On 3/20/2018 4:27 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
From: *Telmo Menezes* <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 1:03 AM, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Now it may be that you want to reject Stathis's claim, and insist that
> consciousness cannot be inferred from behaviour. But it seems to me
that
> that theory is as lacking in independent verification as the contrary.
Again, no theory. I am just stating the simple fact that, since there
is no known instrument so far that can detect consciousness in the 3p,
then it is not possible to propose scientific theories about
consciousness at the moment. Only conjectures.
Explain the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific
conjecture. Science is not about proofs; theories are always only ever
conjectural, and subject to revision and/or rejection as further
evidence is gathered. You don't need an instrument that can give a
clean yes/no answer to the presence of consciousness to develop
scientific theories about consciousness. We can start with the
observation that all normal healthy humans are conscious, and that
rocks and other inert objects are not conscious and work from there to
develop a science of consciousness, based on evidence from the
observation of behaviour. One might well consider that there are
different levels or types of consciousness accorded to humans,
animals, octopuses, and so on. But that would be a scientific finding,
based on observational evidence.
And not just based on observed behavior but also on the details of
internal information processing. One of the reasons for supposing that
octopus consciousness is different from human consciousness is that an
octopus does a lot of information processing in its tentacles.
Brent
So science is not as limited as you seem to want to make it -- science
is not mathematics, after all.
If you want my conjecture: I assume that all living things are
conscious. If you show me an AI that behaves like a human being (or
even a dog) I will assume it's conscious too. But none of this is
science.
I strongly suspect that consciousness is something that cannot, in
fact, be studied by science -- because consciousness is what does
science. It's like asking you to look inside your eyeballs.
It is perfectly possible to look inside one's own eyeballs. Have you
never been to an optician? Just use a mirror with his instruments for
inspecting and recording the state of the retina.
Bruce
--
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 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.
