Re: Emulation and Stuff

From: Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:46:23 -0700 (PDT)

On 19 Aug, 16:41, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:

> >>>> I don't see, indeed, how you can both define matter from
> >>>> contingent
> >>>> structures and still pretend that matter is primitive.
>
> >>> I am saying that material existence *is* contingent
> >>> existence. It is not a structure of anything.
>
> >> Plotinus says that too! Me too.
> >> With church thesis this is can be made more precise in term of not-
> >> computable or not-provable, or some relativizations.
>
> > You're still not getting it. PM isn't a non-computable number.
> > It isn't mathematical at all. You really do think in a box..
>
> If you believe that a deduction is not valid, you have to say where,
> and why.


1. Somehting X is non-computable
2. Everything is mathematical
3. Therefore X is a non-computable number.

The conclusion is valid. But (2) is a belief of yours that
I don't share. Hence *I* don't agree PM is a non-computable number


> >>>> Somehow you talk like you would be able to be *conscious* of the
> >>>> existence of primitive matter.
>
> >>> Well, at least I don't talk about immaterial machines dreaming each
> >>> other.
>
> >> In arithmetic, that happens all the time. More below.
>
> > !!!!
>
> > In arithemetic. people write down problems on blackboards and solve
> > them.
>
> If comp is assumed, some computation correspond to dream, and their
> existence can be proved in arithmetic.

Mathematics cannot prove metaphysical claims.
Backwards-E is metaphysically non-commital.

> And the MGA argument shows that no machine can make the difference
> between "real", virtual and arithmetical.

> > There is no immaterial existence at all, and my agreeign to have
> > my brain physcially replicated doesn't prove there is.
>
> Meaning: UDA is non valid. I am still waiting your argument.

I don't grant step 00 -- the immaterial existence of a UD
or any other mathematical structure.

> >> You have to deny the theorem of elementary arithmetic, which are used
> >> by physicists (mostly through complex or trigonometric functions,
> >> which reintroduce the natural numbers in the continuum).
>
> > No. I don't have to deny their truth. I just have to deny that
> > mathematical
> > existence is ontological existence.
>
> I have no clue what you mean by "ontological existence",

It is what Platonists affirm of numbers and formalists deny

> except
> "physical existence", but this beg the question.
> If you don't deny the arithmetical truth, you accept arithmetical
> realism, and you cannot deny the UD, so you should be able to follow
> the argument. And if you believe the conclusion is wrong, you should
> say where.

I have explained this over and over. I accept that
true backwards-E statements are true. I don't accept that backwards-E
means ontological existence.

> > Since it [UD] does not exist, it does not contain anything.
>
> UD exists like PI exists.

That doesn't exist ontologically either

> The rest is taken into account in the
> argument that I am referring to.
> Don't say that PI and circle does not exists. Say that PI and circles
> does not exist physically. It is quite different.

Even Platonists regard them as existing non-physcially. If you don't
understand what the debate between Platonists, formalists ,
intuiotionists (etc)
is about, you need to read the literature.



> > That is never going to get you further than mathematical existence.
> > You still need the futher step of showing mathematical existence is
> > ontological RITISAR existence.
>
> I still don't know if by RITSIAR you mean "real in the sense my first
> person is real" or "real as my body is real".
> You told me that the difference is epistemological, and I can accept
> this (for a while). But that makes a huge difference in the meaning of
> RITSIAR. I cannot doubt my first person, but I can doubt my body.
> After UDA+MGA, my first person appears to have an infinity of bodies
> (like in QM without collapse), and this makes the difference between
> those two forms of RITSIAR even bigger.

UDA proves nothing without an argument of the actual, if non-physical,
existence of numbers.

> >> See "conscience & mécanisme" appendices for snapshot of a running
> >> mathematical DU. It exists mathematically. But it can be implemented
> >> "materially" , i.e. relatively to our most probable computations too.
>
> > So? It hasn't been.
>
> It has been implemented, and it has run for a week in 1991. This is
> anecdotical. Just to say that the UD is a concrete program.

But it is hardly going to contain vast infinities after a week.

> > The way to prevent it is the same way that all sceptical hypotheses
> > are prevented. You just note that there is not a scrap of evidence
> > for them. The only upshot of scepticism is that there is no
> > certainty, and we have to argue for the position of the greatest
> > plausibility.
>
> I have better that a scrap of evidence: a deductive argument. A proof,
> that COMP => physics has to emerge from numbers.

> But I have also evidences for comp, in the sense that the physics
> which emerge from numbers is a multiversial physics, and the quantum
> reality makes many people to consider that we may live in a
> multiversial reality. And I have also more technical evidences coming
> from the Arithmetical UDA. That are evidence for comp.
>
>
>
> > I can't be "in" something that has merely mathematical existence, any
> > more than I can be "in" Nanrnia
>
> ... then CTM (comp) is false, and you should help us to find the error

comp is false because comp=CTM+CTT+AR
CTM is not falsified.

> in UDA, instead of just denying existence for what almost everybody
> accepts to exist mathematically.

