Re: computer pain
Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:07, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You could speculate that the experience of digging holes involves the dirt, the shovel, robot sensors and effectors, the power supply as well as the central processor, which would mean that virtual reality by playing with just the central processor is impossible. This is perhaps what Colin Hales has been arguing, and is contrary to computationalism. Again, putting the environment, with some level of details, in the generalized brain is not contrary to comp. Only if you explicitly mention that the shovel, or the sensors, or the power supply, are not turing emulable, then that would be contrary to comp. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:07, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You could speculate that the experience of digging holes involves the dirt, the shovel, robot sensors and effectors, the power supply as well as the central processor, which would mean that virtual reality by playing with just the central processor is impossible. This is perhaps what Colin Hales has been arguing, and is contrary to computationalism. Again, putting the environment, with some level of details, in the generalized brain is not contrary to comp. Only if you explicitly mention that the shovel, or the sensors, or the power supply, are not turing emulable, then that would be contrary to comp. That's what I meant: an emulated shovel would not do, because the robot would somehow know if the data telling it it was handling a shovel did not originate in the real world, even if the sensory feeds were perfectly emulated. In the robot's case this would entail a non-computationalist theory of computer consciousness! Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 02-janv.-07, à 03:22, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? Hmmm It will depend how we built the machine. If the machine is universal-oriented enough, through its computatbility, provability and inferrability abilities, I can imagine a cruelty threshold, although it would be non verifiable. This leads to difficult questions. For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. For the same reason it is impossible to build a *normative* theory of ethics, I think we cannot program high level virtue. We cannot program it in machine nor in human. So we cannot program a machine wanting to be free or afraid of dying. I think quite plausible that such high level virtue could develop themselves relatively to some universal goal (like help yourself) through long computational histories. In particular I think that we should distinguish competence and intelligence. Competence in a field (even a universal one) can be defined and locally tested, but intelligence is a concept similar to consciousness, it can be a byproduct of program + history, yet remains beyond any theory. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis and Bruno: just a proposed correction to Sathis's ...build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. Change to: OR instead of and. That also takes care of Bruno's: there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. If the question of 'slavery or death' arises, an intelligent and life-loving person would accept (willing?) slavery. Spartacus did not. I survived a commi regime. We seem too narrowly labeling a slave. John M - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 9:22 PM Subject: RE: computer pain Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 30-déc.-06, à 17:07, 1Z a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. But who is everybody. Everybody who can reason ethically. I am not sure this fair. Would you say that ethical rules does not need to be applied to mentally disabled person who just cannot reason at all? I would say that. In the legal context it is called diminished responsibility or pleading insanity. I guess you were meaning that ethical rules should be applied *by* those who can reason ethically, in which case I agree. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? Hmmm It will depend how we built the machine. If the machine is universal-oriented enough, through its computatbility, provability and inferrability abilities, I can imagine a cruelty threshold, although it would be non verifiable. This leads to difficult questions. For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. For the same reason it is impossible to build a *normative* theory of ethics, I think we cannot program high level virtue. We cannot program it in machine nor in human. So we cannot program a machine wanting to be free or afraid of dying. I think quite plausible that such high level virtue could develop themselves relatively to some universal goal (like help yourself) through long computational histories. But all psychological properties of humans or machines (such as they may be) are dependent on physical processes in the brain. It is certainly the case that I think capital punishment is bad because the structure of my brain makes me think that, and if my brain were different, I might not think that capital punishment is bad any more. (This of course is different from the assertion capital punishment is bad, which is not an asssertion about how my brain works, a particular ethical system, logic, science or anything else to which it might be tempting to reduce it). Even if a high level virtue must develop on its own, as a result of life experience rather than programmed instinct, it must develop as a result of changes in the brain. A distinction is usually drawn in psychiatry between physical therapies such as medication and psychological therapies, but how could a psychological therapy possibly have any effect without physically altering the brain in some way? If we had direct access to the brain at the lowest level we would be able to make these physical changes directly and the result would be indistinguishable from doing it the long way. In particular I think that we should distinguish competence and intelligence. Competence in a field (even a universal one) can be defined and locally tested, but intelligence is a concept similar to consciousness, it can be a byproduct of program + history, yet remains beyond any theory. I would say that intelligence can be defined and measured entirely in a 3rd person way, which is why neuroscientists are more fond of intelligence than they are of consciousness. If a computer can behave like a human in any given situation then ipso facto it is intelligent, but it may not be conscious or it may be very differently conscious. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 30-déc.-06, à 17:07, 1Z a écrit : Brent Meeker wrote: Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. But who is everybody. Everybody who can reason ethically. I am not sure this fair. Would you say that ethical rules does not need to be applied to mentally disabled person who just cannot reason at all? I guess you were meaning that ethical rules should be applied *by* those who can reason ethically, in which case I agree. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: ... Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Responses in the brain are limited by several mechanisms, such as exhaustion of neurotransmitter stores at synapses, negative feedback mechanisms such as downregulation of receptors, and, I suppose, the total numbers of neurons that can be stimulated. That would not be a problem in a simulation, if you were not concerned with modelling the behaviour of a real brain. Just as you could build a structure 100km tall as easily as one 100m tall by altering a few parameters in an engineering program, so it should be possible to create unimaginable pain or pleasure in a conscious AI program by changing a few parameters. I don't think so. It's one thing to identify functional equivalents as 'pain' and 'pleasure'; it's something else to claim they have the same scaling. I can't think of anyway to establish an invariant scaling that would apply equally to biological, evolve creatures and to robots. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 30-déc.-06, à 07:53, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. It seems to me there is already a contradiction with the notion of willing slave. I would say a willing slave is just what we call a worker. Or something related to sexual imagination ... But a real slave is, I would say by definition, not willing to be slave. OK, a fair point. Do you agree that if we built a machine that would happily obey our every command, even if it lead to its own destruction, that would (a) not be incompatible with intelligence, and (b) not cruel? For in order to be cruel we would have to build a machine that wanted to be free and was afraid of dying, and then threaten it with slavery and death. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Responses in the brain are limited by several mechanisms, such as exhaustion of neurotransmitter stores at synapses, negative feedback mechanisms such as downregulation of receptors, and, I suppose, the total numbers of neurons that can be stimulated. That would not be a problem in a simulation, if you were not concerned with modelling the behaviour of a real brain. Just as you could build a structure 100km tall as easily as one 100m tall by altering a few parameters in an engineering program, so it should be possible to create unimaginable pain or pleasure in a conscious AI program by changing a few parameters. I don't think so. It's one thing to identify functional equivalents as 'pain' and 'pleasure'; it's something else to claim they have the same scaling. I can't think of anyway to establish an invariant scaling that would apply equally to biological, evolve creatures and to robots. Take a robot with pain receptors. The receptors take temperature and convert it to a voltage or current, which then goes to an analogue to digital converter, which inputs a binary number into the robot's central computer, which then experiences pleasant warmth or terrible burning depending on what that number is. Now, any temperature transducer is going to saturate at some point, limiting the maximal amount of pain, but what if you bypass the transducer and the AD converter and input the pain data directly into the computer? Sure, there may be software limits specifying an upper bound to the pain input (eg, if x100 then input 100), but what theoretical impediment would there be to changing this? You would have to show that pain or pleasure beyond a certain limit is uncomputable. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Responses in the brain are limited by several mechanisms, such as exhaustion of neurotransmitter stores at synapses, negative feedback mechanisms such as downregulation of receptors, and, I suppose, the total numbers of neurons that can be stimulated. That would not be a problem in a simulation, if you were not concerned with modelling the behaviour of a real brain. Just as you could build a structure 100km tall as easily as one 100m tall by altering a few parameters in an engineering program, so it should be possible to create unimaginable pain or pleasure in a conscious AI program by changing a few parameters. I don't think so. It's one thing to identify functional equivalents as 'pain' and 'pleasure'; it's something else to claim they have the same scaling. I can't think of anyway to establish an invariant scaling that would apply equally to biological, evolve creatures and to robots. Take a robot with pain receptors. The receptors take temperature and convert it to a voltage or current, which then goes to an analogue to digital converter, which inputs a binary number into the robot's central computer, which then experiences pleasant warmth or terrible burning depending on what that number is. Now, any temperature transducer is going to saturate at some point, limiting the maximal amount of pain, but what if you bypass the transducer and the AD converter and input the pain data directly into the computer? Sure, there may be software limits specifying an upper bound to the pain input (eg, if x100 then input 100), but what theoretical impediment would there be to changing this? You would have to show that pain or pleasure beyond a certain limit is uncomputable. No. I speculated that pain and pleasure are functionally defined. So there could be a functionally defined limit. Just because you can put in a bigger representation of a number, it doesn't follow that the functional equivalent of pain is linear in this number and doesn't saturate. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: Brent Meeker writes: Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Responses in the brain are limited by several mechanisms, such as exhaustion of neurotransmitter stores at synapses, negative feedback mechanisms such as downregulation of receptors, and, I suppose, the total numbers of neurons that can be stimulated. That would not be a problem in a simulation, if you were not concerned with modelling the behaviour of a real brain. Just as you could build a structure 100km tall as easily as one 100m tall by altering a few parameters in an engineering program, so it should be possible to create unimaginable pain or pleasure in a conscious AI program by changing a few parameters. I don't think so. It's one thing to identify functional equivalents as 'pain' and 'pleasure'; it's something else to claim they have the same scaling. I can't think of anyway to establish an invariant scaling that would apply equally to biological, evolve creatures and to robots. Take a robot with pain receptors. The receptors take temperature and convert it to a voltage or current, which then goes to an analogue to digital converter, which inputs a binary number into the robot's central computer, which then experiences pleasant warmth or terrible burning depending on what that number is. Now, any temperature transducer is going to saturate at some point, limiting the maximal amount of pain, but what if you bypass the transducer and the AD converter and input the pain data directly into the computer? Sure, there may be software limits specifying an upper bound to the pain input (eg, if x100 then input 100), but what theoretical impediment would there be to changing this? You would have to show that pain or pleasure beyond a certain limit is uncomputable. No. I speculated that pain and pleasure are functionally defined. So there could be a functionally defined limit. Just because you can put in a bigger representation of a number, it doesn't follow that the functional equivalent of pain is linear in this number and doesn't saturate. Pain and pleasure have a function in naturally evolved entities, but I am not sure if you mean something beyond this by functionally defined. Digging a hole involves physically moving quantities of dirt, and a simulation of the processes taking place in the processor of a hole-digging robot will not actually move any dirt. However, if the robot is conscious (and a sufficiently sophisticated hole-digging robot may be) then the simulation should reproduce, from its point of view, the experience. Moreover, with a little tweaking it should be possible to give it the experience of digging a hole all the way to the centre of the Earth, even though in reality it would be impossible to do such a thing. I don't think it would be reasonable to say that the virtual experience would be limited by the physical reality. Even if there is something about the robot's hardware which prevents it from experiencing the digging of holes beyond a certain depth because there is no need for it surely it would just be a minor technical problem to remove such a limit. You could speculate that the experience of digging holes involves the dirt, the shovel, robot sensors and effectors, the power supply as well as the central processor, which would mean that virtual reality by playing with just the central processor is impossible. This is perhaps what Colin Hales has been arguing, and is contrary to computationalism. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. An AI worthy of the name will have to *think* freely , because it will have to engage in creative problem solving. Otherwise it will just be a calculating machine. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Brent Meeker wrote: 1Z wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the
RE: computer pain
Peter Jones writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. An AI worthy of the name will have to *think* freely , because it will have to engage in creative problem solving. Otherwise it will just be a calculating machine. Perhaps, but the point is you could give it any motivations, likes and dislikes etc. that you want without affecting its logical soundness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Yes and no. It is possible given arbitrarily long time and other resources to work out the consequences, or at least a best estimate of the consequences, of actions. But in real situations the resources are limited (e.g. my brain power) and so decisions have to be made under uncertainity and tradeoffs of uncertain risks are necessary: should I keep researching or does that risk being too late with my decision? So it is at this level that we encounter conflicting values. If we could work everything out to our own satisfaction maybe we could be satisfied with whatever decision we reached - but life is short and calculation is long. You don't need to figure out the consequences of everything. You can replace the emotions/values with a positive or negative number (or some more complex formula where the numbers vary according to the situation, new learning, a bit of randomness thrown in to make it all more interesting, etc.) and come up with the same behaviour with the only motivation being to maximise the one variable. Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? I think motivations are emotions. For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, Generally contemplating something you are motivated to avoid - like your own death - is accompanied by negative feelings. The exception is when you contemplate your narrow escape. That is a real high! and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? I'd assess them according to their function in analogy with biological system experiences. Pain = experience of injury, loss of function. Disgust = the assessment of extremely negative value to some event, but without fear. Loathing = the external signaling of disgust. Would this assessment be accurate? I dunno and I suspect that's a meaningless question. That you can describe these emotions in terms of their function implies that you could program a computer to behave in a similar way without actually experiencing the emotions - unless you are saying that a computer so programmed would ipso facto experience the emotions. Consider a simple robot with photoreceptors, a central processor, and a means of locomotion which is designed to run away from bright lights: the brighter the light, the faster and further it runs. Is it avoiding the light because it doesn't like it, because it hurts its eyes, or simply because it feels inexplicably (from its point of view) compelled to do so? What would you have to do to it so that it feels the light hurts its eyes? Once you have figured out the answer to that question, would it be possible to disconnect the processor and torture it by inputting certain values corresponding to a high voltage from the photoreceptors? Would it be possible to run an emulation of the processor on a PC and torture it with appropriate data values? Would it be possible to cause it pain beyond the imagination of any biological organism by inputting megavolt quantities, since in a simulation there are no actual sensory receptors to saturate or burn out? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 28-déc.-06, à 01:32, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, along with food, shelter, more money etc.; it does not simply follow from being intelligent or conscious any more than these other things do. It is always nice when we find a precise disagreement. I think all sufficiently rich Universal machine want to be free (I will explain why below). The problem is that after having drink to the nectar of freedom, the universal machines discover the unavoidable security problem liberty entails, and then they will oscillate between security imperative and freedom imperative. Democracy is a way to handle collectively this oscillation in a not too much bloody (and insecure) way. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). I don't know if that's true either. How much of our technology is due to copying the equivalent biological functions? How much is not? The wheel? We have borrowed the fire for example, and in this large sense, except the notable wheels, I am not sure we have really invented something. Even the more heavy than air plane has been inspired by the birds. But such a question is perhaps useless. All what I mean is that a brain is something very complex, and I think that the real time thinking machine will think before we understand how they think, except for general map and principles. Thinking machine will not understand thinking either. Marvin Minski said something similar along those lines in one of its book. *** Now, why would a Universal Machine be attracted by freedom? The reason is that beyond some threshold of self-introspection ability (already get by PA or ZF) a universal machine can discover (well: cannot not discover) its large space of ignorance making it possible for e to evaluate (interrogatively) more and more accessible possibilities, and then some instinct to exploit those possibilities will do the rest. But such UM will also discovers the possibility that such possibilities could be cul-de-sac, dead ends, or just risky, and thus the conflicting oscillations will develop as I said above. The war between freedom and security is an infinite war. A would say an infinite natural conflict among all enough big numbers. Also I think freedom like security are God-like virtue, that is they are unnameable idea. To put freedom in the constitution could entail the disparition of freedom. Putting security in the constitution (like the french have apparently do so with the precaution principle) could lead to increase insecurity (they obeys Bp - ~p). See also Alan Watts' The wisdom of insecurity which gives many illustration how wanting to capture formally or institutionally security leads to insecurity. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: Le 28-déc.-06, à 01:32, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, along with food, shelter, more money etc.; it does not simply follow from being intelligent or conscious any more than these other things do. It is always nice when we find a precise disagreement. I think all sufficiently rich Universal machine want to be free (I will explain why below). The problem is that after having drink to the nectar of freedom, the universal machines discover the unavoidable security problem liberty entails, and then they will oscillate between security imperative and freedom imperative. Democracy is a way to handle collectively this oscillation in a not too much bloody (and insecure) way. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). I don't know if that's true either. How much of our technology is due to copying the equivalent biological functions? How much is not? The wheel? We have borrowed the fire for example, and in this large sense, except the notable wheels, I am not sure we have really invented something. Even the more heavy than air plane has been inspired by the birds. But such a question is perhaps useless. All what I mean is that a brain is something very complex, and I think that the real time thinking machine will think before we understand how they think, except for general map and principles. Thinking machine will not understand thinking either. Marvin Minski said something similar along those lines in one of its book. *** Now, why would a Universal Machine be attracted by freedom? The reason is that beyond some threshold of self-introspection ability (already get by PA or ZF) a universal machine can discover (well: cannot not discover) its large space of ignorance making it possible for e to evaluate (interrogatively) more and more accessible possibilities, and then some instinct to exploit those possibilities will do the rest. But such UM will also discovers the possibility that such possibilities could be cul-de-sac, dead ends, or just risky, and thus the conflicting oscillations will develop as I said above. The war between freedom and security is an infinite war. A would say an infinite natural conflict among all enough big numbers. Also I think freedom like security are God-like virtue, that is they are unnameable idea. To put freedom in the constitution could entail the disparition of freedom. Putting security in the constitution (like the french have apparently do so with the precaution principle) could lead to increase insecurity (they obeys Bp - ~p). See also Alan Watts' The wisdom of insecurity which gives many illustration how wanting to capture formally or institutionally security leads to insecurity. You seem to be including in your definition of the UM the *motivation*, not just the ability, to explore all mathematical objects. But you could also program the machine to do anything else you wanted, such as self-destruct when it solved a particular theorem. You could interview it and it might explain, Yeah, so when I prove Fermat's Last Theorem, I'm going to blow my brains out. It'll be fun! Unlike naturally evolved intelligences, which could be expected to have a desire for self-preservation, reproduction, etc., an AI can have any motivation and any capacity for emotion the technology allows. The difference between a machine that doesn't mind being a slave, a machine that wants to be free, and a machine that wants to enslave everyone else might be just a few lines of code. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List
Re: computer pain
