Re: Losing Control
On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:54 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Stathis, your lengthy reply to Craig is a bit longer than I can manage to reply in all facets so here is a condensed opinion: Yes, these posts are probably getting a bit too long. Your position about the 'material' world (atoms, etc.) seems a bit mechanistic: like us, the (call it:) inanimates are also different no matter how identical we think they are in those lines we observe by our instruments and reductionist means. You ask about Na-ions: well, even atoms/ions are different to a wider scrutiny than enclosed in our physical sciences. Just think about the fission-sequence - unpredictable WHICH one will undergo it next. It maybe differential within the atomic nucleus, may be in the circumstances and their so far not established impact on the individual atoms (ions?) leading to a next one. We know only a portion of the totality and just think that everything has been covered. I am not representing Craig, I make remarks upon your ideas of everything being predictably identical to its similars. As Brent pointed out, there is no way to differentiate between atoms of the same kind to tell which one, for example, will decay. But even if we could, it is a fact that the atoms in a person can come from anywhere and the person is still the same; whereas changing the configuration of the existing atoms in a person can cause drastic changes in the person. This is obvious with no more than casual observation. The (so far) known facts are neither: not 'known' and not 'facts'. Characteristics are restricted to yesterday's inventory and many potentials are not even dreamed of. We can manipulate a lot of circumstances, but be ready for others that may show up tomorrow - beyond our control. There are, of course, undiscovered scientific facts. If scientists did not believe that they would give up science. But Craig is not saying that there are processes inside cells that are controlled by as yet undiscovered physical effects. What he is saying is that if I decide to move my arm the arm will move not due to the well-studied sequence of neurological events, but spontaneously, due to my will. He cites as evidence for this the fact that on a fMRI parts of the brain light up spontaneously when the subject thinks about something. I agree with Craig (in his response to this same long post): ...Nothing is absolutely identical to anything else. Nothing is even identical to itself from moment to moment. Identical is a local approximation contingent upon the comprehensiveness of sense capacities. If your senses aren't very discerning, then lots of things seem identical I would add: no TWO events have identical circumstances to face, even if you do no detect inividual differences in the observed data of participating entities, the influencing circumstances are different from instance to instance and call for changes in processes. Bio, or not. This is one little corner how agnosticism frees up my mind (beware: not freezes!!). No two things are identical, but they can be close enough to identical for a particular purpose. If a part in your car breaks you do not junk the whole car on the grounds that you will not be able to obtain an *identical* part. Rather, you obtain a part that is close enough - within engineering tolerance. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Tuesday, April 2, 2013 10:59:35 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 4/2/2013 6:44 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, April 2, 2013 8:07:48 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 4/2/2013 3:54 PM, John Mikes wrote: Dear Stathis, your lengthy reply to Craig is a bit longer than I can manage to reply in all facets so here is a condensed opinion: Your position about the 'material' world (atoms, etc.) seems a bit mechanistic: like us, the (call it:) inanimates are also different no matter how identical we think they are in those lines we observe by our instruments and reductionist means. You ask about Na-ions: well, even atoms/ions are different to a wider scrutiny than enclosed in our physical sciences. Just think about the fission-sequence - unpredictable WHICH one will undergo it next. It maybe differential within the atomic nucleus, may be in the circumstances and their so far not established impact on the individual atoms (ions?) leading to a next one. That would imply a hidden variable in the atom which determined when it decayed. Local hidden variables have been ruled out by numerous experiments. Non-local hidden variables (as in Bohm's quantum mechanics) are not ruled out in non-relativistic experiments but it doesn't appear possible to extend them to quantum field theory in which the number of particles is not conserved. We know only a portion of the totality and just think that everything has been covered. I am not representing Craig, I make remarks upon your ideas of everything being predictably identical to its similars. The (so far) known facts are neither: not 'known' and not 'facts'. Characteristics are restricted to yesterday's inventory and many potentials are not even dreamed of. We can manipulate a lot of circumstances, but be ready for others that may show up tomorrow - beyond our control. I agree with Craig (in his response to this same long post): ...Nothing is absolutely identical to anything else. Nothing is even identical to itself from moment to moment. Identical is a local approximation contingent upon the comprehensiveness of sense capacities. If your senses aren't very discerning, then lots of things seem identical The Schrodinger equation