On Sun, Apr 21, 2019, at 12:02, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 19 Apr 2019, at 14:09, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at 09:09, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote: >>> 1) The qualia of black-and-white is not on the same level with the qualia >>> of colors. The qualia of colors include the qualia of black-and-white. You >>> cannot see a color if that color is not emergent upon black-and-white (or >>> more specifically shades-of-gray). You cannot experience music if music is >>> not emergent upon sounds. You cannot taste chocolate if chocolate is not >>> emergent upon sweet. You cannot understand Pythagoras Theorem if the >>> understanding of Pythagoras Theorem doesn't emerge upon the understandings >>> of triangles, angles, lengths, etc. And this is real emergence, because you >>> really get new existent entities that never existed before in the history >>> of existence. God himself never experienced these qualia. >> >> Ok, I think I understand your presentation better now. You make an >> interesting point, I don't think I ever considered emergence purely on the >> side of qualia as you describe. >> >> There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, you >> say that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, such as >> "sweet". Can you really justify this hierarchical relation without >> implicitly alluding to the quanti side? Consider the qualias of eating a >> piece of chocolate, a spoonful of sugar and french fries. You can feel that >> the first two have something in common that distinguishes them from the >> third, and you can give it the label "sweet". At the same time, you could >> say that the chocolate and french fries are pleasant to eat, while the >> spoonful of sugar not so much. You can also label this abstraction with some >> word. Without empirical grounding, nothing makes one distinction more >> meaningful than another. > > Do you really mean “without empirical grounding”, or “without experiential > grounding”. > > The “empirical grounding” seems to me still too much “quanti”.
You are right. I guess what I mean is something more like "without empirically grounded models/theories (I don't know anymore :)" > > > >> >> What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know about >> sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the four(five?) basic >> flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this knowledge into the pure >> qualia world. Without it, there is no preferable hierarchical relation and >> emergence becomes nonsensical again. There's just a field of qualia. > > OK. > > >> >>> >>> I don't understand your second part of the question regarding our >>> "cognitive processes". Are you referring to our specific form of human >>> consciousness ? I don't think this is only restricted to our human >>> consciousness, for the reason that it happens to all qualia that we have. >>> All qualia domains are structured in an emergent way. >> >> I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by repetition, >> like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I to find this >> interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For example, that our >> brain requires a certain amount of variety in its inputs, otherwise it tends >> to a simpler state were apprehension of meaning is no longer possible. In >> other words, I am proposing a plumber-style explanation, and asking you >> why/if you think it can be discarded? >> >>> >>> 2) The main ideas in my book are the emergent structure of consciousness >>> and the self-reference which gives birth to the emergent structure. The >>> ideas about self-reference that I have are rooted in phenomenology. First I >>> observe that consciousness is structured in an emergent way, and then I >>> conclude that the reason it is like this is because there is an entity >>> called "self-reference" that looks-back-at-itself and in this process >>> includes the previously existing self and brings a new transcendent self >>> into existence, like in the case of colors emerging on top of >>> black-and-white. >> >> I have the problem above with the first part of what you say, but I like the >> second part. > > Using the theory of machine self-reference (which is really the base of the > whole of theoretical computer science or recursion theory), we have a try > pique of “self”: > > G (third person self-reference which are rationally justifiable modulo the > bet on the substitution level) > It is close for Necessitation, and admit the Löb’s axiom (as a theorem) > > G* (third person self-reference, rationally justifiable or not. > Incompleteness assures that G is properly included in G*). It NOT closed for > necessitation, but admit the Löb axiom (again as a (meta-theorem) about the > sound machines). > > S4Grz (first person self-reference, non definable by the machine, and > typically on the qualia side: indubitable but no exprimable immediate > knowledge (well: immediate only in its []p & <>t & p form, to be sure). > > Cosmic is unclear on the []p distinction with []p & p, with third person > self, and the first person self, the doxastic belief and the