Re: UDA revisited
1Z wrote: Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Stathis, ... Whatever 'reality' is, it is regular/persistent, repeatable/stable enough to do science on it via our phenomenality and come up with laws that seem to characterise how it will appear to us in our phenomenality. You could say: my perceptions are regular/persistent/repeatable/stable enough to assume an external reality generating them and to do science on. And if a machine's central processor's perceptions are similarly regular/persistent/, repeatable/stable, it could also do science on them. The point is, neither I nor the machine has any magical knowledge of an external world. All we have is regularities in perceptions, which we assume to be originating from the external world because that's a good model which stands up no matter what we throw at it. Oops. Maybe I spoke too soon! OK. Consider... ...stable enough to assume an external reality... You are a zombie. What is it about sensory data that suggests an external world? What is it about sensory data that suggests an external world to human? Well, of course, we have a phenomenal view. Bu there is no informtion in the phenomenal display that was not first in the pre-phenomenal sensory data. No, I think Colin has point there. Your phenomenal view adds a lot of assumptions to the sensory data in constructing an internal model of what you see. These assumptions are hard-wired by evolution. It is situations in which these assumptions are false that produce optical illusions. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
1Z wrote: Brent Meeker wrote: No, I think Colin has point there. Your phenomenal view adds a lot of assumptions to the sensory data in constructing an internal model of what you see. These assumptions are hard-wired by evolution. It is situations in which these assumptions are false that produce optical illusions. It depends on what you mean by information. Our hardwiring allows us to make better-than-chance guesses about what is really out there. But it is not information *about* what is really out there -- it doesn't come from the external world in the way sensory data does. Not in the way that sensory data does, but it comes from the external world via evolution. I'd say it's information about what's out there just as much as the sensory data is. Whether it's about what's *really* out there invites speculation about what's *really real*. I'd agree that it provides our best guess at what's real. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Scientific behaviour demanded of the zombie condition is a clearly identifiable behavioural benchmark where we can definitely claim that phenomenality is necessary...see below... It is all to easy to consider scientific behaviour without phenomenality. Scientist looks at test-tube -- scientist makes note in lab journal... 'Looks' with what? Eyes, etc. Scientist has no vision system. A Zombie scientist has a complete visual system except for whatever it is that causes phenomenality.since we don't know what it is, we can imagine a zombie scientist as having a complete neural system for processing vision. There are eyes and optic chiasm, LGN and all that. But no visual scene. The scientist is blind. The zombie scientist is a functional duplicate. The zombie scientist will behave as though it sees. It will also behave the same in novel situations -- or it would not be a functional duplicate. I spent tens of thousands of hours designing, building, benchtesting and commissioning zombies. On the benchtop I have pretended to be their environment and they had no 'awareness' they weren't in their real environment. It's what makes bench testing possible. The universe of the zombies was the universe of my programming. The zombies could not tell if they were in the factory or on the benchtop. According to solipsists, humans can't either. You seem to think PC somehow tells you reality is really real, but you haven't shown it. Counterargument: we have PC during dreaming, but dreams aren't real. I say nothing about the 'really realness' of 'reality'. It's irrelevant. Couldn't care less. _Whatever it is_, its relentlessly consistent to all of us in regular ways suffient to characterise it scientifically. Our visual phenomenal scene depicts it well enough to do science. So there are no blind scientists? Without that visual depiction we can't do science. Unless we find another way. But a functional duplicate is a functional duplicate. Yes we have internal imagery. Indeed it is an example supporting what I am saying! The scenes and the sensing are 2 separate things. You can have one without the other. You can hallucinate - internal imagery overrides that of the sensing stimulus. Yes! That is the point. It is a representation and we cannot do science without it. Unless we find another way. Maybe the zombies could find one. None of it says anything about WHY the input did what it did. The causality outside the zombie is MISSING from these signals. The causality outside the human is missing from the signals. A photon is a photon, it doesn't come with a biography. Yep. That's the point. How does the brain make sense of it? By making use of some property of the natural world which makes a phenomeanl scene. The process by which we infer the real-world objects that caused our sense-data can be treated in information processing terms, for all that it is presented to us phenomenally. You haven't demonstrated that unplugging phenomenality stymies the whole process. They have no intrinsic sensation to them either. The only useful information is the body knows implicitly where they came from..which still is not enough because: Try swapping the touch nerves for 2 fingers. You 'touch' with one and feel the touch happen on the other. The touch sensation is created as phenomenal consciousness in the brain using