On Monday, January 27, 2014 6:15:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 27 Jan 2014, at 06:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Sunday, January 26, 2014 5:18:53 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 25 Jan 2014, at 15:35, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> >> >> On Saturday, January 25, 2014 1:41:30 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: >>> >>> On 25 January 2014 00:26, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >> Tell me what you believe so we can be clear: >>> >> >>> >> My understanding is that you believe that if the parts of the Chinese >>> >> Room don't understand Chinese, then the Chinese Room can't understand >>> >> Chinese. Have I got this wrong? >>> > >>> > >>> > The fact that the Chinese Room can't understand Chinese is not related >>> to >>> > its parts, but to the category error of the root assumption that forms >>> and >>> > functions can understand things. I see forms and functions as one of >>> the >>> > effects of experience, not as a cause of them. >>> >>> But that doesn't answer the question: do you think (or understand, or >>> whatever you think the appropriate term is) that the Chinese Room >>> COULD POSSIBLY be conscious or do you think that it COULD NOT POSSIBLY >>> be conscious? >> >> >> NO ROOM CAN BE CONSCIOUS. NO BODY CAN BE CONSCIOUS. NO FORM CAN BE >> CONSCIOUS.* >> >> >> I agree. >> > > Cool. > > >> >> >> >> *Except within the fictional narrative of a conscious experience. Puppets >> can seem conscious. Doors, door-knobs, and Chinese rooms can SEEM to be >> conscious. >> >> >> You do the Searle error. The fact that the room/body form is not >> conscious does not entail that the narrative is fictional. If the room >> simulates the person at its right level, it can manifest the real abstract >> person related to the narrative. >> > > That makes perfect sense to me, but it makes more sense that it is a > mistake. It assumes the information-theoretic ground of being in which > simulation is possible. > > > That is arithmetic. yes we assume things like 0+1=1, etc. >
I think that 0+1=1 already requires consciousness. If we assume that from the start, then all further argument is begging the question. If something can 'equal' something else, then consciousness is unnecessary. > > > > My understanding is that this is not only precisely the opposite of the > whole truth, which is that all awareness is grounded in the unprecedented, > unrepeatable, and unique, > > > If you know the truth; there is nothing we can do for you. > I'm not asking for anything to be done for me. > > > > but that the inverted assumption of comp is actually incapable of > detecting its own error. > > > > The point is that it can, but not by introspection. Just by comparing the > comp physics and the inferred physics. > Physics is measurement though. Awareness can't be located that way. > > > > This blindness is what is being reflected in its projections of first > person machine denial of mechanism. > > > ? > To be clear, 1p is not denied. It plays indeed the key role in the whole > UDA. > Then the math recover it Through the arithmetical translation of > Theaetetus idea, and this is made possible by machine's incompleteness. > That version of 1p is a behaviorist silhouette though. It is a 1p which has no function but to pad the 3p math so that the unknown can be taken into account. It does not specify the nature of the unknown or link it to qualitative awareness. > > > > There is no level of simulation, because simulation itself is a theory > which mistakes local sensory approximation for universal > interchangeability. > > > Well, that is the comp bet. You just assert non)comp here, without an > argument. > There can't be an argument, because the argument has to begin with sophistry. We can only argue for comp if we allow ourselves to doubt what cannot really be doubted. > > > > > It makes the mistake of imposing the specially blunted aesthetics of > functionalism onto the aesthetic totality. > > > That's no better than Jacques Arsac argument: "i am catholic, so i can't > believe that a machine will ever think". > It's the argument that makes the most sense, given the assumption that sense is primordial and function is derived. > > > > >> >> With your body or form is a sort of zombie. It does no more think than a >> car. But the owner of the body can think, and use his body to manifest his >> thinking (which is really "done" in platonia) relatively to its most >> probable continuations in Platonia. >> > > I think that the owners of my body look like cells to me. I am a > contributor to their experience, and other, greater owners of my lifetime > likely contribute to my experience. > > >> >> >> >> >> >>> Or do you claim that the question is meaningless, a >>> category error (which ironically is a term beloved of positivists)? If >>> the latter, how is it that the question can be meaningfully asked >>> about humans but not the Chinese Room? >>> >> >> Because humans are not human bodies. >> >> >> We agree on this. >> >> Ok > > >> >> We don't have to doubt that humans are conscious, as to do so would be to >> admit that we humans are the ones choosing to do the doubting and therefore >> are a priori certainly conscious. >> >> >> OK. >> >> >> Bodies do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, since they remain when we >> are personally unconscious or dear. That does not mean, however, that our >> body is not