epistemological > (and non communicable) personal knowledge. > > > > >> >>> >>> 3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down influence >>> in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical >>> experiments have little input from any top level, so they behaving >>> according to their own level and display certain laws. But when they are >>> part of a greater holistic system, like in the brain (which is just an >>> appearance of internal workings in consciousness) they receive top-down >>> influence from the intentions in consciousness, and so they behave >>> according to the will of consciousness. Is the same phenomenon when we >>> speak, that I also gave in my presentation. When we speak, we act from the >>> level of intending to transmit certain ideas. And this level exercises >>> top-down influence in levels and the sentences, words and letters are >>> coming out in accordance with the intention from the higher level. >> >> Here I think you are making the ontological/epistemological confusion. >> Another way to describe what you are alluding to above is this: the more >> complex a system, the higher the amount of branching in the trees of >> causation that extend into the past. To describe the movement of an election >> in the ideal conditions of some laboratory experiment, you might just >> require a couple of equations and variables. To describe the movement of an >> election in the incredible wet mess that is the human brain, you require >> trillions of equations with trillions of variables. >> >> The identification of patterns across scales allows us to vastly compress >> the information of the object we are looking at, making it somewhat >> tractable by our limited intellects. Some of these patters have names such >> as "speaking", "word", "presentation", "red", etc. These patterns are not >> arbitrarily grounded, they are grounded by some correspondence with qualia, >> as I argue above. Why? I don't have the answer, I think it's a mystery. > > I think that mystery is solved by the machine when she understand that []p > and ([]p & p) are equivalent for God (G* proves []p <-> []p & p), but > inequivalent from the machine’s point of view. []p obeys a doxastic notion of > rational belief, > A bit offtopic, but I am working a lot with beliefs (fake news / NLP sort of thing). Doxastic logic seems quite relevant. Do you have any textbook you recommend on this? > > where S4Grz (the logic of []p & p) obeys to a logic of (temporal) knowledge > of an unnameable subject. The first consider the second as mysterious, the > second knows, but cannot justify it through words or any representation. "The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things." I guess... Telmo. > > Bruno > > > > >> >> I am not saying that the point of view you describe above is not valid or >> interesting, but I am saying that it is nothing more than epistemology. >> >> Telmo. >> >>> >>> On Thursday, 18 April 2019 16:22:18 UTC+3, telmo wrote: >>>> Hi Cosmin, >>>> >>>> 1) >>>> >>>> Ok, I saw your presentation. We agree on several things, but I don't quite >>>> get your qualia emergence idea. The things you describe make sense, for >>>> example the dissolution of meaning by repetition, but what makes you think >>>> that this is anything more than an observation in the domain of the >>>> cognitive sciences? Or, putting it another way, and observation / model on >>>> how our cognitive processes work? >>>> >>>>> >>>>> 2) Consciousness is not mysterious. And this is exactly what my book is >>>>> doing: demystifying consciousness. If you decide to read my book, you >>>>> will gain at the end of it a clarity of thinking through these issues >>>>> that all people should have such that they will stop making the >>>>> confusions that robots are alive. >>>> >>>> I don't mean to discourage or attack you in anyway, but one in a while >>>> someone with a book to promote shows up in this mailing list. No problem >>>> with me, I have promoted some of my work sometimes. My problem is with "if >>>> you read my book...". There are many books to read, please give the main >>>> ideas. Then I might read it. >>>> >>>>> >>>>> 3) No, they are not extraordinarily claims. They are quite trivial. And >>>>> they start from the trivial realization that the brain does not exist. >>>>> The "brain" is just an idea in consciousness. >>>> >>>> I have no problem with "the brain is just an idea in consciousess". I am >>>> not sure if this type of claim can be verified, or if it falls into the >>>> category of things we cannot assert, as Bruno would say. I do tend to >>>> think privately in those terms. >>>> >>>> So ok, the brain does not exist. It is just a bunch of qualia in >>>> consciousness. But this is then true of every single thing! Again, no >>>> problem with this, but also no reason to abandon science. The machine >>>> doesn't exist either, but its elections (that don't exist either) follow a >>>> certain pattern of behavior that we call the laws of physics. Why not the >>>> electrons in the brain? What's the difference? >>>> >>>> Telmo. >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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