Consciousness is information?

[Kelly Harmon]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:30 AM, Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...> wrote:
>
> On the contrary, I think it does.  First, I think Chalmers idea that
> vitalists recognized that all that needed explaining was structure and
> function is revisionist history.  They were looking for the animating
> spirit.  It is in hind sight, having found the function and structure,
> that we've realized that was all the explanation available.

Hmmm.  I'm not familiar enough with the history of this to argue one
way or the other.  A quick read through the wikipedia article on
vitalism, and some light googling, left me with the impression that
most of the argument centered around function.  And also the
difference between organic and inorganic chemical compounds.

Though to the extent that there was something being debated beyond
structure and function, I think that Chalmers makes a good point here:

> There is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of
> life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and
> indeed there never was.

I'm highlighting the parenthetical "leaving aside consciousness itself".

SO.  Dennett makes one claim.  Chalmers makes what I thought was a
pretty good rebuttal.  I've never seen a counter-response from Dennett
on this point, and it's not a historical topic that I know much about.
 Do you have some special expertise, or a good source that overturns
Chalmers rebuttal?

Though, comparing what people thought about an entirely different
topic 150 years ago to this topic now seems like a clever debating
point, but otherwise of iffy relevance.


> We will eventually
> be able to make robots that behave as humans do and we will infer, from
> their behavior, that they are conscious.

What about robots (or non-embodied computer programs) that are equally
complex but (for whatever design reasons) don't exhibit any
"human-like" behaviors?  Will we "infer" that they are conscious?  How
will we know which types of complex systems are conscious and which
aren't?  What is the marker?

We'll just "know it when we see it"?  If so, it's only because we have
definite knowledge of our own conscious experience, and we're looking
for behaviors that we can "empathize" with.  But is empathy reliable?
It's certainly exploitable...Kismet for example.  So it can generate
false positives, but what might it also miss?


> And we, being their designers,
> will be able to analyze them and say, "Here's what makes R2D2 have
> conscious experiences of visual perception and here's what makes 3CPO
> have self awareness relative to humans."

I would agree that we could say something definite about the
functional aspects, but not about any experiential aspects.  Those
would have to be taken on faith.  For all we know, R2D2 might have a
case of blindsight AND Anton-Babinski syndrome...in which case he
would react to visual data but have no conscious experience of what he
saw (blindsight), BUT would claim that he did experience it
(Anton-Babinksi)!


> We will find that there are
> many different kinds of "conscious" and we will be able to invent new
> ones.

How would we know that we had actually invented new ones?  What is it
like to be a robo-Bat?


> We will never "solve" Chalmers hard problem, we'll just realize
> it's a non-question.

Maybe.  Time will tell.  But even if we all agree that it's a
non-question, that wouldn't necessarily mean that we'd be correct in
doing so.

>>
>> Well, here's where it gets tricky.  Conscious experience is associated
>> with information.
>
> I think that's the point in question.  However, we all agree that
> consciousness is associated with, can be identified by, certain
> behavior.  So to say that physical systems are too representationally
> ambiguous seems to me to beg the question.  It is based on assuming that
> consciousness is information and since the physical representation of
> information is ambiguous it is inferred that physical representations
> aren't enough for consciousness.  But  going back to the basis: Is
> behavior ambiguous?  Sure it is - yet we rely in it to identify
> consciousness (at least if you don't believe in philosophical
> zombies).   I think the significant point is that consciousness is an
> attribute of behavior that is relative to an environment.
>

So I think the possibility (conceivability?) of conscious computer
simulations is what throws a kink into this line of thought.

I'll quote Hans Moravec here:

"A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
logic of the program, which defines the ``laws of physics'' of the
simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html

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[Kelly Harmon]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
> I agree with your critic of "consciousness = information". This is "not
> even wrong",

Ouch!  Et tu, Bruno???


> and Kelly should define what he means by "information" so
> that we could see what he really means.

Okay, okay!  I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but you've backed
me into a corner.  (ha!)

I'll come up with a definition and post it asap.

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[Alberto G. Corona]

That is also my case. I wonder how the materialist hypothesis has
advanced in a plausible explanation of consciousness, and I think that
this is the right path, and I follow it. But at the deep level, my
subjective experience tells me that I must remain dualist.

I think however that for evolutionary purposes, the consciousness,
being designed by natural selection for keeping an accurate picture of
how the others see us, must naturally reject a materialist explanation
because this is not an accurate picture. The other people do not see
us as a piece of evolved mechanisms, but as moral beings. An adaptive
self must be, and is, fiercely dualist, with a strong notion of self
autonomy and unit of purpose. So all of us feel that way when not
thinking about that.

Thus, maybe if ever a robot is made to simulate our behavior must
incorporate an inner rejection of materialist explanation about the
nature of his higher level circuits, and a vivid notion of subjective
experience. That is not difficult at a certain level of technology, to
create a central “self” module that receives the filtered, relevant
information, plus information of the commands and actions of other
decision modules. This self module must be capable of "inventing" (and
that´s the tricky thing) a self centered, socially plausible, moral
history that link together such perceptions and such actions. Then,
when someone ask him "do you have subjective experience, qualia and so
on" the robot will answer, “of cause, yes, I have a very strong
sensation of unity of mind, perception and I´m a moral subject capable
of self determination”.  Otherwise, he will be inconsistent or non
functional as human simulation.

By the way, the role of the self process as a creator of self centered
histories that are credible for the rest of us, that tend to show a
favorable moral image of the self has been checked in different
experiments, especially with lobotomized people (that invent two
different histories of the same perception-action in each hemisphere).
It also explains many mental disorders: compulsive liars and crazy
overhyped egos made of fantastic histories (reincarnations of
Napoleon) for example. It also explains many effects in social life of
sane people. How hard is to achieve objectivity, for example?


On May 18, 4:50 am, Kelly Harmon <harmon...@...> wrote:

> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@...> wrote:
>
> >> Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily caused
> >> by physical systems.  I think that sometimes physical systems assume
> >> configurations that "shadow", or represent, our conscious experience.
> >> But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience.
>
> > So if we could track the functions of the brain at a fine enough scale,
> > we'd see physical events that didn't have physical causes (ones that
> > were caused by mental events?).
>
> No, no, no.  I'm not saying that at all.  Ultimately I'm saying that
> if there is a physical world, it's irrelevant to consciousness.
> Consciousness is information.  Physical systems can be interpreted as
> representing, or "storing", information, but that act of "storage"
> isn't what gives rise to conscious experience.
>
>
>
> > You're aware of course that the same things were said about the
> > physio/chemical bases of life.
>
> You mentioned that point before, as I recall.  Dennett made a similar
> argument against Chalmers, to which Chalmers had what I thought was an
> effective response:
>
> -------http://consc.net/papers/moving.html
>
> Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to
> deflate the "hard problem" by using analogies to other domains, where
> talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a
> vitalist arguing about the hard problem of "life", or a neuroscientist
> arguing about the hard problem of "perception". Similarly, Paul
> Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying
> about the hard problem of "light", and Patricia Churchland brings up
> an analogy involving "heat". In all these cases, we are to suppose,
> someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than
> structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them
> wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better.
>
> This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out
> that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the
> whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is that
> there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and
> problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments
> in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as
> something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or
> less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at
> least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be
> hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued
> otherwise.
>
> When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious
> that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a
> living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment? How
> does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point:
> their driving question was always "How could a mere physical system
> perform these complex functions?", not "Why are these functions
> accompanied by life?" It is no accident that Dennett's version of a
> vitalist is "imaginary". There is no distinct "hard problem" of life,
> and there never was one, even for vitalists.
>
> In general, when faced with the challenge "explain X", we need to ask:
> what are the phenomena in the vicinity of X that need explaining, and
> how might we explain them? In the case of life, what cries out for
> explanation are such phenomena as reproduction, adaptation,
> metabolism, self-sustenance, and so on: all complex functions. There
> is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of
> life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and
> indeed there never was. In the case of consciousness, on the other
> hand, the manifest phenomena that need explaining are such things as
> discrimination, reportability, integration (the functions), and
> experience. So this analogy does not even get off the ground.
>
> ------
>
> >> Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical system
> >> going through a sequence of these representations is what produces
> >> human behavior.
>
> > So you're saying that a sequence of physical representations is enough
> > to produce behavior.
>
> Right, observed behavior.  What I'm saying here is that it seems
> obvious to me that mechanistic computation is sufficient to explain
> observed human behavior.  If that was the only thing that needed
> explaining, we'd be done.  Mission accomplished.
>
> BUT...there's subjective experience that also needs explained, and
> this is actually the first question that needs answered.  All other
> answers are suspect until subjective experience has been explained.
>
> > And there must be conscious experience associated
> > with behavior.
>
> Well, here's where it gets tricky.  Conscious experience is associated
> with information.  But how information is tied to physical systems is
> a different question.  Any physical systems can be interpreted as
> representing all sorts of things (again, back to Putnam and Searle,
> one-time pads, Maudlin's Olympia example, Bruno's movie graph
> argument, rocks implementing every FSA, Stathis's birds and trees, and
> triviality attacks on functionalism).
>
> > That seems to me to imply that physical representations
> > are enough to produce consciousness.
>
> The problem is that physical "representations" are everywhere.  The
> problem is coming up with a non-arbitrary way of deciding when a
> physical system represents something that's conscious and when it
> doesn't.
>
> Physical systems are too representationally promiscuous!
>
> Which leads me to abandon physicalism/materialism for idealism.

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Kelly Harmon wrote:
> ...
> So I think the possibility (conceivability?) of conscious computer
> simulations is what throws a kink into this line of thought.
>  

No, that's why I wrote "...relative to an environment".  In Moravec's
thought experiment the consciousness is relative to simulation.  From
outside it might many entirely different interpretations, like the stone
that calculates everything.

