Dear Bruno,
Thank you for your thoughtful and kind reply. Interleaving.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bruno Marchal
To: Everything List
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: duplicatability or copying is problematic
At 18:23 15/06/04 -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear George,
BM:
The post is addressed to George, but concern "my thesis". May I make some comments?
I put "my thesis" in quotes because it is really the Sound Universal (Turing) Machine's thesis, you know. ... or will know ;)
"Turing" is under quotes thanks to Church thesis. It is Church thesis which makes the notion of universal machine independent of which precise machine is used to define it. After denying the Church Turing Post Markov ... thesis for some time Godel will eventually accept it and he will call it an epistemological miracle (in its Princeton talk, see Davis 1965).
Church thesis makes the intuitive notion of computability -machine or -reference frame totally independent. We can also say that the notion of computability is formalism independent.
After having accepted Church thesis, Godel will look after a corresponding machine or formalism independent notion of provability. This is curious, because at that time Godel did show, by its own incompleteness phenomenon, that provability is an essentially machine or formalism dependent notion. At the same time, by its very reasoning Godel will provide tools for studying what *is* universal and machine independent concerning the provability notion. This gives rise to the logic of provability, also called the logic of self-reference, which has made tremendous and continuous progress since its birth.
After this introduction I want to comment Stephen's genuine remarks in some sufficiently precise
way so that we can avoid future misunderstanding.
[SPK]
This comment helps me explain my difficulty! As I understand it, "machine independence", "reference frame independence" and "formalism independence" does not mean, to me at least, that "Machine", "reference frames" and "formalisms" do not exist! It merely points out that computation does not depend on any particular form of implementation. This is one of the points that I have been trying to make for a long time and have never been able to express it properly.
As I understand the notion of Platonia, we are to "believe" that "machines" (et all) "exist" without any reference to their implementations. What I would like for you to consider, Bruno, is that while a "machine" does have Platonic (ontological) existence, this "existence is not independent of the "class" of possible ways that it can be implemented.
I am arguing that to neglect the means by which a computation, or mathematical statement in general, is "implemented" or "physicalized" does matter if only in the sense that for any given "Ideal" object or structure there must exist some means by which it could be implemented. This relates to my "epiphenomenona" problem that I mention below.
SPKprevious:
> The problems that I have with Bruno's thesis is Digital
>substitution and that it does not address the problem of
>epiphenomenona found in both Idealism and Materialism.
BM:
Giving that the Comp, through the UDA (for exemple) , leads to Monistic idealism, I think the use of the word "epiphenomenon" could be misleading (it is used more in the non interactive dualist approach of the mind body problem, as far as I know). It is better to to talk about simply phenomena, and I guess you pretend I don't address them (which imo is a little bit unfair as I will try to explain).
[SPK] No, Bruno, Comp does not "lead to Monistic idealism", it is based on it! One must assume Monistic Idealism in order to accept the notion that Arithmetic realism and that this "Truth" is independent of physicality, as you have written previously:
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list.domain.name.hidden/msg04913.html
"By Arithmetic Realism I mean that Arithmetical Truth is independent of me, you, and the rest of humanity."
and
"if we take comp seriously (comp = AR + TC + "yes doctor") then
physics is eventually a branch of machine's psychology (itself a branch
of computer science" itself a branch of number theory."
I would invite you to consider that the "Truth" of some theory, number theory of whatever, may be "independent of me, you and the rest of Humanity" is correct but to state that that Truth, independent as it is from me, you or the rest of Humanity, is meaningful absent the possibility of its implementation is incorrect. For the notion of a "number" to exist as a meaningful notion, there must be an implementation of it somehow. There has to exist a symbol, be it scratched in the dirt or represented in neurons or in the pixels of your computer's monitor.
It is not sufficient to have a "number" ala Idealism, there must be some was that I can present to you a representation of that "number" so that I can communicate the thought, "13 is Prime", to you. We cannot dismiss physicality!
SPKprevious:
>Digital substitution seems to assume that consciousness
>and awareness and related notions can be completely
>explained in terms of how one number relates to another.
BM:
Here is an "important error", on which ultimately Godel's theorem will put light.
Saying "yes doctor" for a digital brain substitution does not mean you or the surgeon or the international scientific community has *explained* how consciousness is related to
numbers or machines. As I insist, comp needs an act of faith. It says there is a level where we can survive (in the grandmother sense) to a digital subtitution, but then it justifies why an ignorance gap remains and must remain. That is: IF there is a level where we survive the subtitution, then we can never pretend to know that level. Please remember that Godel's theorem shows that provability by a machine and truth about that machine are different from the machine perspective. Yes the comp practionners believe its own consciousness can be reduce in some way to relations between numbers, but he/she does not pretend that, even if the correct realtions are given to him, that he can take them as a complete explanation. Comp + Godel will justify why he would became inconsistent would he find such an explanation.
