On 26 Dec 2012, at 22:19, Roger Clough wrote:
Bruno,
The question of whether a thermostat or a computer is conscious
or not seems to be the solipsism issue, namely that only the
computer (not us)
can know whether it is conscious or not. But if I cannot prove that
other minds than mine do or do not exist, I suggest that simililarly,
computer consciousness is impossible to prove (or disprove).
That's correct. Nobody can prove that anything else can be conscious.
This is a theorem in the comp theory (accepting some definitions
'course).
But this does not mean that consciousness is out of the scientific
debate, nor that we have no evidences that some others are conscious.
Since recently I have evidence that all computer are conscious (even
in a highly disconnected or dissociative from our physical "reality").
For the thermostat, I just don't know. It is unclear, because the term
thermostat is not well defined, and most definition does not make
clear if we can see a "person" there. But I prefer to be cautious. May
be thermostat are just NOT NOT conscious.
Bruno
[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net]
12/26/2012
"The one thing a woman looks for in a man is to be needed." - "Ethan
Frome", by Edith Wharton
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Roger Clough
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-12-26, 15:31:44
Subject: Re: Re: How visual images are produced in the brain. Was
Dennettrightafter all ?
Hi Bruno Marchal
Reception requires consciousness, which a thermostat does not have.
perception /per·cep·tion/ (per-sep´shun) the conscious mental
registration of a sensory stimulus.percep´tive
per·cep·tion (pr-spshn)
n.
1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2. Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly
on memory.
perception
[pərsep′shən]
Etymology: L, percipere, to perceive
1 the conscious recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli
that serve as a basis for understanding, learning, and knowing or
for motivating a particular action or reaction.
2 the result or product of the act of perceiving. Kinds of
perception include depth perception, extrasensory perception, facial
perception, and stereognostic perception. perceptive, perceptual, adj.
[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net]
12/26/2012
"The one thing a woman looks for in a man is to be needed." - "Ethan
Frome", by Edith Wharton
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-12-26, 06:41:02
Subject: Re: How visual images are produced in the brain. Was
Dennettrightafter all ?
On 26 Dec 2012, at 12:14, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 24 Dec 2012, at 17:24, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Telmo Menezes
Consciousness does not emerge from anything.
It is simply the act of perception.
Roger, when I say "consciousness" what I mean is not the act of
perception. A thermostat can perceive the environment and act on
it. Conversely, I can be put in an isolation tank and still remain
conscious.
OK.
Well with comp "my consciousness exists" is a 1) true proposition,
2) unprovable, and 3) which supervenes on an infinity of
arithmetical relations.
So comp doesn't explain what consciousness is, but it tells us why
that is unknowable?
Eventually this depends on what you mean by "explanation".
Computationalism explains why consciousness is true and knowable,
actually, but not justifiable, once we can agree on some semi-axiom
for consciousness: like it is true for each of us, and invariant for
the comp-digital-brain substitution. It explains the universal
feeling that we cannot convince any other that we are conscious, and
the logic of qualia (S4Grz1, X1*) should be able to explain why
consciousness is related to perception field, sensation, etc. Then
it explains how the matter illusion organize itself into a quantum
logic of observable, and this in a testable way.
You can get more if you are willing to accept quasi definition of
consciousness, like consciousness = a believe in a reality, or a
believe in self-consistency, under the form of an unconscious
betting procedure. Waking up in the morning is about equivalent with
betting that I will drink some coffee soon, for example. I am
betting that there is a reality in which I can consistently achieve
that goal. It is akin to Helmholtz theory of perception: unconscious
inductive inference.
Bruno
I think it is not too much wrong to say that it emerges, at least
in some sense, from arithmetic.
Bruno
[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net]
12/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Telmo Menezes
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-12-22, 07:11:19
Subject: Re: How visual images are produced in the brain. Was
Dennett rightafter all ?
Hi Stephen,
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 3:41 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
> wrote:
On 12/20/2012 6:17 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Hi Roger,
I accidentally sent the previous email before
I was done, sorry. Please consider this more complete version
of the intended whole:
Hi Telmo,
Those images in the videoclips, while still remarkable,
probably were constructed simply by monitoring
sensory MRI signals just as one might from a video camera,
and displaying them as a raster pattern, artificially
converting the time voltage signal into a timespace signal.
Ok. We're not even sure what we're looking at. The brain is a
gigantic^n kludge. We are seeing stuff happening in the visual
cortex that can be meaningfully mapped to images. This stuff
correlates with what the subject is seeing, but in a weird way.
Hi Telmo,
牋 As I was watching the brain scan image video I noticed a lot of
weird text like stuff mixed into the image. What was that?
Artifacts?
I think so. I believe they are caused by the new images being
constructed from samples of the original images shown to the
subjects.
So we can speculate that we're watching, for example, a pattern
matching process taking place. The most spectacular thing for me
is when we see the燼nticipation爋f the ink blot explosion.
That's something you wouldn't get from a video camera (but you
could get from a computer running a sophisticated AI).
