Le 14-sept.-07, à 00:17, John Mikes a écrit :
> Bruno, that was quite a response. Let me just include those part to
> which I have something to say - in most cases your 'half-agreement'
> cuts my guts.
> ==============
> "...I like very much David Deutsch's
> idea that if we are scientist we are in principle willing to know that
> our theory is wrong, but to discover this we have to take them
> seriously enough."
>
> I never said I am a scientist, I just speculate (and allow to change
> my mind).
That's what I call, with Popper, a scientist, more or less... Perhaps
the scientist just try to be as clear as possible, and submit papers
from time to time.
> What I brought together is in my distsinction a 'narrative', not a
> theory, not even a hypothesis.
I think this corresponds to the points of view (both in the UDA and
after in the arithmetical UDA). I think I agree with you, but I know we
disagree on this!
It just happen that I am enough open minded toward machine that I am
listening to their many points of view.
>
> "(JM)> And i still did not get an acceptable explanation why 'numbers'
> are
> > the basics of everything (and WHAT they may be).
> (BM) Nobody can KNOW that. The fact is that ONCE you take the comp hyp
> seriously enough into consideration, then you can, by work, be
> eventually convince that our own immateriality (which follows easily by
> comp) has to be "contagious" on our possible neighborhoods."<
>
> (JM):
> Why don't I take the 'comp hyp (whatever it is) seriously BEFORE I
> know about numbers?
> I see it circular: unless 'comp' has nothing to do with numbers. I
> cannot take seriously a 'thing' to get to that 'thing'. As you wrote:
Sure! You have perhaps a good intuition about numbers, we cannot define
them without using them. That is why there are a good starting point.
Now comp and numbers are related because comp concerns notably
transformation of finite things into finite things, like when you are
using your computer, and numbers give the most easy and known way to
represented finite things. But you should not fix yourself too much on
numbers; if you insist I will come back to the combinators! (One reason
to use numbers, beside that with + and * and logic, is that they are
enough for the ontic view, another is that we learn numbers in primary
school; combinators belongs to mathematical logics, and are less
known).
Anyway, once you have the combinators and their relations you got the
numbers, and vice verça.
>
> (BM):
> "...we are not talking about those numbers humans
> (re)invented, but on those which have to exist independently of us once
> we accept some minimal amount of computer science, without which we
> could infer nothing fron comp (our, well mine, working
> hypothesis)...."
>
> (JM): -RE-invented? if we agreed (D. Bohm) that the numbers we use as
> numbers
> are human inventions, how did they exist independentloy of us?
As I discussed a lot with Peter D. Jones, I just mean that the
propositions about numbers, and about relation between numbers, are
true or false independent of me. Do you sincerely believe that the fact
that you cannot build a rectangle at least two row large with the
following items IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII depends of you? (yes, there are 17
strokes, well normally).
> Is even the 'littlest' computer science feasible without numbers?
According to Hartree Field, the whole science can be done without
numbers, but his prospects fails for number theory (!) and computer
science indeed. So we agree.
> And I would not accept something to exist before it came into
> existence just to make
> a 'hyp' workable - which I don't see feasible without such circularity.
I don't think there is any circularity: I make clear the distinction
between the hypothesis and the consequences.
>
> BM: (Bohm) denies comp -
> (JM): I do not. I don't know what it is.
Comp is :
- Church thesis (a scientific (= refutable) hypothesis in the
foundation of math and computer science)
- The assumption of the existence of a level of description of myself
such that I can say "yes" to a doctor who proposes me an artificial
body made at that level, without which I would die in the ordinary
sense. Ex: 1) Ray Kurzweil is a comp practionners (hopers, ...). 2)
All scientist except Penrose (but even Searle and Rosen although this
is not obvious and I guess debatable). Comp is a very weak hypothesis,
but with "devastatting consequences" once we take it seriously enough,
due to CT, mainly.
> I hope it is not that embryonic digitality-churner we have on our
> desk (don't even mention 'binary'), but if it is named ptoperly
> (comp?) it has 'something' to do with computationality (involving
> numbers to handle). Now this may be your mystical unknowable 'number'
> what I was willing to call (not condoning) the Almighty Creator, or
> anything else - of course not emulable by an (embryonic level) Turing
> machine.
Yes; although "almighty creator" has some connotations ...
> I just wonder WHY NUMBER? because Plato talked numbers? That was 2500
> years ago at the epistemic cognitive level of that time! OK, our mind
> is still not capable of thinking beyond the level it can think, but to
> substitute the ORIGIN by something invented in the course much much
> later on, because we have some idea about THAT, does not seem to me
> 'scientific' enough.
You can say that for dinosaure, electrons, etc. Of course I hope that
the theories of numbers we have invented reflect the number reality.
Numbers are also what you put on any numerical disk. If you have
conceptual problem with the notion of natural number (beyond not liking
them) I am afraid I cannot help ...
> Unless you give me a better explanation - if you care.
I don't know people who does not believe in numbers (despite I know
people who pretends not to believe in numbers, but there is always some
word play at play there imo). Generally people believe (rightly on the
epistemological level) in *more* than numbers. All what I say is that
if comp is true, anything you add to numbers is provably useless at the
ontic level. And the epistemological level need more than the whole
cantor paradise to be approached: it is the first person plenitude,
something not mathematically definable by a machine, about itself (but
definable but simpler machine than itself).
>
> (BM):
> All proof in math are particular case of thought experiments. In
> philosophy-of-mind, theology, theoretical physics and math, the only
> tools available are the thought experiments.
