On Jun 12, 3:35 am, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Le 11-juin-07, à 08:05, Tom Caylor a écrit :
>
> > On Jun 10, 5:10 am, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >> ...
> >> After Godel, Lob, .... I do think that comp is the best we can hope to
> >> "save" the notion of consciousness, free will, responsibility, qualia,
> >> (first)-persons, and many notions like that. Tthe "only" price: the
> >> notion of matter looses is fundamental character, and we have to
> >> explain matter without postulating it as usual ...). We have to come
> >> back (assuming comp) to Plato, or better Plotinus, Proclus, ...
>
> > How is assuming comp any better than believing in the personal God?
>
> Because in general it is hard to make third person testable statements
> on personal God.
Here you are appealing to the same thing as I was: It's hard!
Life is a journey. You don't get the answers all at once. But the
joy is in the discovering.
More below on my statement about comp being a lot of work.
> Also, with comp, machines HAVE TO be "theological
> machine". That is, comp does not prevent some "mystical" (true but
> unprovable) beliefs: on the contrary, comp makes them obligatory (at
> least for the ideally correct machines).
>
> With comp we can argue that consciousness is already such a mystical
> state. It is a state such that you have "visions" making you belief in
> "a reality". Even cats can believe in invisible mouse, when hunting!
>
The mystical is very much what God is about. It is actually anti-God
to proclaim (as religious fundamentalists do) that we (as a very small
subset of reality) have all knowledge. If such a claim were true,
then such a "knower" would be in a static state, rather UNlike
consciousness.
> The closer thing to consciousness for the lobian machine is the "state
> of being consistent". With machine talking first order arithmetics, "to
> be consistent" can be identified (actually by 1930 Godel Completeness
> theorem) with "having a unameable reality" capable of satisfying your
> set of beliefs. and "to be consistent" belongs to machines' corona [G*
> minus G]. Indeed, by Godel second theorem, the machine statement "to be
> consistent" is true (as we can know for simple machine) but unprovable
> by the machine. After Godel we know that machine can understand/infer
> that any of their beliefs in a reality has to be theological, even the
> belief in a physical reality, or whatever.
>
> Few people seems to realize the immensity of impact of Godel's
> discovery (to begin by Godel himself as compared to Emil Post or Alan
> Turing, ...). Before Godel, after the work of Cantor, mathematicians
> were hoping to secure the many use of infinities in math by the
> finistic use of their names in finistic theories. After Godel, we know
> that we cannot secure the finistic realm itself and that we have to
> invoke higher infinities just to talk on those finite things. Before
> Godel we could have believe that the infinite can be secure by the
> finite. After Godel we know we have to rely on the infinites just to
> get a tiny scratch idea of what the finite things are capable of. This
> has given rise to the branch of logic known as "model theory", for
> example, where infinite objects are used to give clues on finite
> theories.
>
Recalling my comment about "a lot of work", this all is very
interesting (I am also reading Torkel Franzen's book), but I'm betting
that (as it happens a lot) when you get to the top of the mountain you
will find that the theists have already been there, and that there is
yet another higher peak in the distance. The theists will have been
there through faith, not the anti-evidential "faith" of the
fundamentalists, but the faith that is believing what is not seen,
being able to "see" the whole without having to put it together from
parts like the Tower of Babel.
> Note that I am not equating consciousness and consistency. But I am
> open to the idea that consciousness is related to unconscious
> (automatic, preprogrommed) self-interrogation of self-consistency. This
> makes possible to interpret Helmholtz theory of perception (as
> unconscious bet) in the lobian self-referential discourses.
>
> Because we got that "mystical state" at birth since most probably
> billions years, we tend to be a little blase about it, and this
> explains why we have to do some work to abstract from long-time
> prejudices, but then that is what science is all about (as Plato and
> Descartes have seen).
>
> (For the "modalist", consciousness is not "Dt", but "Dt?". The
> interrogation mark remind that Dt belongs to G* minus G.)
>
> I have to go by now and I will try to explain soon why such an
> inference of "Dt?" gives some advantage relatively to some very general
> relative survival goal (mainly it gives a relative speed-up) ...
>
Is not "Dt?" equal to "the search for truth"? But the weakness of
simple consistency is the unanswered question, "What is truth?" Truth
is not found simply through consistency when we reject the truth that
is all around.
> > Comp seems like a lot of work.
>
> Yes indeed. Two times more work than materialist are used to think. We
> have to isolate a "theory of mind" AND then, it remains to test the
> physical laws forced by that theory of mind, as the UDA and the
> arithmetical UDA justifies (or should justify).
>
> But the scientific attitude always asks for "lot of works",as I just
> said above.
>
Perhaps you should use a different word than "scientific" for your
*good* "attitude" of open-mindedness, modesty and humility, searching
for truth, since the word "scientific" tends to be still connected
with the pre-Godelian reductionism. I would not put up a dichotomy
between this attitude and a belief in God. But perhaps your use of
the word "scientific" is based on your conviction to use the word as
you think it "should" (assuming comp? ;) be used, rather like your use
of the word "theology". Actually I'm starting to think that you
really aren't that far off in your use of the word "theology" for the
search for truth.
Tom
> C'mon Tom, we are not in a Holiday club here, are we?
>
> :)
>
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is
easy and my burden is light." -- Jesus
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal
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Received on Tue Jun 12 2007 - 15:33:32 PDT