Brent

> I'll quote Hans Moravec here:
>
> "A simulated world hosting a simulated person can be a closed
> self-contained entity. It might exist as a program on a computer
> processing data quietly in some dark corner, giving no external hint
> of the joys and pains, successes and frustrations of the person
> inside. Inside the simulation events unfold according to the strict
> logic of the program, which defines the ``laws of physics'' of the
> simulation. The inhabitant might, by patient experimentation and
> inference, deduce some representation of the simulation laws, but not
> the nature or even existence of the simulating computer. The
> simulation's internal relationships would be the same if the program
> were running correctly on any of an endless variety of possible
> computers, slowly, quickly, intermittently, or even backwards and
> forwards in time, with the data stored as charges on chips, marks on a
> tape, or pulses in a delay line, with the simulation's numbers
> represented in binary, decimal, or Roman numerals, compactly or spread
> widely across the machine. There is no limit, in principle, on how
> indirect the relationship between simulation and simulated can be."
>
> http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html
>
>  

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 19 May 2009, at 10:13, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>> I agree with your critic of "consciousness = information". This is  
>> "not
>> even wrong",
>
> Ouch!  Et tu, Bruno???


Apology. I was a bit rude.



>
>
>
>> and Kelly should define what he means by "information" so
>> that we could see what he really means.
>
> Okay, okay!  I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but you've backed
> me into a corner.  (ha!)

OK OK. I am glad you are not KO :)


>
>
> I'll come up with a definition and post it asap.

After the corner, the terrible trap .... I am curious about what you  
will say. The concept of information is more tricky than randomness,  
meaning and infinity all together. To relate it with consciousness?  
This makes sense. This makes too much sense ... I think, and that is  
the problem.

Bruno

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




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[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Alberto,

On 19 May 2009, at 11:37, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

>
> That is also my case. I wonder how the materialist hypothesis has
> advanced in a plausible explanation of consciousness, and I think that
> this is the right path, and I follow it. But at the deep level, my
> subjective experience tells me that I must remain dualist.

I am glad you are not an eliminative materialist. But you tell us that  
you remain a weak-materialist? You believe there is a primary physical  
or material world, and that physics is the fundamental science. OK?
The point of most of my posts here is to explain this does not work,  
at least once we accept the computationalist hypothesis in the  
cognitive science.



>
>
> I think however that for evolutionary purposes, the consciousness,
> being designed by natural selection for keeping an accurate picture of
> how the others see us, must naturally reject a materialist explanation
> because this is not an accurate picture.

You mean "must reject eliminative materialism". I agree with you. All  
sentient beings do that naturally.



> The other people do not see
> us as a piece of evolved mechanisms, but as moral beings.

As person, yes.



> An adaptive
> self must be, and is, fiercely dualist, with a strong notion of self
> autonomy and unit of purpose. So all of us feel that way when not
> thinking about that.

Why dualist? Well, I do agree even animals feel themselves implicitly  
dualist, they believe they are hungry and that food exist. They does  
not reflect much on the difference between the appearance of  
substantial food and they first person hungriness.
But comp forces us to abandon weak materialism, like I think most of  
the greek and Indian philosophers already did intuit. The appearance  
of matter is appearance of something else. The days I believe in comp,  
I feel myself fiercely monist: I believe, those days, that matter is a  
construction of the mind. Not the human mind, but the universal  
machines mind. UDA is an argument showing that the current  
paradigmatic chain MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS => NUMBER is reversed: with  
comp I can explain too you in details (it is long) that the chain  
should be NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER. Some agree already that  
it could be NUMBER => MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS, and this indeed is more  
locally obvious, yet I pretend that comp forces eventually the  
complete reversal.
Here I agree with Kelly, and probably some others: idealism, or  
spiritual/mental/informational/number-theoretical monism is where we  
go, and have to go, once we bet we can survive with a digital brain. I  
don't pretend this is obvious, but I have an argument, called UDA. It  
is a constructive argument, it shows how to explicitly derive the  
physical laws from a theory of mind (computer science), so that we can  
test comp empirically, by comparing the physics from comp and the  
physics from usual observation of our neighborhood. Would the world  
still look Newtonian, I would never dare to suggest that comp is  
possible. Thanks to QM, the possibility of comp remains. (And QM's MWI  
prevent comp from solipsism, in case you worried).

>
>
> Thus, maybe if ever a robot is made to simulate our behavior must
> incorporate an inner rejection of materialist explanation about the
> nature of his higher level circuits, and a vivid notion of subjective
> experience.

Note that even physicalist explanations are more and more  
mathematical, and does never really refer to metaphysical materialism.  
But such beliefs lives in the background, and when defended leads  
often to eliminativism (of person), or dualism, which are rarely  
intelligible, or epiphenomenalism, where consciousness loss its grip  
to reality.





> That is not difficult at a certain level of technology, to
> create a central “self” module that receives the filtered, relevant
> information, plus information of the commands and actions of other
> decision modules. This self module must be capable of "inventing" (and
> that´s the tricky thing) a self centered, socially plausible, moral
> history that link together such perceptions and such actions.


In our case, we can bet we belong to deep computational histories,  
which give serious hints.



> Then,
> when someone ask him "do you have subjective experience, qualia and so
> on" the robot will answer, “of cause, yes, I have a very strong
> sensation of unity of mind, perception and I´m a moral subject capable
> of self determination”.  Otherwise, he will be inconsistent or non
> functional as human simulation.

This is a bit tautological, but OK.

>
>
> By the way, the role of the self process as a creator of self centered
> histories that are credible for the rest of us, that tend to show a
> favorable moral image of the self has been checked in different
> experiments, especially with lobotomized people (that invent two
> different histories of the same perception-action in each hemisphere).
> It also explains many mental disorders: compulsive liars and crazy
> overhyped egos made of fantastic histories (reincarnations of
> Napoleon) for example. It also explains many effects in social life of
> sane people. How hard is to achieve objectivity, for example?

Right. I agree here. And objectivity exists only as far as we can  
doubt it, by being clear o sharable hypotheses and questions, so that  
all person can confirm the theories locally or refute it globally. OK.

I think Kelly's point is a defense of monism, but idealist monism, not  
materialist monism. (Kelly: correct me if I was wrong). I think that  
if we accept the computationalist hypothesis, we must indeed abandon  
materialism, even weak materialism: the metaphysical doctrine of the  
material ontological commitment.  (some people are "religious" about  
that!)
Substantial matter can subsist, but it looses all explanatory powers,  
because it appears to be a reification of a projection of infinities  
of computations or number relations (or combinators relation , or  
relations on any finite concepts as rich as numbers you want to use)  
as "seen", observed, betted, etc.  by the machine/numbers/finite  
entities themselves.

Bruno

>
>
>
> On May 18, 4:50 am, Kelly Harmon <harmon...@...> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Brent Meeker  
>> <meeke...@...> wrote:
>>
>>>> Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily  
>>>> caused
>>>> by physical systems.  I think that sometimes physical systems  
>>>> assume
>>>> configurations that "shadow", or represent, our conscious  
>>>> experience.
>>>> But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience.
>>
>>> So if we could track the functions of the brain at a fine enough  
>>> scale,
>>> we'd see physical events that didn't have physical causes (ones that
>>> were caused by mental events?).
>>
>> No, no, no.  I'm not saying that at all.  Ultimately I'm saying that
>> if there is a physical world, it's irrelevant to consciousness.
>> Consciousness is information.  Physical systems can be interpreted as
>> representing, or "storing", information, but that act of "storage"
>> isn't what gives rise to conscious experience.
>>
>>
>>
>>> You're aware of course that the same things were said about the
>>> physio/chemical bases of life.
>>
>> You mentioned that point before, as I recall.  Dennett made a similar
>> argument against Chalmers, to which Chalmers had what I thought was  
>> an
>> effective response:
>>
>> -------http://consc.net/papers/moving.html
>>
>> Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to
>> deflate the "hard problem" by using analogies to other domains, where
>> talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a
>> vitalist arguing about the hard problem of "life", or a  
>> neuroscientist
>> arguing about the hard problem of "perception". Similarly, Paul
>> Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying
>> about the hard problem of "light", and Patricia Churchland brings up
>> an analogy involving "heat". In all these cases, we are to suppose,
>> someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than
>> structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them
>> wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better.
>>
>> This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out
>> that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the
>> whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is  
>> that
>> there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and
>> problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments
>> in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as
>> something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or
>> less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at
>> least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be
>> hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued
>> otherwise.
>>
>> When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious
>> that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a
>> living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment?  
>> How
>> does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point:
>> their driving question was always "How could a mere physical system
>> perform these complex functions?", not "Why are these functions
>> accompanied by life?" It is no accident that Dennett's version of a
>> vitalist is "imaginary". There is no distinct "hard problem" of life,
>> and there never was one, even for vitalists.
>>
>> In general, when faced with the challenge "explain X", we need to  
>> ask:
>> what are the phenomena in the vicinity of X that need explaining, and
>> how might we explain them? In the case of life, what cries out for
>> explanation are such phenomena as reproduction, adaptation,
>> metabolism, self-sustenance, and so on: all complex functions. There
>> is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of
>> life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and
>> indeed there never was. In the case of consciousness, on the other
>> hand, the manifest phenomena that need explaining are such things as
>> discrimination, reportability, integration (the functions), and
>> experience. So this analogy does not even get off the ground.
>>
>> ------
>>
>>>> Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical system
>>>> going through a sequence of these representations is what produces
>>>> human behavior.
>>
>>> So you're saying that a sequence of physical representations is  
>>> enough
>>> to produce behavior.
>>
>> Right, observed behavior.  What I'm saying here is that it seems
>> obvious to me that mechanistic computation is sufficient to explain
>> observed human behavior.  If that was the only thing that needed
>> explaining, we'd be done.  Mission accomplished.
>>
>> BUT...there's subjective experience that also needs explained, and
>> this is actually the first question that needs answered.  All other
>> answers are suspect until subjective experience has been explained.
>>
>>> And there must be conscious experience associated
>>> with behavior.
>>
>> Well, here's where it gets tricky.  Conscious experience is  
>> associated
>> with information.  But how information is tied to physical systems is
>> a different question.  Any physical systems can be interpreted as
>> representing all sorts of things (again, back to Putnam and Searle,
>> one-time pads, Maudlin's Olympia example, Bruno's movie graph
>> argument, rocks implementing every FSA, Stathis's birds and trees,  
>> and
>> triviality attacks on functionalism).
>>
>>> That seems to me to imply that physical representations
>>> are enough to produce consciousness.
>>
>> The problem is that physical "representations" are everywhere.  The
>> problem is coming up with a non-arbitrary way of deciding when a
>> physical system represents something that's conscious and when it
>> doesn't.
>>
>> Physical systems are too representationally promiscuous!
>>
>> Which leads me to abandon physicalism/materialism for idealism.
> >

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




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[Alberto G. Corona]

Hi Bruno

On May 19, 7:37 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:
> ....... UDA is an argument showing that the current  
> paradigmatic chain MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS => NUMBER is reversed: with  
> comp I can explain too you in details (it is long) that the chain  
> should be NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER. Some agree already that  
> it could be NUMBER => MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS, and this indeed is more  
> locally obvious, yet I pretend that comp forces eventually the  
> complete reversal.

