On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 1:47 PM Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
*> At a high level, states of consciousness are states of knowledge,* > That is certainly true, but what about the reverse, does a high state of knowledge imply consciousness? I'll never be able to prove it but I believe it does but of course for this idea to be practical there must be some way of demonstrating that the thing in question does indeed have a high state of knowledge, and the test for that is the Turing Test, and the fact that my fellow human beings have passed the Turing test is the only reason I believe that I am NOT the only conscious being in the universe. *> A conditional is a means by which a system can enter/reach a state of > knowledge (i.e. a state of consciousness) if and only if some fact is true.* > Then "conditional" is not a useful philosophical term because you could be conscious of and know a lot about Greek mythology. but none of it is true except for the fact that Greek mythology is about Greek mythology. > *Consciousness is revealed as an immaterial, ephemeral relation, not any > particular physical thing we can point at or hold.* > I mostly agree with that but that doesn't imply there's anything mystical going on, information is also immaterial and you can't point to *ANY PARTICULAR* physical thing (although you can always point to *SOME *physical thing) and I believe it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way information feels when it is being processed intelligently. However there is nothing ephemeral about information, as far as we can tell the laws of physics are unitary, that is information can't be destroyed and the probability of all possible outcomes must add up to 100%. For a while Stephen Hawking thought that Black Holes destroyed information but he later changed his mind, Kip Thorne still thinks it may do so but he is in the minority. *> All we need to do is link some action to a state of knowledge.* > At the most fundamental level that pretty much defines what a computer programmer does to make a living. * > It shows the close relationship between consciousness and information, > where information is defined as "a difference that makes a difference",* > And the smallest difference that still makes a difference is the difference between one and zero, or on and off. > *It shows a close relationship between consciousness and > computationalism,* > I strongly agree with that, it makes no difference if the thing doing that computation is carbon-based and wet and squishy, or silicon-based and dry and hard. > It is also supportive of functionalism and it's multiple realizability, > as there are many possibile physical arrangements that lead to conditionals. YES! *> It's clear there neural networks firings is all about conditionals and > combining them in whether or not a neuron will fire and which other neurons > have fired binds up many conditional relations into one larger one. It > seems no intelligent (reactive, deliberative, contemplative, reflective, > etc.) process can be made that does not contain at least some conditionals. > As without them, there can be no responsiveness. This explains the > biological necessity to evolve conditionals and apply them in the guidance > of behavior. In other words, consciousness (states of knowledge) would be > strictly necessary for intelligence to evolve.* > I agree with all of that. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> xex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0q60k%3DqoWMbNsAOVxG_qotkyV8TJhN8-vNLoMg7Pu48A%40mail.gmail.com.
