> On 5 Jun 2018, at 23:43, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > > > On 6/5/2018 8:12 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> On 4 June 2018 at 20:30, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: >>> >>> On 6/4/2018 3:13 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>>> Most scientists and scientifically-literate people I know assume that >>>> consciousness emerges from brain activity without ever really thinking >>>> about the ramifications of this hypothesis. I have had this >>>> conversation several times, and I can usually tell that, when asked >>>> certain questions, people are surprised to realize that this idea is >>>> not on such solid grounds as they seemed to think. >>> >>> Would you like to share those questions? >> One of the questions is: what is emergence? Is it an ontological step >> or an epistemological device? If you consider the classical examples: >> statistical physics, ecosystems, societies, markets, cities, etc. I >> think you will come to the conclusion that it is epistemological. We >> do not have enough cognitive capacity to understand the world in terms >> of the individual behaviors of every single human being, but we are >> able to perceive and reason about higher-order patterns of behavior. I >> know what amount of traffic to expect when I ride my bike in a bit, >> because I know the higher-order patterns of my city. But I also know >> that a sufficiently powerful intelligence could keep track of the >> behavior every single person in the city instead. The same goes for >> molecules, individual financial transactions and so on. There is a >> cognitive limit that is breached by what we call emergence, but in all >> of these cases we can go all the way down to the building blocks. > > Yes, this comports with my idea that consciousness is in part a summarization > of experience for memory which is then called on for prediction. That's why > we notice and remember unusual things. We don't need anymore summaries about > commonplace things. > >> >> This leads to my second question: if we assume emergence, then what is >> the building block of consciousness? I think that it is easy to see >> that either consciousness is qualitatively different or we haven't >> found the building block yet. In either case, emergentism is a very >> weak hypothesis, in the sense that it does not propose an explanatory >> mechanism (unlike all other things above). > > Functionalism would say the building block is a transformation of > information...something like a qubit gate. Here's an interesting overview of > the non-functionalist ideas of monism: > > > 'Russellian monism' New paper by Groff and Sam Coleman, forthcoming in Oxford > Companion to Consciousness, edited by Uriah Kriegel. > http://www.philipgoffphilosophy.com/uploads/1/4/4/4/14443634/russellian_monism.pdf > … #Panpsychism #Consciousness > http://www.philipgoffphilosophy.com/uploads/1/4/4/4/14443634/russellian_monism.pdf
Hmm… The Tibetan have refuted this centuries ago. Mechanism refutes this too (exercise). It is simpler to abandon primary matter. The paper is interesting as it shows the kind of non computable magic you need to solve the mind body problem to save both consciousness and matter. They are still blinded by their absence of doubt for a primitively material reality. Bruno > >> >> The third question that I mention is aligned with Bruno's duplication >> machines. If consciousness emerges from brain activity, which is >> finite and made of fungible entities (atoms, molecules, particles, >> whatever), then the same exact pattern that you are experiencing now >> can, in principle be repeated many or infinite times, both across time >> and space. > > If time and space are infinite and everything (pattern) that can happen does. > >> What happens then? Is there some magic property that still >> makes you distinct across such instances? Or does it turn out that you >> cannot really be said to be associated with any specific chunk of >> matter? > > I don't see why that's a problem. It seems to implicitly demand that "you" > be unique and somehow distinct from all possible realizations. Why should it > matter if momentarily in some far away galaxy there's someone who is > experiencing reading these words...but necessarily having the same next > thought of reading THESE worlds? > > Brent > >> >> I'm a lot of fun at parties. >> >> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
