Consciousness is information?

[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 May 2009, at 17:02, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/5/1 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>>> That is, you can't say that the rock
>>> implements one computation but not another.
>>
>> I don't think it implements any computations. I could accept some  
>> tiny
>> apparition of tiny pieces of of tiny automata, but nothing big or
>> sophisticated. Some very special crystals perhaps, no doubt, but  
>> those
>> are, then, computer.
>
> If your computer has to interact with the external world then that
> imposes some constraints on what counts as an implementation of a
> computation.

OK. Although you could say: "if your computer has to interact with  
another computer then ...". But OK. It is important, not for the rise  
of consciousness, but for its relative stability with respect to some  
notion of first person splral. It is important for having local measure.





> But without this constraint you are free to interpret any
> activity as any computation.


I don't see why. Simple activity could correspond to simple  
computation (I can agree with this). But any complex computation will  
require some gobal connectness among the many simple activity.  
Especially the long and deep (in Bennett sense) computations.

> You could pick three trees and, observing
> the movement of birds on and off the trees, interpret this as  a logic
> gate. Three birds land on the first tree, and that's a "zero" input.
> Two birds alight from the second tree, that's a "zero" input also.
> Three birds land on the third tree, that's a "one" output. A minute
> later, five birds alight from the first tree, one bird lands on the
> second tree and two birds land on the third tree, which is interpreted
> as two "one" inputs giving a "zero" output. Looks like it might be a a
> NAND gate! Not very useful, of course, but is there any reason why my
> interpretation is wrong, or why the birds flying around won't give
> rise to whatever consciousness is associated with the operation of the
> logic gate?

Somehow you make my point, because I am willing to say that you are  
right, ONCE assuming the supervenience thesis. But your conclusion,  
that anything computation supervenes on any physical activity,  
including the empty one, is what I definitely consider as an  
absurdity, and is the reason why, keeping comp, I abandon the physical  
supervenience thesis, and eventually the very idea of primitive  
physical stuff.
A computation is just like they are defined in mathematical books on  
computation: it is a global logical relation capable of sustaining non  
trivial relations among abstract items.

Consider Ned Block's Chinese People Computer. You can (logically, not  
ethically of course) program the people of China so that each chinese,  
just by doing very simple mails, participate into a giant computation  
emulating Einstein' brain, say. The consciousness of Einstein will  
rely on the global organization of the information handled by all  
chineses, not on the physical activity of such or such particular  
person. Of course, this line ends up accepting that from the point of  
view of Einstein it is just undecidable if he is a brain in a vat, a  
body in a hospital, or an abstract (but relatively rare and  
sophisticate) pattern in Platonia, and then the comp 1 person  
indeterminacy leads to a rich non trivial relative state  
interpretation of Arithmetic.

I think that if you take a real forest with birds, here and there, you  
can interpret some behavior as NAND or NOR, but you will not succeed  
ever in finding the computation of factorial(5). Even the universal  
dovetailer has to wait (in its own step-time) billions of billions of  
"steps" before getting something as interesting as the factorial  
functions. For Einstein's brain the UD will already take a  
ridiculously long time (well beyond anything physically observable)  
before getting its simulation.

Even if you decide to no more interact with the "external world", you  
will not say yes to a doctor who propose you a rock in place of your  
brain. This is beacuse the probability, ven and especially from your  
first person point of view, that the many NAND (that the rock could  
perhaps emulates indeed) arrange themselves into a Papaioannou healthy  
mind's state is null? You could survive in some possible world, but  
not through the rock computational power. If ever you survive with the  
rock, the probability that you will be dumb or disable will be far  
greater.

But you are right, those who believes in both comp and physical  
supervenience have to attach all consciousness to all physical  
activity, and then they does not need comp anymore and everything  
become trivial. You get a Kelly sort of physics which predict  
everything. I prefer to keep the mathematically coherent and sound  
comp, and forget physical supervenience. Even more so when you realize  
that the math for comp will explain the appearance of rocks and  
particles without assuming any metaphysical naturalism.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 May 2009, at 19:36, Jesse Mazer wrote:

I found a paper on the Mandelbrot set and computability, I understand very little but maybe Bruno would be able to follow it:

http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.CC/0604003

The same author has a shorter outline or slides for a presentation on this subject at http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/cie06/files/d37/PHP_MandelbrotCiE2006Swansea_Jul2006.pdf and at the end he asks the question "If M (Mandelbrot set) not Q-computable, can the Halting Problem be reduced to determining membership of (intersection of M and Q^2), i.e. how powerful a 'hypercomputer' is the Mandelbrot set?" I believe Q^2 here just refers to the set of all possible pairs of rational numbers. Maybe by "reducing" the Halting Problem he means that for any Turing machine + input, there might be some rule that would translate it into a pair of rational numbers such that the computation will halt iff the pair is included in the Mandelbrot set? Whatever he means, it sounds like he's saying it's an open question...

Thanks! Very interesting. It confirms my feeling that the result Blum, Smale and Shub cannot really help to figure out if the "digital Mandelbrot Set" is a compact form of a universal dovetaling ... or the exponential complex would already be one .... Hmm....

Another way to digitalize the M set would be to consider its digital, ste by step enlargement on the Gaussian Integers (n + mi, n, m in Z).

I will study those papers, soon or later. I really love the Mandelbrot set. Look at this beautiful musical zoom by Ubermari0:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgM3XJmH768&feature=channel_page

Look at this new very impressive zoom by Phaumann, with a 10^333  enlargement, in an hard to compute part of the M-set!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6DD1k4BAUg&feature=channel_page

You can see that the computations is deep in Bennett sense, like most object in "nature" plausibly: it is both very involved and sophisticated yet incredibly redundant, and it is itself the product of a very tiny algorithm. It can be used in practice to compress data.

Bruno

>Jason wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The mathematical Universal Dovetailer, the splashed universal Turing
>> Machine, the rational Mandelbrot set, or any creative sets in the
>> sense of Emil Post, does all computations. Really all, with Church
>> thesis. This is a theorem in math. The rock? Show me just the 30 first
>> steps of a computation of square-root(2). ...
> 
> Bruno,
> 
> I am interested about your statement regarding the Mandelbrot set
> implementing all computations, could you elaborate on this?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Jason
> 
> 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/5/3 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

> I think that if you take a real forest with birds, here and there, you
> can interpret some behavior as NAND or NOR, but you will not succeed
> ever in finding the computation of factorial(5).

But you can interpret *any* behaviour as a NAND gate, in an ad hoc
fashion. It doesn't even need to be consistent from moment. On a
Tuesday 3 birds landing could stand for "1" while on a Wednesday 3
birds landing could stand for "0", and on a Saturday it could stand
for "1" again. In this way you could take the physical activity
carried out by a store-bought computer calculating factorial(5) and
map it onto the forest with the birds. Of course, this won't give you
the answer to factorial(5) unless you already have the answer, but
that just means that the computation is obscured, in the same way a
message is obscured if encoded with a one-time pad that is
subsequently destroyed and forgotten. In fact, even with the
store-bought computer the computation is obscured if there are no
intelligent beings around who can understand it. So, if the
computation supervenes on the activity of the store-bought computer
without regard for whether any external observer is around to
understand, then it also supervenes on the activity of the forest with
the birds. Other possibilities are that the computation supervenes on
physical activity only when an external observer understands it (which
poses difficulties for a closed virtual reality with its own conscious
observers), or that the computation does not supervene on physical
activity at all.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[John Mikes]

Stathis, and listers,

I cannot help: I read the text. (Not always, sometimes it seems too obtuse for me even to 'read' it).

