Re: The hard problem of matter

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 12:27:31 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 12:15 PM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
>
> >>You can't do metaphysics with a scientific attitude, if you could it 
>>> wouldn't be metaphysics, it would just be physics. Metaphysics means 
>>> unscientific speculation about physics.
>>
>>  
>
> *>That is why I prefer the term theology.*
>>
>
> That's pretty silly, metaphysics is a vastly better word to use in 
> philosophical speculation. Both metaphysics and theology are unscientific 
> but theology necessarily implies God while metaphysics doesn't.  
>  
>
>> > *Of course I always mean “fundamental science”.*
>>
>
> Theology isn't science, fundamental or otherwise. 
>  
>
>> *> The original question of the greeks* [.
>>
>
> Sorry, I didn't hear what you said after that, I fell asleep.
>
> John K Clark 
>
>  
>

 

Those in the pragmatist tradition of *Richard Rorty* 
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty ] (if a decade is enough for 
a "tradition" to be established) might say if physics (or scientific 
theories generally) is [useful] fiction, metaphysics is fictional 
criticism. 

- pt

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Re: The hard problem of matter

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 12:15 PM Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>>You can't do metaphysics with a scientific attitude, if you could it
>> wouldn't be metaphysics, it would just be physics. Metaphysics means
>> unscientific speculation about physics.
>
>

*>That is why I prefer the term theology.*
>

That's pretty silly, metaphysics is a vastly better word to use in
philosophical speculation. Both metaphysics and theology are unscientific
but theology necessarily implies God while metaphysics doesn't.


> > *Of course I always mean “fundamental science”.*
>

Theology isn't science, fundamental or otherwise.


> *> The original question of the greeks* [.
>

Sorry, I didn't hear what you said after that, I fell asleep.

John K Clark





>



>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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Re: The hard problem of matter

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 12:09:13 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:32 PM Philip Thrift  > wrote:
>
>
>
> >There is something to there being two fields with their own conferences: 
>> AI (Artificial *Intelligence*) and AC (Artificial *Consciousness* 
>
>
> An Artificial Consciousness Conference would be remarkably dull because 
> there would be no way to prove or disprove any of the theories presented. 
> That's why this list has so many consciousness theories and so few 
> intelligence theories; intelligence theories are vastly harder to come up 
> with because they actually have to do something, make a testable prediction 
> and explain things. Consciousness is easy intelligence is hard. 
>
> John K Clark
>
>

Maybe we should all go to the next TSC conference. :) I might even send a 
paper!

Congress Center - Interlaken, Switzerland

 

*The Science of Consciousness 2019* will be held at the Congress Center 
Interlaken, a small town with great reputation in the center of 
Switzerland. Interlaken is located between lakes and mountains, close to 
the famous "Top of Europe" at Jungfraujoch, Europe's highest train station 
at more than 10'000 feet above sea level. 


Important Dates

   - 05 November 2018 - registration, hotel reservation system, and 
   abstract submission opens
   - 11 January 2019 - deadline for abstract submission & early registration
   - 01 February 2019 - author notification 
   - 20 April 2019 - hotel reservation system closes 
   - 10 May 2019 - registration closes 

25-28  June 2019 - The Science of Consciousness, Congress Center 
Interlaken  


Paper:

neurobiocompiler:
   conscious agent program → conscious agent (object)


[image: 類]
- pt 

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Re: The hard problem of matter