the measurement, not the signal measurement itself. The brain attaches meaning to signals according to the channel they come on on, hence phantom limb pain and so on. We still don't need PC to explain that. Please see the recent post to Brent re pain and nociception. Pain IS phenomenal consiouness (a phenomenal scene). Pain is presented phenomenally, but neurologists can identify pain signals without being able to peak into other people's qualia. How do you think the phantom limb gets there? It's a brain/phenomenal representation. Yes. It IS phenomenal consiousness. Not all representations are phenomenal. Of a limb that isn't actually there. Now think about the touch..the same sensation of touch could have been generated by a feather or a cloth or another finger or a passing car. That context is what phenomenal consciousness provides. PC doesn't miraculously provide the true context. It can be fooled by dreams and hallucination. Yes it can misdirect, be wrong, be pathologically constitutes. But at least we have it. We could not survive without it. Would could not do science without it. Unless we find another way. Most people move around using their legs. But legless people can find other ways of moving. It situates us in an external world which we would otherwise find completely invisible. Blindsight, remember, And it doesn't have access to information that the physical brain doesn't have access to. The physical brain generates it! The
Re: UDA revisited
Except that in time, as people realise what I just said above, the hypothesis has some emprical support: If the universe were made of appearances when we opened up a cranium we'd see them. We don't. Or appearances don't appear to be appearances to a third party. Precisely. Now ask yourself... What kind of universe could make that possible? It is not the kind of universe depicted by laws created using appearances. I do need some rules or knowledge to begin with if I am to get anywhere with interpreting sense data. You do NOT interpret sense data! In consciuous activity you interpret the phenomenal scene generated using the sense data. But that is itself an interpetation for reasons you yourself have spelt out. Sensory pulse-trains don't have any meaning in themselves. An interpretation that is hard-coded into your biology a-priori. You do not manufacture it from your own knowledge (unless you are hallucinating!) your knowledge is a-poteriori. Habituated/unconscious reflex behaviour with fixed rules uses sense data directly. Does that make it impossible to have adaptive responses to sense data? Not at all. That adaptation is based on what rule acquired how? Adaptation is another rule assuming the meaning of all novelty. Where does that come from? You're stuck in a loop assuming your knowledge is in the zombie. Stop it! Think about driving home on a well travelled route. You don't even know how you got home. Yet if something unusual happened on the drive - ZAP - phenomenality kicks in and phenomenal consciousness handles the novelty. Is that your only evidence for saying that it is impossible to cope with novelty without phenomenality? I am claiming that the only way to find out the laws of nature is through the capcity to experience the novelty in the natural world OUTSIDE the scientist, not the novelty in the sensory data. This is about science, not any old behaviour. The fact is that most novelty can be handled by any old survivable rule. That rule is just a behaviour rule, not a law of the natural world. The scientist needs to be able to act 'as-if' a rule was operating OUTSIDE themselves in order that testing happen. With living organisms, evolution provides this knowledge Evolution provided a) a learning tool(brain) that knows how to learn from phenomenal consciousness, which is an adaptive presentation of real external world a-priori knowledge. b) Certain simple reflex behaviours. while with machines the designers provide it. Machine providers do not provide (a) They only provide (b), which includes any adaptivity rules, which are just more rules. How do you know that (a) isn't just rules? What's the difference? Yes rules in our DNA give us the capacity to create the scenes in a repeatable way. Those are natural rules. (Not made BY us). The physics that actually does it in response to the sensory data is a natural rule. The physics that makes it an experience is another natural rule. All these are natural rules. You are assuming that rules are experienced, regardless of their form. You are basing this assumption on your own belief (asnother assumption) that we know everything there is to know about physics. You act in denial of something you can prove to yourself exists with simple experiments. You should be proving to me why we don't need phenomenal consciousness, not the other way around. You seem to think there is an ontological gulf between (a) and (b). But that seems arbitrary. Only under the assumptions mentioned above. These are assumptions I do not make. Amazing but true. Trial and error. Hypothesis/Test in a brutal live or die laboratory called The Earth Notice that the process selected for phenomenal consciousness early on But that slides past the point. The development of phenomenal consciousness was an adaptation that occurred without PC. Hence, PC is not necessary for all adaptation. I am not claiming that. I am claiming it is necessary for scientific behaviour. It can be optional in an artifact or animal. The constraints of that situation merely need to be consistent with survival. The fact that most animals have it is proof of its efficacy as a knowledge source, not a disproof of my claim. Read the rest of my paragraph before you blurt. which I predict will eventually be proven to exist in nearly all animal cellular life (vertebrate and invertebrate and even single celled organisms) to some extent. Maybe even in some plant life. 'Technology' is a loaded word...I suppose I mean 'human made' technology. Notice that chairs and digital watches did not evolve independently of humans. Nor did science. Novel technology could be re-termed 'non-DNA based technology, I suppose. A bird flies. So do planes. One is DNA based. The other not DNA based, but created by a DNA based creature called the human. Eventually conscious machines will create novel technology too - including new
