Bruno Marchal wrote:
> All right. (I hope you realize that you are very ambitious, but then
> that is how we learn).
Yes, learning is my aim here.
> My terminological problem here is that "experience" and "knowledge"
> are usually put in the "epistemology" instead of ontology. Of course I
> know that you (and George, perhaps Stephen and Lee) would like to make
> primitive the first person notion(s) ... or the first persons
> themselves ?
> To be sure I have some problem to interpret this.
I'll try to nail this here. I take 'ontology' to refer to issues of
existence or being, where 'epistemology' refers to knowledge, or 'what
and how we know'. When I say that our 'ontology' is manifest, I'm
saying (a little more cautiously than Descartes) that *I experience* is
my primary evidence that 'I am' - indeed, is the manifest 'way in which
I am'. From this basic ontological status, I can then proceed to
epistemological issues of what and how 'I know', which I discuss below.
However, the 'individual I' established by this basic move IMO is in a
sense illusory, unless we are prepared to settle for solipsism. If we
wish to believe in the reality of something larger than what we can see
from our perspective, we need to understand our position as delimited
by the local availability of information.
To me this is very consistent with MWI, where the superposition of the
totality of information is nevertheless discriminated into multiple
perspectives by limitations of access from any locale. It has always
seemed to me that there can be no 'preferred basis' for the assembly of
'personal histories' other than localised structuring of information.
Is it the function of the 'dovetailer' within your comp hypothesis to
establish the localisation basis used in assembling such
'points-of-view' into 'coherent personal histories'?
> That looks like a description of emergence of 1-person from 3-persons,
> unless you define "context" and 'differentiation" exclusively from your
> primary 1-person notion.
Yes, I do define these exclusively in this way. This is perhaps a key
point. My sense is that the context and the differentiation are both
primitive (irreducible). That is why I say that I'm agnostic as to the
details of the differentiation at this logical level. I take the
'context' to be primitive - a primary 'FP1' field, for the reasons
given above. Further, however we decide to schematise the
differentiation of this field, at root we have to accept that *somehow*
parts are separable from the whole - which so far as I can see is
semantically paradoxical (without introjection from 'outside', what
could penetrate a 'seamless' whole?) - but in a sense this is a test of
true primitivity. Consequently, in my schema, we have a primitive
field (context) with primitive differentiation (content). These
together constitute the global first person FP1g.
My point about third person is that this is simply terminological.
Since everything is uniquely constituted in terms of some aspect of the
FP1g context+content, this also applies to the totality of our
representations of the world, what I've termed the shared knowledge
base (SKB). Within the SKB, such representations are what we refer to
as third person - the word at arm's length as it were - but this is
merely an epithet since the ontological status of the SKB in itself
must be FP1. The very term 'third person' is literally an FP1 'object'
within the SKB that refers to a logical category we wish to apply to
certain aspects of the SKB and its presumed referents in 'externality'.
But, notwithstanding these internal categorisations, both the SKB and
its distant referents remain alike - and uniquely - constituents of the
FP1 context+content.
> We can talk in a third person manner about first person notions. But
> some care is needed for not falling in "Chalmers delusion" who forces
> him to accept some universal first person telepathy, so as to be able
> to be at two places at once from a first person point of view. With
> comp this is just impossible.
I find this 'Chalmers delusion' just that - deluded. I've said above
(and in my 'PC' analogy) that questions of knowledge and identity can
only be resolved by a person from what is available locally at their
point-of-view (however this is 'assembled'). This means both whatever
capability they have, and whatever information is available. IMO, to
make intelligible the notion of being in two places at once, one would
need to posit some non-local (as you say telepathic) transmission of
information on the presumed basis of these two points-of-view being the
'same' person. To me, this is mysticism. IMO, what constitutes
'sameness' vis-a-vis persons is the history of points-of-view (which
from the individual first person point-of-view is a function of
memory). At the point of any 'splitting' or duplication of persons,
there is a split in histories, after which they are no longer the
'same'. This is I suppose somewhat analogous to splitting in MWI,
which sometimes causes similar confusion.
> Here I prefer to simplify and to treat sentences like "I experience p"
> by "I know p". And keeping added nuances only when it is obligatory.