The Subject?   ( Consciousness = information )

what happens to that darn 'information'? Oops, 'you' are AWARE of it!? Meaning: you  DO  something with it (to "be - become?" aware).  Who???? By what factor (energy, process, function, etc.)? By what (who's??) initiation? Oops: by computation of course.

Refer all the above questions to 'computation and add: who (what?) is providing the computer? (St.: store-bought computer - is it a binary embryonic, or a more advanced one, maybe an (unlimited!) analogue - whatver that may be).

Or:

forget all those questions and live happily in Wunderland.

 

The nature of an applicable "INFORMATION" is still undecided. The 'bit' has to be part of a program to make sense (to have 'meaning' - another term to be questioned.) Maybe in a conscious software? (robotic?)

Information and its meaning are concept (observer?) related.

I am hung up on 'having a computer' and 'computation' (available?) that

still does not DO the computation, not even operate the computer.

And please, say 'energy' only, if you can tell what it is (not what it does or how it can be measured). And the construct(?) that includes it all.

I am also hung up with 'function' (activity) and the 'observer' (self, "I")

what seems to be so natural in the nth level consequence using them.

 

John M

 

 

 

 

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 3:00 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@...> wrote:

2009/5/3 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

> I think that if you take a real forest with birds, here and there, you
> can interpret some behavior as NAND or NOR, but you will not succeed
> ever in finding the computation of factorial(5).

But you can interpret *any* behaviour as a NAND gate, in an ad hoc
fashion. It doesn't even need to be consistent from moment. On a
Tuesday 3 birds landing could stand for "1" while on a Wednesday 3
birds landing could stand for "0", and on a Saturday it could stand
for "1" again. In this way you could take the physical activity
carried out by a store-bought computer calculating factorial(5) and
map it onto the forest with the birds. Of course, this won't give you
the answer to factorial(5) unless you already have the answer, but
that just means that the computation is obscured, in the same way a
message is obscured if encoded with a one-time pad that is
subsequently destroyed and forgotten. In fact, even with the
store-bought computer the computation is obscured if there are no
intelligent beings around who can understand it. So, if the
computation supervenes on the activity of the store-bought computer
without regard for whether any external observer is around to
understand, then it also supervenes on the activity of the forest with
the birds. Other possibilities are that the computation supervenes on
physical activity only when an external observer understands it (which
poses difficulties for a closed virtual reality with its own conscious
observers), or that the computation does not supervene on physical
activity at all.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[John Mikes]

I would like to go along with Maudlin's point emphasized in Bruno's text below, adding that "causal" structure is restricted to the limited model of which we CAN choose likely 'causes' within our perceived reality, while the unlimited possibilities include wider 'intrusions' of domains 'beyond our present epistemic cognitive inventory'. So the "most likely" cause - although applicable to a 'physical role' (which as well is figmentous) - is limited. In congruence - I think - with Bruno's words below.

Bruno's: "...the description, although containing the genuine information is just not a computation at all..." (AMEN!)

continued, however by: "...It miss the logical relation between the steps, made possible by the universal machine..."  still does not  - DO -

those 'steps' neither OPERATE the machine.

Looks like we want to 'assume' that if there is a possibility, it is also done.

I am looking at the "physical creator" (haha) keeping the contraption moving and us in it. Not to speak about 'making it'. (Deus ex machina?)

Once all is there and moving, everything is fine.

I salute the "...infinitely many such relations, ..." that gives me the idea of a 'physical' supervenience in terms of a restrictive Occam, cutting off everything that dos not fit into our goals.

 

"States" seem to be identified by our limited views. I feel that both the referred Maudlin-text and Jesse's comment are on the static side, as 'descriptive', while I can presume into Bruno's "relations" some sort of a functional (operative) relation that would lend some dynamism (action?) into the descriptional stagnancy. I still did not detect:  HOW?

 

John M

 

 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:

Maudlin's point is that the causal structure has no physical role, so if you maintain the association of consciousness with the causal, actually computational structure, you have to abandon the physical supervenience. Or you reintroduce some magic, like if neurons have some knowledge of the absence of some other neurons, to which they are not related, during some computations.

But read the movie graph which shows the same thing without going through the question of the counterfactuals. If you believe that consciousness supervene on the physical implementation, or even just one universal machine computation, then you will associate consciousness to a description of that computation. but the description, although containing the genuine information is just not a computation at all. It miss the logical relation between the steps, made possible by the universal machine. So you can keep on with mechanism only by associating consciousness with the logical, immaterial, relation between the states. from inside they are infinitely many such relations, and this means the physical has to supervene on the sum of those relations "as seen from inside". By Church thesis and self-reference logic, they have a non trivial, redundant, structure.

Bruno

On 29 Apr 2009, at 21:16, Jesse Mazer wrote:

Bruno wrote:

On 29 Apr 2009, at 00:25, Jesse Mazer wrote:

and I think it's also the idea behind Maudlin's Olympia thought experiment as well.

>Maudlin's Olympia, or the Movie Graph Argument are completely different. Those are arguments showing that computationalism is incompatible with the physical supervenience thesis. They show that consciousness are not related to any physical activity at all. Together with UDA1-7, it shows that physics has to be reduced to a theory of consciousness based on a purely mathematical (even arithmetical) theory of computation, which exists by Church Thesis.

The movie graph argument was originally only a tool for explaining how difficult the mind-body problem is, once we assume mechanism.

OK, I hadn't been able to find Maudlin's paper online, but I finally located a pdf copy in a post from this list at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@.../msg07657.html ...now that I read it I see the argument is distinct from Chalmers' "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton", although they are thematically similar in that they both deal with difficulties in defining what it means for a given physical system to "implement" a given computation. Chalmers' idea was that the idea of a rock implementing every possible computer program could be avoided if we defined an "implementation" in terms of counterfactuals, but Maudlin argues that this contradicts the "supervenience thesis" which says that "the presence or absence of inert, causally isolated objects cannot effect the presence or absence of phenomenal states associated with a system", since two systems may have different counterfactual structures merely by virtue of an inert subsystem in one which *would have* become active if the initial state of the system had been slightly different.

It seems to me that there might be ways of defining "causal structure" which don't depend on counterfactuals, though. One idea I had is that for any system which changes state in a lawlike way over time, all facts about events in the system's history can be represented as a collection of propositions, and then causal structure might be understood in terms of logical relations between propositions, given knowledge of the laws governing the system. As an example, if the system was a cellular automaton, one might have a collection of propositions like "cell 156 is colored black at time-step 36", and if you know the rules for how the cells are updated on each time-step, then knowing some subsets of propositions would allow you to deduce others (for example, if you have a set of propositions that tell you the states of all the cells surrounding cell 71 at time-step 106, in most cellular automata that would allow you to figure out the state of cell 71 at the subsequent time-step 107). If the laws of physics in our universe are deterministic than you should in principle be able to represent all facts about the state of the universe at all times as a giant (probably infinite) set of propositions as well, and given knowledge of the laws, knowing certain subsets of these propositions would allow you to deduce others.

