For mysterious reason, this one does not seem to go through. New
attempt.
On 24 May 2017, at 13:58, David Nyman wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com>
Date: 20 May 2017 at 10:29
Subject: Re: Movie argument
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
On 20 May 2017 02:36, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/19/2017 5:30 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 19 May 2017 at 21:00, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/19/2017 8:45 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 18, 2017 spudboy100 via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com
> wrote:
> So which is the Boss, John, Mathematics, somehow at the
'base; of the universe, or is physics the top dog from the 1st
split second?
One of René Magritte's most famous paintings is
called "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", in English that means " this
is not a pipe".
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/133/the-treachery-of-images-this-is-not-a-pipe-1948(2).jpg
This is how Magritte explained his painting:
" The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet,
could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it
not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe', I'd have
been lying! "
Mathematics is a representation of something it is not the thing
itself. Physics is the thing itself.
Bruno's a Platonist. That means that conscious thoughts are what we
have immediate access to and the physical world is an inference
from perceptions (which are thoughts). We take the physical world
to be real insofar as our inference has point-of-view-invariance so
that others agree with us about perceptions. Bruno observes that
consciousness is associated with and dependent on brains, which are
part of the inferred physical world. He supposes this is because
brains realize certain computations and he hypothesizes that
conscious thoughts correspond to certain computations. But
computation is an abstraction; given Church-Turing it exists in the
sense that arithmetic exists. So among all possible computations,
there must be the computations that constitute our conscious
thoughts and the inferences of a physical world to which those
thoughts seem to refer... but not really. It's the "not really"
where I part company with his speculations. That inferred physical
world is just as computed as Max Tegmark's and is just as necessary
for consciousness as brains and skulls and planets are. So, for
me, the question is whether something is gained by this reification
of computation. Bruno says it provides the relation between mind
and body. But that's more a promise than a fact. It provides some
classification of thoughts of an ideal thinker who doesn't even
think about anything except arithmetic.
I really think you continue to miss something crucial here. The
thinker (which is admittedly a toy version at this stage) isn't
merely thinking "about" arithmetic. It's thinking about (or more
accurately perceiving) *arithmetical truth*. So what's the
difference? Well, 2+2=4 is a tautology of arithmetic; IOW it merely
expresses something that is formally necessitated in the very
definition of the terms. What does it then add to say that it is
true that 2+2=4? Well, we test the truth of this assertion by
perceiving that it corresponds with the (perceptual) facts. For
example, as you often like to say, we can simply see that two
objects plus two more objects is indeed equal to four objects. Now,
this idea of truth as correspondence with the facts has no direct
parallel in physics, computation per se, or any other purely
formally-defined procedural specification.
??
For these latter, it is sufficient that there is such a procedure
and that it is followed. There is no further entailment of truth or
falsity that can have any bearing on the outcome. On the other hand
the notion of truth parallels precisely that characteristic of
perception fixed on by many thinkers on the subject, perhaps most
notably Descartes who correctly intuited that the one thing in his
experience that could not coherently be doubted was that it was true.
What he thought he could not doubt was that he was thinking.
Bertrand Russell noted that he could have doubted there was a
subject doing the thinking.
Thank you so much for these helpful emendations. "He thought he
could not doubt that it was true that he was thinking." Any better?
Then Russell's contribution would have been to note (with suitable
substitution of pronouns) that he could have doubted there was a he
doing the thinking. Even more illuminating? Perhaps you would remind
me what precision such painstaking discriminations are supposed to
add at this point.
To be unambiguous, that primary truth is not of course proof
against delusion; as Descarte also correctly inferred, his true
experience could nonetheless have been imposed on him by a
malignant demon. In that case, however, it would still of course
have been the canvas on which the delusory perceptions were
truthfully painted.
But what's the relevance of such a notion of simple arithmetical
truths to perceptions such as our own? Well, if thought and
perception, by assumption in the computationalist framework, are to
be considered a consequence of computation, which itself devolves
upon arithmetical relations, then the truths of perception must in
some relevant sense be generalisations of the truths of arithmetic.
Yes, the usual, "If this theory is going to work out then it must be
that ...."
As of course is the case with reasoning in any other theory. I might
as well have said that if thought and perception were to be
considered in the end simply physical then they would necessarily
have to be generalisations of physics.