only works if the interchange of two bosons makes no difference - so it is implicit in the success of quantum mechanics that they are identical. Does being interchangeable necessarily mean identical? It does if the number of states that count toward the entropy doesn't increase when you consider interchanges. Cars obey Maxwell-Boltzman statistics, elementary particles don't. If two things have exactly the same, then they are interchangeable in the sense of using it for ballast in a ship, but it doesn't make the things interchangeable in every way that can be measured, it doesn't make them interchangeable in every way that is imaginable, and it certainly does not make them identical. Just because microcosmic observations are precisely consistent does not mean that all phenomena can be explained in those terms. Identical is a myth. There is no identical. A does not = A. The A that follows the = can be distinguished from the previous A, both in the order in which they were typed and in their relation to the rest of the text. The assumption that A = A is an important idea for logic, but it does not follow that the cosmos is made of phenomena which follow that narrow expectation. If I am driving in traffic, my car could be exchanged with any other on the road and be observed to behave in the same way, yet my experience is that the car which I am driving is very different from every other car in the universe. If we close our eyes to the reality of subjectivity, then we can't be very surprised when we fail to see how reality could be subjective. Similarly the solution changes sign if fermions are interchanged and that requires that the two fermions be identical. Otherwise bosons wouldn't obey bose-einstein statistics and fermions wouldn't obey fermi-dirac statistics, they would both obey Maxwell-Boltzman statistics - but experiment shows they don't. I would add: no TWO events have identical circumstances to face, even if you do no detect inividual differences in the observed data of participating entities, the influencing circumstances are different from instance to instance and call for changes in processes. Bio, or not. But that becomes an all-purpose excuse for anything-goes. No generalization is possible, no pattern can be extrapolated. Not true. Any generalization is permitted as long as it is recognized as such and not mistaken for a literal and exhaustive description of nature. You mean any generalization at all? Or any generalization that passes all empirical tests. Any generalization that makes enough sense to be useful or appreciated. Something can be true
Re: Losing Control
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:04:50 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:54 AM, John Mikes jam...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: Dear Stathis, your lengthy reply to Craig is a bit longer than I can manage to reply in all facets so here is a condensed opinion: Yes, these posts are probably getting a bit too long. Your position about the 'material' world (atoms, etc.) seems a bit mechanistic: like us, the (call it:) inanimates are also different no matter how identical we think they are in those lines we observe by our instruments and reductionist means. You ask about Na-ions: well, even atoms/ions are different to a wider scrutiny than enclosed in our physical sciences. Just think about the fission-sequence - unpredictable WHICH one will undergo it next. It maybe differential within the atomic nucleus, may be in the circumstances and their so far not established impact on the individual atoms (ions?) leading to a next one. We know only a portion of the totality and just think that everything has been covered. I am not representing Craig, I make remarks upon your ideas of everything being predictably identical to its similars. As Brent pointed out, there is no way to differentiate between atoms of the same kind to tell which one, for example, will decay. But even if we could, it is a fact that the atoms in a person can come from anywhere and the person is still the same; whereas changing the configuration of the existing atoms in a person can cause drastic changes in the person. This is obvious with no more than casual observation. You aren't an atom so you have no idea if it 'knows where its been'. They certainly seem to know a lot about where they are when they are bunched up all together. You know where you've been though, and where you've been has a profound influence on who you are, so that is a property of some part of the universe. Which part is that do you think? The (so far) known facts are neither: not 'known' and not 'facts'. Characteristics are restricted to yesterday's inventory and many potentials are not even dreamed of. We can manipulate a lot of circumstances, but be ready for others that may show up tomorrow - beyond our control. There are, of course, undiscovered scientific facts. If scientists did not believe that they would give up science. But Craig is not saying that there are processes inside cells that are controlled by as yet undiscovered physical effects. What he is saying is that if I decide to move my arm the arm will move not due to the well-studied sequence of neurological events, but spontaneously, due to my will. UGH. No. I say that if I move my arm, the arm will move because I AM whatever sequence of events on whatever level - molecular, biochemical, physiological, whether well-studied or not. You may not be able to understand that what I intend is not to squeeze myself into biology, or to magically replace biology, but to present that the entirety of the physics of my body intersects with the entirety of the physics