On 31 Mar 2013, at 21:54, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sunday, March 31, 2013 10:59:22 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 30 Mar 2013, at 14:19, Craig Weinberg wrote:
If, instead of a video screen and joystick, I had an arcade game
fitted with a speaker and microphone, I could have another computer
programmed to play PacMan on the first machine using only modem-like
screeching to satisfy the logic of the PacMan game. Instead of
graphic ghosts and visible maze, there would be squealing sound
representing what would have been the pixels on a screen. There
would be no difference for this equipment at all. As long as the
representation was isomorphic, it would make no difference to either
computer that there was no visual experience of PacMan at all but
instead just one dimensional noise streaming back and forth between
two machines.
If you want me to believe that a machine could support an
experience, then you have to explain why and how that is even a
remote possibility without begging the question by smuggling in our
own experience. If I do not agree that we are only machines, then I
do not agree that our experience is evidence of machine experience.
I have never said it is an evidence. It is just by definition of comp,
which is my working hypothesis. You are the one saying that comp is
false.
If a machine works without an experience, why invent any such thing
as experience?
If you accept the antic theory of knowledge, then machines, once above
the Löbian complexity threshold, cannot not have experience.
If Donkey Kong works just as well without anyone seeing him, then
why have a modem sound either? Just connect the two machines directly.
The pathetic fallacy is not a logical fallacy.
No, it's more important than logic.
I think the pathetic fallacy is, as a fallacy, itself a pathetic
fallacy. From which I can't conclude.
I understand that is your position, but I think that is a radically
theoretical view which doesn't apply to the universe in which we
actually live. In this universe, not everything that can be
programmed to smile on command has emotions.
We cannot program emotion. We can program "help yourself, or multiply
yourself". Emotion have simple roots, but get quickly highly entangled
in a non predictible way with the intensional variant of self-
reference when emerging in long story.
You just say that you believe that comp is false, but machines have
naturally that belief, as comp is provably counter-intuitive.
That's just comp feeding back on its own confirmation bias. Comp is
a machine which can only see itself. It's the inevitable inversion
meme which arises from mistaking forms and functions for reality
rather than the capacity to project and receive them.
Yes, comp feedback in this way. You don't like that, apparently, but
that's not an argument. I am not defending comp, I am just
criticizing the reason you provide to think that comp is false.
I have repeatedly provided a whole list of reasons but your
criticism is not really offering any criticism other than that you
don't think my view has any merit.
On the contrary. I do see merit in some serious non-comp theory. I am
criticizing only your philosophy/opinion, and non valid defense of
it, that it is obvious that machines cannot support persons.
You don't explain why though.
I am the one asking "why". You are saying that a theory is wrong, and
I just show that your reasoning is non valid. It only shows that it is
hard for a person to believe she is locally supported by a machine.
But "hard to believe" is not an argument.
There is no specific challenge to all of the things I mentioned. I
say pathetic fallacy, you say you don't respect it. I say the Map
is not the Territory and the Menu is not the Meal but you don't seem
to accept that these are comprehensible ideas.
They just comfort opinion, without making a point.
All seems to evaporate into a smoke screen and impatience. You don't
take the argument seriously and always fall back on my ignorance of
mathematical theory. My arguments question the foundation of math
itself though.
That makes your point even weaker. It is up to you to either abandon
your strong assertion that comp is false. You can study non-comp
without it. I respect and encourage alternative to comp. But you says
that comp is false, and just explain why you believe so, without
showing a contradiction in comp.
I have no tricks or invalid arguments that I know of, and I don't
see that I am being careless at all.
Which means probably that you should learn a bit of argumentation,
to be frank. Or just assume your theory and be cautious on the
theory of other people.
I'm only interested in uncovering the truth about consciousness.
What other people think and do is none of my business.
You are asserting without argument that a theory is incorrect,
I have been asserting my arguments in writing for thousands of
hours. Why do you say that it is without argument unless it is
simply too awful to accept that there is no valid counter-argument?
I have not seen argument which does not invoke wishful thinking, or
begging of the question.
For example?
Just read what you wrote above.
If you find a real argument against comp, publish it, and you will
become famous. But in the literature, all arguments against comp
(like Lucas and Penrose for example) have been debunked.
You can't debunk comp using mathematical theory, you have to reason
from the perceptual experience.
This is equivalent with "God phoned me and told me that comp is
false". That might be true, but is not an argument.
As far as I'm concerned, it is comp that has to argue against its
own presentation problems.
