Dear Quentin et al,
I keep reading this claim that "only the existence of the algorithm
itself is necessary" and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for
mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation
in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that can
be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any
property, including properties that involve some notion of chance. First of
all *existence* is *not* a property of, or a predicate associable with, an
object as Kant, Frege and Russell, et all argued well.
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Existence
Per the Wiki article, Miller argued that existence is indeed a predicate
"since it individuates its subject by being its bounds" [from the above web
reference] but it seems that Miller's claim disallows any kind of
relationship between such things (using that word loosely) as algorithms and
thus denies us a mean to distinguish one algorithm from another. If
Existence individuates an entity by "being its bounds" then it seems to
follow that any other entity does not *exist* to it and thus no relationship
between entities can obtain.
I admit that I have not read enough of Miller's work to see if he deals
with this problem that I see in his reasoning (as applied here), but
nevertheless the basic proposal that existence is sufficient to obtain
anything that is even close to a notion of implementation.
also see:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/
Implementation is a *process*, and as such we have to deal with the
properties that are brought into our thinking on this.
Onward!
Stephen
BTW, Plato never gave an explanation that I have seen of how the Forms "cast
imperfect shadows" or even why such "shadow casting" was necessary...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Quentin Anciaux" <quentin.anciaux.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA
Hi Hal,
Le Mercredi 21 Juin 2006 19:31, Hal Finney a écrit :
> What, after all, do these principles mean? They say that the
> implementation substrate doesn't matter. You can implement a person
> using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same. But if there is no way
> in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this
> philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning.
> The MWI doesn't change that.
That's exactly the point of Bruno I think... What you've shown is that
physicalism is not compatible with computationalism. In the UD vision, there
is no real "instantiation" even the UD itself does not need to be
instantiated, only the existence of the algorithm itself is necessary.
Quentin
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Received on Wed Jun 21 2006 - 18:51:21 PDT