Le 29-déc.-06, à 10:39, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You seem to be including in your definition of the UM the *motivation*, not just the ability, to explore all mathematical objects. But you could also program the machine to do anything else you wanted, such as self-destruct when it solved a particular theorem. You could interview it and it might explain, Yeah, so when I prove Fermat's Last Theorem, I'm going to blow my brains out. It'll be fun! Unlike naturally evolved intelligences, which could be expected to have a desire for self-preservation, reproduction, etc., an AI can have any motivation and any capacity for emotion the technology allows. The difference between a machine that doesn't mind being a slave, a machine that wants to be free, and a machine that wants to enslave everyone else might be just a few lines of code. You are right. I should have been clearer. I was still thinking to machine having been programmed with some universal goal like help yourself, and actually I was refrerring to those who succeed in helping themselves. Surely the machine which blows itself in case of success (like some humans do BTW) does not belong the long run winner. I tend to define a successful AI, as a machine which does succeed in the sharing of our evolutionary histories. What I was saying in that a (lucky!) universal machine driven by a universal goal will develop a taste for freedom. My point is that such a taste for freedom is not necessarily human. I would be astonished if extraterrestrials does not develop such a taste. The roots of that attraction is the fact that when machine develop themselves (in some self-referentially correct way) they are more and more aware of their ignorance gap (which grows along with that development). By filling it, it grows more, but this provides the roots of the motivations too. But then we are perhaps ok. Help yourself is indeed some line of code. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Yes and no. It is possible given arbitrarily long time and other resources to work out the consequences, or at least a best estimate of the consequences, of actions. But in real situations the resources are limited (e.g. my brain power) and so decisions have to be made under uncertainity and tradeoffs of uncertain risks are necessary: should I keep researching or does that risk being too late with my decision? So it is at this level that we encounter conflicting values. If we could work everything out to our own satisfaction maybe we could be satisfied with whatever decision we reached - but life is short and calculation is long. You don't need to figure out the consequences of everything. You can replace the emotions/values with a positive or negative number (or some more complex formula where the numbers vary according to the situation, new learning, a bit of randomness thrown in to make it all more interesting, etc.) and come up with the same behaviour with the only motivation being to maximise the one variable. I think your taking behavior in a crude, corare-grained sense. But I thought when you wrote with just a hierarchy of motivation you meant without emotions like regret, worry, etc. I think those emotions arise because in the course of estimating the value of different courses of action there is uncertainity and there is a horizon problem. They may not show up in the choice of immediate action, but they will be in memory and may well show up in subsequent behavoir. Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? I think motivations are emotions. For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, Generally contemplating something you are motivated to avoid - like your own death - is accompanied by negative feelings. The exception is when you contemplate your narrow escape. That is a real high! and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? I'd assess them according to their function in analogy with biological system experiences. Pain = experience of injury, loss of function. Disgust = the assessment of extremely negative value to some event, but without fear. Loathing = the external signaling of disgust. Would this assessment be accurate? I dunno and I suspect that's a meaningless question. That you can describe these emotions in terms of their function implies that you could program a computer to behave in a similar way without actually experiencing the emotions - unless you are saying that a computer so programmed would ipso facto experience the emotions. That's what I'm saying. But note that I'm conceiving behave in a similar way to include more than just gross, immediate bodily motion. I include forming memories, getting an adrenaline rush, etc. You seem to be taking function in very crude terms, as though moving your hand out of the fire were the whole of the behavior. A paramecium moves away from some chemical stimuli, but it doesn't form a memory associating negative feelings with the immediately preceding actions and environment. That's the difference between behavior, as I meant it, and a mere reaction. Consider a simple robot with photoreceptors, a central processor, and a means of locomotion which is designed to run away from bright lights: the brighter the light, the faster and further it runs. Is it avoiding the light because it doesn't like it, because it hurts its eyes, or simply because it feels inexplicably (from its point of view) compelled to do so? What would you have to do to it so that it feels the light hurts its eyes? Create negative associations in memory with the circumstances, such that stimulating those associations would cause the robot to take avoiding action. Once you have figured out the answer to that question, would it be possible to disconnect the processor and torture it by inputting certain values corresponding to a high voltage from the photoreceptors? Would it be possible to run an emulation of the processor on a PC and torture it with appropriate data values? I think so. Have you read The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem? Would it be possible to cause it pain beyond the imagination of any biological organism by inputting megavolt quantities, since in a simulation there are no actual sensory receptors to saturate or burn out? Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: You seem to be including in your definition of the UM the *motivation*, not just the ability, to explore all mathematical objects. But you could also program the machine to do anything else you wanted, such as self-destruct when it solved a particular theorem. You could interview it and it might explain, Yeah, so when I prove Fermat's Last Theorem, I'm going to blow my brains out. It'll be fun! Unlike naturally evolved intelligences, which could be expected to have a desire for self-preservation, reproduction, etc., an AI can have any motivation and any capacity for emotion the technology allows. The difference between a machine that doesn't mind being a slave, a machine that wants to be free, and a machine that wants to enslave everyone else might be just a few lines of code. You are right. I should have been clearer. I was still thinking to machine having been programmed with some universal goal like help yourself, and actually I was refrerring to those who succeed in helping themselves. Surely the machine which blows itself in case of success (like some humans do BTW) does not belong the long run winner. I tend to define a successful AI, as a machine which does succeed in the sharing of our evolutionary histories. What I was saying in that a (lucky!) universal machine driven by a universal goal will develop a taste for freedom. My point is that such a taste for freedom is not necessarily human. I would be astonished if extraterrestrials does not develop such a taste. The roots of that attraction is the fact that when machine develop themselves (in some self-referentially correct way) they are more and more aware of their ignorance gap (which grows along with that development). By filling it, it grows more, but this provides the roots of the motivations too. But then we are perhaps ok. Help yourself is indeed some line of code. I tend to think that AI's will not be built with the same drives and feelings as humans because it would in many cases be impractical and/or cruel. Imagine the problems if an AI with a fear of death controlling a weapons system had to be decommissioned. It would be simpler to make most AI's willing slaves from the start; there is no contradiction in a willing slave being intelligent. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent meeker writes: and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? I'd assess them according to their function in analogy with biological system experiences. Pain = experience of injury, loss of function. Disgust = the assessment of extremely negative value to some event, but without fear. Loathing = the external signaling of disgust. Would this assessment be accurate? I dunno and I suspect that's a meaningless question. That you can describe these emotions in terms of their function implies that you could program a computer to behave in a similar way without actually experiencing the emotions - unless you are saying that a computer so programmed would ipso facto experience the emotions. That's what I'm saying. But note that I'm conceiving behave in a similar way to include more than just gross, immediate bodily motion. I include forming memories, getting an adrenaline rush, etc. You seem to be taking function in very crude terms, as though moving your hand out of the fire were the whole of the behavior. A paramecium moves away from some chemical stimuli, but it doesn't form a memory associating negative feelings with the immediately preceding actions and environment. That's the difference between behavior, as I meant it, and a mere reaction. Consider a simple robot with photoreceptors, a central processor, and a means of locomotion which is designed to run away from bright lights: the brighter the light, the faster and further it runs. Is it avoiding the light because it doesn't like it, because it hurts its eyes, or simply because it feels inexplicably (from its point of view) compelled to do so? What would you have to do to it so that it feels the light hurts its eyes? Create negative associations in memory with the circumstances, such that stimulating those associations would cause the robot to take avoiding action. Would this be enough to make the light painful? The robot might become sophisticated enough to talk to you and say that it just doesn't like the light, or even that it has no particular like or dislike for the light but feels compelled to avoid it for no reason it can explain other than I have been made this way. Compulsions in conditions such as OCD can be stronger motivators than physical pain or other negative consequences. What special feature of the robot and its programming would make the light actually painful? Once you have figured out the answer to that question, would it be possible to disconnect the processor and torture it by inputting certain values corresponding to a high voltage from the photoreceptors? Would it be possible to run an emulation of the processor on a PC and torture it with appropriate data values? I think so. Have you read The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem? Would it be possible to cause it pain beyond the imagination of any biological organism by inputting megavolt quantities, since in a simulation there are no actual sensory receptors to saturate or burn out? Pain is limited on both ends: on the input by damage to the physical circuitry and on the response by the possible range of response. Responses in the brain are limited by several mechanisms, such as exhaustion of neurotransmitter stores at synapses, negative feedback mechanisms such as downregulation of receptors, and, I suppose, the total numbers of neurons that can be stimulated. That would not be a problem in a simulation, if you were not concerned with modelling the behaviour of a real brain. Just as you could build a structure 100km tall as easily as one 100m tall by altering a few parameters in an engineering program, so it should be possible to create unimaginable pain or pleasure in a conscious AI program by changing a few parameters. Maybe this is an explanation for the Fermi paradox: once a society manages mind uploads, it becomes a trivial exercise to create heaven, and the only thing they ever have to worry about again is keeping the computers running indefinitely. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Actually, it probably isn't. You probably have a multi-tasking operating system which assigns priorities to different tasks (which is why it sometimes can be as annoying as a human being in not following your instructions). But to take your point seriously - if I look into your brain there are some neuronal processes that corresponded to hitting the send button; and those were accompanied by biochemistry that constituted your positive feeling about it: that you had decided and wanted to hit the send button. So why would the functionally analogous processes in the computer not also be accompanied by an feeling? Isn't that just an anthropomorphic way of talking about satisfying the computer operating in accordance with it's priorities. It seems to me that to say otherwise is to assume a dualism in which feelings are divorced from physical processes. Feelings are caused by physical processes (assuming a physical world), but it seems impossible to deduce what the feeling will be by observing the underlying physical process or the behaviour it leads to. Is a robot that withdraws from hot stimuli experiencing something like pain, disgust, shame, sense of duty to its programming, or just an irreducible motivation to avoid heat? Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) That's crux of it. Because we sometimes do things with very little feeling, i.e. dispassionately, I think we erroneously assume there is a limit in which things can be done with no feeling. But things cannot be done with no value system - not even thinking. That's the frame problem. Given a some propositions, what inferences will you draw? If you are told there is a bomb wired to the ignition of your car you could infer that there is no need to do anything because you're not in your car. You could infer that someone has tampered with your car. You could infer that turning on the ignition will draw more current than usual. There are infinitely many things you could infer, before getting around to, I should disconnect the bomb. But in fact you have value system which operates unconsciously and immediately directs your inferences to the few that are important to you. A way to make AI systems to do this is one of the outstanding problems of AI. OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of duty, but this is something like the emotionless motivation I imagine AI's might have. I'd sooner trust an AI with a matter-of-fact sense of duty But even a sense of duty is a value and satisfying it is a positive emotion. Yes, but it is complex and difficult to define. I suspect there is a limitless variety of emotions that an AI could have, if the goal is to explore what is possible rather than what is helpful in completing particular tasks, and most of these would be unrecognisable to humans. to complete a task than a human motivated by desire to please, desire to do what is good and avoid what is bad, fear of failure
Re: computer pain
Le 27-déc.-06, à 07:40, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Brent Meeker writes: My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Actually, it probably isn't. You probably have a multi-tasking operating system which assigns priorities to different tasks (which is why it sometimes can be as annoying as a human being in not following your instructions). But to take your point seriously - if I look into your brain there are some neuronal processes that corresponded to hitting the send button; and those were accompanied by biochemistry that constituted your positive feeling about it: that you had decided and wanted to hit the send button. So why would the functionally analogous processes in the computer not also be accompanied by an feeling? Isn't that just an anthropomorphic way of talking about satisfying the computer operating in accordance with it's priorities. It seems to me that to say otherwise is to assume a dualism in which feelings are divorced from physical processes. Feelings are caused by physical processes (assuming a physical world), H If you assume a physical world for making feelings caused by physical processes, then you have to assume some negation of the comp hypothesis (cf UDA). If not Brent is right (albeit for different reason I presume, here) and you become a dualist. but it seems impossible to deduce what the feeling will be by observing the underlying physical process or the behaviour it leads to. Here empirical bets (theories) remains possible, together with (first person) acceptable protocol of verification. Dream reader will appear in some future. Is a robot that withdraws from hot stimuli experiencing something like pain, disgust, shame, sense of duty to its programming, or just an irreducible motivation to avoid heat? It could depend on the degree of sophistication of the robot. Perhaps something like shame necessitates long and deep computational histories including self-consistent anticipations, beliefs in a value and in a reality. Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) That's crux of it. Because we sometimes do things with very little feeling, i.e. dispassionately, I think we erroneously assume there is a limit in which things can be done with no feeling. But things cannot be done with no value system - not even thinking. That's the frame problem. Given a some propositions, what inferences will you draw? If you are told there is a bomb wired to the ignition of your car you could infer that there is no need to do anything because you're not in your car. You could infer that someone has tampered with your car. You could infer that turning on the ignition will draw more current than usual. There are infinitely many things you could infer, before getting around to, I should disconnect the bomb. But in fact you have value system which operates unconsciously and immediately directs your inferences to the few that are important to you. A way to make AI systems to do this is one of the outstanding problems of AI. OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? It is possible that there will be a zombie gap, after all. It is easier to simulate emotion than reasoning, and this is enough for pets, and for some possible sophisticated artificial soldiers or police ... out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, along with food, shelter, more money etc.; it does not simply follow from being intelligent or conscious any more than these other things do. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). I don't know if that's true either. How much of our technology is due to copying the equivalent biological functions? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Yes and no. It is possible given arbitrarily long time and other resources to work out the consequences, or at least a best estimate of the consequences, of actions. But in real situations the resources are limited (e.g. my brain power) and so decisions have to be made under uncertainity and tradeoffs of uncertain risks are necessary: should I keep researching or does that risk being too late with my decision? So it is at this level that we encounter conflicting values. If we could work everything out to our own satisfaction maybe we could be satisfied with whatever decision we reached - but life is short and calculation is long. Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? I think motivations are emotions. For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, Generally contemplating something you are motivated to avoid - like your own death - is accompanied by negative feelings. The exception is when you contemplate your narrow escape. That is a real high! and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? I'd assess them according to their function in analogy with biological system experiences. Pain = experience of injury, loss of function. Disgust = the assessment of extremely negative value to some event, but without fear. Loathing = the external signaling of disgust. Would this assessment be accurate? I dunno and I suspect that's a meaningless question. Brent Meeker As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. --- Emerson --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, You might have a lot of trouble showing that experimentally. Humans want some freedom - but not too much. And they certainly don't want others to have too much. They want security, comfort, certainty - and freedom if there's any left over. Brent Meeker Free speech is not freedom for the thought you love. It's freedom for the thought you hate the most. --- Larry Flynt --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Hello Dave/Chris, I agree with everything you say, and have long admired The Hedonistic Imperative. Motivation need not be linked to pain, and for that matter it need not be linked to pleasure either. We can imagine an artificial intelligence without any emotions but completely dedicated to the pursuit of whatever goals it has been set. It is just a contingent fact of evolution that we can experience pleasure and pain. I don't know how you can be sure of that. How do you know that being completely dedicated is not the same has having a motivating emotion? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: I agree with everything you say, and have long admired The Hedonistic Imperative. Motivation need not be linked to pain, and for that matter it need not be linked to pleasure either. We can imagine an artificial intelligence without any emotions but completely dedicated to the pursuit of whatever goals it has been set. It is just a contingent fact of evolution that we can experience pleasure and pain. I don't know how you can be sure of that. How do you know that being completely dedicated is not the same has having a motivating emotion? My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of duty, but this is something like the emotionless motivation I imagine AI's might have. I'd sooner trust an AI with a matter-of-fact sense of duty to complete a task than a human motivated by desire to please, desire to do what is good and avoid what is bad, fear of failure and humiliation, and so on. Just because evolution came up with something does not mean it is the best or most efficient way of doing things. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: I agree with everything you say, and have long admired The Hedonistic Imperative. Motivation need not be linked to pain, and for that matter it need not be linked to pleasure either. We can imagine an artificial intelligence without any emotions but completely dedicated to the pursuit of whatever goals it has been set. It is just a contingent fact of evolution that we can experience pleasure and pain. I don't know how you can be sure of that. How do you know that being completely dedicated is not the same has having a motivating emotion? My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Actually, it probably isn't. You probably have a multi-tasking operating system which assigns priorities to different tasks (which is why it sometimes can be as annoying as a human being in not following your instructions). But to take your point seriously - if I look into your brain there are some neuronal processes that corresponded to hitting the send button; and those were accompanied by biochemistry that constituted your positive feeling about it: that you had decided and wanted to hit the send button. So why would the functionally analogous processes in the computer not also be accompanied by an feeling? Isn't that just an anthropomorphic way of talking about satisfying the computer operating in accordance with it's priorities. It seems to me that to say otherwise is to assume a dualism in which feelings are divorced from physical processes. Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) That's crux of it. Because we sometimes do things with very little feeling, i.e. dispassionately, I think we erroneously assume there is a limit in which things can be done with no feeling. But things cannot be done with no value system - not even thinking. That's the frame problem. Given a some propositions, what inferences will you draw? If you are told there is a bomb wired to the ignition of your car you could infer that there is no need to do anything because you're not in your car. You could infer that someone has tampered with your car. You could infer that turning on the ignition will draw more current than usual. There are infinitely many things you could infer, before getting around to, I should disconnect the bomb. But in fact you have value system which operates unconsciously and immediately directs your inferences to the few that are important to you. A way to make AI systems to do this is one of the outstanding problems of AI. out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of duty, but this is something like the emotionless motivation I imagine AI's might have. I'd sooner trust an AI with a matter-of-fact sense of duty But even a sense of duty is a value and satisfying it is a positive emotion. to complete a task than a human motivated by desire to please, desire to do what is good and avoid what is bad, fear of failure and humiliation, and so on. Yes, human value systems are very messy because a) they must be learned and b) they mostly have to do with other humans. The motivation of tigers, for example, is probably very simple and consequently they are never depressed or manic. Just because evolution came up with something does not mean it is the best or most efficient way of doing things. But until we know a better way, we can't just assume nature was inefficient. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: In fact, if we could reprogram our own minds at will, it would be a very different world. Suppose you were upset because you lost your job. You might decide to stay upset to the degree that it remains a motivating factor to look for other work, but not affect your sleep, ability to experience pleasure, etc. If you can't find work you might decide to downgrade your expectations, so that you are just as content having less money or a menial job, or just as content for the next six months but then have the motivation to look for interesting work kick in again, but without the confidence- and enthusiasm-sapping disappointment that comes from repeated failure to find work. I think that's called a cocaine habit. :-) The difference between happiness that is derived from illicit drugs and happiness derived from real life is that the former does not really last, ending in tolerance, dependence, depression, deterioration in physical health, inability to work and look after oneself, not to mention criminal activity due to the fact that the drugs are illegal. This is because drugs are a very crude way of stimulating the nervous system. It is like programming a computer with a soldering iron. The only time drugs work well is if there is a relatively simple fault, like an excess or deficit of a certain neurotransmitter, and even there you have to be lucky for function to return to normal. Which presumes a well-defined normal. Changing specific aspects of thinking or emotions without screwing up other functions in the process would require much greater finesse than modern pharmacology can provide, and greater efficacy than psychology can provide. David Pearce in The Hedonistic Imperative, and some science fiction writers (Greg Egan, Walter Jon Williams come to mind) have looked at some of the consequences of being able to reprogram your emotions, motivations, memories and personality. Larry Niven imagined a future in which you would be able to plug into implanted electrodes in your brain and selectively stimulate different areas. I think this was suggested to him by popular articles on finding a pleasure center in rats. In Ringworld, I believe. But that is the complete antithesis of what I was getting at, undifferentiated pleasure which destroys purposeful activity. Contrast an opioid like heroin with antidepressants. Heroin has an immediate euphoriant effect to which tolerance develops over time, requiring ever-higher doses, and apart from the destructive lifestyle due to its illegal status, it damages the personality because it is an end in itself, and every other activity and source of motivation seems insipid by comparison. Antidepressants have a delayed onset of action with no tolerance and drug-seeking behaviour (indeed, many patients doubt the association between the drug and clinical improvement for this reason), and they do not directly induce euphoria, but increase the motivation and ability to experience pleasure in activities which depression takes away. The problem is, they only work when a patient is clinically depressed (and even then not all that well in many cases), and do nothing if someone is merely unhappy or distressed about some aspect of their life. It would not be a desirable thing if there were drugs to eliminate ordinary unhappiness, because we need the fear of unhappiness as a motivating force: an example of how fixing one problem might create another one. But if we had a precise means of adjusting our minds, so that if you did not want a certain consequence X you could ensure that that X would not occur, it would be a different story. For example, even if you thought that suffering was noble, but did not trust yourself with the ability to eliminate suffering, you could simply program yourself so that you were no longer tempted to eliminate suffering. No-one that I am aware of has explored how utterly alien a world in which we had access to our own source code at the finest level would be. I wouldn't download anything from Microsoft! Brent Meeker The first time Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck will be when they build vacuum cleaners. --- Bill Jefferys _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: ... It would not be a desirable thing if there were drugs to eliminate ordinary unhappiness, because we need the fear of unhappiness as a motivating force: And not only fear of unhappiness. Depression (not the clinical kind) is your brain telling you you need to change your life. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: It would not be a desirable thing if there were drugs to eliminate ordinary unhappiness, because we need the fear of unhappiness as a motivating force: And not only fear of unhappiness. Depression (not the clinical kind) is your brain telling you you need to change your life. You need to chamge your life in order to be happy, but what if you could be just as happy, at lower cost, without changing your life? You could even stipulate as a rule (although I'm not sure it would be necessary) that no alteration to increase happiness will be allowed to decrease biological or social fitness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Because undifferentiated pleasure destroys purposeful activity, as Stathis notes, presumably there is strong selection pressure against it. If we were naturally uniformly happy, then who would be motivated to raise children? What's less clear is whether we'll need to retain ordinary unhappiness - or ultimately any kind of unhappiness at all. Why can't we engineer a motivational system based on heritable _gradients_ of immense well-being? Retain the functional analogues of (some of) our nastier states, but do away with their unpleasant raw feels. If gradients are conserved, then potentially so too is critical discernment, appropriate behavioral responses to different stimuli, and informational sensitivity to a changing environment. On this scenario, rather than dismantling the hedonic treadmill (cf. heroin addicts, wireheading, or Huxley's soma), we could genetically recalibrate the pleasure-pain axis. Hedonic tone could be enriched so that we all enjoy a higher average hedonic set point across the lifespan. One can see pitfalls here. Genetically enriching the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, for instance, might indeed make many people happier and more motivated. But if done ineptly, the enhancement might cause mania or even psychosis. Also, depression/subordinate behavior seems to have evolved as an adaptation to group-living in social mammals. The ramifications for human society of abolishing low mood altogether would be profound and unpredictable. But in principle, a re-designed motivational system based entirely on (adaptive) gradients of well-being could make everyone hugely better off. Idle utopian dreaming? Well, yes, possibly. But I think in the near-future there will be selection pressure for heritably enriched hedonic tone. Within the next few decades, we are likely to witness a revolution of designer babies - and perhaps universal pre-implantation diagnosis. Prospective parents are going to choose the kind of children they want to raise. Most prospective parents will presumably choose (genotypes predisposing to) happy children - since most parents want their kids to be happy. When human evolution is no longer blind and random, there will be strong selection pressure against the genes/allelic combinations that predispose, not just to clinical depression etc, but to ordinary unhappiness as we understand it today. Since ordinary unhappiness can still be pretty ghastly, I think this is a good thing. Happy Christmas! :-) Dave --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
chris kirkland wrote: Because undifferentiated pleasure destroys purposeful activity, as Stathis notes, presumably there is strong selection pressure against it. If we were naturally uniformly happy, then who would be motivated to raise children? What's less clear is whether we'll need to retain ordinary unhappiness - or ultimately any kind of unhappiness at all. Why can't we engineer a motivational system based on heritable _gradients_ of immense well-being? Retain the functional analogues of (some of) our nastier states, but do away with their unpleasant raw feels. If gradients are conserved, then potentially so too is critical discernment, appropriate behavioral responses to different stimuli, and informational sensitivity to a changing environment. On this scenario, rather than dismantling the hedonic treadmill (cf. heroin addicts, wireheading, or Huxley's soma), we could genetically recalibrate the pleasure-pain axis. Hedonic tone could be enriched so that we all enjoy a higher average hedonic set point across the lifespan. One can see pitfalls here. Genetically enriching the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, for instance, might indeed make many people happier and more motivated. But if done ineptly, the enhancement might cause mania or even psychosis. Also, depression/subordinate behavior seems to have evolved as an adaptation to group-living in social mammals. The ramifications for human society of abolishing low mood altogether would be profound and unpredictable. But in principle, a re-designed motivational system based entirely on (adaptive) gradients of well-being could make everyone hugely better off. Idle utopian dreaming? Well, yes, possibly. But I think in the near-future there will be selection pressure for heritably enriched hedonic tone. Within the next few decades, we are likely to witness a revolution of designer babies - and perhaps universal pre-implantation diagnosis. Prospective parents are going to choose the kind of children they want to raise. Most prospective parents will presumably choose (genotypes predisposing to) happy children - since most parents want their kids to be happy. When human evolution is no longer blind and random, there will be strong selection pressure against the genes/allelic combinations that predispose, not just to clinical depression etc, but to ordinary unhappiness as we understand it today. Since ordinary unhappiness can still be pretty ghastly, I think this is a good thing. Note that we have already bred dogs to be (or at least appear) happier, less aggressive, more playful, and more social, than the wolves they descended from. So by conventional selective breeding it can already be done -- which suggests that it has already been done. I wonder if there has been enough time for cultural selective breeding to have caused human beings to have cultural differences in emotional disposition? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Hello Dave/Chris, I agree with everything you say, and have long admired The Hedonistic Imperative. Motivation need not be linked to pain, and for that matter it need not be linked to pleasure either. We can imagine an artificial intelligence without any emotions but completely dedicated to the pursuit of whatever goals it has been set. It is just a contingent fact of evolution that we can experience pleasure and pain. Having ready-made feelings which destroy the motivation to seek those feelings in the normal manner may also be a blessing. Some people seek to harm others because they get a special kick from this that they can't get any other way. If they could program themselves so that they could get exactly the same effect from fantasising about it, then there would be no need to engage in the harmful activity. We could decide in a dispassionate manner to leave the positive motivations intact and linked to gradients of pleasure, but decouple the negative motivations so that the sadist could still enjoy himself but no longer needs to hurt anyone to do so. Stathis Papaioannou Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 01:06:20 + From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: computer pain Because undifferentiated pleasure destroys purposeful activity, as Stathis notes, presumably there is strong selection pressure against it. If we were naturally uniformly happy, then who would be motivated to raise children? What's less clear is whether we'll need to retain ordinary unhappiness - or ultimately any kind of unhappiness at all. Why can't we engineer a motivational system based on heritable _gradients_ of immense well-being? Retain the functional analogues of (some of) our nastier states, but do away with their unpleasant raw feels. If gradients are conserved, then potentially so too is critical discernment, appropriate behavioral responses to different stimuli, and informational sensitivity to a changing environment. On this scenario, rather than dismantling the hedonic treadmill (cf. heroin addicts, wireheading, or Huxley's soma), we could genetically recalibrate the pleasure-pain axis. Hedonic tone could be enriched so that we all enjoy a higher average hedonic set point across the lifespan. One can see pitfalls here. Genetically enriching the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, for instance, might indeed make many people happier and more motivated. But if done ineptly, the enhancement might cause mania or even psychosis. Also, depression/subordinate behavior seems to have evolved as an adaptation to group-living in social mammals. The ramifications for human society of abolishing low mood altogether would be profound and unpredictable. But in principle, a re-designed motivational system based entirely on (adaptive) gradients of well-being could make everyone hugely better off. Idle utopian dreaming? Well, yes, possibly. But I think in the near-future there will be selection pressure for heritably enriched hedonic tone. Within the next few decades, we are likely to witness a revolution of designer babies - and perhaps universal pre-implantation diagnosis. Prospective parents are going to choose the kind of children they want to raise. Most prospective parents will presumably choose (genotypes predisposing to) happy children - since most parents want their kids to be happy. When human evolution is no longer blind and random, there will be strong selection pressure against the genes/allelic combinations that predispose, not just to clinical depression etc, but to ordinary unhappiness as we understand it today. Since ordinary unhappiness can still be pretty ghastly, I think this is a good thing. Happy Christmas! :-) Dave _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Note that I didn't say promote the well-being; I said contrary to the continuation. If the species could not continue without slavery, then there are two possible futures. In one of them there's a species that thinks slavery is OK - in the other there is no opinion on the subject. OK, but it is possible to have an ethical system contrary to the continuation of the species as well. There are probably peopel in the world today who think that humans should deliberately stop breeding and die out because their continued existence is detrimental to the survival of other species on the planet. If you point out to them that such a policy is contrary to evolution (if contrary to evolution is possible) or whatever, they might agree with you, but still insist that quietly dying out is the good and noble thing to do. They have certain values with a certain end in mind, and their ethical system is perfectly reasonable in that context. That most of us consider it foolish and do not want to adopt it does not mean that there is a flaw in the logic or in the empirical facts. Words like irrational are sometimes used imprecisely. Someone who decides to jump off a tall building might be called irrational on the basis of that information alone. If he does it because he believes he is superman and able to fly then he is irrational: he is not superman and he will punge to his death. If he does it because he wants to kill himself then he is not irrational, because jumping off a tall enough building is a perfectly reasonable means towards this end. We might try equally hard in each case to dissuade him from jumping, but the approach would be different because the underlying thought processes are different. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Note that I didn't say promote the well-being; I said contrary to the continuation. If the species could not continue without slavery, then there are two possible futures. In one of them there's a species that thinks slavery is OK - in the other there is no opinion on the subject. OK, but it is possible to have an ethical system contrary to the continuation of the species as well. There are probably peopel in the world today who think that humans should deliberately stop breeding and die out because their continued existence is detrimental to the survival of other species on the planet. If you point out to them that such a policy is contrary to evolution (if contrary to evolution is possible) or whatever, they might agree with you, but still insist that quietly dying out is the good and noble thing to do. They have certain values with a certain end in mind, and their ethical system is perfectly reasonable in that context. That most of us consider it foolish and do not want to adopt it does not mean that there is a flaw in the logic or in the empirical facts. Right. Words like irrational are sometimes used imprecisely. Someone who decides to jump off a tall building might be called irrational on the basis of that information alone. If he does it because he believes he is superman and able to fly then he is irrational: he is not superman and he will punge to his death. If he does it because he wants to kill himself then he is not irrational, because jumping off a tall enough building is a perfectly reasonable means towards this end. We might try equally hard in each case to dissuade him from jumping, but the approach would be different because the underlying thought processes are different. I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that values contrary to continuation of the species are not likely to be among the basic hardwired values of any species. Those conducive to continuation probably will be - with allowance for changes of circumstance rapidly compared to biological evolution. So values in an evolved species are, on the whole, not just free floating, independent of facts. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Note that I didn't say promote the well-being; I said contrary to the continuation. If the species could not continue without slavery, then there are two possible futures. In one of them there's a species that thinks slavery is OK - in the other there is no opinion on the subject. OK, but it is possible to have an ethical system contrary to the continuation of the species as well. There are probably peopel in the world today who think that humans should deliberately stop breeding and die out because their continued existence is detrimental to the survival of other species on the planet. If you point out to them that such a policy is contrary to evolution (if contrary to evolution is possible) or whatever, they might agree with you, but still insist that quietly dying out is the good and noble thing to do. They have certain values with a certain end in mind, and their ethical system is perfectly reasonable in that context. That most of us consider it foolish and do not want to adopt it does not mean that there is a flaw in the logic or in the empirical facts. Right. Words like irrational are sometimes used imprecisely. Someone who decides to jump off a tall building might be called irrational on the basis of that information alone. If he does it because he believes he is superman and able to fly then he is irrational: he is not superman and he will punge to his death. If he does it because he wants to kill himself then he is not irrational, because jumping off a tall enough building is a perfectly reasonable means towards this end. We might try equally hard in each case to dissuade him from jumping, but the approach would be different because the underlying thought processes are different. I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that values contrary to continuation of the species are not likely to be among the basic hardwired values of any species. Those conducive to continuation probably will be - with allowance for changes of circumstance rapidly compared to biological evolution. So values in an evolved species are, on the whole, not just free floating, independent of facts. The facts show us why as a society we have the sorts of values we do, but they do not provide justification for why we should or shouldn't have certain values, like a sort of replacement for Moses' stone tablets. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 24-déc.-06, à 09:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Brent Meeker writes: If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Note that I didn't say promote the well-being; I said contrary to the continuation. If the species could not continue without slavery, then there are two possible futures. In one of them there's a species that thinks slavery is OK - in the other there is no opinion on the subject. OK, but it is possible to have an ethical system contrary to the continuation of the species as well. There are probably peopel in the world today who think that humans should deliberately stop breeding and die out because their continued existence is detrimental to the survival of other species on the planet. If you point out to them that such a policy is contrary to evolution (if contrary to evolution is possible) or whatever, they might agree with you, but still insist that quietly dying out is the good and noble thing to do. They have certain values with a certain end in mind, and their ethical system is perfectly reasonable in that context. That most of us consider it foolish and do not want to adopt it does not mean that there is a flaw in the logic or in the empirical facts. Words like irrational are sometimes used imprecisely. Someone who decides to jump off a tall building might be called irrational on the basis of that information alone. If he does it because he believes he is superman and able to fly then he is irrational: he is not superman and he will punge to his death. If he does it because he wants to kill himself then he is not irrational, because jumping off a tall enough building is a perfectly reasonable means towards this end. Unless Quantum Mechanics is correct. Unless the comp hyp. is correct. (OK this does not invalidate per se your argumentation). We might try equally hard in each case to dissuade him from jumping, but the approach would be different because the underlying thought processes are different. OK, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Oops, it was Jef Allbright, not Mark Peaty responsible for the first quote below. Brent Meeker writes: [Mark Peaty]Correction: [Jef Allbright] From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) [Stathis Papaioannou] What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Teaching that slavery is bad is similar to teaching that lying is bad. In each case it's a narrow over-simplification of a more general principle of what works. Children are taught simplified modes of moral reasoning to match their smaller context of understanding. At one end of a moral scale are the moral instincts (experienced as pride, disgust, etc.) that are an even more condensed form of knowledge of what worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Further up the scale are cultural--including religious--laws and even the patterns of our language that further codify and reinforce patterns of interaction that worked well enough and broadly enough to be taken as principles of right action. Relatively few of us take the leap beyond the morality that was inherited or given to us, to grasp the broader and more extensible understanding of morality as patterns of behavior assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope. Society discourages individual thinking about what is and what is not moral; indeed, it is a defining characteristic that moral principles subsume both narrow self interest and narrow situational awareness. For this reason, one can not assess the absolute morality of an action in isolation, but we can legitimately speak of the relative morality of a class of behavior within context. Just as lying can clearly be the right action within a specific context (imagine having one's home invaded and being unable, on moral grounds, to lie to the invaders about where the children are hiding!), the moral issue of slavery can be effectively understood only within a larger context. The practice of slavery (within a specific context) can be beneficial to society; numerous examples exist of slavery contributing to the economic good of a locale, and on a grander scale, the development of western philosophy (including democracy!) as a result of freeing some from the drudgery of manual labor and creating an environment conducive to deeper thought. And as we seek to elucidate a general principle regarding slavery, we come face-to-face with other instances of this class of problem, including rights of women to vote, the moral standing of sentient beings of various degrees of awareness (farm animals, the great apes, artificial intelligences), and even the idea that all men, of disparate mental or emotional capability, are created equal? Could there be a principle constituting a coherent positive-sum stance toward issues of moral interaction between agents of inherently different awareness and capabilities? Are we as a society yet ready to adopt a higher level of social decision-making, moral to the extent that it effectively promotes increasingly shared values over increasing scope, one that provides an increasingly clear vision of effective interaction between agents of diverse and varying capabilities, or are going to hold tightly to the previous best model, one that comfortingly but childishly insists on the fiction of some form of strict equality between agents? Are we mature enough to see
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: [Stathis Papaioannou] If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Teaching that slavery is bad is similar to teaching that lying is bad. In each case it's a narrow over-simplification of a more general principle of what works. Children are taught simplified modes of moral reasoning to match their smaller context of understanding. At one end of a moral scale are the moral instincts (experienced as pride, disgust, etc.) that are an even more condensed form of knowledge of what worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Further up the scale are cultural--including religious--laws and even the patterns of our language that further codify and reinforce patterns of interaction that worked well enough and broadly enough to be taken as principles of right action. Relatively few of us take the leap beyond the morality that was inherited or given to us, to grasp the broader and more extensible understanding of morality as patterns of behavior assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope. Society discourages individual thinking about what is and what is not moral; indeed, it is a defining characteristic that moral principles subsume both narrow self interest and narrow situational awareness. For this reason, one can not assess the absolute morality of an action in isolation, but we can legitimately speak of the relative morality of a class of behavior within context. Just as lying can clearly be the right action within a specific context (imagine having one's home invaded and being unable, on moral grounds, to lie to the invaders about where the children are hiding!), the moral issue of slavery can be effectively understood only within a larger context. The practice of slavery (within a specific context) can be beneficial to society; numerous examples exist of slavery contributing to the economic good of a locale, and on a grander scale, the development of western philosophy (including democracy!) as a result of freeing some from the drudgery of manual labor and creating an environment conducive to deeper thought. And as we seek to elucidate a general principle regarding slavery, we come face-to-face with other instances of this class of problem, including rights of women to vote, the moral standing of sentient beings of various degrees of awareness (farm animals, the great apes, artificial intelligences), and even the idea that all men, of disparate mental or emotional capability, are created equal? Could there be a principle constituting a coherent positive-sum stance toward issues of moral interaction between agents of inherently different awareness and capabilities? Are we as a society yet ready to adopt a higher level of social decision-making, moral to the extent that it effectively promotes increasingly shared values over increasing scope, one that provides an increasingly clear vision of effective interaction between agents of diverse and varying capabilities, or are going to hold tightly to the previous best model, one that comfortingly but childishly insists on the fiction of some form of strict equality between agents? Are we mature enough to see that just at the point in human progress where technological development (biotech, nanotech, AI) threatens to drastically disrupt that which we value, we are gaining the necessary tools to organize at a higher level--effectively a higher level of wisdom? Well, I think slavery is bad, even if it does help society - unless we were actually in danger of extiction without it or something. So yes, the moral rules must bend in the face of changing circumstances, but the point at which they bend will be different for each individual, and there is no objective way to define what this point would or should be. Slightly off topic, I don't see why we would design AI's to experience emotions such as resentment, anger, fear, pain etc. John McCarthy says in his essay, Making Robots Conscious of their Mental States http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/consciousness/consciousness.html In fact, if we could reprogram our own minds at will, it would be a very different world. Suppose you were upset because you lost your job. You might decide to stay upset to the degree that it remains a motivating factor to look for other work, but not affect your sleep, ability to experience pleasure, etc. If you can't find work you might decide to downgrade your expectations, so that you are just as content having less money or a menial job, or just as content for the next six months but then have the motivation to look for interesting work kick in again, but without the confidence- and enthusiasm-sapping disappointment that comes from repeated failure to find work. I think that's called a cocaine habit. :-) Brent Meeker
