Dreaming On

[david.nyman]

Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
hope this will be helpful for future discussion.

THE APHORISMS

We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.

What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.

Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
- can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
itself).

So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
insight stands.

It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
again, any such identification could only be via some singular
correlative synthesis.

Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
- expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.

By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
or context: that context being our mutual ontology.

Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
*everything* is.

Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
claims.

Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
not their genesis.

To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
constructed.

Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
come to know a world in a present and personal manner.

Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
hanging in the void.

Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
ontological finality.  It has not been completely clear (to me)
whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).

However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
doctor.

COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e. empirical tests
could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.

Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
ontological and epistemological issues.

This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
rather than nowhere.

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[Kim Jones-2]

Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I  
cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.

Sorry to be dumb,

Kim


On 27/07/2009, at 12:52 AM, David Nyman wrote:

>
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> THE APHORISMS
>
> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> itself).
>
> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> insight stands.
>
> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
> correlative synthesis.
>
> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>
> By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
> and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
> correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
> or context: that context being our mutual ontology.
>
> Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
> fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
> rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
> *everything* is.
>
> Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
> this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
> claims.
>
> Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
> physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
> stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
> not their genesis.
>
> To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
> specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
> mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
> constructed.
>
> Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
> believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
> come to know a world in a present and personal manner.
>
> Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
> discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
> foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
> invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
> hanging in the void.
>
> Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
> and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
> ontological finality.  It has not been completely clear (to me)
> whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
> the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
> and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).
>
> However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
> claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
> leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
> doctor.
>
> COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e.  
> empirical tests
> could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
> perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.
>
> Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> ontological and epistemological issues.
>
> This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
> been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> rather than nowhere.
>
> >

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[Brian Tenneson]

Hi Kim,

RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.

Cheers
Brian

Kim Jones wrote:

Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I  
cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.

Sorry to be dumb,

Kim


On 27/07/2009, at 12:52 AM, David Nyman wrote:

  

Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
hope this will be helpful for future discussion.

THE APHORISMS

We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.

What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.

Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
- can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
itself).

So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
insight stands.

It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
again, any such identification could only be via some singular
correlative synthesis.

Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
- expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.

By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
or context: that context being our mutual ontology.

Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
*everything* is.

Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
claims.

Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
not their genesis.

To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
constructed.

Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
come to know a world in a present and personal manner.

Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
hanging in the void.

Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
ontological finality.  It has not been completely clear (to me)
whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).

However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
doctor.

COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e.  
empirical tests
could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.

Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
ontological and epistemological issues.

This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
rather than nowhere.

    

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[Colin Hales-2]

David Nyman wrote:

Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
hope this will be helpful for future discussion.

THE APHORISMS

We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.

What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.

Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
- can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
itself).
  

Yes. This is the big issue.

(a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the awake scientist!)
and
(b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science of a noumenon)

....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is unapproachable)  is not justified.

The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind stuff' is wrong. ALL of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that resulting in mind.  The assumption in your statement is that we need something  extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first person.

ask this instead....

What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour) such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears (a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us?

Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not.
:-)
col





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[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:

>
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> THE APHORISMS
>
> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> itself).
>
> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> insight stands.
>
> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
> correlative synthesis.
>
> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>
> By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
> and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
> correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
> or context: that context being our mutual ontology.
>
> Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
> fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
> rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
> *everything* is.
>
> Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
> this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
> claims.
>
> Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
> physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
> stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
> not their genesis.

The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an  
"ontological"  physical universal, it is impossible to recover the  
first person from it.


>
>
> To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
> specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
> mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
> constructed.

Once comp is assumed, and UDA understood, including step 8, we get an  
explicit mathematical specification of the dreamers (which will be the  
universal numbers---to be (re)explained later) and the explanation of  
the appearance of the dreams:  self-referential gluing (sigma_1)  
arithmetical relations.



>
>
> Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
> believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
> come to know a world in a present and personal manner.

Except for the mystery of numbers, which has to remain intact  
(mysterious). The first person arise from the difference of the logics  
of the points of view. Each point of view is just a different modality  
of the self reference. I recall (or anticipate):

p
Bp
Bp & p
Bp & Dp
Bp & Dp & p

With p any arithmetical sentences, Bp the arithmetical sentence of  
Gödel (Beweisbar(Godel number of p)), etc. Note that "p" = 0-person.  
Bp = 3 person, Bp & p = first person, Bp & Dp = "3-person matter", Bp  
& Dp & p = first person matter. This makes 8 hypostases, due to the G/
G* splitting.

The first person view arise from the discrepancy between the logic of  
Bp and Bp & p (mainly).


>
>
> Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
> discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
> foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
> invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
> hanging in the void.

