2009/9/17 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>:
> Then for the inside/personal views, the whole of human math including
> Cantor paradise cannot be enough to describe the human mind. It is
> more general:
In that case, what light does the comp approach shed on the 'causal
significance' of the inside view - i.e. with reference to the presumed
'causal closure' of the physical narrative and the supposed
epiphenominalism or over-determination of consciousness with respect
to behaviour - Chalmers' zombies etc? I have the feeling in advance
that you may say something that will re-define or negate the question
rather than answer it directly, but no matter, I'm still interested.
I suppose I'm asking what comp says about the relation between direct
first person experience (as opposed to formulations of belief and
other propositional or dispositional factors) and action in the third
person sphere.
David
>
>
> On 16 Sep 2009, at 18:33, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>>
>> David Nyman wrote:
>>> 2009/9/16 Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>:
>>>
>>>
>>>>> I find that I can't real say what the difference is supposed to be
>>>>> between numbers existing mathematically and numbers existing
>>>>> Platonically, other than that different labels are being used.
>>>>> What
>>>>> precisely is the latter supposed to entail that the former does
>>>>> not,
>>>>> and what difference is this supposed to make? Can you help, Peter?
>>>>>
>>>> Existing mathematically doesn't have any ontoloigcal meaning.
>>>> Both formalists and Platonists can agree that 07 exists,
>>>> since they agree Ex:x=7 is true, but only the latter think
>>>> 7 has Platonic existence.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but I still don't see what difference the word 'ontological'
>>> makes in this context. Surely whatever world-conjuring power numbers
>>> may possess can't depend on which label is attached to them? If a
>>> mathematical scheme fulfils a deep enough explanatory role (a moot
>>> point I admit) isn't that 'ontological' enough?
>>>
>>> David
>> Sure. There are different models of the world. Each model takes some
>> things as existing and tries to explain the rest in terms of
>> relations,
>> processes, interactions, or whatever. The Standard Model takes quarks
>> and leptons and does a pretty impressive job of explaining everything
>> but gravity and consciousness (which is probably what inspired Penrose
>> to try to explain mind in terms of gravity). String theory tries to
>> explain both particles and gravity in terms of strings (or branes);
>> but
>> it has it's own 'white rabbit' problem. Bruno wants to take
>> arithemetic
>> as basic.
>
> Not really. I am just saying that if you say yes to the digital
> doctor, then ontologically, we need no more than the mathematical
> existence of the natural numbers, with their laws of addition and
> multiplication. To believe that there is something more "ontological"
> than this is not only absolutely undecidable, but provably irrelevant,
> except for shortening the proofs (but that is already pragmatical or
> epistemological).
> Then for the inside/personal views, the whole of human math including
> Cantor paradise cannot be enough to describe the human mind. It is
> more general:
> Above the "universal" threshold of complexity, all universal machines
> are no more enough clever to understand themself. But above the Löbian
> threshold, all universal machine are clever enough know that! They are
> clever enough to understand completely why they can no more understand
> themselves. And they can understand that their physical realities have
> to emerge from the web of their intrinsical ignorance, etc.
>
>
>> But so far I don't see that his theory has predicted (as
>> opposed to retrodicted) anything except that it has a white rabbit
>> problem too.
>
> Computationalism reduces the mind body problem to the body problem,
> and it reduces the body problem to a "white rabbit measure" problem.
> The shape of the solution may be provided by the 08 arithmetical
> hypostases, including an explanation of both measurable and sharable
> quanta and measurable and non sharable qualia.
> OK, up to now, nothing new in physics has been discovered from the
> comp-physics. I don't expect it soon (centuries). Yet, it is the first
> explanation of consciousness and its relation to matter, and this by
> using one of the oldest rational theory of mind (mechanism). It comes
> from India, China. But those who get the points were the rationalists,
> like the platonists Greek, with an open mind for mystical experiences
> (consciousness is the most basic one (we are blasé), dreams, and
> entheogenic experience, or brain damaged experiences are others).
> Unfortunately we are still a bit brainwashed, I' afraid, by
> Aristotelian theology (used by late 88% Christians, late 70% Muslims
> and 70% Jews, due to Maimonid, but 30% Buddhist, 20% Indian, according
> to a rough early 20th century evaluation). It is really the Plato/
> Aristotle difference, although "Aristotle" refers to the followers of
> Aristotle. Aristotle himself was more Platonist than we thought today.
>
> The problem is: "is there a universe, and the minds emerge from it"
> versus "is there a mind, and the universes emerges from it". With comp
> there are numbers, and from this is the mind of the universal numbers
> and the (internal) explanation how those minds wreathe (braid, plait,
> twine, weave) the fabric of realities.
>
> I just try to explain that comp needs us to bactrack to the Platonists
> and even the Pythagorean neoplatonist theologian. But, as you know,
> the field "non confessional theology" is still a bit taboo ...
> Enlightenment restituted one half of the Greek Science. The rest is
> still coming ...
>
>
>> The discussion seems to have gotten stuck on whether it
>> has been proven that physics can't be fundamental because it can't
>> include consciousness. I consider that a diversion. Since we don't
>> really have a definite idea of what consciousness is let's see what
>> the
>> theory does tell us - then we can worry about where physics fits.
>
> In a sense, each of us (the universal being) know rather well what
> consciousness is, despite we cannot define it.
> But the same could be said about sensible matter.
>
> Now what the comp theory does tell us is that whatever we observed is
> a sum on infinity of computations, structured by the constraints of
> self-consistency.
> At first sight this predicts some solipsistic multidreams, unless
> collection of independent universal entities succeed in sharing
> dreams. Those dreams have to be deep (in Bennett sense) so as to be
> relatively rare, and yet expands continuously in the continuum so has
> to develop normally (in Gauss sense) partial computable realities.
>
> With comp, there is a "simple" meta-definition of consciousness. The
> conscious state is the "belief in a reality" state of a universal
> machine. There is also a meta-definition of awakeness: it is the
> "belief in *the* reality" state, and all lobian machine can prove that
> if they are consistent they can never be sure to distinguish their own
> consciousness and awakeness state. The Gödal-Löb-Solovay logic of self-
> reference shed an incredible light on many very old debates orignating
> most from the dream argument. Alas, mainly for reason of fashion,
> theoretical computer science is not very well known by those concerned
> I'm afraid.
>
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Thu Sep 17 2009 - 17:35:05 PDT