Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On 30 Apr 2009, at 15:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
>> 2009/4/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>:
>>
>>
>>>> Putnam and Searle use the Rock argument to suggest
>>>> that computationalism is false: they consider it absurd that any
>>>> conscious computation supervenes on any physical activity (or
>>>> equivalently no physical activity, since at one extreme the Rock
>>>> argument allows that any computation is implemented by the null
>>>> state).
>>>>
>>> ?
>>>
>> If the vibration of atoms in a rock can be mapped onto any
>> computation, then there is a one to many relationship between a
>> physical state and a computation.
>>
>
>
> But why and how should the vibration of atoms in a rock be mappable
> onto any computations?
> Accepting QM I can see one quantum computation: the simulation of the
> rock.
> Computation are global things. It is not the union of a lot of tiny
> computations, it is the union of those tiny computations + the
> universal state which unite them. (and then from inside the problem is
> that there are an infinity of them).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> That is, you can't say that the rock
>> implements one computation but not another.
>>
>
> I don't think it implements any computations. I could accept some tiny
> apparition of tiny pieces of of tiny automata, but nothing big or
> sophisticated. Some very special crystals perhaps, no doubt, but those
> are, then, computer.
>
>
>
>
>> So the rock is a massively
>> parallel computer implementing every computation.
>>
>
>
> No, a finite rock goes in cycle and does not makes any long
> computation, still less the deep one. It does at most some
> computational noise. Computation, like brain are relatively rare in
> the universe. If Hubble detect a computation somewhere, iy will be
> taken as an argument for the presence of intelligent beings there. But
> it hasn't.
> The genome of a bacteria implements very simple form of computations.
> There are IF ... THEN... ELSE, loops, and conditionnal (by regulatory
> gene). But it took billions of year to "nature" to make them appear.
> Just show me the computation of factorial(24) in a rock. No one has
> shown that.
>
>
>
>
>> Furthermore, any
>> subset (in time and space) of the rock is a massively parallel
>> computer implementing any computation.
>>
>
>
> This is probably true for something like the border of the Mandelbrot
> set. But there is no concrete mandelbrot set in nature.
>
>
>
>
>> At the limit, a minimal subset
>> of the rock, such as a quark existing for one Planck interval,
>> implements every computation.
>>
>
> Hard for me to think you are serious here. A case can be made that the
> quantum vacuum is Turing universal, but this makes him doing
> "sophisticated" computation relatively to us, only ... in the quantum
> white rabbit universes.
>
>
>
>
>
>> And why not go one step further and say
>> that nothingness implements every computation?
>>
>
>
> If you stay with a physical realm, you will get only physical
> nothingness, which even in classical physics is not nothingness.
>
>
>
>
>> So you arrive at the
>> conclusion, computation exists independently of physical activity.
>>
>
> That would please me, but I don't see at all the logic.
>
>
>
>
>> Few
>> people seem satisfied with this conclusion, so they try to argue
>> either that computationalism is false
>>
>
>
> A lot of people try to argue that computationalism is false, and
> usually the argument can be shown directly non valid; Searles for
> example mixes levels of description (as Dennett and Hofstadter show
> very well in Mind'sI).
> Other have better argument, like Maudlin, but this shows only that
> comp is not compatible with linking computation with the running of
> one universal machine, or worse with the only physical one. It is more
> interesting because it shows the real difficulty of the mind-body
> problem once we take comp seriously.
> But remember Jacques Mallah. He shows that there is an implementation
> problem (with physicalism). Along those line a physicalist could
> affirm that even a running computer does not run a "mathematical
> computation". Unfortunately for Mallah, such a problem dissolves when
> you understand that the physical world is not a primitive reality, but
> something which emerge from the logical relations among numbers.
> Indeed, through the "eyes" of the universal machines/numbers.
> Arithmetical reality or alike are the only realms where computations
> exists and are well defined.
>
>
>
>
>> or else that computationalism is
>> true and dependent on physical activity
>>
>
> Which is false by UDA+MGA.
>
>
>
>
>
>> and therefore that the
>> argument is invalid.
>>
>
>
> That is weird.
>
> I think that you believe that a rock implements computations, because
> you believe a computation can be decomposed in tiny computations, but
> this is not true, you need much more. You need a universal machine
> which links and complexify the states in a precise way.
> Some alive beings do some computations (like some flowers compute tiny
> part of the Fibonacci function). But again, this is sophisticated and
> took time to appear. Waves do analog computations, hardly universal
> digital one, or only when put in some very special condition.
> Interesting and rich computations are relatively rare and exceptional
> until they self-multiplied, like amoebas.
>
Does the universe compute its states? How is the evolution of the wave
function of the universe or of a flower not a computation?
> Nor do I believe the filmed movie graph do any computation, it "read"
> a description of one, but does not link them logically in real time.
> Today, genetical systems, brains, and computer (human or engineered)
> do "concrete" computations.
>
But that seems like introducing a "magic" similar to the magic of
physical existence, except now it is the magic of computational connection.
Brent
> The mathematical Universal Dovetailer, the splashed universal Turing
> Machine, the rational Mandelbrot set, or any creative sets in the
> sense of Emil Post, does all computations. Really all, with Church
> thesis. This is a theorem in math. The rock? Show me just the 30 first
> steps of a computation of square-root(2).
> Robinson Arithmetic, Peano Arithmetic, Zermelo Fraenkel Set theory and
> many theories compute, notably, all computations, through the
> enumeration of the proof of all the True Sigma_1 arithmetical
> sentences, but they do much more, they reason and prove more complex
> propositions about them (Lobian Machine).
>
> But again, even if rocks implements computations, this changes nothing
> to the reversal reasoning. IF rocks implements all computations, it
> means the Universal measure is a tiny epsilon more complex to compute,
> given that the measure is put on all possible computations. It means
> we have to take into account all digital rock's state accessed by the
> universal dovetailer.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
>
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Received on Thu Apr 30 2009 - 10:39:20 PDT