It is here that we may differ. All what needs to be subsumed is 0, and  
successor axioms, together with addition and multiplication. Assuming  
comp (which is a statement about RITSIAR, and in that sense you are  
correct), everything (that is: every dreams and the way they glue  
together) has to be derived from the way universal numbers reflects  
each other.




>
>
> Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
> and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
> ontological finality.  It has not been completely clear (to me)
> whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
> the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
> and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).

Comp could be a little more than RITSIAR: it is the fact that RITSIAR  
is preserved through a substitution of my parts done at some level.  
Comp assumes "yes" for the question, will I *stay* as real as I am  
here and now, once I say yes to the doctor and after he has proceeded.


>
>
> However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
> claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
> leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
> doctor.

OK then.

>
>
> COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e.  
> empirical tests
> could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
> perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.
>
> Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> ontological and epistemological issues.

This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.


>
>
> This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
> been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> rather than nowhere.

OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.

Bruno


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




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[Kim Jones-2]

On 27/07/2009, at 11:40 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:

> Hi Kim,
>
> RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.
>
> Cheers
> Brian
>
> Kim Jones wrote:
>>
>> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
>> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
>>
>> Sorry to be dumb,
>>
>> Kim
>>

Much obliged to you Brian. Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation  
without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!

cheers,

Kim

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[david.nyman]

On 27 July, 02:45, Colin Hales <c.ha...@...> wrote:

> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
> stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that
> resulting in mind.  The assumption in your statement is that we need
> something  extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
> is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
> of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
> person.

Hi Col

My somewhat poetic references here to mind-stuff or dreams relates, as
in the original post, to one of Bruno's characterisations of the
'world-view' of COMP as the dreams of the machines.  Any 'stuff' in
the context of COMP, I take it, would be numbers (I can't help adding
'in some sense') and would of course be the *universal* stuff.  As I
think you know from the prior thread, and our previous engagements, I
take a monist view, for what I take to be strong logical grounds, and
I try to apply this to whatever ontological schema is under
consideration.  Consequently I can't think 'everything else is sorted
out' until this embraces mind and body as different aspects of an
integrated whole.  The sorting out would be what I called a
correlative synthesis, which is what COMP attempts to be.  This is not
to say that COMP is per se correct, but that any other schema must
confront the same issues head on - as of course your own approach
attempts to do.  Sorry for any confusion, but I think we're still
broadly in agreement, as before :-)

David

> David Nyman wrote:
> > Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> > machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> > helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> > my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
> > hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> > THE APHORISMS
>
> > We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> > What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> > Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> > - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> > itself).
>
> Yes. This is the big issue.
>
> (a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the
> awake scientist!)
> and
> (b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science
> of a noumenon)
>
> ....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the
> appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are
> responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self
> evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is
> unapproachable)  is not justified.
>
> The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
> stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that
> resulting in mind.  The assumption in your statement is that we need
> something  extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
> is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
> of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
> person.
>
> ask this instead....
>
> What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour)
> such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears
> (a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it
> is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us?
>
> Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not.
> :-)
> col

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[david.nyman]

On 27 July, 12:25, Kim Jones <kimjo...@...> wrote:

> Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation
> without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!

Don't count on it ;-)

D

> On 27/07/2009, at 11:40 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi Kim,
>
> > RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.
>
> > Cheers
> > Brian
>
> > Kim Jones wrote:
>
> >> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
> >> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
>
> >> Sorry to be dumb,
>
> >> Kim
>
> Much obliged to you Brian. Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation  
> without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!
>
> cheers,
>
> Kim

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[david.nyman]

On 27 July, 09:31, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:

> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
> "ontological"  physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
> first person from it

Do you mean to say that we can't recover the 1-person from a physical
universe on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executed
by elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in any
manner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'?  I've always assumed
the former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;
the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to say
the least.

> > Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> > schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> > problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> > ontological and epistemological issues.
>
> This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.

Yes, I should have said 'otherwise intractable' - meaning intractable
for any schema that doesn't explicitly generate the dreamers and their
many viewpoints as well as their dream contents.  This is the problem
space that must be confronted  - as COMP does.  My point is that any
approach to the mind-body issues that doesn't tackle this must fail at
the outset.  Agreed?

> > This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> > TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
> > been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> > obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> > nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> > rather than nowhere.
>
> OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.

I'm still trying!  I must say that the more I think about your
arguments in detail (some of the basic ones - like the teleportation
examples - have direct counterparts in my own intuitive history) the
more they exercise my intuitions in helpful directions.  I feel that
there is something intuitively necessary in this generative approach,
and specifically in the way it seeks to resolve the 0-1-3-person
conundrums that - even if it turns out to be unsupportable as a whole
- would remain a core feature of any successor theory.