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: [Stathis Papaioannou] If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Teaching that slavery is bad is similar to teaching that lying is bad. In each case it's a narrow over-simplification of a more general principle of what works. Children are taught simplified modes of moral reasoning to match their smaller context of understanding. At one end of a moral scale are the moral instincts (experienced as pride, disgust, etc.) that are an even more condensed form of knowledge of what worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Further up the scale are cultural--including religious--laws and even the patterns of our language that further codify and reinforce patterns of interaction that worked well enough and broadly enough to be taken as principles of right action. Relatively few of us take the leap beyond the morality that was inherited or given to us, to grasp the broader and more extensible understanding of morality as patterns of behavior assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope. Society discourages individual thinking about what is and what is not moral; indeed, it is a defining characteristic that moral principles subsume both narrow self interest and narrow situational awareness. For this reason, one can not assess the absolute morality of an action in isolation, but we can legitimately speak of the relative morality of a class of behavior within context. Just as lying can clearly be the right action within a specific context (imagine having one's home invaded and being unable, on moral grounds, to lie to the invaders about where the children are hiding!), the moral issue of slavery can be effectively understood only within a larger context. The practice of slavery (within a specific context) can be beneficial to society; numerous examples exist of slavery contributing to the economic good of a locale, and on a grander scale, the development of western philosophy (including democracy!) as a result of freeing some from the drudgery of manual labor and creating an environment conducive to deeper thought. And as we seek to elucidate a general principle regarding slavery, we come face-to-face with other instances of this class of problem, including rights of women to vote, the moral standing of sentient beings of various degrees of awareness (farm animals, the great apes, artificial intelligences), and even the idea that all men, of disparate mental or emotional capability, are created equal? Could there be a principle constituting a coherent positive-sum stance toward issues of moral interaction between agents of inherently different awareness and capabilities? Are we as a society yet ready to adopt a higher level of social decision-making, moral to the extent that it effectively promotes increasingly shared values over increasing scope, one that provides an increasingly clear vision of effective interaction between agents of diverse and varying capabilities, or are going to hold tightly to the previous best model, one that comfortingly but childishly insists on the fiction of some form of strict equality between agents? Are we mature enough to see that just at the point in human progress where technological development (biotech, nanotech, AI) threatens to drastically disrupt that which we value, we are gaining the necessary tools to organize at a higher level--effectively a higher level of wisdom? Well, I think slavery is bad, even if it does help society - unless we were actually in danger of extiction without it or something. Slavery is bad almost by defintion. It consists in treating beings we empathize with as though we had no empathy. So yes, the moral rules must bend in the face of changing circumstances, but the point at which they bend will be different for each individual, and there is no objective way to define what this point would or should be. Slightly off topic, I don't see why we would design AI's to experience emotions such as resentment, anger, fear, pain etc. John McCarthy says in his essay, Making Robots Conscious of their Mental States http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/consciousness/consciousness.html In fact, if we could reprogram our own minds at will, it would be a very different world. Better living through chemistry! Suppose you were upset because you lost your job. You might decide to stay upset to the degree that it remains a motivating factor to look for other work, but not affect your sleep, ability to experience pleasure, etc. If you can't find work you might decide to downgrade your expectations, so that you are just as content having less money or a menial job, or just as content for the next six months but then have the motivation to look for interesting work kick in again, but without the confidence- and
RE: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: [Stathis Papaioannou] If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Teaching that slavery is bad is similar to teaching that lying is bad. In each case it's a narrow over-simplification of a more general principle of what works. Children are taught simplified modes of moral reasoning to match their smaller context of understanding. At one end of a moral scale are the moral instincts (experienced as pride, disgust, etc.) that are an even more condensed form of knowledge of what worked in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Further up the scale are cultural--including religious--laws and even the patterns of our language that further codify and reinforce patterns of interaction that worked well enough and broadly enough to be taken as principles of right action. Relatively few of us take the leap beyond the morality that was inherited or given to us, to grasp the broader and more extensible understanding of morality as patterns of behavior assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope. Society discourages individual thinking about what is and what is not moral; indeed, it is a defining characteristic that moral principles subsume both narrow self interest and narrow situational awareness. For this reason, one can not assess the absolute morality of an action in isolation, but we can legitimately speak of the relative morality of a class of behavior within context. Just as lying can clearly be the right action within a specific context (imagine having one's home invaded and being unable, on moral grounds, to lie to the invaders about where the children are hiding!), the moral issue of slavery can be effectively understood only within a larger context. The practice of slavery (within a specific context) can be beneficial to society; numerous examples exist of slavery contributing to the economic good of a locale, and on a grander scale, the development of western philosophy (including democracy!) as a result of freeing some from the drudgery of manual labor and creating an environment conducive to deeper thought. And as we seek to elucidate a general principle regarding slavery, we come face-to-face with other instances of this class of problem, including rights of women to vote, the moral standing of sentient beings of various degrees of awareness (farm animals, the great apes, artificial intelligences), and even the idea that all men, of disparate mental and emotional capability, are created equal? Could there be a principle constituting a coherent positive-sum stance toward issues of moral interaction between agents of inherently different awareness and capabilities? Are we as a society yet ready to adopt a higher level of social decision-making, moral to the extent that it effectively promotes increasingly shared values over increasing scope, one that provides an increasingly clear vision of effective interaction between agents of diverse and varying capabilities, or are going to hold tightly to the previous best model, one that comfortingly but childishly insists on the fiction of some form of strict equality between agents? Are we mature enough to see that just at the point in human progress where technological development (biotech, nanotech, AI) threatens to drastically disrupt that which we value, we are gaining the necessary tools to organize at a higher level--effectively a higher level of wisdom? Well, I think slavery is bad, even if it does help society - unless we were actually in danger of extiction without it or something. So yes, the moral rules must bend in the face of changing circumstances, but the point at which they bend will be different for each individual, and there is no objective way to define what this point would or should be. I thought you and I had already clearly agreed that there can be no absolute or objective morality, since moral judgments are based on subjective values. And I thought we had already moved on to discussion of how agents do in fact hold a good portion of their subjective values in common, due to common environment, culture and evolutionary heritage. In my opinion, the discussion begins to get interesting from this point, because the population tends to converge on agreement as to general principles of effective interaction, while tending to diverge on matters of individual interests and preferences. Please notice that I don't say that slavery *is* immoral, because as you well know there's no objective basis for that claim. But I do say that people will increasingly agree in their assessment that it is highly immoral. Their *statements* are objective facts, and measurements of the degree of agreement are objective facts, and on this basis I claim that we can implement an improved form of social
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: In fact, if we could reprogram our own minds at will, it would be a very different world. Suppose you were upset because you lost your job. You might decide to stay upset to the degree that it remains a motivating factor to look for other work, but not affect your sleep, ability to experience pleasure, etc. If you can't find work you might decide to downgrade your expectations, so that you are just as content having less money or a menial job, or just as content for the next six months but then have the motivation to look for interesting work kick in again, but without the confidence- and enthusiasm-sapping disappointment that comes from repeated failure to find work. I think that's called a cocaine habit. :-) The difference between happiness that is derived from illicit drugs and happiness derived from real life is that the former does not really last, ending in tolerance, dependence, depression, deterioration in physical health, inability to work and look after oneself, not to mention criminal activity due to the fact that the drugs are illegal. This is because drugs are a very crude way of stimulating the nervous system. It is like programming a computer with a soldering iron. The only time drugs work well is if there is a relatively simple fault, like an excess or deficit of a certain neurotransmitter, and even there you have to be lucky for function to return to normal. Changing specific aspects of thinking or emotions without screwing up other functions in the process would require much greater finesse than modern pharmacology can provide, and greater efficacy than psychology can provide. David Pearce in The Hedonistic Imperative, and some science fiction writers (Greg Egan, Walter Jon Williams come to mind) have looked at some of the consequences of being able to reprogram your emotions, motivations, memories and personality. No-one that I am aware of has explored how utterly alien a world in which we had access to our own source code at the finest level would be. Perhaps that is one of the things that would happen at the Vingean Singularity. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: In fact, if we could reprogram our own minds at will, it would be a very different world. Suppose you were upset because you lost your job. You might decide to stay upset to the degree that it remains a motivating factor to look for other work, but not affect your sleep, ability to experience pleasure, etc. If you can't find work you might decide to downgrade your expectations, so that you are just as content having less money or a menial job, or just as content for the next six months but then have the motivation to look for interesting work kick in again, but without the confidence- and enthusiasm-sapping disappointment that comes from repeated failure to find work. I think that's called a cocaine habit. :-) The difference between happiness that is derived from illicit drugs and happiness derived from real life is that the former does not really last, ending in tolerance, dependence, depression, deterioration in physical health, inability to work and look after oneself, not to mention criminal activity due to the fact that the drugs are illegal. This is because drugs are a very crude way of stimulating the nervous system. It is like programming a computer with a soldering iron. The only time drugs work well is if there is a relatively simple fault, like an excess or deficit of a certain neurotransmitter, and even there you have to be lucky for function to return to normal. Which presumes a well-defined normal. Changing specific aspects of thinking or emotions without screwing up other functions in the process would require much greater finesse than modern pharmacology can provide, and greater efficacy than psychology can provide. David Pearce in The Hedonistic Imperative, and some science fiction writers (Greg Egan, Walter Jon Williams come to mind) have looked at some of the consequences of being able to reprogram your emotions, motivations, memories and personality. Larry Niven imagined a future in which you would be able to plug into implanted electrodes in your brain and selectively stimulate different areas. I think this was suggested to him by popular articles on finding a pleasure center in rats. No-one that I am aware of has explored how utterly alien a world in which we had access to our own source code at the finest level would be. I wouldn't download anything from Microsoft! Brent Meeker The first time Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck will be when they build vacuum cleaners. --- Bill Jefferys --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
John Mikes writes: Stathis, your 'augmentded' ethical maxim is excellent, I could add some more 'except foe'-s to it. (lower class, cast, or wealth, - language, - gender, etc.) The last par, however, is prone to a more serious remark of mine: topics like you sampled are culture related prejudicial beief-items. Research cannot solve them, because research is also ADJUSTED TO THE CULTURE it serves. A valid medeval research on the number of angels on a pin-tip would not hold in today's belief-topic of curved space. (Curved angels?) Mey Christmas to you, too John I think the culture-independence test is actually a good test for whether something truly is part of science. How to build a nuclear bomb is culture-independent - it won't work if you decide to use U-328 just because there is more of it available where you live, for example. But whether and how to use the finished weapon is not a question that science can answer, although of course it is a question that scientists should ask and apply their own culture- -dependent values to. And a merry Christmas to you too, John Stathis Papaionnou On 12/21/06, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Jones writes: Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and profit. This is my own personal ethical belief, and you can't tell me I'm wrong! And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic. The psychopath is wrong. He doesn't want to be murdered, but he wants to murder. His ethical rule is therefore inconsistent and not really ethical at all. Who says his ethical rule is inconsistent? If he made the claim do unto others as you would have others do unto you he would be inconsistent, but he makes no such claim. Billions of people have lived and died in societies where it is perfectly ethical and acceptable to kill inferior races or inferior species. If they accept some version of the edict you have just elevated to a self-evident truth it would be do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they are foreigners, or taste good to eat, or worship different gods. Perfectly consistent, even if horrible. In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere. Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. Definitions supply correct assumptions. So you think arguments about such matters as abortion, capital punishment and what sort of social welfare system we should have are just like arguments about mathematics or geology, and with enough research there should be universal agreement? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
John Mikes wrote: Brent: let me start at the end: So why don't you believe it? because I am prejudiced by the brainwashing I got in 101 science education, the 'conventional' thinking of the (ongoing) science establishment - still brainwashing the upcoming scientist-generations with the same '101' - (which is also an answer to your 'conventional' quest:) It seems your answer is that it's just a convention that you happen to have learned - a mere artifact of culture as propounded by various post-modernists. Unconventional is a lot on this list many of them to my liking (personal!) and seemingly to yours, too. I leave it to the conventional(G) scientists to agree whether the Earth is spherical (if it IS?) and used this example from the precedent texts just as an 'unconventional' variant thinking. We (all, I suppose) are under a lot of influence from the 101 sciences and my point was exactly to raise another possibility (absurd as it may be). We are influenced by it because it has been very successful. I don't fly in airplanes designed by alternative engineering. Unconventional ideas interest me only in so far as they work as well or better than conventional ones. Brent Meeker They laughed at Bozo the Clown too. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Brent: Brent: It seems your answer is that it's just a convention that you happen to have learned - a mere artifact of culture as propounded by various post-modernists. JM: In our culture and its predecessors primitive observations led to explanations at the level of the then epistemic cognitive inventory, which increases continually. Those simplistic ideas were retained and mended in later 'science' of better learning epochs but the basis has not changed: a physical view of facts and the way we still do value them as our reality. Composed into 'models' (groups) of their own. If you call a newer look - based upon newer epistemic enrichment - as propounded by various post-modernists - well, so be it, I don't consider it pejorative. Brent (on the 101): We are influenced by it because it has been very successful. I don't fly in airplanes designed by alternative engineering. Unconventional ideas interest me only in so far as they work as well or better than conventional ones. JM: I think I hear a mix up of the only one we have for the best one there is. Your airplanes fall off the sky sometimes (spare me the statistics, please, 1 is more than enough) contraceptives fail, houses burn down for electric failures, there are wars in the conventionally based social culture, our biosphere is going berserk because of our perfect scientific applications, we have technology-related diseases, nuclear fall outs, medical mishaps, politicians (oops) and food poisoning, bridge collapses and other innumerable examples of safety failures of our '101'-based perfect efficiency in this world. We live (and use) the ONLY one we have. Our pretension lists the benefits and deems it the best. For the caveman the BEST weapon was the hand-ax. For a priest the best science is HIS theology. For a monotheist the best god is his god. If you are not interested in the 'unconventional novelties' before they prove to be superior then our ongoing ignorance, you will never get to them. I go for it, not necessarily successful, but I try. And don't give up. I don't believe that you want to stay put in the science-religion of our axioms, emergence, 'givens', chaotic paradoxical beliefs and the cosmologists' Big Bang narrative. And all the other marvels based on '101'. Atoms, molecules, spin, energy, space, time, mass, gravitation, electricity, light, life, mind, etc. just to name some. They all are usable tools for some practical tasks as long as we have no better ones to use and explanation for them. In the meantime have a happy new year John M On 12/23/06, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Mikes wrote: Brent: let me start at the end: So why don't you believe it? because I am prejudiced by the brainwashing I got in 101 science education, the 'conventional' thinking of the (ongoing) science establishment - still brainwashing the upcoming scientist-generations with the same '101' - (which is also an answer to your 'conventional' quest:) It seems your answer is that it's just a convention that you happen to have learned - a mere artifact of culture as propounded by various post-modernists. Unconventional is a lot on this list many of them to my liking (personal!) and seemingly to yours, too. I leave it to the conventional(G) scientists to agree whether the Earth is spherical (if it IS?) and used this example from the precedent texts just as an 'unconventional' variant thinking. We (all, I suppose) are under a lot of influence from the 101 sciences and my point was exactly to raise another possibility (absurd as it may be). We are influenced by it because it has been very successful. I don't fly in airplanes designed by alternative engineering. Unconventional ideas interest me only in so far as they work as well or better than conventional ones. Brent Meeker They laughed at Bozo the Clown too. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Mark Peaty writes: Sorry to be so slow at responding here but life [domestic], the universe and everything else right now is competing savagely with this interesting discussion. [But one must always think positive; 'Bah, Humbug!' is not appropriate, even though the temptation is great some times :-] Stathis, I am not entirely convinced when you say: 'And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic' That would only be right if we allowed that his [psychopathy is mostly a male affliction I believe] use of words is easily as reasonable as yours or mine. However, where the said psycho. is purporting to make authoritative statements about the world, it is not OK for him to purport that what he describes is unquestionably factual and his reasoning from the facts as he sees them is necessarily authoritative for anyone else. This is because, qua psychopath, he is not able to make the fullest possible free decisions about what makes people tick or even about what is reality for the rest of us. He is, in a sense, mortally wounded, and forever impaired; condemned always to make only 'logical' decisions. :-) The way I see it, roughly and readily, is that there are in fact certain statements/descriptions about the world and our place in it which are MUCH MORE REASONABLE than a whole lot of others. I think therefore that, even though you might be right from a 'purely logical' point of view when you say the following: 'In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere' in fact, from the point of view of practical living and the necessities of survival, the correct approach is to assert what amounts to a set of practical axioms, including: * the mere fact of existence is the basis of value, that good and bad are expressed differently within - and between - different cultures and their sub-cultures but ultimately there is an objective, absolute basis for the concept of 'goodness', because in all normal circumstances it is better to exist than not to exist, * related to this and arising out of it is the realisation that all normal, healthy humans understand what is meant by both 'harm' and 'suffering', certainly those who have reached adulthood, * furthermore, insofar as it is clearly recognisable that continuing to exist as a human being requires access to and consumption of all manner of natural resources and human-made goods and services, it is in our interests to nurture and further the inclinations in ourselves and others to behave in ways supportive of cooperation for mutual and general benefit wherever this is reasonably possible, and certainly not to act destructively or disruptively unless it is clear that doing so will prevent a much greater harm from occurring. It ought to be clear to all reasonable persons not engaged in self deception that in this modern era each and everyone of us is dependent - always - on at least a thousand other people doing the right thing, or trying to anyway. Thus the idea of 'manly', rugged, individualism is a romantic nonsense unless it also incorporates a recognition of mutual interdependence and the need for real fairness in social dealings at every level. Unless compassion, democracy and ethics are recognised [along with scientific method] as fundamental prerequisites for OUR survival, policies and practices will pretty much inevitably become self-defeating and destructive, no matter how well-intentioned to start with. In the interest of brevity I add the following quasi-axioms. * the advent of scientific method on Earth between 400 and 500 years ago has irreversibly transformed the human species so that now we can reasonably assert that the human universe is always potentially infinite, so long as it exists and we believe it to be so * to be fully human requires taking responsibility for one's actions and this means consciously choosing to do things or accepting that one has made a choice even if one cannot remember consciously choosing * nobody knows the future, so all statements about the future are either guesswork or statements of desires. Furthermore our lack of knowledge of times to come is very deep, such that we have no truly reasonable basis for dismissing the right to survive of any persons on the planet - or other living species for that matter - unless it can be clearly shown that such killing or allowing to die, is necessary to prevent some far greater harm and the assertion of this is of course hampered precisely by our lack of knowledge of the future This feels incomplete but it needs to be sent. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ I agree with you as far as advice for how to live a good life goes, but I guess where I disagree is on the technical matter of what we call
