<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"><base></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear Arturo,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This is already my second post of this week, so you might answer to my two posts, and I will comment your possible answer (if necessary) next week. Thank you.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 20 May 2018, at 19:30, <a href="mailto:tozziarturo@libero.it" class="">tozziarturo@libero.it</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" class="">Dear Bruno,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">You talk about "some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also in the arithmetical reality)".<br class="">This way of reasoning throws us into the realm of the philosophy of mathematics, in which you clearly pursue a neo-platonism in the traces of Tegmark, Godel, Husserl, Tiles, against Carnap, Hilbert, Stuart Mill, Poincare', Brouwer, Lakoff & Nunez, Dehaene, Maddy, Field, Lakatos, Benacerraf. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Well, actually it is Tegmark which follows my lead, as he sent me his first draft of the “mathematical universe”, and took my suggestion into account when adding computationalism, but he missed the 1P/3p distinction, so my older studies remains more consistent. Actually, he cite my papers in the draft, but I guess was not able to maintain it for publication. Many told me that there is some resistance, not to my ideas, but personal or political (I don’t know as I have never met such opponents).</div><div>But I have been influenced by Benacerraf and also Judson Webb, etc. (and of course Gödel, Hilbert, etc.).</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Yet my approach is different. I start from the computationalist hypothesis, and everything I say is derived from it, first informally (the universal dovetailer argument) and formally (in the more mathematical part).</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">Your idea is interesting and intriguing, related as it is to the philosophy of mathematics. </p></div></blockquote><div>It can be related to philosophy of mathematics, but that is a work which remains to be done. </div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""> However, your idea has nothing to do with the concepts of scientific method and of testable hypothesis. </p></div></blockquote><div>That is not correct. I prove that if Mechanism is true, the physical reality is “in the head of the universal Turing machine”. </div><div>That makes Mechanism testable, by comparing the physics which is in the head of the machine with the physics that we infer from observation. When I was young I concluded that Mechanism is refuted, but I was naive and ignorant of quantum mechanics, which eventually confirmed all the weirdness that I got from mechanism, like indeterminacy, non locality, non cloning, the possibility of many “parallel” computations/worlds and the possibility to extract a material sort of information (confirmed by the notion of quantum information). A lot of works remains to be done, but until now, mechanism is confirmed by nature, when physicalism + mechanism is refuted by nature. Physicalism + non mechanism is still an option, though, but is it really plausible? I don’t know. As a scientist, I do not defend any options. I just show mechanism testable and confirmed up to now.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""> You are talking about philosophy, not about science. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>The complete contrary. I avoid doing philosophy. That is especially important when tacking some philosophical questions (at least classify as such by Aristotelians) and show them testable experimentally. </div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">I feel myself closer to the scientific method than to the logic underlying the philosophy, therefore I prefer to spend my time in reading scientific papers. </p></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Then study well my papers, because there is no statements which are not testable. The whole goal of my work was to show that metaphysics and theology, in the frame of some hypothesis, become amenable to the scientific method.I literally predicted quantum mechanics from pure arithmetic + mechanism a long time ago. Then my thesis shows that all universal machine finds this when looking inward (in the sense of Gödel’s self-reference).</div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">Possibly innovative, always deeply grounded in an experimental context. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>I am with you on this. It is the whole point of my research. Too show that thanks to Gödel’s and Turing’s discovery, and some works, we can test today if Aristotle Primary Matter hypothesis is confirmed by Nature. But the results is that Plato is confirmed, and Aristotle is debunked. We can say that we have looked closely at Nature, and that it confirms the immaterialism of Mechanism. Nature exists phenomenologically, as we recover its logic and laws from arithmetic when we assume computationalism. But assuming some primary matter re-introduce the mind-body problem. As there has never been any evidence for primary matter found yet, better to not add it.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Bruno</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div id="mail-app-auto-default-signature" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">--<br class="">Inviato da Libero Mail per Android</p></div><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">domenica, 20 maggio 2018, 07:06PM +02:00 da Bruno Marchal<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="mailto:marchal@ulb.ac.be" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">marchal@ulb.ac.be</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">:</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><blockquote id="mail-app-auto-quote" cite="x-msg://1323/15268361100000035335" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(133, 175, 49); margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 10px;" class=""><div class="js-helper js-readmsg-msg"><div class=""><base target="_self" href="https://e-aj.my.com/" class=""><div id="style_15268361100000035335_BODY" class=""><div class="class_1526841835">Hi Dai Griffith, Hi Colleagues,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 17 May 2018, at 13:44, Dai Griffiths <<a href="mailto:dai.griffiths.1@gmail.com" class="" target="_blank" rel=" noopener noreferrer">dai.griffiths.1@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"><div class=""><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class=""><p class="">What is a 'thing'?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""></p></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I assume Digital Mechanism all along. I don’t know if it is true, but if true it provides a clear (and tastable) answer.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">For the staring basic primitive “ontological”, you can stat from any universal complete theory or system.</div><div class="">To fix the things, I start often from the combinators SK, or, as people are more familiar with them, from numbers, with addition and multiplication. That determines the set of all computations, and our first person experience differentiates on them. Indeed, incompleteness forces the self-referentially correct machines/numbers to get many different modes of selves, the believer, the knower, the observer, the feeler, etc. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A thing like a chair becomes a sort of map of our (indexical, relative) neighbourhood of consistent continuations.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I am aware it is counter-intuitive, and quite non materialist, but it explains many features of physics, and of consciousness (which is defined as immediate undoubtable unjustifiable truth). It provides a “natural role” for consciousness like a self-seppeding up relatively to the universal numbers.