Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but in a contest between theory and reality, reality always wins. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you have my condolences, but I do understand it and I'm telling you that it is for that reason that I am certain your view is factually less complete than mine. My view includes your view, but your view ignores mine. but it is what it would mean if the relationship between qualia and physical activity were bidirectional rather than the qualia being supervenient. If qualia were not bidirectional, you could not read or write. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On 05 Oct 2011, at 17:33, benjayk wrote: meekerdb wrote: On 10/4/2011 1:44 PM, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: But then one 3-thing remains uncomputable, and undefined, namely the very foundation of computations. We can define computations in terms of numbers relations, and we can define number relations in terms of +,*,N. But what is N? It is 0 and all it's successors. But what is 0? What are successors? They have to remain undefined. If we define 0 as a natural number, natural number remains undefined. If we define 0 as having no successor, successor remains undefined. All theories are build on unprovable axioms. Just all theories. Most scientific theories assumes the numbers, also. But this makes not them undefinable. 0 can be defined as the least natural numbers, and in all models this defines it precisely. But natural *numbers* just make sense relative to 0 and it's successors, because just these are the *numbers*. If you define 0 in terms of natural numbers, and least (which just makes sense relative to numbers), you defined them from something undefined. So I ask you: What are natural numbers without presupposing 0 and its successors? This is a bit a technical question, which involves logic. With enough logic, 0 and s can be defined from the laws of addition and multiplication. It is not really easy. It is not technical at all. If you can't even explain to me what the fundamental object of your theory is, your whole theory is meaningless to me. I'd be very interested in you attempt to explain addition and multplication without using numbers, though. It's easy. It's the way you explain it to children: Take those red blocks over there and ad them to the green blocks in this box. That's addition. Now make all possible different pairs of one green block and one red block. That's multiplication. OK. We don't have to use numbers per se, but notions of more and less of something. Anyway, we get the same problem in explaining what addition and multiplication are in the absence of any concrete thing of which there can be more or less, or measurements that can be compared in terms of more and less. meekerdb wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: But to get the comp point, you don't need to decide what numbers are, you need only to agree with or just assume some principle, like 0 is not a successor of any natural numbers, if x ≠ y then s(x) ≠ s(y), things like that. I agree that it is sometimes useful to assume this principle, just as it sometimes useful to assume that Harry Potter uses a wand. Just because we can usefully assume some things in some contexts, do not make them universal truth. So if you want it this way, 1+1=2 is not always true, because there might be other definition of natural numbers, were 1+1=. It's always true in Platonia, where true just means satisfying the axioms. In real life it's not always true because of things like: This business is so small we just have one owner and one employee and 1+1=1. Yeah, but it remains to be shown that platonia is more than just an idea. I haven't yet seen any evidence of that. Bruno seems to justify that by reductio ad absurdum of 1+1=2 being dependent on ourselves, so 1+1=2 has to be true objectively in Platonia. I don't buy that argument. If our mind (or an equivalent mind, say of another species with the same intellectual capbilites) isn't there isn't even any meaning to 1+1=2, because there is no way to interpret the meaning in it. Would you say that if the big bang is not observed then there is no big bang? Why would it be different for 1+1 = 2? I think that you are confusing 1+1=2 is true and the fact that 1+1=2. We need a subject to asses the truth of the string 1+1=2, but no one is a priori needed for the fact itself to be true or false, a priori. It only seems to us to be true independently because we defined it without explicit reference to anything outside of it. But this doesn't prove that it is true independently anymore than the fact that Harry Potter doesn't mention he is just a creation of the mind makes him exist independently of us eternally in Harry-Potter-land. This does not logically follows, and beyond this, it is obvious that Harry-Potter land does exist in any everything type of theories. Indeed with comp, or with other everything type of theories, the problem is that such fantasy worlds might be too much probable, contradicting the observations. The mere existence of them cannot be used in a reductio ad absurdum. We don't know what reality is. We are searching. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On 06 Oct 2011, at 23:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 6, 12:04 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Oct 2011, at 21:59, benjayk wrote: The point is that a definition doesn't say anything beyond it's definition. This is deeply false. Look at the Mandelbrot set, you can intuit that is much more than its definition. That is the base of Gödel's discovery: the arithmetical reality is FAR beyond ANY attempt to define it. Can't you also interpret that Gödel's discovery is that arithmetic can never be fully realized through definition? The usual model (N, +, *), taught in school, and called standard model of arithmetic by logician fully realize it, and is definition independent. This doesn't imply an arithmetic reality to me at all, it implies 'incompleteness'; lacking the possibility of concrete realism. The word concrete has no absolute meaning. Comp is many types---no Token. So, the number 17 is always prime because we defined numbers in the way. If I define some other number system of natural numbers where I just declare that number 17 shall not be prime, then it is not prime. No. You are just deciding to talk about something else. I think Ben is right. We can just say that 17 is also divisible by number Θ (17 = 2 x fellini, which is 8.5), 8.5 is not a 0, s(0), s(s0)), You are just calling natural number what we usually call rational number. You illustrate my point. You talk about something else, and you should have disagree with the axioms that I have already given. and build our number system around that. Like non-Euclidean arithmetic. That already exists, even when agreeing with the axioms, of, say, Peano Arithmetic. We can build model of arithmetic where we have the truth of provable(0=1), despite the falsity of it in the standard model, given that PA cannot prove the consistency of PA. This means that we have non standard models of PA, and thus of arithmetic. But it can be shown that in such model the 'natural number' are very weird infinite objects, and they do not concern us directly. But 17 is prime is provable in PA and is thus true in ALL interpretations or models of PA. Likewise, the Universal Dovetailer is the same object in ALL models of PA. All theorems of PA are true in all interpretations of PA (by Gödel's completeness theorem). Primeness isn't a reality, it's an epiphenomenon of a particular motivation to recognize particular patterns. They have to exist to be able of being recognized by some entities, in case they have the motivation. The lack of motivation of non human animal for the planet Saturn did not prevent it of having rings before humans discovered them. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On 06 Oct 2011, at 23:29, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 6, 12:04 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Oct 2011, at 22:44, benjayk wrote: I'd be very interested in you attempt to explain addition and multplication without using numbers, though. I am not sure this makes any sense. Addition of what? In scientific theories we don't pretend to explain everything from nothing. We can only explain complex things from simpler things. The rest is playing with word. Why is it playing with words? We can explain simple things from complex things too. You can do that from a logical point of view, but an explanation is not a logical thing, but a pragmatical thing, and it makes no sense to explain what we already understand from things that we do not understand. If that was the case, we might be able to explain everything with just one three letter word: GOD. But that kind of explanation, sometimes propose by some people, is a mockery of both GOD and reality. I decide to move my hand, and a lot of complicated physiological change happens. This has nothing to do with the idea of explanation. Anyway, even if I completely agree on these principles, and you derive something interesting from it, if you ultimately are unable to define what numbers are, you effectively just use your imagination to interpret something into the undefinedness of numbers, which you could as well interpret into the undefinedess of consciousness. Here yo are the one talking like a 19th rationalist who believe that we can dismiss *intuition*. Since Gödel's rationalist knows that they can't. In particular we need some undefinable intuition to grasp anything formalized, be it number, or programs, or machines, etc. I chose the numbers because people already grasp them sufficiently well, so that we can proceed. I disagree. I understand what he is saying exactly. What makes numbers any more deserving than awareness of a primitive status, exempt from definition? In that case I prefer the pseudo-virtually deep impetus, exempt from definition. OK. But what else is 0? Nobody knows. But everybody agrees on some axioms, like above, and we start from that. So why is it better to start with nobody knows-0 Nobody starts with nobody knows 0. We start from 0 ≠ s(x), or things like that. and derive something from that than just start with nobody knows-consciousness and just interpet what consciousness means to us? Because 0, as a useful technical object does not put any conceptual problem. Consciousness is far more complex. Consciousness isn't complex, it's as simple or complex as whoever it is that is the subject. See my answer to what you said about the simplicity of yellow. You confuse levels. In order to have 0, you have to have something that is aware of 0, You confuse 0 and 0. but you don't need to know 0 to have awareness. What makes you sure of that? In which theory will you argue? If there is 0€ in a bank account, this is sad, but is not very mysterious. If someone is in a comatose state, the question of consciousness is much more conceptually troubling. Humans took time to grasp zero, but eventually got the point. For consciousness, there are still many scientist who does not believe in it, lie some people does not understand the notion of qualia. Is consciousness related to matter, is it primary, ... all that are question still debated. That's only because they aren't thinking about it the right way. They are trying to fit a who and why into a what and how. That can't be done. I agree, but It is even worst. They believe that the fact that consciousness is not 3p, that it cannot be studied with 3p theories. This is a vary grave error, because it prevents the use of the scientific attitude on it. The same mistake is done with theology since the closure of Plato academy. This has given the free way for abusing of authority, and the lack of rigor in the human sciences, and we are paying the