It helps to keep this in mind to understand the explanation of where the physical appearance comes from, because in some sense the physical appearances will come from our sharable border of that necessary ignorance, where "our" refers to *us* the hopefully sound universal machines.
[SPK]
One thing that I have always been attracted by in science and mathematics is that I was not required to blindly believe some statement. What you are asking of me is not different from the "blind faith" (unjustified belief) that I was raised in by Fundamentalist Christian parents. You must understand that I have a severe allergy to postulations that cannot be justified.
On The Other Hand (OTOH), I agree with your statement about Gödel theorem: If I am a machine I will be unable to "prove" that I am. That is not my problem. My problem is in finding a falsifiable justification for the belief that "I am a Machine".
SPKprevious:
>I think that your would agree that Bruno's thesis
>is a very sophisticated form of Idealism.
BM:
OK. Although I'm not so sure it is so sophisticated. I could argue it is just the consequence of George Boole's laws of thought. But OK.
[SPK]
;-)
SPKprevious:
>It is widely recognized that "matter" and physicality in
>general is an epiphenomenona within any Ideal theory.
BM:
You say that again. Perhaps you are right. I would be please to know some references.
In the case of monistic idealist theory I do think "phenomena" or "appearances" are less misleading terms.
[SPK]
The difference is purely semantical. The Problem is not!
From:
http://www.meta-religion.com/Philosophy/Articles/Philosophy_of_the_mind/mind-body.htm
"Until the present century the duality of mind and brain was never in question except, that is, to the adherents of various Idealist or Phenomenalist doctrines which, in defiance of common sense, insisted that matter was just a construction of mind and had no ontological independence. What was at issue was whether the brain was self-sufficient and operated on a purely physical basis or whether mind could intervene in its operations so as to ensure one overt action rather than another. Determinists insisted that the brain was a machine and so mental events could have no influence on behaviour, they were mere 'epiphenomena.' "
Another term related to this Problem, as it occurs of Monistic Materialism is "conscious inessentialism".
From:
http://www.geocities.com/aphilosophers/zombies.html
"What this basically means is that, in principle, all the actions we perform can be performed without consciousness. Walking, eating, sleeping and talking are all things that our bodies can do. They don't, in principle, require consciousness in order to do them. It should be noted that in discussions about zombies, consciousness is considered to be qualia of any kind. We're not just talking about being able to think abstractly here. For something not to be conscious, it must not be able to feel anything. Zombies don't experience anything at all. It's not like anything to be a zombie. Now, we're left with the question: if consciousness isn't required for the things we do, could beings exist which perform these things without being conscious (i.e. could philosophical zombies exist)? Now, if such beings could exist, it's very important to stress that they would be capable of doing everything we are capable of. Therefore, there could be a bunch of zombies sitting in a classroom discussing the merits of conscious inessentialism. There could be a zombie who refuses to go on a plane and says he's afraid of heights. There could be a zombie acting angry at the fact that he didn't win the lottery."
Basically, the Problem, as I see it in your thought, boils down to the fact that all examples of "physicality" are mere "appearances" that should have no "causal efficacy", e.g. that any appearance that physical state X "causes" physical state Y is merely some numerical relation. The "Physical World" is just a 1st person "appearance". I have no problem that that IFF we only considered a single Observer. When we consider many observers, each with their own 1st person "world of appearance", How can we recover any coherent notion of a 3rd person view? Somehow, the "appearances" have to mesh together and be synchronized!
Leibniz considered such a situation in his Monadology and argued that the synchrony of appearances where due to a "pre-ordained harmony".
http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2003/march/bookReviewDorian.asp
I am arguing that such a "pro-ordained harmony" is impossible because it would require the computation of all possible interactions between all possible observers and find, among these, the one that, to use the physics term, has the "least action". I assume that your Universal Dovetailer could do such a computation, but have a serious problem with the claim that the mere a priori existence of a numerical representation of that computation is sufficient to derive all of our 1st person appearances.
My claim is that such a computation requires at least one "step" and that for it do have such it has to be "implemented" somehow. If the computation has to be "implemented" in order to account for appearances, could we not consider that the "physicality" that we experience is the "implementation" itself?
This idea seems to argue for a kind of dualism, doesn't it?
http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list.domain.name.hidden/msg05092.html
SPKprevious:
>This in turn makes the notion of a physical substrate
>suspect as it does not exist apart from its properties
>as encoded in numbers, e.g. our consciousness is
>merely information thus what that information is
>"encoded" in is irrelevant.
