On 19 February 2014 17:15, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 11:28:18 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 19 February 2014 14:17, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 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. >>> >> >> I'm not really sure what distinction you're trying to draw here. The >> dictionary tells us that ontology is the study of the categories of being >> and existence. We must assume that since there is awareness it must inhere, >> in some sense, in whatever exists, but that alone doesn't take us very far. >> Since not everything that exists makes any claim to be aware the >> interesting part is trying to elucidate the specific conditions that >> differentiate the presence of such claims from their absence. >> > > Except that the nature of awareness seems to be to undersignify other > kinds of awareness. We can't trust that what we see of other things is > enough to judge whether or not there is a claim to be aware there. > That's dangerous talk. It has already got you into pretty deep water in your discussion with Stathis. You don't really want to be trapped into saying that something can be biologically complete at the molecular level and still lack.. well what? Elan vital? You hop from foot to foot on this. One moment you appear to be quibbling about the technical possibilities and the next you appear to accept that something could be a molecule-for-molecule copy (and let's not get hung up on this word, it simply means "at the appropriate substitution level" in context) and yet lack animation. Why? Has molecular bonding somehow failed? Do the biological processes that routinely assemble molecular structures have secret access to a factor X? Is this really a position that you want your theory to force you into? > From what we have seen in neuroscience so far, there does not seem to be > any distinction between the brain, parts of the brain, individual neurons > or parts of neurons which suggest that one level would begin to suddenly be > aware. > Just so. Hence, as Russell recently remarked, it seems easier to justify the appearance of a material world in an idealist theory than appearance per se in a materialist one. > >> >> A computational theory is a variety of idealism whose natural ontological >> homeland is Platonia. One can say that its specific ontological category is >> arithmetical, but this means only that the platonic existence of arithmetic >> suffices for a model of computation. That said, the specific conditions >> that differentiate claims of awareness from their absence will be >> epistemological rather than ontological, which is to say that they will >> require a theory of knowledge. >> > > I disagree. The conditions that differentiate claims of awareness from > their absence have nothing to do with knowledge. There is no 'claim' of > awareness, there is only the presence of aesthetic phenomena - experiences. > Inexplicably, you seem to persistently miss the relevance of what I mean by a claim of awareness. Aesthetic experience is not only present to you, you *know* and can lay *claim* to such presence, as we both continually demonstrate in this discussion. The ability both to know and lay claim to knowledge requires explanation in terms of a theory of knowledge. What else - a theory of cabbage? > Knowledge is derived from the logical comparison of multiple experiences. > It has all kinds of sensory and sensible per-requisites that must be in > place - expectations of causality, reliability, significance, etc. The > theory of knowledge itself requires a theory of pre-epistemic sense. > > >> Computational theory leads to a repertoire of logics which (so far) seem >> capable of supporting the necessary epistemological distinctions with all >> their accompanying modal complexities. >> > > Sure, not surprisingly. Computational theory gives us a marvelous set of > Legos with which we can build Lego houses, Lego brains, Lego > behaviors...but they are empty without some mode of aesthetic participation. > > >> >> If CTM is true, then all the foregoing is also true in the necessary >> sense (i.e. platonically). Consequently, rejecting it on the basis that >> numbers aren't real, or that computation can't differentiate awareness from >> its absence, amounts to a rejection of Platonism. >> > > Yes, I partially reject Platonism. > Which part? > > >> Such rejection implies the Aristotelian view that awareness and its >> artefacts (such as numbers) supervene, in some unspecified and rather more >> problematical way, on primordial stuff that cannot be further explained. >> > > No, my rejection also includes the Aristotelian view also. There is no > primordial stuff, only a primordial capacity: the capacity for nested > sensory-motive participation, aka sense. You are living your life, and it > includes the perception of having a body in a world of bodies, but the > bodies are no more primitive than the experience of them. > You can have an experience without a body (as in it is hypothetically > conceivable) but there can be no body without an experience of it. There > can be no intangible, invisible, silent, unconscious phenomenon which > nonetheless can be considered to exist in some way which could entail the > future development of any experience of itself. > > >> But your theory requires that this primordial stuff be sensory and so, >> > > No, I'm saying that the primordial identity is the capacity for sense > itself - there is no 'stuff'. I'm talking about what order itself actually > is. You're not getting down to the ground