Le 18-févr.-07, à 13:57, Mark Peaty a écrit :
> My main problem with Comp is that it needs several unprovable
> assumptions to be accepted. For example the Yes Doctor hypothesis,
> wherein it is assumed that it must be possible to digitally emulate
> some or all of a person's body/brain function and the person will not
> notice any difference. The Yes Doctor hypothesis is a particular case
> of the digital emulation hypothesis in which it is asserted that,
> basically, ANYTHING can be digitally emulated if one had enough
> computational resources available. As this seems to me to be almost a
> version of Comp [at least as far as I have got with reading Bruno's
> exposition] then from my simple minded perspective it looks rather
> like assuming the very thing that needs to be demonstrated.
I disagree. The main basic lesson from the UDA is that IF I am a
machine (whatever I am) then the universe (whatever the universe is)
cannot be a machine.
Except if I am (literaly) the universe (which I assume to be false).
If I survive classical teleportation, then the physical appearances
emerge from a randomization of all my consistent continuations, and
this is enough for explaining why comp predicts that the "physical
appearance" cannot be entirely computational (cf first person
indeterminacy, etc.).
You can remember it by a slogan: If I am a machine, then (not-I) is not
a machine.
Of course something like "arithmetical truth" is not a machine, or
cannot be produced by a machine.
Remember that one of my goal is to show that the comp hyp is refutable.
A priori it entails some highly non computable things, but then
computer science makes it less easy to refute quickly comp, and empiry
(the quantum) seems to assess comp, until now.
> However, as far as I can see it is inherent in the nature of
> consciousness to reify something.
Well, it depends what you mean by reifying. I take it as a high level
intellectual error. When a cat pursues a mouse, it plausible that the
cat believes in the mouse, and reify it in a sense. If that is your
sense of reifying, then I am ok with the idea that consciousness
reifies things.
But I prefer to use "reifying" more technically for making existing
something primitively, despite existence of phenomenological
explanation.
Let me be clear, because it could be confusing. A computationalist can
guess there is a universe, atoms, etc. He cannot remain consistent if
he believes the universe emerge from its parts, that the universe is
made of atoms, etc.
> I appreciate that the UDA and related treatments in mathematical
> philosophy, can be rigorous, and enormously potent in their
> implications for further speculation and development within their
> universe of discourse, but I remain very sceptical of any advertised
> potential to bootstrap the rest of the universe.
I agree with you. But a thorough understanding of UDA would add
substance to your skepticism. With comp, the more we know about the
universe, the more we know we are ignorant about it. It is related with
the G* minus G gap. Although you can go from G (science) toward G*
(correct faith), when you do that, you will discover many genuine new
things, but the gap between G and G* will be made greater too. In
computerland, it is like each time you see a new star or galaxy, then
necessarily bigger things are forced to exist. The more you explore,
the more it remains to be explored, necessarily so. Understanding comp
and uda makes you infinitely more modest than we are used to think.
I must go,
Regards,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Feb 19 2007 - 08:15:25 PST