On 4/29/2021 1:30 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Am Mi, 28. Apr 2021, um 20:51, schrieb Brent Meeker:
On 4/28/2021 9:54 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Am Di, 27. Apr 2021, um 04:07, schrieb 'Brent Meeker' via Everything
List:
It certainly seems likely that any brain or AI that can perceive
sensory events and form an inner narrative and memory of that is
conscious in a sense even if they are unable to act. This is
commonly the situation during a dream. One is aware of dreamt
events but doesn't actually move in response to them.
And I think JKC is wrong when he says "few if any believe other
people are conscious all the time, only during those times that
corresponds to the times they behave intelligently." I generally
assume people are conscious if their eyes are open and they respond
to stimuli, even if they are doing something dumb.
But I agree with his general point that consciousness is easy and
intelligence is hard.
JFK insists on this point a lot, but I really do not understand how
it matters. Maybe so, maybe if idealism or panspychism are correct,
consciousness is the easiest thing there is, from an engineering
perspective. But what does the tehcnical challenge have to do with
searching for truth and understanding reality?
Reminds me of something I heard a meditation teacher say once. He
said that for eastern people he has to say that "meditation is very
hard, it takes a lifetime to master!". Generalizing a lot, eastern
culture values the idea of mastering something that is very hard, it
is thus a worthy goal. For westerns he says: "meditation is the
easiest thing in the world". And thus it satisfies the (generalizing
a lot) westerner taste for a magic pill that immediately solves all
problems.
I think you are falling for similar traps.
Which is what?
The trap of equating the perceived difficulty of a task with its
merit. Are we after the truth, or are we after bragging rights?
The point of consciousness being "easy" is that theories of
consciousness as a thing in itself are untestable so there is no way to
say what is true. Just because you place value on a task doesn't mean
it's not imaginary. There are people who think the whole purpose of
life is to get to heaven.
I think you are falling into the trap of searching for the ding an
sich. Engineering is the measure of understanding.
That's JKC's point (JFK is dead),
My apologies to JKC for my dyslexia, it was not on purpose.
if your theory doesn't lead to engineering it's just philosophizing
and that's easy.
Well, that is you philosophizing, isn't it? Saying that "engineering
is the measure of understanding" is a philosophical position that you
are not bothering to justify.
It's a philosophy of how we know when we understand something. What's
your criteria? What would constitute an understanding of qualia that
would satisfy you?
If you propose a hypothesis, we can follow this hypothesis to its
logical conclusions. So let us say that brain activity generates
consciousness. The brain is a finite thing, so its state can be fully
described by some finite configuration. Furthermore, this
configuration can be replicated in time and space. So a consequence of
claiming that the brain generates consciousness is that a conscious
state cannot be constrained by time or space. If the exact
configuration we are experiencing now is replicated 1 million years
from now or in another galaxy, then it leads to the same exact first
person experience and the instantiations cannot be distinguished. If
you want pure physicalism then you have to add something more to your
hypothesis.
But it couldn't lead to intelligent action. So one could say it's not
consciousness because it doesn't have the required relation to its
environment/body. Which was my point that physics is required. A
disembodied brain is like the the rock that calculates everything. One
might suppose a Boltzmann brain comes into existence, experiences an
instant of being JKC before vanishing. So what? What conclusion do you
draw from that? That consciousness can't be a physical process?
Brent
Brent
Telmo
Brent
I think human consciousness, having an inner narrative,
This equivalence that you are smuggling in here is doing a lot of
work... and it is the tricky part. "Inner narrative" in the sense of
having a private simulation of external reality fits what you say
below, but why are the lights on? I have no doubt that evolution can
create the simulation, but what makes us live it in the first person?
Telmo
is just an evolutionary trick the brain developed for learning and
accessing learned information to inform decisions.
Julian Jaynes wrote a book about how this may have come about, "The
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". I
don't know that he got it exactly right, but I think he was on to
the right idea.
Brent
On 4/26/2021 4:07 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:
So do you have nothing to say about coma patients who've later
woken up and said they were conscious? Or people under general
anaesthetic who later report being gruesomely aware of the surgery
they were getting? Should we ignore those reports? Or admit that
consciousness is worth considering independently from its effects
on outward behavior?
On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 11:16 AM John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 10:45 AM Terren Suydam
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> It's impossible to refute solipsism
True, but it's equally impossible to refute the idea that
everything including rocks is conscious. And if both a theory
and its exact opposite can neither be proven nor disproven
then neither speculation is of any value in trying to figure
out how the world works.
/> It's true that the only thing we know for sure is our
own consciousness,/
And I know that even I am not conscious all the time, and
there is no reason for me to believe other people can do better.
/> but there's nothing about what I said that makes it
impossible for there to be a reality outside of ourselves
populated by other people. It just requires belief./
And few if any believe other people are conscious all the
time, only during those times that corresponds to the times
they behave intelligently.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
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