big price in the 20th and 21th centuries. But for 0, there is no more problem. Everyone agree on any different axioms rich enough to handle them in their application. There is agreement because 0 is nothing but an agreement. You continue to confuse 0 and 0. Only 0 needs an agreement, not 0. It's a word for an idea, The idea is independent of the word. It precedes the word. 0* 7 = 0 has nothing to do with the word 0, 7, times, =, for the same reason that the ring of Saturn would exist even if the letters r, i, n, g were not existing. which has meanings in relations to other words and ideas of the same arithmetic type. 1 is the successor of 0. You are confusing the number 0 and its cardinal denotation. OK. But what else is 1? The successor of zero. The predecessor of 2. The only number which divides all other numbers, ... (I don't see your point). But what does successor mean? You are just circling within your own
Re: Interesting paper on consciousness, computation and MWI
On 07 Oct 2011, at 01:59, Brian Tenneson wrote: Thanks Bruno for patiently explaining things. It's interesting that you bring up computer science as I am doing a career change right now and am going into computer science. I eventually want to work in brain simulation. A lot of the ideas in this group are relevant. Thanks. From the paper, I'll quote again (mainly for myself when I look back at this message) From page 17 It is my contention that the only way out of this dilemma is to deny the initial assumption that a classical computer running a particular program can generate conscious awareness in the first place. If the author is correct that would seem to drive a nail in the coffin for the digital generation of conscious awareness though in some way that might not prove that brain simulation is impossible. Yes. the expression is ambiguous. Perhaps brain simulation would occur in such a way that the simulation is never consciously self-aware but if that were the case, how good is that simulation?? That would lead to zombie. Still, I don't believe any particular implementation of a computation generates awareness by itself (neither in a physical universe, nor in a immaterial arithmetical dovetailing). Awareness needs all implementation of all computations, as it follows from the step 8 in UDA. When I say yes to the doctor, I might survive in the usual sense, but this does not mean that the artificial brain generates my consciousness (which is more an heaven kind of object). but the artificial brain, if well done enough, might make it possible for my mind (existing only in hevan) to continue to manisfest itself here (on earth), like my brain seems to already be able to do. It is a subtle point, but if our bodies are machine, we provably have an independent soul, and machines (silicon or carbon based) just makes it possible fro a soul to manifest itself with respect to other souls with reasonable probabilities. If my doctor wanted to replace my brain with an artificial brain, I think I'd be scared out of my mind if LINUX wasn't an option hehe... Thanks Bruno. All right, but then everyone can get your code source, and your fist person indeterminacy might grow a lot. Expect to find your self in the nightmarish fantasy of your neighbors. Be careful :) I know this might seem like a naive observation but the Bolshoi universe simulation recently done on a supercomputer at UC Santa Cruz in California produced some images of an early universe that had an uncanny resemblance to the human brain. It is the filamentous web of cluster of galaxies, using information from Hubble and COBE, I think. It is very impressive and shows how big the physical cosmos is. I think that comp implies that the cosmos is infinite. The cosmos is the border of an infinite universal mind, and an infinity of computations plays some role. But this is hard to prove, because comp can also collapse, from the first person views, or renormalize, many infinities. The cosmos is a priori infinite, but some weird computational phenomenon collapsing infinities are hard to avoid especially before we understand better why the 'white rabbits' are so rare in our neighborhoods. It gives me hope that it is possible to simulate a brain on a classical computer. Perhaps the details would involve highly complex neural networks; Don't forget the glial cells. They are 20 times more numerous than neurons, and we know that they don't not only communicate (by chemical waves instead of ionic electricity) between themselves, but they do communicate with the neurons also (this plays a role notably in the chronic pains). They might be needed for the conscious background. the hope would be to rival the complexity of an actual brain. Good luck. It will be easier to copy highly plastic brain (like baby's brain) and let them organize themselves that to actually copy an adult brain, which contains tremendous amount of distributed information. Here is a link that includes video http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/ It is beautiful. Have you look to this nice video (by SpaceRip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEQouX5U0fc Ah, but you can find impressive filamentous structure in the Mandelbrot set too, and even without digging deep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6uO7ZHtK8 (Then of course we might get into some ethical quandaries regarding the personhood of a simulated brain such as can we run any experiment on it that we feel like running... is simulated suffering ethically equivalent to actual suffering... and that sort of thing.) With comp, simulated suffering is the same as suffering, and should be forbidden, unless someone accept it for its own brain, and this before doing the copy. (Like I think you have the right to kill or even torture yourself, as far as you are not making other suffering). The very complex case, is when
Re: Bruno List continued
