Le 17-oct.-05, à 12:57, atillagurel (FOR list) a écrit :
> --- In Fabric-of-Reality.domain.name.hidden, "uv" <uv.domain.name.hidden...> wrote:
> [snip]
>>
>> the paper (by Chris Small in fact)
>> http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/conscious.html
>> on consciousness is quite long but, to me, makes some very good
> points
>> about consciousness.
>
> The author makes a distinction between mind and consciousness and
> claims that consciousness is not someting algorithmic although it
> may be an alghoritmic process how human mind operates. However he
> doesn't give further details on the latter.
>
> I want to explain why doubts on the latter as formulated below
> are unjustified
>
> "Since Godels proof shows that human mind can recognize the truth of
> a statement although it cannot formally be proven to be true, we
> must conclude that working of human mind must have an aspect, that a
> computer programme never can have".
>
>
> Goedel introduces a numbering system that assigns uniquely a natural
> number to any possible mathematical symbol , a collection of symols
> (a statement for example) or collection of statements (a proof for
> example). Lets call it Godel's number.
>
> The proof is based on the construction of the following statement :
>
> "The statement with Godel's number x is unprovable."
>
> And it happens "accidentally" that the above statement has Goedel's
> number x.
>
> Thus the statement is self referencing.
>
> That we recognize the truth of the statement x is an algorithmical
> process namely:
>
> 1. Statement x is self referencing.
> 2. A self referencing statement is unprovable .
> 3. Statement x is unprovable.
> 4. Statement x is true.
>
>
> Since self reference is a property that can be checked easily
> algorithmiacally by a computer, I don't see why a computer should
> not arrive the same conclusion above as the human mind if the
> program checks each constructed statement on self reference before
> proceeding with the next step.
Bravo. Your reasoning, despite some minor details, is quite accurate.
It is due to the mechanizability of the Godel diagonal argument.
Note that there is no equivalent of Church thesis (CT, which bears on
the notion of computability) for the notion of provability. So with CT
computability is an absolute notion, but provability is always
*relative* to a theory (or any mechanical theorem prover or checker).
So instead of saying "the statement with Godel's number x is
unprovable", it is better to say "the statement with Godel's number x
is unprovable by T" (and T is the theory (machine) you want to prove
incomplete).
An important point is that although the computer can generate (by the
mechanical diagonalization) its unprovable truth, the computer can not
take those derivation as proof (if not the statement would be false and
the machine by proving them) would be inconsistent!
I think Emil Post is the first one to understand this clearly in its
1920 notes!
Best regards,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Fri Oct 21 2005 - 06:22:27 PDT