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 11:19:15 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 9 Oct 2018, at 20:18, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 9:05:27 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 7 Oct 2018, at 20:00, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 10:35:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7 Oct 2018, at 15:55, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Matter is a mystery. Some think that there's a hard problem of 
>>> consciousness [1]. But actually, there's a hard problem of matter [2,3].
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
>>> [2] 
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html
>>> [3] http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious :
>>>
>>> *When we look at what physics tells us about the brain, we actually just 
>>> find software—purely a set of relations—all the way down. *
>>>
>>>
>>> Are you not confusing the theories (which can be see as a sort of 
>>> software, although not necessarily computable) and what the theories are 
>>> supposed to be about, which might be some “ontological real field” of 
>>> something?
>>>
>>> Mechanism assumes we can truncate the “all the way down” so as to be 
>>> able to “save our soul” temporarily on a disk. This salvation is relative 
>>> to some reality/computation(s).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *And consciousness is in fact more like hardware, because of its 
>>> distinctly qualitative, non-structural properties. For this reason, 
>>> conscious experiences are just the kind of things that physical structure 
>>> could be the structure of.*
>>>
>>>
>>> I see your point, but find it very weird. You make consciousness into an 
>>> inert sort of substance. I don’t think this solves the hard problem of 
>>> consciousness nor the hard problem of matter. It identify again the too, 
>>> without justifying where that come from.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Given this solution to the hard problem of matter, the hard problem of 
>>> consciousness all but dissolves. There is no longer any question of how 
>>> consciousness arises from non-conscious matter, because all matter is 
>>> intrinsically conscious. There is no longer a question of how consciousness 
>>> depends on matter, because it is matter that depends on consciousness—as 
>>> relations depend on relata, structure depends on realizer, or software on 
>>> hardware.*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> With mechanism, the mind-body problem is reduced to the problem of 
>>> justifying the appearance of matter from the statistics on all computations 
>>> going through your local and actual (indexically defined, and thus 
>>> relative) computational state. The math has been done, and this provides a 
>>> quantum logic for the “probability one” first person (plural) events. The 
>>> world would have been Newtonian, we would have good reason to suspect 
>>> Mechanism to be false, but quantum mechanics seems, up to now, to look very 
>>> like the computationalist solution of the mind body problem.
>>>
>>> Then, consciousness is only a semantical fixed point of all machines. It 
>>> is, from the first person point of view of the machine, something felt as 
>>> immediately true, indubitable, non justifiable, and non definable.
>>>
>>> I can somehow make sense of what you say, because here the theory of 
>>> consciousness is mainly the modal logic G1*, and the theory of matter is 
>>> Z1*, and it appears that they are bisimilar: so, matter and consciousness 
>>> are not just two modes of arithmetical self-knowledge, but they are 
>>> faithful representation of each other. Now, that is not entirely true, 
>>> because the “indubitability” need a slight different theory (X1*), which is 
>>> NOT bisimilar to G, nor any other self-referential modes.
>>>
>>> I recall;
>>>
>>> G is the modal logic of the arithmetical BEWEISBAR predicate of Gödel. 
>>> It is “provability” (in German), but from incompleteness it is not a 
>>> knowledge predicate, and it behaves more like a relative rational 
>>> justifiability. 
>>>
>>> And G is the provable part of that logic. (First theorem of Solovay)
>>>
>>> The true part, is given by the modal logic G* (Second theorem of 
>>> Solovay).
>>>
>>> The corona G* \ G is the surrational corona, or the proper theological 
>>> part: all what is true but not justifiable (yet perhaps knowable, 
>>> observable, feelable, …).
>>>
>>> G is a normal modal logic, with a Kripke semantics available, and unique 
>>> (main) axiom the formula of Löb:
>>> []([]p -> p) -> []p
>>>
>>> G* has as axioms all theorems of G, + the axioms []p -> p. 
>>>
>>> G1 and G1*, have the axiom p->[]p for p atomic. This captures the 
>>> limitation of the arithmetical formula to the leaves of the universal 
>>> dovetailer (it is the modal version of Mechanism).
>>>
>>> The other modes are given by all the variants offered by incompleteness, 
>>>
>>> like the logic of []p & p, []p & <>t, []p & <>t & p. 