Do you have any reference where this is developed?
I try to be as close to facts as possible, and the most plausible
explanation for me, trough natural selection, is that consciousness is
a processing device made by natural selection as an adaptation to the
physical environment, social environment included.  So I support
matter-> consciousness. Dualism is the result of my subjective
experience, and my subjective experience is  the most objective fact
that I can reach.

I cannot support this Kantian notion consciousness -> matter.

The final words that I can say about the "hard problem" of
consciousness is that any conversation with a robot, with the self-
module that  I described in the previous post, will give answers about
qualia indistinguisable from the answers of any of you. He would
indeed doubt about if you are indeed robots and he is the only
conscious being on earth.  Just as any of you may think.

Its self module would not say "I perceive the green as green" because
he has this as an standard answer, like a fake Turing test program,
but because it can zoom in the details of every leaf, grass etc and
verify that the range of ligh frecuencies are in the range of
frequencias that  a computer programmer assigned  to green and a
trainer later told him to call it "green".  He even can have its own
philosophical theories about qualia, the self etc. He even may ask
himself about the origins of moral  and self determination, and even
all of this may force him to believe in God.  So we must conclude that
he have its own qualia and all the attributes of consciousness. in no
less degree  than I could believe in yours.
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[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Alberto,

On 20 May 2009, at 13:08, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

On May 19, 7:37 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:

....... UDA is an argument showing that the current  

paradigmatic chain MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS => NUMBER is reversed: with  

comp I can explain too you in details (it is long) that the chain  

should be NUMBER => CONSCIOUSNESS => MATTER. Some agree already that  

it could be NUMBER => MATTER => CONSCIOUSNESS, and this indeed is more  

locally obvious, yet I pretend that comp forces eventually the  

complete reversal.

Do you have any reference where this is developed?

I have often explain UDA on this list. There is a very older version in 15 steps, and a more recent in 8 steps.

You could search in the archive of this list.

Or look at my Sane04 paper:

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

You can print the slides. I refer now often to UDA-i with i from 0 to 8, which are the main step of the reasoning.     PDF slide

UDA is for Universal Dovetailer Argument. The UD provides a concrete base for a reasoning in line with the "everything" "or many worlder" open minded philosophy common on this list, especially for the "relativist" one (where proba are always conditional).

UDA is provably available to Universal (in the theoretical computer science sense of Post, Turing, Kleene, Church, ... " machine, which leads to a machine version of UDA: AUDA (Arithmetical UDA).

UDA is mainly an argument showing that, assuming comp, the mind body problem reduce to the body problem. 

And AUDA shows a natural path to extract the solution of the body problem by that "interview" of the universal machine.

Much older versions are in French (my PhD actually, and more older paper). See my URL. 

I try to be as close to facts as possible, and the most plausible
explanation for me, trough natural selection, is that consciousness is
a processing device made by natural selection as an adaptation to the
physical environment, social environment included.  

This is plausible for most of the human and animal part of consciousness. It is a reasonable local description. But globally a dual version of this has the advantage of explaining how nature itself evolves, from sort of "competition and selection" of pieces of machine dreams, which are "easy" to define in arithmetic (assuming comp ...).

It is normal that comp depends on the many non trivial results in computer science. A universal machine is itself a rather non obvious notion.

So I support
matter-> consciousness.

I could explain why it has to look locally that way, but it can not work in the big picture, unless you make both matter and mind, not just infinite, but very highly infinite ... (just read UDA, I think I have make progress through those explanation on the list).

Dualism is the result of my subjective
experience,

I doubt this can be. I would say it is a result of your experience together with a bet (instinctive or/and rational) in a independent reality.

you cannot experience the independent reality. You can experience only the dependent reality, but not as a dependent one, for this you need to bet on the independent one. What makes this diificult is that we make that bet instinctively since birth and beyond.

and my subjective experience is  the most objective fact
that I can reach.

I see what you mean, but the subjective experience, although real and true, and undoubtable, is subjective. It exists as far as you cannot prove to an other that it exists.  To communicate you have to bet on tools and on others, and other many doubtable (yet plausible) mind constructions.

I cannot support this Kantian notion consciousness -> matter.

The problem is that if you are ready to attribute consciousness to a device, by its virtue of simulating digitally a conscious brain at some correct level of description, you will be forced to attribute that consciousness to an infinity of computations already defined by the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers (by UDA). A quasi direct consequence is that if a machine look at herself below its substitution level, it will build indirect evidences of a flux of many (a continuum) of computational histories (a typical quantum feature, I mean for QM without wave collapse). But comp forces the structure of those many realities (or dreams) to be determined by specifiable number theoretical relations.  Those relations are either extensional relations (like in number theory), or intensional relations (like in computer science, where number can also points toward other numbers, and effective set of numbers). It makes computationalism testable. The genral shape of QM confirm it, but cosmogenesis remains troubling ...

The final words that I can say about the "hard problem" of
consciousness is that any conversation with a robot, with the self-
module that  I described in the previous post, will give answers about
qualia indistinguisable from the answers of any of you. He would
indeed doubt about if you are indeed robots and he is the only
conscious being on earth.  Just as any of you may think.

Its self module would not say "I perceive the green as green" because
he has this as an standard answer, like a fake Turing test program,
but because it can zoom in the details of every leaf, grass etc and
verify that the range of ligh frecuencies are in the range of
frequencias that  a computer programmer assigned  to green and a
trainer later told him to call it "green".  He even can have its own
philosophical theories about qualia, the self etc. He even may ask
himself about the origins of moral  and self determination, and even
all of this may force him to believe in God.  So we must conclude that
he have its own qualia and all the attributes of consciousness. in no
less degree  than I could believe in yours.

A priori I have no problem, although I could pretend you have solved only the easy problem. 

The hard problem is: why do *we* (and not just a robot)  have those qualia, if robot can have the same talk and behavior? You have still to explain the nature of the qualia, and why we have to experience them, given that a mechanical explanation seems to make them unnecessary, especially if you invoke Darwinian natural selection. And then, by UDA you have to (re)explain what is matter and how to relate them with the qualia. Eventually matter will appear to be a sort of sharable qualia (or comp is false).

I do appreciate your willingness of not treating a self-referentially correct machine as a zombie, but providing a machine with the correct behavior and the relevant discourse does not yet explain the *meaning* of those discourses. Some could argue that on the contrary it makes those meaning illusory.  Theories remains to be done, and if something is true and unexplainable, this has to be justified too. Amazingly  you can extract both the communicable and incommunicable part of that discourse from an interview of the machine , and this has  already be done (thanks to Gödel Post Turing ... and computer science/logic). It is the AUDA part: the (admittedly rough, concerning only ideally correct machines) translation of UDA in the language of a universal machine, like (Peano) Arithmetic.

And given that physics is testable, this makes comp testable (well in AUDA the definition of the internal points of view are debatable, and better solution could be imaginable, I have used the old definition you can find in the Theaetetus of Plato. They work very well thanks to the subtleties of the Gödel-Löb self-reference logic.

UDA is easy (except the step 7 and 8 which asks for more work).

AUDA is difficult because you have to study Mathematical Logic to get the point, and Quantum Mechanics to believe it.

UDA+AUDA leads to McGuin Mysterianism, as explained and justified by the "betting, praying" machine. There is a gap of explanation, which can be justified almost completely from the first person point of view.  From the third person point of view there is no gap at all. Machines can already see this, and this should please you, if I understand you well.

Matter then play a special role in the dreams, especially those "collective dreams", but it is part of the dreams. We are in the number matrix, if you want a short description. My point is not that this is true, but that this is Popper-refutable. It is not a question of liking it or not, but of making the math and the experiments. All in all,  it makes many fundamental question less obvious that many think.

Bruno

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

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[Alberto G. Corona]

Hi Bruno.
Thanks for the link. As an physicist and computer researcher I have
knowledge of some of the fields involved in UDA, but at the first
sight I fear that I will have a hard time understanding it.


> > and my subjective experience is  the most objective fact
> > that I can reach.
> t
> I see what you mean, but the subjective experience, although real and  
> true, and undoubtable, is subjective. It exists as far as you cannot  
> prove to an other that it exists.  To communicate you have to bet on  
> tools and on others, and other many doubtable (yet plausible) mind  
> constructions.
>

Hence, qualia are subjective and , as such,  I cannot assure that you
have it. But I'm sure that you have it and therefore that my knowledge
of qualia is objective simply for one causal reason: natural
selection; Our brains, shaped by very similar genetic programs, share
the same architecture and therefore produce very similar
phemomenologies.

This follows of course if you admit matter-> mind (or better math-
>matter->mind)  and admit natural selection as the "entropic pump"
that creates structure and function (and computer structures) in
living beings. I know no other testable alternative.

