell me, and to provide me with supplementary  

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

2009/8/20 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:


 On 20 Aug, 13:30, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 20 Aug, 10:05, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 But also - just to dispose once and for all of this particular point -
 I want to be sure that you understand that I'm not arguing *for*
 eliminative materialism, except as devil's advocate (I'm sure you know
 this).  But one aspect of my recent discussions with Peter has been to
 bring to a focus the strict consequences of materialism, in precisely
 the honest way that you attribute to Dennett.  The trouble is, that
 Dennett, having eliminated the mind and hence the notorious 'problem',
 still cheerfully carries on deploying the same mind-dependent concepts
 as though nothing had happened!  In other words, his position is
 inconsistent and incoherent.  It's dualism for free!


 Nope. He is a reductionist, not an eliminativist.

Yep.  Perhaps you haven't perused Consciousness Explained recently.
The whole point is that you can't be a reductionist in the Quinean
sense - which Dennett (more or less honestly) is - without being an
eliminativist.   The passage that you commented approvingly actually
used the term 'eliminative materialist', for goodness sake!  The
reason that anyone might imagine that they could be is simply because
of the all-too-understandable tenacity of first-person intuitions.
Despite the (imagined) 'reduction', one can't help but go on
*imagining*!   IOW - since one is in fact conscious - one can't help
but deploy the same mind-dependent (i.e. first-person) concepts that
are supposed to be eliminated (i.e. made redundant) by the reductive
(i.e. third-person) account of mind.   So the distinction between
reduction with and without elimination turns out to be that between
eliminative materialism (the former) and material-mental 'dual aspect'
theory (the latter).

 So, in this context, let me try to understand your remark: with or
 without assuming PM (primitive matter) there is an mathematical notion
 of computation and of computability.  I would say - per Dennett, but
 understood *consistently* - that under the assumption that there is
 *only* primitive matter (i.e. material monism) - there strictly can be
 no appeal to such a notion as computation, because mathematics itself
 is eliminable per Qine.

 That isn't elimination in the sense of eliminativism.

What other sense do you have in mind?

Don't misunderstand me - this is what is
 *wrong* with material monism - because to be consistent, one is either
 honestly forced to such an eliminativist conclusion (but then you must
 deny your own consciousness and all mental concepts), or you tacitly
 accept a form of dualism (but again without noticing!)  So I suppose
 that when you say with primitive matter that you don't mean
 **only** with primitive matter, but rather with primitive matter +
 computation - which is in effect a dualistic assumption.  Again,
 please don't misunderstand me - I regard comp as a coherent *monistic*
 approach to both mind and matter that seeks to 'eliminate' neither,
 and which brings the mind-body issues into full focus. But the
 assumption of PM *in addition* would transform it into a type of
 epiphenomenal dualism.

 You are still confusing reduciton/identity with elimination

Thanks for the excellent summary, but I assure you I'm not confusing
them, I just want to know which is intended in a given case.  I'd
always assumed that your materialism went hand-in-hand with some
identity-based hypothesis of mind (or at least the possibility of
such).  I was surprised - and consequently commented - when you
appeared to endorse a passage citing physical reduction as an approach
to elimination of human concepts.  If I misunderstood what you meant
by I agree, please just correct the misunderstanding.

That being said, I do in fact think that 'identity' - even 'dual
aspect' - theories can't really avoid being an unacknowledged back
door to dualism.  It's part of the 'sweeping under the rug' of the MBP
I think, because the attempt to stretch the notion of 'identity' to
the point of literally *equating* consciousness with 'primitively
material' processes is ultimately to rob either of any sense.  I
suspect you may wish to respond that consciousness is not a matter of
ontology, but epistemology.  But in fact this is directly contradicted
by the identity hypothesis itself: though we may differentiate the
contents of consciousness from the context in which they are
immediately apprehended by use of the term 'epistemological', that
very container is ex hypothesi *identical* to that of the material.
IOW: content = epistemology, but context+content = ontology.

As you correctly remarked, it is rare for anyone to have a new idea,
so I don't indulge the fantasy that I'm proposing anything original.
Schrödinger, for example, articulated it rather clearly, commenting
that if as monists, we must choose a singular ontology, then it would
be curiously blind to reject the 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 20 Aug, 10:09, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

   OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
   activity.

  But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA
  proposes.  MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is
  implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical
  activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going
  on', then it can't be attached to physical activity.  Are you
  questioning that MGA constitutes a valid instantiation of a physical
  TM?  What about Olympia?

 I should have added that you can;t have computaton with zero
 computational activity.

One more time then, using Olympia as the reductio ad absurdum: this
relies on radical minimisation of physical activity to render
implausible the notion of the attachment of instantiation-invariant
consciousness-as-computation to PM.  AFAICS the way to show that it
did not go through would consist either in denying that Olympia
constitutes a valid physical TM, or by denying the absurdity of the
conclusion: i.e. insisting that any activity, however minimised,
remains fully sufficient for the attachment of a unique, invariant
conscious state.  Which is it?

David
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RE: Emulation and Stuff

[Jesse Mazer]

 Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:23:51 -0700
 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
 From: david.ny...@gmail.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 
 On 20 Aug, 10:09, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
activity.
 
   But that is **precisely** the conclusion of the reductio that MGA
   proposes.  MGA claims precisely that - as you say - since it is
   implausible to justify the ascription of computation to zero physical
   activity, if you still want to claim that there is computation 'going
   on', then it can't be attached to physical activity.  Are you
   questioning that MGA constitutes a valid instantiation of a physical
   TM?  What about Olympia?
 
  I should have added that you can;t have computaton with zero
  computational activity.
 
 One more time then, using Olympia as the reductio ad absurdum: this
 relies on radical minimisation of physical activity to render
 implausible the notion of the attachment of instantiation-invariant
 consciousness-as-computation to PM. 

I don't think the Olympia argument is really the final nail in the coffin for 
the notion that computations can only be instantiated by the right sorts of 
physical processes; there might be other ways of defining when a physical 
process counts as an instantiation of a given abstract computation that don't 
lead to the same problems. See my speculations about a physical process needing 
to have the same causal structure as the abstract computation, with causal 
structure defined *not* in terms of counterfactuals but rather in terms of 
which facts imply which other facts, in the posts at 
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html and 
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16257.html 
...this notion of causal structure isn't totally developed and probably has 
holes in it, but I don't see any reason to rule out the idea that it couldn't 
be developed into a coherent notion of instantiation that wouldn't lead to 
weird reductio ad absurdums like Olympia does for computations defined in terms 
of counterfactuals.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

2009/8/20 Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com:

 http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html 
 and http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16257.html

Thanks, Jesse - I'll take a look.