2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but in a contest between theory and reality, reality always wins. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it, you have my condolences, but I do understand it and I'm telling you that it is for that reason that I am certain your view is factually less complete than mine. My view includes your view, but your view ignores mine. but it is what it would mean if the relationship between qualia and physical activity were bidirectional rather than the qualia being supervenient. If qualia were not bidirectional, you could not read or write. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it would not have an explanatory power. Craig I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living protozoa and a hairy bubble. It's sophistry. You see a salmon swim upstream, does that not mean they 'move contrary to physical laws'? How does the salmon do that? Is it magic? Salmon cannot exist. Such a thing would confound scientists! Life is ordinary on this planet. It uses the laws of physics for it's own purposes which may or may not relate to physical existence. I'm
Re: Bruno List continued
If you have the prediction and not the model... then you don't have the same external input. The internal stimuli are modeled by the model, that's the all point of the model. If it's not the case, then simply the model is wrong. 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it would not have an explanatory power. Craig I'm sorry that you don't like this, It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I see that you are wrong about it yet you want me to treat it as a plausible theisis. The consequences of your view is that we can't tell the difference between a living
Re: Bruno List continued
On 08/10/2011, at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. The leaf has the ability to choose its direction to the same extent that a motile cell such as an amoeba does. The amoeba follows chemotactic gradients, the leaf follows the wind. The amoeba does not move in a direction contrary to physics and neither does the leaf. The amoeba may feel that it is choosing where to go and so might the leaf. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 12:38 pm, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: If you have the prediction and not the model... then you don't have the same external input. The internal stimuli are modeled by the model, that's the all point of the model. Subjective internal, not medical internal. If it's not the case, then simply the model is wrong. Yes and no. A model of a tree based only on the shape of it's silhouette you could say is wrong, or incomplete or adequate depending on the intent behind the model. 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 7, 10:28 am, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com On Oct 6, 10:24 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: The mind may not be understandable in terms of biochemical events but the observable behaviour of the brain can be. Yes, the 3-p physical behaviors that can be observed with our contemporary instruments can be understood in terms of biochemical events, but that doesn't mean that they can be modeled accurately or that those models would be able to produce 1-p experience by themselves. We can understand the behaviors of an amoeba in terms of biochemical events but that doesn't mean we can tell which direction it's going to move in. It's also difficult to tell exactly which way a leaf in the wind will move. The leaf may have qualia: Theoretically it may, but I don't think so. If it's connected to the tree it might have qualia, and the individual cells might have qualia, but it seems like once it's detached from the tree, it loses it's high level context. it is something-it-is-like to be a leaf, and the qualia may differ depending on whether the leaf goes left or right. As with a brain, the leaf does not break any physical laws and its behaviour can be completely described in terms of physical processes, but such a description would leave out an important part of the picture, the subjectivity. While it may be correct to say that the leaf moves to the right because it wants to move to the right, since moving to the right is associated with right-moving willfulness, this does not mean that the qualia have a causal effect on its behaviour. No because if the wind is also pushing other inanimate objects in the same direction and the leaf never resists that, then we can assume that it has no ability to choose it's direction. A causal effect of the qualia on the leaf's behaviour would mean that the leaf moves contrary to physical laws, confounding scientists by moving to the right when the forces on it suggest it should move to the left. It's similar with the brain: a direct causal effect of qualia on behaviour would mean that neurons fire when their physical state would suggest that they not fire. You aren't hearing me, so I am going to start counting how many times I answer your false assertion - even though it's probably been at least 5 or 6 times, I'll start the countdown at ten, and at 0, I'm not going to answer this question again from you. 10: There is no such thing as a physical state which suggests whether a neuron that can fire (ie, has repolarized, replenished, or otherwise recovered from it's last firing) actually will fire. You can induce it to fire manually, but left to it's own devices, you can't say that a neuron which triggers a voluntary movement is going to fire without knowing when the person whose arm it is decides to move it. You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. There is no physical law whatsoever that has an opinion one way or the other either way. That's you who do not understand, because your assertion : You can look at every nerve in my body right now and not know whether I will be standing or sitting in one hour's time. simply ignore the *external input*. Without it, you can't, with an accurate mode + external stimuli you can. The model **can't** predict external input, if it could that would only means the model is not about the brain only but about the brain + the entire environment. That's my point. Modeling the brain doesn't let you predict it's behavior - not just because it lacks the external inputs, but the internal inputs (which are disqualified under materialist monism). You don't need a model of the brain or knowledge of external inputs if you have subjective control. The subject can decide that they will stand up in an hour, and be able to influence the veracity of that prediction to a great degree. To get the same degree of accuracy through physics at best would be the looong way around, plus it
