On 27 Nov 2014, at 03:39, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/26/2014 4:41 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't think human consciousness is a spandrel
If consciousness does not effect intelligent behavior and if
Darwin's Theory is correct then there is no alternative,
That assumes human beings and human evolution - and I agree with
that application. But it does not show that intelligence could not
evolve without human-like consciousness which I take to be a inner
narrative.
consciousness is a spandrel. And if consciousness does effect
intelligent behavior then the Turing Test works for both
consciousness and intelligence. So either way if a fan of Darwin
and a fan of logic runs across a computer that passes the Turing
Test he MUST conclude that the machine is at least as conscious as
his fellow human beings are.
> there may be different ways of being intelligent
Almost certainly. Given that intelligence is the most complex thing
in the known universe it would be very surprising indeed if it
could be described by just one number, you need 2 for even
something as simple as the wind.
> I think human consciousness and intelligence are both closely
linked to language.
I think so too. I am quite certain of it.
> Language is an evolutionarily useful adaptation of social animals.
And even if those social animals were put in a non-social
situation, marooned all alone on a desert island for example, they
could not think properly and efficiently without language. And even
a lone brain the size of Jupiter could not think properly unless it
had a language to communicate abstract ideas between distant parts
of its vast brain.
Language is auditory. Abstract ideas can be represented in images
or (per Bruno) numerical relations. You imply that any
representation is language, but I think that's wrong. An
intelligent might think in three dimensional patterns and not
something one-dimensional like language. And neither is it
necessary that there be an internal language for subroutines to
work. There are encryption systems that provide for computations to
be performed on data and results returned with ever decrypting the
data; so the part of the system doing the calculation never receives
any "communication" that has meaning to it.
> But I see no reason that no-social animals cannot be intelligent
(e.g. ocotopi are solitary by are the most intlligent non-
vertebrates).
All animals have some degree of intelligence and the octopus has
more than most, but they are nowhere near smart enough to make
radio telescopes, and lets face it that's what people usually mean
when they talk about "intelligent beings".
But that doesn't prove that octopi could not be both solitary and
intelligent and not have an inner narrative.
I think the thing that separates humans from other animals is that
about 100,000 years ago we developed a system that can encode even
very abstract ideas into a few simple sounds; this not only enabled
collective learning but also enormously magnified the power of
individual thought.
So do you agree that having an inner narrative is the definition of
consciousness, something much more restrictive than Bruno's
"awareness"?
Hadamard wrote a book on the psychology of mathematicians. He tested
his colleagues, and other mathematicians on the following question:
Are you using words when you think (when doing math)? One half of the
answer was no: they were thinking with images, feeling, ... without
inner narrative. I am like that too, most of my thinking are like a
mute movie, with images, but without language. I think with language
only when I think about communicating to others, but I don't need to
communicate to myself, so I don't talk to myself. Of course, this
leads sometimes to having the feeling that a problem is solved, and
the attempt to communicate it makes me realize that some points where
wrongly taken for granted. In that case I can do back-and-forth
between thinking with words and without words.
So, I think that consciousness does not need an inner narrative per
se. Consciousness is just awareness of some reality. When we are in
pain, we are conscious, but we don't need to think "I am in pain" to
get the relevant awareness.
Bruno
Brent
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