Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
George Levy wrote:
> Hi Stephen
>
> Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
>
>>Dear George,
>>
>>Could it be that Consciousness is more related and identifiable
>>with the "processing" of Information than with Information itself?
>
>
> I agree that consciousness is not just information. As you say,
> consciousness seems to be associated with processing of information.
> However, even "processing of information" is not sufficient. For example
> a computer processes information but is not conscious. There is also a
> need for self referentiality.
Being self-aware is presumably a high state of consciousness - one that even
humans only visit
occasionally. I think there are different levels of consciousness. For
example, there is awareness
of being a physical being in a certain place and time and with certain
surrondings and having
certain desires, values, emotions. I think animals like dogs have this degree
of consciousness and
one could argue that a Mars rover does too. In addition a dog recognizes that
there are other dogs
and people and cooperates with those of his pack and competes against others.
Humans go to another
level of self-awareness that I think largely depends on language - they produce
a narrative account
of what they consider important in their thoughts. I think this is a way of
feeding memory with
what it is useful to keep. There is clearly far too little memory capacity in
the brain to store
anything like "a movie of one's life" - so the narrative voice is an inner
"importance filter".
John McCarthy (author of LISP) has several nice essays discussing what it means
to make a conscious
robot on his website.
>
>
>>Consider the example often raised (I do not know the original source)
>>of a Book that contained a "complete description" of Einstein's Brain.
>>It was claimed that this book was in fact equivalent to Einstein
>>himself even to the degree that one could "have a conversation with
>>Einstein" by referencing the book. (Never mind the fact that QM's
>>non-cummutativity of canonical conjugate observables make it
>>impossible for *any* classical object to be completely specified in a
>>way that is independent of observational frame, but I digress...)
>>
>>http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/intro/notes/einstein.html
>>
>
>
> I am questioning the idea that there can be a book containing a
> "complete description" of Einstein's Brain that can be "read"
> independently of your frame of reference. Is the book containing a
> snapshot of the brain at a particular microsecond in Einstein's life? In
> this case I doubt whether this book can be called conscious.
>
> Or is it a video book containing the whole life history of Einstein's
> brain? In which case, you'll have trouble "reading" the book unless you
> change your frame of reference. If you push the "play" button on the
> video player all you will see is a movie of Einstein brain INTERACTING
> WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT - NOT YOUR ENVIRONMENT. (This is like a hologram.
> Did you know that an object seen in a hologram casts a shadow in the
> environment where the hologram is created but not in the viewing
> environment?) Changing your frame of reference to Einstein's
> environment would be extremely difficult - you'll need a time machine.
>
> The only "practical?" way to get a good rendition of Einstein's brain
> THAT INTERACTS WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT is to simulate it on a computer.
> Then you can call it conscious.
>
>
>>[snip]
>>
>>Could it be that the "hard Problem" of consciousness follows
>>inevitably from our hard-headed insistence that the Universe is
>>Classical ("object have definite properties in themselves") in spite
>>of the massive pile of unassailable evidence otherwise? If we treat
>>Consciousness as "what a quantum computer (brain!) does", i.e. process
>>qubits, instead of a classical object, maybe, just maybe we might find
>>the "problem" not to be so intractably "hard" after all! ;-)
>
>
> You remind me of Penrose with whom I disagree. Using the quantum
> computer paradigm is like shoving the mind-body and consciousness
> problem under the quantum carpet.
I agree.
Brent Meeker
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
but a fire to be ignited."
--- Plutarch
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Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
Hi Stephen
Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear George,
Could it be that Consciousness is more
related and identifiable with the "processing" of Information than with
Information itself?
I agree that consciousness is not just information. As you say,
consciousness seems to be associated with processing of information.
However, even "processing of information" is not sufficient. For
example a computer processes information but is not conscious. There is
also a need for self referentiality.
Consider the example often raised (I do not know
the original source) of a Book that contained a "complete description"
of Einstein's Brain. It was claimed that this book was in fact
equivalent to Einstein himself even to the degree that one could "have
a conversation with Einstein" by referencing the book. (Never mind the
fact that QM's non-cummutativity of canonical conjugate observables
make it impossible for *any* classical object to be completely
specified in a way that is independent of observational frame, but I
digress...)
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/intro/notes/einstein.html
I am questioning the idea that there can be a book containing a
"complete description" of Einstein's Brain that can be "read"
independently of your frame of reference. Is the book containing a
snapshot of the brain at a particular microsecond in Einstein's life?
In this case I doubt whether this book can be called conscious.
Or is it a video book containing the whole life history of Einstein's
brain? In which case, you'll have trouble "reading" the book unless
you change your frame of reference. If you push the "play" button on
the video player all you will see is a movie of Einstein brain
INTERACTING WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT - NOT YOUR ENVIRONMENT. (This is like
a hologram. Did you know that an object seen in a hologram casts a
shadow in the environment where the hologram is created but not in the
viewing environment?) Changing your frame of reference to Einstein's
environment would be extremely difficult - you'll need a time machine.
The only "practical?" way to get a good rendition of Einstein's brain
THAT INTERACTS WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT is to simulate it on a computer.
Then you can call it conscious.