David

 ...this notion of causal structure isn't totally developed and probably has
 holes in it, but I don't see any reason to rule out the idea that it
 couldn't be developed into a coherent notion of instantiation that
 wouldn't lead to weird reductio ad absurdums like Olympia does for
 computations defined in terms of counterfactuals.
 


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote:


 Bruno Marchal wrote:

 This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
 argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us
 is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a  
 correct
 argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
 material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
 reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course.  
 But
 then your reasoning has to be false too.
 The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
 Turing-emulable,

 Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated?  It seems that your  
 argument uses MGA to
 conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing- 
 emulable=Turing-emulated.  It
 seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have  
 a correct argument
 showing they are material.  But this is already well known from  
 brain in a vat thought
 experiments.

OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning  
leading to our primitive materiality.
If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being  
published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the  
UD*. I did not use MGA here.




 But if you are correct in your reasoning, the simulated you has to be
 correct to. It is the same reasoning.
 Or you have a special sense making you know that you are the real
 one, but either that special sense is Turing emulable and your
 doppelganger inherit them, or it is not Turing emulable, and you
 better should say no to the doctor, because you would loose that
 sense.

 Or it is a relation to the rest of the world and you can say yes so  
 long as the doctor
 maintains your relations to the rest of the world - i.e. physically  
 instantiates your
 emulation.

This means, by definition of the generalized brain, that you have  
not choose the right substitution level/context.
You can say yes because the doctor substitute correctly a *part* of  
your brain, but you have to introduce a non computational element in  
the environment to prevent its appearance in the mathematical UD*.
You do *seem* to have a sort of point here, though. You provide a  
situation where comp is false, yet we can sayyes to the doctor. But  
in this case your survival is no more qua computatio. Your survival  
comes from the fact that your consciousness supervene on some magical  
(non turing emulable) property of the material moon (say), and that  
your doctor did not give you an artificial brain, just an artificial  
part of your brain. This is no more comp or CTM. It is not different  
than saying yes to the doctor because you believe there is a God who  
will save your soul and put it back in the reconstitution.

Bruno



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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 01:51, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 David Nyman wrote:
  On 19 Aug, 00:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

  Note that I have never said that matter does not exist. I have no  
  doubt it exists. I am just saying that matter cannot be primitive,  
  assuming comp. Matter is more or less the border of the ignorance of  
  universal machines (to be short). There is a fundamental physics which  
  capture the invariant for all possible universal machine observation,  
  and the rest is geography-history. Assuming comp the consistent-
  contingent obeys laws.

  AFAICS the essence of Bruno's dispute with Peter consists in:

  1)  ***If you accept the computational theory of mind (CTM)*** then
  matter can no longer be primitive to your explanations of appearances
  of any kind, mental or physical.

  2) ***If you assert that matter is primitive to your explanation of
  appearances of any kind, mental or physical (PM)*** it is illegitimate
  to appeal to CTM.

  Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
  and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
  argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
  is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
  compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
  seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
  argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
  currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
  disprovable on purely logical grounds.  I for one am unclear on what
  basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong grounds
  for this?

  David

 I think you are right that the MGA is at the crux.  But I don't know whether 
 to regard it
 as proving that computation need not be physically instantiated or as a 
 reductio against
 the yes doctor hypothesis.  Saying yes to the doctor seems very 
 straightforward when you
 just think about the doctor replacing physical elements of your brain with 
 functionally
 similar elements made of silicon or straw or whatever.  But then I reflect 
 that I, with my
 new head full of straw, must still interact with the world.  So I have not 
 been reduced to
 computation unless the part of the world I interact with is also replaced by 
 computational
 elements

If you were a programme interacting with the world before,
you still will be after a function-preserving replacement is made.


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote:





  Bruno Marchal wrote:

  This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
  argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us
  is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a  
  correct
  argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
  material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
  reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course.  
  But
  then your reasoning has to be false too.
  The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
  Turing-emulable,

  Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated?  It seems that your  
  argument uses MGA to
  conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing-
  emulable=Turing-emulated.  It
  seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have  
  a correct argument
  showing they are material.  But this is already well known from  
  brain in a vat thought
  experiments.

 OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning  
 leading to our primitive materiality.
 If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being  
 published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the  
 UD*. I did not use MGA here.

That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
with the full force of necessity -- although your own argument does
not have that force. In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more
plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of
sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of
them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM
is not impacted much

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

 Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
 and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
 argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
 is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
 compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
 seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
 argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
 currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
 disprovable on purely logical grounds.  


I for one am unclear on what
 basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong grounds
 for this?

Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical conclusion--
in this
case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
metaphysical assumption.
The argument is therefore invalid, or not purely logical
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 00:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 18 Aug 2009, at 22:43, Flammarion wrote:





  On 18 Aug, 11:25, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
  On 18 Aug 2009, at 10:55, Flammarion wrote:

  Any physcial theory is distinguished from an
  Everythingis theory by maintaining the contingent existence of only
  some
  possible mathematical structures. That is a general statement that
  is not affected by juggling one theory for another. I have further
  defined PM in *terms* of such contingency.

  That is actually very nice, because it follows the Plato-Aristotle-
  Plotinus definition of matter which I follow in AUDA.
  And this is enough for showing we don't have to reify matter (nor
  numbers).

  If you are not reifying anything. then there is nothing, hen there is
  no UD.

 I think you have a magical conception of reality.
 I don't need to reify number to believe in them.
 I just need to play with them.

I think *you* believe in magic. You believe that
if you write down hypothetical truths about what
an immaterial machine would believe, you can conclude
that everything has been conjured up by an immaterial machine.

It's like saying you can go from making a theoretical study of the
aerodynamics of Pegasus to taking a ride on Pegasus's back.

    I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from contingent
  structures and still pretend that matter is primitive.

  I am saying that material existence *is* contingent
  existence. It is not a structure of anything.

 Plotinus says that too! Me too.
 With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not-
 computable or not-provable, or some relativizations.

You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number.
It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box..

  Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the
  existence of primitive matter.

  Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each
  other.

 In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below.



In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve
them.