"Causal structure" could then be defined in terms of what logical relations hold between the propositions, given knowledge of the laws governing the system. Perhaps in one system you might find a set of four propositions A, B, C, D such that if you know the system's laws, you can see that A&B imply C, and D implies A, but no other proposition or group of propositions in this set of four are sufficient to deduce any of the others in this set. Then in another system you might find a set of four propositions X, Y, Z and W such that W&Z imply Y, and X implies W, but those are the only deductions you can make from within this set. In this case you can say these two different sets of four propositions represent instantiations of the same causal structure, since if you map W to A, Z to B, Y to C, and D to X then you can see an isomorphism in the logical relations. That's obviously a very simple causal structure involving only 4 events, but one might define much more complex causal structures and then check if there was any subset of events in a system's history that matched that structure. And the propositions could be restricted to ones concerning events that actually did occur in the system's history, with no counterfactual propositions about what would have happened if the system's initial state had been different.

Thinking in this way, it's not obvious that Maudlin is right when he assumes that the original "Olympia" defined on p. 418-419 of the paper cannot be implementing a unique computation that gives rise to complex conscious experiences. It's true that the armature itself is not responding in any way to the states of successive troughs it passes over, but there is an aspect of the setup that might give the system a nontrivial causal structure, namely the fact that certain troughs may be connected to other by pipes to other troughs in the sequence, so that as the armature empties or fills one it is also emptying or filling the one it's connected to (this is done to emulate the idea of a Turing machine's read/write head returning to the same memory address multiple times, even though Olympia's armature just steadily progresses down the line of troughs in sequence--troughs connected by pipes are supposed to represent a single memory address). If we represented the Olympia system as a set of propositions about the state of each trough and the position of the armature at each time-step, then the fact that the armature's interaction with one trough changes the state of another trough the armature won't visit until a later step may be enough to give different programs markedly different causal structures, in spite of the fact that the armature itself is just dumbly moving from one trough to the next.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 May 2009, at 09:00, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/5/3 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>> I think that if you take a real forest with birds, here and there,  
>> you
>> can interpret some behavior as NAND or NOR, but you will not succeed
>> ever in finding the computation of factorial(5).
>
> But you can interpret *any* behaviour as a NAND gate, in an ad hoc
> fashion. It doesn't even need to be consistent from moment. On a
> Tuesday 3 birds landing could stand for "1" while on a Wednesday 3
> birds landing could stand for "0", and on a Saturday it could stand
> for "1" again.

But this makes sense only relatively to a "stable universal" machine  
in which you can encode what you are telling me.





> In this way you could take the physical activity
> carried out by a store-bought computer calculating factorial(5) and
> map it onto the forest with the birds.


All right, I see your point, you take any physical activity, and then  
an ad hoc sequence of universal machine which interpret each piece of  
birds behavior into a computation of fact(24). That sequence should be  
capable to be infinite and the birds behavior have to resume more and  
more complex problem dues to the adhocness of the representations.  
The complexity of the sequence of universal machine will grow  
exponentially. Hmm. perhaps. Again this will change nothing, After  
all, the UD does generate *all* implementation of all computations  
including your very complex (to encode) interpretation of rocks and  
forest.





> Of course, this won't give you
> the answer to factorial(5) unless you already have the answer, but
> that just means that the computation is obscured,

It is obscured and blurred relatively to its most probable histories.  
In normal physics (normal in the Gauss meaning) you cannot count on  
those computations. It would be like saying you win the lottery given  
that you have the right numbers, in disorder, but after all you can  
read them in the right order, and someone in Platonia does read them  
in that different order.
I could still disagree because, as you seem to accept, such "physical  
implementation" can reduce to zero the needed amount of physical  
activity, and an interpretation of your computation of the factorial  
of 4, in the rock, will be made by an actual computation of 24 by a  
"real universal machine" which does not need to be physical, in  
platonia, and which has a lot of imagination in front of the rock. You  
need something like this, for your argument to go through, but this  
*is* mainly the comp supervenience. So what you show is that indeed,  
we don't need, or cannot use in any genuine sense a primitive notion  
of physical activity to build a notion of supervenience.
Yet I think that the notion of interpretation is more constrained that  
just invoking some ad hoc sequence of platonist universal  
interpreters. At some level, we must bet on "just one", if only to be  
able to talk (even to talk to oneself).



> in the same way a
> message is obscured if encoded with a one-time pad that is
> subsequently destroyed and forgotten. In fact, even with the
> store-bought computer the computation is obscured if there are no
> intelligent beings around who can understand it.


Not at all. If the computer evaluate fact(4), even alone in a room,  
the probability it gives 24 is one, in a verifiable way by a third  
person. With or without physicalism we accept the idea that the  
physical neighborhood is locally Turing universal, and does interpret  
the computation of 4.
If I put a computer evaluating Stathis here and now, under your  
substitution level, then, despite the computer being alone in the  
room, the probability that you are where you feel you are (here and  
now) or  in that "room" is 1/2 (accepting the usual probability). Cf  
step 5.
You will not say "yes doctor", but only if you take a permanent look  
on my working artificial brain". The point of comp is that some  
program can observe themselves (at some level). And this can be made  
mathematically precise (by Kleene second recursion theorem).

Accpeting your "interpretation of the rock", The probability that you  
are in the rocks, relatively to you here and now, is  
0,00000000000000........1, given that you have to wait the UD  
generates that immensely long sequences of more and more complex "ad  
hoc" universal interpreters.




> So, if the
> computation supervenes on the activity of the store-bought computer
> without regard for whether any external observer is around to
> understand, then it also supervenes on the activity of the forest with
> the birds.

You illustrate well that the only question which makes sense is the  
question of which most probable computation bears us, or which more  
probable universal machine or number "executes" us.  What you say is  
that the UD will generate stupid program interpreting the empty input  
like if it was a code for fact(4).




> Other possibilities are that the computation supervenes on
> physical activity only when an external observer understands it (which
> poses difficulties for a closed virtual reality with its own conscious
> observers),

And leads also to an infinite regression, unless you postulate an  
absolute external witness with cognitive abilities based on ...  
nothing (which makes not much sense).



> or that the computation does not supervene on physical
> activity at all.

It seems to me that we agree that physical supervenience leads to many  
absurdities. Is your argument purely academical, or do you think it  
can be used to prevent the conclusion that physics has to be explained  
by the purely mathematical notion of "most probable computation as  
seen from inside", among the 2^aleph_0 computations going through the  
current states, in UD* or in arithmetic?

With you argument, the movie-graph is conscious.  But is all  
consciousness at once, not just the consciousness corresponding to the  
filmed boolean graph. This not change the problem measure in any way.  
It makes the primitive physicalness idea even more absurd.

It seems to me that your point just recall that in Platonia, there are  
complex sequence of universal machine which can interpret any  
computation, including the empty one, as being any other computations.  
But this is akin to white rabbits (from the probability pov) and akin  
to the fact that, with its terrible redundancy and "free  
imagination",  the UD generates also conspirator interpretations.