itself composed on lower and lower levels by microphenomenal >> experiences which only seem to us at the macro level to be forms and >> functions....they are forms and functions relative to our >> perceptual-relativistic distance from their level of description. Since >> there is no distance between our experience and ourselves, we experience >> ourselves in every way that it can be experienced without being outside of >> itself, and are therefore not limited to mathematical descriptions. The >> sole purpose of mathematical descriptions are to generalize measurements - >> to make phenomena distant and quantified. >> >> >> No problem with this. >> > > Ok > > >> >> >> >> >>> > I like my examples better than the Chinese Room, because they are >>> simpler: >>> > >>> > 1. I can type a password based on the keystrokes instead of the >>> letters on >>> > the keys. This way no part of the "system" needs to know the letters, >>> > indeed, they could be removed altogether, thereby showing that data >>> > processing does not require all of the qualia that can be associated >>> with >>> > it, and therefore it follows that data processing does not necessarily >>> > produce any or all qualia. >>> > >>> > 2. The functional aspects of playing cards are unrelated to the suits, >>> their >>> > colors, the pictures of the royal cards, and the participation of the >>> > players. No digital simulation of playing card games requires any >>> aesthetic >>> > qualities to simulate any card game. >>> > >>> > 3. The difference between a game like chess and a sport like >>> basketball is >>> > that in chess, the game has only to do with the difficulty for the >>> human >>> > intellect to compute all of the possibilities and prioritize them >>> logically. >>> > Sports have strategy as well, but they differ fundamentally in that >>> the real >>> > challenge of the game is the physical execution of the moves. A >>> machine has >>> > no feeling so it can never participate meaningfully in a sport. It >>> doesn't >>> > get tired or feel pain, it need not attempt to accomplish something >>> that it >>> > cannot accomplish, etc. If chess were a sport, completing each move >>> would be >>> > subject to the possibility of failure and surprise, and the end can >>> never >>> > result in checkmate, since there is always the chance of weaker pieces >>> > getting lucky and overpowering the strong. There is no Cinderella >>> Story in >>> > real chess, the winning strategy always wins because there can be no >>> > difference between theory and reality in an information-theoretic >>> universe. >>> >>> How can you start a sentence "a machine has no feeling so..." and >>> purport to discuss the question of whether a machine can have feeling? >>> >>> > So no, I do not "believe" this, I understand it. I do not think that >>> the >>> > Chinese Room is valid because wholes must be identical to their parts. >>> The >>> > Chinese Room is valid because it can (if you let it) illustrate that >>> the >>> > difference between understanding and processing is a difference in >>> kind >>> > rather than a difference in degree. Technically, it is a difference in >>> kind >>> > going one way (from the quantitative to the qualitative) and a >>> difference in >>> > degree going the other way. You can reduce a sport to a game (as in >>> computer >>> > basketball) but you can't turn a video game into a sport unless you >>> bring in >>> > hardware that is physical/aesthetic rather than programmatic. Which >>> leads me >>> > to: >>> >>> The Chinese Room argument is valid if it follows that if the parts of >>> the system have no understanding then the system can have no >>> understanding. >> >> >> You aren't listening to me - which may not be your fault. Your >> psychological specialization may not permit you to see any other >> possibility than the mereological argument that you keep turning to. >> >> >> >> I don't argue for comp. I just invalidate your argument against comp. It >> is circular. >> > > But my argument against comp is that if consciousness/sense is primordial, > > > But it is not primordial. Consciousness is the 1p, which unavoidably > emerge when we define the machine's notion of belief. > Nothing can 'emerge' from anything without sense. There is no 1, there is no p, there is no belief or machine without the meta-context of aesthetic relation and presence. > > > > > then only circular arguments can reveal the truth about it. Comp, being > the near-perfect impostor of sense, is the one case where we have to look > through the logic of argument to the sense of feeling. The only true > Voight-Kampff/Turing test/Gom Jabbar is free from all argument and > rationality. It is entirely aesthetic and intuitive. > > > Yes, non-comp is as much a bet than comp. But comp exists, and non-comp > theories does not yet exist, or are too much unclear without any > prediction. Better to reason and make experience than "knowing the truth". > That's exactly what the impostor must say. "No time for nuanced understanding, we must rush into foolish assumptions now!" > > > >> You always use your primitive notion of sense, which makes no sense to >> me, except in segregating among the possible creatures. >> > > Why wouldn't I use the primitive notion of sense if it is true? > > > If that is not begging the question! > But this is my version of saying yes to the doctor. If we accept that sense is primitive, then all of our experience with consciousness, machines, information, and physics