>
>
> > I cannot support this Kantian notion consciousness -> matter.
>
> The problem is that if you are ready to attribute consciousness to a  
> device, by its virtue of simulating digitally a conscious brain at  
> some correct level of description, you will be forced to attribute  
> that consciousness to an infinity of computations already defined by  
> the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers (by UDA). A  
> quasi direct consequence is that if a machine look at herself below  
> its substitution level, it will build indirect evidences of a flux of  
> many (a continuum) of computational histories (a typical quantum  
> feature, I mean for QM without wave collapse). But comp forces the  
> structure of those many realities (or dreams) to be determined by  
> specifiable number theoretical relations.  Those relations are either  
> extensional relations (like in number theory), or intensional  
> relations (like in computer science, where number can also points  
> toward other numbers, and effective set of numbers). It makes  
> computationalism testable. The genral shape of QM confirm it, but  
> cosmogenesis remains troubling ...
>

I cannot understand this until I read your paper, but, just one
question ¿what is the nature of the process that reduces local entropy
(sculpt chaos, poetically speaking) so that in creates life and
intelligence starting from unanimated matter along the arrow of time?.
Is it of a mathematical nature; is it some general principle of
change? Is it natural selection with some additional principle? I just
want to know what your context in relation with mine is. Of course if
you support Mind-> matter -> math, then you mechanism for such
evolution should be quite different.

>
>
>
>
> > The final words that I can say about the "hard problem" of
> > consciousness is that any conversation with a robot, with the self-
> > module that  I described in the previous post, will give answers about
> > qualia indistinguisable from the answers of any of you. He would
> > indeed doubt about if you are indeed robots and he is the only
> > conscious being on earth.  Just as any of you may think.
>
> > Its self module would not say "I perceive the green as green" because
> > he has this as an standard answer, like a fake Turing test program,
> > but because it can zoom in the details of every leaf, grass etc and
> > verify that the range of ligh frecuencies are in the range of
> > frequencias that  a computer programmer assigned  to green and a
> > trainer later told him to call it "green".  He even can have its own
> > philosophical theories about qualia, the self etc. He even may ask
> > himself about the origins of moral  and self determination, and even
> > all of this may force him to believe in God.  So we must conclude that
> > he have its own qualia and all the attributes of consciousness. in no
> > less degree  than I could believe in yours.
>
> A priori I have no problem, although I could pretend you have solved  
> only the easy problem.
> The hard problem is: why do *we* (and not just a robot)  have those  
> qualia, if robot can have the same talk and behavior? You have still  
> to explain the nature of the qualia, and why we have to experience  
> them, given that a mechanical explanation seems to make them  
> unnecessary, especially if you invoke Darwinian natural selection. And  
> then, by UDA you have to (re)explain what is matter and how to relate  
> them with the qualia. Eventually matter will appear to be a sort of  
> sharable qualia (or comp is false).

Yes I said that this is all that I can say without pretending to solve
the problem. That is because the problem qualia is so interesting.
But in the absence of natural selection, as I said, I can not be sure
if you have such qualia. I cannot be sure either you are zombies or
not. In fact the main school of sociology , based on cultural
determinism, persist in the error of thinking that people of different
cultures have completely different qualia.

Yes, matter is a sort o sharable qualia, and the objectivity of
knowledge is assured by our common brain architecture (and this is the
base of evolutionary epistemologists notion of objectiveness) . The
mind perceive in a specie-specific way an external reality that has no
meaning without such brain processing.. In fact trees, persons, atoms
and so on are shared creations of our minds because they have an
adaptive/utilitarian nature. The external reality, at the deepest
level, may be just mathematical, so are our bodies. Mind maybe then
the process where the reification of matter from math occurs.

Then, math->mind-> matter. Has this last point of view something in
common with yours?

> I do appreciate your willingness of not treating a self-referentially  
> correct machine as a zombie, but providing a machine with the correct  
> behavior and the relevant discourse does not yet explain the *meaning*  
> of those discourses. Some could argue that on the contrary it makes  
> those meaning illusory.  Theories remains to be done, and if something  
> is true and unexplainable, this has to be justified too. Amazingly  
> you can extract both the communicable and incommunicable part of that  
> discourse from an interview of the machine , and this has  already be  
> done (thanks to Gödel Post Turing ... and computer science/logic). It  
> is the AUDA part: the (admittedly rough, concerning only ideally  
> correct machines) translation of UDA in the language of a universal  
> machine, like (Peano) Arithmetic.
> And given that physics is testable, this makes comp testable (well in  
> AUDA the definition of the internal points of view are debatable, and  
> better solution could be imaginable, I have used the old definition  
> you can find in the Theaetetus of Plato. They work very well thanks to  
> the subtleties of the Gödel-Löb self-reference logic.
>
> UDA is easy (except the step 7 and 8 which asks for more work).
> AUDA is difficult because you have to study Mathematical Logic to get  
> the point, and Quantum Mechanics to believe it.
>
> UDA+AUDA leads to McGuin Mysterianism, as explained and justified by  
> the "betting, praying" machine. There is a gap of explanation, which  
> can be justified almost completely from the first person point of  
> view.  From the third person point of view there is no gap at all.  
> Machines can already see this, and this should please you, if I  
> understand you well.
>
> Matter then pay a special role in the dreams, especially those  
> "collective dreams", but it is part of the dreams. We are in the  
> number matrix, if you want a short description. My point is not that  
> this is true, but that this is Popper-refutable. It is not a question  
> of liking it or not, but of making the math and the experiments. All  
> in all,  it makes many fundamental question less obvious that many  
> think.

Still processing that

>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 May 2009, at 12:28, Alberto G.Corona wrote:

>
> Hi Bruno.
> Thanks for the link. As an physicist and computer researcher I have
> knowledge of some of the fields involved in UDA, but at the first
> sight I fear that I will have a hard time understanding it.


We can do the reasoning step by step if you want. I am not sure why  
you feel that you have will have an hard time understanding it.  
Usually people find the 6th first step easy. Some have problem with  
the idea that comp makes us, in principle, duplicable, and that if we  
are duplicated we cannot predict the personal outcome of the  
experience, but up to now, it always appear that it is either a  
problem of misunderstanding of the distinction between first and third  
person I give there, or it happens they just dislike or are shocked by  
that first person indeterminacy, and I agree it is a bit shocking---it  
already forces some reflexion on personal identity. Some just quit the  
reasoning at step 3, considering those three steps as a refutation of  
the computationalist hypothesis That is a form of wishful thinking. I  
use comp because it is plausible, assumed by many people, and it leads  
to a deep insight into the nature of "what there could be".
  I am not interested in the question of the truth of comp. Of course  
I like to criticize invalid argument against comp.  Some deduce,  
invalidly, that I defend comp, but I don't. (as a logician I like to  
demolish all invalid argument, it appears that comp, (like the domain  
of the relation between drugs and health), attracts many invalid  
arguments ...

>
>
>
>>> and my subjective experience is  the most objective fact
>>> that I can reach.
>> t
>> I see what you mean, but the subjective experience, although real and
>> true, and undoubtable, is subjective. It exists as far as you cannot
>> prove to an other that it exists.  To communicate you have to bet on
>> tools and on others, and other many doubtable (yet plausible) mind
>> constructions.
>>
>
> Hence, qualia are subjective ...

Of course.




> ... and, as such,  I cannot assure that you
> have it.


Right.



> But I'm sure that you have it


Thanks God!




> and therefore that my knowledge
> of qualia is objective


? Perhaps we have a vocabulary problem. I would say that knowledge is  
always subjective and never sharable. But we can share beliefs and  
develop objective theories. As far as they are objective and clear,  
they are probably false, and we can, and usually do, refute them, so  
science can progress. A tiny part of science develop some sharable  
"knowledge", which still cannot be communicated as such.  It is the  
hard condition of the consistent entities: they can have develop their  
internal knowledge only by communicating their doubtable beliefs.
With comp fundamental science is akin to a "negative theology". As  
soon we have unified theory we learn it to be false. We learn that  
Reality is not this, not that, neither this or that, ...
Comp provides the simplest explanation, in the form of a simple third  
person sharable reality (the number) why the "Inside Reality" has to  
behave like that. Why it contradicts us all the time.

There is a question of taste here.
Those who like to believe they can control everything, and search for  
security, hates such views.
Those who like surprises and love let it go, and search for freedom  
should appreciate.


> simply for one causal reason: natural
> selection;

Here you are terribly quick. And although I do accept the main line of  
"natural selection" as an explanation of our biological history, I am  
not happy at all with the explanation or absence of explanation of  
everything needed to have a reality where natural selection can exist.  
I don't take granted the notion of physical world, nor any physicalist  
notion of causality. I do agree with many things asserted in physics,  
but not as an ultimate explanation.
The reason I like comp is that it assures us that indeed we have to  
dig deeper with respect of what we see, observe and measure.




> Our brains, shaped by very similar genetic programs, share
> the same architecture and therefore produce very similar
> phemomenologies.

I mostly agree.


>
>
> This follows of course if you admit matter-> mind (or better math-
>> matter->mind)

math-matter-mind is indeed already far better, and, this makes even  
more bizarre you fear UDA, because UDA8, the more complex step, is  
just the step which force to put math at the beginning (even  
arithmetic, but OK). Now, comp makes "matter" a subtle first person  
plural notion, and it will appears that, in such rough description  
math-mind-matter is more correct. But look, it is still possible that  
we have something like (with UM = universal machine, and HU = Human):

math -> UM-mind -> Matter- HU-mind

But this could mean that our comp level of substitution is very low,  
and it would be a threat of "natural selection". So the picture is a  
bit more difficult.




>> and admit natural selection as the "entropic pump"
> that creates structure and function (and computer structures) in
> living beings. I know no other testable alternative.

It is more a filtration among structure already existing (in platonia  
for example), and which have already important mathematical properties  
playing a non trivial role. but I think I see what you mean, and with  
your open-mindness to the idea that math "precedes" matter, you should  
not have difficulties to accept the "filtration idea". the advantage  
is really that you can see that comp extends darwinism to the origin  
and development of the physical laws, which result from a "universal--
thropic"  competition of pieces of "many-dreams" by universal number/
machine, in the way they can coherently glue. Some physicist have seen  
this, like Wheeler who suggest that physics arise from a  
"protogeometry". And Wheeler is well inspired in giving a role to self-
reference. This happens with the comp hyp.

