RE: COMP Self-awareness
Russell Standish writes: Consciousnessisthestateof"beinglikesomething"touseNagel's term.Itisalsothecharacteristicofthe"referenceclass"in Anthropicreasoning. Self-awarenessisbeingawareofoneselfasadistinctthingdifferent fromtheenvironment. Itisnotimmediatelyobviousthattheseareidentical-butperhaps I'moverlookingsomething. I always took it for granted that they were the much the same. I supposeI can be conscious without actively being self-aware, but a moment's reflection will indicate that there is an "I" if I'm having any sort of experience. The mysterious thing is raw conscious experience: if you can explain that, the idea that "I am a thinking being separate from my environment" isn'tfundamentally different to any other idea you might have. Stathis PapaioannouBe one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Bruno's argument
Le 24-juil.-06, à 09:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : x-tad-bigger It's only a coincidence in the literal sense of the word, i.e. two things happening simultaneously. My point was to explore the idea of supervenience, which (to me, at any rate) at first glance seems a mysterious process, and we should cut mysterious processes from our theories whenever possible: entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. Computations exist eternally as mathematical objects, regardless of whether there is a physical world or not. /x-tad-bigger OK. x-tad-biggerBut certain computations are selected out through being isomorphic with physical structures and processes (or simulations thereof): /x-tad-bigger I would have said that certain computations are selected out by giving high relative measure for locally stable consciousness experiences, and then those relative computations will defined what is physical from inside. this explains (or at least makes it possible to explain) why apparent physical laws are isomorphic to mathematical laws. The physical would be the mathematical as seen from inside by mathematical entities. x-tad-biggera parabola, the number three, a mind. We are happy to say that the first two of these are not caused by physical processes even when they manifest as if they are, and I think the same consideration can be applied to mind. What physical structures consciousness is isomorphic with and why is another question. /x-tad-bigger Consciousness would be isomorphic with relative or conditional average on *all* computations, which can be made matematical by Church Thesis. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: COMP Self-awareness
Le 24-juil.-06, à 13:56, Russell Standish a écrit : Consciousness is the state of being like something to use Nagel's term. It is also the characteristic of the reference class in Anthropic reasoning. Self-awareness is being aware of oneself as a distinct thing different from the environment. It is not immediately obvious that these are identical - but perhaps I'm overlooking something. I am pretty sure consciousness and self-awareness are different concept. But we are a long way to distinguishing them theoretically at the present stage, so I would say that to insist on the difference here is akin to a 1004 fallacy, imo. The difference you are mentioning is the difference between awareness and self-awareness, or between consciousness and self-consciousness I would say, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: COMP Self-awareness
On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 11:46:08AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 24-juil.-06, à 13:56, Russell Standish a écrit : Consciousness is the state of being like something to use Nagel's term. It is also the characteristic of the reference class in Anthropic reasoning. Self-awareness is being aware of oneself as a distinct thing different from the environment. It is not immediately obvious that these are identical - but perhaps I'm overlooking something. I am pretty sure consciousness and self-awareness are different concept. But we are a long way to distinguishing them theoretically at the present stage, so I would say that to insist on the difference here is akin to a 1004 fallacy, imo. The difference you are mentioning is the difference between awareness and self-awareness, or between consciousness and self-consciousness I would say, Bruno Are they different or not? If we use different words for them, that indicates that there is a difference. I wasn't satisfied with Stathis's answer, but there has to be some reason why consciousness cannot appear without self-awareness. Otherwise the Occam catastrophe will bring down all of Platonia on our heads! Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Occam
