On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 12:31:07 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 28 Jan 2014, at 13:36, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 5:23:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 27 Jan 2014, at 22:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> >> >> On Monday, January 27, 2014 5:57:55 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 27 Jan 2014, at 06:07, Craig Weinberg wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Saturday, January 25, 2014 11:36:11 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On 26 January 2014 01:35, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> >> 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.* >>>> > >>>> > *Except within the fictional narrative of a conscious experience. >>>> Puppets >>>> > can seem conscious. Doors, door-knobs, and Chinese rooms can SEEM to >>>> be >>>> > conscious. >>>> >>>> Do you think Barack Obama is conscious? If you do, then in whatever >>>> sense you understand that, can the Chinese Room also be conscious? Or do >>>> you think that is impossible? >>>> >>> >>> Yes, I think that Barack Obama is conscious, because he is different >>> from a building or machine. Buildings and machines cannot be conscious, >>> just as pictures of people drinking pictures of water do no experience >>> relief from thirst. >>> >>> >>> To compare a brain with a machine can make sense. >>> To compare a brain with a picture cannot. >>> >> >> It depends what the picture is doing. If you have a collection of >> detailed pictures of brains, and you organize them so that they are shown >> in different sequences according to some computation, isn't that a >> simulation of a brain? >> >> >> It is not. It is a description of a computation, not a computation. The >> computation is in the logical relation, which includes the counterfactuals. >> > > But the counterfactuals are theoretical rather than realistic. > > > I will no more comment any statements using word like "real", "realistic", > "concrete", etc. >
How would you like to refer to the difference between an Escher portrait, in which lizards can come from paper and staircases can turn inside out, and the ordinary world which is presented in which such things are understood to be obviously and permanently impossible? > > > > The computation is like an Escher drawing, it can do things that would be > impossible for a real brain and cannot do or be real in ways that a brain > must necessarily be. A picture is just the next step in abstraction toward > the sub-theoretical, but it is actually one step more concrete in aesthetic > realism. A real picture of a triangle is closer to consciousness than a > computation for the Mandelbot Set, which is only a theory until it is > presented graphically to a visual participant. > > >> Now, we do describe computation by some description, and so this >> confusion is frequent. But it is the same type of confusion between ciphers >> and numbers. Ciphers and sequence of ciphers are not numbers. It is the >> cionfusion between "345" and 345. >> > > Both "345" and 345 are still pictures. > > > ? > > I ask myself if you get the notion of number. > Yes, but the notion of number is not the necessarily true. It may not refer to something which exists, but rather common sense of the gaps between what exists. > > > They can only be made meaningful when they are associated by a sensory > experience in which some aesthetic content or expectation can be labelled > with a string or value. > > > What can I say? That follows from your theory. But your theory does not > even try to explain the sensory experience. > Of course. Explanation means only the translation from one aesthetic context to another. Sense experience is the primordial identity, so explaining it would be to appeal to the senseless. > You assume the difficulty which I think computer science explains > partially, and in a testable way. > The existence of your theory is not by itself a refutation of a different > theory. > That's because the theory prevents the truth about it from being accessed. The theory of comp is blind to its blindness, and demands to be refuted only by those wearing blindfolds. To test fairly, you would have to take off the blindfold, but then the fact of your seeing would make the test redundant. > > > > > >> >> >> >> In either case, consciousness makes no more sense as part of a brain or a >> machine than a picture. >> >> >> Right. We agree on that. But a brain can locally manifest a person. >> > > I don't think it can. > > > So, if someone lost his body in some accident, but the rescuer saves the > brain, and succeeded in connecting it to an artificial heart, and > eventually an artificial body (but still with his natural brain). > The guy behaves normally. He kept his job. But you tell me that he has > become a zombie? > The brain never stopped being an expression of the victim's life though. It is still his body in some sense, even if there is only one cell. The copy of the brain never starts becoming an expression of anyone's life because it is made of nothing but lower level pre-biotic experiences. > > > A tip cannot locally manifest an iceberg. A cookie cutter cannot manifest > a cookie. > > > >> A picture cannot. You can't implement it in a computer, in the sense of >> implementing a program, which then can manifest a person. >> > > Right, because nothing can manifest a person except the complete history > of experiences of Homo sapiens. > > > You confirm that you are lowering the level, and in fact up to infinity. > It's not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. It isn't a question of lowering or raising, it is a matter of understanding that just because all pizzas can be sliced in the same way does not mean that a pizza can be made by slicing-ness. Arithmetic is slicing-ness. > It looks like saying "I am an infinite being". > I would say "I am an infinitely unique experience, made of infinitely unique experiences, which approximates experience as finite and generic". > I have no local Gödel number that you can put on some hard disk. > > It is your right, but, well, I am not interested in that type of theory. > > It excludes too much possibilities, and is based on some illusion of > superiority. > I don't see it as having anything to do with superiority, it is only a recognition that slicing a hard drive like a pizza doesn't make it edible. The hard drive does different things than the pizza entirely, regardless of how much we think it looks like a pizza. > The 1p of the machine also believes, even know, its relation with > *infinity*, but the correct machine does not brag on this, and still less, > derived any superiority feeling from this. > Humility and pride are both equally anthropocentric in my mind. Bending over backward to imagine that we are the same as inanimate object is just an inverse egotism. It is pure vanity to say "I have transcended the vanity of my species." It is a very special privilege to believe to know how very un-special life is. It is the same comfort that we seek when we look up at the grandeur of our own insignificance as when we look down on the grandeur of ourselves. They are both settings on the continuum of sense-making, of what I call eigenmorphism or eigengraphy. > (especially that comp explains in which sense the machine is right when > saying that about herself (her 1-self). > I don't believe that a machine can be right or wrong. It can only reflect the intention of its design and the nature of its materials. > > > >> >> >> Machines are like 4D pictures. One picture or form leads to another and >> another, and if there were some interpreter they could infer a logic to >> those transitions, but there is nothing in the machine which would itself >> lead from unconsciousness to awareness. >> >> >> No, but the machine can still enact it. >> > > What the machine enacts is an impersonal performance of personhood, not a > person. > > > > Well, at least that's a nice way to define what do a zombie: an impersonal > performance of personhood. > > A (3-1) person without a (1-1) person. > > Hmm... > They already exist everywhere. Photographs, cartoons, movies, dolls. We have many signs and simulacra which lull our senses into accepting some degree of empathy. A computer can amplify that considerably in theory, although in fact, I have yet to see any indication that even that is forthcoming. The sterility of impersonality always seems to be there if you have the patience to notice. Imitations and forgeries can never be complete, although they come much closer when imitating an object instead of a subject. Craig > Bruno > > > > > 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] <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<javascript:> > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > 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]. 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