That's part of my argument with Bruno concerning the environment. He
agrees that the simulation of one's brain would have to include at least
a local part of the environment, but he sees this as mere small
expansion in the scope of the simulation which must also be computable.
Cleland seems to take the other extreme that a conscious program is
necessarily interactive and what it interacts with is uncomputable
(although what we know is that it's not practical to compute it).
Brent
On 5/5/2019 4:40 PM, cloudver...@gmail.com wrote:
I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I do know this:
*The Church-Turing thesis is one of the most useless ideas ever invented.*
Is the church-Turing thesis true?
Carol E. Cleland
https://philpapers.org/rec/CLEITC
The Church-Turing thesis makes a bold claim about the theoretical
limits to computation. It is based upon independent analyses of the
general notion of an effective procedure proposed by Alan Turing and
Alonzo Church in the 1930''s. As originally construed, the thesis
applied only to the number theoretic functions; it amounted to the
claim that there were no number theoretic functions which couldn't be
computed by a Turing machine but could be computed by means of some
other kind of effective procedure. Since that time, however, other
interpretations of the thesis have appeared in the literature. In this
paper I identify three domains of application which have been claimed
for the thesis: (1) the number theoretic functions; (2) all functions;
(3) mental and/or physical phenomena. Subsequently, I provide an
analysis of our intuitive concept of a procedure which, unlike
Turing''s, is based upon ordinary, everyday procedures such as
recipes, directions and methods; I call them mundane procedures. I
argue that mundane procedures can be said to be effective in the same
sense in which Turing machine procedures can be said to be effective.
I also argue that mundane procedures differ from Turing machine
procedures in a fundamental way, viz., the former, but not the latter,
generate causal processes. I apply my analysis to all three of the
above mentioned interpretations of the Church-Turing thesis, arguing
that the thesis is (i) clearly false under interpretation (3), (ii)
false in at least some possible worlds (perhaps even in the actual
world) under interpretation (2), and (iii) very much open to question
under interpretation (1)
cf http://www.cse.uconn.edu/~dgoldin/papers/strong-cct.pdf
etc.
@philipthrift
On Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 5:49:22 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:
How do we know other humans are conscious (we don't, we can only
suspect it).
Why do we suspect other humans are conscious (due to their
outwardly visible behaviors).
Due to the Church-Turing thesis, we know an appropriately
programmed computer can replicate any finitely describable
behavior. Therefore a person with an appropriately programmed
computer, placed in someone's skill, and wired into the nervous
system of a human could perfectly mimic the behaviors, speech
patterns, thoughts, skills, of any person you have ever met.
Do you dispute any of the above? If you encountered a close
friend who had to get a computer replacement for his brain (e.g.
due to an inoperable tumor), and this friend displayed perfect
mimicry of the behavior prior to the surgery, would you continue
to tell him he his not conscious, despite his protestations that
he is every bit as conscious as before? On what basis would this
your claim rest?
Jason
On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 1:33 PM <cloud...@gmail.com <javascript:>>
wrote:
Re: "only certain kinds of matter can be conscious" and "all
matter is conscious"
I do think the first (human brains at least, and perhaps some
non-human brains, from primates to down* the "food-chain").
Some think there was no fully or cognitively conscious (only a
sensory conscious) human before language. There may be
something to that.
But not the second (where there is self and self-awareness).
*Rocks are not conscious.* But the idea is that all matter
does have some level of *elementary protoconsciousness* in
various types, phases, and configurations of matter. When
some matter is combined into certain configurations (like a
human brain), these *protopsychical parts* are fused into
something conscious.
* Do Insects Have Consciousness and Ego?
/The brains of insects are similar to a structure in human
brains, which could show a rudimentary form of consciousness/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/do-insects-have-consciousness-ego-180958824/
<https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/do-insects-have-consciousness-ego-180958824/>
I don't think that societies are conscious, the Earth is
conscious, the universe is conscious.
The Earth is aware of itself? I don't think so.
@philipthrift
On Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 8:25:26 AM UTC-5, Terren Suydam wrote:
You keep trotting out the term "cybernetic delusion" as if
it's a problem. But it's just an assumption I make, that
consciousness is identified with cybernetic dynamics. I'm
exploring the consequences of that idea, which are
compelling IMO.
You or anyone else can feel free to adopt or not adopt
that assumption. But it's not a delusion. Calling it that
suggests there's a more correct way to view consciousness.
But you haven't been clear about what that is, vacillating
between "only certain kinds of matter can be conscious"
and "all matter is conscious". If you adopt panpsychism,
you fall prey to the cybernetic delusion yourself. And
when you don't, /you fail to explain what privileges
certain kinds of matter over others/. It seems pretty
clear to me that there's no principled way to do that...
any explanation of why brains can be conscious but not
computers starts to sound suspiciously like "spirit" and
"soul", in the sense that you're invoking some property of
matter that cannot be detected.
Terren
On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 4:57 AM <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, May 4, 2019 at 8:30:00 PM UTC-5, John
Clark wrote:
On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 9:15 PM 'Cosmin Visan'
<everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
/> What happens in cases of telepathy is
[...]. For example, in cases of dream
telepathy[...] This clearly is a case of dream
telepathy./
OK, there was little doubt before but you just
made it official, Cosmin Visanis a crackpot.
John K Clark
/
/
//
Telepathy I doubt pretty bigly, but the cybernetic
delusion is a really crackpot idea.
@philipthrift
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