David

> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> > machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> > helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> > my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
> > hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> > THE APHORISMS
>
> > We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> > What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> > Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> > - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> > itself).
>
> > So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> > intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> > inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> > insight stands.
>
> > It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
> > non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
> > 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
> > again, any such identification could only be via some singular
> > correlative synthesis.
>
> > Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
> > 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
> > - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
> > dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
> > not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>
> > By extension of our individual introspecting, a plurality of minds,
> > and the 'external world' that includes brains, can be conceived as
> > correlated in some way - to be elucidated - in a universal synthesis
> > or context: that context being our mutual ontology.
>
> > Such a universal context, or in common terms 'what exists', cannot be
> > fully known (i.e. can't be exhausted by description) although - or
> > rather because - it constitutes what we are, and by extension what
> > *everything* is.
>
> > Nonetheless we may seek a logic of dreaming so far as it goes, and
> > this will indeed be as far as anything goes in the way of knowledge
> > claims.
>
> > Mathematics may be deployed as a dream-logic: but mathematical
> > physics, restricted to 'physical heuristics', prototypically gets
> > stuck at the level of describing the content and behaviour of dreams,
> > not their genesis.
>
> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an  
> "ontological"  physical universal, it is impossible to recover the  
> first person from it.
>
>
>
> > To go further and deeper we need an explicit mathematical
> > specification of dreamers and their dreams, and of generative
> > mechanisms by which dreamers and their dream contents can be
> > constructed.
>
> Once comp is assumed, and UDA understood, including step 8, we get an  
> explicit mathematical specification of the dreamers (which will be the  
> universal numbers---to be (re)explained later) and the explanation of  
> the appearance of the dreams:  self-referential gluing (sigma_1)  
> arithmetical relations.
>
>
>
> > Such a schema will by its nature form an analysis of how we come to
> > believe that we and our world are real, and in what terms: i.e. how we
> > come to know a world in a present and personal manner.
>
> Except for the mystery of numbers, which has to remain intact  
> (mysterious). The first person arise from the difference of the logics  
> of the points of view. Each point of view is just a different modality  
> of the self reference. I recall (or anticipate):
>
> p
> Bp
> Bp & p
> Bp & Dp
> Bp & Dp & p
>
> With p any arithmetical sentences, Bp the arithmetical sentence of  
> Gödel (Beweisbar(Godel number of p)), etc. Note that "p" = 0-person.  
> Bp = 3 person, Bp & p = first person, Bp & Dp = "3-person matter", Bp  
> & Dp & p = first person matter. This makes 8 hypostases, due to the G/
> G* splitting.
>
> The first person view arise from the discrepancy between the logic of  
> Bp and Bp & p (mainly).
>
>
>
> > Consequently such a schema must subsume within its universe of
> > discourse: being, knowing, perceiving, acting and intending - as the
> > foundations of what it means to be real: i.e. it must be capable of
> > invoking the Cheshire Cat *to the life*, not merely leave its grin
> > hanging in the void.
>
> It is here that we may differ. All what needs to be subsumed is 0, and  
> successor axioms, together with addition and multiplication. Assuming  
> comp (which is a statement about RITSIAR, and in that sense you are  
> correct), everything (that is: every dreams and the way they glue  
> together) has to be derived from the way universal numbers reflects  
> each other.
>
>
>
> > Moving beyond bare analysis and description, any move to universalise
> > and 'realise' the axioms of such a schema is to make a claim on
> > ontological finality.  It has not been completely clear (to me)
> > whether COMP necessarily makes such a stipulation on realisation, in
> > the sense of a claim that its axioms *literally are* what is present
> > and personal (i.e. RITSIAR).
>
> Comp could be a little more than RITSIAR: it is the fact that RITSIAR  
> is preserved through a substitution of my parts done at some level.  
> Comp assumes "yes" for the question, will I *stay* as real as I am  
> here and now, once I say yes to the doctor and after he has proceeded.
>
>
>
> > However I'm coming to suspect that it does not in fact make such a
> > claim, although it allows any one of us to take this as a personal
> > leap of faith, specifically through the acid test of saying yes to the
> > doctor.
>
> OK then.
>
>
>
> > COMP may turn out to be false in its specific predictions - i.e.  
> > empirical tests
> > could rule out the possibility of our being finite machines; or
> > perhaps we can never be sure one way or the other.
>
> > Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
> > schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the same
> > problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
> > ontological and epistemological issues.
>
> This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.
>
>
>
> > This has profound implications for virtually all current cosmological
> > TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As has
> > been observed in other writings, our understanding remains profoundly
> > obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view from
> > nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
> > rather than nowhere.
>
> OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[david.nyman]

On 27 July, 12:25, Kim Jones <kimjo...@...> wrote:

> >> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
> >> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.