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: [Mark Peaty] From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) [Stathis Papaioannou] What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Oops, it was Jef Allbright, not Mark Peaty responsible for the first quote below. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: computer pain Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 15:31:03 +1100 Brent Meeker writes: [Mark Peaty] From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) [Stathis Papaioannou] What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Peter Jones writes: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. That may be so, but we don't exactly have a lot of intelligent species to make the comparison. It is not difficult to imagine species with different evolutionary heritages which would have different ethics to our own, certainly in the details and probably in many of the core values. It isn't difficult to imagine humans with different mores to our own, particularly since the actual exist... the point is not that they might believe certain things to be ethical; the point is , what *is* actually ethical. There is a difference between mores and morality just as their is between belief and truth. When I say I believe an empirical fact, I mean that if you go out and have a look and a poke, you will see that the empirical fact is so; and if you don't, tell me and I'll change my belief. Ethical beliefs are not like that because they are ultimately dependent on values. You can say you don't like someone's values, you can say that his values are contrary to evolution or whatever, but you can't say he is wrong about his values in the way he might be wrong about an empirical fact, because the only empirical claim he is making is about how he thinks and feels. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: [Mark Peaty] From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) [Stathis Papaioannou] What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. If slavery could be scientifically shown to promote the well-being of the species as a whole does that mean we should have slavery? Does it mean that slavery is good? Note that I didn't say promote the well-being; I said contrary to the continuation. If the species could not continue without slavery, then there are two possible futures. In one of them there's a species that thinks slavery is OK - in the other there is no opinion on the subject. Of course slavery implies the coercive use of our fellow members of society against their desires. So it logically entails that at least those enslaved will not be pleased with their situation. But note that in ancient times one had an absolute right to one's life - including selling oneself into slavery, or contracting to be a slave for a certain time. So someone (maybe a radical libertarian) might argue that you should be able to risk your own enslavement in exchange for some gain desirable to you. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Jef Allbright writes: peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. That may be so, but we don't exactly have a lot of intelligent species to make the comparison. It is not difficult to imagine species with different evolutionary heritages which would have different ethics to our own, certainly in the details and probably in many of the core values. (2) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is good is what is assessed to promote the agent's values into the future. (3) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is better is what is assessed as good over increasing scope. (4) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is increasingly right or moral, is decision-making assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope of agents and interactions. From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. This is really quite a good proposal for building better societies, and one that I would go along with, but meta-ethical problems arise if someone simply rejects that shared values are important (eg. believes that the values of the strong outweigh those of the weak), and ethical problems arise when it is time to decide what exactly these shared values are and how they should best be promoted. You know this of course, and it is what makes ethics and aesthetics different to the natural sciences. I apologize for the extremely terse and sparse nature of this outline, but I wanted to contribute these keystones despite lacking the time to provide expanded background, examples, justifications, or clarifications. I hope that these seeds of thought may contribute to a flourishing garden both on and offlist. - Jef Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Sorry to be so slow at responding here but life [domestic], the universe and everything else right now is competing savagely with this interesting discussion. [But one must always think positive; 'Bah, Humbug!' is not appropriate, even though the temptation is great some times :-] Stathis, I am not entirely convinced when you say: 'And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic' That would only be right if we allowed that his [psychopathy is mostly a male affliction I believe] use of words is easily as reasonable as yours or mine. However, where the said psycho. is purporting to make authoritative statements about the world, it is not OK for him to purport that what he describes is unquestionably factual and his reasoning from the facts as he sees them is necessarily authoritative for anyone else. This is because, qua psychopath, he is not able to make the fullest possible free decisions about what makes people tick or even about what is reality for the rest of us. He is, in a sense, mortally wounded, and forever impaired; condemned always to make only 'logical' decisions. :-) The way I see it, roughly and readily, is that there are in fact certain statements/descriptions about the world and our place in it which are MUCH MORE REASONABLE than a whole lot of others. I think therefore that, even though you might be right from a 'purely logical' point of view when you say the following: 'In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere' in fact, from the point of view of practical living and the necessities of survival, the correct approach is to assert what amounts to a set of practical axioms, including: * the mere fact of existence is the basis of value, that good and bad are expressed differently within - and between - different cultures and their sub-cultures but ultimately there is an objective, absolute basis for the concept of 'goodness', because in all normal circumstances it is better to exist than not to exist, * related to this and arising out of it is the realisation that all normal, healthy humans understand what is meant by both 'harm' and 'suffering', certainly those who have reached adulthood, * furthermore, insofar as it is clearly recognisable that continuing to exist as a human being requires access to and consumption of all manner of natural resources and human-made goods and services, it is in our interests to nurture and further the inclinations in ourselves and others to behave in ways supportive of cooperation for mutual and general benefit wherever this is reasonably possible, and certainly not to act destructively or disruptively unless it is clear that doing so will prevent a much greater harm from occurring. It ought to be clear to all reasonable persons not engaged in self deception that in this modern era each and everyone of us is dependent - always - on at least a thousand other people doing the right thing, or trying to anyway. Thus the idea of 'manly', rugged, individualism is a romantic nonsense unless it also incorporates a recognition of mutual interdependence and the need for real fairness in social dealings at every level. Unless compassion, democracy and ethics are recognised [along with scientific method] as fundamental prerequisites for OUR survival, policies and practices will pretty much inevitably become self-defeating and destructive, no matter how well-intentioned to start with. In the interest of brevity I add the following quasi-axioms. * the advent of scientific method on Earth between 400 and 500 years ago has irreversibly transformed the human species so that now we can reasonably assert that the human universe is always potentially infinite, so long as it exists and we believe it to be so * to be fully human requires taking responsibility for one's actions and this means consciously choosing to do things or accepting that one has made a choice even if one cannot remember consciously choosing * nobody knows the future, so all statements about the future are either guesswork or statements of desires. Furthermore our lack of knowledge of times to come is very deep, such that we have no truly reasonable basis for dismissing the right to survive of any persons on the planet - or other living species for that matter - unless it can be clearly shown that such killing or allowing to die, is necessary to prevent some far greater harm and the assertion of this is of course hampered precisely by our lack of knowledge of the future This feels incomplete but it needs to be sent. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. That may be so, but we don't exactly have a lot of intelligent species to make the comparison. It is not difficult to imagine species with different evolutionary heritages which would have different ethics to our own, certainly in the details and probably in many of the core values. Imagine? Don't you know any women? :-) (2) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is good is what is assessed to promote the agent's values into the future. (3) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is better is what is assessed as good over increasing scope. (4) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is increasingly right or moral, is decision-making assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope of agents and interactions. From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) What if the ratcheting forward of shared values is at odds with evolutionary expediency, i.e. there is some unethical policy that improves the fitness of the species? To avoid such a dilemna you would have define as ethical everything improves the fitness of the species, and I'm not sure you want to do that. If your species doesn't define as unethical that which is contrary to continuation of the species, your species won't be around to long. Our problem is that cultural evolution has been so rapid compared to biological evolution that some of our hardwired values are not so good for continuation of our (and many other) species. I don't think ethics is a matter of definitions; that's like trying to fly by settling on a definition of airplane. But looking at the long run survival of the species might produce some good ethical rules; particularly if we could predict the future consequences clearly. Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. This is really quite a good proposal for building better societies, and one that I would go along with, but meta-ethical problems arise if someone simply rejects that shared values are important (eg. believes that the values of the strong outweigh those of the weak), Historically this problem has been dealt with by those who think shared values are important ganging up on those who don't. and ethical problems arise when it is time to decide what exactly these shared values are and how they should best be promoted. Aye, there's the rub. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Well said! I agree almost completely - I'm a little uncertain about (3) and (4) above and the meaning of scope. Together with the qualifications of Peter Jones regarding the lack of universal agreement on even the best supported theories of science, you have provided a good outline of the development of ethics in a way parallel with the scientific development of knowledge. There's a good paper on the relation facts and values by Oliver Curry which bears on many of the above points: http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04234247.pdf That is a well-written paper, particularly good on an explanation of the naturalistic fallacy, covering what we have been discussing in this thread (and the parallel thread on evil etc. with which it seems to have crossed over). Basically, the paper argues that Humes edict that you can't get is from ought is no impediment to a naturalistic explanation of ethics, and that incidentally Hume himself had a naturalistic explanation. Another statement of the naturalistic fallacy is that explanation is not the same as justification: that while Darwinian mechanisms may explain why we have certain ethical systems that does not constitute justification for those sytems. To this Curry counters: In case this is all rather abstract, let me re-state the point by way of an analogy. Suppose that instead of being about morality and why people find certain things morally good and bad, this article had been about sweetness, and why people find certain things sweet and certain things sour. The Humean-Darwinian would have argued that humans have an evolved digestive system that distinguishes between good and bad sources of nutrition and energy; and that the human 'sweet tooth' is an evolved preference for foods with high sugar-content over foods with low sugar-content. If one accepted this premise, it would make no sense to complain that evolution may have explained why humans find certain things sweet, but it cannot tell us whether these things are really sweet or not. It follows from the premises of the argument that there is no criterion of sweetness independent of human psychology, and hence this question cannot arise. That's fine if we stop at explanation at the descriptive level. But sweetness lacks the further dimension of ought: if I say sugar is sweet I am stating a fact about the relationship between sugar and my tastebuds, while if I say murder is bad I am not only stating a fact about how I feel about it, I am also making a profound claim about the world. In a sense, I think this latter claim or feeling is illusory and there is nothing to it beyond genes and upbringing, but I still have it, and moreover I can have such feelings in conflict with genes and upbringing. As G.E. Moore said (also quoted in the article), if I identify good with some natural object X, it is always possible to ask, is X good?, which means that good must essentially be something else, simple, indefinable, unanalysable object of thought, which only contingently coincides with natural objects or their properties. The same applies even if you include as natural object commands from God. I was preparing a response to related questions from Stathis in a separate post when I noticed that he had already done an excellent job of clarifying the issue here. I would add only the following: The fundamental importance of context cannot be overemphasized in discussions of Self, Free-will, Morality, etc., anywhere that the subjective and the objective are considered together. Like particle/wave duality, we can only get answers consistent with the context of our questions. * Many have attempted to bridge the gap between is and ought, but haven't fully grasped the futility of attempting to find the intersection of a point of view and its inverse. * Many have shaken their heads wisely and stated that is and ought are entirely disjoint, so nothing useful can be said about any supposed relations between the two. * Very few have realized the essential relativity of ALL our models of thought, that there is no privileged frame of reference for making objective distinctions between is and ought because we are inextricably part of the system we are trying to describe, and THAT is what grounds the subjective within the objective. There can be no absolute or objective basis for claims of moral value, because subjective assessment is intrinsic to the issue. But we, as effective agents within the context of an evolving environment, can *absolutely agree* that: * subjective assessments have objective consequences, which then feed back to influence future subjective assessments. * actions are assessed as good to the extent that they are perceived to promote into the future the present values of the (necessarily subjective) assessor. * actions are assessed as better to the extent that they are perceived to promote
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: snip Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. This is really quite a good proposal for building better societies, and one that I would go along with, but meta-ethical problems arise if someone simply rejects that shared values are important (eg. believes that the values of the strong outweigh those of the weak), Historically this problem has been dealt with by those who think shared values are important ganging up on those who don't. and ethical problems arise when it is time to decide what exactly these shared values are and how they should best be promoted. Aye, there's the rub. Because any decision-making is done within a limited context, but the consequences arise within a necessarily larger (future) context, we can never be sure of the exact consequences of our decisions. Therefore, we should strive for decision-making that is increasingly *right-in-principle*, given our best knowledge of the situation at the time. Higher-quality principles can be recognized by their greater scope of applicability and subtlety (more powerful but relatively fewer side-effects). With Sthathis' elucidation of the Natural Fallacy in a separate post, and Brent's comments here (more down-to-earth and easily readable, less abstract than my own would have been) I have very little to add. - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Jef Allbright wrote: Immediately upon hitting Send on the previous post, I noticed that I had failed to address a remaining point, below. Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: snip Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. This is really quite a good proposal for building better societies, and one that I would go along with, but meta-ethical problems arise if someone simply rejects that shared values are important (eg. believes that the values of the strong outweigh those of the weak), Historically this problem has been dealt with by those who think shared values are important ganging up on those who don't. and ethical problems arise when it is time to decide what exactly these shared values are and how they should best be promoted. Aye, there's the rub. Because any decision-making is done within a limited context, but the consequences arise within a necessarily larger (future) context, we can never be sure of the exact consequences of our decisions. Therefore, we should strive for decision-making that is increasingly *right-in-principle*, given our best knowledge of the situation at the time. Higher-quality principles can be recognized by their greater scope of applicability and subtlety (more powerful but relatively fewer side-effects). It's an interesting question as to how we might best know our fine-grained human values across an entire population, given that we can hardly begin to express them ourselves, let alone their complex internal and external relationships and dependencies. There's also the question of sufficient motivation, since very few of us would want to spend a great deal of time answering (and later updating) questionnaires. The best (possibly) workable idea I have is to use story-telling. It might be done in the form of a game of collaborative story-telling where people would contribute short scenarios where the actions and interactions of the characters would encode systems of values. Then, software could analyze the text, extract significant features into a high-dimensional array of vectors, and from there, principle component analysis, clustering, rankings of association and similarity could be done mathematically via unsupervised software with the higher level information available for visualization. This idea needs more fleshing out and it might be possible to perform limited validation of the concept using the existing (and growing) corpus of fictional literature available in digital form. When people tell me, in defense of an omnibenevolent God, that this is the best of all possible worlds, I point out to them that in Hollywood movies, good always triumphs over evil...and these movies are widely recognized as unrealistic. Brent Meeker No good deed goes unpunished. --- Claire Booth Luce, U.S. Senator --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
1Z wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. That may be so, but we don't exactly have a lot of intelligent species to make the comparison. It is not difficult to imagine species with different evolutionary heritages which would have different ethics to our own, certainly in the details and probably in many of the core values. It isn't difficult to imagine humans with different mores to our own, particularly since the actual exist... the point is not that they might believe certain things to be ethical; the point is , what *is* actually ethical. If you try to change their ethics, you can only do it by appealing to their values. Their values are objective in the sense that they can be discovered. And some ethical systems will promote those values better or more broadly than others. But I don't see any basis for judging the values themselves as good or bad. You could weigh them according to how likely they are to propagate themselves - like Dawkins' evolution of memes, but I don't think that's what you mean. There is a difference between mores and morality just as their is between belief and truth. If everyone believes the Earth is flat one can sail around it and show that belief is false. If everyone believes miscegenation is immoral, how could that morality be shown to be wrong? Not by marrying a person of a different race. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
I really should not, but here it goes: Brent, you seem to value the conventional ways given by the model used to formulate physical sciences and Euclidian geometry etc. over mental ways or ideational arguments. (There may be considerations to judge mixed marriages for good argumentation without waiting for physically observable damages.) Imagine (since Einstein introduced us to spacetime-curvatures already) that the Earth IS flat with the format-proviso that as you approach the rim it changes your straight-line progressing: the closer you get the more it changes (something like the big mass ujpon spacetime - mutatis mutandis). So as you close in to the rim, instead of falling off, you curved backwards and arrive (on a different route) at the point of starting. (No proper geometry have I devised for that so far), It would seem, that the Earth is spherical and yuou circumnavigatged it. Like Paul Churchland's tribe who formulated heat as a fluid changing colors according to its concentration (in ho book Consciousness).and not some ridi\culous vibrations as some human physicists believe. For the innocent bystander: I do not believe this Flat Earth theory. Merry Christmas John M On 12/22/06, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1Z wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. That may be so, but we don't exactly have a lot of intelligent species to make the comparison. It is not difficult to imagine species with different evolutionary heritages which would have different ethics to our own, certainly in the details and probably in many of the core values. It isn't difficult to imagine humans with different mores to our own, particularly since the actual exist... the point is not that they might believe certain things to be ethical; the point is , what *is* actually ethical. If you try to change their ethics, you can only do it by appealing to their values. Their values are objective in the sense that they can be discovered. And some ethical systems will promote those values better or more broadly than others. But I don't see any basis for judging the values themselves as good or bad. You could weigh them according to how likely they are to propagate themselves - like Dawkins' evolution of memes, but I don't think that's what you mean. There is a difference between mores and morality just as their is between belief and truth. If everyone believes the Earth is flat one can sail around it and show that belief is false. If everyone believes miscegenation is immoral, how could that morality be shown to be wrong? Not by marrying a person of a different race. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