If you mean that 'I know in virtue that I experience', we could agree,
although this use of 'know' can be confusing. As I've said above, my
primary 'ontological' evidence is that 'I experience'. This gives me
my purchase on reality, and with this purchase - this 'grasp' - I gain
access to information, in the form of what I've termed the SKB. Within
the SKB, I can claim 'I know p' (with the above sense), and crucially
IMO this establishes the claim that the proposition 'I know p' is
itself directly a graspable 'FP1 object'. However, the consequence 'p
is true' does not yet follow, since this must be a function of the
correspondence of p (per Tarski) with 'facts' located elsewhere in the
SKB (and, under presumption, in the co-varying distant parts of FP1g to
which it refers). So IMO the truth-value of p, if p is a proposition,
is demonstrated in terms of the 'third person' relations of the SKB,
standing in place of its 'external' FP1g referents.
> This is because experience is 'incorrigible', and
> > consequently is not open to falsification.
>
>
> So at least we agree on the main axiom of standard "knowledge theory".
> This is capture by a formula like "Kp -> p": meaning If I know p then
> p is true. We can know only true proposition. It is conform with the
> traditional use of the verb "to know". Nobody says "John knew that (5 +
> 4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error. We say instead "John
> believed (5 + 4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error.
OK, in that case I can't agree that 'I experience' is equivalent to 'I
know' in this sense. John in your example 'experiences' both when he
'knows' or when he merely 'believes'. Further, he always 'believes'
whether it can be demonstrated that he 'knows' or not. The ascription
of knowledge is here dependent on the truth-value of the proposition in
which he believes, which may at any given point be provisional. In any
case, my use of the term 'I experience' as the primary 'purchase' on
reality seems logically prior to 'I know', from the above example. 'I
know' in the above sense is dependent on the truth-relations within the
SKB and its referents, which 'I experience' is not.
> > 'Knowing' is then an
> > emergent aspect of the 'third' person - experience read as information.
> > A key point is that this applies equally to the 'self' as it does to
> > others, since both are in the same position vis-a-vis the 'shareable
> > knowledge base' (SKB) that IMO is the basis of 'consensual reality'.
> > My point here is that the relation of both 'self' and 'others' to
> > 'knowledge' consists of indicating and manipulating parts of the SKB.
> > 'Experience' is the 'means whereby' we grasp this communicable base,
> > and is consequently itself not communicable.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. As far as I understand it, it seems to
> contradict what you say above.
It isn't IMO contradictory, since the sense of 'I know' here, as
discussed above, is 'I know in virtue of the truth-values and other
relations within the SKB'. But my (ontologically and epistemologically
prior) *purchase* on this 'knowledge' is my FP1 *experience*, the
medium and means whereby I am able to 'grasp' what is available to be
known. Since knowledge in this sense is mediated by the SKB, it puts
'self' and 'other' on the same footing vis-a-vis the 'third person
world' represented by the SKB. This IMO is crucial to understanding
third person discourse and the way it refers to FP1 reality. The
reason all our discourse is 'third person' (including our own internal
discourse) is that it is forced to take place entirely in terms of the
SKB. This makes it all too easy to forget (as the fish ignores the
water) that the SKB (and the linked 'nodes' to which it 'refers') are
all within the global FP1 domain. Were it not so, neither we nor they
would be present to 'grasp' or be grasped.
> I will describe the comp theory and it will be nice to see if it will
> fit with your notion of persons.
Bring it on!
David
> Le 05-août-06, à 17:03, David Nyman a écrit :
>
> >
> > Hi Bruno
> >
> > I think you're right about the complexity. It's because at this stage
> > I'm just trying to discover whether this is a distinction that any of
> > us think is true or useful, so I'm deliberately (but perhaps not always
> > helpfully alas) using a variety of terms in the attempt to get my
> > meaning across (you will recall the difficulties this caused in the FOR
> > group). However, even 'vaguely' is a start, so I'll count it as a
> > success!
>
> All right. (I hope you realize that you are very ambitious, but then
> that is how we learn).