On a (slightly) more serious note, to the best of my recollection the
expression 'real in the sense I am real' was introduced to this list
by Peter Jones some time back, and was contracted to RITSIAR (I think
by me) because it was repeatedly referred to, as is happening again.
The original sense was that we already intuitively grasp what
'reality' in this sense is - i.e. starting with personal reality, or
simply the 'first person' - and that if we allow these intuitions to
get lost in, or hopelessly mangled by, any schema purporting to tell
us what is 'really real', then we're getting fooled in some deeply
perverse way.  That's why I've been badgering Bruno - as Peter also
did - about whether the 'number realm', as specified by COMP, is to be
conceived as being real in this sense: because COMP is based on the
notion that we *are* in some sense numbers, or derived from numbers
and their relations.  So if numbers in the COMP sense don't meet this
criterion of RITSIAR, then (according to me) we couldn't possibly do
so either, and I'm saying that nobody in their 'right mind' should be
prepared to accept this.  However, I'm reasonably satisfied by Bruno's
recent remarks: he does respond to the issues more or less as set out
here.

David

> On 27/07/2009, at 11:40 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi Kim,
>
> > RITSIAR means real in the sense that I am real.
>
> > Cheers
> > Brian
>
> > Kim Jones wrote:
>
> >> Could somebody kindly tell me/explain to me what "RITSIAR" means? I
> >> cannot find any explanation of this in the threads which mention it.
>
> >> Sorry to be dumb,
>
> >> Kim
>
> Much obliged to you Brian. Hopefully, by the end of this "conversation  
> without end" I will know in what sense I am real!!
>
> cheers,
>
> Kim

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Jul 2009, at 14:57, David Nyman wrote:

>
> On 27 July, 09:31, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:
>
>> The UDA is a reasoning which shows that once we postulate an
>> "ontological"  physical universal, it is impossible to recover the
>> first person from it
>
> Do you mean to say that we can't recover the 1-person from a physical
> universe on the assumption that the mind is a 'computation' executed
> by elements of a physical brain, or that it can't be recovered *in any
> manner* on the assumption of 'physical ontology'?  I've always assumed
> the former - which is the one attacked in your thought experiments;
> the latter would be a much stronger and more startling claim, to say
> the least.

It is the former. Typical counter-example are provided by most dualist  
religions, but they have to be anti-comp.
Even with comp, you can always add a physical ontology, but you cannot  
use it to explain any correlation between consciousness and what  
happen in that physical ontological universe. Comp makes the  
physicalist assumption devoid of any explanation power. I think you  
have correct intuition about this.

>
>
>>> Nonetheless, the inescapable implication is that any alternative
>>> schema must from the outset explicitly and fearlessly address the  
>>> same
>>> problem space or else run foul of the same intractable 0-1-3 person
>>> ontological and epistemological issues.
>>
>> This is tackled by the modality of self-reference.
>
> Yes, I should have said 'otherwise intractable' - meaning intractable
> for any schema that doesn't explicitly generate the dreamers and their
> many viewpoints as well as their dream contents.  This is the problem
> space that must be confronted  - as COMP does.  My point is that any
> approach to the mind-body issues that doesn't tackle this must fail at
> the outset.  Agreed?

Agreed.

>
>
>>> This has profound implications for virtually all current  
>>> cosmological
>>> TOEs: i.e. a view from nowhere turns out to be nobody's view.  As  
>>> has
>>> been observed in other writings, our understanding remains  
>>> profoundly
>>> obscured and distorted unless we restore the personal to the view  
>>> from
>>> nowhere.  Only then can we conceive why indeed there is somewhere
>>> rather than nowhere.
>>
>> OK. You will have to judge comp, in that respect, by yourself.
>
> I'm still trying!  I must say that the more I think about your
> arguments in detail (some of the basic ones - like the teleportation
> examples - have direct counterparts in my own intuitive history) the
> more they exercise my intuitions in helpful directions.  I feel that
> there is something intuitively necessary in this generative approach,
> and specifically in the way it seeks to resolve the 0-1-3-person
> conundrums that - even if it turns out to be unsupportable as a whole
> - would remain a core feature of any successor theory.

I think so.


Bruno


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




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>
>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>
>> THE APHORISMS
>>
>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>
>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>
>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>> itself).
>>
>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>> insight stands.

It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...

>>
>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>> correlative synthesis.
>>
>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.

That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
untoward effects.

Brent


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[david.nyman]

2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>

> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
> untoward effects.

Yes indeed.  But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
 To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
define them - of the material object in question.  So now you have two
options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
dilemma).

This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper.  It's
aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.

AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
problem.