On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 11:42:35AM -0400, John M wrote: Russell, you mentioned the 'razor'man and I know you are a proven expert in Occamistic ideas. So I ask for your opinion: Is Occam's razor-thing not a perfect action of increasing the reductionist limitations of a problem? In 'cutting off' the 'nonessential' (pardon me for my layish expressions) and copncentrate on the 'essence' we DO narrow the model of our observation even further than it was. Indeed a 'limited model' is a razor-cut topically partialized view of an otherwise unlimited interconnection which would be beyond our present capabilities to comprehend. Model-view (=the sciences, our common sense, our ways of thinking etc.) is the useful tool for the evolving human views and knowledege base, however with the caveat that it cuts off connections - MAYBE of importance. That may lead to the paradoxes and misconceptions, when we consider the model 'as a total' and draw conclulsions from in-model observation onto the totality. Did 'Occam' not just increased the cut-off? Razoring does facilitate a conclusion on the topic in question, but there may be relations of importance we miss. In my 'wholistic' agnosticism: John M I don't think Occam's razor has anything to do with reductionism. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: COMP Self-awareness
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 1:39 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: COMP Self-awareness snip, sorry I'd say it's the other way around. Self-awareness can't appear without consciousness. My dog is conscious in that he knows his name and he knows he's different from my wife's dog, whose name he also knows. But I don't think he has the reflexive self-awareness of a human being, an inner narrative. I don't see how you could have self-awareness without being conscious, but I'm often conscious without being self-aware. Brent Meeker The obscuring factor here is of the two sorts of self awareness that might benefit from elaboration. First is the collection of phenomenal fields (the visual field, for example). The scenes they provide in our head are centered on us as cognitive agents. The emotion of thirst, for example, is an Omni directional, isotropic, homogenous scene (you don't get thirsty in front or behind!, its uniform and spherically delivered.). The visual scene is highly anisotropic and inhomogenous. The 'self' in phenomenal scenes is implicit in that the scene is constructed to appear to be centred on us. But beyond that _within_ the scene can be a representation of our own body, once again appropriately delivered centred. Out of body experiences are when the scene centering system gets moved. We may then get an entirely different depiction of our complete self and still know (in the sense to follow below) that it is 'me', my 'self'. Secondly, completely separate to the phenomenal scenes, but generated from them via the action of extracting perceived regularities (what the brain does really well) is knowledge. This knowledge is only made apparent in behaviour - even such simple behaviour as the reporting of a belief (such as recognition of a name). Within the complete collection of beliefs (which are entirely devoid of phenomenal content) is a set of beliefs about self to an arbitrary level of complexity. a) Phenomenal awareness (experience inclusive of a self model) And b) Psychological awareness (knowledge inclusive of a self model) The latter is derived from the former. Call them primary and secondary self awareness? Dunno. As to what 'consciousness' might be? I'd say that if a cognitive agent has (a) at all then consciousness is present, regardless of the self-representation and regardless of the extent of (b). Conversely, no matter how complex a cognitive agent's (b) is and regardless of the complexity of the self model a creature devoid of (a) is a zombie deserved of the status of a household appliance. No matter how complex a self model there is in (b) the creature has zero internal life. It does not know it is anywhere. It may to some extent be able to act 'as-if' it had an internal life, but it's just acting - an attribution bestowed by a non-zombie with some (a). By the way...the physiological evidence for this division is summarised nicely in a 'consciousness studies' context in a recent book by Derek Denton which tracks primordial emotions out of the neo-cortex into small neural cohorts in the ancient basal brain structures. Primordial emotions are the emotions of internal body life-support such as breathlessness, hunger etc. Creatures without a neo-cortex can have (a) with minimal (b) and therefore have experiences and are conscious, just not very conscious. No self model necessary, just minimal reflex behaviour. Derek Denton, The Primordial Emotions: The dawning of consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2005 (Bruno: it came out first in French!) That help? 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: COMP Self-awareness
Colin Hales wrote: -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 1:39 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: COMP Self-awareness snip, sorry I'd say it's the other way around. Self-awareness can't appear without consciousness. My dog is conscious in that he knows his name and he knows he's different from my wife's dog, whose name he also knows. But I don't think he has the reflexive self-awareness of a human being, an inner narrative. I don't see how you could have self-awareness without being conscious, but I'm often conscious without being self-aware. Brent Meeker The obscuring factor here is of the two sorts of self awareness that might benefit from elaboration. First is the collection of phenomenal fields (the visual field, for example). The scenes they provide in our head are centered on us as cognitive agents. The emotion