On 21 May 2009, at 12:28, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
>
> 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.
We can do the reasoning step by step if you want. I am not sure why
you feel that you have will have an hard time understanding it.
Usually people find the 6th first step easy. Some have problem with
the idea that comp makes us, in principle, duplicable, and that if we
are duplicated we cannot predict the personal outcome of the
experience, but up to now, it always appear that it is either a
problem of misunderstanding of the distinction between first and third
person I give there, or it happens they just dislike or are shocked by
that first person indeterminacy, and I agree it is a bit shocking---it
already forces some reflexion on personal identity. Some just quit the
reasoning at step 3, considering those three steps as a refutation of
the computationalist hypothesis That is a form of wishful thinking. I
use comp because it is plausible, assumed by many people, and it leads
to a deep insight into the nature of "what there could be".
I am not interested in the question of the truth of comp. Of course
I like to criticize invalid argument against comp. Some deduce,
invalidly, that I defend comp, but I don't. (as a logician I like to
demolish all invalid argument, it appears that comp, (like the domain
of the relation between drugs and health), attracts many invalid
arguments ...
>
>
>
>>> 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 ...
Of course.
> ... and, as such, I cannot assure that you
> have it.
Right.
> But I'm sure that you have it
Thanks God!
> and therefore that my knowledge
> of qualia is objective
? Perhaps we have a vocabulary problem. I would say that knowledge is
always subjective and never sharable. But we can share beliefs and
develop objective theories. As far as they are objective and clear,
they are probably false, and we can, and usually do, refute them, so
science can progress. A tiny part of science develop some sharable
"knowledge", which still cannot be communicated as such. It is the
hard condition of the consistent entities: they can have develop their
internal knowledge only by communicating their doubtable beliefs.
With comp fundamental science is akin to a "negative theology". As
soon we have unified theory we learn it to be false. We learn that
Reality is not this, not that, neither this or that, ...
Comp provides the simplest explanation, in the form of a simple third
person sharable reality (the number) why the "Inside Reality" has to
behave like that. Why it contradicts us all the time.
There is a question of taste here.
Those who like to believe they can control everything, and search for
security, hates such views.
Those who like surprises and love let it go, and search for freedom
should appreciate.
> simply for one causal reason: natural
> selection;
Here you are terribly quick. And although I do accept the main line of
"natural selection" as an explanation of our biological history, I am
not happy at all with the explanation or absence of explanation of
everything needed to have a reality where natural selection can exist.
I don't take granted the notion of physical world, nor any physicalist
notion of causality. I do agree with many things asserted in physics,
but not as an ultimate explanation.
The reason I like comp is that it assures us that indeed we have to
dig deeper with respect of what we see, observe and measure.
> Our brains, shaped by very similar genetic programs, share
> the same architecture and therefore produce very similar
> phemomenologies.
I mostly agree.
>
>
> This follows of course if you admit matter-> mind (or better math-
>> matter->mind)
math-matter-mind is indeed already far better, and, this makes even
more bizarre you fear UDA, because UDA8, the more complex step, is
just the step which force to put math at the beginning (even
arithmetic, but OK). Now, comp makes "matter" a subtle first person
plural notion, and it will appears that, in such rough description
math-mind-matter is more correct. But look, it is still possible that
we have something like (with UM = universal machine, and HU = Human):
math -> UM-mind -> Matter- HU-mind
But this could mean that our comp level of substitution is very low,
and it would be a threat of "natural selection". So the picture is a
bit more difficult.
>> 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.
It is more a filtration among structure already existing (in platonia
for example), and which have already important mathematical properties
playing a non trivial role. but I think I see what you mean, and with
your open-mindness to the idea that math "precedes" matter, you should
not have difficulties to accept the "filtration idea". the advantage
is really that you can see that comp extends darwinism to the origin
and development of the physical laws, which result from a "universal--
thropic" competition of pieces of "many-dreams" by universal number/
machine, in the way they can coherently glue. Some physicist have seen
this, like Wheeler who suggest that physics arise from a
"protogeometry". And Wheeler is well inspired in giving a role to self-
reference. This happens with the comp hyp.
