On Monday, February 24, 2014 3:32:03 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 24 February 2014 16:31, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> >> On Monday, February 24, 2014 9:13:26 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: >> >>> On 24 February 2014 02:43, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> How do you turn your desire to move your hand into the neurological >>>> changes which move them? The neurological change is the expression of what >>>> you actually are. These primitive levels of sense are beyond the question >>>> of 'how', they are more in the neighborhood of 'how else?' >>> >>> >>> But we cannot be content to let "how else?" stand as mere rhetoric, can >>> we? >>> >> >> Yes, in this case, we absolutely can. Otherwise you enter into a regress >> of having to ask 'how does asking how' work? We don't have to ask how it >> works, nor must there be an answer which could satisfy such an expectation. >> The whole idea of 'how' is a cognitive framing of sensible comparisons. >> Sure, it seems very important to the intellect, just as air seems very >> important to the lungs, but that doesn't mean that 'how' can refer to >> anything primordial. It's like asking an actor in a movie asking how they >> got into a projection on a screen. >> > > Er, no I don't agree that it's like that at all, if I've managed to puzzle > out your drift. I wasn't asking "why primitive sense" because that's a > posit of your theory. I was asking how the desire to move your hand turns > into the neurological changes which move them in terms of that posit. >
The desire to move your hand doesn't 'turn into' anything. Think of your desire as an earthquake causing ripples in various parts of the world simultaneously, on all different scales. The molecules are changing polarity, the ion gates are closing, the neurons are firing, the muscle fibers are contracting, the arm is moving - they are all the same event, only expressed within different sized frames of 'here' and 'now'. Where there are neurons, there is no person. Where there is a person, there can be neurons in a figurative sense, derived through understanding and instrumental extension, but at the level of a personal experience, a 'neuron' is *really* an ability to feel or touch something. I am saying that is the ontological reality of what it is. The neuron is an outsider's view which reveals details that the insider view cannot, but I suggest that the view which reconciles them both is metaphenomenal rather than meta-mechanical (arithmetic). > How. This is a question whose answer must lie *within* the theory, hence > be derivable from it. I'm asking how your theory can frame these questions > in such a way that they are capable of being answered. Or are you implying > that the only right way to frame the problem is in such a way that no > questions of this kind can ever be answered? > Yes. There is no way to ask how you begin the chain of physical changes which moves your arm, or how you know how to do that. It is primitive. You can only experience it directly. A computation does not have that. It can never know how to initiate any physical or phenomenal change, any more than "a ripple" can initiate rippling in a lake. > > >> >>> The question of how the desire moves the hand is essentially the same >>> question I have been asking you all along to try to justify in terms of a >>> theory of primitive sensory-motive relations. How specifically might >>> experience translate to function? >>> >> >> It doesn't. It's a matter of the frame of reference. My experience looks >> like a function from your distance. >> > > Yes, but how or why does it look like that.? > Because that's how sense organizes itself to invite opportunities for richer qualities of experience. Mathematics can show us precisely why the relations which are used in nature make that kind of sense, but it is meaningless outside of a context which is worth making sense of. Counting what can never be encountered is a moot point ontologically. > That's what my question means. I think this is what Bruno is getting at > when he says that genuine problems should be invariant to the terms in > which they are described. I find that you have an unfortunate tendency to > assume that you have avoided the need to address a question just because > you change the words you use to describe it. I don't think that helps > either your understanding or your ability to convey it to me. > I don't avoid the need to address a question, I explain that the question is coming from somewhere that evaporates as soon as you accept the consequences of the original premise. How comes from sense, so it makes no sense to ask how sense makes itself. > > From a greater, absolute distance, both of our functions looks like >> mathematics. >> >> >>> Certainly it is the expression of what you actually are, but how can >>> this be cashed out in detail, or even in principle? You may feel that it is >>> unfair of me to make this demand at such an early stage because it is >>> precisely the unsolved conundrum of any theory that doesn't fundamentally >>> sweep consciousness under the rug. >>> >> >> No, no, it's not unfair at all. I'm not ducking the question and saying >> 'we can't know the answer to this mystery because blah blah sacred >> ineffable', I am saying that the question cannot be asked because it can >> only be asked within sense to begin with. If you can ask what sense is, >> your asking is already a first hand demonstration of what it is. It can >> have no better description, nor could it ever require one. All that is >> required is for us to stop doubting what we already experience directly. >> > > We cannot doubt it. Uniquely so, in fact. > If you think that your experience is 'really' neurons firing, or 'really' a sophisticated program, then you are doubting what you experience directly. > >> We can doubt whether what we experience is this kind of an experience or >> that kind, whether it is more 'real' or more like a dream, but we cannot >> doubt that there is an experience in which there is a feeling of direct >> participation - a sense which includes the possibility of a sense of motive. >> > > I agree. As indeed did Descartes. > Cool > > >> >> >>> But I have been under the strong impression that you see