Re: UDA revisited
Absolutely! But the humans have phenomenal consciousness in lieu of ESP, which the zombies do not. PC doesn't magically solve the problem.It just involves a more sophisticated form of guesswork. It can be fooled. We been here before and I'll say it again if I have to Yes! It can be fooled. Yes! It can be wrong. Yes! It can be pathologically affected. Nevertheless without it we are unaware of anything and we could not do science on novelty in the world outside. The act of doing science proves we have phenomenal consciosuness and it's third person verification proves that whatever reality is, it's the same for us all. To bench test a human I could not merely replicate sensoiry feeds. I'd have to replicate the factory! As in brain-in-vat scenarios. Do you have a way of showing that BIV would be able to detect its status? I think the BIV is another oxymoron like the philosophical zombie. It assumes that the distal processes originating the casuality that cause the impinging sense data (from the external/distal world) are not involved at all in the internal scene generation. An assumption I do not make. I would predict that the scenes related to the 'phantom' body might work because there are (presumably) the original internal (brain-based) body maps that can substitute for the lack of the actual bodyBut the scenes related to the 'phantom external world' I would predict wouldn't work. So the basic assumption of BIV I would see as flawed. It assumes that all there is to the scene genreation is what there is at the boundary where the sense measurement occurs. Virtual reality works, I think, because in the end, actual photons fly at you from outside. Actual phonons impinge your ears and so forth. The human is connected to the external world (as mysterious as that may be and it's not ESP!). The zombie isn't, so faking it is easy. No. They both have exactly the same causal connections. The zombie's lack of phenomenality is the *only* difference. By definition. And every nerve that a human has is a sensory feed You just have to feed data into all of them to fool PC. As in a BIV scenario. See above Phenomenal scenes can combine to produce masterful, amazing discriminations. But how does the machine, without being told already by a human, know one from the other? How do humans know without being told by God? You are once again assuming that existing scientific knowledge is 100% equipped. Then, when it fails to have anything to say about phenomenality, you invoke god, the Berkeleyan informant. How about a new strategy: we don't actually know everything. The universe seems to quite naturally deliver phgenomenality. This is your problem, not its problem. Having done that how can it combine and contextualise that joint knowledge? You have to tell it how to learn. Again a-priori knowledge ... Where did we get our apriori knowledge from? If it wasn't a gift from God, it must have been a natural process. Yes. Now how might that be? What sort of universe could do that? This is where I've been. Go explore. (And what has this to do with zombies? Zombies lack phenomenality, not apriori knowledge). They lack the a-priori knowledge that is delivered in the form of phenomenality, from which all other knowledge is derived. The a-priori knowledge (say in the baby zombie) is all pre-programmed reflex - unconsciousess internal processes all about the self - not the external world...except for bawling...another reflex. All of which is irrelevant to my main contention which is about science and exquisite novelty. You're talking about cross-correlating sensations, not sensory measurement. The human as an extra bit of physics in the generation of the phenomenal scenes which allows such contextualisations. Why does it need new physics? Is that something you are assuming or something you are proving? I am conclusively proving that science, scientists and novel technology are literally scientific proof that phenomenality is a real, natural process in need of explanation. The whole world admits to the 'hard problem'. For 2500 years! The new physics is something I am proving is necessarily there to be found. Not what it is but merely that it a new way of thinking is needed. It is the permission we need to scientifically explore the underlying reality of the universe. That is what this is saying. Phenomenality is evidence of something causal of it. That causality is NOT that depicted by the appearances it delivers or we'd already predict it! Our total inability to predict it and total dependence on it for scientific evidence is proof that allowing youself to explore universes causalof phenomenality that is also causal of atoms and scientists is the new physics rule-set to find - and it is NOT the physics rule-set delivered by using the appearances thus delivered. The two are intimately related and equally valid, just not about the same point of view. Colin Hales