David

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> >> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> >> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> >> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
> >> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
> >>
> >> THE APHORISMS
> >>
> >> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
> >>
> >> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
> >>
> >> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> >> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> >> itself).
> >>
> >> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
> >> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
> >> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
> >> insight stands.
>
> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>
> >>
> >> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
> >> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
> >> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
> >> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
> >> correlative synthesis.
> >>
> >> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
> >> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
> >> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
> >> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
> >> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>
> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
> untoward effects.
>
> Brent
>
>
> >

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[david.nyman]

2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>:

>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>> insight stands.
>
> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...

Yes, sorry - am I REALLY being so unclear?  Obviously, as you say, it
is all too easy  to see that mind and brain are *correlated*: my point
was that such correlation can't be conceived as a simple one-to-one
mind-material identity of any sort without doing violence to mind as
an uneliminable primary reality. I think the problem here is with the
all too easy - but flatly wrong - analogy of 'the same thing under two
different descriptions', because here we need to be concerned not with
mere description but with apparently incommensurable modes of
existence: nobody, I take it, could seriously claim that the
manifestly radical ontological dichotomy between 'material-existence'
and 'mind-existence' is exhausted merely by description.

Because - and with justification - for many quotidian and scientific
purposes we focus on the 'material' characterisation of our shared
'externalised' reality, it is fatally easy to lose sight of the fact
that any reification of the material description ineluctably invokes
dualism in the face of the indubitable existence of the mental realm.
This hidden dualism is therefore implicit - except for eliminativists
- in any material account of mind.  The ultimate capitulation - a la
Dennett - is to screw up your eyes and throw out mind to retrieve
monistic materialism.  It is by contrast reasonable to posit that both
be subsumed in the ontology of a singular synthetic category in which
the *correlated appearances* of mind and matter could be shown to
emerge in some mutually coherent manner.  COMP of course is one
candidate for such a synthesis.  Actually, I haven't yet seen any
others (oops - pace Colin).

David

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>>> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
>>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>>
>>> THE APHORISMS
>>>
>>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>>
>>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>>
>>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>>> itself).
>>>
>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>> insight stands.
>
> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>
>>>
>>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>>> correlative synthesis.
>>>
>>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>
> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
> untoward effects.
>
> Brent
>
>
> >
>

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[Colin Hales-2]

http://www.mindmatter.de/mmabstracts7_1.htm

Intentionality and Computationalism: A Diagonal Argument
Laureano Luna Cabanero, Department of Philosophy, IES Francisco Marin, Siles, Spain, and Christopher G. Small, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo, Canada

Computationalism is the claim that all possible thoughts are computations, i.e. executions of algorithms. The aim of the paper is to show that if intentionality is semantically clear, in a way defined in the paper, then computationalism must be false. Using a convenient version of the phenomenological relation of intentionality and a diagonalization device inspired by Thomson's theorem of 1962, we show there exists a thought that cannot be a computation.
-----------------------------------------------------

How good an argument it is I don't know ..... I am in the process of getting my hands on the paper.
Meanwhile, if any of you folks can get it sooner I'd be very interested.

BTW I have recently submitted my own refutation of COMP to a journal...it superficially resembles a more practical version of the above. Basically.....a computationalist-based artificial scientist cannot propose/debate, let alone test, computationalism as a 'law of nature'.  Confusing/self-referential but has teeth as an argument.

Q. How many times does it take for dogma X to be refuted before projects totally dependent on the truth of dogma X get their outcome projections/expectations reviewed?

cheers
colin hales

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[Brent Meeker-2]

David Nyman wrote:

> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>
>
>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>> untoward effects.
>
> Yes indeed.  But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
>  To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
> state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
> define them - of the material object in question.  So now you have two
> options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
> material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
> ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
> non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
> I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
> different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
> dilemma).

I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic theory of
matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
and dynamics.  We then regard molecules and stars and planets, etc, as
consisting of these things.  It is not legitimate to object, for example, that
weather is *just* an added on description or else requires an addition to the
ontology.  It's a description at a different level.  Similarly, material changes
in the brain may be described as mental events also.  Compare a computer running
some AI program.  The events have a description in terms of electrons and gates
and also in terms of decisions and computations.  That was pretty much Bertrand
Russell's theory of neutral monads - there's only one kind of thing but they can
be described in mental-causal terms or material-causal terms.

>
> This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
> physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper.  It's
> aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
> the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
> argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
> Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
> substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
> be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.

The difficulty I have with COMP is in step 8, where some measure is invoked to
make sense out of a computation that computes everything.  What is this measure?
  and what does it actually predict.  As I said before, an *everything*
hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
rather than that.  Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.

