On 02 Sep 2005, at 03:05, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
>
>> Bruno: Tegmark's paper is interesting, except that he still (like
>> many physicists) puts
>> the mind-body problem under the rug, and so he misses the impact
>> of incompleteness,
>> and the fact that at the level of mathematical Platonism, the
>> physical world is not
>> just a mathematical structure among others. With comp, although
>> physics is secondary,
>> the physical world is not just a mathematical structure among
>> others, but a very
>> special mathematical structures emerging from existing relations
>> among a vast set
>> of mathematical structures.
>>
>
> Again, you seem to insist on your own language.
Not at all. I insist on the consequences of comp. Like Godfrey you
have admitted not having read neither the UDA proof nor its
constructive translation. Now you talk like if I was calling comp
something else. That physics is secondary with comp is a result, a
theorem in cognitive science/theology/biology (call that like you
want). That materialism is incompatible with computationalism is a
result, etc.
So please, you can doubt the result, and then you could perhaps point
on some error in UDA, but it is unfair to pretend that by comp I am
not just talking on the "well known" comp in cognitive science. Of
course, many many many papers still confused comp and materialism,
but unless UDA is wrong this is no more possible to do.
> First, you admitted that by "COMP" or "comp" you *meant*
> computationalism.
I have always use that term. comp is just shorter and easy to pronounce.
> Then you overlay all your own beliefs on computationalism,
> which certainly confuses a lot of people.
No. I point on a theorem and refer to its proof. Actually I intervene
in this list when people says something which can be shown not valid
by the UDA reversal.
> Here is what wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Connectionism
>
> "Computationalism is a specific form of cognitivism which argues
> that mental activity is computational, i.e. that the mind is
> essentially a Turing machine.
Lee, please take into account that those who wrote those words are
probably not (yet?) aware of my result.
My fault, in part, because I am slow at submitting papers. Actually I
have never do that. All papers which I have published has been
ordered by some people who heard about my stuff. Why? That's another
story.
Of course the reversal result introduces ambiguity in expressions
like "mental activity". That is why I sum up "comp" by YD + CT + AR.
("Yes doctor" + Church Thesis + Arithmetical realism).
> Many researchers argued that the trend in connectionism was towards
> a reversion to associationism, and
> the abandonment of the idea of a language of thought, something
> they felt was mistaken. On the other hand, it was those very
> tendencies that made connectionism attractive for other researchers.
>
> "Connectionism and computationalism need not be at odds per se, but
> the debate as it was phrased in the late 1980s and early 1990s
> certainly led to opposition between the two approaches. However,
> throughout the debate some researchers have argued that
> connectionism and computationalism are fully compatible, though
> nothing like a consensus has ever been reached. The differences
> between the two approaches that are usually cited are the following:
>
> * Computationalists posit symbolic models that do not resemble
> underlying brain
> structure at all, whereas connectionists engage in "low
> level" modeling, trying
> to ensure that their models resemble neurological structures.
> * Computationalists generally focus on the structure of
> explicit symbols (mental
> models) and syntactical rules for their internal
> manipulation, whereas
> connectionists focus on learning from environmental stimuli
> and storing
> this information in a form of connections between neurons.
> * Computationalists believe that internal mental activity
> consists of manipulation
> of explicit symbols, whereas connectionists believe that the
> manipulation of
> explicit symbols is a poor model of mental activity.
Here I agree comp must be distinguished with functionalism, and then
comp is much weaker, because it says we are turing machine emulable
*at some level*, which could be far more low than symbolic type of
processing (it could even be the dovetailing on the solution of
DeWhit-Wheeler cosmological wave equation). But this makes sense
through the result I got, with the grandmother YD and without.
>
> So please, Bruno, quit trying to imply that all computationalists
> (e.g. me)
> believe *only* on the UDist or only in mathematical structures.
Don't confuse UDist (Schmidhuber Hal Finney sort of theory) and the
UD. Original paper of UD "paradox":
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/M&PI_15-MAI-91.pdf
Note the reversal is implicit (diplomatic stuff!).
The question is: Do you agree that YD, computationalism, and
Uploading acceptance are mainly equivalent?
Then I have shown that this entails the reversal physics/computer-
science.
>
> For many, many years whenever you wrote "COMP" I assumed that you
> meant your
> own theories.
I have no theory other than traditional computationalism (mind is
turing emulable)
My theory is the standard "mechanist" thesis updated by Post, Godel,
Church, Kleene, discoveries of the universal machine and its lobian
theorem prover extension.
> Naturally that included this extremely speculative concept of
> Schmidhuber's and others that that both time and our physical
> reality are
> merely a manifestation of timeless bitstrings.
This is perhaps the biggest difference between Schmidhuber and me. I
give a detailed proof of the main proposition without making any
speculation other than putting clearly the hypotheses on the table.
For many comp is obviously true and for many comp is obviously false.
The least thing I illustrate is that comp is not obvious at all.
Indeed, the mind-body problem is partially reduced to explaining how
the physical appearances emerges from *all* computations through
"internal first person points of view (which makes sense by CT).
>
> See also http://website.lineone.net/~kwelos/AI.htm
>
> "(2) Philosophical AI or Computationalism"
> "Secondly, and of more relevance to this discussion, is
> computationalism or philosophical AI, (sometimes also known as
> Strong AI), which is the view that all human mental activities are
> reducible to algorithms, and could therefore be implemented on a
> computer.
This is just wrong and is a typical confusion between p -> q and q ->
p (which can be often seen as an abuse of OCCAM).
STRONG AI = machine can be conscious
COMP = me and humans are turing emulable. (+ humans are conscious).
STRONG AI does not logically imply COMP (machine could think does not
logically entail that only machine could think! Of course with OCCAM,
machine can think makes more plausible that we are perhaps machine,
but given that I provide a proof we must distinguish deduction and
inductive inference).
>
> Computationalism is an essential tenet of physicalism, which states
> that there is no need to assume any spiritual or non-algorithmic
> aspect to existence.
Comp *was* an essential tenet of physicalism. That's explain why the
reversal is "shocking", for many, probably.
UDA shows that comp makes physicalism, materialism, naturalism wrong
(or explicatively empty, like invisible horses pulling cars).
>
> "Computationalism is thus diametrically opposed to Buddhist
> philosophy, which regards the subtle mind (that which survives death
> and goes on to the next life) as a fundamental aspect of reality,
Even before the reversal, YD is already quite close to the comp
theology: you can save your soul on a disk, and survive a form of
body transmigration, and the UDA shows that this put fundamental
constraints on the nature of reality.
> not an epiphenomenon of matter. Buddhism views a sentient being,
> human or animal and its mind, as a totally different kind of thing
> from a machine or automaton."
Actually this is also an incredible simplification of Buddhism which
has many different viewpoints on those matter. the "Milinda question"
is arguably defending comp.
But then please again in consideration the reversal. I could accept
that old, pre-reversal, comp can be thoughjt contrary to buddhism,
but after the reversal I doubt such arguments remain valid.
Please, Lee, in older posts you acknowledge the newness of what I
pretend having done, it is up to you to verify the UDA if you think
an error has been commited. Ask any question.I probably underestimate
the hardness and radical novelty of what I consider to be the result
of a not so hard (but not so simple too) hypotheses-deductive reasoning.
The translation and "constructivisation" of the UDA argument, AUDA or
the machine interview, is admittedly much more involved and demanding
in mathematical logic.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Fri Sep 02 2005 - 07:54:41 PDT