Note that the hierarchy of homunculi is something very different from the hierarchy of knowledge you propose. In the latter, you can, in a sense, go as far as you like---each new level being a sort of 'coarse-graining' of the level below; in many cases, in fact, the hierarchy will terminate, because eventually, there's nothing left to coarse-grain.

The hierarchy of homunculi, however, is...

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Note that the hierarchy of homunculi is something very different from the hierarchy of knowledge you propose. In the latter, you can, in a sense, go as far as you like---each new level being a sort of 'coarse-graining' of the level below; in many cases, in fact, the hierarchy will terminate, because eventually, there's nothing left to coarse-grain.

The hierarchy of homunculi, however, is necessarily infinite. Picture a person looking at a screen. We'd say that they understand what's happening on the screen, that they have knowledge about it, and so on. For instance, the screen might show an apple; the person will identify the apple, and thus, recognize that picture as a picture of an apple. In this way, the picture comes to represent an apple.

But if we attempt to cash out all representation in this way, we become trapped in the infinite regress: if, in order to recognize the picture as being of an apple, the person possesses some internal mental representation of it---an inner picture of that picture of an apple---they need likewise an inner observer recognizing that second-order picture as such, in order to make it into a representation of the picture seen by the person.

But this never bottoms out: we're left with ever higher-level homunculi, and, like the way the picture of an apple can only be recognized as a picture of an apple if the first-level homunculus recognizes the internal representation as representing a picture of an apple, the interpretation of the representation at the nth level depends on the interpretation of the representation at the (n+1)st; thus, we have to climb the whole infinite hierarchy in order to generate the recognition of the picture of an apple as being a picture of an apple on the lowest rung. Since we generally consider such infinite tasks impossible, it follows that representation---intention, meaning, having aims and goals---cannot be explained by such a homuncular theory.

Now, not every theory of intentionality need be homuncular. Yours may not be, for instance. I try to circumvent the homunculus problem by the von Neumann construction, which allows me to construct a sort of internal representation that is itself its own user---that 'looks at itself', recognizing itself as representing something. But very many theories, in practice, are---as a guideline, whenever you read sentences such as 'x represents y', 'x means z', and so on, you should ask: to whom? And if there is an entity, implicitly or explicitly, that needs to be introduced in order to use a given representation as representing something, then you can discard the theory: it contains an (often unacknowledged) homunculus.

Regarding the halting problem, the example I gave is actually one in which it is solvable (while in general, it's not): the algorithm that calls itself will never terminate. But you are right to link infinite regress and self-referential problems, such as the halting problem: when I draw a map of an island, and the island includes the map (say, it's installed at some specific point), then the map must refer to itself; and if it's infinitely detailed, then the map must contain a copy of the map must contain a copy of the map... And so on.

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Dear Stefan Weckbach,

thank you for reading my essay, and especially for your comments. I think one thing I must clarify right off the bat: I don't claim for my von Neumann minds to be a model of full-fledged consciousness, by which I mean especially phenomenal consciousness---the 'what-it's-likeness' of being in a conscious state.

But I think this problem can be usefully separated...

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Dear Stefan Weckbach,

thank you for reading my essay, and especially for your comments. I think one thing I must clarify right off the bat: I don't claim for my von Neumann minds to be a model of full-fledged consciousness, by which I mean especially phenomenal consciousness---the 'what-it's-likeness' of being in a conscious state.

But I think this problem can be usefully separated from the problem of intentionality---that is, from the question of how mental states come to be about things external to them. So, while I am mute on the issue of consciousness, per se, I try and at least outline a possible solution to the question of how mental representations can in fact come to represent something.

To this end, I draw an analogy with von Neumann replicators in a CA-environment: they contain information by simply being shaped, evolutionarily, by that environment; they can access their own information, and generate appropriate behaviour. In this sense, they're like a picture that can look at itself, thus getting rid of the homunculus.

So the way a mental representation arises is roughly this: an organism with a CA-brain encounters a certain environment, and receives certain stimuli; these stimuli set up certain conditions within the CA-brain; the CA-brain contains some population of von Neumann replicators, and, via a selection process, this population will eventually come to be shaped by, or adapted to, those CA-conditions---and with them, the environment that set them up (if only indirectly---but then, all access to the world is ultimately indirect).

In this way, replicators surviving the selection process contain information about the environment. Moreover, this information is accessible to themselves, for e.g. building a copy. But equally well, the information may be used to guide behaviour. Thus, the dominant replicator (whatever, exactly, that may mean) comes to be in a position to guide behaviour (it gets put into the driving seat), and then steers the organism in accord with the information it retrieves about itself, and by extension, the environment.

None of this, as I said, entails that there's anything it is like to be such a CA-brained organism. I think the problem of phenomenology, the hard problem of conscious, lies elsewhere, and will probably require entirely new tools for its solution. In fact, I share your suspicion that data processing does not suffice to create any kind of inner world---but note that my approach shouldn't be construed as 'only' data processing: while one can use cellular automata in this way, a cellular automaton pattern is just a concrete physical entity, like a stone or a telephone; and it's really in this sense that I conceive of them, as entities in their own right, rather than just data structures. But again, I see no reason to believe that even this ought to suffice for phenomenal experience.