That is not true at all. Mathematicians tend to
be instinctive Platonists. One of the upshots
of that is that they don't feel the need to argue
for Platonism, which in turn means they
never formulate good argumetns for it.

>Arithmetical reality kicks back.
>
>
>
> >>> No, it just has to be right. The fact that a simulated me
> >>> *would8 be wrong doesn't mean the real me *is* wrong.
>
> >> But if you are correct in your reasoning, the simulated you has to be
> >> correct to.
>
> > False. You are treating all reasoning as being assumptionless and
> > apriori. Both me's could have arguments of equal validity, but one of
> > the argumetns could have true assumptions and the other false
> > assumptionsm
> > because the truth of the assumptions (and hence the soundness of the
> > argument)
> > depends on external factors which vary.
>
> No, in this protocol, both have the same assumptions. If not, you are
> begging the question.

They have the same assumptions but "where" they are alters
the truth of the assumptions. Since the truth of the conclusions
depends
on the soundness of the assumptions , they do not both have to be
correct
even if they are employing the same reasoning.

> >> The mind-body problem comes from the fact that we have not yet find
> >> how to attach consciousness to matter.
>
> > No, it comes from no being able to attach *phenomenal*
> > consciousness to mathematical structures. There is no problem
> > attaching *cognition* to matter at all. If the matter of your brain
> > is disrupted, so are your though processes.
>
> What is *phenomenal* consciousness?

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.block.html

>Is not consciousness always
> phenomenal? How do you define matter and attach cognition to it? You
> are talking like if materialist did find a solution of the mind-body
> problem.

You can attach cogninition to matter through computation or
some other approach like connectionism. that's the Easy Problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Attaching Phenomenal Consiousness to matter is the Hard Problem,
and CTM is not the tiniest bit more successful than materialism in
that
regard.

> This is not the case.
> And yes, if the matter in my brain is disrupted, so are my thought
> processes. This is one reason to accept comp. So what?
>
> I have some colleagues who argues that MGA is not needed. They have
> read some papers on the phantom limbs, and they argue that
> consciousness (like the consciousness of a pain in the limb) is
> obviously non material, because it cannot be located in the limb, and
> cannot be located in the brain, nor elsewhere.

That's a terribly bad argument. All you need for phantom limb
pain is a map of the body in the brain. There is even an anatomical
structure that does the job

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus

And it's been know for a century!

>They find that the "yes
> doctor" hypothesis, when well understood (yes doctor *qua computatio*)
> makes us immaterial at once, and that it is obvious that matter is
> what needs an explanation. I have succeeded in explaining to some of
> them that such argument can't go through, on purely logical grounds,
> but MGA does go through, and if you think plausible, against such
> colleagues, that consciousness is a material phenomenon, then UDA
> shows you that such a material phenomenon cannot be Turing emulable.


MGA doesn't go through if mental activity is taken to supervene
on computational activity.

> >> It is the same reasoning.
> >> Or you have a special sense making you know that you are the "real"
> >> one, but either that special sense is Turing emulable and your
> >> doppelganger inherit them, or it is not Turing emulable, and you
> >> better should say "no" to the doctor, because you would loose that
> >> sense.
>
> > I don't need to strenuously argue against that there is something
> > special about me that makes me un-emulable , or un-BIV-able.
> > I just have to note that there is no evidence for either hypothesis.
> > The burden is on the sceptic.
>
> There are ton of evidences. My favorite one is that *primary* matter
> is not even assumed in any physical text.

Who's the physicist here?

 Results 01 - 10 of about 18,800,000 for" physics matte"r. (0.35
seconds)

> I have finished to read Aristotle for the second times, and I am not
> sure at all that he is responsible for that notion. I think that such
> a notion appeared the first time in catholic texts to prevent a
> protestant understanding of the relation between Jesus and braid.
> I may begin to ask you to define what is primary matter. Your use of
> it looks more and more like the use of "God".
> And about conceptual analysis of that notion of matter, I would like a
> definition of matter which does not rely on matter, like Dennett asks
> for consciousness. If not, it is a sort of fake God.
> To say that matter is fundamental, comma, is the same as saying that
> consciousness is fundamental comma. It is the same kind of misuse of
> God-like notion which explains the difficulty to keep a reasonable
> scientific, modest and agnostic, attitude in the fundamental fields.

And saying maths is fundamental is somehow OK?

> I am sorry Peter, but CTM + PM just does not work, and it is a good
> news, because if we keep CTM, we get a sort of super generalization of
> Darwin idea that things evolve. Now we know, assuming comp, that the
> physical laws have a reason, and that they evolves, in a non tempral
> or spatial way, in some arithmetico-logical space.
>

> It is not yet a complete solution of the mind-body problem, but it is  
> a progress.

So is materialism!

>It provides also a purely arithmetical interpretation of  
> Plotinus neo-platonism, and that is interesting per se. After 1500  
> years of materialism, together with variate form of person  
> eliminativism, humanity could use a bit of a theory which provides  
> some importance and respect toward persons.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu Aug 20 2009 - 01:46:23 PDT

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