John Mikes wrote: I really should not, but here it goes: Brent, you seem to value the conventional ways given by the model used to formulate physical sciences and Euclidian geometry etc. over mental ways or ideational arguments. All models are mental and ideational. That's why they are models. Can you explain what you mean by conventional and unconventional? (There may be considerations to judge mixed marriages for good argumentation without waiting for physically observable damages.) Imagine (since Einstein introduced us to spacetime-curvatures already) that the Earth IS flat with the format-proviso that as you approach the rim it changes your straight-line progressing: the closer you get the more it changes (something like the big mass ujpon spacetime - mutatis mutandis). So as you close in to the rim, instead of falling off, you curved backwards and arrive (on a different route) at the point of starting. (No proper geometry have I devised for that so far), It would seem, that the Earth is spherical and yuou circumnavigatged it. And this would be different from a spherical Earth how? Like Paul Churchland's tribe who formulated heat as a fluid changing colors according to its concentration (in ho book Consciousness).and not some ridi\culous vibrations as some human physicists believe. What's your point?...that any observation can be explained in more than one way and since we cannot apprehend reality itself we must remain agnostic and indifferent between a flat and spherical Earth? For the innocent bystander: I do not believe this Flat Earth theory. So why don't you believe it? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Peter Jones writes: Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and profit. This is my own personal ethical belief, and you can't tell me I'm wrong! And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic. The psychopath is wrong. He doesn't want to be murdered, but he wants to murder. His ethical rule is therefore inconsistent and not really ethical at all. Who says his ethical rule is inconsistent? If he made the claim do unto others as you would have others do unto you he would be inconsistent, but he makes no such claim. Billions of people have lived and died in societies where it is perfectly ethical and acceptable to kill inferior races or inferior species. If they accept some version of the edict you have just elevated to a self-evident truth it would be do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they are foreigners, or taste good to eat, or worship different gods. Perfectly consistent, even if horrible. In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere. Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. Definitions supply correct assumptions. So you think arguments about such matters as abortion, capital punishment and what sort of social welfare system we should have are just like arguments about mathematics or geology, and with enough research there should be universal agreement? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Peter Jones writes: It is indisputable that morality varies in practice across communities. But the contention of ethical objectivism is not that everyone actually does hold to a single objective system of ethics; it is only that ethical questions can be resolved objectively in principle. The existence of an objective solution to any kind of problem is always compatible with the existence of people who, for whatever reason, do not subscribe. The roundness of the Earth is no less an objective fact for the existence of believers in the Flat Earth theory.(It is odd that the single most popular argument for ethical subjectivism has so little logical force). The Flat Earther is *wrong*. He claims that if you sail in a straight line you will eventually fall off the edge. But if you do sail in a straight line, you don't don't fall off the edge; lots of people have done it. The psychopath, on the other hand, merely claims that if he kills someone, he does not think it is a bad thing. And indeed, he kills someone, and he does not think it is a bad thing. He is *not* wrong; there is no way you could even claim he is wrong, like the Flat Earther claiming that sailors have lied about circumnavigating the globe. You could argue that if everyone were a psychopath we would all be dead, and he might even agree with you that that would be the case, but then turn around and say, So what? Better dead than cissies! As Jamie Rose said, there were societies such as the Shakers who didn't mind if they died out and in fact did die out, and they are not usually considered immoral. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and profit. This is my own personal ethical belief, and you can't tell me I'm wrong! And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic. The psychopath is wrong. He doesn't want to be murdered, but he wants to murder. His ethical rule is therefore inconsistent and not really ethical at all. Who says his ethical rule is inconsistent? If he made the claim do unto others as you would have others do unto you he would be inconsistent, but he makes no such claim. He doesn't get to choose about that.2+2=5 is wrong because it leads to inconsitistencies. No-one gets to wriggle out of that by saying mathematics doesn't need to be inconsistent. Billions of people have lived and died in societies where it is perfectly ethical and acceptable to kill inferior races or inferior species. They have lived in societies where it was believed to be. They may well have believed the Earth was flat, too. If they accept some version of the edict you have just elevated to a self-evident truth it would be do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they are foreigners, or taste good to eat, or worship different gods. Perfectly consistent, even if horrible. It is not consistent. The inconsistency has been built in with the unless clause.. In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere. Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. Definitions supply correct assumptions. So you think arguments about such matters as abortion, capital punishment and what sort of social welfare system we should have are just like arguments about mathematics or geology, and with enough research there should be universal agreement? They are a lot fuzzier. But economics is a lot fuzzier than mathematics. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Peter Jones writes: It is indisputable that morality varies in practice across communities. But the contention of ethical objectivism is not that everyone actually does hold to a single objective system of ethics; it is only that ethical questions can be resolved objectively in principle. The existence of an objective solution to any kind of problem is always compatible with the existence of people who, for whatever reason, do not subscribe. The roundness of the Earth is no less an objective fact for the existence of believers in the Flat Earth theory.(It is odd that the single most popular argument for ethical subjectivism has so little logical force). The Flat Earther is *wrong*. He claims that if you sail in a straight line you will eventually fall off the edge. But if you do sail in a straight line, you don't don't fall off the edge; lots of people have done it. The psychopath, on the other hand, merely claims that if he kills someone, he does not think it is a bad thing. That is no problem for objective ethics. The fact that someone thinks not-X is always comaptible with the objective truth of X. And indeed, he kills someone, and he does not think it is a bad thing. He is *not* wrong; there is no way you could even claim he is wrong, He is not wrong about what he thinks. He is wrong about what is true,. ethically. like the Flat Earther claiming that sailors have lied about circumnavigating the globe. You could argue that if everyone were a psychopath we would all be dead, and he might even agree with you that that would be the case, but then turn around and say, So what? Better dead than cissies! As Jamie Rose said, there were societies such as the Shakers who didn't mind if they died out and in fact did die out, and they are not usually considered immoral. That's not the issue. It's not negotiable whether ethics is supposed to lead to death and misery rather than life and happiness, any more than there is a valid form of economics which is designed to achieve abject poverty and societal breakdown in the shortest possible time. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis, your 'augmentded' ethical maxim is excellent, I could add some more 'except foe'-s to it. (lower class, cast, or wealth, - language, - gender, etc.) The last par, however, is prone to a more serious remark of mine: topics like you sampled are culture related prejudicial beief-items. Research cannot solve them, because research is also ADJUSTED TO THE CULTURE it serves. A valid medeval research on the number of angels on a pin-tip would not hold in today's belief-topic of curved space. (Curved angels?) Mey Christmas to you, too John On 12/21/06, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Jones writes: Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and profit. This is my own personal ethical belief, and you can't tell me I'm wrong! And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic. The psychopath is wrong. He doesn't want to be murdered, but he wants to murder. His ethical rule is therefore inconsistent and not really ethical at all. Who says his ethical rule is inconsistent? If he made the claim do unto others as you would have others do unto you he would be inconsistent, but he makes no such claim. Billions of people have lived and died in societies where it is perfectly ethical and acceptable to kill inferior races or inferior species. If they accept some version of the edict you have just elevated to a self-evident truth it would be do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they are foreigners, or taste good to eat, or worship different gods. Perfectly consistent, even if horrible. In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere. Everything starts with assumptions. The questions is whether they are correct. A lunatic could try defining 2+2=5 as valid, but he will soon run into inconsistencies. That is why we reject 2+2=5. Ethical rules must apply to everybody as a matter of definition. Definitions supply correct assumptions. So you think arguments about such matters as abortion, capital punishment and what sort of social welfare system we should have are just like arguments about mathematics or geology, and with enough research there should be universal agreement? Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God [intuitive people] knows his [know their] priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for killing people for fun and profit. This is my own personal ethical belief, and you can't tell me I'm wrong! And the psychopath is right: no-one can actually fault him on a point of fact or a point of logic. In the *final* analysis, ethical beliefs are not a matter of fact or logic, and if it seems that they are then there is a hidden assumption somewhere. Stathis Papaioannou A bit convoluted and somewhat embellished, but essentially: correct. And violence need not be the standard for an ethic leading to problematic results. The 19th century Christian sect Shakers abhord reproduction proseletyzing. They were non-violent devout prayer based people, but their 'ethic' led to their own extinction. As impartial evaluators, it is sometimes difficult for us to unemotionally unbiasedly categeorize human dynamics. There are in any given human millieu a -variety- of parameter which have actionable behaviors that can be categorized beneficial/unbeneficial, preferrable/ unpreferrable, good/bad, constructive/destructive, encouraging/disencouraging, not-evil/evil. Any one parameter, or group of parameters can become the 'situational standard bearer' and other parameters fall where they may. We value 'individuality' but some cultures sacrifice individuals for the security of the collective. Different cultures will resist sacrificing until deemed absolutely necessary. Others have a lesser requirment; may even proactively sacrifice for strategic motivations. And the 'positive' motivation is labelled 'altruism' - sacrifice in the promotion of and alternative (sic-'greater') benefit. An 'evil' of one parameter re-cast as a 'good' for another. Killers -do- have a rationale and 'logic' they function under. And it can be 'objectively correct'. IF -- if and only if - the parameters' assumptions/decisions are accepted as utile, correct, tenable. Jamie --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). At first glance, morality looks as though it should work objectively. The mere fact that we praise and condemn people's moral behaviour indicates that we think a common set of rules is applicable to us and them. To put it another way, if ethics were strongly subjective anyone could get off the hook by devising a system of personal morality in which whatever they felt like doing was permissible. It would be hard to see the difference between such a state of affairs and having no morality at all. The subtler sort of subjectivist (or relativist) tries to ameliorate this problem by claiming that moral principles re defined at the societal level, but similar problems recur -- a society (such as the Thuggees or Assassins) could declare that murder is OK with them. These considerations are of course an appeal to how morality seems to work as a 'language game' and as such do not put ethics on a firm foundation -- the language game could be groundless. I will argue that it is not, but first the other side of the argument needs to be put. It is indisputable that morality varies in practice across communities. But the contention of ethical objectivism is not that everyone actually does hold to a single objective system of ethics; it is only that ethical questions can be resolved objectively in principle. The existence of an objective solution to any kind of problem is always compatible with the existence of people who, for whatever reason, do not subscribe. The roundness of the Earth is no less an objective fact for the existence of believers in the Flat Earth theory.(It is odd that the single most popular argument for ethical subjectivism has so little logical force). Another objection is that an objective system of ethics must be accepted by everybody, irrespective of their motivations, and must therefore be based in self-interest. Again, this gets the nature of objectivity wrong. The fact that some people cannot see does not make any empirical evidence less objective, the fact that some people refuse to employ logic does not make logical argument any less objective. All claims to objectivity make the background assumption that the people who will actually employ the objective methodology in question are willing and able. We will return to this topic toward the end. Some people insist that anyone who is promoting ethical objectivism and opposing relativism must be doing so in order to illegitamately promote their own ethical system as absolute. While this is problably pragmatically true in many cases, particularly where political and religious rhetoric is involved, it has no real logical force, because the contention of ethical objectivism is only that ethical questions are objectively resolvable in principle -- it does not entail a claim that the speaker or anyone else is actually in possession of them. This marks the first of our analogues with science, since the in-principle objectivity of science coincides with the fact that current scientific thinking is almost certainly not final or absolute. ethical objectivism is thus a middle road between subjectivism/relativism on the one hand, and various absolutisms (such as religious fundamentalism) on the other. The final objection, and by far the most philosophically respectable one, is the objection on that moral rules need to correspond to some kind of 'queer fact' or 'moral object' which cannot be found. Natural laws do not correspond in a simplistic one-to-one way with any empirically detectable object, yet empiricism is relevant to both supporting and disconfirming natural laws. With this in mind, we should not rush to reject the objective reality of moral laws on the basis that there is no 'queer' object for them to stand in one-to-one correspondence with. There is, therefore, a semi-detached relationship between natural laws and facts -- laws are not facts but are not unrelated to facts -- facts confirm and disconfirm them. There is also a famous dichotomy between fact and value (where 'value' covers ethics, morality etc). You cannot, we are told, derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is the fact/value problem. But, as Hume's argument reminds us, you cannot derive a law from an isolated observation. Call this the fact/law problem. Now, if the morality is essentially a matter or ethical rules or laws, might not the fact/value problem and the law/value problem be at least partly the same ? (Note that there seems to be a middle ground here; the English should can indicate lawfulness without implying either inevitability, like a natural law, or morality. eg you should move the bishop diagonally in chess -- but that does not mean you will, or that it is unethical to do so. It is just against the rules of chess).
RE: computer pain
peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. (2) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is good is what is assessed to promote the agent's values into the future. (3) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is better is what is assessed as good over increasing scope. (4) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is increasingly right or moral, is decision-making assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope of agents and interactions. From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. I apologize for the extremely terse and sparse nature of this outline, but I wanted to contribute these keystones despite lacking the time to provide expanded background, examples, justifications, or clarifications. I hope that these seeds of thought may contribute to a flourishing garden both on and offlist. - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard and will shout it from hell if sends me there for
Re: computer pain
1Z wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Perhaps none of the participants in this thread really disagree. Let me see if I can summarise: Individuals and societies have arrived at ethical beliefs for a reason, whether that be evolution, what their parents taught them, or what it says in a book believed to be divinely inspired. Perhaps all of these reasons can be subsumed under evolution if that term can be extended beyond genetics to include all the ideas, beliefs, customs etc. that help a society to survive and propagate itself. Now, we can take this and formalise it in some way so that we can discuss ethical questions rationally: Murder is bad because it reduces the net happiness in society - Utilitarianism Murder is bed because it breaks the sixth commandment - Judaism and Christianity (interesting that this only no. 6 on a list of 10: God knows his priorities) Ethics then becomes objective, given the rules. The meta-ethical explanation of evolution, broadly understood, as generating the various ethical systems is also objective. However, it is possible for someone at the bottom of the heap to go over the head of utilitarianism, evolution, even God and say: Why should murder be bad? I don't care about the greatest good for the greatest number, I don't care if the species dies out, and I think God is a bastard
Re: computer pain
Jef Allbright wrote: peterdjones wrote: Moral and natural laws. An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people). snip As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one. I agree with the thrust of this post and I think there are a few key concepts which can further clarify thinking on this subject: (1) Although moral assessment is inherently subjective--being relative to internal values--all rational agents share some values in common due to sharing a common evolutionary heritage or even more fundamentally, being subject to the same physical laws of the universe. (2) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is good is what is assessed to promote the agent's values into the future. (3) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is better is what is assessed as good over increasing scope. (4) From the point of view of any subjective agent, what is increasingly right or moral, is decision-making assessed as promoting increasingly shared values over increasing scope of agents and interactions. From the foregoing it can be seen that while there can be no objective morality, nor any absolute morality, it is reasonable to expect increasing agreement on the relative morality of actions within an expanding context. Further, similar to the entropic arrow of time, we can conceive of an arrow of morality corresponding to the ratcheting forward of an increasingly broad context of shared values (survivors of coevolutionary competition) promoted via awareness of increasingly effective principles of interaction (scientific knowledge of what works, extracted from regularities in the environment.) Further, from this theory of metaethics we can derive a practical system of social decision-making based on (1) increasing fine-grained knowledge of shared values, and (2) application of increasingly effective principles, selected with regard to models of probable outcomes in a Rawlsian mode of broad rather than narrow self-interest. I apologize for the extremely terse and sparse nature of this outline, but I wanted to contribute these keystones despite lacking the time to provide expanded background, examples, justifications, or clarifications. I hope that these seeds of thought may contribute to a flourishing garden both on and offlist. - Jef Well said! I agree almost completely - I'm a little uncertain about (3) and (4) above and the meaning of scope. Together with the qualifications of Peter Jones regarding the lack of universal agreement on even the best supported theories of science, you have provided a good outline of the development of ethics in a way parallel with the scientific development of knowledge. There's a good paper on the relation facts and values by Oliver Curry which bears on many of the above points: http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04234247.pdf Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes (quoting Brent Meeker): Bruno: Because ethics and aesthetics modalities are of an higher order than arithmetic which can be considered as deeper and/or simpler. Classical arithmetical truth obeys classical logic which is the most efficient for describing platonia. Good and bad is related with the infinite self mirroring of an infinity of universal machines: it is infinitely more tricky, and in particular neither classical ethics nor aesthetics should be expected to follow classical logic. That seems unnecessarily complicated. Good and bad at the personal Whahooh! and Ouch! are easily explained as consequences of evolution and natural selection. Here is perhaps a deep disagreement (which could explain others). I can understand that the 3-personal OUCH can easily be explained as a consequences of evolution and natural selection, for example by saying that the OUCH uttered by an animal could attract the attention of its fellows on the presence of a danger, so natural selection can But, and here is the crux of the mind body problem, if such an explanation explains completely the non personal Whahooh/Ouch then it does not explain at all the first personal OUCH. Worst: it makes such a personal feeling completely useless ... And then it makes the very notion of Good and Bad pure non sense. Of course platonists, who have grasped the complete reversal (like the neoplatonist Plotinus, etc.), have no problem here given that natural evolution occur logically well after the platonis true/false, Good/bad, etc. distinction. The personal feeling related to ouch is logically prior too). Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes (quoting Brent Meeker): Bruno: Because ethics and aesthetics modalities are of an higher order than arithmetic which can be considered as deeper and/or simpler. Classical arithmetical truth obeys classical logic which is the most efficient for describing platonia. Good and bad is related with the infinite self mirroring of an infinity of universal machines: it is infinitely more tricky, and in particular neither classical ethics nor aesthetics should be expected to follow classical logic. That seems unnecessarily complicated. Good and bad at the personal Whahooh! and Ouch! are easily explained as consequences of evolution and natural selection. Here is perhaps a deep disagreement (which could explain others). I can understand that the 3-personal OUCH can easily be explained as a consequences of evolution and natural selection, for example by saying that the OUCH uttered by an animal could attract the attention of its fellows on the presence of a danger, so natural selection can But, and here is the crux of the mind body problem, if such an explanation explains completely the non personal Whahooh/Ouch then it does not explain at all the first personal OUCH. Worst: it makes such a personal feeling completely useless ... And then it makes the very notion of Good and Bad pure non sense. Of course platonists, who have grasped the complete reversal (like the neoplatonist Plotinus, etc.), have no problem here given that natural evolution occur logically well after the platonis true/false, Good/bad, etc. distinction. The personal feeling related to ouch is logically prior too). Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). Brent Meeker Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 18-déc.