  All the Peter Jones which are generated by the UD, in the Tarski or
  Fregean sense, (I don't care), will pretend that primitive matter  
  does
  not exist, and if your argument goes through, for rational reason and
  logic (and not by mystical apprehension), those immaterial Peter  
  Jones
  will prove *correctly* that they are material, and this is a
  contradiction.

  It's not  a contradiction of materialism. If there are no immaterial
  PJ's, nothing is believed by them at all.

 Once you say yes to the doctor, there are immaterial Peter Jones. All  
 your doppelganger emulating you, and being emulated at your level of  
 substitution and below relatively occuring in the proof of the Sigma_1  
 sentences of Robinson Arithmetic. (The arithmetical version of the UD).

There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

  So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your  
  consciousness
  of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature.

  No. I just have to deny immaterial existence.

 You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used  
 by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,  
 which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
mathematical
existence is ontological existence. As I have been

  You keep confusing the
  idea
  that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs
  with the
  actual existence of those entities and beliefs.

 You underestimate the dumbness of the DU, or sigma_1 arithmetic. It  
 contains the emulation of all the quantum states of the milky way,  
 with correct approximation of its neighborhood.

Since it does not exist, it does not contain anything.

It is hard to  
 recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and huge  
 numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there  
 exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain.  

Same mistake
All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would
contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist.

 In computations enough similar than our own most probable current one,  
 it is a theorem that those entities have such or such beliefs, and  
 behave in such and such ways, developing such and such discourses.



  Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that
  Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease  
  to
  give referents to such Peter Jones.

  False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or  AR.
  I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it,
  no-one can see it, so it ain't there.

 Standard comp says nothing about Plato's Platonism, but once you take  
 the digitalness seriously enough, and 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 18 Aug, 22:46, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/18 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:



   The paraphrase condition means, for example, that instead of adopting 
   a statement like unicorns have one horn as a true statement about 
   reality and thus being forced to accept the existence of unicorns, you 
   could instead paraphrase this in terms of what images and concepts are 
   in people's mind when they use the word unicorn; and if you're an 
   eliminative materialist who wants to avoid accepting mental images and 
   concepts as a basic element of your ontology, it might seem plausible 
   that you could *in principle* paraphrase all statements about human 
   concepts using statements about physical processes in human brains, 
   although we may lack the understanding to do that now.

  I presume that one could substitute 'computation' for 'unicorn' in the
  above passage?  If so, the human concept that it is 'computation' that
  gives rise to consciousness could be paraphrased using statements
  about physical processes in human brains.  So what may we now suppose
  gives such processes this particular power?  Presumably not their
  'computational' nature - because now nous n'avons pas besoin de cette
  hypothèse-là (which I'm sure you will recall was precisely the point
  I originally made).

  That's completely back to front. Standard computaitonalism
  regards computation as a physical process taking place
  in brains and computer hardware. It doesn't exist
  at the fundamental level like quarks, and it isn't non-existent
  like unicorns. It is a higher-level existent, like horses.

 I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
 physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
 paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
 *any* human concept is *eliminable*

No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

 (my original point) after such
 reduction to primary physical processes.  So why should 'computation'
 escape this fate?  How would you respond if I said the brain is
 conscious because it is 'alive'?  Would 'life' elude the paraphrased
 reduction to physical process?

I don't see your point. Either claim may  or may not be true
and may or may not be paraphraseable.

 BTW, let's be clear: I'm not saying that physicalism is false
 (although IMO it is at least incomplete).  I'm merely pointing out one
 of its consequences.

Which is what?

  It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true
  and computationalism false. That is to say that
  the class of consciousness-causing processes might
  not coincide with any proper subset of the class
  of computaitonal processes.

 Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake.  Here's
 the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of
 consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper
 subset of the class of computational processes.  Physicalist theory
 of mind urgently required.  QED

I am arguing with Bruno about whether the eliminaiton of matter
makes things easier for the MBP. I think it just give you less to work
with.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Quentin Anciaux]

2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
 There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
 my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

And you saying so doesn't prove there isn't.


  So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your
  consciousness
  of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature.

  No. I just have to deny immaterial existence.

 You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used
 by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
 which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

 No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
 mathematical
 existence is ontological existence. As I have been

Then you're missusing 'existence'. Because using your language
existence = no existence at all ! for mathemetical existence... Why
bother using the word existence when you don't even mean it.


  You keep confusing the
  idea
  that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs
  with the
  actual existence of those entities and beliefs.

 You underestimate the dumbness of the DU, or sigma_1 arithmetic. It
 contains the emulation of all the quantum states of the milky way,
 with correct approximation of its neighborhood.

 Since it does not exist, it does not contain anything.

You say so, but you could repeat it ad infinitum, it won't render it truer.

It is hard to
 recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and huge
 numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there
 exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain.

 Same mistake
 All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would
 contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist.

 In computations enough similar than our own most probable current one,
 it is a theorem that those entities have such or such beliefs, and
 behave in such and such ways, developing such and such discourses.



  Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that
  Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease
  to
  give referents to such Peter Jones.

  False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or  AR.
  I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it,
  no-one can see it, so it ain't there.

 Standard comp says nothing about Plato's Platonism, but once you take
 the digitalness seriously enough, and CT, it is just standard computer
 science.

 That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
 You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
 ontological RITISAR existence.

So you would accept to be turned into a program as long as you're
running on a physical implementation... ok it's fair enough. My
question is *in that precise case*... What are you ? the program
written in whatever language it was written ? the functionnaly
equivalent program written in brainfuck ? the same written in the
machine language of the physical machine you're running on ? the
bytecode that would be JIT in a VM ? the transistor of the physical
machine ?

What IS RITSIAR when you'll be digitalized ?

If you're running, and I suspend the program ? Do *you* still exists ?
If I restart it ? Do you still exists ? If I never restart it do you
still exists ? If I destroy every copy of the program that is you do
you still exists ?

 See conscience  mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running
 mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
 materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.

 So? It hasn't been.

  Fregean sense is enough to see
  that those Peter Jones would correctly (if you are correct) prove
  that
  they are material, when we know (reasoning outside the UD) than they
  are not.

  So? That doesn't man I am wrong, because it doesn't mean I am in
  the UD. The fact that we can see that a BIV has false beliefs
  doesn't make us wrong
  about anything.

 This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
 argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us
 is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct
 argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
 material.

 So? If you develop a correct argument that you are running on a
 computer
 when actually you are a BIV, then the BIV you will come up with that
 argument too. Any argument whatsoever can be undermined by a sceptical
 hypothesis, and there are many.