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class=""><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that only processes exist, and that for human convenience in living in the world we put conceptual membranes around some parts of those processes and call them 'things'. From this point of view we do not have two aspects (things and predictions about those things), but simply the monitoring of processes, and theorising about what we find. This does not preclude a taxonomy of processes (e.g. mechanisms might be a special kind of process).<br class=""></p><p class="">Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully reformulated as "Is information a thing?”.<br class=""></p></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It is certainly a type of thing. With mechanism, we can exploit the abyssal difference between the arithmetical reality and the arithmetical theory seen from inside by the universal machines. The physics (and theology) is not dependent of the choice of the starting ontology, as any universal entity emulates the infinitely many interactions between all of them (I predicted the non cloning theorem of matter from this well before QM “confirms” it. </div><div class="">The interesting thing is not in the things, but indeed in the relations between, and even more in what the universal relations/things can believe, know, observe among all things/relations.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Information can be measured, but it can also interpreted, and that is what the universal machine like to do the most. </div><div class="">See my papers for why mechanism associate a notion of person to a vast variety of machines, and also to some non mechanical super-entities (which exist also in the arithmetical reality (not to be confused with its computable part).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Bruno</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class=""><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>Dai<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><div class="moz-cite-prefix_mailru_css_attribute_postfix">On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CAMEsQ-vORLzewKMRjuCgphxiQRssebdmaX-uWJT81m4rH7Gw=A@mail.gmail.com" class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">Dear FISers,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" class="">I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I got an idea -maybe not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two kind of philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the existence of things) and predicative (what can we say and know about things). Against Quine materialism I came across the idea that ontological problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting problem. The fact is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All we have as scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think of Science as a communicative social system differentiated from its environment by means of a code -I think Loet would agree with me in this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but the set of statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are many ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have many points of agreement with him but also of disagreement -but honestly I currently lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough discussion). Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent ways to deal with it. But this means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a set of statements that represent what we know about information. The problem is that although we can have the intuition that information is real, physical as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external reference like "reality ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory function within the system. I remember that in the "Science of the Society", Luhmann devised the concept of consistency proofs (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an sich, is inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be asking us a question that cannot be answered.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" class="">Best,</p><p dir="ltr" class="">JJ</p><div class="gmail_quote_mailru_css_attribute_postfix">El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark" <<a href="mailto:mburgin@math.ucla.edu" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" target="_blank" rel=" noopener noreferrer">mburgin@math.ucla.edu</a>> escribió:<br type="attribution" class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" class=""> Dear FISers,<br class=""> It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I would like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our intrinsic and often tacit assumptions.<br class=""><br class=""> To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is information physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical means the nature of information and not its substance, or more exactly, the substance of its carrier, which can be physical, chemical biological or quantum. By the way, expression “quantum information” is only the way of expressing that the carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar to the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only forms or number representations and not numbers themselves.<br class=""> <br class=""> If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at first, to answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers assume that information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in our discussions. However, some people think differently (cf., for example, Furner, J. (2004) Information studies without information).<br class=""><br class=""> Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, namely, to admit that information is physical because only physical things exist.<br class=""> If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we have three options assuming that information exists:<br class="">- information is physical<br class="">- information is mental<br class="">- information is both physical and mental <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""><br class="">Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises three worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of structures, we have seven options assuming that information exists:<br class="">- information is physical<br class="">- information is mental<br class="">- information is structural <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">- information is both physical and mental <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">- information is both physical and structural <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">- information is both structural and mental <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">- information is physical, structural and mental <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""> The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to avoid unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information (in a general sense) exists in all three worlds but … in the physical world, it is called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b class="">energy</b>, in the mental world, it is called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b class="">mental energy</b>, and in the world of structures, it is called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b class="">information</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(in the strict sense). This conclusion well correlates with the suggestion of Mark Johnson that information is both physical and not physical only the general theory of information makes this idea more exact and testable.<br class=""> In addition, being in the world of structures, information in the strict sense is represented in two other worlds by its representations and carriers. Note that any representation of information is its carrier but not each carrier of information is its representation. For instance, an envelope with a letter is a carrier of information in this letter but it is not its representation.<br class=""> Besides, it is possible to call all three faces of information by the name energy - physical energy, mental energy and structural energy.