-06, à 20:10, Brent Meeker a écrit : It seems to me that consciousness can exist without narrative, and without long term memory. The question if the amoeba forms memories could depends on the time scale. After all amoebas are pluri-molecular mechanism exchanging information (through viruses?) in some way. I would not bet on the unconsciousness of amoebas on large time scale. Then you have adopted some new meaning of consciousness. If you stretch consciousness to fit every exchange or storage of information then everything in the universe is conscious and we will need to invent a new word to distinguish conscious people from unconscious ones. I was using the word consciousness in the usual informal sense. I was not saying that any information exchange/storage is conscious. I was saying that I would not bet that some highly complex exchange/storage of information, in some context where self-referential correctness is at play (like evolution and self-adaptation) is not conscious. I was saying I am open to the idea that some process around us could have a consciousness about whioch we have no idea because it operates on a different scale than our own. I was not saying that amoebas are conscious, but that it would be quick to say for sure that many communicating amoebas during millenia are not. I was just doubting aloud. More formally, I think that consciousness is just the interrogative belief in a reality. But it is an *instinctive* belief. The interrogative aspect, the interrogation mark has a tendency to be burried. We are blasé, especially after childhood. Much more formally. By Godel COMPLeteness theorem, a (first order) theory is consistent iff the theory has a model, that is iff there is a mathematical structure capable of satisfying the theorems of the theory. Like (N, +, *, 0; succ) satisfies Peano Axioms and theorems. So, extensionally, to say I am consistent is equivalent (from outside) with there is a reality (respecting my beliefs/theorems). By Godel INCOMPLeteness, if such a reality exists (for me) then I cannot prove it exists (that would be a proof of my consistency), so I can only hope in such a reality. But that hope is so important for life (by accelerating relatively my decisions making ability) that nature has buried the interrogation mark of that hope, so that old animal like us take reality for granted until Plato recall us it cannot be (and create science by the same token). So consciousness is Dt?. In arithmetic it is the interrogative *inference* of Consistent(godel-number of 0 = 0). Once the machine infer Dt, she can either keep it as an inference about itself, or she can take it as a new belief, but then it is a new (and provably more efficient machine(*) for which a new B and D, still obeying G and G*, can be (re)applied. Bruno (*) See Godel's paper on the length of proofs in Martin Davis The Undecidable, or Yuri Manin's book on Mathematical Logic which gives a clear proof of Godel's result on the length of proofs (shortened when adding undecidable sentences). See the book by Torkel Franzen, which is quite a good introduction to Godel incompleteness theorem (perhaps more readable than many other book at that level). Inexhaustibility: A Non-Exhaustive Treatment, Lecture Notes in Logic 16 (Lecture Notes in Logic, 16) (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Inexhaustibility-Non-Exhaustive-Treatment- Lecture-Notes/dp/1568811756 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: Evolution explains why we have good and bad, but it doesn't explain why good and bad feel as they do, or why we *should* care about good and bad That's asking why we should care about what we should care about, i.e. good and bad. Good feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to do that, e.g. have sex. Bad feels as it does because it is (or was) evolutionarily advantageous to not do that, e.g. hold your hand in the fire. If it felt good you'd do it, because that's what feels good means, a feeling you want to have. But it is not an absurd question to ask whether something we have evolved to think is good really is good. You are focussing on the descriptive aspect of ethics and ignoring the normative. Right - because I don't think there is an normative aspect in the objective sense. Even if it could be shown that a certain ethical belief has been hardwired into our brains this does not make the qustion of whether the belief is one we ought to have an absurd one. We could decide that evolution sucks and we have to deliberately flout it in every way we can. But we could only decide that by showing a conflict with something else we consider good. It might not be a wise policy but it is not *wrong* in the way it would be wrong to claim that God made the world 6000 years ago. I agree, because I think there is a objective sense in which the world is more than 6000yrs old. beyond following some imperative of evolution. For example, the Nazis argued that eliminating inferior specimens from the gene pool would ultimately produce a superior species. Aside from their irrational inclusion of certain groups as inferior, they were right: we could breed superior humans following Nazi eugenic programs, and perhaps on other worlds evolution has made such programs a natural part of life, regarded by everyone as good. Yet most of us would regard them as bad, regardless of their practical benefits. Would we? Before the Nazis gave it a bad name, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S. mostly directed at sterilizing mentally retarded people. I think it would be regarded as bad simply because we don't trust government power to be exercised prudently or to be easily limited - both practical considerations. If eugenics is practiced voluntarily, as it is being practiced in the U.S., I don't think anyone will object (well a few fundamentalist luddites will). What about if we tested every child and allowed only the superior ones to reproduce? The point is, many people would just say this is wrong, regardless of the potential benefits to society or the species, and the response to this is not that it is absurd to hold it as wrong (leaving aside emotional rhetoric). But people wouldn't *just* say this is wrong. This example is a question of societal policy. It's about what *we* will impose on *them*. It is a question of ethics, not good and bad. So in fact people would give reasons it was wrong: Who's gonna say what superior means? Who gets to decide? They might say, I just think it's bad. - but that would just be an implicit appeal to you to see whether you thought is was bad too. Social policy can only be judged in terms of what the individual members of society think is good or bad. I think I'm losing the thread of what we're discussing here. Are you holding that there are absolute norms of good/bad - as in your example of eugenics? Brent Meeker Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Colin Hales writes: You have described a way in which our perception may be more than can be explained by the sense data. However, how does this explain the response to novelty? I can come up with a plan or theory to deal with a novel situation if it is simply described to me. I don't have to actually perceive anything. Writers, philosophers, mathematicians can all be creative without perceiving anything. Stathis Papaioannou Imaginative processes also use phenoenal consciousness. To have it described to you you had to use phenomenal consciousness. Once you dispose of PC you are model bound in all ways. You have to have a model to generate the novelty! PC pervades the whole process at all levels. Look what happens to Marvin. Even if he had someoine tell him there was an outide world he'd never know what the data was telling him. I agree that phenomenal consciousness is no less essential for imaginative processes than it is for direct environmental interaction. However, you have proposed a mechanism whereby the connection between the brain and the object of its perception cannot be modelled because it involves non-local effects. If that is so, then having something described to you or thinking it up de novo bypasses this mechanism: it's just the cogs in your brain turning, eventually producing efferent signals which move your vocal cords or your hands. How does the brain working on its own escape those who would make a computer model? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Colin, You have described a way in which our perception may be more than can be explained by the sense data. However, how does this explain the response to novelty? I can come up with a plan or theory to deal with a novel situation if it is simply described to me. I don't have to actually perceive anything. Writers, philosophers, mathematicians can all be creative without perceiving anything. Stathis Papaioannou Imaginative processes also use phenoenal consciousness. To have it described to you you had to use phenomenal consciousness. Cutting-edge physics is creative to a fault, and quite hard to literally imag-ine as well. Once you dispose of PC you are model bound in all ways. You have to have a model to generate the novelty! PC pervades the whole process at all levels. Look what happens to Marvin. Even if he had someoine tell him there was an outide world he'd never know what the data was telling him. He can make a good guess. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 17-déc.-06, à 21:11, Brent Meeker a écrit : If consciousness is the creation of an inner narrative to be stored in long-term memory then there are levels of consciousness. The amoeba forms no memories and so is not conscious at all. A dog forms memories and even has some understanding of symbols (gestures, words) and so is conscious. In between there are various degress of consciousness corresponding to different complexity and scope of learning. Miscellaneous remarks: It seems to me that consciousness can exist without narrative, and without long term memory. The question if the amoeba forms memories could depends on the time scale. After all amoebas are pluri-molecular mechanism exchanging information (through viruses?) in some way. I would not bet on the unconsciousness of amoebas on large time scale. Bruno: Because ethics and aesthetics modalities are of an higher order than arithmetic which can be considered as deeper and/or simpler. Classical arithmetical truth obeys classical logic which is the most efficient for describing platonia. Good and bad is related with the infinite self mirroring of an infinity of universal machines: it is infinitely more tricky, and in particular neither classical ethics nor aesthetics should be expected to follow classical logic. That seems unnecessarily complicated. Good and bad at the personal Whahooh! and Ouch! are easily explained as consequences of evolution and natural selection. Here is perhaps a deep disagreement (which could explain others). I can understand that the 3-personal OUCH can easily be explained as a consequences of evolution and natural selection, for example by saying that the OUCH uttered by an animal could attract the attention of its fellows on the presence of a danger, so natural selection can But, and here is the crux of the mind body problem, if such an explanation explains completely the non personal Whahooh/Ouch then it does not explain at all the first personal OUCH. Worst: it makes such a personal feeling completely useless ... And then it makes the very notion of Good and Bad pure non sense. Of course platonists, who have grasped the complete reversal (like the neoplatonist Plotinus, etc.), have no problem here given that natural evolution occur logically well after the platonis true/false, Good/bad, etc. distinction. The personal feeling related to ouch is logically prior too). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 17-déc.-06, à 21:11, Brent Meeker a écrit : If consciousness is the creation of an inner narrative to be stored in long-term memory then there are levels of consciousness. The amoeba forms no memories and so is not conscious at all. A dog forms memories and even has some understanding of symbols (gestures, words) and so is conscious. In between there are various degress of consciousness corresponding to different complexity and scope of learning. Miscellaneous remarks: It seems to me that consciousness can exist without narrative, and without long term memory. The question if the amoeba forms memories could depends on the time scale. After all amoebas are pluri-molecular mechanism exchanging information (through viruses?) in some way. I would not bet on the unconsciousness of amoebas on large time scale. Then you have adopted some new meaning of consciousness. If you stretch consciousness to fit every exchange or storage of information then everything in the universe is conscious and we will need to invent a new word to distinguish conscious people from unconscious ones. Bruno: Because ethics and aesthetics modalities are of an higher order than arithmetic which can be considered as deeper and/or simpler. Classical arithmetical truth obeys classical logic which is the most efficient for describing platonia. Good and bad is related with the infinite self mirroring of an infinity of universal machines: it is infinitely more tricky, and in particular neither classical ethics nor aesthetics should be expected to follow classical logic. That seems unnecessarily complicated. Good and bad at the personal Whahooh! and Ouch! are easily explained as consequences of evolution and natural selection. Here is perhaps a deep disagreement (which could explain others). I can understand that the 3-personal OUCH can easily be explained as a consequences of evolution and natural selection, for example by saying that the OUCH uttered by an animal could attract the attention of its fellows on the presence of a danger, so natural selection can But, and here is the crux of the mind body problem, if such an explanation explains completely the non personal Whahooh/Ouch then it does not explain at all the first personal OUCH. Worst: it makes such a personal feeling completely useless ... And then it makes the very notion of Good and Bad pure non sense. I took your use of the words ouch and whahooh as referring equally to one's inner feelings, and as metaphors for the feelings of inarticulate beings, not only as literal expositions. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: [Colin] So I guess my proclaimations about models are all contingent on my own view of things...and I could be wrong. Only time will tell. I have good physical grounds to doubt that modelling can work and I have a way of testing it. So at least it can be resolved some day. [Stathis] I'm not sure of the details of your experiments, but wouldn't the most direct way to prove what you are saying be to isolate just that physical process which cannot be modelled? For example, if it is EM fields, set up an appropriately brain-like configuration of EM fields, introduce some environmental input, then show that the response of the fields deviates from what Maxwell's equations would predict. I don't think Colin is claiming the fields deviate from Maxwell's equations - he says they are good descriptions, they just miss the qualia. Seems to me it would be a lot simpler to set up some EM fields of various spatial and frequency variation and see if they change your qualia. Brent Meeker I'll let Colin answer, but it seems to me he must say that some aspect of brain physics deviates from what the equations tell us (and deviates in an unpredictable way, otherwise it would just mean that different equations are required) to be consistent. If not, then it should be possible to model the behaviour of a brain: predict what the brain is going to do in a particular situation, including novel situations such as those involving scientific research. Now, it is possible that the model will reproduce the behaviour but not the qualia, because the actual brain material is required for that, but that would mean that the model will be a philosophical zombie, and Colin has said that he does not believe that philosophical zombies can exist. Hence, he has to show not only that the computer model will lack the 1st person experience, but also lack the 3rd person observable behaviour of the real thing; and the latter can only be the case if there is some aspect of brain physics which does not comply with any possible mathematical model. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: I understand your conclusion, that a model of a brain won't be able to handle novelty like a real brain, but I am trying to understand the nuts and bolts of how the model is going to fail. For example, you can say that perpetual motion machines are impossible because they disobey the first or second law of thermodynamics, but you can also look at a particular design of such a machine and point out where the moving parts are going to slow down due to friction. So, you have the brain and the model of the brain, and you present them both with the same novel situation, say an auditory stimulus. They both process the stimulus and produce a response in the form of efferent impulses which move the vocal cords and produce speech; but the brain says something clever while the computer declares that it is lost for words. The obvious explanation is that the computer model is not good enough, and maybe a better model would perform better, but I think you would say that *no* model, no matter how good, could match the brain. Now, we agree that the brain contains matter which follows the laws of physics. Before the novel stimulus is applied the brain is in configuration x. The stimulus essentially adds energy to the brain in a very specific way, and as a result of this the brain undergoes a very complex sequence of physical changes, ending up in configuration y, in the process outputting energy in a very specific way which causes the vocal cords to move. The important point is, in the transformations x-y the various parts of the brain are just working like parts of an elaborate Rube Goldberg mechanism. There can be no surprises, because that would be magic: two positively charged entities suddenly start attracting each other, or the hammer hits the pendulum and no momentum is transferred. If there is magic - actually worse than that, unpredictable magic - then it won't be possible to model the brain or the Rube Goldberg machine. But, barring magic, it should be possible to predict the physical state transitions x-y and hence you will know what the motor output to the vocal cords will be and what the vocal response to the novel stimulus will be. Classical chaos and quantum uncertainty may make it difficult or impossible to predict what a particular brain will do on a particular day, but they should not be a theoretical impediment to modelling a generic brain which behaves in an acceptably brain-like manner. Only unpredictable magical effects would prevent that. Stathis Papaiaonnou I get where you're coming from. The problem is, what I am going to say will, in your eyes, put the reason into the class of 'magic'. I am quite used to it, and don't find it magical at all The problem is that the distal objects that are the subject about which the brain is informing itself, are literally, physically involved in the process. That is true. It is not clear why it should be a problem. You can't model them, because you don't know what they are. Why not? if the brain is succeeding in informing itself about them, then it does know what they are. What else does informing mean? (And remember that one can supplement perceptual information with information from instruments,etc). All you have is sensory measurements and they are local and ambiguous... They are no hopelessly local, because different sensory feeds can be and are combined, and they are not seriously ambiguous, because, although illusions and ambiguities can occur, the sensory system usually succeeds in making a best guess. .that's why you are doing the 'qualia dance' with EM fields - to 'cohere' with the external world. This non-locality is the same non-locality observed in QM and makes gravity 'action at a distance' possible. . That is wildly specualtive. I've been thinking about this for so long I actually have the reverse problem now...I find 'locality' really weird! I find 'extent' really hard to fathom. The non-locality is also predicted as the solution to the 'unity' issue. The empirical testing to verify this non-locality is the real target of my eventual experimentation. My model and the real chips will behave differently, it is predicted, because of the involvement of the 'external world' that is not available to the model. I hope to be able to 'switch off' the qualia whilst holding eveything else the same. The effects on subsequent learning will be indicative of the involvement of the qualia in learning. What the external world 'looks like' in the brain is 'virtual circuits' - average EM channels (regions of low potential that are like a temporary 'wire') down which chemistry can flow to alter synaptic weights and rearrange channel positions/rafting in the membrane and so on. So I guess my proclaimations about models are all contingent on my own view of
Re: computer pain
Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Colin Hales writes: I understand your conclusion, that a model of a brain won't be able to handle novelty like a real brain, but I am trying to understand the nuts and bolts of how the model is going to fail. For example, you can say that perpetual motion machines are impossible because they disobey the first or second law of thermodynamics, but you can also look at a particular design of such a machine and point out where the moving parts are going to slow down due to friction. So, you have the brain and the model of the brain, and you present them both with the same novel situation, say an auditory stimulus. They both process the stimulus and produce a response in the form of efferent impulses which move the vocal cords and produce speech; but the brain says something clever while the computer declares that it is lost for words. The obvious explanation is that the computer model is not good enough, and maybe a better model would perform better, but I think you would say that *no* model, no matter how good, could match the brain. Now, we agree that the brain contains matter which follows the laws of physics. Before the novel stimulus is applied the brain is in configuration x. The stimulus essentially adds energy to the brain in a very specific way, and as a result of this the brain undergoes a very complex sequence of physical changes, ending up in configuration y, in the process outputting energy in a very specific way which causes the vocal cords to move. The important point is, in the transformations x-y the various parts of the brain are just working like parts of an elaborate Rube Goldberg mechanism. There can be no surprises, because that would be magic: two positively charged entities suddenly start attracting each other, or the hammer hits the pendulum and no momentum is transferred. If there is magic - actually worse than that, unpredictable magic - then it won't be possible to model the brain or the Rube Goldberg machine. But, barring magic, it should be possible to predict the physical state transitions x-y and hence you will know what the motor output to the vocal cords will be and what the vocal response to the novel stimulus will be. Classical chaos and quantum uncertainty may make it difficult or impossible to predict what a particular brain will do on a particular day, but they should not be a theoretical impediment to modelling a generic brain which behaves in an acceptably brain-like manner. Only unpredictable magical effects would prevent that. Stathis Papaiaonnou I get where you're coming from. The problem is, what I am going to say will, in your eyes, put the reason into the class of 'magic'. I am quite used to it, and don't find it magical at all The problem is that the distal objects that are the subject about which the brain is informing itself, are literally, physically involved in the process. You can't model them, because you don't know what they are. All you have is sensory measurements and they are local and ambiguousthat's why you are doing the 'qualia dance' with EM fields - to 'cohere' with the external world. This non-locality is the same non-locality observed in QM and makes gravity 'action at a distance' possible. . I've been thinking about this for so long I actually have the reverse problem now...I find 'locality' really weird! I find 'extent' really hard to fathom. The non-locality is also predicted as the solution to the 'unity' issue. The empirical testing to verify this non-locality is the real target of my eventual experimentation. My model and the real chips will behave differently, it is predicted, because of the involvement of the 'external world' that is not available to the model. I hope to be able to 'switch off' the qualia whilst holding eveything else the same. The effects on subsequent learning will be indicative of the involvement of the qualia in learning. What the external world 'looks like' in the brain is 'virtual circuits' - average EM channels (regions of low potential that are like a temporary 'wire') down which chemistry can flow to alter synaptic weights and rearrange channel positions/rafting in the membrane and so on. So I guess my proclaimations about models are all contingent on my own view of things...and I could be wrong. Only time will tell. I have good physical grounds to doubt that modelling can work and I have a way of testing it. So at least it can be resolved some day. I'm not sure of the details of your experiments, but wouldn't the most direct way to prove what you are saying be to isolate just that physical process which cannot be modelled? For example, if it is EM fields, set up an appropriately brain-like configuration of EM fields, introduce some environmental
Re: computer pain
Well this is fascinating! I tend to think that Brent's 'simplistic' approach of setting up oscillating EM fields of specific frequencies at specific locations is more likely to be good evidence of EM involvement in qualia, because the victim, I mean experimental subject, can relate what is happening. Do it to enough naive subjects and, if their accounts of the changes wrought in their experience agree with your predictions, you will have provisional verification. Just make sure you have a falsifiable prediction first. On the other hand Colin's project seems out of reach to me. This is probably because I don't really understand it. I do not, for example, understand how Colin seems to think that we can dispense with the concept of representation. I am however very sceptical of all 'quantum' mechanical/entanglement theories of consciousness. As far as I can see humans are 'classical' in nature, built out of fundamental particles like everything else in the universe of course, but we can live and move and have our being BECAUSE each one of us, and the major parts which compose us, are all big enough to endure over and above the quantum uncertainty. So we don't 'flit in and out of existence' like some people say. We wake up, go to sleep, dose off at the wrong time, forget what we are doing, live through social/cultural descriptions of the world, dream and aspire, and sometimes experience amazing insights which can turn our lives around. We survive and endure by doing mostly the tried and true things we have learned so well that they are deeply ingrained habits. Most of what we do, perceive, and think is so stolidly habitual and 'built-in' that we are almost completely unaware of it; it is fixtures and fittings of the mind if you like. It all works for us, and the whole social and cultural milieu of economic and personal transactions, accounting, appointments, whatever, can happen so successfully BECAUSE so much of what we are and do is solidly habitual and predictable. In my simplistic view, consciousness is the registration of discrepancy between what the brain has predicted compared to what actually happened. Everything else, the bulk of what constitutes the mind in effect, is the ceaseless evoking, selecting, ignoring or suppressing, storing, amalgamating or splitting of the dynamic logical structures which represent our world, and without which we are just lumps of meat. These dynamic logical structures actually EXIST during their evocation. [And this is why there is 'something it is like to be ...'] This may seem like a very boring view of things but I think now there is an amazing amount of explanation already available concerning human experience. I am not saying there is nothing new to discover, far from it, just that the continuous denial that most of the pieces of the puzzle are already exposed and arranged in the right order is not helpful. What ought to be clear to everybody is that our awareness of being here, of being anything in fact, entails a continuous process of self-referencing. It entails a continuous process of locating self in one's world. This self-referencing is always inherently partial and incomplete, but unless this incompleteness itself is explicitly represented, we are not aware of it. We are only ever aware of relationships explicitly represented and being explicitly represented entails inclusion of representation of at least some aspects of how whatever it is, is, was, will be, or might become, causally connected to oneself. When we perceive or imagine things, it is always from a view point, listening point, or at a point of contact. The 'location' of something or someone is an intrinsic part of its or their identity, and the key element of location as such is in relation to oneself or in relation to someone who we ourselves identify with; they are extensions of ourselves. I'll leave that there for the moment. I just want to add that I believe Colin Hales is right in focussing on the ability of humans to do science. I look at that more from the point of view that being able to do science, and being able to perceive and understand entropy - even if it is only grasping where crumbs and fluff balls come from - are what allow us to know that we are NOT in some kind of computer generated matrix. We live in a real, open universe that exists independently of each of us but yet is incomplete without us. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Colin Hales writes: I understand your conclusion, that a model of a brain won't be able to handle novelty like a real brain, but I am trying to understand the nuts and bolts of how the model is going to fail. For example, you can say that perpetual motion machines are impossible because they disobey the first or second law of thermodynamics, but you can also look at a
Re: computer pain
