Thanks for the links. I'll look over them and hopefully I'll understand
what I see. At least if I have questions I can ask though maybe not in
this thread.
I don't yet know precisely what you mean by a machine but I do have
superficial knowledge of Turing machines; I'm assuming there is a
resemblance between the two concepts. I surmise that a machine can have
an input like a question and if it halts then the question has a
decidable answer, else it has no decidable answer.
What about posing the following question "am I a machine" or the
statement "I am a machine" and maybe some machines halt on an answer and
some don't. Ie, if X is a machine, then have it attempt to compute the
statement "X is a machine." (I know I'm a bit fuzzy on the details.)
For machines X that return "X is a machine" I would be inclined to think
such machines possess at least some form of self-awareness, a kind of
abstract self-awareness devoid of sensation (or so it would appear).
-Brian
Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 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 - 12:08:01 PDT