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Scientific behaviour demanded of the zombie condition is a clearly identifiable behavioural benchmark where we can definitely claim that phenomenality is necessary...see below... It is all to easy to consider scientific behaviour without phenomenality. Scientist looks at test-tube -- scientist makes note in lab journal... 'Looks' with what? Eyes, etc. Scientist has no vision system. A Zombie scientist has a complete visual system except for whatever it is that causes phenomenality.since we don't know what it is, we can imagine a zombie scientist as having a complete neural system for processing vision. There are eyes and optic chiasm, LGN and all that. But no visual scene. The scientist is blind. The zombie scientist is a functional duplicate. The zombie scientist will behave as though it sees. It will also behave the same in novel situations -- or it would not be a functional duplicate. Oh god. here we go again. I have to comply with the strictures of a philosophical zombie or I'm not saying anything. I wish I'd never mentioned the damned word. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: SNIP No confusion at all. The zombie is behaving. 'Wide awake' in the sense that it is fully functional. Well, adaptive behaviour -- dealing with novelty --- is functioning. Yes - but I'm not talking about merely functioning. I am talking about the specialised function called scientific behaviour in respect of the natural world outside. The adaptive behaviour you speak of is adaptivity in respect of adherence or otherwise to an internal rule set, not adaptation in respect of the natural world outside. BTW 'Adaptive' means change, change means novelty has occurred. If you have no phenopmenality you must already have a rule as to how to adapt to all change - ergo you know everything already. So you deny that life has adapted through Darwinian evolution. Brent Meeker Adaptation in KNOWLEDGE? Adaptation in reflex behaviour? Adaptation in the creature's hardware? Adaptation in the capacity the learn? All different. Dead end. No more. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: But you have no way to know whether phenomenal scenes are created by a particular computer/robot/program or not because it's just mystery property defined as whatever creates phenomenal scenes. You're going around in circles. At some point you need to anchor your theory to an operational definition. OK. There is a proven mystery calle dthe hard problem. Documented to death and beyond. It is discussed in documents - but it is not documented and it is not proven. It's enshrined in encylopedias! yes it's a problem We don;t know. It was #2 in big questions in science mag last year. It is predicted (by Bruno to take a nearby example) that a physical system that replicates the functions of a human (or dog) brain at the level of neural activity and receives will implement phenomenal consciousness. Then the proposition should be able to say exactly where, why and how. It can't, it hasn't. Where is in the brain. Science doesn't usually answer why questions except in the general sense of evolutionary adaptation. How? we don't know exactly. But having an unanswered question doesn't constitute a deep mystery that demands new physics. is that the physics (rule set) of appearances and the physics (rule set) of the universe capable of generating appearances are not the same rule set! That the universe is NOT made of its appearance, it's made of something _with_ an appearance that is capable of making an appearance generator. It is a commonplace that the ontology of physics may be mistaken (that's how science differs from religion) and hence one can never be sure that his theory refers to what's really real - but that's the best bet. Yes but in order that you be mistaken you have to be aware you have made a mistake, Do you ever read what you write? That sounds like something Geore W. Bush believes. which means admitting you have missed something. The existence of an apparently unsolvable problem... isn;t that a case for that kind of behaviour? (see below to see what science doesn't know it doesn't know about itself) That's it. Half the laws of physics are going neglected merely because we won't accept phenomenal consciousness ITSELF as evidence of anything. We accept it as evidence of extremely complex neural activity - can you demonstrate it is not? You have missed the point again. a) We demand CONTENTS OF phenomenal consciousness (that which is perceived) as all scientific evidence. but B) we do NOT accept phenomenal consciousness ITSELF, perceiving as scientific evidence of anything. Sure we do. We accept it as evidence of our evolutionary adaptation to survival on Earth. Evidence (a) is impotent to explain (b). That's your assertion - but repeating it over an over doesn't add anything to its support. Maybe some new physics is implied by consciousness (as in Penrose's suggestion) or a complete revolution (as in Burno's UD), but it is far from proven. I don't see even a suggestion from you - just repeated complaints that we're not recognizing the need for some new element and claims that you've proven we need one. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Le Dimanche 26 Novembre 2006 22:54, Colin Geoffrey Hales a écrit : SNIP What point is there in bothering with it. The philosophical zombie is ASSUMED to be equivalent! This is failure before you even start! It's wrong and it's proven wrong because there is a conclusively logically and empirically provable function that the zombie cannot possibly do without phenomenality: SCIENCE. The philosophical zombie would have to know everything a-priori, which makes science meaningless. There is no novelty to a philosophical zombie. It would have to anticipate all forms of randomness or chaotic behaviour NUTS. But that's exactly what all the arguments is about !! Either identical functionnal behavior entails consciousness either there is some magical property needed plus identical functionnal behavior to entails consciousness. This is failure before you even start! But the point is to assume this nonsense to take a conclusion, to see where it leads. Why imagine a possible zombie which is functionnally identical if there weren't any dualistic view in the first place ! Only in dualistic framework it is