On Saturday, December 28, 2013 4:10:08 PM UTC-5, freqflyer07281972 wrote: > > Hey Craig, > > What is the origin of the quote? >
It was just something that someone said on Facebook, but I feel like it represents the thinking of a lot of people. > Also, what privileges the process of 'introspection' to reveal anything > contrary to the hypothesis that we are machines? Isn't introspection a bit > of a dubious test for finding out a thing's machinehood? > Through introspection we can find out what we mean by machine. When we do, I think that we find that we mean automatic, unconscious, unfeeling, superficial, etc. The fact that we can introspect at all is, by that sense of machine, diametrically opposed to mechanism. > > Finally, I'm not so sure that it is 'consciousness' (yet another word that > is frequently thrown around as a symbol with no proper referent) that is > responsible for uniqueness and unrepeatability as it is the infinitesimally > small chance that all of the quantum correlations that exist in a current > observer moment could ever be repeated... and if they could, that would > nevertheless include no information about whether the entire state had been > repeated or not. > I don't think that any state can be literally repeated, as the totality is present in all states. > > I dunno, seems like a lot of hand waving to me... I do feel rather > convinced of precisely the sentiment that the quotation you led off with > expresses, namely that we are machines made of machines made of machines > made of... information eventually. And the information is processed by some > set of very fundamental rules. > > What are "rules" and how can anything 'follow' them? > > I do get your rejoinder, however.... which I think is something like: If > everything is information fundamentally operating according to > computational principles, why on earth would there "be something" that it > is like to be that computation? Whence the "inner life" and rich inner > experiences we have access to in introspection? > Not inner fire or rich experience, but *any* experience at all. > Whence the qualia? And honestly, I don't have an answer for that. > But I think that I do, and it seems to make more sense than "information". > I take it your answer (sorry to rehash some of this, but I find it helpful > to deepen my understanding) is that everything is endowed with primitive > "sense making" faculties, > Close, but I'm actually proposing that there is no everything other than sense making faculties. Sense experience is all there can ever be. > kind of like a panpsychism. > I say Primordial Identity Pansensitivity > I'm wondering, why can't this axiom simply be added on to the idea that we > are machines made of information? i.e. we are machines made of information > and information itself has an inner life? > Because information has no plausible reason to have or want an inner life. With the sense primitive, it is perfectly plausible to imagine that the invention of a common structure would serve to organize and enhance aesthetic values. With the information primitive, both sense and physics are incoherent and absurd. > It's beginning to sound a lot like woo, so I'd better stop there. > Seems ok to me? Thanks, Craig > > Best regards, > > Dan > > > > On Saturday, December 28, 2013 9:40:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> "humans are machines unable to recognize the fact that they are machines," >>> >> >> I would re-word it as 'Humans are not machines but when they introspect >> on their most mechanical aspects mechanistically, they are able to imagine >> that they could be machines who are unable recognize the fact." >> >> I agree that there is an intrinsic limit to Strong AI, but I think that >> the limit is at the starting gate. Since consciousness is the embodiment of >> uniqueness and unrepeatability, there is no "almost" conscious. It doesn't >> matter how much the artist in the painting looks like he is really painting >> himself in the mirror, or how realistic Escher makes the staircase look, >> those realities are forever sculpted in theory, not in the multisense >> realism. >> > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