>
>
>>
>>
>>> 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,
Careful! I have never supported Mind -> matter -> math. I support Math
-> mind - matter.
Indeed assuming comp I support Arithmetic -> Mind -> Matter
I could almost define mind by intensional arithmetic: the numbers when
studied by the numbers. This does not work because I have to say:
the numbers as studied by the numbers relatively to their most
probable local universal number, and this is how matter enters in the
play: an indeterminacy bearing on an infinity of possible universal
machines/numbers.
> 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.
I can imagine qualia varies from person to person, and from person to
non human animals, in way our bodies differ, but I can argue they
already obeys the same logic. The logic of the qualia of any self-
referentially correct machines. I extract one, well more than one.
>
>
> 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) .
I can agree but things are deeper. In a nutshell you can associate a
mind (a person, even) to an objective (third person) available (with
respect to you and colleagues). If not true, it is at least polite,
and it makes sense in firt person plural realities where we can share
a big computational history. Both QM and natural selection plays a key
role in confirming this. But the problem, for the mind-body problem,
is that from our personal (even plural) perspective we cannot
associate a singular body to our mind, we can only associate an
infinity of possible computational histories, and what we call matter
is the result of the statistical interference of those histories. They
obey to the law of computer science/numbers, and this makes the comp
hyp testable. It gives also an explanation realm where we can
understand where the physical realities come from.
> 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.
OK.
> 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.
OK. All what I say, is that such talk is necessary, assuming comp, and
can be described in such a precise way that it makes the mind-body
comp (partial) solution testable.
>
>
> Then, math->mind-> matter.
OK.
> Has this last point of view something in
> common with yours?
It *is* mine (even the day I don't believe in comp). But my point is
that computer science and mathematical logic makes this testable.
Scientific. In the Popper sense (by UDA).
And then I can put it in another way: it is NOT *mine*. It is the
solution of the mind body problem given by the average self-
referentially correct (and platonist) universal machine, when you
listen to that machine (by AUDA).
By platonist a mean any entity believing that a closed arithmetical
proposition is either true, or false.
>
>
>
>
>> 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 play 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
Take it easy, and don't hesitate for asking any question. I am aware
that some people confuse computations and description of computations.
It is an intrinsically hard and confusing matter. Mathematical
logician have an advantage, because it is a kind of confusion they
study in detail. But eventually, in the arithmetical translation of
the UDA, you can even understand why the nuance between computation
and description of computation are normal. There is a sense why even
self-referentially correct machine get easily trapped here. What save
the machine from the trap is the inescapable gap between self-
referential provable statement and the true one.
Penrose argues that (sound) humans are not (sound) machines, because -
he says- *we* can see the trap in any such machine, and no such
machine can see her own trap. But the truth is that all machine can
see the trap of any given (third person presented at a correct level
of description) machine, and even study the creative geometry of that
trap, and what is common for all machines.
We can still be machine, because we don't know and then cannot know,
which machine we are. We cannot even know if we are sound, nor can we
known our correct level of description.
But by betting we are machine, we can deduce the sharable laws of our
observable realities from an infinite sum of arithmetical histories,
and justified the appearance from arithmetic, like Everet comp+QM
justifies already the appearance of a classical selection from
Schroedinger equation.
You can see UDA+AUDA as a refinement of Penrose which leads to a
radicalization of Everett. A correction of Penrose leads to an
extension of Everett on Arithmetic. A coming back to Pythagorus (minus
the superstitions).
I must go. Apology for the length and the spelling.
Best,
Bruno
See the reference on Penrose or others in the biblio
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/lillethesis/these/node79.html#SECTION001300000000000000000
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Fri May 22 2009 - 16:37:59 PDT