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Dear Erik,

thanks for your comments! I'm glad you see some value in my thoughts. I should, perhaps, note that to me, my model is more like a 'proof of concept' than a serious proposal for how intentionality works in actual biological organisms (to point out the obvious difference, none of us has a CA in their brain).

So the bottom line is that if the model works as advertised, what...

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Dear Erik,

thanks for your comments! I'm glad you see some value in my thoughts. I should, perhaps, note that to me, my model is more like a 'proof of concept' than a serious proposal for how intentionality works in actual biological organisms (to point out the obvious difference, none of us has a CA in their brain).

So the bottom line is that if the model works as advertised, what it does is to show that there is logical space between eliminativism and mysticism when it comes to intentionality---i.e. neither does the acceptance of a world that's comprised 'only' of the physical force us to deny the reality of intentionality, nor does the acceptance of that reality force us to believe that there is some mysterious form of original intentionality that we just have to accept as a brute fact about the world. There's a possibility here of both having your cake and eating it (if, again, thinks work as I want them to).

Regarding the issues you raise, I think the most important thing to realize is that ultimately, reference in my model isn't grounded in the outside world, but rather, in the 'environmental conditions' set up in the cellular automaton via the environment's influence, mediated by the senses. So in some sense, we don't really have access to the outside world---but then again, we knew that already: all it takes to fool us is to insert the right electrochemical signals into our sensory channels, whether that's done by an evil demon or a mad scientist having your brain on their desk in a jar.

So, for the problem of error, this means that, in the case you're describing, we simply don't notice the error---so the replicator wasn't perfectly adapted to the CA environment, and was never replaced; then, things are just going to proceed as if that replicator was a faithful representation of the CA environment. I might, for instance, run out of my room upon seeing the 'stranger', straight to the police, and report a break-in. I'm wrong about that, of course, there never was a stranger in my room, or a break-in---but this seems to be a common enough sort of occurrence.

Similarly, you are right that there isn't necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between objects in the world and replicators. But then, what of it? It just means that we'll have the same beliefs, and show the same behaviors, in the presence of either---that is, we just can't distinguish between them.

I don't think this necessarily reduces the approach to a pragmatist one---in the end, all we ever are aware of, or have beliefs about, are really classes of things, and not individual things themselves. For instance, the chair in my office certainly contains today a couple of different atoms than it did yesterday; yet, I consider it to be the same chair, and my beliefs and other propositional attitudes toward it aren't influenced by this difference. Some differences just don't make a difference to us.

This then also suggests a reply to the Twin Earth case: on my account, 'water' doesn't refer to either H₂O or XYZ; it refers to some set of CA-conditions set up by being in the presence of some sufficiently similar liquids. My meanings are all in the head.

This also accounts for the possibility of a divergence in meaning, once additional facts come to light: suppose Earth science (and with it, Twin Earth science) become sufficiently advanced to tell the difference between H₂O and XYZ. Then, the inhabitants of Earth could redefine water as 'that liquid whose chemical composition is H₂O', while Twin Earthlings could say instead that water is 'that liquid whose chemical composition is H₂O'. This difference will be reflected in a difference between the CA-conditions set up in an observer of water and their twin: the knowledge of water's chemical composition allows different replicators to prosper.

Furthermore, an inhabitant of Earth transported to Twin Earth will mistake H₂O for XYZ; but then, upon further analysis---i.e. looking really hard, just as it might take looking harder to distinguish between a stranger and a jacket in a dark room---will learn of the difference. In the future, he then simply won't know whether he's presented with a glass of H₂O or a glass of XYZ without doing the analysis---but that's not any more problematic than not knowing whether something is water or vodka without having had a taste.

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Dear Erik,

please, don't apologize for being critical---if the idea is to have any chance at all, it must be able to withstand some pressure. So every issue you point out is helping me, and I'm grateful for having the opportunity of discussing my idea.

Regarding the problem you see, do you think that narrow content is just in principle not capable of solving the problem of reference,...

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Dear Erik,

please, don't apologize for being critical---if the idea is to have any chance at all, it must be able to withstand some pressure. So every issue you point out is helping me, and I'm grateful for having the opportunity of discussing my idea.

Regarding the problem you see, do you think that narrow content is just in principle not capable of solving the problem of reference, or do you think that if one believes in narrow content at all, then there's really no additional problem left to solve---i.e. that one then is committed to a kind of eliminativist stance?

To me, the problem to solve is how any sort of mental state refers at all---i.e. how it comes to have any kind of content. For instance, I disagree with the idea that a thermostat refers, simply by virtue of being in a particular state, to the temperature (or to its being 'too low' or 'too high'). There's no salient difference between that thermostat and any other system with two possible states---it will always depend on the environment which state the system is in, and thus, the representational content could at most be 'I am in the state I am when the environment dictates that I evolve into this state'---which is basically empty, and doesn't really say more than that the system is in one of two possible states.

