> On 7 Sep 2019, at 02:44, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Horgan is wrong because he's apparently never really examined what sceintific > "comprehension" consists of. It is the ability to tell a consistent story > about what happens that has predictive power. It's not necessarily a story > that satisfies people pre-conceptions of what story would be entertaining and > satisfying and they could tell to kids a bedtime. Those are the stories > religion tells. Sceince tells stories that work...and that's their defining > characteristic. Chalmers can call consciousness "the hard problem" because > he doesn't like the story in which it is a brain process.
No one serious would identify 1p consciousness with anything 3p. Chamers only reacts the mind-body problem in the Aristotelian framework, where the greeks got already the proof that it cannot work, and that proof is made rigorous by any “honest” universal number. > It doesn't satisfy his intuition that in the story "consciousness" should be > something he likes. The same thing happened when life was shown to be > metabolism and reproduction...chemical processes. Not really. Life is conceived (correctly I would argue) as a 3p process, and so the reduction here can make sense. It does not when you identify 1p and 3p. You get led to the Penrose-Lucas type of error, confusing []p with []p & p, which is basically a confusion between, belief and knowledge. > But it's a story that works. And when neuroengineers and consciousness > mechanics are designing and building human like AIs nobdy will worry about > whether Chalmers likes the story or not. The AI will worry about that. Bruno > > Brent > > On 9/6/2019 1:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> via John Horgan @Horganism >> >> >> The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience >> >> As time passes, the claim that science can comprehend everything looks >> increasingly nutty >> >> By John Horgan on September 4, 2019 >> >> Does anyone still believe that science can explain, well, everything? This >> belief was ascendant in the 1980s, when my career began. Bigshot scientists >> proclaimed that they were solving the riddle of existence. They would soon >> explain why our universe exists and takes the form it does, and why we exist >> and are what we are. >> >> For years I believed this claim, out of deference to scientists propagating >> it and desire to believe. The vision of a revelation to end all revelations >> thrilled me. Eventually I had doubts, which I spelled out in The End of >> Science and other writings. Lately, I’ve begun to look at the vision of >> total knowledge as a laughable delusion, a pathological fantasy that should >> never have been taken seriously, even though brilliant scientists propagated >> it. >> >> Stephen Hawking was the most influential know-it-all. In his 1988 >> mega-bestseller A Brief History of Time, Hawking predicted that physicists >> would soon find an “ultimate theory” that would explain how our cosmos came >> into being. He compared this achievement to knowing “the mind of God.” This >> statement was ironic. Hawking, an atheist, wanted science to eliminate the >> need for a divine creator. >> >> >> I’ve often suspected that Hawking, who had a wicked sense of humor, was >> goofing when he talked about an “ultimate theory.” The success of Brief >> History nonetheless inspired lots of similar books by physicists, including >> Theories of Everything by John Barrow (1991), The Mind of God by Paul Davies >> (1992) and Dreams of a Final Theory by Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg. >> >> Weinberg, a deadly serious man, was definitely not kidding when he >> envisioned a final theory. He argued that with the help of a new >> “supercollider” in Texas (which ended up being canceled), physicists might >> soon “bring to an end a certain kind of science, the ancient search for >> those principles that cannot be explained in terms of deeper principles.” >> >> Like Hawking, Weinberg hoped that the final theory would crush, once and for >> all, our superstitious faith in an all-powerful, beneficent deity. “It would >> be wonderful to find in the laws of nature a plan, prepared by a concerned >> creator in which human being played some special role,” Weinberg wrote. “I >> find sadness in doubting that they will.” >> >> Physicists were not the only scientists bewitched by the dream of >> omniscience. “I take the position that there is nothing that cannot be >> understood,” Peter Atkins, a religion-bashing British chemist, stated in his >> 1981 book The Creation. “Fundamental science may almost be at an end and >> might be completed within a generation.” He added, “Complete knowledge is >> just within our grasp. Comprehension is moving across the face of the Earth, >> like the sunrise.” >> >> Then there was biologist Richard Dawkins, who declared in his 1986 >> bestseller The Blind Watchmaker that the mystery of life had already been >> solved. Our existence “once presented the greatest of mysteries,” Dawkins >> wrote, but “it is a mystery no longer, because it is solved. Darwin and >> Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their >> solution for a while yet.” >> >> >> One of those “footnotes” concerns the problem of consciousness. In the late >> 1980s Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the double helix (and another >> hard-core atheist), proposed that consciousness, the subject of interminable >> philosophical speculation, might be scientifically tractable. Science could >> “solve” consciousness by finding its “neural correlates,” processes in the >> brain that correspond to conscious states. >> >> In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis, Crick declared that “’you,’ >> your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of >> personal identity and free will, are no more than the behavior of a vast >> assembly of neurons.” That statement might have been the high water mark of >> scientism and its corollaries, materialism and reductionism. >> >> Meanwhile, researchers were claiming that advances in computers and >> mathematics were illuminating chaotic and complex phenomena that had >> resisted traditional scientific analysis. These scientists, whom I like to >> call chaoplexologists, were finding common principles underpinning brains, >> immune systems, ecologies and nation-states. Economics and other social >> sciences would soon become as rigorous as chemistry and nuclear physics. >> Supposedly. >> >> To be charitable, all this hubris wasn’t entirely unjustified. After all, in >> the 1960s physicists confirmed the big bang theory and took steps toward a >> unified theory of all of nature’s forces, while biologists deciphered the >> genetic code. You can see how these and other successes, as well as advances >> in computers and other tools, might have persuaded optimists that total >> scientific knowledge was imminent. >> >> But the concept of scientific omniscience always suffered from fatal flaws. >> Read Brief History and other books carefully and you realize that the quest >> for an ultimate theory had taken physicists beyond the realm of experiment. >> String theory and other major candidates for an ultimate theory of physics >> can be neither experimentally confirmed nor falsified. They are untestable >> and hence not really scientific. >> >> >> Let’s say physicists convince themselves that string theory is in fact the >> final theory, which encodes the fundamental laws from which nature springs. >> Theorists must still explain where those laws came from, just as believers >> in God must explain where He came from. This is the problem of infinite >> regress, which bedevils all who try to explain why there is something rather >> than nothing. >> >> As for life, Dawkins’s claim that it is no longer a mystery is absurd. In >> spite of all the advances in biology since Darwin, we still don’t have a >> clue how life began, or whether it exists elsewhere in the cosmos. We don’t >> know whether our emergence was likely or a once-in-eternity fluke. >> >> Brain scientists still have no idea how our brains make us conscious, and >> even if they did, that knowledge would apply only to human consciousness. It >> would not yield a general theory of consciousness, which determines what >> sort of physical systems generate conscious states. It would not tell us >> whether it feels like something to be a bat, nematode or smart phone. As I >> argue in my new book Mind-Body Problems, science appears farther than ever >> from understanding the mind. >> >> There may still be a few true believers in scientific omniscience out there. >> Big Data boosters indulge in hype reminiscent of the heyday of chaoplexity >> (although the phrase “social science” remains as oxymoronic as ever). And in >> his 2011 book On Being, Peter Atkins, who is now 79, reiterated his “faith” >> that “there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and >> elucidate.” But I doubt many scientists share this view any more. >> >> Over the last decade or two, science has lost its mojo. The replication >> crisis has undermined the public’s confidence in scientists, and scientists’ >> confidence in themselves. It has made them humble--and that is a good thing. >> Because what if scientists had somehow convinced themselves, and the rest of >> us, that they had figured everything out? What a tragedy that would be. >> We’re better off in our current state of befuddlement, trying to comprehend >> this weird, weird world even though we know we’ll always fall short. >> >> >> The older I get, the more I appreciate what philosopher Paul Feyerabend said >> to me in 1992 when I broached the possibility of total knowledge. “You think >> that this one-day fly, this little bit of nothing, a human being--according >> to today's cosmology!--can figure it all out?” he asked me with a manic >> grin. “This to me seems so crazy! It cannot possibly be true! What they >> figured out is one particular response to their actions, and this response >> gives this universe, and the reality that is behind this is laughing! ‘Ha >> ha! They think they have found me out!’” >> >> I’ll close with a quote from Philip Anderson, a Nobel laureate in physics >> and leading chaoplexologist. When I interviewed him in 1994, Anderson >> derided the claims of some of his fellow scientists that they could solve >> the riddle of reality. “You never understand everything,” Anderson said. >> “When one understands everything, one has gone crazy.” >> >> >> ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) >> >> John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute >> of Technology. His books include The End of Science, The End of War and >> Mind-Body Problems, available for free at mindbodyproblems.com. >> >> source: >> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-delusion-of-scientific-omniscience/ >> >> <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-delusion-of-scientific-omniscience/> >> >> @philipthrift >> >> -- >> 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] >> <mailto:[email protected]>. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9a41eef3-3584-43dd-b9b7-dd0034a78932%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9a41eef3-3584-43dd-b9b7-dd0034a78932%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/64291c27-3637-3fd1-d066-c91463aeccca%40verizon.net > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/64291c27-3637-3fd1-d066-c91463aeccca%40verizon.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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