of my experience. The two aesthetics - public bodies in space and private experiences through time, are an involuted (Ouroboran, umbilical, involuted) Monism. If you don't understand what that means then you are arguing with a straw man. He cites as evidence for this the fact that on a fMRI parts of the brain light up spontaneously when the subject thinks about something. That and also the fact that when I move my fingers to type, they move and letters are typed. I agree with Craig (in his response to this same long post): ...Nothing is absolutely identical to anything else. Nothing is even identical to itself from moment to moment. Identical is a local approximation contingent upon the comprehensiveness of sense capacities. If your senses aren't very discerning, then lots of things seem identical I would add: no TWO events have identical circumstances to face, even if you do no detect inividual differences in the observed data of participating entities, the influencing circumstances are different from instance to instance and call for changes in processes. Bio, or not. This is one little corner how agnosticism frees up my mind (beware: not freezes!!). No two things are identical, but they can be close enough to identical for a particular purpose. Exactly! That's my point. Since consciousness can have no particular purpose however, it is that which lends all purposes and cannot be simulated. If a part in your car breaks you do not junk the whole car on the grounds that you will not be able to obtain an *identical* part. Rather, you obtain a part that is close enough - within engineering tolerance. Right, but that analogy fails when you consider replacing yourself with someone who is just like you, but you won't be alive anymore. If the part is life itself, identity, awareness,
Astigmatism Example
If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak eye*, I find that after a few seconds, the image from the strong eye, even though it is closed, tries to creep into my visual field. It is not difficult at this point to 'look through' the eye that is closed (seeing phosphenes or just darkness). Reversing the test, with my weak eye closed, there is no creeping effect and it is not really possible for me to look through the eye that is closed. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. The fact that closing the weak eye instead does not produce the creeping image effect demonstrates that there is no functional purpose which could be served by favoring the strong eye when it is the one which is closed. In some people astigmatism progresses until the develop a wandering eye. The physicalist can claim victory over the functionalist here in that the atrophy of nerve connections to the weak eye and the relative hypertrophy of the nerve connections to the strong eye clearly dominate the functional considerations of the visual mechanism. The creeping image effect also is not immediate, so that it is not the case that the hardware is incapable of maintaining clear vision through the weak eye, it is obviously the inertia of purely physical-perceptual processes which is dragging the function down. Between the physical and the perceptual, which one is driving? It would seem that physics would win here, because the creeping image is not the more aesthetically rich image - however, this is not a case where the aesthetics are determined only from the top down. Remember that both eyes are exposed to the same light. The retinas receive the same total number of photons. The strong eye develops more robust connections to it not because it has more light, but because the shape of the eye is such that the cells (sub-personal agents) of the retina are able to make more sense out of the better focused light. There are not more signals being generated, but clearer signals which carry farther up the ladder from sub-personal optical detection to personal visual sensation. The nerve growth follows the coherence of visual consciousness, not a just a photological nutrient supply. The eye becomes stronger because the brain population is prioritizing higher sensitivity, not because neurons are being pushed around by blind ionic concentration gradients. That sensory priority is the cause of the neurological investment in that eye's sensitivity, so that it is perceptual inertia which drives the creeping image effect not just biological morphology. *which is my left eye. Curious if any of you left brainy types have an astigmatism in the right eye. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak eye*, I find that after a few seconds, the image from the strong eye, even though it is closed, tries to creep into my visual field. It is not difficult at this point to 'look through' the eye that is closed (seeing phosphenes or just darkness). Reversing the test, with my weak eye closed, there is no creeping effect and it is not really possible for me to look through the eye that is closed. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. The fact that closing the weak eye instead does not produce the creeping image effect demonstrates that there is no functional purpose which could be served by favoring the strong eye when it is the one which is closed. In some people astigmatism progresses until the develop a wandering eye. The physicalist can claim victory over the functionalist here in that the atrophy of nerve connections to the weak eye and the relative hypertrophy of the nerve connections to the strong eye clearly dominate the functional considerations of the visual mechanism. The creeping image effect also is not immediate, so that it is not the case that the hardware is incapable of maintaining clear vision through the weak eye, it is obviously the inertia of purely physical-perceptual processes which is dragging the function down. Between the physical and the perceptual, which one is driving? It would seem that physics would win here, because the creeping image is not the more aesthetically rich image - however, this is not a case where the aesthetics are determined only from the top down. Remember that both eyes are exposed to the same light. The retinas receive the same total number of photons. The strong eye develops more robust connections to it not because it has more light, but because the shape of the eye is such that the cells (sub-personal agents) of the retina are able to make more sense out of the better focused light. There are not more signals being generated, but clearer signals which carry farther up the ladder from sub-personal optical detection to personal visual sensation. The nerve growth follows the coherence of visual consciousness, not a just a photological nutrient supply. The eye becomes stronger because the brain population is prioritizing higher sensitivity, not because neurons are being pushed around by blind ionic concentration gradients. That sensory priority is the cause of the neurological investment in that eye's sensitivity, so that it is perceptual inertia which drives the creeping image effect not just biological morphology. *which is my left eye. Curious if any of you left brainy types have an astigmatism in the right eye. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost completely undetectable except for in the processing of a few organisms scattered on planets after billions of years of silent darkness. If you run it the other way, with the Universal Mind as the Universal Experience instead, then complexity becomes a symptom of elaborated qualities of that experience rather than a cause of experience itself appearing into an unconscious world of matter. Our own quality of consciousness is not just a mind full of practical or logical thoughts, but also of feelings, images, intuitions, visions, etc. Our world has never been unconscious or conscious like us, but is rather filled with every sort of in-between semi-conscious, from primate to mammal, reptile, etc.. The transition to inorganic matter is both smooth and sudden, as phenomena like viruses and crystals bridge the gap but also on another level, leave no obvious link. From the Universal Experience, comp is derived as a second order strategy to manage the interaction between sub-experiences, and that interaction is what we perceive as physics. This way, representation arises naturally through any multiplicity of presentations, and both the presentation problem and de-presentation problems are resolved. Comp exists to serve sensory presence, since sensory presence cannot plausibly serve comp in any way. The universe is never silent and unconscious, but is always an experience defined by whatever participants are available, regardless of the complexity. The Universal Experience, I suggest, has the property of conserving appearances of separateness between different kinds of sub-experiences, and this accounts for the mistaken impression that non-human experiences are objectively and absolutely unconscious - they are 'as if unconscious' relative to our local realism, but that is necessary to insulate our experience from an implosion of significance. Thanks, Craig Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak eye*, I find that after a few seconds, the image from the strong eye, even though it is closed, tries to creep into my visual field. It is not difficult at this point to 'look through' the eye that is closed (seeing phosphenes or just darkness). Reversing the test, with my weak eye closed, there is no creeping effect and it is not really possible for me to look through the eye that is closed. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize
Re: Astigmatism Example
My google account is forcing me to reply here rather than interspersed, which is very inconvenient. But I will try. 1. As far as I know the universal mind is not aesthetic 2. Not sure what your 2nd question means 3. The universe has existed for 13.82 ly with little or no consciousness to detect it unless you consider a universal consciousness. I do not see how that is a criticism. Seems to be a fact of nature. 4.I cannot run the other way with my model. That's your model On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost completely undetectable except for in the processing of a few organisms scattered on planets after billions of years of silent darkness. If you run it the other way, with the Universal Mind as the Universal Experience instead, then complexity becomes a symptom of elaborated qualities of that experience rather than a cause of experience itself appearing into an unconscious world of matter. Our own quality of consciousness is not just a mind full of practical or logical thoughts, but also of feelings, images, intuitions, visions, etc. Our world has never been unconscious or conscious like us, but is rather filled with every sort of in-between semi-conscious, from primate to mammal, reptile, etc.. The transition to inorganic matter is both smooth and sudden, as phenomena like viruses and crystals bridge the gap but also on another level, leave no obvious link. From the Universal Experience, comp is derived as a second order strategy to manage the interaction between sub-experiences, and that interaction is what we perceive as physics. This way, representation arises naturally through any multiplicity of presentations, and both the presentation problem and de-presentation problems are