On 12 Jan 2014, at 14:18, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sunday, January 12, 2014 5:41:15 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 12 Jan 2014, at 05:12, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
RE: arXiv: 1401.1219v1 [quant-ph] 6 Jan 2014
Consciousness as a State of Matter
Max Tegmark, January 8, 2014
Hi Folk,
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
I confess that after 12 years of deep immersion in science’s
grapplings with consciousness, the blindspot I see operating is so
obvious and so pervasive and so incredibly unseen it beggars belief.
I know it’s a long way from physics to neuroscience (discipline-
wise). But surely in 2014 we can see it for what it is. Can’t they
(Tegmark and ilk) see that the so-called “science of
consciousness” is
· the “the science of the scientific observer”
That's observation theory, not consciousness theories.
Observation is part of consciousness. Without consciousness there is
no observation.
It depends on what you mean by observation. For many purposes,
observation can be only an interaction. that is enough to explain the
wave collapse appearance from the SWE.
Now, observation can also be defined in a stringer sense involving
consciousness, I can agree. Yet, this does not permit a direct
identification of consciousness theory with observation theory.
· trying to explain observing with observations
Of course you need logic, ans some assumption on the mind (like
computationalism assume mind to be invariant for Turing simulation).
Since observation is part of consciousness,
OK, for some sense of observation. But there are many use of
"observation" which do not require consciousness.
he is pointing out that trying to explain consciousness without
recognizing that all evidence of it comes from consciousness is
circular reasoning.
But nobody tries to negate that! Obviously consciousness requires
consciousness to be part of the evidence. The same occurs for matter.
But from this you cannot conclude that consciousness or matter have to
be primitively assumed in the theory. That would be circular.
Whether or not we need assumptions for our theories is not relevant
to the ontology of consciousness.
?
· trying to explain experience with experiences
Well, at some level, we can't avoid that, but the experience are
extended into testable theories.
Tests and theories are experiences.
You confuse a theory, with the experience of a theory.
· trying to explain how scientists do science.
In some theoretical frame. yes, "meta-science" can be handled
scientifically (= modestly).
But consciousness ≠ modesty or science.
Sure. Nobody said that. A theory of consciousness does not need to be
conscious.
· a science of scientific behaviour.
· Descriptive and never explanatory.
You overgeneralize. That is the case of physics, but not of meta-
mathematics in the comp frame. I recall to you that computationalism
is incompatible with physicalism.
Why is meta-mathematics in comp more explanatory?
Meta-mathematics explains how machine can be aware (in some variate
senses) of their own limitations, in both the ability to justify some
guess, and to express some lived experience.
· Assuming that the use of consciousness to confirm ‘laws
of nature’ contacts the actual underlying reality...
That's partly wrong, partly correct.
That's partly information about an opinion, mostly cryptic.
It was correct, because consciousness does not tell anything per se
about the reality, except for itself.
It was not correct, because a *theory* of consciousness can have
verifiable aspects, and so, if they are refuted we *might* learn
something about reality, in some local revisable way.
· Assuming there’s only 1 scientific behaviour and never
ever ever questioning that.
?
That's fuzzy, and false, as far as I can interpret it precisely.
It's supposed to be false. He's giving another example of how
scientific approaches to consciousness beg the question and deceive
themselves.
I understood that. I was agreeing with Colin.
It means precisely that in reality there are many, many tools within
science and reason, but the contemporary approaches consolidate
science into a single dogmatic ideology.
This is a bit frstrating when you read the authors and see that their
opinions is quite variate and variable. Wjat is true, is that most of
them adopt, not always consciously, the theology of Aristotle, with
the belief in "Nature" and things like that, which gives terms which
are too much fuzzy for the fundamental questioning.
· Assuming scientists are not scientific evidence of
anything.
That's false in Everett QM, and in computationalism.
They still do not contain scientists, only toy models of the
footprint that first person interaction imposes on 3p functions.
Not at all. In the Everett universal waves, there are scientists
(indeed all of them, for Everett).
Don't confuse the physical wave that Everett is assuming to exist and
is talking about, with the mathematical description of the wave that
he provides. Those differ like a finger and the moon.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