[snip]
Could it be that the "hard Problem" of
consciousness follows inevitably from our hard-headed insistence that
the Universe is Classical ("object have definite properties in
themselves") in spite of the massive pile of unassailable evidence
otherwise? If we treat Consciousness as "what a quantum
computer (brain!) does", i.e. process qubits, instead of a classical
object, maybe, just maybe we might find the "problem" not to be so
intractably "hard" after all! ;-)
You remind me of Penrose with whom I disagree. Using the quantum
computer paradigm is like shoving the mind-body and consciousness
problem under the quantum carpet. We must first get a good
understanding of self referential systems, classical or quantum. Bruno
seems to be on the right track but I think we are still waiting for the
linkage between diagonalization and self referentiality and
consciousness... (forgive me if I have missed something in his
argument)
"The message needs no medium!" Marshall McLuhan got it all wrong! :-)
George Levy
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Re: Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation
Dear George,
Could it be that Consciousness is more
related and identifiable with the "processing" of Information than with
Information itself? Consider the example often raised (I do not know the
original source) of a Book that contained a "complete description" of Einstein's
Brain. It was claimed that this book was in fact equivalent to Einstein himself
even to the degree that one could "have a conversation with Einstein" by
referencing the book. (Never mind the fact that QM's non-cummutativity of
canonical conjugate observables make it impossible for *any* classical object to
be completely specified in a way that is independent of observational frame, but
I digress...)
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/intro/notes/einstein.html
It seems to me that hidden in this idea is
the assumption that it is possible to enumerate all possible responses that a
given object can have with *any other* object and that this enumeration can be
faithfully represented in a finite string of symbols. A simple Diagonalization
argument proves that this is simply impossible, so why does the idea
persist?
Computer scientist of the stature of Peter
Wegner have pointed this out and it seems to have fallen on deaf
ears:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/papers/bcj1.pdf
His proposed solution is to start of by
considering the use of non-well founded set theory and the logic that follows. I
find this proposal to be very interesting because it implicitly involves a means
to represent self-referential statements in a way that is
non-paradoxical...
http://web.mit.edu/dmytro/www/NewSetTheory.htm
Could it be that the "hard Problem" of
consciousness follows inevitably from our hard-headed insistence that the
Universe is Classical ("object have definite properties in themselves") in spite
of the massive pile of unassailable evidence otherwise? If we treat
Consciousness as "what a quantum computer (brain!) does", i.e. process
qubits, instead of a classical object, maybe, just maybe we might find the
"problem" not to be so intractably "hard" after all! ;-)
Hopeful!
Stephen
- Original Message -
From:
George Levy
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 6:19
PM
Subject: Symmetry, Invarance and
Conservation (Was Number and function for non-mathematician)
In the July 1-7 2006 edition of New Scientist there is a review
of the book "The Comprehensible Cosmos" by Victor Stenger. You can see here a
power
point presentation on symmetry by Stenger.Stenger discusses the
idea of symmetry, in particular the work of Emmy Noether who proved that the
conservation of energy is a direct consequence of time translation symmetry:
the same result is obtained if an experiment is performed now or at a
different time. Other natural laws can be traced to other symmetries:
i.e., conservation of momentum to space translation symmetry etc... I
think it may be valuable to express some of our ideas as
symmetries/invariances/conservation/equivalence. For example the
invariance/conservation of information with regard to the recording substrate
is obvious. Information does not change if you transfer it from your hard
drive to your floppy (ie., hardware translation symmetry.) This fact, however,
may be of far reaching consequence. If one assumes that consciousness is a
type of information then consciousness become independent of its physical
basis: "The message is independent of the medium!" Or even better: "The
message needs no medium!" Marshall McLuhan got it all wrong! :-) George
Levy
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Symmetry, Invarance and Conservation (Was Number and function for non-mathematician)
In the July 1-7 2006 edition of New Scientist there is a review of the book "The Comprehensible Cosmos" by Victor Stenger. You can see here a power point presentation on symmetry by Stenger. Stenger discusses the idea of symmetry, in particular the work of Emmy Noether who proved that the conservation of energy is a direct consequence of time translation symmetry: the same result is obtained if an experiment is performed now or at a different time. Other natural laws can be traced to other symmetries: i.e., conservation of momentum to space translation symmetry etc... I think it may be valuable to express some of our ideas as symmetries/invariances/conservation/equivalence. For example the invariance/conservation of information with regard to the recording substrate is obvious. Information does not change if you transfer it from your hard drive to your floppy (ie., hardware translation symmetry.) This fact, however, may be of far reaching consequence. If one assumes that consciousness is a type of information then consciousness become independent of its physical basis: "The message is independent of the medium!" Or even better: "The message needs no medium!" Marshall McLuhan got it all wrong! :-) George Levy Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 05-juil.-06, à 20:36, George Levy a écrit : My background is more engineering and physics than mathematics and I do share some of Norman misgivings. Some of it has to do with terminology. For example the term "COMP hypothesis" does not carry any information. One of my old name for it was "digital mechanism hypothesis" Would it be more appropriate to rename it as an invariance, equivalence or conservation law? For example would it be appropriate to call it "invariance of consciousness with (change in physical) substrate?" It is more the assumption that there is a level of description of myself such that my consciousness is indeed invariant for functional digital substitution made at that level. You can invoke "physical" but then you must make the proof a bit longer. This is due to the fact that the UDA put doubt on the very meaning of the word physical, so you need to justify that the use of "physical" is harmless in the definition of comp. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