With just arithmetic, when we stop to postulate a primitive or  
ontological material world, all primitive ad-hocness is removed, given  
that the existing internal interpretations are all determined, with  
their relative frequency, by addition and multiplication rules, and  
physics will be defined by the (absolute) probability of relative  
computations (here = probability of relative number theoretical  
relations. "to be a finite piece of computation" is decidable even in  
very tiny fragment of arithmetic, and this can be used to avoid any  
starting ambiguity. This is made possible through Church thesis, and  
it eventually forces us to realize that a rock is the result of an  
infinity of computation, and the rock "we see" a crude local average,  
but comp makes it possible that a rock implements all computations to,  
but only by an explicit call to a sequence of universal machine in  
Platonia. Meaning; there is no room for providing an explanative power  
(both for mind and matter) to the notion of primitive substance and  
primitive substancial incarnated laws.  Due to the failure of logicism  
we need numbers or combinators and primitive immaterial laws to agree  
on, like addition and multiplication, or lambda abstraction and  
application, etc. The measure does not depend on which first universal  
system you choose, by non completely trivial application of computer  
science. And to use a primitive quantum computer for a primitive  
physics is treachery with respect to the comp mind body problem.

OK?

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/5/4 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

>> in the same way a
>> message is obscured if encoded with a one-time pad that is
>> subsequently destroyed and forgotten. In fact, even with the
>> store-bought computer the computation is obscured if there are no
>> intelligent beings around who can understand it.
>
>
> Not at all. If the computer evaluate fact(4), even alone in a room,
> the probability it gives 24 is one, in a verifiable way by a third
> person. With or without physicalism we accept the idea that the
> physical neighborhood is locally Turing universal, and does interpret
> the computation of 4.

Sure, the computer is evaluating fact(4) even when no-one can
understand it, but it is obscured because no-one can understand it. An
intelligent person who has never seen a computer before may eventually
figure it out, and computers are as a broad generalisation designed to
follow understandable patterns in their architecture, just as written
languages are designed (or evolve) to follow recognisable patterns.
But what if fact(4) is a military secret, and the engineers
deliberately tried to make the internal workings of the machine as
convoluted as possible, so that it looks like random activity to
anyone lacking the design specifications? This would be the equivalent
of taking a written message and encoding it so that it looks like
random letters; with the right key, any message can be encoded to look
like any given string (of similar or greater length). Are you saying
that obscuring the workings of the computer in this way would be
impossible?

> It seems to me that we agree that physical supervenience leads to many
> absurdities. Is your argument purely academical, or do you think it
> can be used to prevent the conclusion that physics has to be explained
> by the purely mathematical notion of "most probable computation as
> seen from inside", among the 2^aleph_0 computations going through the
> current states, in UD* or in arithmetic?

I agree with you. I am not terribly happy with the conclusion, because
it seems so weird. The only way out is, as you say, if comp is false:
the mind is not Turing emulable, or (even weirder, perhaps incoherent)
there is no such thing as consciousness at all.

> With you argument, the movie-graph is conscious.  But is all
> consciousness at once, not just the consciousness corresponding to the
> filmed boolean graph. This not change the problem measure in any way.
> It makes the primitive physicalness idea even more absurd.
>
> It seems to me that your point just recall that in Platonia, there are
> complex sequence of universal machine which can interpret any
> computation, including the empty one, as being any other computations.
> But this is akin to white rabbits (from the probability pov) and akin
> to the fact that, with its terrible redundancy and "free
> imagination",  the UD generates also conspirator interpretations.
>
> With just arithmetic, when we stop to postulate a primitive or
> ontological material world, all primitive ad-hocness is removed, given
> that the existing internal interpretations are all determined, with
> their relative frequency, by addition and multiplication rules, and
> physics will be defined by the (absolute) probability of relative
> computations (here = probability of relative number theoretical
> relations. "to be a finite piece of computation" is decidable even in
> very tiny fragment of arithmetic, and this can be used to avoid any
> starting ambiguity. This is made possible through Church thesis, and
> it eventually forces us to realize that a rock is the result of an
> infinity of computation, and the rock "we see" a crude local average,
> but comp makes it possible that a rock implements all computations to,
> but only by an explicit call to a sequence of universal machine in
> Platonia. Meaning; there is no room for providing an explanative power
> (both for mind and matter) to the notion of primitive substance and
> primitive substancial incarnated laws.  Due to the failure of logicism
> we need numbers or combinators and primitive immaterial laws to agree
> on, like addition and multiplication, or lambda abstraction and
> application, etc. The measure does not depend on which first universal
> system you choose, by non completely trivial application of computer
> science. And to use a primitive quantum computer for a primitive
> physics is treachery with respect to the comp mind body problem.
>
> OK?

OK, I think. Thanks for taking the time to reply!


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 May 2009, at 17:09, John Mikes wrote:

I would like to go along with Maudlin's point emphasized in Bruno's text below, adding that "causal" structure is restricted to the limited model of which we CAN choose likely 'causes' within our perceived reality, while the unlimited possibilities include wider 'intrusions' of domains 'beyond our present epistemic cognitive inventory'. So the "most likely" cause - although applicable to a 'physical role' (which as well is figmentous) - is limited. In congruence - I think - with Bruno's words below.

Bruno's: "...the description, although containing the genuine information is just not a computation at all..." (AMEN!)

continued, however by: "...It miss the logical relation between the steps, made possible by the universal machine..."  still does not  - DO -

those 'steps' neither OPERATE the machine.

Looks like we want to 'assume' that if there is a possibility, it is also done.

Yes. It is the trade mark of all everythingers and many worlders. Be them quantum or arithmetical many states/worlds/histories.

relative existence = relative consistence. Actual consciousness = inside view of possible existence. 

"Now" is as well yesterday from the point of view of yesterday than tomorrow from the point of view of tomorrow, if ever. The "everything" idea is that such an indexical approach is conceptually simpler, and should be favored for Occam-like related reason.

But it is neither assume in comp (my point) nor in (quantum mechanics, Everett-Deutsch point). Indeed any rememorable "here and now" depends on the statistical interference on the many many many "elsewhere". It is not an assumption, it is a consequence of the theory. You can change the theory by adding selection principles, but this is really cutting off everything that does not fit our wishful thinking. It is like when Niels Bohr says "Quantum mechanics is false in the classical macroscopic world, when applying QM to Niels Borh explains why Niels Bohr (and all of us) can experience a third person plural collapse despite the SWE prevent the need for it to happen "really".

I am looking at the "physical creator" (haha)

... still looking for Aristotle initial motor (haha).

keeping the contraption moving and us in it. Not to speak about 'making it'. (Deus ex machina?)

No worry, assuming comp, it is  "Machina ex Deus". 

Machines can already prove that as far as they are consistent, something which is not a machine, and which is not even nameable (arithmetical truth) transcends them (Tarski,  Askanas).

I have also discovered recently (and this has been proved by my student/friend "the little genius" (Eric Vandenbuscche)), that some false beliefs can enlarge the true provability spectrum. It is almost like de Bono said, according to Kim, it could be logical to be illogical, in some situation. But as I said to Kim, this belongs probably to the corona G* minus G, the space of the unspeakable.  (Note that I fall myself in the same trap if I suggest this should be a reason to abandon prescriptive talk, yet, assuming comp, I can justify caution with such prescriptive talk, this because I talk explicitly on Machines and I talk on (ideally correct) Humans only through the comp HYPOTHESIS). 

