On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal" <[email protected]> wrote:
On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> >>> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the environment >>> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial >>> Intelligence, >>> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when >>> the >>> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent >>> inference we do all the time. >>> >> >> >> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of >> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found >> it >> not to match their predictions. >> > > In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to > run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right? > Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy, consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss. The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the > cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of > creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that > trigger consciousness. > After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky) decision in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the responsibility. Then I want to know what these interactions > are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first > principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even > wrong. > The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will needs some order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince the whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the doors, fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on something. In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning, decision, etc. I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the problem here). I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side of the problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way, given that matter itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly speaking we should say that the "easy" part of the story is only what "appears" to be happening. So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and constrained) story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated in computation. >From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each 'level' has its own proper logic; and the logic of material appearance is that of the 'laws' of physics. Nothing else is necessary, at least at that level, to account for the disposition and evolution of material states. So strictly speaking, when talking of prediction and other mentalistic concepts, we should nevertheless be aware that this isn't of itself the logic of the physical mechanisms with which these concepts are entangled. Of course it must be consistent with that logic for the mental to be capable of manifesting in the generalised environment of physical appearances, but we shouldn't expect the logic of the physical level to recapitulate the mentalistic logic in virtue of instantiating it. Hence when we speak of such things as predictions at the level of the brain, we mustn't forget that this is a 'manner of speaking' to be cashed out interpretatively or meaningfully only at the level of perceptual truth. It's easy to miss this distinction because inevitably we can't help talking about everything from an implicitly pre-interpreted perspective. This is how Dennett for example is able to conceal from his readers (and possibly from himself) that he is both denying and asserting the same thing at one and the same time. David But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need to dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is handed at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/queen is confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants panic is genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ... Bruno Bruno > Telmo. > > 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]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at https://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 https://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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