resolved. Comp exists to serve sensory presence, since sensory presence cannot plausibly serve comp in any way. The universe is never silent and unconscious, but is always an experience defined by whatever participants are available, regardless of the complexity. The Universal Experience, I suggest, has the property of conserving appearances of separateness between different kinds of sub-experiences, and this accounts for the mistaken impression that non-human experiences are objectively and absolutely unconscious - they are 'as if unconscious' relative to our local realism, but that is necessary to insulate our experience from an implosion of significance. Thanks, Craig Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I don't think the function in functionalism is supposed to refer to utility or purpose. Functionalism as I understand it just refers to the idea that if you replaced each part of the brain with a functionally identical part, meaning that its input/output relationship is the same as the original part, then this will result in no change in conscious experience, regardless of the material details of how the part produces this input/output relation (a miniature version of the Chinese room thought experiment could work, for example). It's also self-evident that there should be no behavioral change, *if* we assume the reductionist idea that the large-scale behavior of any physical system is determined by the rules governing the behavior and interactions of each of its component parts (you would probably dispute this, but the point is just that this seems to be one of the assumptions of 'functionalism', and of course almost all modern scientific theories of systems composed of multiple parts work with this assumption). For example, if you have a tumor which is altering your consciousness and disrupting some other abilities like speech, that is obviously not serving any useful function, but functionalism wouldn't claim it should, it would just say that if you replaced the tumor with an artificial device that affected the surrounding neurons in exactly the same way, the affected patient wouldn't notice any subjective difference (likewise with more useful parts of the brain, of course). There may of course be different meanings that philosophers have assigned to the term functionalism, but I think this is one, and I'm pretty sure it's part of what COMP is taken to mean on this list. Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:30:44 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: My google account is forcing me to reply here rather than interspersed, which is very inconvenient. But I will try. 1. As far as I know the universal mind is not aesthetic Exactly, which is why it can't be responsible for any aesthetic agenda, and as far as I can tell, consciousness is a purely aesthetic agenda. No mind (or logic, or set of computations) can be responsible for consciousness. 2. Not sure what your 2nd question means 3. The universe has existed for 13.82 ly with little or no consciousness to detect it unless you consider a universal consciousness. Little to no consciousness is what I am saying is a bad assumption. Any given non-human experience may have little or no consciousness which we relate to as human beings, but just as comp (especially Bruno's implementation of comp) points to a vast infinity of unfamiliar and invisible perfections, my expectation is that the universe without human beings is still overflowing with experience. This is a different kind of panexperientialism, not one which says that a planet is a living being, but that what we see as a planet is a contrived representation of vast set of experience on a completely different scale than humans can directly interact with. Just as a human brain reveals no clue as to the particular feelings and memories of the person who is associated with it, all experiences associated with Earth are represented by the Earth itself. My panexperientialism is about all phenomena which appear to us as public bodies being tokens of the underlying reality, which is not matter, not computation, but an eternity of interwoven experiences and meta-experiences. I do not see how that is a criticism. Seems to be a fact of nature. Seems is the key word. Of course nature seems to contain a universe of unconscious matter to us, because that perceptual relativity is what allows us to develop our own rich perceptual inertial frame (niche or umwelt). Just as the mites that live in our eyelids have no possible sense of the actions which exist on our level, we have no opportunity to view the universe from a non-human vantage point - where millions of years pass in seconds and solar systems bounce off of each other like spinning tops. 4.I cannot run the other way with my model. That's your model The truth of nature belongs to everyone, not just me. All that it takes for you to be able to run the model my way is some curiosity, bravery, and humility. Craig On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On 4/3/2013 2:44 PM, Jason Resch wrote: You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Then do you think there could be philosophical zombies? How would you operationally test a robot to see whether it was (a) intelligent (b) conscious? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:53:40 PM UTC-4, jessem wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I don't think the function in functionalism is supposed to refer to utility or purpose. Functionalism as I understand it just refers to the idea that if you replaced each part of the brain with a functionally identical part, meaning that its input/output relationship is the same as the original part, then this will result in no change in conscious experience, regardless of the material details of how the part produces this input/output relation (a miniature version of the Chinese room thought experiment could work, for example). Right, but in the nervous system, the input/output relationship is the same as utility or purpose. Think of it this way. If I make a cymatic pattern in some sand spread out on top of a drum head by vibrating it with a certain frequency of sound, then functionalism says that whatever I do to make that pattern must equal a sound. We know that isn't true though. I could make that cymatic pattern simply by making a mold of it and filling that mold with sand. I could stamp out necklaces with miniature versions of that pattern in bronze. I could design a device which records the motion of the sand as the pattern forms optically and then reproduces the same motion and the same pattern in some other medium, like a TV screen. All of these methods reproduce the input/output relationship which creates the pattern, yet none of them involve carrying over the sound which I initially used to make the pattern. It's a little different because we can change our conscious experience by changing the pattern of our brain activity, and that activity can be changed in the same way by different means, so that functionalist assumptions can be used legitimately to understand brain physiology - but - that does not mean that the functionalist assumptions automatically tell the whole story. If they did, then we would not need subjective reports to correlate with brain activity, we would be able to simply detect subjective qualities as functions, which of course we cannot do in any way. Just as there is more than one way to make a pattern in sand, there is more than one expression of any given experience. On one level it is hundreds of billions of molecules reconfiguring each other, and on another is a single experience which contains within it a billion times that number of experiences on different levels. It's also self-evident that there should be no behavioral change, *if* we assume the reductionist idea that the large-scale behavior of any physical system is determined by the rules governing the behavior and interactions of each of its component parts (you would probably dispute this, but the point is just that this seems to be one of the assumptions of 'functionalism', and of course almost all modern scientific theories of systems composed of multiple parts work with this assumption). Look at how freeway traffic works. We can statistically analyze the positions and actions of the cars and with a few simple rules, predict a model of general traffic flow. Such a model is very effective for predicting and controlling traffic, but it does not have access to the meaning of the traffic - which is in fact the narrative agendas of each individual driver trying to leave one location and get to another. That is the reason the traffic exists; because drivers are using vehicles to realize their motives. We could model traffic instead as a torrent of automotive particles, which attract drivers inside of them automatically through a wave like field which happens to be synchronized with rush hour and lunch hour, and our model would not be incorrect in its predictions, but of course, it would lead us to a completely false conclusion about the nature of cars. For example, if you have a tumor which is altering your consciousness and disrupting some other abilities like speech, that is obviously not serving any useful function, but functionalism wouldn't claim it should, it would just say that if you replaced the tumor with an artificial device that affected the surrounding neurons in exactly the same way, the affected patient wouldn't notice any subjective difference (likewise with more useful parts of the brain, of course). There may of course be different meanings that philosophers have assigned to the term functionalism, but I think this is one, and I'm pretty sure it's part of what COMP is taken to mean on this list. Point taken. I was referring more to the 'ontological implications of functionalism' rather than functionalism itself. It's important to
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:44:24 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comjavascript: wrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. There's no question that human intelligence reflects an improved survival through learning, and that that is what makes the physiological investment pay off. What I question is why that improvement would entail awareness. There are a lot of neurons in our gut as well, and assimilation of nutrients is undoubtedly complex and important to survival, yet we are not compelled to insist that there must be some conscious experience to manage that intelligence. Learning is complex, but awareness itself is simple. Craig Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
