On 08 Dec 2017, at 11:09, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, 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).
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 ...
Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
Yes. But using mechanism, you have a theory of knowledge/consciousness
attached to it, which justifies the presence of the non communicable/
justifiable qualia which accompanies such type of model. It is close
to Helmholtz's theory of perception as a form of inductive inference.
looking at some object is an inference that we might see some object
when looking.
This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
boss, as you say.
Each times they do that, I think that they confuse []p with either p,
or []p & p, or []p & <>t. Note that before Gödel, all mathematicians
would have said that for the ideally correct machine all those
modalities are trivially equivalent, and they are (!), but only at the
truth-level, which is inacessible by the machine, making them obeying
to different logics, splitting on justifiable and non-justifiable, by
inheriting the G/G* separation.
In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.
That happens very often. The subject is irreducibly subtle (and hot).
And it seems that the human beings want to "believe in some solution"
before dying, of to transmit to the kids. In science, especially in
metaphysics, (serious) philosophy and (serious) theology, the first
thing to understand is that we don't know much, and it is hard to make
a theory. But the, with the discovery of the universal numbers by
Turing, Kleene, .., the theory is simply there, and the nuances can be
made mathematically precise. The first theorem of incompleteness of
Gödel, using the modal abbreviation, ~[]f -> ~[]~[]f, or <>t ->
~[]<>t, can be seen as the first non trivial theorem in machine
theology. God/Truth knows better, he can tell the machine "thou are
consistent", or "there is a Reality", but then immediately after he
will tell "thou will not say-justify that there is a Reality", or
"thou will not say-justify that you are consistent", and ideally
correct machine won't. Now, the machine linked to the reality itself
"by definition", which is provided by the formal version of
Theaetetus' definition of knowledge, is at the antipode of being
Löbian. For her "consciousness", or "the existence of a reality" is
what is 100% obvious. That makes it a terrible child, close to
solipsism. Maybe civilization occur when the []p learn how to handle
the []p & p. "[]p & p" is the third hypostases, but in the chrono-
arithmetico-logical time, things go this way:
p (Reality, Truth) ===> []p & p (brain's filtration) ===> []p
(civilization or discovery of the other, and the understanding of the
transcendence of any reality).
I am used to put the intensional variant of Gödel's []p in this way(*):
------------ p
-----[]p---------------[]p
[]p & p
-----[]p & ~[]f-------[]p & ~[]f
----[]p & ~[]f & p----[]p & ~[]f & p
But it might make more (first person) sense to permute the second and
third "hypostase" :
------------ p
[]p & p
-----[]p---------------[]p
-----[]p & ~[]f-------[]p & ~[]f
----[]p & ~[]f & p----[]p & ~[]f & p
It is coherent with the fact that []p & p does not split along G/G*.
It is the "civilisation" act which forces the splitting along G and
G*, like if a genuine other is already a "god" (transcendent unknown).
Bruno
(*) in english:
Truth
Justifiable
Knowable
Observable
Sensible
Or, using Plotinus
One
Intellect
Soul
Intelligible matter
Sensible matter
Telmo.
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 everything-
[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.