 The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
 reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course. But
 then your reasoning has to be false too.
 The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
 Turing-emulable, or that you just don't know if you are in the UD or
 not.

 The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
 are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
 for them. The only upshot 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 18 Aug, 22:46, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/18 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

 Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake.  Here's
 the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of
 consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper
 subset of the class of computational processes.  Physicalist theory
 of mind urgently required.  QED

Why does it have to be spelt out? No-one in this discussion has
spelt out a CMT, it is taken off the shelf.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 10:28, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

  There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
  my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

 And you saying so doesn't prove there isn't.



   So to save a role to matter, you will have to make your
   consciousness
   of primitive matter relying on some non computational feature.

   No. I just have to deny immaterial existence.

  You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used
  by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
  which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

  No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
  mathematical
  existence is ontological existence. As I have been

 Then you're missusing 'existence'. Because using your language
 existence = no existence at all ! for mathemetical existence... Why
 bother using the word existence when you don't even mean it.

People do. People agree that Sherlock Holmes lived
at 221b Baker Street even though he lived at all.
If you want to start a project to eliminate metaphorical
and other non-literla uses from langauge, you have
a long way to go.

   You keep confusing the
   idea
   that theoretical entities could hypothetcially have certain beliefs
   with the
   actual existence of those entities and beliefs.

  You underestimate the dumbness of the DU, or sigma_1 arithmetic. It
  contains the emulation of all the quantum states of the milky way,
  with correct approximation of its neighborhood.

  Since it does not exist, it does not contain anything.

 You say so, but you could repeat it ad infinitum, it won't render it truer.

*If* it does not exist, it does not contain anything.

Now show that it exists.

 It is hard to
  recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and huge
  numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there
  exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain.

  Same mistake
  All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would
  contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist.

  In computations enough similar than our own most probable current one,
  it is a theorem that those entities have such or such beliefs, and
  behave in such and such ways, developing such and such discourses.

   Note that if you accept standard comp, you have to accept that
   Peter Jones is generated by the UD makes sense, even if you cease
   to
   give referents to such Peter Jones.

   False. Standard comp says nothing about Platonism or  AR.
   I can give a Johnsonian refutation of the UD. I can't see it,
   no-one can see it, so it ain't there.

  Standard comp says nothing about Plato's Platonism, but once you take
  the digitalness seriously enough, and CT, it is just standard computer
  science.

  That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
  You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
  ontological RITISAR existence.

 So you would accept to be turned into a program as long as you're
 running on a physical implementation... ok it's fair enough. My
 question is *in that precise case*... What are you ? the program
 written in whatever language it was written ? the functionnaly
 equivalent program written in brainfuck ? the same written in the
 machine language of the physical machine you're running on ? the
 bytecode that would be JIT in a VM ? the transistor of the physical
 machine ?

 What IS RITSIAR when you'll be digitalized ?

Whatever combination of hardware and software I am in
fact running on. Juggling combinations of h/w and s/w is not
going to make me immaterial.

 If you're running, and I suspend the program ? Do *you* still exists ?

no

 If I restart it ? Do you still exists ?

yes

 If I never restart it do you
 still exists ?

no

If I destroy every copy of the program that is you do
 you still exists ?

no


  See conscience  mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running
  mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
  materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.

  So? It hasn't been.

   Fregean sense is enough to see
   that those Peter Jones would correctly (if you are correct) prove
   that
   they are material, when we know (reasoning outside the UD) than they
   are not.

   So? That doesn't man I am wrong, because it doesn't mean I am in
   the UD. The fact that we can see that a BIV has false beliefs
   doesn't make us wrong
   about anything.

  This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
  argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us
  is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct
  argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
  material.

  So? If you develop a correct argument that you are running on a
  computer
  when actually you are a BIV, 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Quentin Anciaux]

2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
  That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
  You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
  ontological RITISAR existence.

 So you would accept to be turned into a program as long as you're
 running on a physical implementation... ok it's fair enough. My
 question is *in that precise case*... What are you ? the program
 written in whatever language it was written ? the functionnaly
 equivalent program written in brainfuck ? the same written in the
 machine language of the physical machine you're running on ? the
 bytecode that would be JIT in a VM ? the transistor of the physical
 machine ?

 What IS RITSIAR when you'll be digitalized ?

 Whatever combination of hardware and software I am in
 fact running on. Juggling combinations of h/w and s/w is not
 going to make me immaterial.

If I'm reading the program and executing it in my head with a pencil
and writing down the result on a sheet of paper... would you exists ?
in my head ? on the paper ? on the pencil ? Would you cease to exists
at the very moment I stop doing it ?


 If you're running, and I suspend the program ? Do *you* still exists ?

 no

 If I restart it ? Do you still exists ?

 yes

 If I never restart it do you
 still exists ?

 no

If I destroy every copy of the program that is you do
 you still exists ?

 no


  See conscience  mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running
  mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
  materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.

  So? It hasn't been.

   Fregean sense is enough to see
   that those Peter Jones would correctly (if you are correct) prove
   that
   they are material, when we know (reasoning outside the UD) than they
   are not.

   So? That doesn't man I am wrong, because it doesn't mean I am in
   the UD. The fact that we can see that a BIV has false beliefs
   doesn't make us wrong
   about anything.

  This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
  argumentation that you are material, and that what we see around us
  is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a correct
  argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
  material.

  So? If you develop a correct argument that you are running on a
  computer
  when actually you are a BIV, then the BIV you will come up with that
  argument too. Any argument whatsoever can be undermined by a sceptical
  hypothesis, and there are many.

  The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
  reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course. But
  then your reasoning has to be false too.
  The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
  Turing-emulable, or that you just don't know if you are in the UD or
  not.

  The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
  are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
  for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no
  certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest
  plausibility.

 At this stage.
  Then with step-8, you know, relatively to the comp act of faith,
  that you are already there. If you say yes to the doctor, you can bet,
  from computer science that you are already in the (N,x,+) matrix.

  I can't be in something that has merely mathematical existence, any
  more than I can be in Nanrnia

 So you can't be a program...


 So I *can* be a runnign programme. I *can't* be abstract software.
 




-- 
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

 I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
 physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
 paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
 *any* human concept is *eliminable*

 No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.

 (my original point) after such
 reduction to primary physical processes.  So why should 'computation'
 escape this fate?  How would you respond if I said the brain is
 conscious because it is 'alive'?  Would 'life' elude the paraphrased
 reduction to physical process?