Brent, You're mail client is malfunctioning again, you are quoting something Telmo wrote as coming from me. My opinion on the matter of philosophical zombies is that they are logically inconsistent. Jason On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/3/2013 2:44 PM, Jason Resch wrote: You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Then do you think there could be philosophical zombies? How would you operationally test a robot to see whether it was (a) intelligent (b) conscious? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscribe@**googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 6:04 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:44:24 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. There's no question that human intelligence reflects an improved survival through learning, and that that is what makes the physiological investment pay off. Right, so my point is that we should not expect things like human intelligence or human learning to be trivial or easy to get in robots, when the human brain is the most complex thing we know, and can perform more computations than even the largest super computers of today. What I question is why that improvement would entail awareness. A human has to be aware to do the things it does, because zombies are not possible. Your examples of blind sight are not a disproof of the separability of function and awareness, only examples of broken links in communication (quite similar to split brain patients). There are a lot of neurons in our gut as well, and assimilation of nutrients is undoubtedly complex and important to survival, yet we are not compelled to insist that there must be some conscious experience to manage that intelligence. Learning is complex, but awareness itself is simple. I think the nerves in the gut can manifest as awareness, such as cravings for certain foods when the body realizes it is deficient in some particular nutrient. Afterall, what is the point of all those nerves if they have no impact on behavior? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
Hmm. You're right I was intending to ask Telmo that question. Brent On 4/3/2013 5:52 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Brent, You're mail client is malfunctioning again, you are quoting something Telmo wrote as coming from me. My opinion on the matter of philosophical zombies is that they are logically inconsistent. Jason On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:44 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/3/2013 2:44 PM, Jason Resch wrote: You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Then do you think there could be philosophical zombies? How would you operationally test a robot to see whether it was (a) intelligent (b) conscious? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3267 / Virus Database: 3162/6222 - Release Date: 04/03/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 8:58:37 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 6:04 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:44:24 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. There's no question that human intelligence reflects an improved survival through learning, and that that is what makes the physiological investment pay off. Right, so my point is that we should not expect things like human intelligence or human learning to be trivial or easy to get in robots, when the human brain is the most complex thing we know, and can perform more computations than even the largest super computers of today. Absolutely, but neither should we expect that complexity alone can make an assembly of inorganic parts into a subjective experience which compares to that of an animal. What I question is why that improvement would entail awareness. A human has to be aware to do the things it does, because zombies are not possible. That's begging the question. Anything that is not exactly what it we might assume it is would be a 'zombie' to some extent. A human does not have to be aware to do the things that it does, which is proved by blindsight, sleepwalking, brainwashing, etc. A human may, in reality, have to be aware to perform all of the functions that we do, but if comp were true, that would not be the case. Your examples of blind sight are not a disproof of the separability of function and awareness, I understand why you think that, but ultimately it is proof of exactly that. only examples of broken links in communication (quite similar to split brain patients). A broken link in communication which prevents you from being aware of the experience which is informing you is the same thing as function being separate from awareness. The end result is that it is not necessary to experience any conscious qualia to receive optical information. There is no difference functionally between a broken link in communication and separability of function and awareness. The awareness is broken in the dead link, but the function is retained, thus they are in fact separate. There are a lot of neurons in our gut as well, and assimilation of nutrients is undoubtedly complex and important to survival, yet we are not compelled to insist that there must be some conscious experience to manage that intelligence. Learning is complex, but awareness itself is simple. I think the nerves in the gut can manifest as awareness, such as cravings for certain foods when the body realizes it is deficient in some particular nutrient. Afterall, what is the point of all those nerves if they have no impact on behavior? Oh I agree, because my view is panexperiential. The gut doesn't have the kind of awareness that a human being has as a whole, because the other organs of the body are not as significant as the brain is to the organism. If we are going by the comp assumption though, then there is an implication that nothing has any awareness unless it is running a very sophisticated program. Craig Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On 4/3/2013 7:33 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Not only is the function of the artificial peptides the same, the patient also feels the same. Wouldn't you expect them to feel a bit different? How do you know? Maybe they became zombies. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Any human who has played a bit of Arimaa can beat a computer hands down.
