On 07 Dec 2017, at 18:36, David Nyman wrote:
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.
That is right. With comp, the "easy" part is only "easy" relatively to
the solution of the "hard matter" problem. The problem is that
Dennett, in his theory ofn consciousness, take matter, and
physicalism, for granted. he does not even seem aware of the
conceptual problem raised by QM, and still less of the comp-mind-bdy
problem, where the mind-body problem is reduced into the problem of
justifying the conscious-appearance (if I can say) of matter and
physical laws.
So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and constrained)
story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated in
computation.
Yes, and it works only if the computations where such narrations occur
have the right relative weigh, as is confirmed by the existence of the
quantum logic for the "certain bet" ([]p & <>t, p semi-computable).
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.
OK, as far as such laws of physics are covered by the statistics on
all computations (which resides in elementary arithmetic or equivalent).
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.
Absolutely. The relations are not that direct. That is an advanced
subtle point, but I agree.
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.
OK. But like at the beginning of the UDA, on some aspect of the
consciousness problem, we can momentarily simplify things to avoid
difficult points, which are actually not understandable for those who
have not took the time to dig enough on those issue. You are right,
nevertheless.
It's easy to miss this distinction because inevitably we can't help
talking about everything from an implicitly pre-interpreted
perspective.
Yes. It is not easy.
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 am afraid so, and I think he does not deny this to himself ... at
the end of his book when he asks himself if consciousness has been
explained or explained away.
Bruno
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
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