fall perfectly into place. If we do not accept sense, then there is no plausible argument for its emergence from computation of physics. > > Why would you not send me 1000 $ if it is true that you have to? > > You do have some time some strange way to justify your point. > > Nobody knows the truth or falsity of comp. You argument is circular. > The falsity of comp is not something to know, it is something to understand. The nature of comp is that it is itself made of argument - it is made of theory. Theory can exist only as a representation within some presented experience. If you try to prove that with an argument, it is like trying to prove that a song will sound good without listening to the song. > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> Of course the whole can have properties that the parts do not have, that >> is not what I am denying at all. I am saying that there is no explanation >> of the Chinese Room which requires that it understands anything except one >> in which understanding itself is smuggled in from the real world and >> attached to it arbitrarily on blind faith. >> >> >> OK. That is why it is nice that incompleteness provides a bridge (the Bp >> ==> Bp & p definition of Theaetetus) between the machine and the real world >> (arithmetic). machines quickly realize that the arithmetical reality kick >> back. >> > > I haven't known machines to realize anything. > > > > Because you don't listen to them. > I am listening to machines all day long. I have to reboot them because they are incapable of learning even how to install their own updates. Even if a machine seemed to realize something, there would be no way of knowing that such an impression was not my own pareidolia. > > > > >> >> >> >> >> >>> It is pointed out (correctly) by Searle that the person >>> in the room does not understand Chinese, from which he CONCLUDES that >>> the room does not understand Chinese, >> >> >> Rooms don't understand anything. Rooms are walls with a roof. Walls and >> roofs are planed matter. Matter is bonded molecules. Molecules are sensory >> experiences frozen in some externalized perceptual gap. >> >> >>> and uses this conclusion to >>> support the idea that the difference between understanding and >>> processing is a difference in kind, so no matter how clever the >>> computer or how convincing its behaviour it will never have >>> understanding. >>> >> >> The conclusion is just the same if you use the room as a whole instead of >> the person. You could have the book be a simulation of John Wayne talking >> instead. No matter how great the collection of John Wayne quotes, and how >> great a job the book does at imitating what John Wayne would say, the >> room/computer/simulation cannot ever become John Wayne. >> >> >> Then there is something magical in John Wayne's body. What? Not a first >> person soul, as machines have them too. It has to be something noin Turing >> emulable, and not FPI recoverable, so what is it, and wy postulating this >> for carbon based creature, and not silicon creature? >> > > It's not his body, it's the totality of the unique sense of his life and > its relation to all life, order, and history of the universe. > > > Like the machine's 1p, then. OK. But that does not distinguish a silicon > machine, from a carbon machine. they both have bodies and histories, here > or in arithmetic. > Silicon and carbon are not the relevant distinction. If sense experience is primary, then the forms are only a disposable front end for a history of feeling, not of arithmetic. The material is no more important than an IP address is to a web site. To expect the website to follow the IP address is the Cargo Cult mistake. It's not that silicon is materially less hospitable than carbon, it is that the expression of biological life uses a carbon alphabet on the microphysical level, and no other. It may very well be too late to introduce any kind of competing biology, because of the tyrannical nature of sense. Absolute uniqueness is conserved. > > > > It's not emulable or reproducible, its the opposite. Emulation and > reproduction are expectations within awareness, which cannot be emulated or > reproduced at all. > > > That is a subtle point, and you are right. But again that is provable on > machines, and by machines on themselves. > How can we tell the difference between observing what can be proved on machines and what our own expectations project into them? It is like asking the I Ching whether it can ever be wrong. > > > > Emulation is a theory about theory being reality. > > > The exact contrary. Comp is made consistent because we distinguih > arithmetical truth from any possible effective theory. > But arithmetic truth and effective theory are both blind to the distinction between experience and abstraction. > > > > > It cannot be disproved theoretically, > > > Perhaps. But it can be disproved experimentally. > No, because experiments rely on measurement, which means awareness is amputated. The unique-proprietary becomes generic-public. > > > > but in reality, it doesn't work because theory is always less than the > reality which inspires it. > > > Theories can work even when not complete. > Sure, but the fact that they work doesn't complete them. A puppet can be made to imitate a person, and that 'works' as far as an audience is concerned, but the reality of a person is more than the characterization of a ventriloquist. Craig > > 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.