>
> (JM):
> (I wrote: > I also keep away from ANY thought experiences, they are
> products of
> > OUR state of the mind at the time they are 'invented'....<
> in which "experience" is a typo, it should read "experiment". Sorry
> about it)
>
> I was referring to those 'thought experiments' (EPR, teleportation
> etc.) which imagined physical tests on imaginary (unreal?)
> circumstances to prove a position. To "test" ideas
> in mental domains is a mental effort, not what I would call a
> 'thought experiment'.
>
> (JM):
> > I am in subconscious trouble with the machine, which is differently
> > identified by Robert Rosen and I find a lot acceptable in his ideas.
> (BM):
> Imo, Rosen is wrong on Church thesis. But this could wait when I
> succeed to explain more about CT later ..
> (JM):
> I was referring to his nomenclature of the 'formal' (reductionist,
> conventional) terms vs his tems in the impredicative view of the total
> interconnective 'cpmplexity'. "His" machine is computer-emulable while
> his 'natural systems' always have noncomputable elements.
This is exactly why I say comp is a vaccine against reductionism.
Universal machine can be shown to be necessarily confronted with many
uncomputable elements. (and both the geographical part of the "physical
world" and its lawfull charcter comes from that). Then Lobian Machines
(which grosso modo are the universal machine* knowing* that they are
universal) *know* that they are confronted with uncomputable elements,
always...
> I consider the latter as part of the world,
Me too. The beauty I try to convey to you, is that with the discovery
of the universal machine notion we know now that we have to consider
the uncomputable elements as part of the "world".
> while the restricted view - mostly topically selected within
> boundaries we set for our presently accessible observations - is what
> I call "model", encompass the conventional sciences.
What you call "models" here could correspond to incomplete internal
views by relative numbers or relative machines (relative to possible
computational histories).
> He worked in math and theor. biology as well.
> (I am looking forward to reading your explanatory piece about the CT. )
Few people understand CT I realize.
> Interesting match in your par:
> "Just keep track of the definitions. By angels and gods (note the
> plural) I mean things which are not turing-emulable, or if you prefer,
> any entities which are provably not machines."
> (JM):
> "provably" is ambiguous. i would accept "per definitionem".
No, I am always referring to a well defined notion of provability by
ideally correct machine. There is no ambiguity at all, thanks to Godel
Turing and Co.
>
> (BM): What is conventional sciences.
> (JM): basically: what you and Nietzsche described. I consider it the
> historical figment of the ever changing (advancing?) observational
> skills and explanational levels, built upon the previous flight of
> knowledge-base in the human (scientific) establishment. It applies
> math to calfculate the quantities deduced from the developing
> observations on the 'model-view' (see above). Such incomplete
> information may lead to paradoxes. Thinking is 'reduced' to the actual
> level of epistemic content viewed as "all that there is".
I think honestly that you are confusing the scientist's work and what
he says at the pause-café, or during the week-end, or when pressed by
unscrupulous media. Science by nature cannot be reductive, only
"religious-in-the-pejorative-sense" interpretation of some
pseudo-scientist 'narrative'..
> I call it reductionistic, (the only way we can think!)
I would say that it is only the only way we can communicate our
thinking in finite time to others. Certainly not the way we think, not
even the way the first person canonically associated to the lobian
machine can think!).
> building an ingenious edifice of a physical world and its mental
> attributes. I disagree with conclusions drawn from 'within boundaries'
> (i.e. models) and applied to 'beyond boundaries' (the 'totality?) -
> what (conventional science) has a habit to do.
OK, it is really here that CT can help you to understand how lobian
machines can think beyond the boundaries.
>
> (BM):
> Science = doubt and modesty. When scientist
> pretend to know the truth, they are mad, that's all.
>
> (JM): i think - while doubt and modesty are good attributes - there
> must be some more to it. I could not identify, what, but some
> understanding and ordering of signs(?) we perceive
I hope so! Indeed.
> (and i am also realist enough to believe in such)
Me too.
> has also its place in it. There is no "truth" only "my truth" or "your
> truth". Experience is (1P) interpretation, even 3P communication.
You confuse perhaps the first hypostasis (0-person pov) and the third
one (first pov). Once you are realist enough to admit some reality
independent of yourself, you can accept a notion of 0-person point of
view, independently of our own inaccuracy in our attempt to describe
it.
>
> (BM): (on atoms - molecules):
> "Plotinus (+300) did already understand that such notions were
> inconsistent with the
> more primitive platonic ideas. Now, I could accept that atoms (the
> modern one), like the spherical hypothesis about the earth are
> excellent local theories.
>
> (JM):
> I try to keep out of comparisons in long obsolete levels in
> knowledge-development.
Of course here we agree, I think, that we disagree. We have discovered
many pearls like Newton, Einstein, Godel, the moon, the QM, etc. But
that has been made possible by an aristotelian simplification
concerning the nature of matter, which has helped scientist to forget
for a time the mind body problem. Alas the scientists, without much
choice, have abandoned the mind body problem to the
"religious-in-the-pejorative-sense" authoritative authorities since
+525, about. But things evolve, slowly ... (that's normal!).
> Those elements I try to think within are products of the most recent
> advancement. In old times the guys were smart, logical, even wise and
> their underdeveloped circumstances may disturb our mind in
> speculations in novelties FOR the future development.
OK then,
> I ;ove your distinction of the "local theories" - it may save our
> sanity.
Absolutely: any sound lobian machine has to make those distinctions to
remain sound ...
>
> The requested URL: http://www.kjf.ca/62-TAMIK.htm
> (I had troubles bringing it in. If you cannot get it, I may attach the
> text in a private e-mail)
No I got it. Thanks.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sat Sep 15 2007 - 08:54:09 PDT