<br class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""> Finally, as many interesting ideas were suggested in this discussion, may be Krassimir will continue his excellent initiative combining the most interesting contributions into a paper with the title<br class=""> <b class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Is information physical?</b><br class=""> and publish it in his esteemed Journal.<br class=""> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""> Sincerely,<br class=""> Mark Burgin<br class=""><br class=""><div class="m_-6888820020232975365moz-cite-prefix_mailru_css_attribute_postfix">On 5/11/2018 3:20 AM, Karl Javorszky wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="auto" class="">Dear Arturo, <div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">There were some reports in clinical psychology, about 30 years ago, that relate to the question whether a machine can pretend to be a therapist. That was the time as computers could newly be used in an interactive fashion, and the Rogers techniques were a current discovery.</div><div dir="auto" class="">(Rogers developed a dialogue method where one does not address the contents of what the patient says, but rather the emotional aspects of the message, assumed to be at work in the patient.)</div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">They then said, that in some cases it was indistinguishable, whether a human or a machine provides the answer to a patient's elucidations. </div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">Progress since then has surely made possible to create machines that are indistinguishable in interaction to humans. Indeed, what is called "expert systems ", are widely used in many fields. If the interaction is rational, that is: formally equivalent to a logical discussion modi Wittgenstein, the difference in: "who arrived at this answer, machinery or a human", becomes irrelevant. </div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">Artistry, intuition, creativity are presently seen as not possible to translate into Wittgenstein sentences. Maybe the inner instincts are not yet well understood. But!: there are some who are busily undermining the current fundamentals of rational thinking. So there is hope that we shall live to experience the ultimate disillusionment, namely that humans are a combinatorial tautology. </div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">Accordingly, may I respectfully express opposing views to what you state: that machines and humans are of incompatible builds. There are hints that as far as rational capabilities go, the same principles apply. There is a rest, you say, which is not of this kind. The counter argument says that irrational processes do not take place in organisms, therefore what you refer to belongs to the main process, maybe like waste belongs to the organism's principle. This view draws a picture of a functional biotope, in which the waste of one kind of organism is raw material for a different kind. </div><div dir="auto" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="auto" class="">Karl </div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"><div dir="ltr" class=""><<a href="mailto:tozziarturo@libero.it" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">tozziarturo@libero.it</a>> schrieb am Do., 10. Mai 2018 15:24:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="" style="margin-top: 0px;">Dear Bruno,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">You state:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">"IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,<br class="">THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. “physical” becomes a mathematical notion.<br class="">...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the brain/body at that level of description".</p><p dir="ltr" class="">The problem of your account is the following:<br class="">You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS".<br class="">Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested and it is not empirically testable. You are starting with a sort of postulate: I, and other people, do not agree with it. The current neuroscience does not state that our brain/body is (or can be replaced by) a digital machine.<br class="">In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not exist in our real world. Here your entire building falls down. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class=""></p><div id="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129mail-app-auto-default-signature_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">--<br class="">Inviato da Libero Mail per Android</p></div>giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 02:46PM +02:00 da Bruno Marchal<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="m_-6888820020232975365moz-txt-link-abbreviated_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" href="mailto:marchal@ulb.ac.be" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" rel=" noopener noreferrer">marchal@ulb.ac.be</a>:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote id="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129mail-app-auto-quote_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" cite="http://15259565360000035165/" class="" style="border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(133, 175, 49); margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 10px;"><div class=""><div class=""><div id="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129style_15259565360000035165_BODY_mailru_css_attribute_postfix" class=""><div class="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129class_1525973693_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"><div class="">(This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it, with minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first comment to Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div>Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my new computer classifies them in some mysterious way!</div><div class="">This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the end of the week.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark <<a href="mailto:mburgin@math.ucla.edu" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">mburgin@math.ucla.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129Apple-interchange-newline_mailru_css_attribute_postfix_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"><div class=""><p class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dear Colleagues,</p><p class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion</p><p class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Is information physical?<br class=""></p></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My result here is that </div><div class=""><b class=""><u class=""><br class=""></u></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><u class="">IF</u></b> indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science, </div><div class=""><b class=""><u class=""><br class=""></u></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><u class="">THEN</u></b> “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e. “physical” becomes a mathematical notion.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model" (logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the brain/body at that level of description.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all physical objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology. Physics is reduced to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete machinery. Amazingly Arithmetic (even the tiny semi-computable part of arithmetic) is Turing complete (Turing Universal).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The basic idea is that:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">1) no universal machine can distinguish if she is executed by an arithmetical reality or by a physical reality. And,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">2) all universal machines are executed in arithmetic, and they are necessarily undetermined on the set of of all its continuations emulated in arithmetic. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">That reduces physics to a statistics on all computations relative to my actual state, and see from some first person points of view (something I can describe more precisely in some future post perhaps).