Once all is there and moving, everything is fine.

I salute the "...infinitely many such relations, ..." that gives me the idea of a 'physical' supervenience in terms of a restrictive Occam, cutting off everything that dos not fit into our goals.

Just say "No doctor". No problem. We are just studying consequences of an hypothesis. But I think the comp hypothesis is the less reductionist view possible concerning the possible first person points of view.  The little and simple has more degree of freedom than the complexe and sophisticate. 

I tend to believe comp is even a vaccine against major forms of reductionism. 

 

"States" seem to be identified by our limited views.

Third person conceived states are indeed identify with finite descriptions of a (probably deep and complex) computational states (notion relative to the choice of a universal machine).

But then "first person states", as conceivable by first persons, are very complex and variable things with non trivial connectedness, and dependence on non nameable continuum (and thus a relative measure problem).

But machine can prove their own relative (to consistency, to the existence of a "reality") incompleteness theorem, and this introduces many deep nuances between all the possible variant of Theaetetus knowledge theories, up to the quasi Aristotelian (naturalist) theory of matter by Plotinus. I can't wait listening more to that humble universal machine ... 'course, today, it is still hard work: Gödel, Löb, Feferman, Smullyan, ..., but Solovay makes a progress by providing shortcuts: the modal systems G and G*.

I feel that both the referred Maudlin-text and Jesse's comment are on the static side, as 'descriptive', while I can presume into Bruno's "relations" some sort of a functional (operative) relation that would lend some dynamism (action?) into the descriptional stagnancy. I still did not detect:  HOW?

Comp cannot explain HOW, for a reason similar to the fact that comp cannot explain where the numbers come from.

Comp can explain some things though. It explains why and how the numbers, relatively to each others, and through their additive and multiplicative relations (cf Post, Turing ... Matiyazevitch)  begin to believe in numbers and in dynamics, and it explains why and how the numbers cannot explain the numbers and the dynamics, and it explains how the number can explain, like your servitor tries, why the numbers cannot explain the numbers and the dynamics. The same for many transcendent notions like "truth", "consciousness", "realm", etc.

Comp gives a TOE with a gap. But it explains why there is a gap, why we have to be ignorant there, and why that TOE is as close as an explanation can possibly exist. But it shows, to simplify, that the physical multi-world is given by some geometry on that ignorance gap, making comp refutable. So, let us see...

QM confirms comp, up to now, and it is too early to conclude anything definitive. Eventually comp, and thus arithmetic, has to justify QM as QM justifies the collapse. 

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 04 May 2009, at 13:31, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

2009/5/4 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

...

It seems to me that we agree that physical supervenience leads to many

absurdities. Is your argument purely academical, or do you think it

can be used to prevent the conclusion that physics has to be explained

by the purely mathematical notion of "most probable computation as

seen from inside", among the 2^aleph_0 computations going through the

current states, in UD* or in arithmetic?

I agree with you. I am not terribly happy with the conclusion, because
it seems so weird. The only way out is, as you say, if comp is false:
the mind is not Turing emulable, or (even weirder, perhaps incoherent)
there is no such thing as consciousness at all.

Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can be conscious *about*.

It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference logics, taking consciousness as consistency).

Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts)

We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable possible reality (the third person belief).

To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because it is defined

by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with.

OK, I think. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

You are welcome,

Bruno

(*)  (usual comp is a 1-comp, 3-comp is "MEC-DIG-BEH" in "C&M", for Digital Behaviorist Mechanism in french, in a part translated by Kim on the list recently)

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Stephen Paul King-2]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

Hi Bruno and Members,

 

    The comment that is made below seems to only involve a single consciousness and an exterior "reality". Could we not recover a very similar situation if we consider the 1-PoV and 3-PoV relation to hold to some degree over a multitude of consciouness (plurality). In the plurality case, the "objective doubtful but sharable possible reality" would be composed of a large intersection of sorts of 3-PoV aspects that can be recognized by or mapped to a statistical or generic notion of a 1-PoV. No?

 

Onward!

 

Stephen 

----- Original Message -----

From: marchal@...

To: everything-list@...

Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:33 PM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

snip

 

Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can be conscious *about*.

It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference logics, taking consciousness as consistency).

Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts)

We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable possible reality (the third person belief).

To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because it is defined

by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with.

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[Jason Resch-2]

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
>
> With just arithmetic, when we stop to postulate a primitive or
> ontological material world, all primitive ad-hocness is removed, given
> that the existing internal interpretations are all determined, with
> their relative frequency, by addition and multiplication rules, and
> physics will be defined by the (absolute) probability of relative
> computations (here = probability of relative number theoretical
> relations.


Bruno,

In other posts I have seen you mention that the rule of succession is
not enough, that addition and multiplication are needed.  Why is it
that it stops at multiplication, and not exponentiation or tetration?
Is it enough to say some form of iteration + succession are required?
(e.g. a for loop with succession gives addition, a for loop with
addition yields multiplication, etc.)

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 May 2009, at 22:31, Jason Resch wrote:

>
> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> With just arithmetic, when we stop to postulate a primitive or
>> ontological material world, all primitive ad-hocness is removed,  
>> given
>> that the existing internal interpretations are all determined, with
>> their relative frequency, by addition and multiplication rules, and
>> physics will be defined by the (absolute) probability of relative
>> computations (here = probability of relative number theoretical
>> relations.
>
>
> Bruno,
>
> In other posts I have seen you mention that the rule of succession is
> not enough, that addition and multiplication are needed.  Why is it
> that it stops at multiplication, and not exponentiation or tetration?
> Is it enough to say some form of iteration + succession are required?
> (e.g. a for loop with succession gives addition, a for loop with
> addition yields multiplication, etc.)
>
> Jason
>

It is due to the fact that, when formalized (in first order logic,  
say) Turing Universality begins with addition and multiplication (you  
don't even need succession). Then you can define exponentiation,  
tetration, etc. All partial recursive function can then be defined.

Succession + addition, or succession + multiplication, are not Turing  
Universal, and leads indeed to decidable theories.

For the "ontology" we need no more than a universal system. it  
determines the universal dovetailing.

For the "epistemology" we need succession, addition, multiplication  
and the axioms of induction. This gives a notion of universal system  
together with its internal "self-aware" substructures played by the  
Lobian machine and their consistent extensions (the believer in  
induction), simulated by the universal systems. Those internal  
machines will develop far beyond "simple induction" though. The  
general internal view (the first person plenitude) is not axiomatisable.

Iteration and succession? I don't think so. You need induction. With  
induction it is Turing Universal, but not without, I think. It could  
depend how you formalized the iteration rule, but without induction  
and staying in first order logic, that would astonish me.

The crazy thing, not so simple to prove, is that even without  
induction, addition + multiplication is Turing universal. You bypass  
the role of induction by defining finite sequence through Gödel bata  
function and an ingenuous use of the Chinese Lemma.

Far easier to prove, without induction, is that addition+multiplication
+exponentiation is Turing universal, but thanks to Godel' beta  
function you can eliminate exponentiation. If you know "Godel's  
original "Godel's numbering" you can guess why.