Brent

>
> AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
> customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
> functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
> basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
> relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
> problem.
>
> David
>
>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>>>> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>>>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>>>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
>>>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>>>
>>>> THE APHORISMS
>>>>
>>>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>>>
>>>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>>>
>>>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>>>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>>>> itself).
>>>>
>>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>>> insight stands.
>> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
>> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>>
>>>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>>>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>>>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>>>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>>>> correlative synthesis.
>>>>
>>>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>>>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>>>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>>>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>>>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>> untoward effects.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>
> >
>

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[Rex Allen]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent Meeker<meekerdb@...> wrote:
>
> I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic theory of
> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
> and dynamics.


I think most of us are using "ontology" in the sense of definition 1,
below.  But you keep introducing the term in the sense of definition
2.  I'd noticed it before on David's previous "dream" thread.

Ontology

1. That department of the science of metaphysics which investigates
and explains the nature and essential properties and relations of all
beings, as such, or the principles and causes of being.

2. A systematic arrangement of all of the important categories of
objects or concepts which exist in some field of discourse, showing
the relations between them. When complete, an ontology is a
categorization of all of the concepts in some field of knowledge,
including the objects and all of the properties, relations, and
functions needed to define the objects and specify their actions. A
simplified ontology may contain only a hierarchical classification (a
taxonomy) showing the type subsumption relations between concepts in
the field of discourse. An ontology may be visualized as an abstract
graph with nodes and labeled arcs representing the objects and
relations. Note: The concepts included in an ontology and the
hierarchical ordering will be to a certain extent arbitrary, depending
upon the purpose for which the ontology is created. This arises from
the fact that objects are of varying importance for different
purposes, and different properties of objects may be chosen as the
criteria by which objects are classified. In addition, different
degrees of aggregation of concepts may be used, and distinctions of
importance for one purpose may be of no concern for a different
purpose.





On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent Meeker<meekerdb@...> wrote:

>
> David Nyman wrote:
>> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>
>>
>>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>>> untoward effects.
>>
>> Yes indeed.  But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
>>  To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
>> state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
>> define them - of the material object in question.  So now you have two
>> options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
>> material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
>> ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
>> non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
>> I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
>> different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
>> dilemma).
>
> I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic theory of
> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
> and dynamics.  We then regard molecules and stars and planets, etc, as
> consisting of these things.  It is not legitimate to object, for example, that
> weather is *just* an added on description or else requires an addition to the
> ontology.  It's a description at a different level.  Similarly, material changes
> in the brain may be described as mental events also.  Compare a computer running
> some AI program.  The events have a description in terms of electrons and gates
> and also in terms of decisions and computations.  That was pretty much Bertrand
> Russell's theory of neutral monads - there's only one kind of thing but they can
> be described in mental-causal terms or material-causal terms.
>
>>
>> This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
>> physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper.  It's
>> aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
>> the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
>> argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
>> Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
>> substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
>> be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.
>
> The difficulty I have with COMP is in step 8, where some measure is invoked to
> make sense out of a computation that computes everything.  What is this measure?
>  and what does it actually predict.  As I said before, an *everything*
> hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
> rather than that.  Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.
>
> Brent
>
>
>>
>> AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
>> customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
>> functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
>> basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
>> relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
>> problem.
>>
>> David
>>
>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>>>>> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>>>>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>>>>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
>>>>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>>>>
>>>>> THE APHORISMS
>>>>>
>>>>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>>>>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>>>>> itself).
>>>>>
>>>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>>>> insight stands.
>>> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
>>> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>>>
>>>>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>>>>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>>>>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>>>>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>>>>> correlative synthesis.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>>>>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>>>>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>>>>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>>>>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>>> untoward effects.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>
>> >
>>
>
>
> >
>

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[Rex Allen]

Brent,

Another example of your somewhat non-standard "definition 2" usage:

> First of all I think epistemology precedes ontology.  We first get
> knowledge of some facts and then we create an ontology as part
> of a theory to explain these facts.



