On 15 Nov 2008, at 15:57, John Mikes wrote:
>
> Dear Gordon Tsai, you wrote:
>
> "...How do we gain 'the outside view' of a closed-system if we are
> inside or we are the system?..."
>
> I am the 'heretic' who denies that we 'can'. Whatever "we" think as
> 'outside', is within our own thinking, no matter how we imagine to
> transcend our limitations.
> Bruno writes very smart things, I enjoy reading them, but 'with a
> grain of salt' that it is Brunoism, not binding in the limits to my
> imagination.
I am not brunoīst, whatver that means.
Please be careful with term like that, because some could believe
there is a religion or worst, a philosophy, proposed by a certain bruno.
Keep in mind I am just a studborn reasoner, trying to share a proof
that IF you can survive with an artifial digital brain, even just in
principle, whatever you decide the brain or the universe is, then
Plato is right, and Aristotle is wrong: meaning "the physical world
emerge from elementary arithmetic. The physical world is not the
fundamental background reality. The fundamental theory is number
theory/computer science/mathematical logic.
IIf you want, all what I have done, is to take one half of atheism
(mechanism) and show it incompatible with one other half of atheism
(materialism). That's all. I have no position, no theories, no ideas,
really. Just an argument. There is no brunoism. There is a proof which
is either correct, or wrong. And up to today, all the many (serious)
scientists who have study the proof have not find any error, and it is
academically received, except by some philosopher and other pseudo-
religious people from literature and media.
It is a proof, like the proof that the square root of 2 cannot be
equal to the ratio of two integers. Once you understand it, you
understand we have to live with that for ever, or to change the
meaning of our words (like the square root of two is the ratio of two
"generalized integers", why not, if you can make sense of it?).
Bruno Marchal
> Sometimes I get startled by his strong arguments,
> sometimes I have the "OK, but..." response.
> I started on the list more than 10 years ago.
> Welcome to the place of free spirits
>
> John Mikes
>
>
>
> On 11/13/08, Gordon Tsai <gtsai42.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> Bruno:
>>
>> I'd like to hear more details about MGA if you don't mind. I
>> tried to
>> find the detailed description with no avail. Even though I am new
>> and still
>> sipping through the snipits here, I feel the potential of this
>> hypothesis. I
>> think the all the hard problems (mind/body, subjectivity/objectivity,
>> dualism/non-dual) are basically circular dependent, like two coupled
>> subsystems, perhaps neither of them fundamental. How do we gain
>> 'the outside
>> view' of a closed-system if we are inside or we are the system?
>> It's like
>> chess pieces being aware of their existence and searching for
>> underneath
>> rules by observation. I also like your ideas such as 'self-
>> observing 'ideal'
>> machine discovers the arithmetic truth by looking inside' (pardon
>> my poetic
>> distortion). How close can we look? The light is on but nobody's
>> home?
>>
>> Gordon
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Thu, 11/13/08, Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>>
>> From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
>> Subject: Re: QTI & euthanasia (brouillon)
>> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
>> Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008, 9:38 AM
>>
>>
>> On 13 Nov 2008, at 00:16, Kory Heath wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 12, 2008, at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> First, I have never stop to work on that and try to share the
>>>> argument
>>>> with people interested in the matter.
>>>
>>> True. You're tireless! (That's a complement.)
>>>
>>>> Second, it happens that sometimes I think the burden his on him to
>>>> tell us what he means by a physical universe.
>>>
>>> I totally agree. But most people will just wave their arms and say,
>>> "What do you mean? We're obviously in a physical universe.
>> What's
>>> problematic about that?"
>>
>>
>> I think there is a reason for that. Million of years of Darwinian
>> brain washing. But we can't complain, it has also been brain-
>> building.
>> Note that the Greek are the first to rationally take a distance from
>> that, and by this move created modern science including theology as
>> the most fundamental science. But humanity was perhaps not mature
>> enough, so when Aristotle reintroduced the idea that matter is basic,
>> both scientist and theologian get back to it.
>> Of course poets and mystics know better ....
>>
>>
>>
>>> And then the burden is back on us to explain
>>> why the concept of "physical existence" is more problematic than
>> it
>>> seems. Burden Tennis.
>>
>>
>> This is the reason why I have developed the Movie Graph Argument
>> (hereafter MGA).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> It is not a question of taste. It is a question of acknowledging
>>>> use
>>>> of logic and assumptions, and finding either hidden assumptions, or
>>>> imprecise statements or invalid argument step(s).
>>>
>>> I see your point. But there are issues of clarity or focus, and to
>>> some extent those are a matter of taste. I'd like to read an essay
>>> (by
>>> anyone) that lays out a clear argument in favor of the position that
>>> computations don't need to be implemented in order to be conscious.
>>
>>
>> Be careful with the term. The MGA is subtle and to explain it we will
>> have to be more precise. For example here it is better to remember
>> that only *person* are conscious. Computations are not conscious (be
>> it soft or hard wired).
>>
>>
>>
>>> I
>>> believe this argument can be made without reference to Loebian
>>> machines, first-person indeterminacy, or teleportation thought-
>>> experiments.
>>
>>
>> MGA is a completely different thought experiment. It looks a bit like
>> UDA, but it is deeply different.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I hope you don't find my criticism too annoying.
