Re: Some thoughts from Grandma

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 15:34:37 +0200

Le 06-juil.-07, à 19:24, David Nyman a écrit :

>
> On 06/07/07, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>> I am not sure that numbers are real in the sense that "I am real",
>> unless you are talking of the third person "I". Then "you" are as real
>> as your (unknown) Godel-number.
>> In general, when people use the word "I" they refer to their first
>> person, or to first person plural feature of their "physical" body. It
>> is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable
>> first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than
>> some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate. So that Fuch-Pauli could
>> be
>> right ... (if you know the work of Fuchs).
>
> What I meant was something looser, a tautology perhaps. That is,
> whatever we postulate as giving rise to our personal 'reality' must
> thereby be 'real' in just this sense: it 'underpins' that reality.



I don't understand how you could go automatically from a postulate to
something real. That can happens, but here the comp hyp puts non
trivial restrictions: when that happens, we cannot be sure it happens.






> I
> recall your various debates with Peter on this issue, and whatever
> else was at issue, I just felt that at least implicitly this must be
> entailed by the 'realism' part of AR.



AR is just the common idea that the elementary arithmetic taught in
high school is not crackpot.






>
>> OK, but not only (there are also the relations between numbers, the
>> relation between the relations between the numbers, etc.)
>
> You are more precise (and correct!)
>
>> OK. (Technically it is not obvious how to define in arithmetic such
>> self-relation: the basic tool is given by the recursion or fixed point
>> theorems).
>
> My basic notion of self-relative existence equates I think to
> Plotinus' One as you describe it in the Sienna paper. I postulate it
> to stand for 'existence' independent of other causality.




Note that (with comp) there is no need to postulate any form of
primitive causality (beyond the material implication and the modus
ponens deduction rule). All notion of causality, from the physical laws
to the human responsibility, are captured by higher order logical
modalities.





> I see the big
> One as 'self-differentiating' through spontaneous symmetry breaking,



Again I think you have a right intuition, although that "symmetry
breaking" is or should be a fourth hypostase phenomenon (not a
zeroth-one).
The One differentiates ? I can be ok with the image or analogy, but
strictly speaking the One is static, even more static, in some sense,
than the Second (the "Divine Intellect" (G*). The One is just above or
beside time or space categories.





> as the basis for all subsequent categorisation whatsoever, except the
> original - and unique - ontic category of self-relative existence.



I hope you make yourself precise enough because you enjoy to be made
even more precise! There is no notion of self at the zero person point
of view. Self appears with self-referential machines. Those belongs to
the "Nous", the Intellect, the second hypostase.
(This could be seen as a detail ...)





> This entails that all such subsequent categorisation is in some
> fundamental sense epistemic: i.e. how the One 'gets to know' itself.



Exact (assuming comp, etc.)




> So I agree with Plotinus that the One can't be said to 'know' anything
> without such differentiation.



All right. But I would say that the differentiated One is already the
Intellect. I can keep your nomenclature for a while.




>
>> I am not sure how could grandma have a feeling about that, except if
>> grandma get Church Thesis and the UDA.
>
> Well, I'm working on the technicalities. But the 'feeling' comes from
> what I've said above. If all categories of 'process' or 'structure'
> are epistemic - i.e. forms of self-relative 'coming to know' -



Well the passage from a "intellect self" to a knower is the (subtle)
passage from the intellect to the soul (from the second hypostase (or
third person!) to the third hypostase (the unameable first person, the
Brouwer-Post-Bergsonian "builder" of time).





> this
> entails that everything arises as an interpretation from a 'point of
> view'.



You are quick but OK.




> So what is revealed in any given context and - at least as
> importantly - what is obscured, must then be characteristic of that
> specific point of view, in no sense 'absolute reality' (whatever that
> could mean).



There is an absolute common part, even if they are appreciated
differently according to the hypostasis/point-of-view. I would say.





>
>> The point is just that physics appears as a sort of
>> sum on your lobian ignorance.
>
> I think this is what I mean by 'obscured'.



Hmmm.... The fact is that any sound universal machine which introspects
itself/herself(?) enough will discover eventually that this
self-ignorance is productive, creative in some sense. It can be
considered as bright, white, flashing. It is big, and looking twice it
is soon even much bigger ... and structured ...





>
>> As I said this is a point where I would like to disagree with the
>> lobian machine. The fact is that even the lobian machine warns us on
>> the possibility of zombie. Certainly the current artificial cops on
>> the
>> road are zombie. Tomorrow we will be able to build artificial skin for
>> androids capable of making us believe they are normal humans citizens,
>> ... We should distinguish "local zombie" which are capable to fail you
>> during some finite time, and "theoretical global zombie" which are
>> capable to fail you, in principle, for ever (like Torgny try to make
>> us
>> believe he belongs too: nobody can prove him wrong).
>
> You're right, we must distinguish zombies. The kind I have in mind
> are the kind that Torgny proposes, where 'everything is the same' as
> for a human, except that 'there's nothing it is like' to be such a
> person. My key point is that this must become incoherent in the face
> of self-relativity.