possible to imagine a functionnally equivalent to human yet lacking consciousness, the other way is that functionnally equivalence *requires* consciousness (you can't have functionnally equivalence without consciousness). This is failure before you even start! That's what you're doing... you haven't prove that zombie can't do science because the zombie point is not on what they can do or not, it is the fact that either acting like we act (human way) entails necessarily to have consciousness or it does not (meaning that there exists an extra property beyond behavior, an extra thing undetectable from seeing/living/speaking/... with the zombie that gives rise to consciousness)L. You haven't prove that zombie can't do science because you tells it at the starting of the argument. The argument should be weither or not it is possible to have a *complete* *functionnal* (human) replica yet lacking consciousness. Quentin Scientist_A does science. Scientist_A closes his eyes and finds the ability to do science radically altered. Continue the process and you eliminate all scientific behaviour. The failure of scientific behaviour correlates perfectly with the lack of phenomenal cosnciousness. Empirical fact: Human scientists have phenomenal consciousness also Phenomenal consciousness is the source of all our scientific evidence ergo Phenomenal consciousness exists and is sufficient and necessary for human scientific behaviour No need to mention zombies, sorry I ever did. No more times round the loop, thanks. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: You are a zombie. What is it about sensory data that suggests an external world? What is it about sensory data that suggests an external world to human? Nothing. That's the point. That's why we incorporate the usage of natural world properties to contextualise it in the external world. Huh??? Called phenomenal consciousuness..that makes us not a zombie. That's not what phenomenal consciousness means...or usually means... Well, of course, we have a phenomenal view. Bu there is no informtion in the phenomenal display that was not first in the pre-phenomenal sensory data. Yes there is. Mountains of it. It's just that the mechanism and the need for it is not obvious to you. Things that don't exist tend not to be obvious. Some aspects of the external world must be recruited to some extent in the production of the visual field, for example. None of the real spatial relative location qualities, for example, are inherent in the photons hitting the retina. Same with the spatial nature of a sound field. That data is added through the mechanisms for generation of phenomenality. It's not added. It's already there. It needs to be made explicit. The science you can do is the science of zombie sense data, not an external world. What does of mean in that sentence? Human science is based on human phenomenality which is based on pre-phenomenal sense data, and contains nothing beyond it informationally. No, science is NOT done on pre-phenomenal sense data. It is done on the phenomenal scene. Which in turn is derived from sense data. If A is informative about B and B is informative about C, A is informative about C. This is physiological fact. Close you eyes and see how much science you can do. That shuts off sense-data , not just phenomenality. I don;t seem to be getting this obvious simple thing past the pre-judgements. Humans unconsciously make guesses about the causal origins of their sense-data in order to construct the phenomenal view, which is then subjected to further educated guesswork as part of the scientific process (which make contradict the original guesswork, as in the detection of illusions) No they unconsciously generate a phenomenal field an then make judgements from it. Again close your eyes and explore what affect it has on your judgements. Hard-coded a-priori reflex system such as those that make the hand-eye reflex work in blindsight are not science and exist nowhere else excpet in reflex bahaviour. In humans. That doesn't mean phenomenality is necessary for adaptive behaviour in other entities. Your hypotheses about an external world would be treated as wild metaphysics by your zombie friends Unless they are doing the same thing. why shouldn't they be? It is function/behaviour afer all. Zombies are suppposed to lack phenomenality, not function. You are stuck on the philosophiocal zombie! Ditch it! Not what we are talking about. The philosophical zombie is an oxymoron. If *you're* not talking about Zombies, why use the word? (none of which you cen ever be aware of, for they are in this external world..., so there's another problem :-) Very tricky stuff, this. The only science you can do is I hypohesise that when I activate this nerve, that sense nerve and this one do this You then publish in nature and collect your prize. (Except the external world this assumes is not there, from your perspective... life is grim for the zombie) Assuming, for some unexplained reasons, that zombies cannot hypothesise about an external world without phenomena. Again you are projecting your experiences onto the zombie. There is no body, no boundary, not NOTHING to the zombie to even conceive of to hypothesise about. They are a toaster, a rock. Then there is no zombie art or zombie work or zombie anything. Why focus on science? We have to admit to this ignorance and accept that we don't know something fundamental about the universe. BTW this means no magic, no ESP, no dualism - just basic physics an explanatory mechanism that is right in front of us that our 'received view' finds invisible. Errr, yes. Or our brains don't access the external world directly. That is your preconception, not mine. It's not a preconception,. There just isn't any evidence of clairvoyance or ESP. Try and imagine the ways in which you would have to think if that make sense of phenomenality. here's one: That there is no such thing as 'space' or 'things' or 'distance' at all. That we are all actually in the same place. You can do this and not violate any laws of nature at all, and it makes phenomenality easy - predictable in brain material the fact that it predicts itself, when nothing else has... now what could that mean? I have no idea what you are talking about. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this