Re: The hard problem of matter

[John Clark]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:32 PM Philip Thrift  wrote:



>There is something to there being two fields with their own conferences:
> AI (Artificial *Intelligence*) and AC (Artificial *Consciousness*


An Artificial Consciousness Conference would be remarkably dull because
there would be no way to prove or disprove any of the theories presented.
That's why this list has so many consciousness theories and so few
intelligence theories; intelligence theories are vastly harder to come up
with because they actually have to do something, make a testable prediction
and explain things. Consciousness is easy intelligence is hard.

John K Clark




>

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Re: The hard problem of matter

[John Clark]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 7:12 PM Pierz  wrote:


> *>a lot of what passes for intelligent in the domain of machines is in
> fact dumb as dogshit.*
>

And so after being outsmarted on every occasion the last surviving human
turned to the Jupiter Brain just before he entered oblivion and said "I
still think you're dumb as dogshit". Apparently  dogshit is powerful stuff,
it can engineer the Galaxy.


> *>I know this because it's the field I work in. Computers are literal to a
> mind-numbingly stupid degree. People who expect robots to take over my job
> (software developer) any time soon have no idea what they are talking
> about.*
>

Today IBM's Watson can make better diagnosis of illness than most human
doctors, do you really think your profession will be immune? Machines have
already replaced many tasks that were once done by human programmers.
Imagine if there were no higher level languages and you had to program
everything in low level assembly language or even worse binary machine code!
You had to program the 1946 ENIAC computer at a huge patch panel, modern
computers are millions of times larger than ENIAC and the patch panel on
them would be the size of the Himalayas, but modern computers have no patch
panel at all because the machine does all that for you automatically.

>*We don't know for shit what consciousness is.*
>

Nobody has a definition of consciousness but you know what it is because
you have something better, an example of it, if you didn't you wouldn't
know you don't know what it means because there would be no way for you to
know anything.

>> My theory is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being
>> processed and that is a brute fact, meaning it terminates a chain of "why
>> is that?" questions.
>>
>
> > *Great theory! I love a theory that says, "because". I have sooo many
> questions. Like what relations in the data correspond to what qualia.*
>

Rather than a explanation I will give an example of a qualia generating
program because I like concrete examples. For the pain qualia write a
subroutine
such that the closer the number in the X register comes to the integer P
the more computational resources will be devoted to changing that number,
and if it ever actually equals P then the program should stop doing
everything else and do nothing but try to change that number to something
far enough away from P until it's no longer an urgent matter and the
program can again do things that have nothing to do with P.


> *>Now I know that you may claim that any better theory [of consciousness]
> is impossible in principle.*
>

Yes, absolutely impossible.


> >*I think it's technically extraordinarily difficult but not impossible
> in principle. We would need two preconditions: the use of conscious reports
> of qualia as an accepted datum in science,*
>

A person or a computer giving a report is observable behavior, so you're
just stating my axiom that intelligence implies consciousness using
different words.


> > *and highly sophisticated technology to interface with the brain, a
> known conscious entity with the ability to report its experiences.*
>

You've stacked the deck, you're assuming for no logical reason I can see
that another person is a "known conscious entity" but a computer is not. Right
at the beginning you're assuming the very thing you're trying to prove,
that computers are not conscious.


> *> My "method of determining if something is conscious" is the same as
> most people who don't believe their smart phones are having experiences.*
>

I don't understand why people assume  producing emotion is more difficult
than producing intelligence. Some of our most powerful emotions like
pleasure, pain, and lust come from the oldest parts of our brain that
evolved about 500 million years ago. It is our grossly enlarged neocortex
that makes the human brain so unusual and so recent, it only started to get
large about 3 million years ago and only started to get ridiculously large
less than one million years ago. It deals in deliberation, spatial
perception, speaking, reading, writing and mathematics; in other words
everything we're proud of and  makes humans so very different from other
animals. The only new emotion we got out of it was worry, probably because
the neocortex is also the place where we plan for the future. So if
evolution came up with feeling first and high level intelligence only much
later I don't see why the opposite would be true for our computers.