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Put in that way, the proof is not constructive, as, if we are machine, we cannot know which machine we are. But Gödel’s incompleteness can be used to recover this constructively for a simpler machine than us, like Peano arithmetic. This way of proceeding enforces the distinction between first and third person views (and six others!).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have derived already many feature of quantum mechanics from this (including the possibility of quantum computer) a long time ago. I was about sure this would refute Mechanism, until I learned about quantum mechanics, which verifies all the most startling predictions of Indexical Mechanism, unless we add the controversial wave collapse reduction principle.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The curious “many-worlds” becomes the obvious (in arithmetic) many computations (up to some equivalence quotient). The weird indeterminacy becomes the simpler amoeba like duplication. The non-cloning of matter becomes obvious: as any piece of matter is the result of the first person indeterminacy (the first person view of the amoeba undergoing a duplication, …) on infinitely many computations. This entails also that neither matter appearance nor consciousness are Turing emulable per se, as the whole arithmetical reality—which is a highly non computable notion as we know since Gödel—plays a key role. Note this makes Digital Physics leaning to inconsistency, as it implies indexical computationalism which implies the negation of Digital Physics (unless my “body” is the entire physical universe, which I rather doubt).</div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">My opinion is presented below:<br class=""></p><div class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br class="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129webkit-block-placeholder_mailru_css_attribute_postfix_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"></div><div class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br class="m_-6888820020232975365m_1048372877214317129webkit-block-placeholder_mailru_css_attribute_postfix_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>Why some people erroneously think that information is physical</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span></span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter something that they call information.</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, i.e., a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information is physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is information because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail comes to the computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result, people start thinking even more that information is physical.</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical objects are only carriers or containers of information.</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible to say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, the textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same is true for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects because all of them only contain information but are not information. For instance, as we know, different letters can contain the same information. Even if we make an identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the letter and its copy will be different physical objects (physical things) but they will contain the same information.</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of knowledge, data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who think that information is physical.</span></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">OK. The reason is that we can hardly imagine how immaterial or non physical objects can alter the physical realm. It is the usual problem faced by dualist ontologies. With Indexical computationalism we recover many dualities, but they belong to the phenomenologies.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""></span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Consolas; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class=""><span class=""> </span>One more misleading property of information is that people can measure it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure only physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information is essentially different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., weight. There are no “scales” that measure information. Only human intellect can do this.</span></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">OK. I think all intellect can do that, not just he human one.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Now, the reason why people believe in the physical is always a form of the “knocking table” argument. They knocks on the table and say “you will not tell me that this table is unreal”.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I have got so many people giving me that argument, that I have made dreams in which I made that argument, or even where I was convinced by that argument … until I wake up.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">When we do metaphysics with the scientific method, this “dream argument” illustrates that seeing, measuring, … cannot prove anything ontological. A subjective experience proves only the phenomenological existence of consciousness, and nothing more. It shows that although there are plenty of strong evidences for a material reality, there are no evidences (yet) for a primitive or primary matter (and that is why, I think, Aristotle assumes it quasi explicitly, against Plato, and plausibly against Pythagorus).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Mechanism forces a coming back to Plato, where the worlds of ideas is the world of programs, or information, or even just numbers, since very elementary arithmetic (PA without induction, + the predecessor axiom) is already Turing complete (it contains what I have named a Universal Dovetailer: a program which generates *and* executes all programs).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So I agree with you: information is not physical. I claim that if we assume Mechanism (Indexical computationalism) matter itself is also not *primarily* physical: it is all in the “head of the universal machine/number” (so to speak).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And this provides a test for primary matter: it is enough to find if there is a discrepancy between the physics that we infer from the observation, and the physics that we extract from “the head” of the machine. This took me more than 30 years of work, but the results obtained up to now is that there is no discrepancies. I have compared the quantum logic imposed by incompleteness (formally) on the semi-computable (partial recursive, sigma_1) propositions, with most quantum logics given by physicists, and it fits rather well.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best regards,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Bruno</div></div></div></div></div><div class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Fis mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br class=""><a href="http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis</a><br class=""></div></div></div></blockquote></div>_______________________________________________<br class="">Fis mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br class=""><a href="http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="" rel=" noopener noreferrer">http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis</a><br class=""></blockquote></div><br class=""><fieldset class="m_-6888820020232975365mimeAttachmentHeader_mailru_css_attribute_postfix"></fieldset><br class=""><pre class="">_______________________________________________
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Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Education
School of Education and Psychology
The University of Bolton
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