>
>
> >
> > To make my own summary, I think my key points are:
> >
> > 1) I take some sort of 'first person', in the direct sense I've termed
> > 'FP1', to be primitive because IMO this establishes our 'manifest'
> > ontology (i.e. that given to us in direct experience)
>
>
> My terminological problem here is that "experience" and "knowledge"
> are usually put in the "epistemology" instead of ontology. Of course I
> know that you (and George, perhaps Stephen and Lee) would like to make
> primitive the first person notion(s) ... or the first persons
> themselves ?
> To be sure I have some problem to interpret this.
>
>
>
>
> > without either
> > dualism, or 'emergence' from the third person (which IMO is
> > incoherent). This amounts to saying that any situation or context
> > which is able to manifest the direct experience of 'I' is in some
> > fundamental sense 'I all the way down'.
>
>
> This could make sense, but in many more than one way given the point
> above.
>
>
>
> >
> > 2) However, I don't by this token believe that such a 'global I' (FP1g)
> > is a 'person' with individual experiential content. The reason is that
> > FP1g is undifferentiated, and such differentiation is what IMO
> > demarcates 'perceivers' and their 'perceptual models'. A conceptual
> > model might be a network where 'persons' are nodes that co-vary, by
> > sharing information, with other parts of the network to which they are
> > energetically connected. These nodes are then what I have termed FP1i.
>
>
> This makes sense, except that with comp, by UDA, you will have to
> (re)define entirely "energetically connected" by the coherence
> conditions on the notions of person. Perhaps you could wait I say more
> on this in my own future summary-roadmap which I have promise to Tom
> and George.
>
>
>
>
> >
> > 3) About the details of differentiation schemas (comp, physics,
> > whatever) I'm deliberately agnostic, because my key point is simply to
> > propose the emergence of 'persons' from the contrast between a seamless
> > 'context' and its differentiated 'content'.
>
>
> That looks like a description of emergence of 1-person from 3-persons,
> unless you define "context" and 'differentiation" exclusively from your
> primary 1-person notion.
>
>
>
>
> > I take such persons to
> > have a 'dyadic' structure ('perceiver' + 'perceptual model') that is
> > directly experienced, and elements of such direct experience are also
> > what we call 'third person' when 'read' as information.
>
> We can talk in a third person manner about first person notions. But
> some care is needed for not falling in "Chalmers delusion" who forces
> him to accept some universal first person telepathy, so as to be able
> to be at two places at once from a first person point of view. With
> comp this is just impossible.
>
>
> > I do, as you
> > know, hold certain opinions about the equivalence properties of
> > experience, but they are not IMO critical in establishing this more
> > fundamental point.
> >
> > 4) A consequence of the foregoing is that such experiential content can
> > be 'experienced' (or *is* experience) but not 'known', in the sense of
> > 'if p is true'.
>
>
> Here I prefer to simplify and to treat sentences like "I experience p"
> by "I know p". And keeping added nuances only when it is obligatory.
>
>
>
> > This is because experience is 'incorrigible', and
> > consequently is not open to falsification.
>
>
> So at least we agree on the main axiom of standard "knowledge theory".
> This is capture by a formula like "Kp -> p": meaning If I know p then
> p is true. We can know only true proposition. It is conform with the
> traditional use of the verb "to know". Nobody says "John knew that (5 +
> 4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error. We say instead "John
> believed (5 + 4)^2 = 5^2 + 4^2, until he realized his error.
>
>
>
> > 'Knowing' is then an
> > emergent aspect of the 'third' person - experience read as information.
> > A key point is that this applies equally to the 'self' as it does to
> > others, since both are in the same position vis-a-vis the 'shareable
> > knowledge base' (SKB) that IMO is the basis of 'consensual reality'.
> > My point here is that the relation of both 'self' and 'others' to
> > 'knowledge' consists of indicating and manipulating parts of the SKB.
> > 'Experience' is the 'means whereby' we grasp this communicable base,
> > and is consequently itself not communicable.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. As far as I understand it, it seems to
> contradict what you say above.
>
>
> >
> > 5) Finally, I think that many conceptual problems come from confusing
> > the SKB with the referents from which it derives. In 'everyday life'
> > we tend to act from the belief that the world *itself* is 'third
> > person' - because its analogs in the SKB are read in that way.
>
> OK.