> > *It's being a biological organism with a nervous system, though again,
> I'm agnostic on organisms like trees. When you're not being a philosopher I
> bet that's your real criterion too! You're not worrying about killing your
> smartphone when you trash it for the next model.*
>

Actually I have a emotional attachment to my obsolete devices so I do have
a twang of regret when I trash them, but I do so nevertheless, and
sometimes I have a twang of regret when I eat meat but its not strong
enough for me to 

Re: The hard problem of matter

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 Oct 2018, at 03:16, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 7:54 PM Pierz  > wrote:
> 
> >I refuse to accept that "axiom", and I also do not feel compelled to embrace 
> >solipsism.
> 
> You are able to function is the world so you must have some method of 
> deciding when something is conscious and when it is not, if its not 
> intelligent behavior what is it? 
>  
> > I think it is entirely possible - and indeed sensible - to believe that 
> > some entities that behave "intelligently", like the chess app on my iPhone, 
> > are insentient.
> 
> I don't know what the quotation marks in the above means but if something 
> acts intelligently then it is sensible to say it has some degree of 
> sentience. 
>  
> > Whereas some entities that behave unintelligently (like Donald Trump 
> > (sorry, I really shouldn't)) are sentient.
> 
> I admit it's a imperfect tool but it's all we've got and all we'll ever have 
> so we just have to make good with what we have. A failure to act 
> intelligently does not necessarily mean its non-sentient, perhaps both a rock 
> and Donald Trump are really brilliant but are just pretending to be stupid. 
> If so then both are conscious and both are very good actors.
>   
> > The absence of an objective test for third-party sentience does not force 
> > one into solipsism. It may point to 1) a problem with your ontology (qualia 
> > aren't "real")
> 
> That means nothing. I detect qualia from direct experience and that outranks 
> everything, it even outranks the scientific method; so if qualia isn't real 
> then nothing is real which would be equivalent to everything being real which 
> is equivalent to "real" having no meaning because meaning needs contrast.   
>  
> > or 2) a deficient state of knowledge wth respect to the (pre) conditions of 
> > consciousness.
> 
> I don't know what that means either. 
>  
> > Seeing as you have no theory of consciousness at all,
> 
> Yes I do. My theory is that consciousness is the way data feels when it is 
> being processed and that is a brute fact, meaning it terminates a chain of 
> "why is that?" questions.  


How data process can detect a difference between a physical process and a 
digital process emulating the physical process at the relevant substitution 
level?

Invoking an ontological commitment is indeed a way to stop a chain of question. 
God, or Matter made it. Nice.

Bruno



>  
> > statements like "you have no alternative but to..." don't have much force. 
> > There are plenty of alternatives,
> 
> Name one! I ask once more, in you everyday life when you're not being 
> philosophical you must have some method of determining when something is 
> conscious, if its not intelligent behavior what on earth is it? 
> 
> > a refusal to engage it as a problem, in spite of the increasingly 
> > widespread acceptance among scientists that it is a real problem, and 
> > possibly the biggest problem of all in our current state of knowledge
> 
> I think intelligence implies consciousness but consciousness does not 
> necessarily imply intelligence, so the problem I want answered is abut how 
> intelligence works not consciousness.
> 
> John K Clark  
> 
> 
> 
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Re: The hard problem of matter

