Hi Mirek,
Welcome to the list,
Le 13-août-07, à 16:54, Mirek Dobsicek a écrit :
> Hello Bruno !
>
> I am a freshman to this list and it seems to me that some kind of a
> 'course' is going to happen.
Let us say that I try to give some information linking my (already old)
work and the main discussion on this list.
In the case you know french the most extensive description of what I
have done is in "Conscience et Mécanisme", or in some preceding papers.
In English my last papers could perhaps help, you can find them here:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications.html
> I checked a couple of last messages and it
> looks interesting. Please, would you mind to repeat what is
> approximately the starting point of your explanations and where do you
> aim? Hopefully, I'll be able to follow.
The starting point of this list is the idea that "everything exist"
could be an easier explanation than any assumption of the kind
"something exists".
My own starting point is what I called the "indexical digital mechanist
thesis", which is called also "computationalism", and which is a
digital version of Milinda-Descartes mechanism thesis. When Milinda
asked Nagarjuna, what is the nature of a person, Nagarjuna answered by
an informal exposition of the mechanist thesis.
What I show (or try to show) is that once we take the idea that "I am a
machine" seriously enough, then this entails a reversal between physics
and "intensional number theory", or "mathematical computer science" or
(as I can justify) "machine theology", and this in a sufficiently
precise way so that the physics extracted from the computationalist
"machine theology" can be compared with the empirical facts.
Lennart Nilsson wrote:
> Bruno wrote:
>> I don't think Church thesis can be grasped
>> conceptually without the understanding that the class of programmable
>> functions is closed for the diagonalization procedure.
>
> This is something I never grasped but would love to understand.
Thanks for saying; it is indeed a key point, which, I realize now, is
rarely understood, although in my opinion Emil Post has seen this point
in the 1920, and Judson Webb has written a genuine book in the 1980
(ref in my thesis).
But at the computability meeting in Siena 2007, I have heard that some
people still believe that Church thesis could be viewed as a definition
(of computable function), which, as I hope being able to explain, is
complete nonsense. Actually, when Church did propose what he did
consider as a definition, Stephen Kleene makes clear it has to be a
thesis (i.e. an hypothesis). I will come back on this.
I will have to come back on Cantor. Meanwhile people can consult my old
post on diagonalization.
Actually you can search for diagonalisation (with a s) for my older and
more basic posts, and then search for diagonalization (with a z) for
some more recent one.
Well, the list archive are no so easy to search in: here is my older
"diagonalisation" post, send to George Levy on the list, the 21
augustus 2001, shortly after the sudden death of James Higgo.
-------------------------------- copy of my first diagonalzation
post----------------------------
in memory of James,
Hi George, Hi People,
I guess most of you know the famous proof by diagonalisation
of the uncountability or non enumerability of the reals.
To my knowledge diagonalisation appears in the work of
Dubois-Reymond, but it is Cantor who first used it for proving
that the set of reals is bigger, in some sense, than the set of
natural numbers N, or the set of integers Z or the set of
rational numbers Q.
Here I want recall Cantor proof, and then I want to show you
a weird, similar but false diagonalisation reasoning.
The correction of that reasoning will give a shortcut to Godel's
incompleteness result, which is itself a step toward G and G*.
In this post I prove Cantor theorem, and then I give you the
similar but wrong proof. I will let you search the error.
I hope you see that Q is countable. There are simple
drawing proof of that. But without drawing, it is enough
to realise that a rational numbers like -344/671 is described
by a finite string in the alphabet {O, 1, 2, 3, ... 9, -, /}.
And finite strings can be ordered by length, and those
with the same length which remains can be ordered by some
chosen alphabetical order. I call this order (on string) the
*lexicographic* order.
Actually we will be interested by the functions of N to N.
N is the set of natural numbers (positive integers).
============================
So here is a variant of Cantor theorem:
1. Theorem: The set of functions from N to N is NOT countable.
(Note: if you know Cantor proof, just skip it and go to 2. below).