floor, you're in the lobby. > All of the above is axiomatic in an idealist theory, hence it is axiomatic in comp. And for heaven's sake let's avoid quibbling about vocabulary. Stuff is just a placeholder. If you want the ground floor to be capacity for sense then let's just say that Platonia (the "true reality" in Plato's philosophy) is the capacity for sense; it makes as much, or as little, difference. Nothing is intangible, invisible, silent or unconscious - or indeed the converse - per se; only in context. A computational theory suggests that combinators (natural numbers will suffice) plus the relations of addition and multiplication are (amazingly), in combination and recombination, capable of lawfully delimiting and stabilising a psychic landscape of intersubjective experience. We can if we wish regard these primitive arithmetical relations as primordially aesthetic, just as they are primordially combinatorial - sensory-motive, if you like. The question still remains of precisely how such primitive relations could recombine to express fuller and fuller aesthetic and active modalities, and this is what computational theory seems well adapted to model and investigate. as I argue above, amounts to the claim that sense or awareness properly >> inhere in whatever exists. >> > > Gotta turn it around. There is no "exist". There is "seems present from > some sensible perspective". > (Drum roll) You make a perfect argument for comp! > > >> So we can grant this and the difficult part still remains: what >> conditions differentiate specific claims of sensory awareness from the >> absence of such claims? >> > > To reiterate, there is no claim of awareness, there is only the direct > experience of it. > But you just made one (or its inverse, which amounts to the same thing). And the direct experience of awareness (a tautology, I presume), even if we grant it, is insufficient either for second- or higher-order aesthetic expression or the ability to know and refer to it (aka phenomenal judgement). Let me digress for a moment to tell you a story. Some years ago I watched a TV programme about an unfortunate gentleman who suffered from one of those syndromes where his short-term memory had shrunk to a minute or so (there are unfortunately many other cases in the literature). He was shown a video in which he was conducting some musicians (he was a musician himself) which, remarkably, he could still do with some facility. Of course he had no memory of the event and on repeated showings typically refused to accept that the man in the video was himself. But sometimes his response was different: he said "well, I must have been unconscious". It was terribly poignant but also very instructive. It occurred to me to wonder what it would be like if one's memory were reduced to 10 seconds, or 1 second, or less. At what point would it still be possible to say that such a person was conscious even if in principle there was still, in whatever sense remained, a minimal aesthetic presence? However one imagines the primordial relations between one component of experience and another, it seems inescapable that a prerequisite for any recognisably conscious experience, or aesthetic awareness, is a sufficiency of context. One needs a time and a space in which to orientate oneself with respect to a reality. Already this is highly suggestive that all these components - time, space, oneself, reality - are complex indexicals (complex aesthetic indexicals, even). > > >> Given that challenge, I frankly still don't see why you would reject >> computational theory as an attractive candidate for that role. >> > > Because awareness cannot improve the function of a computation. Everything > that can be conceived of within computational theory can be just as easily > conceived with the absence of all aesthetic qualities. The Pythogorean > theorem does not need a triangle, it just needs an arithmetically defined > relation. The need for the triangle itself is what comp can't explain. > Well the short answer to that is that any description can be conceived in absence of aesthetic qualities, unless in some sense you presuppose their necessity. Aha, you say, game set and match! But the longer answer is that there are different ways to presuppose the necessity of aesthetic qualities and it is a difference that makes a difference. I have already remarked that one mustn't be misled by the order of argumentation that something argued for later is thereby "created" after some prior fact. In this sense the aesthetics claimed by the computational machine are there, in some generalised sense, in Platonia at the outset; i.e. in some sense they are necessary. But the difference is that comp sets out to justify this implicit necessitation by showing specifically *how* the ascent to full personhood and full aesthetic expression might be achievable, and moreover into the bargain showing specifically how an apparent multiverse of physical manifestations is also necessitated to stabilise normal inter-subjective experience. And the most poignant and at the same time absolutely jugular difference, which most unfortunately and incomprehensibly is the one that seems to be the grit in your shoe, is that it justifies the claims of the persons whose experiences are the waking dreams of the machines in exactly the same way as we justify our own. The only possible way: by empathic identification with a fellow creature that feels and speaks its truth as we do ourselves. 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. > -- 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.