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 9 Oct 2018, at 20:18, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 9:05:27 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 7 Oct 2018, at 20:00, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 10:35:07 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 7 Oct 2018, at 15:55, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Matter is a mystery. Some think that there's a hard problem of 
>>> consciousness [1]. But actually, there's a hard problem of matter [2,3].
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness 
>>> 
>>> [2] 
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html
>>>  
>>> 
>>> [3] http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious 
>>>  :
>>> 
>>> When we look at what physics tells us about the brain, we actually just 
>>> find software—purely a set of relations—all the way down.
>> 
>> Are you not confusing the theories (which can be see as a sort of software, 
>> although not necessarily computable) and what the theories are supposed to 
>> be about, which might be some “ontological real field” of something?
>> 
>> Mechanism assumes we can truncate the “all the way down” so as to be able to 
>> “save our soul” temporarily on a disk. This salvation is relative to some 
>> reality/computation(s).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> And consciousness is in fact more like hardware, because of its distinctly 
>>> qualitative, non-structural properties. For this reason, conscious 
>>> experiences are just the kind of things that physical structure could be 
>>> the structure of.
>> 
>> I see your point, but find it very weird. You make consciousness into an 
>> inert sort of substance. I don’t think this solves the hard problem of 
>> consciousness nor the hard problem of matter. It identify again the too, 
>> without justifying where that come from.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> Given this solution to the hard problem of matter, the hard problem of 
>>> consciousness all but dissolves. There is no longer any question of how 
>>> consciousness arises from non-conscious matter, because all matter is 
>>> intrinsically conscious. There is no longer a question of how consciousness 
>>> depends on matter, because it is matter that depends on consciousness—as 
>>> relations depend on relata, structure depends on realizer, or software on 
>>> hardware.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> With mechanism, the mind-body problem is reduced to the problem of 
>> justifying the appearance of matter from the statistics on all computations 
>> going through your local and actual (indexically defined, and thus relative) 
>> computational state. The math has been done, and this provides a quantum 
>> logic for the “probability one” first person (plural) events. The world 
>> would have been Newtonian, we would have good reason to suspect Mechanism to 
>> be false, but quantum mechanics seems, up to now, to look very like the 
>> computationalist solution of the mind body problem.
>> 
>> Then, consciousness is only a semantical fixed point of all machines. It is, 
>> from the first person point of view of the machine, something felt as 
>> immediately true, indubitable, non justifiable, and non definable.
>> 
>> I can somehow make sense of what you say, because here the theory of 
>> consciousness is mainly the modal logic G1*, and the theory of matter is 
>> Z1*, and it appears that they are bisimilar: so, matter and consciousness 
>> are not just two modes of arithmetical self-knowledge, but they are faithful 
>> representation of each other. Now, that is not entirely true, because the 
>> “indubitability” need a slight different theory (X1*), which is NOT 
>> bisimilar to G, nor any other self-referential modes.
>> 
>> I recall;
>> 
>> G is the modal logic of the arithmetical BEWEISBAR predicate of Gödel. It is 
>> “provability” (in German), but from incompleteness it is not a knowledge 
>> predicate, and it behaves more like a relative rational justifiability. 
>> 
>> And G is the provable part of that logic. (First theorem of Solovay)
>> 
>> The true part, is given by the modal logic G* (Second theorem of Solovay).
>> 
>> The corona G* \ G is the surrational corona, or the proper theological part: 
>> all what is true but not justifiable (yet perhaps knowable, observable, 
>> feelable, …).
>> 
>> G is a normal modal logic, with a Kripke semantics available, and unique 
>> (main) axiom the formula of Löb:
>> []([]p -> p) -> []p
>> 
>> G* has as axioms all theorems of G, + the axioms []p -> p. 
>> 
>> G1 and G1*, have the axiom p->[]p for p atomic. This captures the limitation 
>> of the arithmetical formula to the leaves of the universal dovetailer (it is 
>> the modal version of Mechanism).
>> 
>> The other modes are given by all the variants 

Re: The hard problem of matter

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 9 Oct 2018, at 17:19, John Clark  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 10:09 AM Bruno Marchal  > wrote:
> 
> >>There are 2 ways this can be done:
> 1) With a wet Turing Machine (aka a brain made of matter)
> 2) With a dry Turing Machine (aka a computer made of matter)
> Both methods work fine.
>  
> >That is fine FAPP. Meaning: it is not fine when doing metaphysics with the 
> >scientific attitude.
> 
> You can't do metaphysics with a scientific attitude, if you could it wouldn't 
> be metaphysics, it would just be physics. Metaphysics means unscientific 
> speculation about physics.


