Bruno,
as another chap with learned English "in vertical stance" I "partially"
agree with your 'plural' as would all English mother-tongued people, but I
also consider the gramatically probably inproper "points of views", since WE
allow different 'views' in our considerations. Stathis may choose his
preference<G>.
"Points of view" assumes THE one view we allow. "MATTER OF FACTlLY"
(plural: 'matters-of factly'? - if it really HAS a plural. Is there an
English "singulare tantum"? ) I still speculate what "point of views" may
refer to, however I would volunteer a "point-of-views" in the conventional
sense.
Alas, no 'utmost' authority OVER the hundreds of live English versions.
John
On 1/25/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>
> Bruno marchal writes:
>
> > Le 23-janv.-07, à 06:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
> >
> > > Simplistically, I conceive of computations as mysterious abstract
> > > objects, like
> > > all other mathematical objects. Physical computers are devices which
> > > reflect
> > > these mathematical objects in order to achieve some practical purpose
> > > in the
> > > substrate of their implementation. A computer, an abacus, a set of
> > > fingers,
> > > pencil and paper can be used to compute 2+3=5, but these processes do
> > > not
> > > create the computation, they just make it accessible to the user. The
> > > fact that
> > > 2 birds land on a tree in South America and 3 elephants drink at a
> > > watering hole
> > > in Africa, or 2 atoms move to the left in a rock and 3 atoms move to
> > > the right
> > > is essentially the same process as the abacus, but it is useless,
> > > trivial, lost in
> > > randomness, escapes the notice of theories of computation - and
> > > rightly so.
> > > However, what about the special case where a more complex version of
> > > 2+3=5
> > > on the abacus is conscious? Then I see no reason why the birds and the
> > > elephants
> > > or the atoms in a rock should not also implement the same
> > > consciousness, even
> > > though there is no possibility of interaction with the outside world
> > > due to the
> > > computation being lost in noise. What this really does is destroy the
> > > whole notion
> > > of physical supervenience: if you shot the elephants or smashed the
> > > rock, the
> > > computation could as easily spring from the new noise situation. Thus,
> > > it would
> > > appear that consciousness comes from computation as pure mathematical
> > > object,
> > > and is no more created by the physical process that addition is
> > > created by the
> > > physical process. Either that, or it isn't computational at all.
> >
> >
> > OK, so we do agree.
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >> The real question is not "does a rock implement computations", the
> > >> question is "does a rock implement computations in such a way as to
> > >> changed the relative measure of my (future) comp states in a relevant
> > >> way?" And for answering such question we need to know what a rock
> > >> really is, and both physics and comp are not near at all to answer
> > >> this. Comp has less trouble here because it does not have to reify
> any
> > >> primary reality associated to the rock, which already emerge locally
> > >> from many non material computations.
> > >
> > > No, as I implied above, a rock makes no difference whatsoever to the
> > > measure of
> > > computation it might be seen as implementing.
> >
> > OK.
> > So, now, we have to extract "physics" from computations if we assume
> > (even just standard comp). Do you agree with the UDA informal
> > conclusion? That is, that physics will be given by relative (cf RSSA)
> > measure on computational histories from some internal point of views?
> > Such a measure has to be observer invariant (I am not talking about the
> > content of what is measured, but about the general math of that
> > measure). In any case we must dig on computations and provability, if
> > only to get reasonable mathematical definition of those different
> > "person point of view".
>
> Yes, I agree, *given* comp.
>
> > PS Could someone give me the plural of "point of view" ?
>
> "points of view"
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
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>
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Received on Thu Jan 25 2007 - 10:48:35 PST