Le 11-janv.-06, à 17:57, Benjamin Udell a écrit :
> Bruno, list,
>
> Well, on the basis of that which you say below (much of which I
> unfortunately only vaguely understand), where you don't focus it all
> decidedly on the particular issues of faith and belief, it actually
> does now sound more like some sort of theology. It has various
> elements of theology in the broader or more comprehensive sense.
Thanks for telling. Note that it is all normal you only vaguely
understand my last post, because it is a very concise summary.
> The thing that it seems to be missing is gods or God. Considered as
> theology, it seems like a wheel sorely missing its hub.
The neoplatonician use often the term "God" for "ultimate explanation",
and also use often (but it is an idiosyncrasies) the names of the greek
Gods for concept (EROS = love, THANATOS = death, etc.). Strictly
speaking, it has nothing to do with the judeo-christian notion of God.
Still, I like to define axiomatically God by something so big that it
escapes any attempt to define it, except perhaps in some negative way.
In that sense I could argue that the "God" of comp theology can be
identified either with either the "ultimate explanation", the "root of
everything" or even with the unnameable SELF which caracterizes the
comp first person.
Perhaps the chapter of "God" will be a necessary blank page in comp
treatise.
Now, I think that "GOD" as a term has much more heavy connotation than
theology, but I am probably underestimating the stealing of "rational
theology" by the political power (this happened sometimes after
Plotinus death).
> At this point, in terms of descriptive accuracy, this hublessness
> seems the hub of the matter. So it sounds like a kind of
> psycho-cosmology, or -- well, not a psychophysics, but, in order to
> suggest your computationalist primacy of the soul -- a physiopsychics
> (in English, if the adjective is "physicopsychical," it's a little
> less suggestive of paranormalism, which is strongly associated
> nowadays with the adjective "psychic.")
>
> (C.S. Peirce held that matter is "congealed mind." Though he thought
> that space would turn out to be curved, he was pre-Einstein and saw
> matter as a kind of spentness and barrenness rather than as a tight
> lockup of energy.)
>
> Your theory may be empirically refutable but, if it survives such
> tests, what is there to support its affirmation?
The UDA+MOVIEgraph argument. I will simply say UDA. (Universal
Dovetailer Argument).
> Is derivability of physical laws from "laws of mind" really enough?
Would be nice, but the UDA shows there is no choice. Please understand
that the UDA argument explains only but completely that if the comp
hyp. is true then necessarily matter emerges from mind. Because this
sounds so weird I have begin a derivation, at first just in order to
illustrate what that could mean.
> An information theorist, John Collier, said at the peirce email forum
> "peirce-l" that he had managed to derive each two among logic,
> information theory, and probability theory, from the third remaining,
> though I don't know whether he ever published these derivations.
Could be interesting.
> Have you shown that your "laws of mind" cannot be derived from physics
> in a way that shows that the nonderivability is not merely a result of
> our insufficent knowledge of physical law? You may also encounter some
> flak on your conception of mind.
The problem is that physics does never really address the mind-body
problem, with some exception like Mario Bunge, but he dismisses it and
explain it "away" in a manner similar to Dennett. Many people have try
and generally the honest one (like Dennett) admit their failure. It
*is* a tricky problem. my original goal of my research (and thesis) was
*just* to explain that the mind body problem was not yet solved. That
is how and why I eventually translate it into a measure (on
computational histories) problem, quite in line with discussion on this
list.
>
> For what it's worth, for my part, I would hold that a key factor in
> intelligence, at least, which learns and grows, is an evolvability
> factor, a kind of sufficient un-boundness to its "codes" and its
> methods and systems of interpretation, in order to be able to test
> those codes, methods, systems and to do so not only by trial and error
> but more sophisticated kinds of learning and testing, such that memory
> and active recollection take on particular importance.
I do agree with you here.
> Do your laws of mind take evolvability into account? Maybe they don't
> need to, though, depending on what you mean by "mind." I tend to think
> that the mind must involve the retention and evolvability factor in
> some radical way, but it's quite vague to me how that would work.
> Maybe there are things which could fairly be called "mind" though I
> would never have thought of them that way.
As far as you don't (re)introduce substances, there is a possibility of
staying coherent with comp. Now you question is tricky. Like in the
block-universe of relativity there is no time "from outside". Time will
be an internal modality, and can (and certainly will) play a basic role
in the development of "intelligence". Well "space" got some important
role too, but is trickier that time.
>
> If I understood your theory I might also try to challenge the idea
> that the soul is both ontologically AND epistemologically primary.
Well I already distinguish the mind from the soul. The mind is a very
general notion comprehending all imaterial notion from the number PI to
the game of bridge and anything not reasonnablu described by pieces of
Stuff (even nations and person belongs to "mind"). It is the
"spiritual" or "immaterial" realm, and with comp it does not
necessarily go outside the realm of mathematical (if not arithmetica)
truth. The soul is really the first person or the knower, it is not as
primary as arithmetical truth. It needs a lobian machine (which is a
mathematical object). The knower is epistemological, but the mind is
not. Comp reality is close to Rudy Rucker's Mindscape (if you know
it(*)) except that it does not need many of its set theoretical
construct at the bottom (they will appear as reflected in the
object-discourse by machine).
> Actually I wouldn't use, for my views, the term "primary" in a strong
> foundationalist sense, I just mean that, for various reasons, I regard
> the (sequential) order of knowledge to be the opposite of the
> (sequential) order of being.
If Stephen Paul King is still there, I think he would suggest you to
read Pratt's approach of the mind body problem where a similar duality
appears. Could be interesting, but it is hard to explain without
abstract math (category theory).
> Of course, in logic, some oppositions seems to reverse themselves
> across changes of level, so who knows, I'm not totally convinced about
> my own views either.
Me either ('bout my views). This is a lobian symptom of sanity :-)
(Note the Smiley, because I am saying probably a G* \ G truth here,
which means I should probably shut up).
Bruno
PS I don't despair to make some comments on your "long post", although
it could become less necessary given that I make partial answer through
the posts which follow. In any case don't hesitate to repeat critics or
question I would have missed.
(*) His book: "infinity and the mind" has been re-edited more or less
recently.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jan 12 2006 - 10:57:28 PST