That is why I prefer the term theology. Of course I always mean “fundamental 
science”.

But metaphysics did not just “speculate on physics”. The original question of 
the greeks (and the Indians and others) was about the existence of the physical 
universe, which speculates on mathematics, and theology itself.





> 
> >  you cannot invoke “matter” if you want associate consciousness to that 
> > intelligent behaviour,
> 
> If? Without that association there is no alternative to solipsism.


That does not follow. Arithmetic emulates all machines but also all 
interactions in between machines, relative to other universal machine. 





> And without matter you can't have intelligent behavior, or even unintelligent 
> behavior.  


According to your religion/metaphysical-theory/hypothesis.





> 
> > because the consciousness itself will have to associate itself with the 
> > infinitely many computations,
> 
> That of course is nonsense.


That follows from the Turing universality of a tiny part of arithmetic. That is 
the part well known (by logicians) since the 1930s.

It is astonishing, no doubt. Since the result of Matiyasevitch, all 
computations are already emulated by a square 4 diophantine polynomial.


Bruno



> 
> > You forget the fact that the physical reality is not the only thing capable 
> > of emulating Turing machine, the elementary arithmetical reality, in fact 
> > all models of Robinson Arithmetic [blah blah blah blah]
> 
> You've been telling us for years about the wonders of Robinson arithmetic but 
> stop talking about it and do something with it! Start the Robinson Computer 
> Corporation and become the world's first trillionaire by this time next year. 
> 
> John K Clark 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: The hard problem of matter

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 5:06:08 AM UTC-5, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 11:01:53 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 9:41:39 PM UTC+11, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 12:41:04 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:



 On 10/9/2018 9:18 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 6:45:55 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 
>
>
>
> On 10/9/2018 11:01 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>> If you reject intelligent behavior as a tool for detecting 
>> consciousness then how did you determine that? And how can you figure 
>> out 
>> anything else about any consciousness except for your own?  I don't 
>> think 
>> there is any way, I think the only alternative is solipsism. 
>>
>
>
> That is a good question. I still think that we will have lots of 
> intelligent robots running around - really smart, can win on Jeopardy!, 
> can 
> drive cars, can "fake" emotions ... - but we will not consider them 
> conscious. We can (hopefully) turn them off and destroy them whenever we 
> want. We do have something like a consciousness test in the case of 
> medical 
> decisions at end-of-life. So I think a consciousness test will be 
> different 
> than an intelligence test.
>
>
> Sure.  Garden slugs are conscious at the level of perception, that's 
> how they find food and mates.  But they're not very intelligent.
>
> Brent
>

 Do slugs perceive, or do they just react? Does a slug say to itself, "I 
 like the taste of that"?


 Is consciousness just the use of language?  Dogs and chimps don't have 
 language either.  Why aren't perception and awareness forms of 
 consciousness?

 Brent

>>>
>>>
>>> Some say humans didn't become fully conscious until they had (recursive) 
>>> language.
>>>
>>> Yair Neumana, Ophir Nave: Why the brain needs language in order to be 
>>> self-conscious 
>>> 
>>>
>>> You need to distinguish between raw qualia - the presence of experience 
>> or a "what it's like to be"  - and self-consciousness, or awareness of 
>> being a self. The latter is a kind of meta-quale, an awareness of the fact 
>> of having qualia which must surely come much further up the neural 
>> complexity hierarchy than just pure experience itself. I always find it 
>> hard to understand why these completely different things get confused. I'm 
>> pretty sure a fly experiences suffering of some kind when I spray it with 
>> insecticide. I'm also pretty sure it has no consciousness of being a self.
>>
>>>
>>> Consciousness = Linguisticity+Experientiality   (both), it would 
>>> seem.
>>>
>>> - 
>>> https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-matter-of-consciousness/
>>>
>>>
>
> That's right. I take "experience" to mean basically what Galen Strawson 
> says about it.
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html
>  
> :
>
>
> Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we 
> don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is 
> an awesome mystery. It’s the ultimate hard problem. The current Wikipedia 
> entry is typical: Consciousness “is the most mysterious aspect of our 
> lives”; philosophers “have struggled to comprehend the nature of 
> consciousness.”
>
> I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by 
> “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of 
> any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s 
> experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, 
> hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the 
> universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is 
> utterly unmysterious.
>
> ...
> -
>
>
> There are lower-level ["sensory"] and higher-level [self-aware, 
> "understanding"] experiential modalities. These are what have to be 
> included to have a complete "language of matter" - one that is more than 
> just information processing.
>
> Back to biological evolution, it is actually a guide in one way to making 
> conscious objects: They can only be made from particular molecules. The 
> sight kind of chemical "soup" was needed to make life.
>
> [edit]  The right kind of chemical "soup" was needed to make life.

