Dear Donald,

thank you for taking the time of reading and commenting on my essay. Regarding intentionality, I agree that the concept is treated somewhat vaguely in much philosophical literature, but I'd say my level of rigor is par for the course, at least---compare my definition: "Mental content exhibits the curious property of intentionality--of being directed at, concerned with, or simply about entities external to itself.", and that of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs." Both essentially follow Brentano, who introduced the concept into modern discourse (saving it from the old scholastics).

Again, I can understand---and to some degree, sympathize with---wanting a more thorough definition, but sometimes one also risks getting embroiled in petty turf wars when trying to clarify every last definitional issue ('rigour mortis'). So rather than spending most of the allocated room on such definitions, I chose to introduce my model instead, hoping that this would help clarify lingering issues---apologies if it didn't.

Regarding Richard's paradox, the ordering itself isn't really so important; one merely needs an unambiguous way of referring to certain elements (either of English phrases corresponding to natural numbers, or of behaviors of a given automaton). Any association between these elements and natural numbers will do fine, since then, you can refer to the nth element, which picks out a unique one; then, you can use the diagonalization trick by creating a new element that wasn't part of the original association.

But since that was claimed to be complete (a list of all the English sentences describing real numbers/a theory of all behaviors of the automaton), we arrive at a contradiction.

Regarding self-replication, you raise a good point---natural replication is indeed never exact. This doesn't necessarily address the infinite regress, though: if the parent needs to have access to a plan of the child in order to construct the next generation, we still get a regress, even if all of the plans are allowed to differ. Furthermore, when replication is inexact, we start getting into issues of vagueness: when is a construct a 'child'? How similar do parent and child-generation have to be in order to constitute an example of self-replication? If a stone, rolling down a hill, breaks off another, is that an example of self-replication?

Lastly, you're dead-on regarding perception: it's indeed a far more active process than my caricature gives it credit. But whether the outside world is just faithfully projected onto an internal screen, or whether a sort of virtual internal reality, perhaps only loosely 'inspired by actual events', is created, doesn't make a difference for the conceptual point: both implicitly presume some central meaner (as Dennett calls the homunculus) using the internal representation as pertaining to the outside world. And with that, we're already off the rails as far as a theory of representation goes.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful comments!

Cheers,

Jochen

Dear Stefan,

thanks for your comment. I have to say that I feel somewhat narrow in focus in this competition---most people seem to propose entire cosmologies, while I just play around with cellular automata!

I'm glad, though, that some people seem to find some value in my ideas nevertheless. I'll have a look at your essay!

Cheers,

Jochen

Dear Jochen Szangolies

Physics of Descartes existed before Newtonian physics. It is known that through the efforts of Voltaire's Newtonian physics moved to Europe and became dominant up until Einstein put it under doubt, but he did this not by returning to the physics of Descartes, and by relativism, i.e. by its complications.

I believe that by updating the physics of Descartes to achieve greater understanding of the world than did previous theories, as it provides a more intuitive mapping. New Cartesian Physic, as the concept of moving space-matter, not remakes of modern physics, and summarizes it based on the identity of the space-matter.

I appreciate your essay and wish you success in the contest.

Sincerely,

Dizhechko Boris

Dear Jochen,

very interesting essay. I rated it with the highest number.

Your goal-oriented dynamics (replication) reminds me on evolution. I wrote my PhD thesis about physical models of evolution including the evolution of networks. Evolution is goal-oriented. Here, there are two processes, mutation and selection. Mutation produces new information (=species) and selection is a global interaction among the species giving a goal to the process. In a more refined model of Co-evolution, the selection itself is formed by the interaction between the species, so again you will get a direction or goal.

I know it is a little bit to late (maybe) but I want to recommend my essay.

All the best and good luck for the contest

Torsten

    Dear Jochen,

    In your reply to Stefan Keppeler above, you noted that your paper has a relatively narrow focus, compared to those (like mine!) that "propose entire cosmologies". But this is not necessarily a bad thing: your paper is well written, rigorously argued, interesting and perfectly relevant to this year's essay topic: why ask for more?

    I already knew about many aspects of Von Neuman's work, in particular about Von Neuman replicators, but I had never studied the details of his approach. Your essay presents it very clearly and builds on it in an interesting way. Congratulations, and good luck in the contest!

    Marc

      Dear Torsten,

      thanks for your comment. Glad you found something to like about my work!

      Regarding evolution, I'm unsure if I would really say that mutation adds information---in a sense, mutation merely creates an ensemble of possible signals; selection then chooses among these. The ensemble of messages doesn't really carry information, but choosing one of the options then at the very least carries information about the entity making the choice---in my case, the environment, as mediated by the cellular automaton. But that's maybe something for another day to ponder.

      I had actually already read your essay, and found it very intriguing; although I apparently didn't add a comment (I find it hard to keep track of conversation threads in this forum). Thanks for your good wishes, and right back to you!

      Cheers,

      Jochen

      Dear Marc,

      thanks for your kind words! Although I have to say, I'm still a little humbled by the breadth and depth of ideas and concepts presented in this contest. I mean, of course I have my own ideas about what the world, deep down, is like, but I'm not sure I'll ever consider them well-developed enough to risk airing them in such a forum---so all the more props to those who do!

      Von Neumann truly was a thinker of rare accomplishment; I'm happy enough if I can help popularizing some of his ideas.

      Thanks for the well wishes!

      Cheers,

      Jochen

      Hi Jochen,

      What a brilliant use of Von Neumann replicators! I can't say I am qualified to judge whether your theory is workable, but feel you're certainly on to something.

      All the best,

      Rick Searle

      Write a Reply...