Re: UDA revisited
That's it. Half the laws of physics are going neglected merely because we won't accept phenomenal consciousness ITSELF as evidence of anything. We accept it as evidence of extremely complex neural activity - can you demonstrate it is not? You have missed the point again. a) We demand CONTENTS OF phenomenal consciousness (that which is perceived) as all scientific evidence. but B) we do NOT accept phenomenal consciousness ITSELF, perceiving as scientific evidence of anything. Sure we do. We accept it as evidence of our evolutionary adaptation to survival on Earth. Evdiencde of anything CAUSAL OF PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS. You are quoting evidence (a) at me. Evidence (a) is impotent to explain (b). That's your assertion - but repeating it over an over doesn't add anything to its support. It is logically impossible for apparent causality depicted in objects in phenomenal scenes to betray anything that caused the scene you used. This is like saying you conclude the objects in the image in a mirror caused the reflecting surface that is the mirror. This is NOT just assertion. Empirical evidence derives no necessity for causal relationships NAGEL Well proven. Accepted. Not mine. All empirical science is like this there is no causality in any of it. Phenomenality is CAUSED by something. Whatever that is, is caused all our empirical evidence. Maybe some new physics is implied by consciousness (as in Penrose's suggestion) or a complete revolution (as in Burno's UD), but it is far from proven. I don't see even a suggestion from you - just repeated complaints that we're not recognizing the need for some new element and claims that you've proven we need one. Brent Meeker OK. Well I'll just get on with making my chips then. I have been exploring the physics in question for some time now and it pointed me at exactly the right place in brain material. I am just trying to get people to make the first steps I did. It involves accepting that you don't know everything and that exactly what you don't know is why our universe produces phenomenality. There is an anomaly in our evidence system which is an indicator af how to change. That anomaly means that investigating underlying realities consistent with the causal production of phenomenal conciousness is viable science. The thing is you have to actually do it to get anywhere. Killing your darlings is not easy. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Le Dimanche 26 Novembre 2006 22:54, Colin Geoffrey Hales a écrit : SNIP What point is there in bothering with it. The philosophical zombie is ASSUMED to be equivalent! This is failure before you even start! It's wrong and it's proven wrong because there is a conclusively logically and empirically provable function that the zombie cannot possibly do without phenomenality: SCIENCE. The philosophical zombie would have to know everything a-priori, which makes science meaningless. There is no novelty to a philosophical zombie. It would have to anticipate all forms of randomness or chaotic behaviour NUTS. But that's exactly what all the arguments is about !! Either identical functionnal behavior entails consciousness either there is some magical property needed plus identical functionnal behavior to entails consciousness. This is failure before you even start! But the point is to assume this nonsense to take a conclusion, to see where it leads. Why imagine a possible zombie which is functionnally identical if there weren't any dualistic view in the first place ! Only in dualistic framework it is possible to imagine a functionnally equivalent to human yet lacking consciousness, the other way is that functionnally equivalence *requires* consciousness (you can't have functionnally equivalence without consciousness). This is failure before you even start! That's what you're doing... you haven't prove that zombie can't do science because the zombie point is not on what they can do or not, it is the fact that either acting like we act (human way) entails necessarily to have consciousness or it does not (meaning that there exists an extra property beyond behavior, an extra thing undetectable from seeing/living/speaking/... with the zombie that gives rise to consciousness)L. You haven't prove that zombie can't do science because you tells it at the starting of the argument. The argument should be weither or not it is possible to have a *complete* *functionnal* (human) replica yet lacking consciousness. Quentin Scientist_A does science. Scientist_A closes his eyes and finds the ability to do science radically altered. Continue the process and you eliminate all scientific behaviour. The failure of scientific behaviour correlates perfectly with the lack of phenomenal cosnciousness. Closing your eyes cuts of sensory data as well. So: not proven. Empirical fact: Human scientists have phenomenal consciousness also Phenomenal consciousness is the source of all our scientific evidence ergo Phenomenal consciousness exists and is sufficient and necessary for human scientific behaviour Doesn't follow. the fact that you use X to do Y doesn't make Z necessary for Y. Something else could be used instead. legs and locomotion... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