 I don't see your point. Either claim may  or may not be true
 and may or may not be paraphraseable.

My point is that claiming - *a priori* - that 'life' caused
consciousness would shed as little light as saying that computation
did so.  In either case, a successful paraphrase must be capable of
pointing out precisely *which* specific physical entities - in
precisely *what* relation - to precisely *which* other specific
physical entities - are deemed responsible for the paraphrased concept
in any specific case.  I freely concede that - *if* it turned out a
posteriori that a reduced physical theory capable of explicitly
attaching specific mental descriptions to specific physical processes
could be shown, in all cases FAPP, to be equivalent to some explicitly
specifiable program interpreted purely in terms of functional
relations of its physical instantiation - I would indeed be impressed.
 But this would be a world away from a brute a priori assumption.
IOW, the justification for any paraphrased concept is posterior, not
prior.

In the context of the foregoing, MGA makes a direct attack on CTM +
PM = true via reductio: i.e. by demonstrating at least one class of
physical reduction of a computation where any physical attachment
theory must evaporate.  To emphasise: it isn't per se an attack on PM,
only on the a priori conjunction of PM and CTM.  At what step do you
say it is invalid?

 BTW, let's be clear: I'm not saying that physicalism is false
 (although IMO it is at least incomplete).  I'm merely pointing out one
 of its consequences.

 Which is what?

That PM theory isn't justified in making an a priori claim to a
'computational' theory of mind, or indeed *any* a priori claim to
organising principles transcending the underlying physical processes.
All conceptual overlays in this context must be, and indeed - with the
outstanding exception of CTM - in practice always are, accepted as
requiring justification a posteriori.

  It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true
  and computationalism false. That is to say that
  the class of consciousness-causing processes might
  not coincide with any proper subset of the class
  of computaitonal processes.

 Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake.  Here's
 the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of
 consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper
 subset of the class of computational processes.  Physicalist theory
 of mind urgently required.  QED

 I am arguing with Bruno about whether the eliminaiton of matter
 makes things easier for the MBP. I think it just give you less to work
 with.

MBP??  At this stage, I'm really unclear on the basis of the above
whether or not you actually wish to defend CTM + PM = true on a
priori grounds.  Would you please clarify?

David

 


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

2009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

 Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake.  Here's
 the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of
 consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper
 subset of the class of computational processes.  Physicalist theory
 of mind urgently required.  QED

 Why does it have to be spelt out? No-one in this discussion has
 spelt out a CMT, it is taken off the shelf.

It doesn't.  It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it
is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language
- then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by
rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual
reduction.  MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the
conjunction of CTM and PM.  Of course, CTM on the basis of
arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from
physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification.

I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your
defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true.
Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim?
OTOH, if you don't wish necessarily to defend the validity of CTM +
PM, the discussion would then indeed appear to reduce
straightforwardly (if that's the mot juste) to an elucidation of what
is entailed by RITSIAR.  Perhaps there's an opportunity here to clear
the board a bit?

David

 


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 19 Aug, 09:36, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:

  Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
  and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
  argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
  is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
  compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
  seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
  argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
  currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
  disprovable on purely logical grounds.  
 I for one am unclear on what
  basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong grounds
  for this?

 Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical conclusion--
 in this
 case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
 metaphysical assumption.
 The argument is therefore invalid, or not purely logical

Again, with respect, you appear to assume that MGA argues that matter
doesn't exist.  In fact it argues that CTM + PM = false, which is not
the same thing at all.  It is possible to retain matter as primitive
(which I for one don't rule out, dependent on a more complete
understanding of mind-body) whilst relinquishing an a priori CTM.
What would be needed, as I've said elsewhere, would be an alternative
theory of mind which - like any other 'transcendent' a posteriori
analysis - would be capable of direct elucidation in terms of of
primary physical processes.  Bruno has argued separately against the
plausibility of finding such a theory, but this isn't implicit in MGA,
AFAICS.

David
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:33, Flammarion wrote:




 On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote:





 Bruno Marchal wrote:

 This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
 argumentation that you are material, and that what we see  
 around us
 is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a
 correct
 argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
 material. The problem is that if you are correct in our physical
 reality their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course.
 But
 then your reasoning has to be false too.
 The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
 Turing-emulable,

 Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated?  It seems that your
 argument uses MGA to
 conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing-
 emulable=Turing-emulated.  It
 seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have
 a correct argument
 showing they are material.  But this is already well known from
 brain in a vat thought
 experiments.

 OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning
 leading to our primitive materiality.
 If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being
 published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the
 UD*. I did not use MGA here.

 That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
 with the full force of necessity --

I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so. Where?



 although your own argument does
 not have that force.

If there is a weakness somewhere, tell us where.



 In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more
 plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of
 sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of
 them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM
 is not impacted much

?  Ex(x = UD) is a theorem of elementary arithmetic.

I have been taught elementary arithmetic in school, and I don't think  
such a theory has been refuted since.

You will tell me that mathematical existence = non existence at all.  
You are the first human who says so.

Bruno



 

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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Flammarion wrote:




 On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

 Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
 and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
 argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
 is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
 compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
 seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
 argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
 currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
 disprovable on purely logical grounds.


 I for one am unclear on what
 basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong  
 grounds
 for this?

 Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical  
 conclusion--
 in this
 case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
 metaphysical assumption.


I completely agree with that point, but I don't see the relevance.  
Comp, alias CTM, is an hypothesis in cognitive science/philosophy-of- 
mind/metaphysics/theology. It is certainly not an hypothesis in  
mathematics. It relates the preservation of my consciousness through a  
substitution of my (generalized) brain ( a priori material).

Bruno

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




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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:58, Flammarion wrote:


 I think *you* believe in magic. You believe that
 if you write down hypothetical truths about what
 an immaterial machine would believe, you can conclude
 that everything has been conjured up by an immaterial machine.

I don't proceed in that way at all. I propose a step by step reasoning  
which shows that CTM + PM leads to an epistemological contradiction,  
so that CTM has to justify the appearance of PM. (= UDA)
Then I show that theoretical computer science is very promising to  
extract those appearance of PM. (= AUDA).




 It's like saying you can go from making a theoretical study of the
 aerodynamics of Pegasus to taking a ride on Pegasus's back.

Comparing mathematical objects with fairy tales objects can hardly help.




   I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from  
 contingent
 structures and still pretend that matter is primitive.

