> On 19 Mar 2018, at 13:01, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 9:29 PM, Lawrence Crowell > <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 10:34:17 AM UTC-6, telmo_menezes wrote: >>> >>> On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 5:18 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 11:16 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>>> Evolution produced me. I know with 100% certainty that I am >>>>>>>> conscious. I very strongly suspect billions of other things are >>>>>>>> conscious >>>>>>>> too. I know for a fact Evolution can detect intelligent behavior >>>>>>>> but it >>>>>>>> can’t detect consciousness and yet I am consciousness. Therefor >>>>>>>> consciousness MUST be a byproduct intelligence. Evolution says as >>>>>>>> much about >>>>>>>> consciousness as there is to say, it is the best purely logical >>>>>>>> argument >>>>>>>> against solipsism, in fact it is the only one, all the others are >>>>>>>> just >>>>>>>> variations of “my initiation says its untrue” or “solipsism is too >>>>>>>> strange >>>>>>>> to be true”. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> This assumes that if evolution produced X, then any property of X is >>>>>> also a product of evolution. >>>> >>>> >>>> Not any property >>>> of >>>> X, just any property the parts of X didn't have before Evolution >>>> started >>>> its work. You walk into a bakery and see a cake and you assume the baker >>>> made the cake. Do you also assume the baker made the flower in the cake, >>>> and >>>> the carbon in the flower, and the protons in the carbon, and the quarks >>>> in >>>> the protons? >>> >>> No, because the cake is an improbable thing, while protons are >>> probable things. I don't know how probable consciousness is. As you >>> said, I cannot detect it. >>> >>>>> >>>>>> It is trivially not the case. For example, you have mass and an >>>>>> electromagnetic field and a temperature, and yet neither mass nor >>>>>> electromagnetism nor temperature are products >>>>> of evolution. >>>> >>>> I know Evolution produced my physical brain and I know with 100% >>>> certainty >>>> my brain is conscious, >>> >>> But you don't know what else is conscious. >>> >>>> however I do not know with 100% certainty that mass >>>> or electromagnetism or temperature are conscious, in fact I rather >>>> suspect >>>> they are not and there is only one reason I have that suspicion, they do >>>> not >>>> behave intelligently. >>> >>> Intelligent behavior is relative to humans. It just means that you are >>> good at the things that are necessary to succeed in a specific >>> evolutionary niche that the Lovecraftian-horror a.k.a. nature >>> produced. It also produced myriad other things. >>> >>> Humans are terribly complex, and it might be that consciousness arises >>> from terribly complex things, or from certain types of terribly >>> complex things. But I don't really know and neither do you. >>> >>> Telmo. >> >> >> In a part what you say is spot on. The problem with consciousness is there >> is a lot more ignorance about it than much in the way of certain knowledge. >> It may be a sort of epiphenomenon that emerges from some class of complex >> systems, which at this time we do know understand. Roger Penrose thinks it >> is something is a triality of physics, mathematics and mind, which is a sort >> of Platonic look. Dennett on the other hand thinks consciousness is a sort >> of illusion, which is a sort of epiphenomenon. Dennett calls it a >> hetererophenomenon as it involves a sort of game of multiple drafts. We >> really do not know for sure what consciousness is. > > I am on the Platonist camp, but fully realize that this is a personal > bet / intuition. I agree with Bruno that if computationalism is true, > then consciousness cannot be an epiphenomenon. But we don't know if > computationalism is true. > > Dennett I just find just silly. I think he plays with words, and > accepting his arguments would force me to deny something (the only > thing) that I absolutely know to be true. > >> I can think of things that strike me as obstructions to the idea of >> uploading brain states to a computer. The issue of NP-completeness seems >> plausible, and classic NP-complete problems are combinatorial systems which >> the brain is an example of. Other questions seem to make this problematic. >> It does seem to me the barrier of ignorance is far higher than our ability >> to vault over it. > > Agreed. I'm not sure we will ever be able to understand consciousness > -- there is really no reason to assume that this is possible.
I am not sure why you say this. Maybe you still believe in a material universe? This still makes only matter incomprehensible. Consciousness is, fundamentally just knowledge, or true personal first person belief. > If it > is, I bet that it will require a quantitative jump in our > understanding of reality. A jump back to the neopythagorean or neoplatonist theology. A jump back to 1500 years ago. > I most definitely do not believe that it can > be solved by incrementalist research in neuroscience. Yes, that would be like trying to understand how deep blue win a chess game by looking at the electronic of the universal machine running it: that will not work. Bruno > > Telmo. > >> LC >> >> -- >> 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. -- 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.