The discussion has run its course. It has taught me a lot about the sorts of issues and mindsets involved. It has also given me the idea for the methodological-zombie-room, which I will now write up. Maybe it will depict the circumstances and role of phenomenality better than I have thus far. Meanwhile I'd ask you to think about what sort of universe could make it that if matter (A) acts 'as if' it intereacted with matter (B), that it literally reified aspects of that interaction, even though matter (B) does not exist. For that is what I propose constitutes the phenomenal scenes. It happens in brain material at the membranes of appropriately configured neurons and astrocytes. Matter (B) is best classed as virtual bosons. Just have a think about how that might be and what the universe that does that might be made of. It's not made of the things depicted by the virtual bosons. cheers, colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: UDA revisited
On Nov 26, 11:50 pm, 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why use the word if you don't like the concept? I've been away for a bit and I can't pretend to have absorbed all the nuances of this thread but I have some observations. 1. To coherently conceive that a PZ which is a *functional* (not physical) duplicate can nonetheless lack PC - and for this to make any necessary difference to its possible behaviour - we must believe that the PZ thereby lacks some crucial information. 2. Such missing information consequently can't be captured by any purely *functional* description (however defined) of the non-PZ original. 3. Hence having PC must entail the possession and utilisation of information which *in principle* is not functionally (3-person) describable, but which, in *instantiating* 3-person data, permits it to be contextualised, differentiated, and actioned in a manner not reproducible by any purely functional (as opposed to constructable) analog. Now this seems to tally with what Colin is saying about the crucial distinction between the *content* of PC and whatever is producing it. It implies that whatever is producing it isn't reducible to sharable 3-person quanta. This seems also (although I may be confused) to square with Bruno's claims for COMP that the sharable 3-person emerges from (i.e. is instantiated by) the 1-person level. As he puts it -'quanta are sharable qualia'. IOW, the observable - quanta - is the set of possible transactions between functionally definable entities instantiated at a deeper level of representation (the constitutive level). This is why we see brains not minds. It seems to me that the above, or something like it, must be true if we are to take the lessons of the PZ to heart. IOW, the information instantiated by PC is in principle inaccessible to a PZ because the specification of the PZ as a purely functional 3-person analog is unable to capture the necessary constitutive information. The specification is at the wrong level. It's like trying to physically generate a new computer by simply running more and more complex programs on the old one. It's only by *constructing* a physical duplicate (or some equivalent physical analog) that the critical constitutive - or instantiating - information can be captured. We have to face it. We won't find PC 'out there' - if we could, it would (literally) be staring us in the face. I think what Colin is trying to do is to discover how we can still do science on PC despite the fact that whatever is producing it isn't capturable by 'the observables', but rather only in the direct process and experience of observation itself. David Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: SNIP No confusion at all. The zombie is behaving. 'Wide awake' in the sense that it is fully functional. Well, adaptive behaviour -- dealing with novelty --- is functioning. Yes - but I'm not talking about merely functioning. I am talking about the specialised function called scientific behaviour in respect of the natural world outside.You assume, but have no shown, that it is in a class of its own. The adaptive behaviour you speak of is adaptivity in respect of adherence or otherwise to an internal rule set, not adaptation in respect of the natural world outside.False dichotomy. Any adaptive system adapts under the influence under the influence of external impacts, and there are always some underlying rules, if only the rules of physics. BTW 'Adaptive' means change, change means novelty has occurred. If you have no phenopmenality you must already have a rule as to how to adapt to all change - ergo you know everything already.Rules to adapt to change don't have to stipulate novel inputs in advance. I spent tens of thousands of hours designing, building, benchtesting and commissioning zombies. On the benchtop I have pretended to be their environment and they had no 'awareness' they weren't in their real environment. It's what makes bench testing possible. The universe of the zombies was the universe of my programming. The zombies could not tell if they were in the factory or on the benchtop. That's why I can empathise so well with zombie life. I have been literally swatted by zombies (robot/cranes and other machines) like I wasn't therescares the hell out of you! Some even had 'vision systems' but were still blind. soyes the zombie can 'behave'. What I am claiming is they cannot do _science_ i.e. they cannot behave scientifically. This is a very specific claim, not a general claim. I see nothing to support it. I have already showed you conclusive empirical evidence you can demonstrate on yourself.No you haven't. Zombies aren't blind in the sense of not being able to see at all,. You are just juggling different definitions of Zombie. Perhaps the 'zombie room' will do it. - it's all the same - action potential pulse trains traveling from sensors to brain. No,
RE: UDA revisited
