On Thursday, November 15, 2012 3:43:03 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 5:04 PM, Craig Weinberg > <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > > > There is no mathematical justification for geometry though that I can >> think of. >> > > There are ways that numbers can describe geometry and ways that geometry > can describe numbers. What more do you need? >
A reason that there could possibly be a difference between the two. > > >> So the fact that arithmetic can produce the exact same sort of behavior >>> that minds are so proud of, like playing Chess or solving equations or >>> winning millions on Jeopardy, is all just a big coincidence. If you really >>> believe that then there is a bridge I'd like to sell you. >>> >> >> > It's not a coincidence at all, but neither is the fact that arithmetic >> fails miserably at producing the sort of behavior that minds take for >> granted, like caring about something or having a personality. >> > > The thing I'm most eager to hear is why you said "minds" and not " Craig > Weinberg's mind". > I was imitating you, since that was how you said it I wanted to be equally presumptuous. > > > They [potassium and sodium ions in your brain] only matter to me because >> of the feelings and experiences their configurations make available to me. >> > > OK, there is no disputing matters of taste. > > > what we feel is in no way linked to those objects except through >> empirical relation. >> > > Except for that Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play? > If you mean that bullet-induced mortality is an argument for the supervenience of qualia on physics I don't think that it is. A brain with a hole in it is just as likely or unlikely to be associated with an experience of consciousness as anything else from a functional point of view. > > > There is no theory by which their configuration should lead to anything >> beyond the configuration itself. >> > > To hell with theories. Just because there is no theory to explain a > phenomenon does not mean the phenomenon does not exist; nobody has a theory > worth a damn to explain why the universe is accelerating but all > astronomers know that it is nevertheless doing so. > Astronomers can't see neurons turning acoustic patterns into music though. Nobody can see that, because it may not be happening at all. > And there may not be a theory to explain why but there is not the > slightest doubt that changes in those potassium and sodium ions cause > PROFOUND changes in your consciousness and your subjective emotional state. > So if ions in a few pounds of grey goo inside the bone box on your > shoulders can create consciousness > They can't, and they don't. Just as the pixels on your screen do not speak in my voice, the grey goo is only a thin slice of what a person actually is. The brain is not creating consciousness. The brain is not creating consciousness. The computer on your desk is not creating the internet. The radio receiver is not creating the radio station. > I don't understand why its such a stretch to imagine that electrons in a > semiconductor can do the same thing, especially if they produce the same > behavior. > It isn't a stretch at all - atoms in a semiconductor do make sense of conditions which affect them - the sense they make of those conditions we think are electrons (and other bosons, mesons, and fermions), but that's because we are using atoms to look at atoms and imagining that we are seeing through a neutral medium. What atoms in a semiconductor don't make is the sense with which we employ them. Just as a coffee filter is not aware of its role as a coffee filter, the computer knows nothing about the computations as a whole. It isn't even a computer, it's just traffic signals on a clock for the mindless traffic of unrelated events in the semiconductor neighborhoods. > > Einstein made more sense of the data was through imagination and >> discovery, >> > > OK. > > > not through mechanistic data processing or accumulation of knowledge. >> > > What's the difference? > A filing cabinet can accumulate knowledge, and Google can sort the contents semantically, but there is nothing there that cares about it. It's just going to sit there forever. > > > How do you know that Bugs Bunny isn't tasting anything when he eats a >> carrot? >> > > I don't know it for a fact but I strongly suspect it because Bugs fails > the Turing Test. > We could have a conversation over the phone where I imitate Bugs voice and describe the flavor of the carrots. Then Bugs passes the Turing Test. > > we are a single cell which knows how to divide itself into trillions of >> copies. >> > > A cell in your body can divide into two or a trillion cells, but you don't > know how it does it. > The how isn't important. I don't know how computers get distributed to specific stores either, but that doesn't change that there is a fundamental basis for distinction between living organisms and inorganic assemblies. > > > We are not an assembly of disconnected parts. >> > > Nothing is "an assembly of disconnected parts". > Machines have parts which can be fastened, welded, or soldered together, but they are still disconnected units which originate in different processes and places. > > >>> no inorganic lever system seems to aspire to anything other than >>>> doing the same thing over and over again. >>>> >>> >> >> >> A computer calculating the value of PI never repeats itself, it >>> never returns to a previous state. >>> >> >> > It never leaves the state it's in. Calculating the value of Pi is one >> of the kinds of acts which requires infinite resources to complete, >> therefore it never gets chance to repeat itself. >> > > It's true that a real computer, unlike a theoretical Turing Machine, does > not have a infinite memory and so can't be in a infinite number of states, > but you don't have a infinite memory either and so your brain can't be in a > infinite number of states. You and the computer are in the same boat. > No because I am not about to be so dumb and robotic as to blindly follow someone's instruction to compute Pi to the last digit like a computer would. > > > you have to finish 'peating' to be able to re-peat. >> > > If you believe that a real computer can't finishing peating and thus can't > repeat I take it that you're retracting your comment that a computer just > does "the same thing over and over again". > No, I'm not retracting at all, I'm saying that you have picked an example which gives the computer no opportunity to finish a task. By definition a computer does the same thing over and over again, it's got a clock which repeats and all of its functions are defined as recursively enumerable through the rigid repetition of that clock. > >> > I do think that my approach does solve the Hard Problem of >> consciousness >> > > And your approach is that people are conscious because they use free will > to make decisions and they use free will to make decisions because they are > conscious. That doesn't sound very hard to me, or very deep. > People are conscious and have free will because that is the quality of participation of a human being. Consciousness itself is an elaboration of sense, which is the capacity to make a difference and detect differences. That capacity is more primitive than information or matter and that is how the hard problem is solved. The answer to the Hard Problem of why there is experience at all is because there is nothing except experience in the universe. Matter and information are kinds of sense experience. Craig > > John K Clark > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/2yGyW0UTuKMJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