Comp, like tuns of theories, has many problems. Having a problem is
more a symptom of being interesting than being false.
and you do this by assuming that it cannot do this or that, but
with no argument that your personal feeling.
Why are common sense observations shared by all people since the
beginning of humanity reduced to 'my personal feeling', but
esoteric works of mathematics from the last couple of centuries are
are infallible?
They are not infallible, and personal feeling are not argument.
Why aren't personal feelings an argument when the subject is the
ability of persons and feelings to exist?
Because they are personal, and quite variate among different people.
That is why we make theories, and reason hypothetico-deductively, and
keeping in mind that any theory can be false.
Don't you see that you are a priori disqualifying the very thing
that you think you are explaining? There can be no theory which
becomes an experience and Comp is a theory about theories.
Comp is a theological theory assuming that machine can vehiculate
immaterial, and even partially non mechanical experience. Computer
science gives the room for it, and this is enough to refute your
point, independently of the truth or falsity of comp.
I just explain to you that machines might have already that
feeling, as it looks like when we listen to them.
I understand that, but I'm saying that the whole idea that machines
might have any feeling at all is unsupported by anything except the
very theory which begs the question to begin with.
Assuming is not begging. If you assume non-comp it is all right. But
you pretend to have an argument against comp, so it is normal we ask
it too you, and well, we don't really see an argument.
To be sure, machines cannot think, and the expression "machine can
think" is a short cut for "machine can support a person with respect
to some environment".
I don't assume non-comp, like Deleuze, I reason that comp is
representation, and representation can neither receive nor mobilize
anything on its own.
That's non-comp. The question is why a person can't neither receive
and mobilize things on its own, when represented at or below some
representation level.
Why would machines feel anything? "Well, lets assume that we are
machines, and therefore whatever we do is something that a machine
can do, including feel." Or, we could assume that we are ears of
corn, and therefore whatever we do is something that an ear of corn
can do if it was coaxed into becoming as complex a vegetable as we
are. We could decide that we are a TV show, and that TV shows will
someday evolve into us, so that the shows we see now are just baby
shows where the characters haven't grown very realistic yet.
You are correct. If we assume that we are angels, then we can
conclude that angels can feel. But nowhere I have attempted to prove
that machine can feel. It is my working assumption, and I am
interested in its fundamental consequence. But *you* pretend that
comp is necessary wrong, so we wait for the argument. Not a personal
feeling.
I don't pretend comp is wrong, I reason that it cannot be right.
That reasoning is missing. You always end up refering to your opinion
or experience. That explain why you assume non-comp, not why we should
assume it.
The arguments have been listed several times but they boil down to
the presentation problem. Computation has no need for any kind of
sensory-motor presentation.
Why?
It has no capability to bring any presentation into being.
Why?
I do not use some particular personal feeling as evidence against
comp, but the unquestionable variety of aesthetic modalities that we
experience make no sense as a compression algorithm.
There are infinitely many other algorithms.
The whole point of universal machines is their universality - what
would be the point of converting data into sensations and then back
into data?
Communication and action relatively to a probable world.
I am a logician. I defend more the use of valid reasoning than the
truth of any proposition, including comp.
Let me give you a good argument against comp. It does look obvious
that there is primitive fundamental physical reality. But with comp
that cannot exist in any reasonable sense by the UDA argument, so
comp is wrong.
That's not a good argument to me, it's the straw man you keep in
stock. I can easily see how memory could naturally acquire the kinds
of characteristics which we consider physical - fixed positions,
reliable connections, efficiently organized forms, etc. That is not
a problem for me, and I have no problem understanding that functions
in time map to topologies in space.
Nice.
The elephant in comp's room is this: Presentation. Sensory-motor
participation. Experience. This will never be explained by any theory.
In a 100% way? You are right. But this does not add a iota to the idea
that it is false.
Only a theory which begins and ends with experience can explain the
universe.
Why?
Of course the weakness of that argument is that there is no evidence
for a *primitively* physical reality. There are only evidences for a
physical reality. And here comp explains where such evidences comes
from.
So you will have to try harder.
Or just develop your theory, keeping some agnosticism about the fact
that your theory might contradict or not some other theories. May be
you will find a valid contradiction by working in that way, in comp
or in your theory. If not you look like a philosopher having some
prejudice against some entities a priori.
Again, I only care about explaining consciousness.
It seems to me that if you start from experience, then you take
consciousness for granted.
Bruno
It doesn't enter my mind to consider other people's expectations of
what I'm interested in doing.
Thanks,
Craig
Best,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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