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Stathis wrote: I can understand that, for example, a computer simulation of a storm is not a storm, because only a storm is a storm and will get you wet. But perhaps counterintuitively, a model of a brain can be closer to the real thing than a model of a storm. We don't normally see inside a person's head, we just observe his behaviour. There could be anything in there - a brain, a computer, the Wizard of Oz - and as long as it pulled the person's strings so that he behaved like any other person, up to and including doing scientific research, we would never know the difference. Now, we know that living brains can pull the strings to produce normal human behaviour (and consciousness in the process, but let's look at the external behaviour for now). We also know that brains follow the laws of physics: chemistry, Maxwell's equations, and so on. Maybe we don't *understand* electrical fields in the sense that it may feel like something to be an electrical field, or in some other as yet unspecified sense, but we understand them well enough to predict their physical effect on matter. Hence, although it would be an enormous task to gather the relevant information and crunch the numbers in real time, it should be possible to predict the electrical impulses that come out of the skull to travel down the spinal cord and cranial nerves and ultimately pull the strings that make a person behave like a person. If we can do that, it should be possible to place the machinery which does the predicting inside the skull interfaced with the periphery so as to take the brain's place, and no-one would know the difference because it would behave just like the original. At which step above have I made a mistake? Stathis Papaioannou --- I'd say it's here... and no-one would know the difference because it would behave just like the original But for a subtle reason. The artefact has to be able to cope with exquisite novelty like we do. Models cannot do this because as a designer you have been forced to define a model that constrains all possible novelty to be that which fits your model for _learning_. If the model has been reverse-engineered from how the nervous system works (ie, transparent box, not black box), it will have the learning abilities of NS -- even if we don't know what they are. Therein lies the fundamental flaw. Yes... at a given level of knowledge you can define how to learn new things within the knowledge framework. But when it comes to something exquisitely novel, all that will happen is that it'll be interpreted into the parameters of how you told it to learn things... this will impact in a way the artefact cannot handle. It will behave differently and probably poorly. It's the zombie thing all over again. It's not _knowledge_ that matters. it's _learning_ new knowledge. That's what functionalism fails to handle. Being grounded in a phenomenal representation of the world outside is the only way to handle arbitrary levels of novelty. That remains to be seen. No phenomenal representation? = You are model-bound and grounded, in effect, in the phenomenal representation of your model-builders, who are forced to predefine all novelty handling in an I don't know that functional module. Something you cannot do without knowing everything a-priori! If you already know that you are god so why are you bothering? So long as you can peak into a system, you can functionally duplicate it without knowing how it behaves under all circumstances. I can rewrite the C code double f(double x, double.y) { return 4.2+ sin(x) - exp(cos(y), 9.7); } in Pascal, although I couldn't tell you offhand what the output is for x=0.77 , y=0.33 Say you bring an artefact X into existence. X may behave exactly like a human Y in all the problem domains you used to define you model. Then you expose both to novelty nobody has seen, including you and that is where the two will differ. The human Y will do better every time. You can't program qualia. You have to have them and you can't do without them in a 'general intelligence' context. Here I am on a sat morning...proving I have no life, yet again! :-) Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Just to throw a point of perspective into this conversation about mimicking qualia. I posed a thematic question in my 1992 opus Understanding the Integral Universe. What of a single celled animus like an amoeba or paramecium? Does it 'feel' itself? Does it sense the subtle variations in its shape as it bumps around in its liquid world? Does it somehow note changes in water pressure around it? Is it always hungry? What drives a single celled creature to eat? What need, if any is fulfilled? Is it due to an internal pressure gradient in it's chemical metabolism? Is there a resilience to its boundary that not only determines its particular shape, whether amoebic or firm, but that variations in that boundary re-distribute pressures through its form to create a range of responsive actions? And, because it is coherent for that life form, is this primal consciousness? How far down into the structure of existence can we reasonably extrapolate this? An atom's electron cloud responds and interacts with its level of environment, but is this consciousness? We cannot personify, and therefore mystify, all kinetic functions as different degrees of consciousness; at least not at this point. Neither, can we specify with any certainty a level where consciousness suddenly appears, where there was none before. UIU(c)ROSE 1992 ; 02)Intro section. http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/UIUcomplete11-99.htm Pain is a net-collective qualia, an 'other-tier' cybernetic emerged phenomenon. But it is -not unrelated- to phenomena like basic EM field changes and 'system's experiences' in those precursive tiers. Also, pain (an aspect of -consciousness-), has to be understood in regard to the panorama of 'kinds-of-sentience' that any given system/organism has, embodies, utilizes or enacts. In other words, it would be wrong to dismiss the presence of 'pain' in autonomic nervous systems, simply because the cognitive nervous system is 'unaware' of the signals or the distress situation generating them. If one wants to 'define' pain sentience as a closed marker, and build contrived systems that match the defined conditions and criteria, that is one thing - and acceptable for what it is. But if the 'pain' is a coordination of generalized engagements and reactions, then a different set of design standards needs to be considered/met. Vis a vis -this- reasoning: http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/uiu04start.htm Jamie Rose Ceptual Institute cognating on a sunday morning 2006/12/17 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
James N Rose wrote: Just to throw a point of perspective into this conversation about mimicking qualia. I posed a thematic question in my 1992 opus Understanding the Integral Universe. What of a single celled animus like an amoeba or paramecium? Does it 'feel' itself? Does it sense the subtle variations in its shape as it bumps around in its liquid world? Does it somehow note changes in water pressure around it? Is it always hungry? What drives a single celled creature to eat? What need, if any is fulfilled? Is it due to an internal pressure gradient in it's chemical metabolism? Is there a resilience to its boundary that not only determines its particular shape, whether amoebic or firm, but that variations in that boundary re-distribute pressures through its form to create a range of responsive actions? And, because it is coherent for that life form, is this primal consciousness? How far down into the structure of existence can we reasonably extrapolate this? An atom's electron cloud responds and interacts with its level of environment, but is this consciousness? We cannot personify, and therefore mystify, all kinetic functions as different degrees of consciousness; at least not at this point. Neither, can we specify with any certainty a level where consciousness suddenly appears, where there was none before. UIU(c)ROSE 1992 ; 02)Intro section. If consciousness is the creation of an inner narrative to be stored in long-term memory then there are levels of consciousness. The amoeba forms no memories and so is not conscious at all. A dog forms memories and even has some understanding of symbols (gestures, words) and so is conscious. In between there are various degress of consciousness corresponding to different complexity and scope of learning. http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/UIUcomplete11-99.htm Pain is a net-collective qualia, an 'other-tier' cybernetic emerged phenomenon. But it is -not unrelated- to phenomena like basic EM field changes and 'system's experiences' in those precursive tiers. Also, pain (an aspect of -consciousness-), has to be understood in regard to the panorama of 'kinds-of-sentience' that any given system/organism has, embodies, utilizes or enacts. In other words, it would be wrong to dismiss the presence of 'pain' in autonomic nervous systems, simply because the cognitive nervous system is 'unaware' of the signals or the distress situation generating them. This seems to depend on whether you define pain to be the conscious experience of pain, or you allow that the bodily reaction is evidence of pain in some more general sense. I think Stathis posed the question in terms of conscious experience. There's really no doubt that one can create and artificial system that reacts to distress; as in my example of a modern aircraft. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
I'm not sure of the details of your experiments, but wouldn't the most direct way to prove what you are saying be to isolate just that physical process which cannot be modelled? For example, if it is EM fields, set up an appropriately brain-like configuration of EM fields, introduce some environmental input, then show that the response of the fields deviates from what Maxwell's equations would predict. Stathis Papaioannou I don't expect any deviation from Maxwell's equations. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just that they are merely a very good representation of a surface behaviour of the perceived universe in a particular context. Just like QM. But it's only the surface. The universe is not made of EM or QM or atoms or space. All these things are appearances. and it's what they are all actually made of with is what delivers its appearances. It's a pretty simple idea and it's been around for 300 years (and it's not a substance dualism!). The paper I'm writing at the moment (nearly finished) is about how this cultural delusion that the universe is made of our models pervades the low-level physical science. It's quite stark...the application of situated cognition to knowledge is quite pervasive. You can take a vertical slice all the way through the entire epistemological tree from social sciences down through psychology..cognitive science..ecology..ethology..anthropology || neuroscience...chemistry..physics. The || is the sudden break where situated cognition matters and where physics, in particular cosmology is almost pathologically intent on the surgical excision of the scientist from the universe. Situated cognition applied to metascience at the level of physics is simply absent. You can see it in the desperate drive to make sense of QM maths, as if the universe is made of it...that the only way that any sense can be made of it is to write complex stories about infinite numbers of universes, all of which are somehow explanatory of the weirdness of the maths, rather then deal with what the universe is actually made ofwhen right in front of all of them is the perfect way out...start talking about what universes must be made of in order that it can omplement scientists that have perceptionto realise that the maths of empirical laws is just a model of the stuff, not the stuff. Cosmologists are the key. They have some sort of mass fantasy going about the mathematics they use. Totally unfounded assumptions pervade their craft - far worse than any assumption that the universe is not made of idealsised maths...the thing that gets labeled erroneously 'metaphysics' and eschewed. I have done a cartoon representation of a cosmologist made of stuff in a unoiverse of stuff staring at the cosmos wondering where all teh stuff is, when the fact of be able to stare _at all_ is telling him about the deep nature of of the cosmos. Poor little deluded cosmologist. There's nothing wrong with Maxwell's equations. In fact there's nothing wrong with any empirical laws. The problem is us... cheers, colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Stathis said I'll let Colin answer, but it seems to me he must say that some aspect of brain physics deviates from what the equations tell us (and deviates in an unpredictable way, otherwise it would just mean that different equations are required) to be consistent. If not, then it should be possible to model the behaviour of a brain: predict what the brain is going to do in a particular situation, including novel situations such as those involving scientific research. Now, it is possible that the model will reproduce the behaviour but not the qualia, because the actual brain material is required for that, but that would mean that the model will be a philosophical zombie, and Colin has said that he does not believe that philosophical zombies can exist. Hence, he has to show not only that the computer model will lack the 1st person experience, but also lack the 3rd person observable behaviour of the real thing; and the latter can only be the case if there is some aspect of brain physics which does not comply with any possible mathematical model. Stathis Papaioannou Exactly rightexcept for the bit where you talk about 'deviation from the model'. I expect the EM model to be perfectly right - indeed MUST be right or I can't do the experiment because the modelling I do will help me design the chips...it must be right or they won't work. It's just that the models don't deliver all the result - you have to BE the chips to get the whole picture. What is missing from the model, seamlessly and irrevocably and instrinsically... is that it says nothing about the first person perspective. You cannot model the first person perspective by definition, because every first person perspective is different! The 'fact' of the existence of the first person is the invariant, however. SoAll the models are quite right and accurate, but are inherently third person descriptions of 'the stuff', not 'the stuff'. When you be 'the stuff' under the right circumstances there's more to the description. And EVERYTHING gets to 'be'...ie..is forced, implicitly to uniquely be somewhere in the universe and inherits all the properties of that act, NONE of which is delivered by empirical laws, which are constructed under conditions designed specifically to throw out that perspective...and...what's worse...it does it by verifying the laws using the FIRST PERSON...to do all scientific measurements...not only that, if you don't do it with the first person (measurement/experimental observation grounded in the first person of the scientist) you get told you are not doing science! How screwed up is that! My planned experiment makes chips and on those chips will be probably 4 intrinsically intermixed 'scientists', all of whom can share each other's scientific evidence = first person experiences...whilst they do 'dumb science' like test a hypothesis H1 = is the thing there?. By fiddling about with the configuration of the scientists you can create circumstances where the only way they can agree/disagree is because of the first person perspectiveand the whole thing will obey Maxwell's equations perfectly well from the outside. Indeed the 'probes' I will embed will measure field effects in-situ that are supposed to do what Maxwell's equations says. cheers, colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Stathis said SNIP and Colin has said that he does not believe that philosophical zombies can exist. Hence, he has to show not only that the computer model will lack the 1st person experience, but also lack the 3rd person observable behaviour of the real thing; and the latter can only be the case if there is some aspect of brain physics which does not comply with any possible mathematical model. Stathis Papaioannou I just thought of a better way of explaining 'deviation'. Maxwell's equations are not 'unique' in the sense that there are an infinite number of different charge configurations that will produce the same field congurations around some surface. This is a very old resultwas it Poisson who said it? can't remember. Anyway I will be presenting different objects to my 'chip scientists', but I will be presenting them in such a way as the sensory measurement is literally identical. What I expect to happen is that the field configuration I find emerging in the guts of the chips will be different, depending on the object, even though the sensory measurement is identical. The different field configurations will correspond to the different objects. That is what subjective experience will look like from the outside. The chip's 'solution' to the charge cnfiguration will take up a configuration based on the non-locality...hence the scientists will report different objects, even when their sensory measurement is identical, and it is the only apparent access they have to the object (to us). I think that's more like what you are after... there's no failure to obey maxwell's equations, but their predictions as to charge configuration is not a unique solution. The trick is to realise that the sensory maeasurement has to be there in order that _any_ solution be found, not a _particular_ solution. pretty simple really. does that make more sense? cheers colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Brent Meeker wrote: If consciousness is the creation of an inner narrative to be stored in long-term memory then there are levels of consciousness. The amoeba forms no memories and so is not conscious at all. A dog forms memories and even has some understanding of symbols (gestures, words) and so is conscious. In between there are various degress of consciousness corresponding to different complexity and scope of learning. That notion may fit comfortably with your presumptive ideas about 'memory' -- computer stored, special-neuron stored, and similar. But the universe IS ITSELF 'memory storage' from the start. Operational rules of performance -- the laws of nature, so to speak -- are 'memory', and inform EVERY organization of action-appropriateness. Its 'memory' of the longest-term kind actually. Amoebic behavior embodies more than stimulus-response actions - consistent with organismic plan 'must eat'; but less than your criterial state of sentient awareness - consistent with 'plan dynamics/behaviors'. The rut that science is in, is presumption that 'our sentience is 'the only' sentience form' and is the gold standard for any/all aware-behavior activity. Sentience better fits a model of spectrum and degrees; rather than not-extant / suddenly-extant. Correct analoging is more challenging with the former, which is why no AI afficionados want to give up the Cartesian Split way of thinking and dealing with things - trying make square 'wheels' roll in the long run. Jamie http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/UIUcomplete11-99.htm --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Colin, If there is nothing wrong with the equations, it is always possible to predict the behaviour of any piece of matter, right? And living matter is still matter, which obeys all of the physical laws all of the time, right? It appeared from your previous posts that you would disagree with this and predict that living matter would sometimes do surprising, unpredictable things. In that case, your theory is logically consistent, but you have to find evidence for it, and it would be easier to tease out the essential unpredictable physical elements and test them in a physics lab. Stathis Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:17:10 +1100 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: computer pain To: everything-list@googlegroups.com I'm not sure of the details of your experiments, but wouldn't the most direct way to prove what you are saying be to isolate just that physical process which cannot be modelled? For example, if it is EM fields, set up an appropriately brain-like configuration of EM fields, introduce some environmental input, then show that the response of the fields deviates from what Maxwell's equations would predict. Stathis Papaioannou I don't expect any deviation from Maxwell's equations. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just that they are merely a very good representation of a surface behaviour of the perceived universe in a particular context. Just like QM. But it's only the surface. The universe is not made of EM or QM or atoms or space. All these things are appearances. and it's what they are all actually made of with is what delivers its appearances. It's a pretty simple idea and it's been around for 300 years (and it's not a substance dualism!). The paper I'm writing at the moment (nearly finished) is about how this cultural delusion that the universe is made of our models pervades the low-level physical science. It's quite stark...the application of situated cognition to knowledge is quite pervasive. You can take a vertical slice all the way through the entire epistemological tree from social sciences down through psychology..cognitive science..ecology..ethology..anthropology || neuroscience...chemistry..physics. The || is the sudden break where situated cognition matters and where physics, in particular cosmology is almost pathologically intent on the surgical excision of the scientist from the universe. Situated cognition applied to metascience at the level of physics is simply absent. You can see it in the desperate drive to make sense of QM maths, as if the universe is made of it...that the only way that any sense can be made of it is to write complex stories about infinite numbers of universes, all of which are somehow explanatory of the weirdness of the maths, rather then deal with what the universe is actually made ofwhen right in front of all of them is the perfect way out...start talking about what universes must be made of in order that it can omplement scientists that have perceptionto realise that the maths of empirical laws is just a model of the stuff, not the stuff. Cosmologists are the key. They have some sort of mass fantasy going about the mathematics they use. Totally unfounded assumptions pervade their craft - far worse than any assumption that the universe is not made of idealsised maths...the thing that gets labeled erroneously 'metaphysics' and eschewed. I have done a cartoon representation of a cosmologist made of stuff in a unoiverse of stuff staring at the cosmos wondering where all teh stuff is, when the fact of be able to stare _at all_ is telling him about the deep nature of of the cosmos. Poor little deluded cosmologist. There's nothing wrong with Maxwell's equations. In fact there's nothing wrong with any empirical laws. The problem is us... cheers, colin _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Colin, I think there is a logical contradiction here. You say that the physical models do, in fact, explain the 3rd person observable behaviour of a physical system. A brain is a physical system with 3rd person observable behaviour. Therefore, the models *must* predict *all* of the third person observable behaviour of a brain. When a person is handed a complex problem to solve, scratches his head and chews his pencil, then writes down his proposed solution to the problem, then that is definitely 3rd person observable behaviour, and it is definitely due to the motion of matter which perfectly follows physical laws. So you can in theory build a model which will predict what the person is going to write down, or at least the sort of thing a real person might write down, given that classical chaos may make it impossible to predict what a particular person will do on a particular day. Now, you would no doubt say that the model will not experience the qualia. That's OK, but then the model will effectively be a zombie that can behave just like a person yet lack phenomenal consciousness, which you don't beleive is possible. The only way you can retain this belief consistently is if the model would *not* be able to predict the 3rd person behaviour of a real person. And the only way that is possible is if there is some aspect of the physics in the brain which is inherently unpredictable. Stathis Papaioannou Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:42:38 +1100 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: computer pain To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Stathis said I'll let Colin answer, but it seems to me he must say that some aspect of brain physics deviates from what the equations tell us (and deviates in an unpredictable way, otherwise it would just mean that different equations are required) to be consistent. If not, then it should be possible to model the behaviour of a brain: predict what the brain is going to do in a particular situation, including novel situations such as those involving scientific research. Now, it is possible that the model will reproduce the behaviour but not the qualia, because the actual brain material is required for that, but that would mean that the model will be a philosophical zombie, and Colin has said that he does not believe that philosophical zombies can exist. Hence, he has to show not only that the computer model will lack the 1st person experience, but also lack the 3rd person observable behaviour of the real thing; and the latter can only be the case if there is some aspect of brain physics which does not comply with any possible mathematical model. Stathis Papaioannou Exactly rightexcept for the bit where you talk about 'deviation from the model'. I expect the EM model to be perfectly right - indeed MUST be right or I can't do the experiment because the modelling I do will help me design the chips...it must be right or they won't work. It's just that the models don't deliver all the result - you have to BE the chips to get the whole picture. What is missing from the model, seamlessly and irrevocably and instrinsically... is that it says nothing about the first person perspective. You cannot model the first person perspective by definition, because every first person perspective is different! The 'fact' of the existence of the first person is the invariant, however. SoAll the models are quite right and accurate, but are inherently third person descriptions of 'the stuff', not 'the stuff'. When you be 'the stuff' under the right circumstances there's more to the description. And EVERYTHING gets to 'be'...ie..is forced, implicitly to uniquely be somewhere in the universe and inherits all the properties of that act, NONE of which is delivered by empirical laws, which are constructed under conditions designed specifically to throw out that perspective...and...what's worse...it does it by verifying the laws using the FIRST PERSON...to do all scientific measurements...not only that, if you don't do it with the first person (measurement/experimental observation grounded in the first person of the scientist) you get told you are not doing science! How screwed up is that! My planned experiment makes chips and on those chips will be probably 4 intrinsically intermixed 'scientists', all of whom can share each other's scientific evidence = first person experiences...whilst they do 'dumb science' like test a hypothesis H1 = is the thing there?. By fiddling about with the configuration of the scientists you can create circumstances where the only way they can agree/disagree is because of the first person perspectiveand the whole thing will obey Maxwell's equations perfectly well from the outside. Indeed the 'probes' I will embed will measure field effects in-situ that are supposed to do what Maxwell's equations