Re: Consciousness is information?

From: Alberto G.Corona <agocorona.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 03:28:13 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Bruno.
Thanks for the link. As an physicist and computer researcher I have
knowledge of some of the fields involved in UDA, but at the first
sight I fear that I will have a hard time understanding it.


> > and my subjective experience is  the most objective fact
> > that I can reach.
> t
> I see what you mean, but the subjective experience, although real and  
> true, and undoubtable, is subjective. It exists as far as you cannot  
> prove to an other that it exists.  To communicate you have to bet on  
> tools and on others, and other many doubtable (yet plausible) mind  
> constructions.
>

Hence, qualia are subjective and , as such, I cannot assure that you
have it. But I'm sure that you have it and therefore that my knowledge
of qualia is objective simply for one causal reason: natural
selection; Our brains, shaped by very similar genetic programs, share
the same architecture and therefore produce very similar
phemomenologies.

This follows of course if you admit matter-> mind (or better math-
>matter->mind) and admit natural selection as the "entropic pump"
that creates structure and function (and computer structures) in
living beings. I know no other testable alternative.

>
>
> > I cannot support this Kantian notion consciousness -> matter.
>
> The problem is that if you are ready to attribute consciousness to a  
> device, by its virtue of simulating digitally a conscious brain at  
> some correct level of description, you will be forced to attribute  
> that consciousness to an infinity of computations already defined by  
> the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers (by UDA). A  
> quasi direct consequence is that if a machine look at herself below  
> its substitution level, it will build indirect evidences of a flux of  
> many (a continuum) of computational histories (a typical quantum  
> feature, I mean for QM without wave collapse). But comp forces the  
> structure of those many realities (or dreams) to be determined by  
> specifiable number theoretical relations.  Those relations are either  
> extensional relations (like in number theory), or intensional  
> relations (like in computer science, where number can also points  
> toward other numbers, and effective set of numbers). It makes  
> computationalism testable. The genral shape of QM confirm it, but  
> cosmogenesis remains troubling ...
>
I cannot understand this until I read your paper, but, just one
question ¿what is the nature of the process that reduces local entropy
(sculpt chaos, poetically speaking) so that in creates life and
intelligence starting from unanimated matter along the arrow of time?.
Is it of a mathematical nature; is it some general principle of
change? Is it natural selection with some additional principle? I just
want to know what your context in relation with mine is. Of course if
you support Mind-> matter -> math, then you mechanism for such
evolution should be quite different.

>
>
>
>
> > The final words that I can say about the "hard problem" of
> > consciousness is that any conversation with a robot, with the self-
> > module that  I described in the previous post, will give answers about
> > qualia indistinguisable from the answers of any of you. He would
> > indeed doubt about if you are indeed robots and he is the only
> > conscious being on earth.  Just as any of you may think.
>
> > Its self module would not say "I perceive the green as green" because
> > he has this as an standard answer, like a fake Turing test program,
> > but because it can zoom in the details of every leaf, grass etc and
> > verify that the range of ligh frecuencies are in the range of
> > frequencias that  a computer programmer assigned  to green and a
> > trainer later told him to call it "green".  He even can have its own
> > philosophical theories about qualia, the self etc. He even may ask
> > himself about the origins of moral  and self determination, and even
> > all of this may force him to believe in God.  So we must conclude that
> > he have its own qualia and all the attributes of consciousness. in no
> > less degree  than I could believe in yours.
>
> A priori I have no problem, although I could pretend you have solved  
> only the easy problem.
> The hard problem is: why do *we* (and not just a robot)  have those  
> qualia, if robot can have the same talk and behavior? You have still  
> to explain the nature of the qualia, and why we have to experience  
> them, given that a mechanical explanation seems to make them  
> unnecessary, especially if you invoke Darwinian natural selection. And  
> then, by UDA you have to (re)explain what is matter and how to relate  
> them with the qualia. Eventually matter will appear to be a sort of  
> sharable qualia (or comp is false).

Yes I said that this is all that I can say without pretending to solve
the problem. That is because the problem qualia is so interesting.
But in the absence of natural selection, as I said, I can not be sure
if you have such qualia. I cannot be sure either you are zombies or
not. In fact the main school of sociology , based on cultural
determinism, persist in the error of thinking that people of different
cultures have completely different qualia.

Yes, matter is a sort o sharable qualia, and the objectivity of
knowledge is assured by our common brain architecture (and this is the
base of evolutionary epistemologists notion of objectiveness) . The
mind perceive in a specie-specific way an external reality that has no
meaning without such brain processing.. In fact trees, persons, atoms
and so on are shared creations of our minds because they have an
adaptive/utilitarian nature. The external reality, at the deepest
level, may be just mathematical, so are our bodies. Mind maybe then
the process where the reification of matter from math occurs.

Then, math->mind-> matter. Has this last point of view something in
common with yours?



> I do appreciate your willingness of not treating a self-referentially  
> correct machine as a zombie, but providing a machine with the correct  
> behavior and the relevant discourse does not yet explain the *meaning*  
> of those discourses. Some could argue that on the contrary it makes  
> those meaning illusory.  Theories remains to be done, and if something  
> is true and unexplainable, this has to be justified too. Amazingly  
> you can extract both the communicable and incommunicable part of that  
> discourse from an interview of the machine , and this has  already be  
> done (thanks to Gödel Post Turing ... and computer science/logic). It  
> is the AUDA part: the (admittedly rough, concerning only ideally  
> correct machines) translation of UDA in the language of a universal  
> machine, like (Peano) Arithmetic.
> And given that physics is testable, this makes comp testable (well in  
> AUDA the definition of the internal points of view are debatable, and  
> better solution could be imaginable, I have used the old definition  
> you can find in the Theaetetus of Plato. They work very well thanks to  
> the subtleties of the Gödel-Löb self-reference logic.
>
> UDA is easy (except the step 07 and 08 which asks for more work).
> AUDA is difficult because you have to study Mathematical Logic to get  
> the point, and Quantum Mechanics to believe it.
>
> UDA+AUDA leads to McGuin Mysterianism, as explained and justified by  
> the "betting, praying" machine. There is a gap of explanation, which  
> can be justified almost completely from the first person point of  
> view.  From the third person point of view there is no gap at all.  
> Machines can already see this, and this should please you, if I  
> understand you well.
>
> Matter then pay a special role in the dreams, especially those  
> "collective dreams", but it is part of the dreams. We are in the  
> number matrix, if you want a short description. My point is not that  
> this is true, but that this is Popper-refutable. It is not a question  
> of liking it or not, but of making the math and the experiments. All  
> in all,  it makes many fundamental question less obvious that many  
> think.

Still processing that

>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu May 21 2009 - 03:28:13 PDT

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