Bruno






> >

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 May 2009, at 20:13, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno and Members,

 

    The comment that is made below seems to only involve a single consciousness and an exterior "reality". Could we not recover a very similar situation if we consider the 1-PoV and 3-PoV relation to hold to some degree over a multitude of consciouness (plurality). In the plurality case, the "objective doubtful but sharable possible reality" would be composed of a large intersection of sorts of 3-PoV aspects that can be recognized by or mapped to a statistical or generic notion of a 1-PoV. No?

Yes. May be. Why? You need something like that for the first person plural, but you have to extract it in some precise way for solving the UD measure problem. You could elaborate perhaps.

Bruno

From: marchal@...

To: everything-list@...

Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:33 PM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

snip

 

Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can be conscious *about*.

It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference logics, taking consciousness as consistency).

Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake doubts)

We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable possible reality (the third person belief).

To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because it is defined

by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by becoming someone else you can't identify with.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Torgny Tholerus]

Bruno Marchal skrev:

>
> Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its
> consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can
> be conscious *about*.
> It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes
> systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference
> logics, taking consciousness as consistency).
>
> Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake
> doubts)

Yes, you are right.  I can only fake doubts...

>
> We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the
> basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable
> possible reality (the third person belief).
>
> To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct
> materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because
> it is defined
> by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we
> assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This
> means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a
> zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by
> becoming someone else you can't identify with.

I can say "yes" to the doctor, because it will not be any difference for
me, I will still be a zombie afterwards...

--
Torgny Tholerus

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote:

>
> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>
>> Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its
>> consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can
>> be conscious *about*.
>> It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes
>> systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference
>> logics, taking consciousness as consistency).
>>
>> Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake
>> doubts)
>
> Yes, you are right.  I can only fake doubts...

I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide  
any argument.
I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less  
a zombie conscious to be a zombie!

>
>
>>
>> We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the
>> basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable
>> possible reality (the third person belief).
>>
>> To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct
>> materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because
>> it is defined
>> by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we
>> assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This
>> means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a
>> zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by
>> becoming someone else you can't identify with.
>
> I can say "yes" to the doctor, because it will not be any difference  
> for
> me, I will still be a zombie afterwards...

  I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite  
well the Löbian "consciousness" theory.
Indeed the theory says that "consciousness" can be very well  
approximated logically by "consistency".
So a human (you are human, all right?) who says "I am a zombie", means  
"I am not conscious", which can mean "I am not consistent".
By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose  
arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your  
ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an  
infinity of natural numbers, right?

We knew already you are not arithmetically sound.  Nevertheless it is  
amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the  
lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are  
zombie, though.

It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real  
ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a  
zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word  
like "zombie".

My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound,  
Löbian machine. No problem.

There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are  
zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may.

1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute  
your brain by a sponge?
2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie?
3) Do you have any "sort-of" feeling, insight, dreams, impression,  
sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ?
4) Does the word "pain" have a meaning for you? In particular, what if  
the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a  
cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often  
unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes?

Bruno


(*) For example: Peano Arithmetic + "Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent"  
gives a consistent theory. If not, Peano Arithmetic + "Peano  
Arithmetic is inconsistent" would prove "0=1", and thus PA would prove  
~(provable "Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent" ), and thus PA would  
prove its own consistency, contradicting Gödel II.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Torgny Tholerus]

Bruno Marchal skrev:

> On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote:
>
>  
>> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>    
>>> Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake
>>> doubts)
>>>      
>> Yes, you are right.  I can only fake doubts...
>>    
>
>
>
> I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide  
> any argument.
> I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less  
> a zombie conscious to be a zombie!
>  

I am a zombie that behaves AS IF it knows that it is a zombie.

>
>
>
>
>
>  
>>    
>>> When you say "yes" to the doctor, we
>>> assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This
>>> means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a
>>> zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by
>>> becoming someone else you can't identify with.
>>>      
>> I can say "yes" to the doctor, because it will not be any difference  
>> for me, I will still be a zombie afterwards...
>>    
>
>
>
>
>   I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite  
> well the Löbian "consciousness" theory.
> Indeed the theory says that "consciousness" can be very well  
> approximated logically by "consistency".
> So a human (you are human, all right?

I look exactly as a human.  When you look at me, you will not be able to
know if I am a human or a zombie, because I behave exacly like a human.

> ) who says "I am a zombie", means  
> "I am not conscious", which can mean "I am not consistent".
> By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose  
> arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your  
> ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an  
> infinity of natural numbers, right?
>  

Yes it is right.  There is no infinity of natural numbers.  But the
natural numbers are UNLIMITED, you can construct as many natural numbers
as you want.  But how many numbers you construct, the number of numbers
will always be finite.  You can never construct an infinite number of
natural numbers.

> We knew already you are not arithmetically sound.  Nevertheless it is  
> amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the  
> lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are  
> zombie, though.
>
> It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real  
> ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a  
> zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word  
> like "zombie".
>
> My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound,  
> Löbian machine. No problem.
>  

An ordinary computer can never be arithmetically unsound.  So I am not
arithmetically unsound.  I am build by a finite number of atoms, and the
atoms are build by a finite number of elementary parts.  (And these
elementary parts are just finite mathematics...)

> There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are  
> zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may.
>
> 1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute  
> your brain by a sponge?
>  

If the sponge behaves exactly in the same way as my current brain, then
it will be OK.

> 2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie?
>  

Does an ordinary computer have the "right" to do anything?

I do not want to be tortured, I behave as if I try to avoid that as
strongly as I can.  Because I behave in this way, I answer "no" to your
question, because that answer will decrease the probability of you
torturing me.

> 3) Do you have any "sort-of" feeling, insight, dreams, impression,  
> sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ?
>  

I behave as if I have "sort-of" feelings, I behave as if I have
insights, I behave as if I have dreams, I behave as if I have
impressions, I behave as if I have sensations, I behave as if I have a
subjective or mental life, ...

> 4) Does the word "pain" have a meaning for you? In particular, what if  
> the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a  
> cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often  
> unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes?
>  

No, I will say "no" in this case, because I avoid things that causes
"pain".  I have an "avoiding center" in my brain, and when this center
in my brain is stimulated, then my behavior will be to avoid those
things that causes this center to be stimulated.  Stimulating this
center will cause me to say: "I feel pain".

--
Torgny Tholerus

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[m.a.-2]

Perhaps apropos.

           Common let's do de zombie rock
           All around de zombie block


          http://www.dailypaul.com/node/90682




-----Original Message-----
From: everything-list@...
[mailto:everything-list@...]On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:10 AM
To: everything-list@...
Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?




On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote:

>
> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>
>> Something conscious cannot doubt about the existence of its
>> consciousness, I think, although it can doubt everything else it can
>> be conscious *about*.
>> It is the unprovable (but coverable) fixed point of Descartes
>> systematic doubting procedure (this fit well with the self-reference
>> logics, taking consciousness as consistency).
>>
>> Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake
>> doubts)
>
> Yes, you are right.  I can only fake doubts...

I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot provide
any argument.
I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less
a zombie conscious to be a zombie!

