On 22 Sep 2014, at 06:23, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 5:30 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 9/21/2014 6:58 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:22 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 9/21/2014 5:07 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
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. All they must have is the
potential for Turing computing.
But most seems to agree on this here. The kinds/hierarchies of self-
reference having been post subjects for the last weeks.
Indeed. And "potential" here can be confusing. But the self-reference,
and the link with consistency and truth, even explain why machines are
in trouble when relating their soul (1-personhood) and their possible
body/bodies.
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.
Tall order given current state of affairs, but sure.
It's cheap to redefine consciousness as the potential for universal
computation, 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.
Isn't the appropriate machine relating to some axioms and models the
input, from instruments of observation say, of a galactic structure
in some plane or stream of its accessible neighborhood; isn't that
machine just more or less correctly dreaming the thing from its
intuitive 1p perspective and its histories?
That machine has ultimately no way of knowing whether galaxies are
conscious and has to have some finally unjustifiable and incomplete
(given Theatetus' negation knowledge definition) theory of this.
It will find relative to its histories, that milkshakes of nebulae,
nurseries mixing in lactose tolerant orbits, superbly noval black
holes and all this fun drama is plausible or false or correct given
its standards of evidence, plausibility, theology etc.
It might need more coffee and ask: What would galaxy ice cream taste
like? Vanilla definitely as stracciatella would already be bringing
process and simulation of orbits into play which ice cream is
physically constrained to do in these parts, if you're not doing
funky 3d modelling or something.
Good stracciatella has to be fine grained, so only asteroids could
be taken literally. Rocky road would be faithful to stars and solid
bodies given dark background so nothing is really appropriate and we
retreat to reducing things to vanilla super nova starlight. Just the
light. The science theologies of ice cream deserve more attention,
yes.
I can relate. It makes sense only to attribute consciousness when we
can guess a person, and it is wise to be just agnostic by precaution
if not.
May be black holes and galaxies are conscious, and communicate through
gravitation and dark matter with a zest of quantum entanglement (to
look serious!). It took 200.000 years for the Milky -Way to tell
Magellan "oops!" ...
Bruno
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