>
>
>>
>>
>>> I cannot support this Kantian notion consciousness -> matter.
>>
>> The problem is that if you are ready to attribute consciousness to a
>> device, by its virtue of simulating digitally a conscious brain at
>> some correct level of description, you will be forced to attribute
>> that consciousness to an infinity of computations already defined by
>> the additive and multiplicative structure of the numbers (by UDA). A
>> quasi direct consequence is that if a machine look at herself below
>> its substitution level, it will build indirect evidences of a flux of
>> many (a continuum) of computational histories (a typical quantum
>> feature, I mean for QM without wave collapse). But comp forces the
>> structure of those many realities (or dreams) to be determined by
>> specifiable number theoretical relations.  Those relations are either
>> extensional relations (like in number theory), or intensional
>> relations (like in computer science, where number can also points
>> toward other numbers, and effective set of numbers). It makes
>> computationalism testable. The genral shape of QM confirm it, but
>> cosmogenesis remains troubling ...
>>
> I cannot understand this until I read your paper, but, just one
> question ¿what is the nature of the process that reduces local entropy
> (sculpt chaos, poetically speaking) so that in creates life and
> intelligence starting from unanimated matter along the arrow of time?.
> Is it of a mathematical nature; is it some general principle of
> change? Is it natural selection with some additional principle? I just
> want to know what your context in relation with mine is. Of course if
> you support Mind-> matter -> math,

Careful! I have never supported Mind -> matter -> math. I support Math  
-> mind - matter.
Indeed assuming comp I support Arithmetic -> Mind -> Matter
I could almost define mind by intensional arithmetic: the numbers when  
studied by the numbers. This does not work because I have to say:
the numbers as studied by the numbers relatively to their most  
probable local universal number, and this is how matter enters in the  
play: an indeterminacy bearing on an infinity of possible universal  
machines/numbers.





> Yes I said that this is all that I can say without pretending to solve
> the problem. That is because the problem qualia is so interesting.
> But in the absence of natural selection, as I said, I can not be sure
> if you have such qualia. I cannot be sure either you are zombies or
> not. In fact the main school of sociology , based on cultural
> determinism, persist in the error of thinking that people of different
> cultures have completely different qualia.

I can imagine qualia varies from person to person, and from person to  
non human animals, in way our bodies differ, but I can argue they  
already obeys the same logic. The logic of the qualia of any self-
referentially correct machines. I extract one, well more than one.



>
>
> Yes, matter is a sort o sharable qualia, and the objectivity of
> knowledge is assured by our common brain architecture (and this is the
> base of evolutionary epistemologists notion of objectiveness) .

I can agree but things are deeper. In a nutshell you can associate a  
mind (a person, even) to an objective (third person) available (with  
respect to you and colleagues). If not true, it is at least polite,  
and it makes sense in firt person plural realities where we can share  
a big computational history. Both QM and natural selection plays a key  
role in confirming this. But the problem, for the mind-body problem,  
is that from our personal (even plural) perspective we cannot  
associate a singular body to our mind, we can only associate an  
infinity of possible computational histories, and what we call matter  
is the result of the statistical interference of those histories. They  
obey to the law of computer science/numbers, and this makes the comp  
hyp testable. It gives also an explanation realm where we can  
understand where the physical realities come from.



> The
> mind perceive in a specie-specific way an external reality that has no
> meaning without such brain processing.. In fact trees, persons, atoms
> and so on are shared creations of our minds because they have an
> adaptive/utilitarian nature.

OK.


> The external reality, at the deepest
> level, may be just mathematical, so are our bodies. Mind maybe then
> the process where the reification of matter from math occurs.

OK. All what I say, is that such talk is necessary, assuming comp, and  
can be described in such a precise way that it makes the mind-body  
comp (partial) solution testable.


>
>
> Then, math->mind-> matter.

OK.



> Has this last point of view something in
> common with yours?


It *is* mine (even the day I don't believe in comp). But my point is  
that computer science and mathematical logic makes this testable.  
Scientific. In the Popper sense (by UDA).

And then I can put it in another way: it is NOT *mine*. It is the  
solution of the mind body problem given by the average self-
referentially correct (and platonist) universal machine, when you  
listen to that machine (by AUDA).

By platonist a mean any entity believing that a closed arithmetical  
proposition is either true, or false.

>
>
>
>
>> I do appreciate your willingness of not treating a self-referentially
>> correct machine as a zombie, but providing a machine with the correct
>> behavior and the relevant discourse does not yet explain the  
>> *meaning*
>> of those discourses. Some could argue that on the contrary it makes
>> those meaning illusory.  Theories remains to be done, and if  
>> something
>> is true and unexplainable, this has to be justified too. Amazingly
>> you can extract both the communicable and incommunicable part of that
>> discourse from an interview of the machine , and this has  already be
>> done (thanks to Gödel Post Turing ... and computer science/logic). It
>> is the AUDA part: the (admittedly rough, concerning only ideally
>> correct machines) translation of UDA in the language of a universal
>> machine, like (Peano) Arithmetic.
>> And given that physics is testable, this makes comp testable (well in
>> AUDA the definition of the internal points of view are debatable, and
>> better solution could be imaginable, I have used the old definition
>> you can find in the Theaetetus of Plato. They work very well thanks  
>> to
>> the subtleties of the Gödel-Löb self-reference logic.
>>
>> UDA is easy (except the step 7 and 8 which asks for more work).
>> AUDA is difficult because you have to study Mathematical Logic to get
>> the point, and Quantum Mechanics to believe it.
>>
>> UDA+AUDA leads to McGuin Mysterianism, as explained and justified by
>> the "betting, praying" machine. There is a gap of explanation, which
>> can be justified almost completely from the first person point of
>> view.  From the third person point of view there is no gap at all.
>> Machines can already see this, and this should please you, if I
>> understand you well.
>>
>> Matter then play a special role in the dreams, especially those
>> "collective dreams", but it is part of the dreams. We are in the
>> number matrix, if you want a short description. My point is not that
>> this is true, but that this is Popper-refutable. It is not a question
>> of liking it or not, but of making the math and the experiments. All
>> in all,  it makes many fundamental question less obvious that many
>> think.
>
> Still processing that

Take it easy, and don't hesitate for asking any question. I am aware  
that some people confuse computations and description of computations.  
It is an intrinsically hard and confusing matter. Mathematical  
logician have an advantage, because it is a kind of confusion they  
study in detail. But eventually, in the arithmetical translation of  
the UDA, you can even understand why the nuance between computation  
and description of computation are normal. There is a sense why even  
self-referentially correct machine get easily trapped here. What save  
the machine from the trap is the inescapable gap between self-
referential provable statement and the true one.

Penrose argues that (sound) humans are not (sound) machines, because -
he says- *we* can see the trap in any such machine, and no such  
machine can see her own trap. But the truth is that all machine can  
see the trap of any given (third person presented at a correct level  
of description) machine, and even study the creative geometry of that  
trap, and what is common for all machines.
We can still be machine, because we don't know and then cannot know,  
which machine we are. We cannot even know if we are sound, nor can we  
known our correct level of description.
But by betting we are machine, we can deduce the sharable laws of our  
observable realities from an infinite sum of arithmetical histories,  
and justified the appearance from arithmetic, like Everet comp+QM  
justifies already the appearance of a classical selection from  
Schroedinger equation.

You can see UDA+AUDA as a refinement of Penrose which leads to a  
radicalization of Everett. A correction of Penrose leads to an  
extension of Everett on Arithmetic. A coming back to Pythagorus (minus  
the superstitions).

I must go. Apology for the length and the spelling.

Best,

Bruno

See the reference on Penrose or others in the biblio
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/lillethesis/these/node79.html#SECTION001300000000000000000


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




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[Jason Resch-2]

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:

>
>
> Indeed assuming comp I support Arithmetic -> Mind -> Matter
> I could almost define mind by intensional arithmetic: the numbers when
> studied by the numbers. This does not work because I have to say:
> the numbers as studied by the numbers relatively to their most
> probable local universal number, and this is how matter enters in the
> play: an indeterminacy bearing on an infinity of possible universal
> machines/numbers.
>
>

Bruno, I was wondering if there are anyn concrete examples to help
clarify what you mean by numbers studied by numbers.  Are there things
for example, that 31 could know about 6, or are such things only
possible with or between very big numbers?

>
>
> Take it easy, and don't hesitate for asking any question. I am aware
> that some people confuse computations and description of computations.
> It is an intrinsically hard and confusing matter. Mathematical
> logician have an advantage, because it is a kind of confusion they
> study in detail. But eventually, in the arithmetical translation of
> the UDA, you can even understand why the nuance between computation
> and description of computation are normal. There is a sense why even
> self-referentially correct machine get easily trapped here. What save
> the machine from the trap is the inescapable gap between self-
> referential provable statement and the true one.
>

I still have a confusion as to what you label a computation and a
description.  Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
universe that it could be made conscious, or do you count all
appearance of matter to be only a description of a computation and not
capable of "true" computation?  Do you believe that the only real
computation exists platonically and this is the only source of
conscious experience?  If so I find this confusing, as could there not
be multiple levels?  For example would a platonic turing machine
simulating another turing machine, simulating a mind be consicous?  If
so, how does that differ from a platonic turing machine simulating a
physical reality with matter, simulating a mind?

Thanks,

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 May 2009, at 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:

>
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>  
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Indeed assuming comp I support Arithmetic -> Mind -> Matter
>> I could almost define mind by intensional arithmetic: the numbers  
>> when
>> studied by the numbers. This does not work because I have to say:
>> the numbers as studied by the numbers relatively to their most
>> probable local universal number, and this is how matter enters in the
>> play: an indeterminacy bearing on an infinity of possible universal
>> machines/numbers.
>>
>>
>
> Bruno, I was wondering if there are anyn concrete examples to help
> clarify what you mean by numbers studied by numbers.  Are there things
> for example, that 31 could know about 6, or are such things only
> possible with or between very big numbers?