 I am saying that material existence *is* contingent
 existence. It is not a structure of anything.

 Plotinus says that too! Me too.
 With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not-
 computable or not-provable, or some relativizations.

 You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number.
 It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box..


If you believe that a deduction is not valid, you have to say where,  
and why.




 Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the
 existence of primitive matter.

 Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each
 other.

 In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below.

 

 In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve
 them.

If comp is assumed, some computation correspond to dream, and their  
existence can be proved in arithmetic.
And the MGA argument shows that no machine can make the difference  
between real, virtual and arithmetical.



 There is no immaterial existence at all, and  my agreeign to have
 my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.

Meaning: UDA is non valid. I am still waiting your argument.



 You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used
 by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
 which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).

 No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
 mathematical
 existence is ontological existence.

I have no clue what you mean by ontological existence, except  
physical existence, but this beg the question.
If you don't deny the arithmetical truth, you accept arithmetical  
realism, and you cannot deny the UD, so you should be able to follow  
the argument. And if you believe the conclusion is wrong, you should  
say where.


 Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything.

UD exists like PI exists. The rest is taken into account in the  
argument that I am referring to.
Don't say that PI and circle does not exists. Say that PI and circles  
does not exist physically. It is quite different.



 It is hard to
 recognize Peter Jones or Bruno Marchal from the huge relation and  
 huge
 numbers involved, in some emulations, but it is easy to prove there
 exists, from the information the doctor got when scanning your brain.

 Same mistake
 All you can prove is that *if* the UD existed *then* it would
 contain such-and-such. But it doesn't actually exist.

What you mean is that UD does not physically exists. (Well I am not  
sure this is true, but OK).
But MGA shows that the UD does not need to physically exist for my  
(non primary) physical existence.



 That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
 You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
 ontological RITISAR existence.

I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean real in the sense my first  
person is real or real as my body is real.
You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept  
this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning of  
RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body.  
After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies  
(like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between  
those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger.





 See conscience  mécanisme appendices for snapshot of a running
 mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
 materially , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.

 So? It hasn't been.


It has been implemented, and it has run for a week in 1991. This is  
anecdotical. Just to say that the UD is a concrete program.




 The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
 are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
 for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no
 certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest
 plausibility.


I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive 

Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Brent Meeker]

Flammarion wrote:
 
 
 On 18 Aug, 18:26, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 Flammarion wrote:
 
 Single-universe thinking is a different game from everythingism. It is
 not about
 explaining everything from logical first priciples. It accepts
 contingency as the price
 paid for parsimony. Pasimony and lack of arbitrariness are *both*
 explanatory
 desiderata, so there is no black-and-white sense in which
 Everythingism wins.
 But parsimony in *theory* is what is desirable.
 
 Everythingists tend to think that, and their opponents tend
 not to.
 
 Almost any physics explanation of how the
 universe came to be is going to predict the existence of many universes.  If 
 it's based on
 QM is will be probabilistic.  So then there is a tension with parsimony 
 between an
 unparsimonious addition to the theory, i.e. and just one thing happens, 
 and keeping the
 theory parsimonious, but allowing an unparsimonious ontology in which they 
 all happen.
 
 Physical many-world theories are still constrained down to a subset of
 the
 the total of maths. Everythingist theories are not.
 
In that case you might as well call it primary ectoplasm or 
 primary asdfgh.
 You might as well call 2 the successor of 0. All symbols are
 arbitrary.
 My point was just that I think it's *misleading* to use the word matter 
 which already has all sorts of intuitive associations for us, when really 
 you're talking about something utterly mysterious whose properties are 
 completely divorced from our experiences, more like Kant's noumena which 
 were supposed to be things-in-themselves separate from all phenomenal 
 properties (including quantitative ones).
 I don't accept that characterisation of PM. (BTW, phenomenal
 properties could be accounted for
 as non-mathematical attributes of PM)
 I think this is a category mistake.  Mathematical attributes belong to *the 
 descriptions*
 or PM, not to PM.  And the descriptions are necessarily mathematical simply 
 to be precise
 and consistent.
 
 I think that is  a bizzare statement. You mean I can;t say that a
 cubic object is cubic,
 because a cube is part of geometry, which is part of maths? If the
 attributes belong to the
 descriptions only, the descriptions are never going to be accurate at
 all, since the descriptions
 are attributing the attributes to the objects.

No, what I mean is that when you describe something as cubic the description 
cubic is 
mathematical - not the object itself.

 
 And the descriptions are necessarily mathematical simply to be precise
 and consistent.
 
 a) if they are not precise descriptions *of* something -- of
 properties that things have -- what's the point?

My point is that things can have mathematical properties and yet not be 
mathematical 
objects.  An object can be triangular and yet not consist of three intersecting 
line segments.

Brent

 All you are going to achieve is a kind of fictive self-consistency,
 like a set of cooked books.
 
 b) there is no apriori necessity why the world should be susceptible
 to mathematical description
 at all iTFP
  
 


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Brent Meeker]

Flammarion wrote:
 
 
 On 19 Aug, 01:51, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote:
 David Nyman wrote:
 On 19 Aug, 00:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 Note that I have never said that matter does not exist. I have no  
 doubt it exists. I am just saying that matter cannot be primitive,  
 assuming comp. Matter is more or less the border of the ignorance of  
 universal machines (to be short). There is a fundamental physics which  
 capture the invariant for all possible universal machine observation,  
 and the rest is geography-history. Assuming comp the consistent-
 contingent obeys laws.
 AFAICS the essence of Bruno's dispute with Peter consists in:
 1)  ***If you accept the computational theory of mind (CTM)*** then
 matter can no longer be primitive to your explanations of appearances
 of any kind, mental or physical.
 2) ***If you assert that matter is primitive to your explanation of
 appearances of any kind, mental or physical (PM)*** it is illegitimate
 to appeal to CTM.
 Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
 and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
 argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
 is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
 compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
 seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
 argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
 currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
 disprovable on purely logical grounds.  I for one am unclear on what
 basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong grounds
 for this?
 David
 I think you are right that the MGA is at the crux.  But I don't know whether 
 to regard it
 as proving that computation need not be physically instantiated or as a 
 reductio against
 the yes doctor hypothesis.  Saying yes to the doctor seems very 
 straightforward when you
 just think about the doctor replacing physical elements of your brain with 
 functionally
 similar elements made of silicon or straw or whatever.  But then I reflect 
 that I, with my
 new head full of straw, must still interact with the world.  So I have not 
 been reduced to
 computation unless the part of the world I interact with is also replaced by 
 computational
 elements
 
 If you were a programme interacting with the world before,
 you still will be after a function-preserving replacement is made.