Perception of the moving image from a given perspective
by the brain might take place in the following way :
1)燜IRSTNESS (The eye). The initial operation in processing the
raw optical signal is reception of the sensory signal.
This is necessarily done by a monad (you or me),
because only monads see the world from a given
perspective.
In my opinion you are conflating intelligence and consciousness.
I see two separate issues:
1) The human being as an agent senses things, assigns symbols to
them, compares them with his memories and so on. The brain tries
to anticipate all possible futures and then choses actions that
are more likely to lead to a future state that it prefers. This
preference can be ultimately reduced to pain avoidance / pleasure
seeking. In my view, the fundamental pain and pleasure signals
have to be encoded some how in our DNA, and were selected to
optimise our chances of reproduction. All this is 3p and can be
emulated by a digital computer. Some of it already is.
2) There is a "me" here observing the universe from my
perspective. I am me and not you. There's a consciousness inside
my body, attached to my mind (or is it my mind)? I suspect
there's one inside other people too, but I cannot be sure. This
is a 1p phenomena and outside the realm of science. It cannot be
explained by MRI machines and clever algorithms - although
many neuroscientists fail to realise it. This
mystery is essentially what makes me an agnostic more than an
atheist. If there is a god, I suspect he's me (and you). In a
sense.
You can have 1 without 2, the famous zombie.
牋 I disagree! The very act of fulfilling the requirements of 1
"connects it to" the #2 version of itself. The isomorphism between
1 and 2 is just a fact of how logical algebras can be represented
as spaces (sets + relations) and vice versa! What gets glossed
over is that Human beings (and any other physical system that has
the potential to implement a universal machine) are not static
structures. The logical algebra that represents them cannot be
static either, it has to evolve as well.
牋 Think of how you would model a neural network X as it learns
new patterns.... The propositions of your logical algebra for X
would have to be updated as the learning progresses, no?
Ok, I agree that humans beings and neural networks are not static
structures. This is trivially true. I still don't get how
consciousness is supposed to emerge out of a dynamic process.
Are you claiming, for example, that if I start running game of
life it will become conscious and have a 1p perspective? I'm not
using this as a counter-example, I am honestly asking. I don't
know the answer to that.
This is not a visual display, only a
complex sensory signal.
2) SECONDNESS (the hippocampus ? the cerebellum? ).
The next stage is intelligent processing of the
optical爏ignal and into a useable爀xpreswion of
the visual image.
(From the monadology, we find that each monad
(you or me) does not 爌erceive the world directly,
but is given such a perception by the supreme monad
(the One, or God). This supreme monad contains
the ability to intelligently construct the visual image
from the optical nerve signal)
3) THIRDNESS (cerebrum ?) Knowing this visual expresson
by the individual monad according to its individual perspective.
This perspective is爏omehow coordinated with motor muscles (left/
right,
etc.), but I question that this爄s燼n actual 2D or 3D "display,"
such as in the videoclips. (The videoclips are another matter
as they are artificialy constructed.)
I agree with you, but maybe videoclips can still be created from
there. If the neural network contains a piece of information A,
and this information can be represented by image B, there has to
be a function f: A -> B. Of course finding this function (and/or
computing it) might be incredibly hard.
牋 It is helpful to see function f: A -> B as a Functor and not a
plain jane function. Maybe a presheve is a better model.
Fair enough for functor. I don't know what a presheve is.
If there is an actual or simulated display then we are
faced with Dennett's problem: the infinite regress of
spectators, spectators of spectator, etc.
Ok, but here we're back to 1p.
牋 We defeat Dennett by showing that the regress cannot occur when
there are physical resources required by the computations for each
level of the recursion. We can cutoff recursions in our algorithms
with code: if count of loops is 10, stop. But physical systems can
not count, they just run out of juice after a while....
Yes. For example, in the simulation argument, you still end up
having to have an ultimate reality which is no longer a simulation.
But if there is no display, we do not need an observer self,
and are possibly ending up with Michael Dennett's materialist
concept of the self. This might be called epi-phenominalism.
The self is simply an expression of the brain.
I don't believe it is just an expression of the brain (I suspect
you don't either), but part of the reason why I don't believe is
1p, so I cannot communicate it (can I?). I don't know. I tried at
dinner parties and got funny looks.
牋 I do think that the consciousness is an expression of the brain
*and* all of its environment that molds its behavior. It is silly
to think that skin is the boundary that a mind associates with!
Agreed.
We cannot forget causal closure in our reasoning about 1p!
牋 Telmo, can't you see that the defining characteristic of 1p is
that one cannot communicate it?
I can.
Only I can know exactly what it is like to be me. So I can infer
or bet that you have a "what it is like to be Telmo" but I cannot
know it, by definition and this relation is symmetrical between
any pair of conscious entities.
Ok, but why shouldn't I just believe in爏olipsism爐hen?
I do not at present know the answer.
牋 Consider dual aspect monism! It works!
What's the best place to read about it?
--
Onward!
Stephen
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