On 4 June 2018 at 23:48, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 6/4/2018 7:13 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > I am very grateful for mother medicine, but > we should not pretend that its operative assumptions solve the > fundamental questions. > > What fundamental question do you refer to? How to detect consciousness? > How to produce consciousness? How to prove (in the empirical sense) that > consciousness is linked to brain activity? That's my concern, that one just > throws up things that are syntactically questions but with no thought as to > what might constitute an answer. > > I understand your concern. I will just tell you what my main curiosities > are: > > > OK, I'll take a stab at them. > > > - Why does consciousness even exist? Darwinism does not seem to require it. > > > It's a necessary feature of intelligence. Intelligence requires "what-if" > modeling of situations in order to foresee consequences. Even a the lower > animal level this implies modeling oneself in the simulation. In higher, > social animals it includes being able to put yourself in the place of others > in order to anticipate their repsonses, i.e. having a theory of mind.
Yes, but why are the "lights on" inside me? Why are we not mechanisms, that do exactly what you describe, but without a first-person experience of it? > - What is the relationship between consciousness and matter? > > Consciousness, as explained above, is the ability to perceive and act > intelligently in the world by doing "what-if" simulations to foresee events. > It is something that is instantiated by complex material systems that > include memory and information processing; but we don't know exactly what > kind. You switched to intelligence. AI is fairly advanced now, it does not seem to require consciousness to do the things it describe. Perhaps it is conscious as a side-effect, but why? > - Is there a reality that is external to conscious perception? > > > It is a theory I have held a long time and it seems very well supported in > my experience. So I'm thinking that you exist and will read this. I am not proposing solipsism. My question is: is there a reality that is external to *any* conscious perception? I don't see any evidence one way or the other, just models that help calculate things. > My view is scientifically speaking we never know anything "fundamental" and > the search for it is like the hunting of the snark. We seek theories with > more scope and more accuracy, but being "more fundamental" doesn't entail > that something is most fundamental. Mystics like Bruno postulate something > and then build structures on it which, by some (often small) agreement with > experience, PROVE their postulates. But as Feynman used to point out, this > is Greek mathematics. Science is like Persian mathematics in which the > mathematician seeks to identify all the possible axiom sets that entail the > observations. > > I tend to agree that scientifically we never know anything > fundamental. I do believe that it is possible to use reason to acquire > knowledge by means that are not the scientific method. I am certain > that I possess knowledge that was not acquired by scientific means, > for example I know how it feels to be me. > > > It ain't so much what you don't know that gets you into trouble, as what you > know that ain't so. > --- Josh Billings Indeed. > Even if my metaphysical > obsessions are a fool's errand, I do think it is valuable to know > where the boundaries of scientific knowledge are, and be humble enough > to recognize them. > > > I think it is scientists who are most aware of the boundaries of scientific > knowledge. Non-scientists tend to look at technology and think, "Oh we can > make airplanes so we know all about flying." Scientists know that there's > no proof that the Navier-Stokes equations will converge to a solution for a > particular case. That doesn't however mean that the boundary is fixed and > can't be pushed back. So when scientists propose to study consciousness, > non-scientists think, "Oh they want to explain it like Newton explained > gravity and Maxwell explained radio waves. Put it in mathematical formulae. > That's impossible. I have consciousness and I know it's not mathematical (I > can't even do math)." Scientists are thinking, "We'll make an approximate > but limited model of consciousness, like Newton did of gravity, so we'll be > able to predict some phenomena of consciousness, like Maxwell did for EM." Well but you know my objections, namely with the instrumentation issue. > I feel that a lot of resistance to this stuff comes from a fear that > one is trying to slide religion or the supernatural through the back > door, so to speak. I trust that you believe that I am not trying to > sell anything like that. I only proclaim my ignorance, and the > ignorance of everyone else. > > > Just like a lot of resistance to materialism comes from people who want an > immortal soul. I have no doubt that there is a lot of that. These people lack imagination. The immortal soul, especially under many-mind assumptions, is a truly terrifying idea. 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.
