On 20 Sep 2012, at 11:45, Roger Clough wrote:
BRUNO: I think that your metaphysics and reading of Leibniz makes
sense for me, and comp, but I have to say I don't follow your
methodology or teaching method on the religious field, as it
contains authoritative arguments.
ROGER: Everything I write should be prefaced with IMHO.
BRUNO: My feeling is that authoritative argument is the symptom of
those who lack faith.
ROGER: That doesn't make sense, because faith= trust. And if you
don't trust, nothing is authoritative.
BRUNO: That error is multiplied in the transfinite when an
authoritative argument is attributed to God.
ROGER: Sorry, no comprehende.
I can trust entities which provides explanations, not entities
threatening with torture in case I do not love them.
Humans have attributed to God authoritative arguments, with the result
of justifying their own use of it.
I can understand such argument in warfare, or when decision must be
taken without the time to make a rational decision, but in the
religious field, I think that authoritative argument have to fail,
they only display the lack of faith of those who use them, or, more
often, they display their special terrestrial interests.
BRUNO: you answer the following question?
How could anyone love a God, or a Goddess, threatening you of
eternal torture in case you don't love He or She?
That's bizarre.
How could even just an atom of sincerity reside in that love, with
such an explicit horrible threat?
ROGER: That love and all love, comes from God, not from me.
But then why God has to threaten his creature to get love from them?
And again, how could that love be sincere?
This does not make sense.
Bruno
BRUNO: I hope you don't mind my frankness and the naivety of my
questioning.
Bruno
ROGER: Not at all, as in my experience most agnosticism or atheism is
is a product of ignorance, if you don't mind my saying that. :-)
Roger Clough, [email protected]
9/19/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: John Mikes
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-18, 17:17:40
Subject: Re: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
Ha ha: so not consciousness is the 'thing', but 'intelligence'? or
is this one also a function (of the brain towards the self?) who is
the self? how does the brain
DO something ?
(as a homunculus?) on its own? Any suggestions?
John M???
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:07 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg
IMHO conscousness is not really anything in itself,
it is what the brain makes of its contents that the self
perceives. The self is intelligence, which is
able to focus all pertinent brain activity to a unified point.
Roger Clough, [email protected]
9/18/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end."
Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-17, 23:43:08
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Monday, September 17, 2012 11:02:16 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Craig Weinberg ?rote:
I understand that, but it still assumes that there is a such thing
as a set
of functions which could be identified and reproduced that cause
consciousness. I don't assume that, because consciousness isn't like
anything else. It is the source of all functions and appearances,
not the
effect of them. Once you have consciousness in the universe, then
it can be
enhanced and altered in infinite ways, but none of them can replace
the
experience that is your own.
No, the paper does *not* assume that there is a set of functions that
if reproduced will will cause consciousness. It assumes that something
like what you are saying is right.
By assume I mean the implicit assumptions which are unstated in the
paper. The thought experiment comes out of a paradox arising from
assumptions about qualia and the brain which are both false in my
view. I see the brain as the flattened qualia of human experience.
This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of
all
forms of
measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there
ever being
a
such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person
behaviors of
any
system.
What is it that you don't think I understand?
What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of
behaviours is not required.
Yes, it is. Not for prosthetic enhancements, or repairs to a nervous
system, but to replace a nervous system without replacing the
person who is
using it, yes, there is no set of behaviors which can ever be
exhaustive
enough in theory to accomplish that. You might be able to do it
biologically, but there is no reason to trust it unless and until
someone
can be walked off of their brain for a few weeks or months and
then walked
back on.
The replacement components need only be within the engineering
tolerance
of the nervous system components. This is a difficult task but it is
achievable in principle.
You assume that consciousness can be replaced, but I understand
exactly why
it can't. You can believe that there is no difference between
scooping out
your brain stem and replacing it with a functional equivalent as
long as it
was well engineered, but to me it's a completely misguided notion.
Consciousness doesn't exist on the outside of us. Engineering only
deals
with exteriors. If the universe were designed by engineers, there
could be
no consciousness.
Yes, that is exactly what the paper assumes. Exactly that!
It still is modeling the experience of qualia as having a
quantitative relation with the ratio of brain to non-brain. That
isn't the only way to model it, and I use a different model.
I assume that my friends have not been replaced by robots. If they
have
been then that means the robots can almost perfectly replicate their
behaviour, since I (and people in general) am very good at picking
up even
tiny deviations from normal behaviour. The question then is, if
the function
of a human can be replicated this closely by a machine does that
mean the
consciousness can also be replicated? The answer is yes, since
otherwise we
would have the possibility of a person having radically different
experiences but behaving normally and being unaware that their
experiences
were different.
The answer is no. A cartoon of Bugs Bunny has no experiences but
behaves
just like Bugs Bunny would if he had experiences. You are eating
the menu.
And if it were possible to replicate the behaviour without the
experiences - i.e. make a zombie - it would be possible to make a
partial zombie, which lacks some experiences but behaves normally and
doesn't realise that it lacks those experiences. Do you agree that
this is the implication? If not, where is the flaw in the reasoning?
The word zombie implies that you have an expectation of
consciousness but there isn't any. That is a fallacy from the start,
since there is not reason to expect a simulation to have any
experience at all. It's not a zombie, it's a puppet.
A partial zombie is just someone who has brain damage, and yes if
you tried to replace enough of a person's brain with a non-
biological material, you would get brain damage, dementia, coma, and
death.
Craig
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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