On 05 Sep 2005, at 19:13, Hal Finney wrote:
> Bruno writes:
>
>> I will think about it, but I do think that CT and AR are just making
>> the YD more precise. Also everybody in cognitive science agree
>> explicitly or implicitly with both CT and AR, so to take them away
>> from YD could be more confusing.
>>
>
> I think that is probably true about the Church Thesis, which I
> would paraphrase as saying that there are no physical processes more
> computationally powerful than a Turing machine, or in other words that
> the universe could in principle be simulated on a TM.
Here I disagree completely. Church Thesis (CT) has nothing to do with
physical processes. Note that this is a point where I think David
Deutsch is confused with his new version he called Church Turing
principle, and which I call "Deutsch's Thesis", and which is
completely independent of Church Thesis. Church's thesis is just the
thesis that all computable function are captured by LISP (or <add
your favorite universal computer language>. It identifies an
intuitive notion of computability with a formal one.
Now if comp is true, that is: if I am a turing-emulable (LISP-
emulable, ALGOL-emulable, etc.) THEN the universe is not Turing
emulable a priori. We can come back on this.
Note that Nielsen's e^i*omega*t can be considered as a non turing
emulable physical process which is physically possible.
> I wouldn't be
> surprised if most people who believe that minds can be simulated on
> TMs also believe that everything can be simulated on a TM.
They are wrong. If minds are turing-emulable then indeed minds cannot
perceive something as being provably non-turing-emulable, but minds
can prove that 99,999...% of comp-Platonia is not turing-emulable.
And the UDA shows that physics emerge from that comp-Platonia
(arithmetical truth).
>
> (I don't see the two philosophical questions as absolutely linked,
> though.
> I could imagine someone who accepts that minds can be simulated on
> TMs,
> but who believes that naked singularities or some other exotic
> physical
> phenomenon might allow for super-Turing computation.)
Absolutely. And the UD generates complex things which from the first
point of view of machine will be non-turing emulable.
>
> But isn't AR the notion that abstract mathematical and computational
> objects exist, to the extent that the mere potential existence of a
> computation means that we have to consider the possibility that we are
> presently experiencing and living within that computation? I don't
> think that is nearly as widely believed.
You are right. But this is exactly the point which follows from the
Movie-Graph-Argument (or Maudlin's Olympia).
It is highly not obvious at all!!!
It is not AR. AR is so obvious that people (who are not professional
logician) take time to understand it needs to be assumed. But AR is
just the belief that the arithmetical truth is independent of us.
Would an asteroid hit Earth and destroy all life on it, would not
change the fact that 17 is a prime number, or that Goldbach
conjecture is true or false.
>
> That simple mathematical objects have a sort of existence is probably
> unobjectionable,
That's AR.
> but most people probably don't give it too much thought.
> For most, it's a question analogous to whether a falling tree makes a
> noise when there's no one there to hear it. Whether the number 3
> existed
> before people thought about it is an abstract philosophical question
> without much importance or connection to reality, in most people's
> minds,
> including computationalists and AI researchers.
Because most ignore the difference between first and third, singular
and plural, point of views.
Mathematically they confused p, Bp, Bp & p, Bp & Dp, etc. But Godel's
B provide counterexamples.
>
> To then elevate this question of arithmetical realism to the point
> where it has actual implications for our own perceptions and our
> models
> of reality would, I think, be a new idea for most computationalists.
Yes. But they ignore UDA. They ignore the first person indeterminacy.
They are bounded by they Aristotelian idea that computationalism and
mechanism are allied to materialism, naturalism, physicalism. My work
shows comp is incompatible with materialism, naturalism, physicalism.
> Right here on this list I believe we've had people who would accept
> the basic doctrines of computationalism, who would believe that it is
> possible for a human mind to be "uploaded" into a computer, but who
> would insist that the computer must be physical!
I will come back on this when I will comment your post where you
point us to Maudlin's paper.
I could also ask you what you mean by "physical" and then what are
you assuming precisely. I do not assume anything physical.
> A mere potential or
> abstractly existing computer would not be good enough. I suspect that
> such views would not be particularly rare among computationalists.
You are right, but they are wrong. I can have an intuition with UDA +
AUDA + OCCAM. But the proof is given by UDA + Movie-graph.
UDA does use a physicalist base (a concrete running of a concrete
UD), and the Movie-Graph does eliminates that assumption.
Somehow the movie-graph shows that not only a machine cannot
distinguish a physical reality from a virtual reality, but a machine
cannot distinguish a physical reality from an arithmetical reality.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Tue Sep 06 2005 - 11:16:38 PDT