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On Oct 7, 9:21 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 06 Oct 2011, at 23:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 6, 12:04 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Oct 2011, at 21:59, benjayk wrote: The point is that a definition doesn't say anything beyond it's definition. This is deeply false. Look at the Mandelbrot set, you can intuit that is much more than its definition. That is the base of Gödel's discovery: the arithmetical reality is FAR beyond ANY attempt to define it. Can't you also interpret that Gödel's discovery is that arithmetic can never be fully realized through definition? The usual model (N, +, *), taught in school, and called standard model of arithmetic by logician fully realize it, and is definition independent. What is it that is taught if not definitions? This doesn't imply an arithmetic reality to me at all, it implies 'incompleteness'; lacking the possibility of concrete realism. The word concrete has no absolute meaning. Comp is many types---no Token. It doesn't need to have an absolute meaning. A relative meaning makes the same point. Incompleteness says to me 'lacking in completeness', not 'complete beyond all reckoning'. So, the number 17 is always prime because we defined numbers in the way. If I define some other number system of natural numbers where I just declare that number 17 shall not be prime, then it is not prime. No. You are just deciding to talk about something else. I think Ben is right. We can just say that 17 is also divisible by number Θ (17 = 2 x fellini, which is 8.5), 8.5 is not a 0, s(0), s(s0)), You are just calling natural number what we usually call rational number. It's not 8.5, it's Θ. It doesn't matter what we usually call it, now we are calling it a natural number. The fact that we feel uncomfortable with this illustrates that our basis for arithmetic truth is sensorimotive, and not itself purely arithmetic. We feel that natural numbers are 'natural', but there is no arithmetic reason for that. It's sentimental. I brought up the idea earlier of a number system without any repetition. A base-∞ number system which would run 0-9 and then alphaumeric, symbolic, pictograms, names of people in the Tokyo phonebook, etc. This would be closer to an arithmetic system independent of sensorimotive patterning. The familiarity of the digits I think functions like a mantra, hypnotically conjuring the dream of an arithmetic reality where there is none. There is a sensorimotive reality and an electromagnetic 3-p side to that reality, and there are 1-p arithmetic computations with which the sensorimotive can model 3-p isomorphic experiences for itself, but there is no truly primitive arithmetic reality independent of subjective observers. You illustrate my point. You talk about something else, and you should have disagree with the axioms that I have already given. Not sure what you mean. and build our number system around that. Like non-Euclidean arithmetic. That already exists, even when agreeing with the axioms, of, say, Peano Arithmetic. We can build model of arithmetic where we have the truth of provable(0=1), despite the falsity of it in the standard model, given that PA cannot prove the consistency of PA. This means that we have non standard models of PA, and thus of arithmetic. But it can be shown that in such model the 'natural number' are very weird infinite objects, and they do not concern us directly. But 17 is prime is provable in PA and is thus true in ALL interpretations or models of PA. Likewise, the Universal Dovetailer is the same object in ALL models of PA. All theorems of PA are true in all interpretations of PA (by Gödel's completeness theorem). I'm not saying that arithmetic isn't an internally consistent logic with unexpected depths and qualities, I'm just saying it can't turn blue or taste like broccoli. Primeness isn't a reality, it's an epiphenomenon of a particular motivation to recognize particular patterns. They have to exist to be able of being recognized by some entities, in case they have the motivation. The lack of motivation of non human animal for the planet Saturn did not prevent it of having rings before humans discovered them. Rings from whose perspective? Without something to anchor perceptual frame of reference, there would be no difference between the ringlike visual qualities of them and the crunchiness of the oceans of ice, dust and rocks that make them up, or the tiny nubs of light on either side of a speck in a distant sky, or the nothing at all that it would be in the absence of visual qualia. Who says Saturn has rings at all? Only our eyes, through telescopic extension, and our sensorimotive feedback loops of our brains with their observations and experiences in applied astronomy. The rings are part of the human story of the Saturn, not necessarily Saturn's story