Proof: (by absurdum and diagonalisation)
I recall that a function from N to N is just an assignment for each
natural number (called the argument or input) of a natural numbers,
called the output or value.
exemples:
-the constant function:
input 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
output 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
-the identity function:
input 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
output 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
-the factorial function:
input 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
output 1 1 2 6 24 120 720 ...
-an "arbitrary" function:
input 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
output 10 0 0 3 56 1 35465439087 ...
Of course in this last case, the "..." has only sense
in Plato heaven or in God's Mind.
Suppose now (our absurd hypothesis) that the set of all
function from N to N is countable.
This means that we can count or enumerate the functions.
So we would have a sequence of functions, each associated
to a natural number such that all functions appear in that
sequence. We would have a sequence:
f_0 f_1 f_2 f_3 f_5 f_6 ...
of all functions (from N to N, but this will not be repeated).
Let us put those functions with their value in a matrix:
input 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
f_0 4 7 0 0 0 19 5 ...
f_1 8 6 6 2 1 3 49 ...
f_2 66 36 5 2 4 5 8 ...
f_3 1 2 3 2 1 3 2 ...
f_4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...
f_5 10 0 0 3 56 1 356 ...
f_6 0 10 7 2 2 35 0 ...
.. .... ...
Now we will get a contradiction. Indeed we pretend that
all functions belongs to the sequence f_0 f_1 f_2 ...
and this makes the matrix well defined (in Plato heaven
or Cantor paradise, we don't ask that the matrix can be
algorithmicaly generable).
But here is a function, certainly well defined in Plato
Heaven, which, by definition, will not appear in the
matrix. It is the function g which send n on f_n(n) + 1.
g(n) = f_n(n) + 1
In particular g(0) = f_0(0) + 1 = 4+1 = 5;
g(1) = f_1(1) + 1 = 6+1 = 7;
g(2) = 6; g(3) = 3; g(4) = 6, g(5) = 2; g(6) = 1, ...
You see we just change the "diagonal value" so as to be
sure that g is different from f_0 on the value O
(it is f_0(0) + 1), g is different from f_1 on the value 1, etc.
Would have g belong to the list f_0 f_1 f_2 f_3 f_5 ...
A number k would exist such that g = f_k, but then, applying
g on k gives g(k) = f_k(k), but remembering the definition
of g, we have also g(k) = f_k(k) + 1. Contradiction.
The proof does not depend of the choice of the matrix, so that
we have just shown that the set of functions cannot be put
in an exhaustive sequence. N^N is not countable.
(A^B is a notation for the set of function from B to A).
==============================
2. A paradox ?
I will say that a function f is computable if there is
a well defined formal language FL in which I can explained
non ambiguously how to compute f on arbitrary input (number).
I must be able to recognise if an expression in my language
is a grammaticaly correct definition of a function, that is
syntax error must be recoverable.
All expression in the language must be of finite length, and
the alphabet (the set of symbols) of the language is asked to
be finite.
Now all finite strings, a fortiori the grammatically correct
one, form a countable set. Just use the lexicographic order
defined above.
So the set of function computable with FL is countable.
A synonym of countable is *enumerable*, and is used by
computer scientist, so I will also use it.
So I can enumerate the functions computable with FL, that is
I can put them in sequence like f_0, f_1, f_2, f_3, ...
going through all functions computable in or with FL.
Let us consider the function g defined again by
g(n) = f_n(n) + 1
Now, g is not only well defined, but is even computable. To
compute it on n, just search in the enumeration f_i the nth
function, apply it to n (this gives an answer because the f_i
are computable) and add 1.
So, there is a number k such that g = f_k, but then, again
g(k) = f_k(k) = f_k(k) + 1
But f_k(k) is a well defined number (f_k is computable), and
no numbers can be equal to "itself + 1". Contradiction.
Could the set of computable functions in FL be uncountable, after
all, or is g not expressible in FL, or what?
Where is the error? I let you think a little bit. You can
ask question. (Notably in case of notational problem).
Bruno
--------------------------------
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Tue Aug 14 2007 - 06:46:37 PDT