On 10/27/2015 11:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2015-10-27 19:16 GMT+01:00 Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
On 10/26/2015 11:57 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2015-10-27 7:44 GMT+01:00 Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
On 10/26/2015 3:37 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 10:44:28AM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 10/26/2015 2:43 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
Assuming computationalism, our everyday
experience _is_ internal to the
system. That doesn't make it any less meaningful.
I think that's a confusion. The system is the
universe with it's
physics. So in a sense everything is internal to
it. But
experience is individual and it's meaningful because
the individual
has values and memory and so incorporates experiences
into decisions
about future actions...that's what constitutes giving
them
semantics.
Hi Brent, I appreciate your point of view very much, but
I fail to see
how what you say is incompatible with my claim. Where is the
confusion?
I think our everyday experience is given meaning as referring
to things outside ourselves. So it's not internal to "the
system" that is the experiencer. It is only because the
observer is distinct from the rest of the world that he can
form meaningful symbolic representations of it.
The only clarification I would make is that (with
computationalism)
the system is formal, but the observer (individual in your
terminology) and environment (universe with its physics
in your
terminology) are a non formal partition of the system.
I'm not sure what you mean by non-formal partition. If your
brain is replaced by a I/O functionally equivalent digital
computer it will still be in an environment and will have
internal representations that refer to the environment.
In a computer... an io, is just a memory location... as anything
else is... that the value of that memory location reflect or not
an external world... doesn't change anything from the POV of the
program reading it... so as the meaning must somehow be internal
to the program as to what that value at that memory location
means for it.
That's like saying a neuron in your brain doesn't know anything.
I don't know about neurons and interactions with the environment...
but as far as a program is concerned, a program has only access to
memory locations... so if meaning must arise from the POV of the
program (ie: what we could call a conscious program), it must be
internal to itself...
Only if it isolated from its environment. To say it only has access to
memory locations obfuscates the fact that those memory locations may be
influenced via sensors that provide interaction with the world.
What you could say I could agree, is that IO of our "real" world do
provide regularity pattern to those memory locations when fed with the
sensor data... what random value would not... so one can say that
meaning arise from stable pattern... where they come from and the fact
they represent something ontologically real is unknown to the program...
Right. Although I would go a little further and say that the AI needs to
be able to act in the world, to experiment, not just passively accept input.
Brent
In a sense it's true, but it obfuscates the source of meaning.
What your neurons, as a brain, know are things about the external
world (external to the brain) with which they interact. The
"meaning" is internal in the sense that it is represented by a
pattern in the brain - but it is only meaning because it has
referents outside the brain. A brain that had never had an
environment with which to interact would not have anything to
represent and would contain no "meaning". It would be like the
computer running a random or unknowable program, or the rock that
computes everything.
Brent
--
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]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy
Batty/Rutger Hauer)
--
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]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
<mailto:[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.