BM:
I do not quite agree with the saying "consciousness" is merely information. I will at some point suggest that consciousness is true and partially automated anticipation of our own consistency, but it is premature to do it now (without first explaining Godel's theorem and the Solovay's extensions with G, G* etc.).
[SPK]
But you must admit that "anticipation" implies the existence of "temporal transitivity" in that an anticipated event is one that is predicted to be experienced somehow but such an event has not yet occurred. This takes me right back to my question about how it is that we can recover the experience of time from COMP. There is no "time" in Platonia! All that exists is co-present, there is no meaningful notion of "delay" or "duration". How do we fit "at least one computational step" in this?
SPKprevious:
> What I am trying to do is to make the point that it
>is not sufficient to just take as an article of faith
>or postulation the idea that digital substitution is
>actually possible, especially when the epiphenomenona
>problem is not even addressed! OTOH,
BM:
Please remind me what means "OTOH" I always forget this one!
It is not sufficient to make that act of faith to solve the mind-body problem, I agree. Although it is sufficient for surviving the digital brain transplantation (if comp is correct).
But I'm afraid the (epi)phenomena are addressed. I can even sum the technics up in one short sentence: just apply the Theaetetus' definition of knowledge from opinion with opinion defined by machine's formal provability.
[SPK]
Bruno, this looks like circular reasoning! COMP assumes digital substitution, thus we have to "believe" in digital substitution to believe COMP! The question, for me, is: How could we Falsify COMP? I see Digital brain transplantation as the falsifiable aspect of your theory and thus most of my questions are pointed at it. ;-)
As to the Theaetetus' definition of Knowledge: Knowledge is "justified true belief" I am lead, inevitably, to ask for the means by which the "belief" that "I am a machine" is Justified. I cannot base the belief that X is true without some means to show that X is necessarily true, following Kipke, a proposition p is necessarily true if and only if it is true in all possible worlds.
http://www.hum.utah.edu/~phanna/classes/ling5981/autumn03/web/webnotes/29sept/node12.html
If someone could show that COMP is false in one possible world, then it follows that COMP is not necessarily true and thus we cannot consider it justified by the mere belief in []p-> p (Is this written correctly?), e.g., the proof that "a Machine cannot prove that it is a Machine" does not alone justify that my Belief that I am a Machine.
SPKprevious:
if it can be shown that digital substitution is possible in practice then Bruno's thesis will go along way to explaining many things. But there is more to my difficulties than this! Copying, to me, implies that something is doing the copying. What is that is doing the "Copying".
BM:
I do not think that the notion of "possible in practice" is relevant for the issue here.
[SPK]
My question did not come through. I was asking you to explain how it is that one Platonic Ideal can "operate" upon another.
Would not a proof that something "is not possible in practice" be a falsification? For example, we can easily derive proofs that Perpetual Motion Machines can not exist "in practice", even thought we can concoct "in principle" proofs that they can, such as in worlds where thermodynamic laws do not exist. This is a serious problem for me!
I have pointed out on many occasions that Platonia is a World that has no Thermodynamics laws. You might offer the counterargument that my claim is true but irrelevant since there is no Time in Platonia. I am just taking that claim to its, hopefully, logical conclusion.
BM:
I am not sure I understand either why you need that something does the copying. Where would that something come from?, and what would it be?, as you ask yourself. I am not building from nothing, I take granted arithmetical truth. It is a part of comp, and it's enough to grant the computational histories, and stable machine discourses including some necessary interrogations. The phenomenal qualities will be handled by logical *modalities*, those isolated from variant of the Godel Lob logic of self-reference.
[SPK]
All that evades the question as to the source of "temporal transitivity"! Your theory requires an explanation for how it is that the "illusion of time" is necessary, such that I experience it. I do not see how a mere* modality*which is an Platonic entity is sufficient.
BM:
Stephen, thank you for your frank remarks which helps me to be aware all this is not so easy.
I suspect you make the Lucas-Penrose confusion, consisting to confuse "believing we are a machine", and "believing we know which machine we are". In the case of consistent or sound machines the truth of the first proposition entails the falsity of the second one.
[SPK]
I am trying to be sure that I am avoiding this "error". Please point me to a discussion of this "error". ;-)
It would be helpful to me to understand exactly what is meant by the term "Machine"! My notion of Machines involves the property of pre-specifiability. This follows, again within my understanding, from the fact that a computational Machine is one that can be identified with some string of integers, thus is we assume AR as per your definition then a computation is merely a string of a priori existing numbers. Is this correct?
Also, could you point to to your favorite arguments contra-Chalmers?
Kindest regards,
Stephen
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Wed Jun 16 2004 - 22:19:26 PDT