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On Oct 7, 9:27 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 06 Oct 2011, at 23:29, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Oct 6, 12:04 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 04 Oct 2011, at 22:44, benjayk wrote: I'd be very interested in you attempt to explain addition and multplication without using numbers, though. I am not sure this makes any sense. Addition of what? In scientific theories we don't pretend to explain everything from nothing. We can only explain complex things from simpler things. The rest is playing with word. Why is it playing with words? We can explain simple things from complex things too. You can do that from a logical point of view, but an explanation is not a logical thing, but a pragmatical thing, and it makes no sense to explain what we already understand from things that we do not understand. Complexity doesn't mean it's any harder to understand. A sand dune is simple, the granular relations of the sand within it are complex, but they are both equally understandable and contribute equally in any explanation of one with the other. If that was the case, we might be able to explain everything with just one three letter word: GOD. But that kind of explanation, sometimes propose by some people, is a mockery of both GOD and reality. Billions of people alive today do just that. I decide to move my hand, and a lot of complicated physiological change happens. This has nothing to do with the idea of explanation. Why not? Your position is just racist against simple, high level processes. Anyway, even if I completely agree on these principles, and you derive something interesting from it, if you ultimately are unable to define what numbers are, you effectively just use your imagination to interpret something into the undefinedness of numbers, which you could as well interpret into the undefinedess of consciousness. Here yo are the one talking like a 19th rationalist who believe that we can dismiss *intuition*. Since Gödel's rationalist knows that they can't. In particular we need some undefinable intuition to grasp anything formalized, be it number, or programs, or machines, etc. I chose the numbers because people already grasp them sufficiently well, so that we can proceed. I disagree. I understand what he is saying exactly. What makes numbers any more deserving than awareness of a primitive status, exempt from definition? In that case I prefer the pseudo-virtually deep impetus, exempt from definition. ? OK. But what else is 0? Nobody knows. But everybody agrees on some axioms, like above, and we start from that. So why is it better to start with nobody knows-0 Nobody starts with nobody knows 0. We start from 0 ≠ s(x), or things like that. and derive something from that than just start with nobody knows-consciousness and just interpet what consciousness means to us? Because 0, as a useful technical object does not put any conceptual problem. Consciousness is far more complex. Consciousness isn't complex, it's as simple or complex as whoever it is that is the subject. See my answer to what you said about the simplicity of yellow. You confuse levels. No, you amputate levels. You are mistaking the experience of yellow for the neurological mechanics associated with that experience (which are not sufficient to explain the experience) In order to have 0, you have to have something that is aware of 0, You confuse 0 and 0. No, I'm saying that the referent of 0 is not an arithmetically real entity, but a lowest common denominator sensorimotive phenomena which we share with many, but not all phenomena. but you don't need to know 0 to have awareness. What makes you sure of that? In which theory will you argue? No theory, just first hand experience. You have to learn what 0 is, but you don't have to learn what blue is. You see it whether or not you know any name for it. For 0, we generally need to learn the concept by being introduced to the name 0 first. Zero was invented by human minds, blue was not (although it may have been invented by photosynthetic eukaryotes 'minds'. If there is 0€ in a bank account, this is sad, but is not very mysterious. If someone is in a comatose state, the question of consciousness is much more conceptually troubling. Humans took time to grasp zero, but eventually got the point. For consciousness, there are still many scientist who does not believe in it, lie some people does not understand the notion of qualia. Is consciousness related to matter, is it primary, ... all that are question still debated. That's only because they aren't thinking about it the right way. They are trying to fit a who and why into a what and how. That can't be done. I agree, but It is even worst. They believe that the fact that consciousness is not 3p, that it cannot be studied with 3p theories. I don't
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. How else would you define it? -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. How else would you define it? I keep telling you - it's a bidirectional sensorimitive- electromagnetic induction. That is exactly what it is. That is the actual reality of what is going on. If you had to make the universe from scratch, and you left out the sensorimotive part, you would have nothing but meaningless matter moving around with no possibility of awareness of anything. It's just hard for some people to realize that their own naive perception is actually a phenomenon that has to exist somewhere in the Cosmos - but what else could it be? Not part of the Cosmos? What does that even mean? It's actually crazily anthropomorphic to imagine that somehow everything we can measure has reality yet the measurer himself is just some ephiphenomal phantom. Everything in the universe is real except what's in our natural ordinary experience? That's moronic. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, or perhaps an action potential propagates down the axon without any change in ion concentrations. That is what I call contrary to physical laws. You don't agree, so you must have some other idea of what a neuron would have to do to qualify as firing contrary to physical laws. What is it? -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 7, 8:23 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Oct 7, 7:10 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If a motor neuron involved in voluntary activity fires where you would not predict it would fire given its internal state and the inputs then it is *by definition* acting contrary to physical law. Every firing of motor neurons involved in voluntarily activity fires where you would not predict, given that the internal state provides no prediction and that the inputs are determined by the subject and therefore unknowable to anyone outside of the subject. The internal state of the neuron determines its sensitivity to inputs. The internal state is complex but it includes things such as the membrane potential, the intracellular ion concentrations, the number, type and location of ion channels, to what extent the synaptic vesicles have filled with neurotransmitter, and multiple other factors. The inputs consist of every environmental factor that might potentially affect the neuron such as the extracellular ionic concentrations, pH, temperature, synaptic connections, concentration of neurotransmitter in the synapse, concentration of enzymes which break down neurotransmitter and so on. Not one of those things determines whether or not a given neuron associated with voluntary action will fire. It is the same thing as talking about the drive shaft, CV boot, transmission, fuel line, spark plugs, and paint job as determining when and where an automobile goes. It's the same as saying that the TV remote control uses you to change the channel instead of the other way around. Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. If the neuron fires where consideration of these factors would lead to a prediction that it should not fire then that is by definition the neuron acting contrary to physical law. There is no such thing as a factor which leads to a prediction of when efferent nerves will fire. Even if you say that the subject is just regions of the brain, it is still those regions, those tissues and neurons which *decide* to fire as a first cause - without any deterministic precursor that could ever be predicted with any degree of accuracy without access to the private subjective content of the decision process. Seeing a nerve fire doesn't tell you when it's going to fire again, just as seeing a car make a left turn doesn't tell you what direction it's going to turn after that. So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, No, the ligand will always be present, because the electromagnetic conditions change to attract, repel, bind,
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Nevertheless, you talk about swapping your brain for a suitably designed computer and consciousness surviving teleportation and pauses/restarts of the computer. Yes. As a starting point, these ideas assume the physical supervenience thesis. It does not. At the start it is neutral on this. A computationalist practitioner (knowing UDA, for example) can associate his consciousness with all the computations going through its state, and believe that he will survive locally on the normal computations (the usual physical reality) only because all the pieces of matter used by the doctors share his normal histories, and emulate the right computation on the right level. But the consciousness is not attributed to some physical happening hereby, it is attributed to the infinitely many arithmetical relations defining his possible and most probable histories. Only in step 8 is the physical supervenience assumed, but only to get the reductio ad absurdum. There is no [consciousness] evolving in [time and space]. There is only [consciousness of time and space], evolving (from the internal indexical perspective), but relying and associated on infinities of arithmetical relations (in the 3-view). The progression surely must be to start by assuming that your mind is generated as a result of brain activity, rather than an immaterial soul. You then consider whether you would accept a computerised brain and retain consciousness. If you decide yes, you accept computationalism, and if you accept computationalism you can show that physical supervenience is problematic. You then adjust your theory to keep computationalism and drop physical supervenience or drop computationalism altogether. This is the sequence in which most people would think about it. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On 10/7/2011 7:11 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Nevertheless, you talk about swapping your brain for a suitably designed computer and consciousness surviving teleportation and pauses/restarts of the computer. Yes. As a starting point, these ideas assume the physical supervenience thesis. It does not. At the start it is neutral on this. A computationalist practitioner (knowing UDA, for example) can associate his consciousness with all the computations going through its state, and believe that he will survive locally on the normal computations (the usual physical reality) only because all the pieces of matter used by the doctors share his normal histories, and emulate the right computation on the right level. But the consciousness is not attributed to some physical happening hereby, it is attributed to the infinitely many arithmetical relations defining his possible and most probable histories. Only in step 8 is the physical supervenience assumed, but only to get the reductio ad absurdum. There is no [consciousness] evolving in [time and space]. There is only [consciousness of time and space], evolving (from the internal indexical perspective), but relying and associated on infinities of arithmetical relations (in the 3-view). The progression surely must be to start by assuming that your mind is generated as a result of brain activity, rather than an immaterial soul. You then consider whether you would