Reference, semantic content, etc., needs more than that. For instance, consider the example of one versus two lights being lit in the steeple of the Old North Church. If that's all you see, it has no representational content; but if you further know that 'one if by land, two if by sea', then one lantern being lit has content, and it represents the English attacking by land.

The trouble is, of course, that the intentionality thus bestowed to the lantern is derived from that of you, who knows that 'one if by land, two if by sea'. Since you already possess intentionality, trying to explain the intentionality of your own mental states---i.e. how they come to refer to anything---in the same terms as we have just explained the intentional, referential nature of the one lantern burning in the Old North Church will run into the homunculus problem.

This is independent of whether mental content is narrow or wide---the important thing is that it represents something; whether that something is, say, the apple out there in the world, or the conditions caused within the brain by the presence of that apple, or even the phenomenal experience of that apple is immaterial.

And it's there that my model comes in (if things work as I think they do): by collapsing the symbol and the entity using it as a symbol---the representation and the homunculus using it; you and the lantern at the Old North Church---into a single entity, I think it's possible to get rid of the regress. So, a von Neumann replicator evolved in conditions caused by the presence of an apple uses itself as a symbol for these conditions, reads the information it has stored and causes the body to perform actions appropriate to the presence of said apple. One might call this an 'autotelic symbol', because it derives its referent not from something external to it, but rather, from its own form (and because I just learned the word 'autotelic').

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Hi JS,

I want you to ask you to please have a look at my essay, where ……………reproduction of Galaxies in the Universe is described. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc…just have a look at the essay… “Distances,...

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Hi JS,

I want you to ask you to please have a look at my essay, where ……………reproduction of Galaxies in the Universe is described. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc…just have a look at the essay… “Distances, Locations, Ages and Reproduction of Galaxies in our Dynamic Universe” where UGF (Universal Gravitational force) acting on each and every mass, will create a direction and purpose of movement…..

I think intension is inherited from Universe itself to all Biological systems

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example ‘Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary’ (1994) , ‘Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe’, About “SITA” simulations, ‘Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required’, “New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations”, “Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background”, “Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.”, in 2015 ‘Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, ‘Explaining Pioneer anomaly’, ‘Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets’, ‘Observation of super luminal neutrinos’, ‘Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up’, “Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto” etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like… No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading…

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Be
st wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please…………….

=snp. gupta

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Hi Edwin,

thank you for your kind words, and for giving my essay a thorough reading! I'll have to have a look at yours, so that I can comment on some of the issues you raise.

Regarding the selection problem, I think this is something my model can only hope to address in some further developed stage. Right now, my main concern is to show, in a kind of 'proof-of-principle'-way, that a...

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Hi Edwin,

thank you for your kind words, and for giving my essay a thorough reading! I'll have to have a look at yours, so that I can comment on some of the issues you raise.

Regarding the selection problem, I think this is something my model can only hope to address in some further developed stage. Right now, my main concern is to show, in a kind of 'proof-of-principle'-way, that a pattern, or a state of mind, having meaning to itself isn't in conflict with a natural, physical world governed by 'mindless mathematical laws', as the contest heading stipulates (although I myself tend to think of laws rather as descriptions than as active governing agencies).

Furthermore, the 'self-scanning' system is introduced as an example of what will not work: I (following Svozil) demonstrate that this assumption leads to absurdity. So, your intuition is right: there is no system (well, no 'sufficiently complex' system) that could simply scan itself in order to produce its own description. It would've made my life a whole lot easier if there were!

Rather, the impossibility of this particular solution is what forces me to introduce the von Neumann structure, of a system with a clearly delineated syntactic and semantic aspect---copying and interpreting its own, coded description. So there's a system that simply has its own description available to itself; and if now this description is shaped, as I propose, by an evolutionary process such that the fitness function depends on the 'outside world', then this description contains likewise information about the outside world.

Consequently, we have a symbol that has access to information that it itself represents, and that information is about the outside world (by mediation of sensory data setting up certain conditions within the internal CA-universe). In this sense, it is a representation that is its own user.

Now, intentionality is contagious: your own purposeful behavior translates into purposeful behavior of, say, the car you drive. The car makes a left turn because you want to take a left turn. In the same way, if a replicator becomes dominant, it gets to control an organisms behavior---where I fully acknowledge that how it comes to be dominant, and how exactly this behavior-controlling works, don't as yet have a satisfying answer in my model.

But suppose this works (and I don't believe that there are any other than technical problems in realizing this). Then, we have a symbol that to itself contains information using that information in order to guide movement---say, grabbing for an apple. That is, the goal-directedness of the action is due to the information the evolutionary process has imbued the replicator with---because it has a certain form, so to speak, it produces a certain action.

Does this help?

I'm going to have a look at your essay (but it might take me some time to comment).

Cheers,

Jochen

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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...

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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

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