On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 8:58:37 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 6:04 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:44:24 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Then shouldn't a powerful computer be able to quickly deduce the winning Arimaa mappings? You're making the same mistake as John Clark, confusing the physical computer with the algorithm. Powerful computers don't help us if we don't have the right algorithm. The central mystery of AI, in my opinion, is why on earth haven't we found a general learning algorithm yet. Either it's too complex for our monkey brains, or you're right that computation is not the whole story. I believe in the former, but not I'm not sure, of course. Notice that I'm talking about generic intelligence, not consciousness, which I strongly believe to be two distinct phenomena. Another point toward Telmo's suspicion that learning is complex: If learning and thinking intelligently at a human level were computationally easy, biology wouldn't have evolved to use trillions of synapses. The brain is very expensive metabolically (using 20 - 25% of the total body's energy, about 100 Watts). If so many neurons were not needed to do what we do, natural selection would have selected those humans with fewer neurons and reduced food requirements. There's no question that human intelligence reflects an improved survival through learning, and that that is what makes the physiological investment pay off. Right, so my point is that we should not expect things like human intelligence or human learning to be trivial or easy to get in robots, when the human brain is the most complex thing we know, and can perform more computations than even the largest super computers of today. Absolutely, but neither should we expect that complexity alone I don't think anyone has argued that complexity alone is sufficient. can make an assembly of inorganic parts into a subjective experience which compares to that of an animal. Both are made of the same four fundamental forces interacting with each other, why should the number of protons in the nucleus of some atoms in those organic molecules make any difference to the subject? What led you to chose the chemical elements as the origin of sense and feeling, as opposed to higher level structures (neurology, circuits, etc.) or lower level structures (quarks, gluons, electrons)? What I question is why that improvement would entail awareness. A human has to be aware to do the things it does, because zombies are not possible. That's begging the question. Not quite, I provided an argument for my reasoning. What is your objection, that zombies are possible, or that zombies are not possible but that doesn't mean something that in all ways appears conscious must be conscious? Anything that is not exactly what it we might assume it is would be a 'zombie' to some extent. A human does not have to be aware to do the things that it does, which is proved by blindsight, sleepwalking, brainwashing, etc. A human may, in reality, have to be aware to perform all of the functions that we do, but if comp were true, that would not be the case. Your examples of blind sight are not a disproof of the separability of function and awareness, I understand why you think that, but ultimately it is proof of exactly that. only examples of broken links in communication (quite similar to split brain patients). A broken link in communication which prevents you from being aware of the experience which is informing you is the same thing as function being separate from awareness. The end result is that it is not necessary to experience any conscious qualia to receive optical information. There is no difference functionally between a broken link in communication and separability of function and awareness. The awareness is broken in the dead link, but the function is retained, thus they are in fact separate. So you take the split brain patient's word for it that he didn't see the word PAN flashed on the screen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANot=1m50s Perhaps his left hemisphere didn't see it, but his right hemisphere certainly did, as his right hemisphere is able to draw a picture of that pan (something in his brain saw it). I can't experience life through your eyes right now because our brains are disconnected, should you take my word for my assertion that you must not be experiencing anything because the I in Jason's skull doesn't experience any visual stimulus from Craig's eyes? There are a lot of neurons in our gut as well, and assimilation of nutrients is undoubtedly complex and important to survival, yet
Re: Losing Control
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:32 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: There are, of course, undiscovered scientific facts. If scientists did not believe that they would give up science. But Craig is not saying that there are processes inside cells that are controlled by as yet undiscovered physical effects. What he is saying is that if I decide to move my arm the arm will move not due to the well-studied sequence of neurological events, but spontaneously, due to my will. UGH. No. I say that if I move my arm, the arm will move because I AM whatever sequence of events on whatever level - molecular, biochemical, physiological, whether well-studied or not. You may not be able to understand that what I intend is not to squeeze myself into biology, or to magically replace biology, but to present that the entirety of the physics of my body intersects with the entirety of the physics of my experience. The two aesthetics - public bodies in space and private experiences through time, are an involuted (Ouroboran, umbilical, involuted) Monism. If you don't understand what that means then you are arguing with a straw man. If you ARE the sequence of neurological events and the neurological events follow deterministic or probabilistic rules then you will also follow deterministic or probabilistic rules. However, you don't believe that this is the case. So sometimes there must be neurological events which are spontaneous according to your definition - outside the normal causal chain. Absent this, you return to the default scientific position. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