On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:56 PM, Rex Allen<rexallen314@...> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent Meeker<meekerdb@...> wrote:
>>
>> I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic theory of
>> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
>> and dynamics.
>
>
> I think most of us are using "ontology" in the sense of definition 1,
> below.  But you keep introducing the term in the sense of definition
> 2.  I'd noticed it before on David's previous "dream" thread.
>
> Ontology
>
> 1. That department of the science of metaphysics which investigates
> and explains the nature and essential properties and relations of all
> beings, as such, or the principles and causes of being.
>
> 2. A systematic arrangement of all of the important categories of
> objects or concepts which exist in some field of discourse, showing
> the relations between them. When complete, an ontology is a
> categorization of all of the concepts in some field of knowledge,
> including the objects and all of the properties, relations, and
> functions needed to define the objects and specify their actions. A
> simplified ontology may contain only a hierarchical classification (a
> taxonomy) showing the type subsumption relations between concepts in
> the field of discourse. An ontology may be visualized as an abstract
> graph with nodes and labeled arcs representing the objects and
> relations. Note: The concepts included in an ontology and the
> hierarchical ordering will be to a certain extent arbitrary, depending
> upon the purpose for which the ontology is created. This arises from
> the fact that objects are of varying importance for different
> purposes, and different properties of objects may be chosen as the
> criteria by which objects are classified. In addition, different
> degrees of aggregation of concepts may be used, and distinctions of
> importance for one purpose may be of no concern for a different
> purpose.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent Meeker<meekerdb@...> wrote:
>>
>> David Nyman wrote:
>>> 2009/7/27 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>
>>>
>>>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>>>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>>>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>>>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>>>> untoward effects.
>>>
>>> Yes indeed.  But what do we mean by a process in materialist ontology?
>>>  To speak of what the brain 'does' is to refer to actual changes of
>>> state of physical elements - at whatever arbitrary level you care to
>>> define them - of the material object in question.  So now you have two
>>> options: either the 'process' is just an added-on description of these
>>> material changes of state, and hence redundant or imaginary in any
>>> ontological sense, or else you are implicitly claiming a second -
>>> non-material - ontological status for the mind-process so invoked. As
>>> I said, it would be difficult to imagine two states of being more
>>> different than minds and brains (i.e. this is the classic mind-body
>>> dilemma).
>>
>> I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic theory of
>> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including their couplings
>> and dynamics.  We then regard molecules and stars and planets, etc, as
>> consisting of these things.  It is not legitimate to object, for example, that
>> weather is *just* an added on description or else requires an addition to the
>> ontology.  It's a description at a different level.  Similarly, material changes
>> in the brain may be described as mental events also.  Compare a computer running
>> some AI program.  The events have a description in terms of electrons and gates
>> and also in terms of decisions and computations.  That was pretty much Bertrand
>> Russell's theory of neutral monads - there's only one kind of thing but they can
>> be described in mental-causal terms or material-causal terms.
>>
>>>
>>> This is the insight in Bruno's requirement of the COMP reversal of
>>> physics and mind as described in step 8 of his SANE2004 paper.  It's
>>> aim is to deal a knockdown blow to any facile intuition of the mind as
>>> the computation (i.e. process) of a material brain, and IMO the
>>> argument more than merits a direct riposte in that light.
>>> Furthermore, in a platonic COMP, the question of the level of
>>> substitution required to reproduce your mind is unprovable, and has to
>>> be an act of faith in any 'doctor' who claims to know.
>>
>> The difficulty I have with COMP is in step 8, where some measure is invoked to
>> make sense out of a computation that computes everything.  What is this measure?
>>  and what does it actually predict.  As I said before, an *everything*
>> hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
>> rather than that.  Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>>>
>>> AFAICS, until these 'under-the-carpet' issues are squarely faced, the
>>> customary waving away of the brain-mind relation as a simplistic
>>> functional identity remains pure materialist prejudice, and on the
>>> basis of the above, flatly erroneous. To say the least, any such
>>> relation is moot, absent a radically deeper insight into the mind-body
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>> On 26 Jul 2009, at 16:52, David Nyman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
>>>>>> machines.  Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
>>>>>> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
>>>>>> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far.  I
>>>>>> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> THE APHORISMS
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
>>>>>> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
>>>>>> itself).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So the brain (i.e. what the eye can see) can't be the mind; but the
>>>>>> intuition remains that mind and brain might be correlated by some
>>>>>> inclusive conception that would constitute our ontology: Kant's great
>>>>>> insight stands.
>>>> It's more than an intuition.  There's lots of evidence the mind and brain are
>>>> correlated: from getting drunk, concusions, neurosurgery, mrfi,...
>>>>
>>>>>> It is similarly obvious that 'identity' theories and the like are
>>>>>> non-sense: it would indeed be hard to think of two descriptions less
>>>>>> 'identical' than brain-descriptions and mind-descriptions: hence
>>>>>> again, any such identification could only be via some singular
>>>>>> correlative synthesis.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hence any claim that the mind is literally identical with, or
>>>>>> 'inside', the brain can be shown to be false by the simple - if messy
>>>>>> - expedient of a scalpel; or else can be unmasked as implicitly
>>>>>> dualistic: i.e. the claim is really that 'inside' and 'outside' are
>>>>>> not merely different descriptions, but different ontologies.
>>>> That's a bit of a straw man you're refuting.  I've never heard anyone claim that
>>>> the mind is the brain.   The materialist claim is that the mind is what the
>>>> brain does, i.e. the mind is a process.  That's implicit in COMP, the idea that
>>>> functionally identical units can substituted for parts of your brain without any
>>>> untoward effects.
>>>>
>>>> Brent
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> >
>>>
>>
>>
>> >>
>>
>

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Jul 2009, at 05:40, Brent Meeker wrote:

The difficulty I have with COMP is in step 8, where some measure is invoked to
make sense out of a computation that computes everything.  