Do you remember that the partial computable functions are recursively  
enumerable?
Do you remember the phi_i: computing partial functions from N to N.

phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, phi_4, ....

You can associate a computation to a proof in Robinson Arithmetic of a  
statement like phi_31(6) = 745.
The idea is to use the original Robinson Arithmetic as the basic  
universal machine.

A description of a computation would be a representation of that  
computation in arithmetic. And Robinson arithmetic is already Sigma_1-
complete and thus, if there is a computation of phi_31(6) = 745, there  
will be proof of that fact in Robinson Arithmetic.

The difference is really a question of level, and is basically  
(simplifying a little bit) the difference between the fact that

phi_31(6) = 745, is true and provable in RA, and the fact

provable(phi_31(6) = 745) is true and provable in RA

The numbers involved will not be so great, but can hardly be very  
little.


>
> I still have a confusion as to what you label a computation and a
> description.

A computation is an abstract object. It is what is usually described  
by a description of a computation. It is a sequence of step of a  
universal machine. Remember that you can also enumerate the partial  
computable functions from NXN to N, noted with P capital:

Phi_1, Phi_2, Phi_3, Phi_4, ....

Let me say that a number u is universal if   Phi_u(x,y) = phi_x(y) for  
all x and y. x is the number-program, and y is the number-data. By  
chosing RA as basic system, all those numbers are well defined. It can  
be shown that there will be an infinity of such universal number u1,  
u2, u3 ... (enumerable but not recursively enumerable!).

A computation is a finite or infinite sequences of step of some u_i on  
some input x.
A description of a (finite piece of) a computation is a nummber code  
for an arithmetical description of such a computation.

The difference between computation and description of a computation is  
similar to the difference between 1+1=2, and the Gödel number of the  
formula "1+1 =2".




> Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
> universe that it could be made conscious,

But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is  
conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a  
person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your  
question is ambiguous.
It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious. My  
brain appears to make it possible for my consciousness to manifest  
itself relatively to you. Remember that we are supposed to no more  
count on the physical supervenience thesis.
It remains locally correct to attribute a consciousness through a  
brain or a body to a person we judged succesfully implemented locally  
in some piece of matter (like when we say yes to a doctor).  But the  
piece of matter is not the subject of the consciousness. It is only  
the "abstract person" or "program" who is the subject of consciousness.
To say a brain is conscious consists in doing Searle's'mistake when he  
confused levels of computations in the Chinese room, as well seen  
already by Hofstadter and Dennett in Mind's I.



> or do you count all
> appearance of matter to be only a description of a computation and not
> capable of "true" computation?

"appearance of matter" is a qualia. It does not describe anything but  
is a subjective experience, which may correspond to something stable  
and reflecting the existence of a computation (in Platonia) capable to  
manifest itself relatively to you.


> Do you believe that the only real
> computation exists platonically and this is the only source of
> conscious experience?

Computations and their relative implementations exist only in  
platonia, yes. But even in Platonia, they exist in multiple relative  
version, all defined eventually through many multiple relations  
between numbers.


>  If so I find this confusing, as could there not
> be multiple levels?

But they are multiple levels of computations in Platonia or  
Arithmetic. Even a huge number of them. That is why we have to take  
into account the first person indeterminacies.




> For example would a platonic turing machine
> simulating another turing machine, simulating a mind be consicous?


A 3-machine is never conscious. A 3-entity is never conscious. Only a  
person is. First person can only be associated with the infinities of  
computations computing them in Platonia.




>  If
> so, how does that differ from a platonic turing machine simulating a
> physical reality with matter, simulating a mind?


You will have to introduce a magical (assuming comp) selection  
principle for attaching, in a persistent way, a mind to that "physical  
reality" simulation. The mind can only be attached to an infinity of  
such relative simulations, and this is why if that mind look at itself  
below its substitution level he will find a trace of those  
computations. Comp says you have to make the statistic on all the  
computations. So the Physical has to be a sum on all those computations.
That such computations statistically interfere is not so difficult to  
show. That the comp interference gives the apparent quantum one is not  
yet discarded.

I think you are not taking sufficiently into account the first person  
(hopefully plural) indeterminacy in front of the universal dovetailer,  
(or arithmetic) which defined the space of all computations.

Does this help a bit?


Bruno


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




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 22 May 2009, at 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:
>  
> ...
>> Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
>> universe that it could be made conscious,
>>    
>
> But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is  
> conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a  
> person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your  
> question is ambiguous.
> It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious.

By "me" do you mean some computation in Platonia?  I'm wondering what
are the implications of your theory for creating "artificial"
consciousness.  Since comp starts with the assumption that replacing
one's brain with functionally  identical units (at some level of detail)
will make no discernable difference in your experience, it entails that
a computer that functionally replaces your brain is conscious (conscious
of being you in fact).  So if I want to build a conscious robot from
scratch, not by copying someone's brain, what must I do?

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 May 2009, at 06:39, Brent Meeker wrote:

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 22 May 2009, at 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>> Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
>>> universe that it could be made conscious,
>>>
>>
>> But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is
>> conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a
>> person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your
>> question is ambiguous.
>> It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious.
>
> By "me" do you mean some computation in Platonia?  I'm wondering what
> are the implications of your theory for creating "artificial"
> consciousness.  Since comp starts with the assumption that replacing
> one's brain with functionally  identical units (at some level of  
> detail)
> will make no discernable difference in your experience, it entails  
> that
> a computer that functionally replaces your brain is conscious  
> (conscious
> of being you in fact).  So if I want to build a conscious robot from
> scratch, not by copying someone's brain, what must I do?

I don't see the problem, besides the obvious and usual difficulties of  
artificial intelligence.
Actually if you implement a theorem prover for Peano Arithmetic (=  
Robinson Arithmetic + the induction axioms) I am willing to say that  
you have build a conscious entity.
It is the entity that I interview (thanks to the work of Gödel, Löb  
and Solovay).
The person related to it, which I identify with the knower (obeying to  
the theaetetical logic of "provable(p) & p")
exist simultaneously in all the possible relative implementations of  
it in platonia or in UD* (the universal deployment).
I mean it is the same for a copy of me, or an intelligent robot build  
from scratch. Both "person" exist in an atemporal and aspatial ways in  
Platonia, and will appear concrete to any entity belonging to some  
computation where they can manifest themselves.
Like numbers. 17 exists in Platonia, but 17 has multiple  
implementation in many computations in Platonia.

I guess I miss something because I don't see any problem here. You may  
elaborate perhaps. We are in the seven step here. Are you sure you  
grasp the six preceding steps?

Bruno

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




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 23 May 2009, at 06:39, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>  
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>    
>>> On 22 May 2009, at 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>
>>> ...
>>>      
>>>> Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
>>>> universe that it could be made conscious,
>>>>
>>>>        
>>> But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is
>>> conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a
>>> person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your
>>> question is ambiguous.
>>> It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious.
>>>      
>> By "me" do you mean some computation in Platonia?  I'm wondering what
>> are the implications of your theory for creating "artificial"
>> consciousness.  Since comp starts with the assumption that replacing
>> one's brain with functionally  identical units (at some level of  
>> detail)
>> will make no discernable difference in your experience, it entails  
>> that
>> a computer that functionally replaces your brain is conscious  
>> (conscious
>> of being you in fact).  So if I want to build a conscious robot from
>> scratch, not by copying someone's brain, what must I do?
>>    
>
>
> I don't see the problem, besides the obvious and usual difficulties of  
> artificial intelligence.
> Actually if you implement a theorem prover for Peano Arithmetic (=  
> Robinson Arithmetic + the induction axioms) I am willing to say that  
> you have build a conscious entity.
>  

But why?  Why not RA without induction?  Is it necessary that there be
infinite schema?  Since you phrase your answer as "I am willing..." is
it a matter of your intuition or is it a matter of "degree" of
consciousness.

Brent

> It is the entity that I interview (thanks to the work of Gödel, Löb  
> and Solovay).
> The person related to it, which I identify with the knower (obeying to  
> the theaetetical logic of "provable(p) & p")
> exist simultaneously in all the possible relative implementations of  
> it in platonia or in UD* (the universal deployment).
> I mean it is the same for a copy of me, or an intelligent robot build  
> from scratch. Both "person" exist in an atemporal and aspatial ways in  
> Platonia, and will appear concrete to any entity belonging to some  
> computation where they can manifest themselves.
> Like numbers. 17 exists in Platonia, but 17 has multiple  
> implementation in many computations in Platonia.
>
> I guess I miss something because I don't see any problem here. You may  
> elaborate perhaps. We are in the seven step here. Are you sure you  
> grasp the six preceding steps?
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
>  

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[Kelly Harmon]

Okay, below are three passages that I think give a good sense of what
I mean by "information" when I say that "consciousness is
information".  The first is from David Chalmers' "Facing up to the
Problem of Consciousness."  The second is from the SEP article on
"Semantic Conceptions of Information", and the third is from "Symbol
Grounding and Meaning:  A comparison of High-Dimensional and Embodied
Theories of Meaning", by Arthur Glenberg and David Robertson.

So I'm looking at these largely from a static, timeless, platonic
view.  In my view, there are ungrounded abstract symbols that acquire
meaning via constraints placed on them by their relationships to other
symbols.  The only "grounding" comes from the conscious experience
that is intrinsic to a particular set of relationships.  To repeat my
earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
physics is information from the outside."  It is this subjective
experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
completely abstract "platonic" symbols.

So I think that something like David Lewis' "modal realism" is true by
virtue of the fact that all possible sets of relationships are
realized in Platonia.

Note that I don't have Bruno's fear of white rabbits.  Assuming that
we are typical observers is fine as a starting point, and is a good
way to choose between otherwise equivalent explanations, but I don't
think it should hold a unilateral veto over our final conclusions.  If
the most reasonable explanation says that our observations aren't
especially typical, then so be it.  Not everyone can be typical.

I think the final passage from Glenberg and Robertson (from a paper
that actually argues against what's being described) gives the best
sense of what I have in mind, though obviously I'm extrapolating out
quite abit from the ideas presented.