of thirst, for example, is an Omni directional, isotropic, homogenous scene (you don't get thirsty in front or behind!, its uniform and spherically delivered.). The visual scene is highly anisotropic and inhomogenous. The 'self' in phenomenal scenes is implicit in that the scene is constructed to appear to be centred on us. But beyond that _within_ the scene can be a representation of our own body, once again appropriately delivered centred. Out of body experiences are when the scene centering system gets moved. We may then get an entirely different depiction of our complete self and still know (in the sense to follow below) that it is 'me', my 'self'. Secondly, completely separate to the phenomenal scenes, but generated from them via the action of extracting perceived regularities (what the brain does really well) is knowledge. This knowledge is only made apparent in behaviour - even such simple behaviour as the reporting of a belief (such as recognition of a name). Within the complete collection of beliefs (which are entirely devoid of phenomenal content) is a set of beliefs about self to an arbitrary level of complexity. a) Phenomenal awareness (experience inclusive of a self model) And b) Psychological awareness (knowledge inclusive of a self model) The latter is derived from the former. Call them primary and secondary self awareness? Dunno. As to what 'consciousness' might be? I'd say that if a cognitive agent has (a) at all then consciousness is present, regardless of the self-representation and regardless of the extent of (b). Conversely, no matter how complex a cognitive agent's (b) is and regardless of the complexity of the self model a creature devoid of (a) is a zombie deserved of the status of a household appliance. No matter how complex a self model there is in (b) the creature has zero internal life. It does not know it is anywhere. It may to some extent be able to act 'as-if' it had an internal life, but it's just acting - an attribution bestowed by a non-zombie with some (a). By the way...the physiological evidence for this division is summarised nicely in a 'consciousness studies' context in a recent book by Derek Denton which tracks primordial emotions out of the neo-cortex into small neural cohorts in the ancient basal brain structures. Primordial emotions are the emotions of internal body life-support such as breathlessness, hunger etc. Creatures without a neo-cortex can have (a) with minimal (b) and therefore have experiences and are conscious, just not very conscious. No self model necessary, just minimal reflex behaviour. Derek Denton, The Primordial Emotions: The dawning of consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2005 (Bruno: it came out first in French!) That help? Colin Hales Maybe...with some more explication. You're saying that phenomenal awareness (a) is perception that includes a model of oneself as the percipient. But I don't see what (b) is?...knowing you're six foot tall and live in California? Have you read any of John McCarthy's essays (see his website) on making a conscious robot? If a robot knows where it is (say via GPS) and senses its surroundigs (say by IR cameras) then it's got consciousness (a). If it also knows it weighs 5000lbs and has enough fuel to go 200miles it's got consciousness (b) (I'm not just making these up - they're things a vehicle in the DARPA challenge would have). Now suppose that it also has a memory of what obstacles it crossed in the past and which ones it failed to cross; and when it detects a new obstacle it uses this memory to decide whether to go around or not. What kind of consciousness is that? 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,
Interested in thoughts on this excerpt from Martin Rees
Which approximates my ideas on the nature of reality and the possible role of intelligence. (MARTIN REES:) This is a really good time to be a cosmologist, because in the last few years some of the questions we've been addressing for decades have come into focus. For instance, we can now say what the main ingredients of the universe are: it's made of 4% atoms, about 25% dark matter, and 71% mysterious dark energy latent in empty space. That's settled a question that we've wondered about, certainly the entire 35 years I've been doing cosmology. We also know the shape of space. The universe is 'flat'in the technical sense that the angles of even very large triangles add up to 180 degrees. This is an important result that we couldn't have stated with confidence two years ago. So a certain phase in cosmology is now over. But as in all of science, when you make an advance, you bring a new set of questions into focus. And there are really two quite separate sets of questions that we are now focusing on. One set of questions addresses the more 'environmental' side of the subjectwe're trying to understand how, from an initial Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, the universe has transformed itself into the immensely complex cosmos we see around us, of stars and galaxies, etc.; how around some of those stars and planets arose; and how on at least one planet, around at least one star, a biological process got going, and led to atoms assembling into creatures like ourselves, able to wonder about it all. That's an unending