Dear John,
At 11:19 07/07/04 -0400, John M wrote:
>Dear Bruno,
>I don't know how tolerable our discussion may be for the list, but for me it
>is enjoyable. Amazing, in how many things (aspects?) we DO agree, coming
>fundamentally from quite different worldviews.
I'm sure we agree on something and be confident we will be able to agree
about what we disagree ...
Anyway discussion is only interesting between people who disagrees (as far
as they are willing to search the disagreement point).
I will be obliged now to write the paper for Amsterdam, which will be
an english version of my Paris paper (except I will not talk about Changeux
and Connes).
I hope George and Kory are not angry because I don't give them enough
Holiday work ;)
What should I do? Explain my work top down or bottom up. Teach logic?
Wait for people reading Smullyan's FU.
> > To be frank I do think Comp and QM are more universal than >human, and
> >perhaps what *is* human is to considere comp and >QM as human thinking
>'YOU do think' (!) In our 'human' restrictions we cannot even think about
>'other' ways of thinking. If it went through our mind, it DID become 'human
>thinking'. If 'it' happened to go into and through it at all. Whatever we
>imagine as 'non human' IS human with a twist.
>Including your argument Godel II, a gem of the 'human' thought.
Here I don not understand you at all. Why are you so stuck by our
"human" nature. We are mammals too. Why don't you say that whatever we
think it did become mammal thinking, that our imagination get a
mammal twist. The same with earth-like creature.
Actually even without the comp hyp, we are (at least) universal machine
(in the "church thesis" sense, I can prove it to you).
So why don't you say that whatever we think it gets the universal machine
twist?
I really don't understand.
Furthermore, why should such a twist, as human (mammal,
life being, universal machine, whatever ...) prevent us to bet on some
reality beyond us? Whatever we are.
And perhaps to bet wrongly and precisely enough to be able to learn ...
>(Sci fi is the worst human violent emotional stupidity, neither sci nor fi.
>So (just not so bad) are our dreams about 'nonhuman' thinking).
Come on! *Some Sci Fi* are perhaps bad, but some could be
master piece of reasoning, but too much in conceptual advance
to be appreciate by current academical institution or even by the
sc fi author himself.
> >"belongs to all possible universes"<
>Consider the impossible ones.
But I told you that is exactly what Godel II makes it possible to do
in a clean sharable (between universal machine) way.
And that a way to be more independent of our human nature.
But of course whatever I do you will always be able to say: "human!".
>I will try your article with my rusty French, I never read math-based
>science in French (and that was ~50 years ago) so I have doubts about
>understanding it.
French and english are quite alike for math: look
function is fonction
relation is relation
collection is collection
theorem is theoreme
lemma is lemme
proposition is proposition
Ok, some exception (exception) the french for 'set' is 'ensemble'.
But you can wait for my amsterdam paper.
You can also read my 2000 Computation Consciousness and the Quantum
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CC&Q.pdf
Or my older 1991 Mechanism and personal identity:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/M&PI_15-MAI-91.pdf
>I am afraid to read 'Smullyan's little bible' - it may be
>too good. Besides you would not believe how many people suggest such an
>inescapble 30,000th ONE book to read.
It is up to you of course. But please don't think I want to convince you
or anyone on any truth ... I certainly would like to share a feeling
of supertranscendantal *beauty* in the way it seems the laws of nature
should arise from all machine dreams ...
>What I am reading now is "Krakatoa", with a cultural history of the Dutch
>British takeover of the Portugese South-of-Asia world - part of my cultural
>debt of information.
This is certainly interesting too. Although no clearly in the scope of the
list.
>Then you wrote: "?" after my par including the 'model' view I carry. To
>attempt an inadequate rambling about this point: I consider the universe(s)
>parts of the wholeness they emerged from, the plenitude (not Plato's), an
>unimaginable-undescribable everything in infinite invariance of infinite
>symmetrical changes (no time involved). Such emergences are inevitable by
>the fact that the 'everything' involves (local - without a space-concept,
>transitionally occurring) asymmetries ie. universes, ....
You are quick here. I imagine things ... I dont' figure that clearly. I must
read it again.
I tell you if I understand when I understand.
I think, John, that we agree that wholism is important and reductionism
should be avoid.
But what I would like to explain is that the idea of being a machine
is not a reductionism. It is only a reductionism in the eyes of those who
have a reductionist conception of machine. Such a conception is provably
false since Emil Post, Turing, Church works.
With comp, even better, "to be a machine" gives tools capable of
vaccinate us toward an extremely large collection of reductionist trap.
A lot of people miss that point, like Rosen you mention in your 2004
draft.
Oh but you know German. The best book to understand how Church's thesis
can kill the dragon of reductionism is the book by Judson Webb:
Webb, 1980
Webb, J. C. (1980). Mechanism, Mentalism and
Metamathematics: An essay on Finitism. D. Reidel Publishing
Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
(It is an American book but it has a lot of quotation in German)
Best regards,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jul 08 2004 - 10:57:02 PDT