Yes, but my future experience will not have been reduced to the running of 
Turing-emulable 
program - it will depend on impinging effects not part of the program, unless 
the 
environment is also part of the emulation.

Brent

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[David Nyman]

On 19 Aug, 16:41, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 I am sorry Peter, but CTM + PM just does not work, and it is a good  
 news, because if we keep CTM, we get a sort of super generalization of  
 Darwin idea that things evolve.

We still don't have a definite response from Peter as to whether CTM
+ PM = true is central to his argument.  On the basis of some of the
things he's said in reply to me recently, I think it may not be.  If
we could resolve this key point, perhaps it would cast fresh light on
some of the issues thrown up e.g. (BTW I'm not expecting answers to
these questions here and now):

1) What motivates the assumption of different theoretical postulates
of primitiveness, contingency and necessity?
2) How do explanations of physical and mental phenomena diverge on the
basis of these different assumptions?
3) What kind of non-computational theories of mind might be viable,
assuming CTM + PM = false?
4) And my original question: does the notion of emulation =
substitution have any force outside CTM?  IOW if I believe I'm made
of primitive matter, what does this imply in terms of evaluating
proposals from the doctor?

and so forth.

Anyway, it would be nice to get past an impasse which has plagued the
discussions interminably whilst continually failing to be resolved.
Just wondering, of course :-)

David


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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:

  I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
  physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
  paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
  *any* human concept is *eliminable*

  No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.

 Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
 precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
 can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
 'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.

Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation
by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination.
Substituting H2O for water does not show that water is non-existent,
just that
is is non-fundamental.

  (my original point) after such
  reduction to primary physical processes.  So why should 'computation'
  escape this fate?  How would you respond if I said the brain is
  conscious because it is 'alive'?  Would 'life' elude the paraphrased
  reduction to physical process?

  I don't see your point. Either claim may  or may not be true
  and may or may not be paraphraseable.

 My point is that claiming - *a priori* - that 'life' caused
 consciousness would shed as little light as saying that computation
 did so.

I don't think anyone is doing that. For one thing, there is quite
a body of research on computationalism. For another, it is being
discussed as a hypothesis, which is different from assuming its
truth.

  In either case, a successful paraphrase must be capable of
 pointing out precisely *which* specific physical entities - in
 precisely *what* relation - to precisely *which* other specific
 physical entities - are deemed responsible for the paraphrased concept
 in any specific case.  I freely concede that - *if* it turned out a
 posteriori that a reduced physical theory capable of explicitly
 attaching specific mental descriptions to specific physical processes
 could be shown, in all cases FAPP, to be equivalent to some explicitly
 specifiable program interpreted purely in terms of functional
 relations of its physical instantiation - I would indeed be impressed.
  But this would be a world away from a brute a priori assumption.
 IOW, the justification for any paraphrased concept is posterior, not
 prior.

Err...yeah. I'm not particularly commited to the CTM as  a categorical
truth.
I just don't think it has the implications Bruno thinks.

 In the context of the foregoing, MGA makes a direct attack on CTM +
 PM = true via reductio: i.e. by demonstrating at least one class of
 physical reduction of a computation where any physical attachment
 theory must evaporate.  To emphasise: it isn't per se an attack on PM,
 only on the a priori conjunction of PM and CTM.  At what step do you
 say it is invalid?

Where he says computation can happen without any physicial process at
all. I don't see any evidence for that

  BTW, let's be clear: I'm not saying that physicalism is false
  (although IMO it is at least incomplete).  I'm merely pointing out one
  of its consequences.

  Which is what?

 That PM theory isn't justified in making an a priori claim to a
 'computational' theory of mind,

No-one has maintained that CTM is an implication
of PM

or indeed *any* a priori claim to
 organising principles transcending

Only Bruno thinks computation trancends matter.

the underlying physical processes.
 All conceptual overlays in this context must be, and indeed - with the
 outstanding exception of CTM - in practice always are, accepted as
 requiring justification a posteriori.

Have you read *any* of the literature on the CTM?

   It's prima facie possible for physicalism to be true
   and computationalism false. That is to say that
   the class of consciousness-causing processes might
   not coincide with any proper subset of the class
   of computaitonal processes.

  Yes, of course, this is precisely my point, for heaven's sake.  Here's
  the proposal, in your own words: assuming physicalism the class of
  consciousness-causing processes might not coincide with any proper
  subset of the class of computational processes.  Physicalist theory
  of mind urgently required.  QED

  I am arguing with Bruno about whether the eliminaiton of matter
  makes things easier for the MBP. I think it just give you less to work
  with.

 MBP??  

Mind body problem

At this stage, I'm really unclear on the basis of the above
 whether or not you actually wish to defend CTM + PM = true on a
 priori grounds.  Would you please clarify?

CTM *implies* materialism, and the MGA doesn't work.
CTM might still be false though.
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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 15:20, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 19 Aug 2009, at 10:36, Flammarion wrote:





  On 19 Aug, 01:29, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

  Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
  and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
  argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
  is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
  compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
  seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
  argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
  currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
  disprovable on purely logical grounds.

  I for one am unclear on what
  basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong  
  grounds
  for this?

  Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical  
  conclusion--
  in this
  case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
  metaphysical assumption.

 I completely agree with that point, but I don't see the relevance.  
 Comp, alias CTM,

CTM does not have Platonism tacked on as a sub-hypothesis

Classical Digital mechanism, or Classical Computationalism, or just
comp, is the conjunction of the following three sub-hypotheses:

1)  The yes doctor hypothesis: It is the assumption, in cognitive
science, that it exists a level of description of my parts (whatever I
consider myself to be[2]) such that I would not be aware of any
experiential change in the case where a functionally correct digital
substitution is done of my parts at that level. We call that level the
substitution level. More simply said it is the act of faith of those
willing to say yes to their doctor for an artificial brain or an
artificial body graft made from some description at some level. We
will see such a level is unknowable. Note that some amount of folk or
�grand-mother psychology� has been implicitly used under the granting
of the notion of (self) awareness[3].

