On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:02:40 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 18 February 2014 17:14, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > Moreover, that very failure must be strikingly apparent to the functional >>> actors themselves. >>> >> >> Why do you think that isn't the pathetic fallacy though? >> > > Quite simply because the whole argument is based on the premise that the > computational theory of mind is true and hence if the tendency to attribute > sense to the functional actors is pathetic, we must apply it to ourselves > ex hypothesi. >
My whole argument is attacking the premise that the computational theory of mind is true though. We can reasonably determine that we do project pathetic qualities onto inanimate objects fallaciously (the camera 'likes you', the baby doll is "crying", the pattern of pixels on the screen is an actor, etc), so that to give blanket immunity to all devices above an arbitrary level of sophistication would be unscientific. The idea of applying the pathetic fallacy to ourselves is unsound since the capacity to discern living from non-living, the uncanny valley, etc would not make sense. We would not bury the dead, but instead assume that they had graduated from their body and become a very quiet, but wise skeleton. > It's interesting that Bruno says he originally formulated the UDA as a > reductio: i.e. in the full expectation that the logic of CTM would break > down. And indeed, it turns out that it can only be salvaged by a reversal > that establishes computational self-reference as the arbitrator of > observational consistencies that would otherwise be swamped by an infinity > computational noise. The clear alternative is to abandon CTM, but if it is > to be salvaged (and there are robust independent motivations to do so) the > entailment is that the entire domain of action and meaning is a > self-referential Platonic landscape of dreams. > Why are they dreams rather than unconscious, invisible, intangible, silent computations? > > The rigour of the UDA was the first thing that I appreciated because more > typically the real difficulties associated with the premise (such as the > inherent ambiguity of the relation between physics and > computation/information) are obfuscated. Of course we have already agreed > that if you reject the premise of CTM in the first place none of the > conclusions can follow. But I'm still not sure why you reject it. > I reject it because conscious experience adds nothing to the function of a computation, but computation can add long term aesthetic qualities to conscious experience which would not otherwise be available. I reject it because I understand that the whole of consciousness can be destructively reduced to binary logic, but that binary logic cannot be re-inflated into conscious experience unless conscious experience is interpreting it already. I reject it because the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal, and information has no capacity to cause effects on its own. > It can't just be because it is implausible that a human brain (or even > part of it) could be replaced by anything based on, or even suggested by, > the present state of technology, surely? > My argument has nothing to do with the brain at all. In fact, it has nothing to do with biology. We can begin from geometry. Since geometry computations can be performed by computers without actually being able to draw and see geometric figures, in a universe of only computation, the experience of seeing computations as lines, angles, curves, etc would be completely superfluous. The whole of the visible and tangible presence of the universe would be a dynamically updating post script file. > The premise is agnostic as to the level of substitution, which might be > arbitrarily low as long as all the functional relations of the appropriate > level are retained. > But it seems that conscious experience has no function. > The UD (or rather its completed trace) mandates ex hypothesi both the > presence of a computational infinity and the differential selection of > consistency of observation (modulo an unresolved measure issue to bias the > filtration towards of normal versus pathological outcomes). In sum, it's > like a Programmatic Library of Babel. > Again, that's fine for a universe which is made of unconscious mathematical relations. The problem is getting from UD to anything that resembles a feeling. > > ISTM that what recommends such a theory over some form of identity theory > is the implausibility on its face that the lines of fracture of the domain > of appearance could ever be made to coincide with those of physical > structure (as, for, example, biology does with physics). And panpsychist > theories are essentially identity theories with the addition of some kind > of interior/exterior (or in Gregg Rosenberg's case effective/receptive) > distinction. Computational / informational theories seem to offer an > exponentially more powerful model for recursively generating, combining and > recombining hierarchies of levels, parts and wholes and Bruno's > arithmetical development of the UDA suggests at the least some potentially > fruitful lines for further investigation. > My view turns panpsychism inside out, so it becomes primordial identity pansensitivity. Pansensitivity is the canvas, the brush, the paint, the artist, and the art, but the relation between them is computation, aka the most common sense of insensitivity (or extropy/quanta). > But what I really don't see is how this idea is at war with the basic > thrust of your intuition that sense is an ineliminable part of all this > from the beginning. > Because sense is not a part of anything, everything is a part of sense. You can't have parts or 'all this' or 'beginning' without sense already in place. > There's no suggestion that sense is created ex nihilo by computation, only > that it might be the key to understanding the fracture lines of > interiority/exteriority (a sort of computational lensing, as I suggested). > I'm saying that interiority/exteriority already requires sense to make such a distinction. The details of the creation of sense from comp are fuzzy, but I would not say they are meaningfully different from ex nihilo creation in Bruno's accounts. > That said, to be honest I strongly disagree that the subject/object > distinction is either simple or basic > Well, I would not say subject/object, but more like private/public. There need not be a human like subject at all, just a separation from form-function and appreciation-participation. There can be appreciation of appreciation - pure consciousness, but there cannot be any forms or functions without any appreciation, because they would be the same as nothing. > , or that a collection of micro-distinctions of this kind could combine to > form a more comprehensive one. I agree that it must seem basic at the > outset to any subject, for roughly analogous reasons to why we typically > never question why we can't see the back of our heads, but probably only > before considerable further reflection on the matter. I think it takes a > lot of functional work to make a subject, or an object for that matter, > even though the eventual domain of "objective" appearance that manifests to > such a subject is inherent (though uninformed) from the beginning. > You're talking about the special case of human experience, human bodies, etc. I'm talking about the ontology of the nature of any possible awareness in any possible universe. Craig > > David > -- 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.
