On 12/7/2017 5:05 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 7 December 2017 at 21:49, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/7/2017 9:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal" <[email protected]
<mailto:[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] <mailto:[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.
That's "cashed out" if you're interpreting the process in a mental
realm.
Yes.
But there are other equally valid realms. In the physical realm
it is cashed out by action in the world. In biology it is cashed
out by success or failure in reproduction and evolution.
Yes again. But I was speaking specifically in terms of the comp
assumption in terms of which those other realms - and this then
obviously includes not only fundamental physics but the 'special'
sciences and the broader, overarching narratives, such as evolution,
that supervene on them - are a tightly constrained set of appearances
. That is, they ultimately fall within the epistemological or
interpretative spectrum of a generic mental agent in terms of whose
necessary constraints they are enabled to burrow their way out of a
deeper, vastly more generalised computational ontology. So in (this)
final analysis, all the cashing out should in essence be conceived as
epistemological or mentalistic, although certainly in a much more
rigorous and nuanced manner than is to be found in a more naive, say
Berkeleyan, idealism. As I say below, it's sometimes difficult to
appreciate this point because we can't help implicitly interpreting
everything in sight and hence we tend to project that interpretation
back on the basic field of study as though it were intrinsic to it.
Which it ain't.
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.
I think this is an unfair criticism because it assumes that the
mental viewpoint is the only really real one.
But what other 'viewpoint' is really real as distinct from really
imaginary and already implicitly interpreted? This is what I mean
about the implicit pre-interpretation of the field of study. There
really (really) ain't no such thing as the View from Nowhere, except
in the eye of the interpreting imagination.
Can you illustrate your point with quotes from Dennett?
Well, his work is suffused with such stuff, but a quickly Googled example:
From: Why and How Does Consciousness Seem the Way it Seems?
"Therefore, qualia, conceived of as states of
this imaginary medium [consciousness, my addendum] do not exist....But
it seems to us that they do."
Dennett frequently uses terms like 'seeming' to get around the fact
that he doesn't want to appear to be denying that we have experiences
(which would be just too patently absurd) but he also doesn't want to
say that there's anything remaining after the functional account is
exhausted. So instead he says we only 'seem' to have experiences.
Trouble is, only seeming to have an experience cannot be in any wise
distinguished from just having an experience, but this sleight of
language might just distract his readers enough not to notice that the
pea hasn't really disappeared but is still somewhere under one of the
cups.
I don't think Dennett's thinks we "have" experiences. We can reflect
and assert that we experienced something specific. But not that we
"experienced" simpliciter. But it's a fair criticism.
Indeed, it might just distract Dennett himself enough not to have
noticed it himself. But I rather doubt that, since I can see it and
he's smarter than me. It's just that this style is what fits his fixed
methodological precommitments, and consequently all's fair in love and
dogmatic assertion.
In point of fact, were Dennett not so committed to materialism as a
methodology, his analysis in terms of what he calls
heterophenomenology would be much more coherent. In fact, AFAICT, it
seems pretty much compatible with comp, as far as it goes. He's right
that our 'judgements' about (hetero)phenomena are what must count in
order to be effective at the functional level, but because he won't go
beyond physics as his base ontology, in effect he's limited himself to
a (functionally implied) 'Bp', but without the extension to 'and p'.
He tries to sidestep the Paradox of Phenomenal Judgement by accepting
the judgements but essentially denying provenance to the phenomena
themselves (which of course has the rather undesirable effect of
making the entire phenomenal world disappear from view, but let that
pass). Comp by contrast can face the POPJ without fear of incoherence
because the logic of its epistemology (its 'laws of mentality')
inextricably entangles 'Bp' with 'and p'.
You've bought into Bruno's idea that modal logic is a mental process. I
find that less plausible than that it's a physical process. When you
believe some propositions do you also believe every logical consequence
of those propositions (an infinite number)? Comp doesn't really imply
such things. They are like physicists assumption of real numbers, it's
a convenient limit to work in so as to avoid complications of where the
cutoff is. It's an interesting and useful way of looking at things, but
one should be leery of taking it too seriously.
Brent
It's the primary truth or reality of 'and p' that is the retroactive
interpretative warrant for the rest of the logical structure from
which it arises, extrinsic interpretation, at that point finally, no
longer being assumed or required.
David
Brent
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
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