Stathis Papaioannou
On Mon, 8 Jul 2024 at 03:58, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Sun, Jul 7, 2024, 11:58 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> *> ** I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, >>> not a "byproduct".* >> >> >> I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can >> natural selection, and that's why we have it. It aids in getting our genes >> transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness >> not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think >> consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, >> and yet we have it, or at least I have it. >> > > This is the position of epiphenomenalism: that conscious has no effects. > It is what makes zombies logically possible. But you don't seem to think > zombies are logically possible, so then epiphenomenalism is false, and > consciousness does have effects. As you said previously, if consciousness > had no effects, there would be no reason for it to evolve in the first > place. > > > Why? It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else >> that is not useless, there are no other possibilities. >> > > There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless. > Another possibility is that consciousness has no separate causal efficacy but is a necessary side-effect of the behaviour associated with it. > > Incidentally, GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of >> somebody holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium >> balloon and asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is >> about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away. >> >> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis >> <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> >> hbf >> >> >> >> >> >>> Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask >>> themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something >>> it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we >>> can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least >>> one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer >>> is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see >>> intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of >>> intelligence. >>> >>> I >>> >>> Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the >>> way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, >>> every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever >>> or terminates in a brute fact. >>> >>> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis >>> <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> >>> wfn >>> -- >>> >>> -- >> 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 view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3XGz7MJdzy7P2cnmq96McL1U_6r8k5bKpQKMCbkS5bBA%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3XGz7MJdzy7P2cnmq96McL1U_6r8k5bKpQKMCbkS5bBA%40mail.gmail.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]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUh_69v0K%2BQd0dJF7DrQh8-hfc%3DrJRfVizA3Adrx1DqW-w%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUh_69v0K%2BQd0dJF7DrQh8-hfc%3DrJRfVizA3Adrx1DqW-w%40mail.gmail.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]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAH%3D2ypXzUCD0N7c2UeREV2yQKkzjN4XKdMyF82TDB0Nrw7L8yQ%40mail.gmail.com.