>
> >
> > I think this summarises the distinctions I'm trying to make, in a non
> > rigorous way. If you or George feel inclined to take it further that
> > would be great, but I guess it would depend on whether, as I've said,
> > this seems to add anything useful to the enterprise. I could certainly
> > use some help in any attempt to axiomatise the above.
>
>
> I will describe the comp theory and it will be nice to see if it will
> fit with your notion of persons.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >> Hi David,
> >>
> >> I think I see, albeit vaguely, what you mean by your distinction, but
> >> it seems to me more and more complex and based on many non trivial
> >> notion "objective", "context", "boudaries" . It would be interesting
> >> if
> >> George and you were able to converge to a "sharable" notion of first
> >> person. I am interested because the first person notion plays a key
> >> role, both in the UDA reasoning (the first part of my thesis which
> >> shows that comp forces a reversal between physics and the
> >> "bio/psych/theology of numbers") and in the beginning of the partial
> >> but "explicit" part of (propositional) physics we can already extract
> >> (and compare with quantum logic) when we translate the UDA in purely
> >> number-theoretical tools (the second part of my thesis).
> >> To be sure, David, there are too many implicit assumptions, in your
> >> person distinction in your last posts, which, even in the case you
> >> would make them clear, would still be too precise so that I cannot
> >> currently make the comparison. I will say more in the roadmap asap.
> >>
> >> Bruno
> >>
> >> Le 05-août-06, à 02:21, David Nyman a écrit :
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Hi Bruno
> >>>
> >>> I think before commenting on the axioms you present I would want to
> >>> place them within something more inclusive along the following lines:
> >>>
> >>> ('FP1' and 'FP2' are used in the senses I have previously given, with
> >>> 'TP' as 'third person' in the sense of any schema whatsoever for
> >>> differentiating the 'directly uttered' FP1 subjective context. The
> >>> intention is to present an 'outsideless' approach to reality that
> >>> nevertheless allows for the definition of boundaries that delimit
> >>> information flow and representation, and consequently 'knowing',
> >>> 'knowability' and 'knowledge', in the ways characteristic of
> >>> 'individual first persons'.)
> >>>
> >>> 1) Global FP1 (FP1g) = 'subjective context'
> >>> 2) TP = 'objective content'
> >>> 3) Individual FP1 (FP1i) : perceiver/ model = FP1g + TP
> >>> 4) FP2 : shareable model of FP1i = FP1g + TP
> >>>
> >>> Then:
> >>>
> >>> 5) If p is knowable then p is TP in context of FP1g
> >>> 6) If k1 is a knower then k1 is FP1i in context of FP1g
> >>> 7) If p is known then p is TP in context of FP1i
> >>> 8) If k2 is knowable then k2 is FP2 in context of FP1g
> >>> 9) If k2 is known then k2 is FP2 in context of FP1i
> >>> 10) If k2 is shared then k2 is FP2 in context of more than one FP1i
> >>>
> >>> This further implies that:
> >>>
> >>> 11) FP1g is not knowable
> >>> 12) FP1i is knowable but not shareable
> >>> 13) FP2 is knowable and shareable
> >>> 14) FP2 may in fact be known and in fact be shared
> >>>
> >>> In consequence of the foregoing, third person discourse relating to
> >>> 'first person' necessarily takes place in terms of FP2, but in the
> >>> context of a community of FP1i 'knowers'. The content of FP1i is
> >>> indescribable but 'shareable' - on the analogy of a shareable
> >>> distribution - 'downloadable'. As directly uttered or manifested,
> >>> it's sui generis, not 'like anything'. As FP1i, 'I' can narrate my
> >>> 'experience' - including my own 'self-reporting' - only in
> >>> ostensive TP terms that map to the 'shareable distribution'. Hence,
> >>> for example, 'red' is indicated by 'pointing' to 'that' - both
> >>> for 'me' and in my report to 'you' via the shareable
> >>> distribution. In this way we can jointly develop common mappings and
> >>> organising schemas within 'shared reality'. This symmetry of
> >>> limitation puts us on an equal footing within a community of
> >>> shareable
> >>> discourse.
> >>>
> >>> David
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
> >
> >
> > >
> >
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Aug 07 2006 - 11:04:40 PDT