>
>
>>
>> We live on the overlap of a subjective un-sharable certainty (the
>> basic first person knowledge) and an objective doubtful but sharable
>> possible reality (the third person belief).
>>
>> To keep 3-comp, and to abandon consciousness *is* the correct
>> materialist step, indeed. But you cannot keep 1-comp(*) then, because
>> it is defined
>> by reference to consciousness. When you say "yes" to the doctor, we
>> assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive. This
>> means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not become a
>> zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own consciousness, by
>> becoming someone else you can't identify with.
>
> I can say "yes" to the doctor, because it will not be any difference
> for
> me, I will still be a zombie afterwards...

  I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite
well the Löbian "consciousness" theory.
Indeed the theory says that "consciousness" can be very well
approximated logically by "consistency".
So a human (you are human, all right?) who says "I am a zombie", means
"I am not conscious", which can mean "I am not consistent".
By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose
arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your
ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an
infinity of natural numbers, right?

We knew already you are not arithmetically sound.  Nevertheless it is
amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the
lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are
zombie, though.

It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real
ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a
zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word
like "zombie".

My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound,
Löbian machine. No problem.

There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are
zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may.

1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute
your brain by a sponge?
2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie?
3) Do you have any "sort-of" feeling, insight, dreams, impression,
sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ?
4) Does the word "pain" have a meaning for you? In particular, what if
the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to you a
cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often
unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes?

Bruno


(*) For example: Peano Arithmetic + "Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent"
gives a consistent theory. If not, Peano Arithmetic + "Peano
Arithmetic is inconsistent" would prove "0=1", and thus PA would prove
~(provable "Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent" ), and thus PA would
prove its own consistency, contradicting Gödel II.


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/






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[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2009, at 18:29, Torgny Tholerus wrote:

>
> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>> On 06 May 2009, at 11:35, Torgny Tholerus wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>>
>>>> Someone unconscious cannot doubt either ... (A zombie can only fake
>>>> doubts)
>>>>
>>> Yes, you are right.  I can only fake doubts...
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I suspect you are faking faking doubts, but of course I cannot  
>> provide
>> any argument.
>> I mean it is hard for me to believe that you are a zombie, still less
>> a zombie conscious to be a zombie!
>>
>
> I am a zombie that behaves AS IF it knows that it is a zombie.

OK. Meaning you don't know that you are  zombie. But you know nothing.
It is a good thing to link consciousness and knowledge.

>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> When you say "yes" to the doctor, we
>>>> assume the "yes" is related to the belief that you will survive.  
>>>> This
>>>> means you believe that you will not loose consciousness, not  
>>>> become a
>>>> zombie, nor will you loose (by assumption) your own  
>>>> consciousness, by
>>>> becoming someone else you can't identify with.
>>>>
>>> I can say "yes" to the doctor, because it will not be any difference
>>> for me, I will still be a zombie afterwards...
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  I don't know if you do this to please me, but you illustrate quite
>> well the Löbian "consciousness" theory.
>> Indeed the theory says that "consciousness" can be very well
>> approximated logically by "consistency".
>> So a human (you are human, all right?
>
> I look exactly as a human.  When you look at me, you will not be  
> able to
> know if I am a human or a zombie, because I behave exacly like a  
> human.

So you believe that human are not zombie, and you agree that you are  
not human.
Where do you come from? Vega? Centaur?

>
>
>> ) who says "I am a zombie", means
>> "I am not conscious", which can mean "I am not consistent".
>> By Gödel's second theorem, you remain consistent(*), but you loose
>> arithmetical soundness, which is quite coherent with your
>> ultrafinitism. If I remember well, you don't believe that there is an
>> infinity of natural numbers, right?
>>
>
> Yes it is right.  There is no infinity of natural numbers.  But the
> natural numbers are UNLIMITED, you can construct as many natural  
> numbers
> as you want.  But how many numbers you construct, the number of  
> numbers
> will always be finite.  You can never construct an infinite number of
> natural numbers.

This is no more ultrafinitism. Just the usal finitism or intuitionism.  
It seems I recall you have had a stronger view on this point.
Ontologically I am neutral on this question. With comp I don't need  
any actual infinity in the third person ontology. Infinities are not  
avoidable from inside, at least when the inside view begins some self-
reflexion studies.

>
>
>> We knew already you are not arithmetically sound.  Nevertheless it is
>> amazing that you pretend that you are a zombie. This confirms, in the
>> lobian frame, that you are a zombie. I doubt all ultrafinitists are
>> zombie, though.
>>
>> It is coherent with what I tell you before: I don't think a real
>> ultrafinitist can know he/she is an ultrafinitist. No more than a
>> zombie can know he is a zombie, nor even give any meaning to a word
>> like "zombie".
>>
>> My diagnostic: you are a consistent, but arithmetically unsound,
>> Löbian machine. No problem.
>>
>
> An ordinary computer can never be arithmetically unsound.

? (this seems to me plainly false, unless you mean "perfect" for  
"ordinary". But computers can be as unsound as you and me.
There is no vaccine against soundness: all computers can be unsound  
soo or later. there is no perfect computer. Most gods are no immune,  
you have to postulate the big unnameable One and be very near to It,  
to have some guaranty ... if any ...






> So I am not
> arithmetically unsound.  I am build by a finite number of atoms, and  
> the
> atoms are build by a finite number of elementary parts.  (And these
> elementary parts are just finite mathematics...)

The inconsistency of this follows from the seven step. You are always  
under the spell of the galois Connexion between what you can be here  
and now and the space of possibilities there and elsewhere.
The more you are 3-finite, the more you are 1-infinite.
That is why you are quite coherent by saying that you are a zombie.  
Zombies lack first personhood.

>
>
>> There are not many zombies around me, still fewer argue that they are
>> zombie, so I have some questions for you, if I may.
>>
>> 1) Do you still answer yes to the doctor if he proposes to substitute
>> your brain by a sponge?
>>
>
> If the sponge behaves exactly in the same way as my current brain,  
> then
> it will be OK.

Why do you care about you behavior? This remains unclear for me.
Well, you will tell me that you behave like if you were caring, but  
that you don't really care ...


>
>
>> 2) Do humans have the right to torture zombie?
>>
>
> Does an ordinary computer have the "right" to do anything?


I don't think a computer has the right to cross a red stop, nor does a  
computer have the right to smoke salvia in my country. Now that you  
ask, I am not sure. If I am arrest for having some cannabis with me, I  
will tell the police that it is for the my computer :)



>
>
> I do not want to be tortured, I behave as if I try to avoid that as
> strongly as I can.  Because I behave in this way, I answer "no" to  
> your
> question, because that answer will decrease the probability of you
> torturing me.

Do you realize that to defend your point you are always in the  
obligation, when talking about any first person notion, like  
consciousness, fear, desire, to add "I behave like ....". But if you  
can do that successfully you will make me doubt that you are a zombie.
Or ... do you think a zombie could eventually find a correct theory of  
consciousness, so that he can correctly fake consciousness, and delude  
the humans?

>
>
>> 3) Do you have any "sort-of" feeling, insight, dreams, impression,
>> sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ?
>>
>
> I behave as if I have "sort-of" feelings, I behave as if I have
> insights, I behave as if I have dreams, I behave as if I have
> impressions, I behave as if I have sensations, I behave as if I have a
> subjective or mental life, ...