Okay, so the passages of interest:

--

David Chalmers:

The basic principle that I suggest centrally involves the notion of
information. I understand information in more or less the sense of
Shannon (1948). Where there is information, there are information
states embedded in an information space. An information space has a
basic structure of difference relations between its elements,
characterizing the ways in which different elements in a space are
similar or different, possibly in complex ways. An information space
is an abstract object, but following Shannon we can see information as
physically embodied when there is a space of distinct physical states,
the differences between which can be transmitted down some causal
pathway. The states that are transmitted can be seen as themselves
constituting an information space. To borrow a phrase from Bateson
(1972), physical information is a difference that makes a difference.

The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there is a
direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information
spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces.
From the same sort of observations that went into the principle of
structural coherence, we can note that the differences between
phenomenal states have a structure that corresponds directly to the
differences embedded in physical processes; in particular, to those
differences that make a difference down certain causal pathways
implicated in global availability and control. That is, we can find
the same abstract information space embedded in physical processing
and in conscious experience.

--

SEP:

Information cannot be dataless but, in the simplest case, it can
consist of a single datum.  A datum is reducible to just a lack of
uniformity (diaphora is the Greek word for “difference”), so a general
definition of a datum is:

The Diaphoric Definition of Data (DDD):

A datum is a putative fact regarding some difference or lack of
uniformity within some context.  [In particular data as diaphora de
dicto, that is, lack of uniformity between two symbols, for example
the letters A and B in the Latin alphabet.]

--

Glenberg and Robertson:

Meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal
symbols that are arbitrarily related to what they signify.  A new form
of the abstract symbol approach to meaning affords the opportunity to
examine its adequacy as a psychological theory of meaning.  This form
is represented by two theories of linguistic meaning (that is, the
meaning of words, sentences, and discourses), both of which take
advantage of the mathematics of high-dimensional spaces. The
Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL; Burgess & Lund, 1997) posits
that the meaning of a word is its vector representation in a space
based on 140,000 word–word co-occurrences. Latent Semantic Analysis
(LSA; Landauer & Dumais, 1997) posits that the meaning of a word is
its vector representation in a space with approximately 300 dimensions
derived from a space with many more dimensions. The vector elements
found in both theories are just the sort of abstract features that are
prototypical in the cognitive psychology of meaning.

Landauer and Dumais also apply LSA to sentence and discourse
understanding. A sentence is represented as the average of the vectors
of the words it contains, and the coherence between sentences is
predicted by the cosine of the angle (in multidimensional space)
between the vectors corresponding to successive sentences.  They claim
that LSA averaged vectors capture “the central meaning” of passages
(p. 231).

Consider a thought experiment (adapted from Harnad, 1990, and related
to the Chinese Room Argument) that suggests that something critical is
missing from HAL and LSA. Imagine that you just landed at an airport
in a foreign country and that you do not speak the local language. As
you disembark, you notice a sign printed in the foreign language
(whose words are arbitrary abstract symbols to you). Your only
resource is a dictionary printed in that language; that is, the
dictionary consists of other arbitrary abstract symbols. You use the
dictionary to look up the first word in the sign, but you don’t know
the meaning of any of the words in the definition.  So, you look up
the first word in the definition, but you don’t know the meaning of
the words in that definition, and so on. Obviously, no matter how many
words you look up, that is, no matter how many structural relations
you determine among the arbitrary abstract symbols, you will never
figure out the meaning of any of the words. This is the symbol
grounding problem (Harnad, 1990): To know the meaning of an abstract
symbol such as an LSA vector or an English word, the symbol has to be
grounded in something other than more abstract symbols.

Landauer and Dumais summarize the symbol grounding problem by noting,
“But still, to be more than an abstract system like mathematics words
must touch reality at least occasionally” (p. 227). Their proposed
solution is to encode, along with the word stream, the streams from
other sensory modalities. “Because, purely at the word–word level,
rabbit has been indirectly preestablished to be something like dog,
animal, object, furry, cute, fast, ears, etc., it is much less
mysterious that a few contiguous pairings of the word with scenes
including the thing itself can teach the proper correspondences.
Indeed, if one judiciously added numerous pictures of scenes with and
without rabbits to the context columns in the encyclopedia corpus
matrix, and filled in a handful of appropriate cells in the rabbit and
hare word rows, LSA could easily learn that the words rabbit and hare
go with pictures containing rabbits and not to ones without, and so
forth” (p. 227). Burgess and Lund (1997) offer a similar solution, “We
do think a HAL-like model that was sensitive to the same
co-occurrences in the natural environment as a human language learner
(not just the language stream) would be able to capitalize on this
additional information and construct more meaningful representations”
(p. 29).

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 May 2009, at 09:08, Brent Meeker wrote:


>>
> But why?  Why not RA without induction?  Is it necessary that there be
> infinite schema?  Since you phrase your answer as "I am willing..." is
> it a matter of your intuition or is it a matter of "degree" of
> consciousness.


OK. I could have taken RA. But without the induction axioms, RA is  
very poor in provability abilities, it has the consciousness of a low  
animals, if you want. Its provability logic is very weak with respect  
to self-reference. It cannot prove the arithmetical formula Bp -> BBp  
for any arithmetical p. So it is not even a type 4 reasoner (cf  
Smullyan's Forever Undecided, see my posts on FU), and it cannot know  
its own incompleteness. But it can be considered as conscious. It is  
not self-conscious, like the Lobian machine.

Note that Bp -> BBp is true *for* RA, but it is not provable *by* RA.
Bp -> BBp is true for and provable by PA. Smullyan says that PA, or  
any G reasoner, is self-aware.

Of course, consciousness (modeled by consistency) is true for PA and  
RA, and not provable neither by RA nor PA (incompleteness).

But all this is not related to the problem you were talking about,  
which I still don't understand.

Bruno

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




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[John Mikes]

I missed the meaning of 'conscious' as applied in this discussion. If we accept that it means 'responding to information' ( used in the wides sense: in responding there is an absorption of the result of an observer moment and completenig relations thereof and te information as the absorbed relations) then a thermostat is conscious. 

Without such clarification Jason's question is elusive. (I may question the term "physical universe" as well - as the compilation of aspect-slanted figments to explain observations we made in select views by select means (cf. conventional and not-so-conventional science, numbers, Platonist filters, quantum considerations, theological views, etc.)

*

Then Bruno's response below refers to a fetish (person? what is this?) - definitely NOT a computer, but "relative to ANOTHER(?) computer". The 'another' points to similarity.

 It also reverberates with Jason's "WE(??)" (Is this 'a person', a homunculus, or what?)create a computer further segregating the 'fetish' Bruno refers to from 'a computer'. 

I don't find it ambiguous: I find it undefined terms clashing in elusive meanings.

 

Another open spot is the 'conscious robot' that would not become conscious even by copying someone's BRAIN (which is NOT conscious! - as said).

We still face the "I", the "ME" UFO (considered as 'self'') that DOES but IS NOT. - And - is conscious. Whatever that may mean.

 

Then comes Brent with the reasonable question. I would add: what is necessary for a 'computation in Platonia' to become a person? should it pee? I feel the term Brent asked is still a select artifact ideation, APPLICABLE (maybe) to non-computational domains to make it "a person" (whatever that may be). It is still not "I", the conscious, thinking of it.

The 'conscious' ME is different from a computation with denied consciousness - as I read.

Replacing the (non-conscious) brain with identical other parts does not impart the missing conscious quality - unless the replacement IS conscious, in which case it is NOT a replacement. It is a "exchange to...". - as Brent correctly points to.  (Leaving open the term 'you - conscious' as a deus ex machina quale-addition for the replacement).

 

Just looking through differently colored goggles.

 

John Mikes

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...> wrote:

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On 22 May 2009, at 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> ...
>> Do you believe if we create a computer in this physical
>> universe that it could be made conscious,
>>
>
> But a computer is never conscious, nor is a brain. Only a person is
> conscious, and a computer or a brain can only make it possible for a
> person to be conscious relatively to another computer. So your
> question is ambiguous.
> It is not my brain which is conscious, it is me who is conscious.

By "me" do you mean some computation in Platonia?  I'm wondering what
are the implications of your theory for creating "artificial"
consciousness.  Since comp starts with the assumption that replacing
one's brain with functionally  identical units (at some level of detail)
will make no discernable difference in your experience, it entails that
a computer that functionally replaces your brain is conscious (conscious
of being you in fact).  So if I want to build a conscious robot from
scratch, not by copying someone's brain, what must I do?

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 May 2009, at 09:35, Kelly Harmon wrote:

>
> Okay, below are three passages that I think give a good sense of what
> I mean by "information" when I say that "consciousness is
> information".  The first is from David Chalmers' "Facing up to the
> Problem of Consciousness."  The second is from the SEP article on
> "Semantic Conceptions of Information", and the third is from "Symbol
> Grounding and Meaning:  A comparison of High-Dimensional and Embodied
> Theories of Meaning", by Arthur Glenberg and David Robertson.
>
> So I'm looking at these largely from a static, timeless, platonic
> view.

We agree then. Assuming comp we have no choice in the matter here.




> In my view, there are ungrounded abstract symbols that acquire
> meaning via constraints placed on them by their relationships to other
> symbols.

Absolutely so.




>  The only "grounding" comes from the conscious experience
> that is intrinsic to a particular set of relationships.


Exactly.



> To repeat my
> earlier Chalmers quote, "Experience is information from the inside;
> physics is information from the outside."  It is this subjective
> experience of information that provides meaning to the otherwise
> completely abstract "platonic" symbols.


I insist on this well before Chalmers. We are agreeing on this.
But then you associate consciousness with the experience of information.
This is what I told you. I can understand the relation between  
consciousness and information content.



>
>
> So I think that something like David Lewis' "modal realism" is true by
> virtue of the fact that all possible sets of relationships are
> realized in Platonia.


We agree. This is explained in detail in "conscience et mécanisme".  
Comp forces modal realism. AUDA just gives the precise modal logics,  
extracted from the theory of the self-referentially correct machine.