Cool.

But you will have to understand that UDA is far more modest than what you are perhaps thinking.

I am not invoking a measure. What I argue for in UDA is just this:

IF you are willing to accept the comp hyp ("I am Turing emulable"), then you have to find a relative measure on the computational histories and you have to derive the physical laws or the physical invariants from it.

The goal of UDA consists only in reformulating the mind-body problem in the comp frame. And the new formulation of the mind-body problem is a "pure" body-problem in a "pure" theory of mind.

I could have content myself with this, but in the seventies I was told that this was just an obvious argument showing that comp is false.  So I provided AUDA which shows that this is false. The math shows the "body" problem makes sense and is not trivial.

With comp, the theory of mind is easy: it is computer science, especially the self-reference logic branch. The study of what sound machine can believe, imagine and hope for about themselves and about the most probable computations which bears them.

What is this measure?

If the 3th, or 4th or 5th arithmetical hypostatic logics gives some reasonable Quantum Logics (like it does apparently), then the measure will be given ... by Gleason's theorem. It will be given uniquely by the trace of some density operator.

If the 3th, or 4th or 5th arithmetical hypostatic logics gives some unreasonable Quantum Logics, doubts will be reasonably held that either comp is false, or that the Theaetetical definitions of knowledge and matter will have to be revised.

 and what does it actually predict.  

At the AUDA level: everything, except geography and history. That is why it is easily testable in practice. It predicts everything non contingent, from the actual taste of a pizza to the existence and mass of the bosons (or comp is false).

The problem is technical. It may be possible that to predict the existence of the bosons, you have to actually run the UD for n steps, with n being a ridiculously large number (like OMEGA[OMEGA]OMEGA, if you remember).

But comp has not been "invented" to predict physical things, only to find a conceptually correct description of "reality" i.e. without eliminating consciousness and persons.

As I said before, an *everything*
hypothesis is a cheap way to explain anything - unless you can explain why this
rather than that.  Bruno promises to be able to do that - so I'm waiting to see.

This is a gross overestimation of what I did.

The point of UDA is that if I am a machine, then I get the "comp-everything" as a result. The "everything" is NOT an hypothesis. It is more like the infinite terms in quantum filed theory. I just put them NOT under the rug. Some things have been already derived: like the non booleanity of the observable world, though.

The comp-everything is not a trivial "everything". It is already amazing that it exists and that it can be defined mathematically (Church thesis, Gödel's miracle). This is the purpose of doing the seventh step with enough details.

Computer science imposes a highly non trivial structure on its necessary "everything like structure", with an incredible high redundancy of computational histories, and with amazing quantum like property for the observable propositions, so we can definitely conclude that comp leads to a new formulation of the mind body problem, which is scientific in the Popper sense.

My thesis is much more a questioning than an answering. It is like: "Do you realize that if we take comp seriously enough into account, we have to explain the appearance of bodies, space and time from the structure of numbers as "seen" by the numbers.

UDA can be said to solve conceptually he consciousness/reality problem, but it leads to the obviously hard problem to extract the laws of physics, and this could be very difficult. AUDA is just a beginning, and I like it, because it attributes already a person to a machine. It is a vaccine against person elimination. We can already listen to the machine, that is what Gödel, Löb and Solovay really actually did, although perhaps not so much consciously so (at least for Gödel).

I show only that with comp we have to reduce the mind body problem to an hard problem of matter.

Bruno

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

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Jul 2009, at 05:56, Rex Allen wrote:

>
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Brent  
> Meeker<meekerdb@...> wrote:
>>
>> I think that's a misuse of "ontology".  When we discuss the atomic  
>> theory of
>> matter the ontology is a set of elementary particles, including  
>> their couplings
>> and dynamics.
>
>
> I think most of us are using "ontology" in the sense of definition 1,
> below.  But you keep introducing the term in the sense of definition
> 2.  I'd noticed it before on David's previous "dream" thread.
>
> Ontology
>
> 1. That department of the science of metaphysics which investigates
> and explains the nature and essential properties and relations of all
> beings, as such, or the principles and causes of being.
>
> 2. A systematic arrangement of all of the important categories of
> objects or concepts which exist in some field of discourse, showing
> the relations between them.

Good point. I use always "ontology" in the first sense.

Bruno


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




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