I have had thoughts about how we attach meaning to symbols in computers (our designed computational systems), and how a physical system like a landslide, or accretion disk or something could accidentally assume forms and computation-like behaviours which we could attach symbolic meaning to, yet mostly do not /can not as we are not watching.
With such a vision there is strong ambiguity in the world over what is potentially symbolically meaningful to someone, the meanings things can carry, and the stories their symbols can follow. I think that essential ambiguity of interpretation, of the apparent orders and symbols in the world, makes nonsense of the popular idea that we may ourselves be certain sophisticated symbolic constructs in an advanced simulation.
Sorry for this but I am in the middle of doing something else and have only skimmed this paper but it looks tantalisingly relevant...
What you are thinking of is semiotics, the study of how we attach meanings to things. If a landslide assumes a form to which we attach a meaning, Augustine would say that's a natural sign.
For example, when something burns, a natural sign forms which we call smoke, and the meaning we attach to the sign is that there is a fire.
I don't thing that is what he is referring to. He is talking amount symbols as in computational manipulation of symbols to achieve information processing, not symbols as in a deeper meaning for something.
Shame I missed this thread. I do wonder about all aspects of symbols, how to differentiate shallow, deep or even consciously 'realised' symbols. Im wondering how things can be accidentally symbolic, with or without someone to observe the apparent symbolism. I feel there is something special about conciousness and there seems to be a popular view that conciousness is an accident of the universe or of any sufficiently detailed symulation.
Have often wondered how philosphers treat the apparent "dualism" of logicial or theoretical computational systems and their physical embodiments - thanks for posting!
"Perhaps the best known proposal for a hypercomputer is due to Mark Hogarth (1994, 2004), who developed an idea of Itamar Pitowsky (1990). Relativistic hypercomputers exploit the properties of a special kind of spacetime called Malament-Hogarth spacetime, which is physically possible in the sense of constituting a solution to Einstein's field equations for General Relativity. Malament-Hogarth spacetimes contain regions with an infinite time-like trajectory λ that can be circumvented by a finite time-like trajectory γ. In other words, λ and γ have a common origin, and there is a spacetime point p on γ such that λ, even though it is infinite, lies entirely in p's chronological past. If an observer launches a Turing machine along λ and then travels along γ she may, within finite time, find herself in the future of an infinitely long computation performed by the Turing machine. If the Turing machine is able to send signals to the observer, the observer would be able to know the outcome of a potentially infinitely long computation, thereby having computational means more powerful than (ordinary) Turing machines. For instance, an observer may be able to obtain the results of an arbitrary instance of the halting function for Turing machines.
Constructing and using a relativistic hypercomputer is a nontrivial affair."
This of course ignores the problem of energy and entropy. Computation takes energy and generates entropy. An infinity long computation would require infinite energy and would generate an infinite amount of entropy.
"The expressive power of real numbers may be used to generate a simple recipe to obtain the values of a Turing-uncomputable function. Consider that the digital expansion of a real number contains countably many digits. Hence, for any characteristic function (i.e., a function whose values are ‘0’ or ‘1’) defined over a countable domain, including all Turing-uncomputable such functions, there is a real number whose binary expansion encodes its values. This is because for all values of a characteristic function, the nth value of the function may be defined to be the nth digit of the binary expansion of a real number.
Suppose you wish to know the value of a specific Turing-uncomputable characteristic function, such as the halting function for Turing machines, for its nth argument. Take the real number r whose digital expansion encodes the values of the halting function. All you need to do is obtain the value of the nth digit in the binary expansion of r and you have the result you desire. If you can do this, you may obtain any value of any characteristic function defined over strings, including all Turing-uncomputable such functions."
"A closely related problem is that of distinguishing between physical systems such as digital computers, which appear to compute, and physical systems such as rocks, which appear not to compute. Unlike computers, ordinary rocks are not sold in computer stores and are usually not considered computers. Why? What do computers have that rocks lack, such that computers compute and rocks don't? (If indeed they don't?) In other words, what does it take for a computation to be implemented in a concrete physical system? Different answers to these questions give rise to different accounts of concrete computation."
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"Consider a rock under the sun, early in the morning. During any time interval, the rock's temperature rises. The rock goes from temperature T to temperature T+1, to T+2, to T+3. Now consider a NOT gate that feeds its output back to itself. At first, suppose the NOT gate receives ‘0’ as an input; it then returns a ‘1’. After the ‘1’ is fed back to the NOT gate, the gate returns a ‘0’ again, and so on. The NOT gate goes back and forth between outputting a ‘0’ and outputting a ‘1’. Now map physical states T and T+2 onto ‘0’; then map T+1 and T+3 onto ‘1’."
According to the simple mapping account, the rock implements a NOT gate undergoing the computation represented by ‘0101’.
By contast, according to the counterfactual account, the rock's putative computational implementation is spurious, because the physical state transitions do not support counterfactuals. If the rock were put in state T, it may or may not transition into T+1 depending on whether it is morning or evening and other extraneous factors. Since the rock's physical state transitions that map onto the NOT gate's computational state transitions do not support counterfactuals, the rock does not implement the NOT gate according to the counterfactual account."
With such a vision there is strong ambiguity in the world over what is potentially symbolically meaningful to someone, the meanings things can carry, and the stories their symbols can follow. I think that essential ambiguity of interpretation, of the apparent orders and symbols in the world, makes nonsense of the popular idea that we may ourselves be certain sophisticated symbolic constructs in an advanced simulation.
Sorry for this but I am in the middle of doing something else and have only skimmed this paper but it looks tantalisingly relevant...