accept a computerised brain and retain consciousness. There might be two different choices here. One would be a kind of artificial neuron or bundle of neurons that would be physically placed in your head and designed with the same connectivity as your natural neurons. The other would be a transceiver that would send out the afferent signals intended for your brain to a computer outside your body which would do some calculation emulating your brain and then sending the result back to the efferent nerves connections. Within the multiverse that is being instantiated by the UD these might correspond to very different states of computation even though they are the same so far as your input/output is concerned. Brent If you decide yes, you accept computationalism, and if you accept computationalism you can show that physical supervenience is problematic. You then adjust your theory to keep computationalism and drop physical supervenience or drop computationalism altogether. This is the sequence in which most people would think about it. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Of course all the parts of the car determine how it will move! You can predict exactly what the car will do if you know how it works and you have the inputs. What you are talking about is either tautological and obvious or delusional. if I send you the owner's manual of my car, you can tell me where I'm going to drive it tomorrow? So what are you talking about? That if you observe a car turning, you can tell which way it's turning or something? If you send me the plans of your car and the inputs - which way you intend to steer and so on - then yes, I can work out exactly where you're going. A model of the car, such as a car racing computer game, does not include the driver and the whole universe, as you seem to think, just the car. A car racing computer game is not a model of a car unless it is played by a user who is familiar with cars. A horse does not confuse the game with an automobile. It's a red herring anyways. You still can't tell where a real car is going to go unless you know where the driver is going to steer it, and that is something which cannot be determined by modeling the car or the driver's body, brain, neurons, ion channels, or molecules. The same brain in the same body with the same neurons, ion channels, or molecules can drive to the beach one day or the mountains the next depending upon nothing but how they feel. You could say that how they feel is a complex chain of events, but they would not be only microcosmic events which could be modeled, any butterfly wing in some part of the world could set off a chain of unpredictable happenstance that ends up in the driver deciding to go somewhere completely unexpected. The real car and the real neuron don't know what inputs they are going to receive next, so why do you expect that the model will? So a neuron fires in those regions of the brain associated with subjectivity where the biochemistry suggests it would not fire. How many times do you need me to tell you that biochemistry does not suggest whether such a neuron would fire? If I decide to move my arm, whatever it is that is deciding *is* the firing of some group of neurons. Biochemistry doesn't give you any insight as to whether your ion channels are about to speak Chinese or English with a New Jersey dialect. It's so wrong, it's not even wrong, it's just blanket denial of ordinary reality. There's nothing I can say to you because you're not listening or understanding what I mean at all. But the neurons that fire when you decide to move your arm do so because of the various internal and external factors I have listed. Ion channels open in response to either a ligand or a votage across the membrane, causing further changes in the voltage across the membrane, causing more voltage activated ion channels to open, causing an action potential which propagates down the axon. If you look at *any* given neuron and observe all the relevant factors you can, if your model is good enough, tell if it's going to fire. If it does something other than this then it is contrary to physical laws. Ligand-activated ion channels open without any ligand present, No, the ligand will always be present, because the electromagnetic conditions change to attract, repel, bind, etc. The electromagnetic conditions are the 3-p view of the 1-p sensorimotive intentions. They are the same thing. Just as you have an interior world which others do not experience directly when they look at the outside of your head, but when you smile it's a consequence of a human feeling, which they can make sense of in terms of their own feeling, and they may smile back. In your view, the only possibility is that the mouth movements of one person must cause the other person's mouth to move. It's a catastrophic mechanization of the reality - which is a sensorimotive semantic exchange through the natural language of human expression. The material monism view disqualifies this simple truth a priori and sticks it's head up it's theoretical ass to find some a-signifying stupidity to justify it. The ligand will always be present?? Then what's the point of neurons releasing neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft? or perhaps an action potential propagates down the axon without any change in ion concentrations. Again, not what I'm saying. The ion concentrations change because the electromagnetic conditions of the ions change spontaneously. Spontaneously. Spontaneously. What does that mean? An ion is an ion. Depolarisation occurs when sodium channels open allowing sodium into the cell and making the interior more positive with respect to the exterior. The sodium channels in a particular neuron may open in response to a neurotransmitter. At a certain threshold this then causes voltage-activated sodium channels to open, causing positive feedback and resulting in a voltage spike, the action potential.