the >>> sensory-motive approach as the key precisely fitted to unlocking this >>> puzzle; hence my enquiry as to the specifics. >>> >> >> Yes, I think it is the frame of the puzzle. If we start from sense, then >> every piece falls into place eventually. If we start from non-sense, then >> we can never find the piece of the puzzle which is the puzzle itself. >> > > I understand that feeling and share it. It's very common (though > curiously, not universal) and perhaps it is not eliminable as long as we > insist on understanding the puzzle exclusively from within the frame of > sense. I know it seems as if once we step outside that frame, even > conceptually, we can never step back in. It seems impossible, like lifting > oneself by one's own bootstraps. > I think just the opposite. It *is* impossible, but it is perfectly possible to *seem* possible to escape sense. That's the trick of science - the omniscient voyeur, the view from nowhere, etc, but it isn't valid when we try to use it to look at looking itself. > But understanding the world in its fullness inevitably seems to involve > believing six impossible things before breakfast. This step is not by any > stretch the most impossible, especially if we can find ways of accurately > modelling the reference to sense, as Bruno tries to teach us, if not quite > bridging the gap to the thing itself. When something starts to look > indistinguishable from the thing itself - even to the extent of displaying > every sign of feeling like the thing itself - the distinction between > original and copy begins to fade just a little, at least for me. I know > that despite this the Iron Man must follow his weird and warn of the > dreadful apocalypse to come (although hopeful not bring it about). > "We can give you a new body that is perfect in every way, except that you are in a coma forever in it". It's a small detail really. The body will function just as before. The tip of the iceberg will look just the same as the one before. > > >> >>> >>> To be honest it was the realisation of (or at least the possibility of) >>> a novel resolution of these issues in the comp formulation of the >>> world-problem in general that eventually made me waver from my prior >>> attachment to a sensory-motive approach. >>> >> >> I don't think that you had a sensory-motive approach, I think you >> probably had an idealist-theoretic approach...the idea of experience as a >> pseudo-substance rather than ordinary sense/sense-making. >> > > I don't think so, although frankly I still don't have any clue what you > mean by "ordinary" sense-making. I used to call it sense-action, based on > the twin relational primitives of perception and acting-upon. I suppose you > might call it a theory of fundamental relations. I spent a good deal of > time on this list debating with Bruno and other like-minded folk (whom he > sometimes called first-person fundamentalists). It would probably be > embarrassing to re-read, but I put a lot of thought and discussion into it > over the years. I just couldn't take it very far beyond the basic notions > and a lot of suggestive analogising, which is pretty typical of > "theorising" at this level. I suspect that the time to start worrying about > any theory is when it seems that it should be capable of explaining > everything but in practice it doesn't actually explain very much. > It sounds like you were on the right track, but got distracted with other people's stereotypes about successful theories. Did you consider that arithmetic relations are also be governed by the more primitive perceptual and acting-upon primitives? Did you consider that these primitives could be seen to be reflected as form + function and again as matter + energy? What changed your mind? > >> >>> In the end, as I tried to frame counter-arguments in the debate and >>> turned the thing over and over in my mind, I found that this possibility of >>> resolution carried more immediate persuasive heft for me than my worries >>> about the precise metaphysical relation of the various elements of the >>> schema. After all, we cannot expect to be able to explain everything at >>> once. >>> >> >> We can if the explanation is felt directly rather than symbolized and >> communicated. >> > > I disagree. It only feels that way. > What is the universe other than "feels that way"? > > >> >> >>> And also it seemed to me that we were not that far away from being able >>> to test at least some of this conjecture in "yes doctor" mode, by direct >>> interface with digital prostheses and the like (hence my posting of that >>> link). That would be rather persuasive wouldn't it? >>> >> >> Nothing is persuasive until someone is transplanted into a synthetic >> brain and returns to tell the tale. >> > > That's demanding too much. > Consciousness is absolute. It can only be tested in an absolute way. > I think digital prostheses will actually turn the tide of the debate on > this. But of course, as the charming YouTube illustrates, there's no > definitively knock-down way to win this argument. We can only place our > bets and hope. > The tide of the debate is overwhelmingly toward computationalism currently. I agree that it might turn once people become aware of the inadequacy of digital prostheses. > > >> >>> We shouldn't have to wait interminably for some unfortunate AI "doll" to >>> become capable of protesting its heartfelt feelings to our unsympathetic >>> ear; we could directly experience the computational simulation of real >>> consciousness for ourselves and let that be the criterion. No? >>> >> >> As long as there is enough of us left to live and participate as a >> person, we can compensate to some extent for the shortfall of a prosthetic >> limb. We triangulate the gap and our perception can fill-in to a surprising >> degree. Only if our entire brain is amputated and replaced successfully >> will we know what it is like to be a computer rather than a human being. >> > > Meh, I suspect most people would concede the point a lot earlier. But then > you're not most people. > The maybe I am one of the people who would be most overlooked and erased in a CTM regime. 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] <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. >> > > -- 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.