Also, "my" theory is believed by almost all scientists. Diderot call
it simply "rationalism". If Brent does not believe in mechanism, he
should tell us what is his explanation for consciousness. But here, he
clearly dismiss the problem when saying that once machine will be
intelligent, the "hard" problem will dissolve. But he never explained
why and how.
I think Brent just do not see the problem raised by mechanism, which
is that we cannot invoke the physical universe to explain the
appearance of the physical universe. How could a physical universe
select a computation among all computation. To assume that he does
that by being "real" *is* a reification error. It is a variant of "God
made it".
As Bruno says, perception becomes a view from the "inside" of
arithmetic, where that elusive internal space (which we seek in
vain in extrinsically-completed models such as physics tout court)
is equated with the truths, as distinct from the formal procedures,
of arithmetic. The strength of the logical models that Bruno
utilises in the machine interviews is then that they can be
characterised in this sense as "accessing truths".
The only truths he shows they can access are those provable in PA -
This, if you don't mind that I react already here, is simply false. It
is false intuitively, because most of the truth the subject access to
are not computable, nor provable by PA or anyone else. Bret forget the
1p indeterminacy. In the WM-duplication, PA cannot prove "Washington",
in fact PA cannot even prove "W v M", just Con(PA) -> (W v M), but PA
cannot prove con(PA).
which is because he defines "accessible" as "provable".
He forget that provable does actually not work at all for the physical
accessibility. Fortunately, incompleteness saves theaetetus theory of
the knowable, and the observable. Physically accessible is
"observable" with a probability different of zero. It is the diamond
of the logic []p & Dt (& p). It not a notion of provability, but of
osbervability.
But you forget that the necessary generalisation has not yet been
fully accomplished. The task at this point is to show that in
principle it could be accomplished with the tools at hand.
Well, it is entirely done at the propositional level, and tested.
It's also the case that we similarly cannot extrapolate from
neuroscience to a theory of perception. The crucial difference
however is that the goal of a completed neuroscience will have been
accomplished by the explication of perceptual *behaviour*, not its
putative truth, which is not in any sense a neurocognitive category.
As you often opine, many will be satisfied that all possibility of
explanation will have been exhausted at this point.
Yes. neuroscience assumes mechanism, but does not in any way try to
solve the mind body problem. It works only on the "easy" behavioral
problem.
However, their purely extrinsic formulation is in the relevant
sense "incomplete" in this regard. Their completion in that same
sense is to be found in the conjunction of an extrinsic formulation
with an intrinsic (reflexive) logic that is comprehensible only in
terms of what the subject thus modelled perceives to be true, i.e
to correspond with its perceptually-available "facts". The
consequence is then that consciousness is equated in this view with
whatever is perceptually true, in the first instance, for a given
subject.
But we have no reason to suppose that there is a unique physics in
this computational plethora.
You are much too quick here. We have no reason (contradictions or
other refutations) to suppose that there isn't and at least
promising signs that there could be. This is ordinarily sufficient
encouragement to engage one's interest in where this line of enquiry
might lead next. I take it that you however are not so encouraged.
Brent is (accidentally) right. We get three physics.This can be used
to argue that in the afterlife, QM is still correct!
So a coherent set of "perceptually available facts" is just a
wish, a promisory note on the bank of everythingism.
So you'd rather bank elsewhere, as of course is your privilege. But
at the same time you're also a little like the Greenspan of
everythingism, anxious to warn us of irrational exuberance.
Nonetheless, promissory notes aren't always unworthy of their paper.
You haven't done enough yet in my view to discourage a modest
further investment in this general direction.
Brent seems to not see the problem. My goal was just to show that with
mechanism, the mind-body problem is twice more complex than it is
thought. But mechanism makes the "hard" part (consciousness) more
easy, thanks to incompleteness which explains the qualia (I would
say), but it leads to an hard problem of matter, also solved
conceptually (and up to not being refuted some day) by the nuances on
the possible probabilities definable by the machine (the Bp & Dt).
I insist that I am not the author of any new theory. I show only that
the antic Milinda-Descartes theory of mind, Mechanism, leads to the
obligation to justify physics as a science of the stable first person
appearances for dreaming numbers. Without Gödel and QM, I would
proudly declare that Mechanism has been shown hardly plausible. But
Gödel and the quantum saves it, until now, and gives us a neo-
neopythagorean theology as a theory of everything, which was more than
what was asked.
Bruno
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