Of course they are analogue devices, but their analogue nature makes no difference to the computation. If the ripple in the power supply of a TTL circuit were 4 volts then the computer's true analogue nature would intrude and it would malfunction. Stathis Papaioannou Of course you are right..The original intent of my statement was to try and correct any mental misunderstandings about the difference between the real piece of material manipulating charge and the notional 'digital' abstraction represented by it. I hope I did that. Colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: UDA revisited
Colin Hales writes: The very fact that the laws of physics, derived and validated using phenomenality, cannot predict or explain how appearances are generated is proof that the appearance generator is made of something else and that something else else is the reality involved, which is NOT appearances, but independent of them. I know that will sound weird... The only science you can do is I hypothesise that when I activate this nerve, that sense nerve and this one do this And I call regularities in my perceptions the external world, which becomes so familiar to me that I forget it is a hypothesis. Except that in time, as people realise what I just said above, the hypothesis has some emprical support: If the universe were made of appearances when we opened up a cranium we'd see them. We don't. We see something generating/delivering them - a brain. That difference is the proof. I don't really understand this. We see that chemical reactions in the brain generate consciousness, so why not stop at that? In Gilbert Ryle's words, the mind is what the brain does. It's mysterious, and it's not well understood, but it's still just chemistry. If I am to do more I must have a 'learning rule'. Who tells me the learning rule? This is a rule of interpretation. That requires context. Where does the context come from? There is none. That is the situation of the zombie. I do need some rules or knowledge to begin with if I am to get anywhere with interpreting sense data. You do NOT interpret sense data! In consciuous activity you interpret the phenomenal scene generated using the sense data. Habituated/unconscious reflex behaviour with fixed rules uses sense data directly. You could equally well argue that my computer does not interpret keystrokes, nor the electrical impulses that travel to it from the keyboard, but rather it creates a phenomenal scene in RAM based on those keystrokes. Think about driving home on a well travelled route. You don't even know how you got home. Yet if something unusual happened on the drive - ZAP - phenomenality kicks in and phenomenal consciousness handles the novelty. If something unusual happens I'll try to match it as closely as I can to something I have already encountered and act accordingly. If it's like nothing I've ever encountered before I guess I'll do something random, and on the basis of the effect this has decide what I will do next time I encounter the same situation. With living organisms, evolution provides this knowledge Evolution provided a) a learning tool(brain) that knows how to learn from phenomenal consciousness, which is an adaptive presentation of real external world a-priori knowledge. b) Certain simple reflex behaviours. while with machines the designers provide it. Machine providers do not provide (a) They only provide (b), which includes any adaptivity rules, which are just more rules. Incidentally, you have stated in your paper that novel technology as the end product of scientific endeavour is evidence that other people are not zombies, but how would you explain the very elaborate technology in living organisms, created by zombie evolutionary processes? Stathis Papaioannou Amazing but true. Trial and error. Hypothesis/Test in a brutal live or die laboratory called The Earth Notice that the process selected for phenomenal consciousness early onwhich I predict will eventually be proven to exist in nearly all animal cellular life (vertebrate and invertebrate and even single celled organisms) to some extent. Maybe even in some plant life. 'Technology' is a loaded word...I suppose I mean 'human made' technology. Notice that chairs and digital watches did not evolve independently of humans. Nor did science. Novel technology could be re-termed 'non-DNA based technology, I suppose. A bird flies. So do planes. One is DNA based. The other not DNA based, but created by a DNA based creature called the human. Eventually conscious machines will create novel technology too - including new versions of themselves. It doesn't change any part of the propositions I make - just contextualises them inside a fascinating story. The point is a process that is definitely non-conscious, i.e. evolution, produces novel machines, some of which are themselves conscious at that. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at
RE: UDA revisited
Colin Hales writes: OK. There is a proven mystery called the hard problem. Documented to death and beyond. Call it Physics X. It is the physics that _predicts_ (NOT DESCRIBES) phenomenal consciousness (PC). We have, through all my fiddling about with scientists, conclusive scientific evidence PC exists and is necessary for science. So what next? You say to yourself... none of the existing laws of physics predict PC. Therefore my whole conception of how I understand the universe scientifically must be missing something fundamental. Absolutely NONE of what we know is part of it. What could that be?. The hard problem is not that we haven't discovered the physics that explains consciousness, it is that no such explanation is possible. Whatever Physics X is, it is still possible to ask, Yes, but how can a blind man who understands Physics X use it to know what it is like to see? As far as the hard problem goes, Physics X (if there is such a thing) is no more of an advance than knowing which neurons fire when a subject has an experience. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
