On 02 Jun 2009, at 18:54, Brian Tenneson wrote:
>
> Thank you for starting this discussion. I have only joined recently
> and
> have little knowledge of your research. To see it laid out in the
> sequence you describe should make it clear to me what it is all about.
>
> I'm particularly interested in the interaction between consciousness
> and
> computation. In Max Tegmark's Ensemble TOE paper he alludes to a
> self-aware structure. I take structure to be an object of study in
> logic (model theory, in particular) but am not at all sure how
> consciousness, which I envision self-awareness to be deeply tied to,
> connects to mathematics. It seems you're going to build up to a
> statement such as "consciousness is computable" OR "consciousness is
> not
> computable," or something about consciousness, at least.
In UDA, I avoid the use of consciousness. I just use the hypothesis
that consciousness, or first person experience remains unchanged for a
functional substitution made at the correct comp substitution level
(this is the comp hypothesis).
Then the UD Argument is supposed to show, that physicalism cannot be
maintained and that physics is a branch of computer science, or even
just number theory.
In AUDA, I refine the constructive feature of UDA to begin the
extraction of physics.
You can read my paper here, and print the UD slides, because I
currently refer often to the steps of that reasoning:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
I have written a better one, but I must still put it in my webapge.
It seems to me that Tegmark is a bit fuzzy about the way he attaches
the first person experience with the "universes"/bodies. Like many
physicists, he is a bit naive about the mind-body problem. The
computationalist hypothesis is not a solution per se, just a tool
making it possible to reformulate the problem. Indeed it forces a
reduction of the mind-body problem to a highly non trivial body
problem. It is my whole point.
UDA shows that if I am a machine then the universe, whatever it may
be, cannot be a machine. An apparent physical universe can, and
actually must emerge, from inside, but this one too cannot be entirely
described by a machine.
>
>
> In light of that it seems a prudent fundamental step would be to
> define
> what it means for one structure to be aware of another.
In AUDA, the arithmetical and more constructive version of UDA,
consciousness, like truth, will appear to be undefinable, except by
some fixed point of the doubting procedure. It is then show equivalent
to an instinctive bet on a reality. It has a relative self-speeding
role.
> This would
> apparently be some relation on the aggregate of all structures (which
> may be the entire level 04 multiverse in Tegmark's theory). Perhaps
> some
> basic fundamental step would be to provide some axioms on what this
> relation could be but I'm almost convinced this can't be done in a
> non-controversial way.
Computationalism is not controversal, nor is my deduction, but few
people get both the quantum difficulties and the mathematical logic. I
am more ignored than misunderstood, and then I don't publish so much.
But I love to explain to people with a genuine interest in those issues.
>
>
> I know I'm putting the cart before the horse here so I don't expect
> all
> to be revealed for some time when it occurs in your exposition. If
> there is some literature by yourself or others on the particular
> subjects and issues I mentioned, I'd appreciate links to them.
Almost all my papers dig on that issue. See my url
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
or search in this list for explanations. What is new, and
counterintuitive is that computationalism entails a reversal between
physics and machine's biology/psychology/theology .... See my paper on
Plotinus for a presentation of AUDA in term of Plotinus (neo)platonist
theology.
We cannot define consciousness (nor the notion of natural numbers),
but we don't have to define those things to reason about, once we
agree on some principles (like the "yes doctor" and Church thesis).
Welcome aboard on the train Brian,
Bruno
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Received on Tue Jun 02 2009 - 20:37:58 PDT