As I said. But if you know that, I mean if you can behave like if you  
were knowing that, it would mean that such words do have some meaning  
for you.

How can you know that you are not conscious? Why do you behave like if  
you are conscious, and then "confess" to us that you are not. Why  
don't you behave like if you were not conscious. Should not a zombie  
defend the idea that he is conscious, if he behaves like if he was  
conscious.

>
>
>> 4) Does the word "pain" have a meaning for you? In particular, what  
>> if
>> the doctor, who does not know that you are a zombie, proposes to  
>> you a
>> cheaper artificial brain, but warning you that it produces often
>> unpleasant hard migraine? Still saying yes?
>>
>
> No, I will say "no" in this case, because I avoid things that causes
> "pain".  I have an "avoiding center" in my brain, and when this center
> in my brain is stimulated, then my behavior will be to avoid those
> things that causes this center to be stimulated.  Stimulating this
> center will cause me to say: "I feel pain".

This is coherent, but hardly believable. It does not fit with the  
known pathologies of consciousness.
Glad to meet a zombie who believes that humans are not zombie, but I  
continue to think that a real complete zombie would argue (falsely)  
that he is conscious. You are the first  zombie who wants to be  
recognize as a zombie. It is very paradoxical, you have to acknowledge  
some understanding of what it means to be "conscious", for pretending  
you are not. It is less boring that the many I met in my youth who  
were pretending the word "conscious" has no meaning at all.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Stephen Paul King-2]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

Hi Bruno,

 

    I came upon the idea after considering how is it that the notion of an "objective reality" when we know for a fact that all of our knowledge does not come from any kind of direct contact with an "objective reality", at best it is infered. Leibniz' Monadology can be considered as a way to think of this idea where each monad represents a 1-PoV. A synchronization of many such 1PoV, given some simple consistensy requirements, would in the large number limit lead to a notion of a "common world of experience". 

    The 3PoV would follow from a form of inversion or reflection of a 1PoV. For example, we form thoughts of or fellow humans from our own experiences of ourselves. BTW: it seems to me that consciousness, at least, requires some form of dynamic self- modeling process. This implies that there is no such a thing as a static consciousness.

    Re the UD Measure problem: The idea i have is that we either have our infinity within each Monad or try to find a way to derive a measure of the infinity without reference to the only source of definiteness that we have available: our conscious experience.

 

Onward!

 

Stephen

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: marchal@...

To: everything-list@...

Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 6:23 PM

Subject: Re: Consciousness is information?

On 05 May 2009, at 20:13, Stephen Paul King wrote:

Hi Bruno and Members,

 

    The comment that is made below seems to only involve a single consciousness and an exterior "reality". Could we not recover a very similar situation if we consider the 1-PoV and 3-PoV relation to hold to some degree over a multitude of consciouness (plurality). In the plurality case, the "objective doubtful but sharable possible reality" would be composed of a large intersection of sorts of 3-PoV aspects that can be recognized by or mapped to a statistical or generic notion of a 1-PoV. No?

Yes. May be. Why? You need something like that for the first person plural, but you have to extract it in some precise way for solving the UD measure problem. You could elaborate perhaps.

Bruno

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[Torgny Tholerus]

Bruno Marchal skrev:

> On 07 May 2009, at 18:29, Torgny Tholerus wrote:
>
>  
>> Bruno Marchal skrev:
>>    
>>
>>> you are human, all right?
>>>      
>> I look exactly as a human.  When you look at me, you will not be  
>> able to know if I am a human or a zombie, because I behave exacly like a  
>> human.
>>    
> So you believe that human are not zombie, and you agree that you are  
> not human.
> Where do you come from? Vega? Centaur?
>  

I come from Stockholm, Sweden.  I was constructed by my parents.  In
reality I think that all humans are zombies, but because I am a polite
person, I do not tell the other zombies that they are zombies.  I do not
want to hurt the other zombies by telling them the truth.

>> Yes it is right.  There is no infinity of natural numbers.  But the
>> natural numbers are UNLIMITED, you can construct as many natural  
>> numbers as you want.  But how many numbers you construct, the number of  
>> numbers will always be finite.  You can never construct an infinite number of
>> natural numbers.
>>    
> This is no more ultrafinitism. Just the usal finitism or intuitionism.  
> It seems I recall you have had a stronger view on this point.
> Ontologically I am neutral on this question. With comp I don't need  
> any actual infinity in the third person ontology. Infinities are not  
> avoidable from inside, at least when the inside view begins some self-
> reflexion studies.
>  

I was an ultrafinitist before, but I have changed my mind.  Now I accept
that you can say that the natural numbers are unlimited.  I only deny
actual infinities.  The set of all natural numbers are always finite,
but you can always increase the set of all natural number by adding more
natural numbers to it.

>> An ordinary computer can never be arithmetically unsound.
>>    
> ? (this seems to me plainly false, unless you mean "perfect" for  
> "ordinary". But computers can be as unsound as you and me.
> There is no vaccine against soundness: all computers can be unsound  
> soo or later. there is no perfect computer. Most gods are no immune,  
> you have to postulate the big unnameable One and be very near to It,  
> to have some guaranty ... if any ...
>  

OK, I misunderstood what you meant by "unsound", I thougth you meant
something like "unlogical".  But now I see that you mean something like
"irrational".  And I sure am irrational.

>
>> I do not want to be tortured, I behave as if I try to avoid that as
>> strongly as I can.  Because I behave in this way, I answer "no" to  
>> your question, because that answer will decrease the probability of you
>> torturing me.
>>    
> Do you realize that to defend your point you are always in the  
> obligation, when talking about any first person notion, like  
> consciousness, fear, desire, to add "I behave like ....". But if you  
> can do that successfully you will make me doubt that you are a zombie.
> Or ... do you think a zombie could eventually find a correct theory of  
> consciousness, so that he can correctly fake consciousness, and delude  
> the humans?
>  

An intelligent zombie can correctly fake consciousness, and I am an
intelligent zombie.

>>> 3) Do you have any "sort-of" feeling, insight, dreams, impression,
>>> sensations, subjective or mental life, ... ?
>>>      
>> I behave as if I have "sort-of" feelings, I behave as if I have
>> insights, I behave as if I have dreams, I behave as if I have
>> impressions, I behave as if I have sensations, I behave as if I have a
>> subjective or mental life, ...
>>    
> As I said. But if you know that, I mean if you can behave like if you  
> were knowing that, it would mean that such words do have some meaning  
> for you.
>
> How can you know that you are not conscious? Why do you behave like if  
> you are conscious, and then "confess" to us that you are not. Why  
> don't you behave like if you were not conscious. Should not a zombie  
> defend the idea that he is conscious, if he behaves like if he was  
> conscious.

If you ask me if I am conscious, I will reply "yes".  But I am so
intelligent that I can look at myself from the outside, and then I
understand why I behave like I do.  I can see that all my behaviour is
explained by chemical reactions in my brain, and there is no more than
that.  So when I talk about myself on the meta level, then I can say
that I have no consciousness.  But most people are not intelligent
enough to realize that.

--
Torgny Tholerus

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