2)  Church Thesis. A modern version is that all digital universal
machines are equivalent with respect to the class of functions (from
the natural numbers to the natural numbers) they can compute[4]. It
can be shown that this entails such machines compute the same
functions, but also they can compute them in similar ways, i.e.
following similar algorithm. So, the thesis says, making abstraction
of computation time, all digital universal machine can simulate each
other exactly (I will say emulate each other).

3)  Arithmetical Realism (AR). This is the assumption that
arithmetical proposition, like �1+1=2,� or Goldbach conjecture, or the
inexistence of a bigger prime, or the statement that some digital
machine will stop, or any Boolean formula bearing on numbers, are true
independently of me, you, humanity, the physical universe (if that
exists), etc. It is a version of Platonism limited at least to
arithmetical truth. It should not be confused with the much stronger
Pythagorean form of AR, AR+, which asserts that only natural numbers
exist together with their nameable relations: all the rest being
derivative from those relations.

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 13:35, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:

 It doesn't.  It just has to be *amenable* of spelling out: i.e. if it
 is a posteriori compressed - for example into 'computational' language
 - then this demands that it be *capable* of prior justification by
 rigorous spelling out in physical terms for every conceptual
 reduction.  MGA claims to show that this is impossible for the
 conjunction of CTM and PM.  Of course, CTM on the basis of
 arithmetical realism is not spelled out either, but is immunised from
 physical paraphrase by making no appeal to PM for justification.

Err. yeah. The hard part is reducing mentation to computation.
The physical paraphrase of computation is just engineering,

 I understand both your discomfort with arithmetical realism and your
 defence of PM, but this discussion hinges on CTM +PM = true.
 Couldn't we try to focus on the validity or otherwise of this claim?

OK. It's invalid because you can't have computaiton with zero phyiscal
activity.

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Re: Emulation and Stuff

[Flammarion]

On 19 Aug, 13:48, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 19 Aug, 09:36, Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote:



   Bruno's position is that only one of the above can be true (i.e. CTM
   and PM are incompatible) as shown by UDA-8 (MGA/Olympia).   I've also
   argued this, in a somewhat different form.  Peter's position I think
   is that 1) and 2) are both false (or in any case that CTM and PM are
   compatible).  Hence the validity of UDA-8 - in its strongest form -
   seems central to the current dispute, since it is essentially this
   argument that motivates the appeal to arithmetical realism, the topic
   currently generating so much heat.  UDA-8 sets out to be provable or
   disprovable on purely logical grounds.  
  I for one am unclear on what
   basis it could be attacked as invalid.  Can anyone show strong grounds
   for this?

  Of course, no argument can validly come to a  metaphysical conclusion--
  in this
  case, that matter does not exist --without making a single
  metaphysical assumption.
  The argument is therefore invalid, or not purely logical

 Again, with respect, you appear to assume that MGA

I was refering to the UDA

argues that matter
 doesn't exist.  In fact it argues that CTM + PM = false, which is not
 the same thing at all.  It is possible to retain matter as primitive
 (which I for one don't rule out, dependent on a more complete
 understanding of mind-body) whilst relinquishing an a priori

hypothetical

:CTM.
 What would be needed, as I've said elsewhere, would be an alternative
 theory of mind which - like any other 'transcendent' a posteriori
 analysis - would be capable of direct elucidation in terms of of
 primary physical processes.  Bruno has argued separately against the
 plausibility of finding such a theory, but this isn't implicit in MGA,
 AFAICS.

 David
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RE: Emulation and Stuff

[Jesse Mazer]

Seems like this post didn't go through, so I'll resend it:

 Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:19 -0700
 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
 From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 
 
 
 On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
  009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
 
   I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
   physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
   paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
   *any* human concept is *eliminable*
 
   No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.
 
  Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
  precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
  can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
  'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.
 
 Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation
 by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination.

Of course it is--*according to the Quinean definition of ontology*. The strange 
thing about your mode of argument is that you talk as though a word like 
existence has some single true correct meaning, and that anyone who uses it 
differently is just wrong--do you disagree with the basic premise that the 
meaning of words is defined solely by usage and/or definitions? If so, do you 
agree that there are in fact different ways the word existence is defined by 
real people, even if we restrict our attention to the philosophical community? 
Provided you agree with that, your posts would be a lot less confusing if you 
would distinguish between different definitions and state which one you meant 
at a given time--for example, one might say I agree numbers have Quinean 
existence but I think they lack material existence, or existence in the sense 
that intelligent beings that appear in mathematical universes are actually 
conscious beings with their own qualia. We might call these three notions of 
existence Q-existence, M-existence and C-existence for short. My argument with 
you has been that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, 
M-existence is an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all 
we need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible 
universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence. 

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RE: Emulation and Stuff

[Jesse Mazer]

 Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:19 -0700
 Subject: Re: Emulation and Stuff
 From: peterdjo...@yahoo.com
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 
 
 
 
 On 19 Aug, 13:03, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
  009/8/19 Flammarion peterdjo...@yahoo.com:
 
   I completely agree that **assuming primary matter** computation is a
   physical process taking place in brains and computer hardware.  The
   paraphrase argument - the one you said you agreed with - asserts that
   *any* human concept is *eliminable*
 
   No, reducible, not eliminable. That is an important distinction.
 
  Not in this instance.  The whole thrust of the paraphrase argument is
  precisely to show - in principle at least - that the reduced concept
  can be *eliminated* from the explanation.  You can do this with
  'life', so you should be prepared to do it with 'computation'.
 
 Showing that a word can be removed from a verbal formulation
 by substitution with s synonym is not *ontological* elimination.

Of course it is--*according to the Quinean definition of ontology*. The strange 
thing about your mode of argument is that you talk as though a word like 
existence has some single true correct meaning, and that anyone who uses it 
differently is just wrong--do you disagree with the basic premise that the 
meaning of words is defined solely by usage and/or definitions? If so, do you 
agree that there are in fact different ways this word is defined by real 
people, even if we restrict our attention to the philosophical community? 
Provided you agree with that, your posts would be a lot less confusing if you 
would distinguish between different definitions and state which one you meant 
at a given time--for example, one might say I agree numbers have Quinean 
existence but I think they lack material existence, or existence in the sense 
that intelligent beings that appear in mathematical universes are actually 
conscious beings with their own qualia. We might call these three notions of 
existence Q-existence, M-existence and C-existence for short. My argument with 
you has been that even if one wishes to postulate a single universe, 
M-existence is an unnecessary middleman and doesn't even seem well-defined, all 
we need to do is postulate that out of all the mathematically possible 
universes that have Q-existence, only one has C-existence.

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