On 22 Sep 2014, at 05:30, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/21/2014 6:58 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is
why I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about
consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work
out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't,
consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic
extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that
exists are "bundles of sensations" (or however Hume phrased it).
But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In
the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that
gets rid of all "magic" assumptions.
True. But matter explains lots of other stuff. Consciousness as a
pure potentiality, distinct from any content, doesn't explain
anything.
In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain
types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very
reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be
always correlated.
We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we
don't know what else is conscious.
And we don't know that other people are conscious. But as JKC
pointed out we do know that things that affect our brain affect our
consciousness. Quite aside from anesthesia and concussions that
make it go away (modulo your theory that we merely forget), it's
affected by whiskey and pot and salvia and LSD, and the effects are
even amenable to some explanation at the molecular level.
Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your computer? Are galaxies? The
problem is that we might be confusing empathy for consciousness.
It is clear that the more an organism is similar to us the more
empathy we feel (human > monkey > cat > insect > bacteria, ...).
That's true on Bruno's definition of consciousness.
I don't understand what you're driving at. Telmo seems to be
asserting ignorance of types of statements concerning consciousness.
If you negate this, don't you have to show your hand more than
resorting to discourse examples?
I'm saying that things like insect swarms or galaxies are likely to
be conscious by Bruno's definition.
I might have colleagues believing some swarms can be Turing universal,
or learn to be Turing universal.
A galaxy? This is not even defined in a way (neither in physics, nor
in the comp-physics) such that we can make sense of the question. Just
show me how to program the factorial function using the galaxy.
All they must have is the potential for Turing computing.
Not the potential. They must be universal numbers relatively to some
an universal number or arithmetic, or even a turing universal physical
laws (like the SWE + spins).
But that's not the consciousness that we are told is indubitable
and which we all intuititively know we have.
This would be true concerning sufficiently rich machines as
well...which is why I don't see if/how your distinction leads
anywhere.
It's saying that any explanation of consciousness needs to explain
the conscious inner narrative I experience. It's cheap to redefine
consciousness as the potential for universal computation,
It is not the potential, it is the actuality of being or having a
Turing universal body/representation with respect to arithmetic, or
intermediate levels.
because the potential for universal computation is common. If the
potential for universal computation is going to explain
consciousness-as-I-experience-it, the explanation can't just rely on
the assumption that brains do computation. It needs to say how the
computation a brain does is different from the computation a galaxy
does.
It would be probably an hard task to prove that the galaxy is not a
universal Turing machine, given that "many bodies" can easily made
universal by using sharp positions, but those are infinitely non
probable.
Complex code just can't be decoded. But now, if the galaxy does
compute a creative set like a brain, then they do that same creative
or Turing universal computation. perhaps at different scale, but if it
is consciousness, then, with that new idea, we can attribute it some
consciousness, almost by definition.
Bruno
Brent
We attribute consciousness to other things as we perceive their
behavior to be intelligent and goal directed; because that's how we
recognize it in people: "How many fingers do you see?" "What day
is it?" "Do you know where you are?".
Brent
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