> On 29 Nov 2014, at 2:42 am, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Kim Jones:
>
>>> >> Yes but tell me of the examples you have found of Evolution producing
>>> >> intelligence without consciousness.
>>
>> > iPhones. Smart fridges. Self-driving cars. Computers. Space probes etc.
>> > etc.
>
> If you believe all these things are smart then fine,
"Smart" I take to mean "highly competent in a way that a human can understand
and benefit from". I don't think this exhausts the possibilities of being
smart. My iPad exists relative to me on the level of a trusted slave-labourer.
When Siri asks me to pay her for the service of finding a great Vietnamese
restaurant within walking distance, I will attribute consciousness to her -
given that Apple isn't pulling my leg somehow.
> but what makes you think they're not conscious?
They may well be. I can certainly hold that thought in my mind and give it good
consideration. To me this question exists on much the same level as "have
extraterrestrials visited the Earth?" Well it's entirely possible, but highly
improbable given the evidence available. It's also possible that we haven't
seen anything like all of the evidence for or against that yet. I recently read
somewhere that Google engineers have admitted that Google now does things they
themselves have not directly authorised nor fully understand the need for.
That, if true, is super-smart. And just a little scary. If something as
autonomous as that is happening without an ego or an experiencing self
observing itself doing these things then we have already eliminated the "need"
for consciousness in the MV. In fact there is precisely NO need for
consciousness at all if intelligence (IQ = horsepower; grunt of the engine)
alone is enough to invent a self-driving car or an orbital space station. Yet,
we do have consciousness - whether we "need" it or not. This, to my mind leads
straight to the mind-body problem that you seem eternally ready to deny.
Intelligence is like the colour of your eyes or your height or the dimensions
of your schwannstücker. It's fixed and immutable. You have an engine upstairs
of a certain horsepower, that's all. Can't change that. Intelligence is more
like low-level consciousness, without Löbianity. Still, this is immensely
effective and powerful. Ant colonies. Forests. Bee hives. Corporations. Flying
cars. All hugely intelligent and adapted to the environment in which they
arose. Conscious? Could be, could be. Basically, I am undecided on that. Anyone
who is "decided on that" on the basis of available evidence has fallen headlong
into the Intelligence Trap.
> When Evolution made information processing devices it found it was much much
> easier to produce emotion than intelligence,
Not really. Emotion is a very central part of intelligence. Evolution produced
intelligence which is absolutely one hundred per cent tethered to emotions.
It works like this: emotions are the qualia. Qualia are events. A non-conscious
subject cannot differentiate events happening "inside" from events happening
"outside". That somewhat unnecessary distinction requires consciousness. An
amoeba simply reacts to events, and learns strategies for survival from them.
That's intelligence.
> so why in the world would we find the exact opposite to be true when we make
> the same sort of thing?
Because intelligence is easy to produce. Emotions are hard to produce. It's
exactly the opposite of what you are saying. Evolution always produces
intelligence, even when it delegates the evolutionary process to the
accelerated-intelligent entities (us) and there appears to be no end to how far
intelligence can evolve. If Google becomes any more competent I think they
should stick it in the White House and let it run the planet for us while we
all romp naked through the heather and smell the wildflowers...and other
bizarre behaviour of conscious beings. You are definitely right when you say
that evolution cares not a fig about consciousness. Evolution is not itself an
experiential subject of any sort, so that's hardly surprising. Evolution is
the name given by conscious beings to a rhythmic, harmonic process of
adaptation observed happening over time. "Evolution" means simply "things
persist or they don't, given their behaviour." Consciousness would then fit in
as a new kind of adaptive behaviour - from evolution's perspective.
>
>> > Evolution is supposed to be "the only game in town"
>
> I don't know who you're quoting but it's not me, and it's not true, at least
> not anymore.
PZ Meyers, Larry Krauss, Dicky Dawkins et al at their atheist/physicalist
talkfests
> At one time Evolution was the only way complex objects could get make, but
> that stopped being true 545 million years ago during the Cambrian Explosion
> when, more than 3 billion years after life first appeared, Evolution finely
> managed to make the first primitive brain.
Freudian slip. Here you smuggle your (as yet unacknowledged) version of the
"creator deity" into the equation. Evolution didn't finally manage to make
anything. Evolution is not a thing at all - it's a process, which is a sequence
of events which in this case occasionally results in adaptive traits in
organisms, including their behaviour, most importantly of all. This is not a
semantic quibble. You appear to be assuming the need for consciousness right at
the outset. You are saying that evolution had a purpose right from the start
which was to introduce consciousness somehow. This simply makes evolution into
a deity. You cannot assume that the goal of evolution was implicit at its very
beginnings. You cannot even assume that evolution has any goal or purpose at
all - it simply happens.
>
>> > Evolution has produced all of these things, John.
>
> Evolution made us, but we made the iPhone; Evolution has severe limitations
> and could never have made a iPhone, it never even managed to make a
> macroscopic part that moved in 360 degrees.
It did it through us. We are the new agents working for evolution. In so far as
evolution produced an entity that was able to accelerate and ramp-up its
intelligence to the level of consciousness, then I would say that evolution
created the wheel. Evolution is the Blind Watchmaker. Transhumanism etc - this
is "hyper-accelerated evolution". You write as though homo sapiens are sitting
somewhere on the sidelines observing evolution going on but not taking part in
it.
Kim
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> so where else could they have come from?
>>
>> Kim
>>
>> --
>> 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/d/optout.
>
> --
> 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/d/optout.
--
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/d/optout.