- pt
>

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For more options, 

Re: The hard problem of matter

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 11:01:53 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 9:41:39 PM UTC+11, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 12:41:04 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/9/2018 9:18 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 6:45:55 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: 



 On 10/9/2018 11:01 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:


> If you reject intelligent behavior as a tool for detecting 
> consciousness then how did you determine that? And how can you figure out 
> anything else about any consciousness except for your own?  I don't think 
> there is any way, I think the only alternative is solipsism. 
>


 That is a good question. I still think that we will have lots of 
 intelligent robots running around - really smart, can win on Jeopardy!, 
 can 
 drive cars, can "fake" emotions ... - but we will not consider them 
 conscious. We can (hopefully) turn them off and destroy them whenever we 
 want. We do have something like a consciousness test in the case of 
 medical 
 decisions at end-of-life. So I think a consciousness test will be 
 different 
 than an intelligence test.


 Sure.  Garden slugs are conscious at the level of perception, that's 
 how they find food and mates.  But they're not very intelligent.

 Brent

>>>
>>> Do slugs perceive, or do they just react? Does a slug say to itself, "I 
>>> like the taste of that"?
>>>
>>>
>>> Is consciousness just the use of language?  Dogs and chimps don't have 
>>> language either.  Why aren't perception and awareness forms of 
>>> consciousness?
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>>
>> Some say humans didn't become fully conscious until they had (recursive) 
>> language.
>>
>> Yair Neumana, Ophir Nave: Why the brain needs language in order to be 
>> self-conscious 
>> 
>>
>> You need to distinguish between raw qualia - the presence of experience 
> or a "what it's like to be"  - and self-consciousness, or awareness of 
> being a self. The latter is a kind of meta-quale, an awareness of the fact 
> of having qualia which must surely come much further up the neural 
> complexity hierarchy than just pure experience itself. I always find it 
> hard to understand why these completely different things get confused. I'm 
> pretty sure a fly experiences suffering of some kind when I spray it with 
> insecticide. I'm also pretty sure it has no consciousness of being a self.
>
>>
>> Consciousness = Linguisticity+Experientiality   (both), it would seem.
>>
>> - 
>> https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-matter-of-consciousness/
>>
>>

That's right. I take "experience" to mean basically what Galen Strawson 
says about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html
 
:


Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we 
don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is 
an awesome mystery. It’s the ultimate hard problem. The current Wikipedia 
entry is typical: Consciousness “is the most mysterious aspect of our 
lives”; philosophers “have struggled to comprehend the nature of 
consciousness.”

I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by 
“consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of 
any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s 
experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, 
hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the 
universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is 
utterly unmysterious.

...
-


There are lower-level ["sensory"] and higher-level [self-aware, 
"understanding"] experiential modalities. These are what have to be 
included to have a complete "language of matter" - one that is more than 
just information processing.

Back to biological evolution, it is actually a guide in one way to making 
conscious objects: They can only be made from particular molecules. The 
sight kind of chemical "soup" was needed to make life.

- pt

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