>
>
> Note that I don't have Bruno's fear of white rabbits.


Then you disagree with all reader of David Lewis, including David  
lewis himself who recognizes this inflation of to many realities as a  
weakness of its modal realism. My point is that the comp constraints  
leads to a solution of that problem, indeed a solution close to the  
quantum Everett solution. But the existence of white rabbits, and thus  
the correctness of comp remains to be tested.




> Assuming that
> we are typical observers is fine as a starting point, and is a good
> way to choose between otherwise equivalent explanations, but I don't
> think it should hold a unilateral veto over our final conclusions.  If
> the most reasonable explanation says that our observations aren't
> especially typical, then so be it.  Not everyone can be typical.

It is just a question of testing a theory. You seem to say something  
like "if the theory predict that water under fire will typically boil,  
and that experience does not confirm that typicality (water froze  
regularly) then it means we are just very unlucky". But then all  
theories are correct.

>
>
> I think the final passage from Glenberg and Robertson (from a paper
> that actually argues against what's being described) gives the best
> sense of what I have in mind, though obviously I'm extrapolating out
> quite abit from the ideas presented.
>
> Okay, so the passages of interest:
>
> --
>
> David Chalmers:
>
> The basic principle that I suggest centrally involves the notion of
> information. I understand information in more or less the sense of
> Shannon (1948). Where there is information, there are information
> states embedded in an information space. An information space has a
> basic structure of difference relations between its elements,
> characterizing the ways in which different elements in a space are
> similar or different, possibly in complex ways. An information space
> is an abstract object, but following Shannon we can see information as
> physically embodied when there is a space of distinct physical states,
> the differences between which can be transmitted down some causal
> pathway. The states that are transmitted can be seen as themselves
> constituting an information space. To borrow a phrase from Bateson
> (1972), physical information is a difference that makes a difference.
>
> The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there is a
> direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information
> spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces.

This can be shown false in Quantum theory without collapse, and more  
easily with the comp assumption.
No problem if you tell me that you reject both Everett and comp.  
Chalmers seems in some place to accept both Everett and comp, indeed.  
He explains to me that he stops at step 3. He believes that after a  
duplication you feel to be simultaneously at the both place, even  
assuming comp. I think and can argue that this is non sense. Nobody  
defends this on the list. Are you defending an idea like that?



>
> From the same sort of observations that went into the principle of
> structural coherence, we can note that the differences between
> phenomenal states have a structure that corresponds directly to the
> differences embedded in physical processes; in particular, to those
> differences that make a difference down certain causal pathways
> implicated in global availability and control. That is, we can find
> the same abstract information space embedded in physical processing
> and in conscious experience.

Assuming comp, the expression "physical processing" cannot be taken  
for granted. It has to be explained.

>
>
> --
>
> SEP:
>
> Information cannot be dataless but, in the simplest case, it can
> consist of a single datum.  A datum is reducible to just a lack of
> uniformity (diaphora is the Greek word for “difference”), so a general
> definition of a datum is:
>
> The Diaphoric Definition of Data (DDD):
>
> A datum is a putative fact regarding some difference or lack of
> uniformity within some context.  [In particular data as diaphora de
> dicto, that is, lack of uniformity between two symbols, for example
> the letters A and B in the Latin alphabet.]

No problem with that.

>
>
> --
>
> Glenberg and Robertson:
>
> Meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal
> symbols that are arbitrarily related to what they signify.  A new form
> of the abstract symbol approach to meaning affords the opportunity to
> examine its adequacy as a psychological theory of meaning.  This form
> is represented by two theories of linguistic meaning (that is, the
> meaning of words, sentences, and discourses), both of which take
> advantage of the mathematics of high-dimensional spaces. The
> Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL; Burgess & Lund, 1997) posits
> that the meaning of a word is its vector representation in a space
> based on 140,000 word–word co-occurrences. Latent Semantic Analysis
> (LSA; Landauer & Dumais, 1997) posits that the meaning of a word is
> its vector representation in a space with approximately 300 dimensions
> derived from a space with many more dimensions. The vector elements
> found in both theories are just the sort of abstract features that are
> prototypical in the cognitive psychology of meaning.
>
> Landauer and Dumais also apply LSA to sentence and discourse
> understanding. A sentence is represented as the average of the vectors
> of the words it contains, and the coherence between sentences is
> predicted by the cosine of the angle (in multidimensional space)
> between the vectors corresponding to successive sentences.  They claim
> that LSA averaged vectors capture “the central meaning” of passages
> (p. 231).

Perhaps. I don't see the relevance. It is quite coherent with comp  
that some form of meaning can be approached in this or similar ways.  
Assuming comp, what can be considered as lacking is the self-reference  
of the universal machine involved in the attribution of meaning.

>
>
> Consider a thought experiment (adapted from Harnad, 1990, and related
> to the Chinese Room Argument) that suggests that something critical is
> missing from HAL and LSA. Imagine that you just landed at an airport
> in a foreign country and that you do not speak the local language. As
> you disembark, you notice a sign printed in the foreign language
> (whose words are arbitrary abstract symbols to you). Your only
> resource is a dictionary printed in that language; that is, the
> dictionary consists of other arbitrary abstract symbols. You use the
> dictionary to look up the first word in the sign, but you don’t know
> the meaning of any of the words in the definition.  So, you look up
> the first word in the definition, but you don’t know the meaning of
> the words in that definition, and so on. Obviously, no matter how many
> words you look up, that is, no matter how many structural relations
> you determine among the arbitrary abstract symbols, you will never
> figure out the meaning of any of the words.

?
How do you thing a computer work?  (Well, I guess I am asking Harnad  
here).



> This is the symbol
> grounding problem (Harnad, 1990): To know the meaning of an abstract
> symbol such as an LSA vector or an English word, the symbol has to be
> grounded in something other than more abstract symbols.


This has been a recurrent critics of mechanism and platonism. But  
unless introducing a substantial soul and dualism (and non  
computationalism) I don't see how such approach can work.
The grounding problem is what the notion of universal machine explains  
the best, at least if you agree that the arithmetical reality (not the  
formalism!) is independent of you (this is needed to even make a  
theory of information).


>
>
> Landauer and Dumais summarize the symbol grounding problem by noting,
> “But still, to be more than an abstract system like mathematics words
> must touch reality at least occasionally” (p. 227).

Touch reality? Or touch physical reality? It is ambiguous in our  
context.



> Their proposed
> solution is to encode, along with the word stream, the streams from
> other sensory modalities.


With comp, those other "sensory modalities" are coded before being  
processed by the brain, or the universal machine under consideration.

> “Because, purely at the word–word level,
> rabbit has been indirectly preestablished to be something like dog,
> animal, object, furry, cute, fast, ears, etc., it is much less
> mysterious that a few contiguous pairings of the word with scenes
> including the thing itself can teach the proper correspondences.
> Indeed, if one judiciously added numerous pictures of scenes with and
> without rabbits to the context columns in the encyclopedia corpus
> matrix, and filled in a handful of appropriate cells in the rabbit and
> hare word rows, LSA could easily learn that the words rabbit and hare
> go with pictures containing rabbits and not to ones without, and so
> forth” (p. 227). Burgess and Lund (1997) offer a similar solution, “We
> do think a HAL-like model that was sensitive to the same
> co-occurrences in the natural environment as a human language learner
> (not just the language stream) would be able to capitalize on this
> additional information and construct more meaningful representations”
>
> (p. 29).

This could be of interest for criticizing some implementation of  
artificial intelligence. But it is not relevant in our fundamental  
description because both the term "rabbit" and the picture of the  
rabbit have to be encoded in the universal machine. lewis Carroll  
himself we aware of the fun you can make with dictionary based theory  
of meaning.

Kelly, the question is: do we disagree? I criticize your statement  
"consciousness = information" for vagueness, but only BECAUSE you have  
oppose it to the computationalist hypothesis, (and this despite you  
seem to appreciate its the platonist idealist consequence). It is a  
bit weird. Now, I am not even sure you criticize the computationalist  
hypothesis.
Neither you nor me can accept Chalmers dualism which relies on both  
comp and primitive matter, which I show to be epistemologically  
incompatible. But this is going in your direction. Where is the problem?

Bruno

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




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 23 May 2009, at 09:08, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>  
>> But why?  Why not RA without induction?  Is it necessary that there be
>> infinite schema?  Since you phrase your answer as "I am willing..." is
>> it a matter of your intuition or is it a matter of "degree" of
>> consciousness.
>>    
>
>
> OK. I could have taken RA. But without the induction axioms, RA is  
> very poor in provability abilities, it has the consciousness of a low  
> animals, if you want. Its provability logic is very weak with respect  
> to self-reference. It cannot prove the arithmetical formula Bp -> BBp  
> for any arithmetical p. So it is not even a type 4 reasoner (cf  
> Smullyan's Forever Undecided, see my posts on FU), and it cannot know  
> its own incompleteness. But it can be considered as conscious. It is  
> not self-conscious, like the Lobian machine.
>
> Note that Bp -> BBp is true *for* RA, but it is not provable *by* RA.
> Bp -> BBp is true for and provable by PA. Smullyan says that PA, or  
> any G reasoner, is self-aware.
>
> Of course, consciousness (modeled by consistency) is true for PA and  
> RA, and not provable neither by RA nor PA (incompleteness).
>
> But all this is not related to the problem you were talking about,  
> which I still don't understand.
>
> Bruno

I think it is related.  I'm just trying to figure out the implications
of your theory for the problem of creating artificial, conscious
intelligences. What I gather from the above is that you think there are
degrees of consciousness marked by the ability to prove things.  To
consider another view, for example, John McCarthy thinks there are
degrees of consciousness marked by having narratives created and
remembered and meta-narratives.  Either of these ideas is definite
enough that they could actually be implemented (in contrast to many
philosophical ideas about consciousness).   I have some reservation
about your idea because I know many people that I think are conscious
but who couldn't prove even the simplest theorem in PA.  Are we to
suppose they just have a qualitatively different kind of consciousness?

Brent

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