On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 16 May 2015, at 15:47, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >>> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Kellett < >>> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Bruce Kellett >>> >>> Are you seriously going to argue that homo sapiens did *not* >>> arise by a process of natural selection, aka evolution? >>> >>> No, Darwinian evolution is my favourite scientific theory. >>> >>> What I am arguing is that we don't know if consciousness is an >>> evolved trait. It is perfectly possible to imagine darwinian >>> evolution working without consciousness, even to the human >>> intelligence level (producing philosophical zombies). >>> >>> For example, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter, >>> then evolution is something that happens within consciousness, >>> not a generator of it. >>> >>> >>> That is probably the strongest argument against computationalism to >>> date. >>> >>> How so? >>> >> >> So you think that Darwinian evolution produced intelligent zombies, and >> then computationalism infused consciousness? > > > No. What I am saying is that consciousness is not a plausible target for > gradual evolution for the following reasons: > > 1) There is no evolutionary advantage to it, intelligent zombies could do > equally well. Every single behaviour that each one of us has, as seen for > the outside, could be performed by intelligent zombies; > > 2) There is no known mechanism of conscious generation that can be > climbed. For example, we understand how neurons are computational units, > how connecting neurons creates a computer, how more neurons and more > connections create a more powerful computer and so on. Evolution can climb > this stuff. There is no equivalent known mechanism for consciousness. > > I don't know if intelligent zombies are possible. Maybe consciousness > necessarily supervenes on the stuff necessary for that level of > intelligence. But who knows where consciousness stops supervening? Maybe > stuff that is not biologically evolved is already conscious. Maybe stars > are conscious. Who knows? How could we know? > > > I think we can say that universal numbers are conscious, but they are > self-conscious only when they become Löbian. > > So, in a sense, I agree with you, consciousness is already there, in > arithmetic, seen in some global way. > Then it can differentiate on the different computation which will > relatively incarnate/implement those universal numbers. > > > > > > >> I think you are going to have to do better than that if you want comp to >> be believed by anyone with any scientific knowledge. > > > Anyone with any scientific knowledge will be agnostic on comp. There is no > basis to believe it or disbelieve it. Maybe it is unknowable. What we can > do is investigate the consequences of assuming comp. > > > If the classical-comp-physics is different from the empirical physics, we > wll have clues that the classical comp is false. > Ok. Do you have any intuition on the level of effort necessary to extract classical physics from comp? > > > > > >> You really are calling on dualism to explain consciousness -- the >> homunculus in the machine..... > > > I am not trying to explain consciousness. I don't know what consciousness > is > > > I think you know what consciousness is (you just cannot define it). > True. > > > > or how it originates. What I am claiming is that current science has > nothing to say about it either. > > > Hmm... > Would you be willing to accept, if only for the sake of a discussion, the > following "consciousness of P axioms" (P for a person): > > > 1) P know that P is conscious, > 2) P is conscious entails that P cannot doubt that P is conscious, > 3) P, like any of its consistent extensions, cannot justify that P (resp > the consistent extensions) is (are) conscious > 4) P cannot define consciousness in any 3p way. (But might with some good > definition of 1p.) > 4) comp: there is a level of description of P's body such that P's > consciousness is invariant for a digital substitution made at that level. > I have no problem with any of these axioms. They feel like a natural expansion on "cogito ergo sum" + the definition of comp. > > If yes, then current computer science can already explains why universal > machine, or Löbian machine, are already conscious (even just in arithmetic). > > Roughly speaking, consciousness originates from the fact that p -> []p > (the sigma_1 truth get represented in the body/brain of the machine), and > the fact that []p -> p is true, but non justifiable by the machine. That > makes the machine which are developing knowledge, more and more aware of > their possible relative ignorance, and above some threshold, even wise, as > they understand that the augmentation of knowledge leads to the > augmentation of ignorance. The more the lantern is powerful in the cavern, > the more we see that the cavern is big. > Nice way to put it. > > Also, that (axiomatic) notion of consciousness has many role, from > speeding up the relative ability of the machine, and augmenting the degrees > of freedom, to distinguishing efficaciously the bad (like being eaten) from > the good (like eaten). It makes also possible to understand each other, > even if quite imperfectly. > > Consciousness is what makes possible to internalize some semantic: it is > the sense maker, or the (instinctive) bet of self-consistency, or, > equivalently, of the presence of some reality or some truth. > > In the definition of knowledge ([]p & p), consciousness appears to be more > on the side of truth (p), than of []p. It looks like the brain-body ([]p) > is mainly a filter of truth (p) and of consciousness than the producer. > I still feel that you are talking about intelligence, and that you are perhaps showing that intelligence entails consciousness, but consciousness itself is maintained as a brute fact. I still feel there's a magic step. > > Also, with comp, zombies are not possible, because you need some body to > make a zombie. And there are none, after the reversal. > Couldn't the zombies be part of the dreams of computations, like other features of the universe? Telmo. > > Bruno > > > > > > Telmo. > > >> >> >> Bruce >> >> -- >> 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. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > 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. 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