I am afraid that IF you were right here, this would mean that you are
either an unsound machine, or that you are not a machine at all.
The assertion of inexistence of absolute zombie à-la Torgny belongs
(most probably) to G* minus G, I mean to the true but unprovable
sentences of the machine. I don't see how we could contradict
effectively Torgny's self-zombie proposition. It does not mean that it
is not interesting to try or search for consequence of such
propositions, and Torgny's game(?) is fun (in our context).





> My reasoning is that a claim for the 'existence'
> of something like Torgny's B-Universe is implicitly a claim for
> self-relative existence: i.e. independent of other causality, like the
> One. When Torgny proposed the Game of Life as an example of 'another
> universe', I pointed out that GoL clearly doesn't possess independent
> existence: it's just a part of the A-Universe.



If you accept, with Torgny, the idea that the "1+1=2" statement (and
all consequence of Robinson arithmetic ,sorry John Mikes!) has a truth
value not depending on you, then the many Gols follows at once.




> If one is to postulate
> a universe suitable for the thought experiment, one must in effect
> propose 'another One' - i.e. an independently self-relative
> 'B-Universe'.



Of course, "another One" is by itself contradictory, for a machine. In
a sense, there are as many Ones than there is machine, but they share
almost all relevant structure, once the machine is "rich enough".




>
> It follows that, given the other assumptions of 'sameness',
> conversations with machines in such a B-Universe must then proceed
> exactly as they do in the A-Universe, because they depend on
> self-relation in the same ways. Now, it may seem that - beyond all
> relativity - the question still remains of the 'absolute' quality of
> 'what it's like' to be 'One' in the context of such
> self-individuation. I leave it for you to judge whether - if a
> machine can report just as we do on what it's like to be itself, with
> exactly the same self-relative justification - it can then remain
> coherent to claim that 'it's not like anything' to be that machine.


I miss the line (sorry).


>
>> Before a long time (despite Kurzweyl) we just can do it, even at a
>> high
>> level. A brain is *very* complex, for any theory. In the future people
>> will just bet on the available theory through some Pascal wag.
>> It is possible that there is some "zombie" gap, and that the first
>> person having an artificial brain will not be conscious ... (I doubt
>> this, but apparently the lobian machine say so .... according to the
>> definition I gave).
>
> Yes, I agree. And if the machine can justifiably and honestly pass
> all examinations of 'what it's like' to be itself, I would be
> reluctant to accuse it of zombiehood, based on my own criteria above.


OK.



> How we would judge its 'justification' and 'honesty' is an interesting
> question. For example, if a machine was a Huge Lookup Table, it might
> be able to pass the test, but neither honestly nor justifiably, in my
> terms.


This is unfortunately a difficult point. Except for "relative
probabilistic matter" it does not really matter which algorithm is
used, or even if an algorithm is used. What matter, in UD* for example,
is the set of possible execution of possible algorithms.




>
>> Are you considering neural processing as a behavior?
>> Are you considering that some platonic and static relations between
>> numbers can be seen as behavior?
>
> I'm saying essentially that 1-personal self-relation is
> 'characteristically' temporal.


Yes.




> I have no other justification than an
> inability to imagine how else it could be differentiated: 'dynamic'
> self-relation seems to be the defining characteristic of 'qualitative'
> existence. This seems to be at the heart of 'what it's like' to exist
> 1-personally: we 'sense' self-relation as 'action'. So 'neural
> processing' - i.e. as an aspect of the 'physical brain' perceived
> 1-personally - can be behaviour in this sense.


Hmmm.... Dangerous move. I would not say that "I" am acting when my
brain operates. This could lead to 1-3 person confusion, imo.




> Platonic and static
> relations between numbers are 0-personal, and - self-relative to the
> One - this is perhaps structural or eternal. This is why I (and
> perhaps Plotinus) don't believe that the One 'knows' anything
> distinctly from the knowers and knowledge created by its own
> self-differentiation: there has to be emergence at the 1-personal
> level for an 'act of knowing' to unfold 'in time'.


OK.



>
>> Recall that the nameable lobian master always insist on "I will say a
>> stupidity or I could say a stupidity" (is that english?)
>
> If I meet the Buddha on the road.....


That's the spirit :)




>
> David
>
> ("I will, or may, say something stupid")


That's english. Thanks.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Sun Jul 08 2007 - 09:34:56 PDT

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