questto understand how the simplicity led to complexity. To answer it requires ever more computer modeling, and data in all wavebands from ever more sensitive telescopes. Another set of questions that come into focus are the following: Why is the universe expanding the way it is? Why does it have the rather arbitrary mix of ingredients? Why is it governed by the particular set of laws which seem to prevail in it, and which physicists study? These are issues where we can now offer a rather surprising new perspective. The traditional idea has been that the laws of nature are somehow unique; they're given, and are 'there' in a platonic sense independent of the universe which somehow originates and follows those laws. I've been puzzled for a long time about why the laws of nature are set up in such a way that they allow complexity. That's an enigma because we can easily imagine laws of nature which weren't all that different from the ones we observe, but which would have led to a rather boring universelaws which led to a universe containing dark matter and no atoms; laws where you perhaps had hydrogen atoms but nothing more complicated, and therefore no chemistry; laws where there was no gravity, or a universe where gravity was so strong that it crushed everything; or the lifetime was so short that there was no time for evolution. It always seemed to me a mystery why the universe was, as it were, 'biophilic'why it had laws that allowed this amount of complexity. To give an analogy from mathematics, think of the Mandelbrot Set; there's a fairly simple formula, a simple recipe that you can write down, which describes this amazingly complicated pattern, with layer upon layer of structure. Now you could also write down other rather similar-looking recipes, similar algorithms, which describe a rather boring pattern. What has always seemed to me a mystery is why the recipe, or code, that determined our universe had these rich consequences, just as the algorithms of the Mandelbrot set rather than describing something rather boring, in which nothing as complicated as us could exist. For about 20 years I've suspected that the answer to this question is that perhaps our universe isn't unique. Perhaps, even, the laws are not unique. Perhaps there were many Big Bangs which expanded in different ways, governed by different laws, and we are just in the one that has the right conditions. This thought in some respect parallels the way our concept of planets and planetary systems has changed. People used to wonder: why is the earth in this rather special orbit around this rather special star, which allows water to exist or allows life to evolve? It looks somehow fine-tuned. We now perceive nothing remarkable in this, because we know that there are millions of stars with retinues of planets around them: among that huge number there are bound to be some that have the conditions right for life. We just happen to live on one of that small subset. So there's no mystery about the fine-tuned nature of the earth's orbit; it's just that life evolved on one of millions of planets where things were right. It now seems an attractive idea that our Big Bang is just one of many: just as our earth is a planet that happens to have the right conditions for life, among the many many planets that exist, so our universe, and our Big Bang, is the one out of many which happens to allow
RE: Bruno's argument
Bruno Marchal writes (quoting SP): But certain computations are selected out through being isomorphic with physical structures and processes (or simulations thereof): I would have said that certain computations are selected out by giving high relative measure for locally stable consciousness experiences, and then those relative computations will defined what is physical from inside. this explains (or at least makes it possible to explain) why apparent physical laws are isomorphic to mathematical laws. The physical would be the mathematical as seen from inside by mathematical entities. I think I understand what you mean. If we say there is a physical world for the sake of argument, and then the whole thing suddenly disappears, there would be no way for a conscious being to know that anything had changed, because the computations underpinning his consciousness are unaffected: they still give the impression of a physical world. So the existence of a physical world somehow separate from mere mathematical entities is an unnecessary hypothesis. a parabola, the number three, a mind. We are happy to say that the first two of these are not caused by physical processes even when they manifest as if they are, and I think the same consideration can be applied to mind. What physical structures consciousness is isomorphic with and why is another question. Consciousness would be isomorphic with relative or conditional average on *all* computations, which can be made matematical by Church Thesis. This sounds right, but I have absolutely no idea where to start when we are talking about computations underlying consciousness. As Russell asked, why does it appear that they emanate from complex structures called brains? Why don't we perceive ourselves to be disembodied spirits, or to have heads solid like a potato? 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