>>
>>
>> Not at all. But many in this list said it was obvious that the UD
>> does
>> not need to be run, and I remember that I thought that explaining MGA
>> was not really necessary. Even you, right now, seem to agree that
>> computation does not need to be implemented. This does not motivate
>> me
>> too much. The MGA is far more subtle than UDA, and it is a bit
>> frustrating to explain it to people who says in advance that they
>> already agree with the conclusion. Even Maudlin did complain to me
>> that few people have understand its Olympia reasoning. Many confuses
>> it with other type of criticism of comp.
>>
>>
>>
>>> It's easy for me to
>>> sit on the sidelines and take potshots, while you've done a lot of
>>> actual work. And remember that I do, in fact, believe that
>>> computations don't need to be implemented in order to be
>>> conscious, so
>>> you're usually preaching to the choir with me.
>>
>>
>> You see!
>>
>>
>>
>>> My point is that, I can
>>> imagine Dennett reading your posts, and saying "Ok, that makes sense
>>> *if* we accept that computations don't need to be implemented in
>>> order
>>> to be conscious. But I still don't see why I should believe
>> that."
>>
>>
>> Dennett, like many "naturalist" is not aware that the notion of
>> matter
>> is not obvious at all. The greeks were much more aware than all those
>> who followed, of the mind body problem (except Descartes and
>> Malebranche). Today people thought about the "consciousness" problem,
>>
>> when the real trouble is in defining both mind and matter and
>> relating
>> them. And Dennett seems not to be aware that modern physics has not
>> progressed at all in the "hard problem of matter", on the contrary,
>> modern physics (quantum physics) makes the problem of matter even
>> harder (which in a sense *constitutes* a progress of course). The QM
>> many worlds saves the idea that matter is something objective, but
>> even the many worlds does not explain what matter is, and if it is,
>> at
>> all.
>>
>> Dennett gives a good criteria of what could be an explanation of
>> intelligence or consciousness. It has to be something relating NON-
>> INTELLIGENT (or non-conscious) entity in such a way it explains
>> intelligence or consciousness. This is the basic idea behind Putnam's
>> functionalism, or even computationalism (which is the belief that
>> functionalism is true at least at some level of description of
>> oneself).
>>
>> So, why does Dennett not ask the same for an explanation of matter.
>> Matter should be explained without any use of the word matter, and so
>> it should be explained by relating only ... non material entities.
>> But
>> nobody asks for that. Why? Because we are hardwired for not doubting
>> matter. We take for granted that matter is made of ... matter.
>>
>> Now, physics, if you look at it, never uses the concept of matter. It
>> is so typical in Newton physics where the material sun can become a
>> "material point" whose only role is to attract or repulse other
>> material point. Matter is explained in term of relative actions
>> occurring in a space-time frame.
>>
>> Even today, if you ask a string theorist what a string is made of, or
>> what a brane is made of, they look at you like if you are doing some
>> metaphysics just for annoying them, or they begin a lengthy
>> explanation where only mathematical objects appear.
>>
>> I am not sure physicist really believe in matter, but they fake such
>> belief for evacuating what they feel to be "only" a philosophical
>> problem, actually they try to escape the mind-body problem---except
>> few philosophers, don't take what I am saying to literaly.
>>
>> It is only when you grasp the mind body problem, that you realize you
>> have to be a bit more cautious when talking about mind *and* about
>> matter.
>> And MGA has been invented only to explain that mechanism does not,
>> per
>> se, solve the mind-body problem. Indeed it makes the matter problem
>> the *only* big problem. Mind is well taking into account by "machine
>> discourse", which are well taken into account by computer science and
>> mathematical logic.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess what it comes down to is that the Movie Graph Argument on
>>> its
>>> own doesn't seem fully convincing to me. But it's quite possible
>> that
>>> I don't fully understand that argument. (I have my own reasons for
>>> believing that computations don't need to be implemented in order to
>>> be conscious, and sometimes I think some of them are functionally
>>> equivalent to the MGA, but I'm not sure.) Where is the clearest
>>> statement of the MGA?
>>
>>
>> Now I feel guilty. There is just no presentations of the MGA in
>> English. The MGA appears the first time in my 1988 paper, written in
>> french.
>> It appears in full detail in my "Brussel's Thesis", 1994, which I
>> have
>> been obliged to write in French (by moral harassment). Then it
>> appears
>> in my PhD thesis in France, which I did begin in english, and then I
>> have been force to translate in french (I have been unlucky, it was
>> not harassment, but the first year of application of the "Loi
>> Toubon",
>> forcing all thesis to be written in french). Note that in the two
>> theses, MGA precedes UDA.
>>
>> In this list, I have always suggest people to read the Maudlin"s
>> paper
>> 1989, which develops a similar argument. Actually, some objections
>> (by
>> Barnes) to Maudlin does not work on MGA. And one objection to MGA,
>> the
>> conterfactual objection, is answered by Maudlin. It is easy to extend
>> MGA 1988 a few bit so that it handles the counterfactual objection
>> answered by Maudlin 1989 (and thats give the new MGA described in my
>> two theses).
>>
>> Perhaps the time has come I explain the MGA on the list? Would you be
>> interested? It seems that both you and Stathis already accept the
>> conclusion. So ...
>>
>> Are there still people believing in the necessity of matter for
>> consciousness (yet grasping UDA[1...7] ) ?
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>
> >
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Nov 17 2008 - 10:17:28 PST