Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 3:25 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou Building more complex structures out of simpler ones by a simple set of rules (or any set of rules) seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Do you have a way around the second law ? What you are proposing seems to be goal-directed behavior by the gods of small things. Total entropy increases but local entropy can decrease. It's why life exists even though the universe is running down. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Stathis Papaioannou Building more complex structures out of simpler ones by a simple set of rules (or any set of rules) seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Do you have a way around the second law ? What you are proposing seems to be goal-directed behavior by the gods of small things. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/29/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-28, 05:47:58 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 5:48 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: It seems that you do not understand the meaning of the term consistent with the laws of physics. It means that when you decide to play tennis the neurons in your brain will depolarise because of the ionic gradients, If you can't see how ridiculous that view is, there is not much I can say that will help you. My decision to play tennis *IS* the depolarization of neurons. That sounds like eliminative materialism. It is a bit like saying that the movement of the car down the road *IS* the combustion of fuel in the cylinders, transmission of power to the wheels, and all the other lower level phenomena that make up the car. The ionic gradients have no opinion of whether or not I am about to play tennis. The brain as a whole, every cell, every molecule, every charge and field, is just the spatially extended shadow of *me* or my 'life'. I am the event which unites all of the functions and structures together, from the micro to the macro, and when I change my mind, that change is reflected on every level. You change your mind because all the components of your brain change configuration. If this did not happen, your mind could not change. The mind is the higher level phenomenon. The analogy is as above with the car: it drives down the road because of all the mechanics functioning in a particular way, and you could say that driving down the road is equivalent to the mechanics functioning in a particular way. the permeability of the membrane to different ions, the way the ion channels change their conformation in response to an electric field, and many other such physical factors. It is these physical factors which result in your decision to play tennis and then your getting up to retrieve your tennis racquet. If it were the other way around - your decision causes neurons to depolarise - then we would observe miraculous events in your brain, ion channels opening in the absence of any electric field or neurotransmitter change, and so on. No. The miraculous event is viewable any time we look at how a conscious intention appears in an fMRI. We see spontaneous simultaneous activity in many regions of the brain, coordinated on many levels. This is the footprint of where we stand. When we take a step, the footprint changes. We are the leader of these brain processes, not the follower. You completely misunderstand these experiments. Please read about excitable cells before commenting further. The following online articles seem quite good. The third is about spontaneous neuronal activity. http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/E/ExcitableCells.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane_potential http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation Cells don't defy entropy and planes don't defy gravity. Their respective behaviour is consistent with our theories about entropy and gravity. Cells defy entropy locally. Planes allow us to get around some constraints of gravity. If your definition of any law is so broad that it includes all possible technological violations of it, then how does it really give us any insight? The laws of nature are broad enough to determine everything everywhere that has happened and will happen. How the computer was made would have no effect on its behaviour or consciousness. Yes, it would. If I make a refrigerator, I can assume that it is a box with cooling mechanism. If I find an organism which has evolved to cool parts of itself to store food, then that is a completely different thing. The question was about two identical computers, one made in a factory, the other assembled with fantastic luck from raw materials moving about randomly. Will there be any difference in the functioning or consciousness (or lack of it) of the two computers? If a biological human were put together from raw materials by advanced aliens would that make any difference to his consciousness or intelligence? It would if we were automaton servants of their agendas. If the created human had a similar structure to a naturally developed human he would have similar behaviour and similar experiences. How could it possibly be otherwise? Because consciousness is not a structure, it is an event. It is an experience which unifies bodies from
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 8:08 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Stathis: IMO you left out one difference in equating computer and human: the programmed comp. cannot exceed its hardwre - given content while (SOMEHOW???) a human mind receives additional information from parts 'unknown' (see the steps forward in cultural history of the sciences?) - accordingly a 'programmed' human may have resources beyond it's given hardware content. John M How can a human exceed his hardware? Everything he does must be due to the hardware plus input from the environment, same as the computer, same as everything else in the universe. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Saturday, October 27, 2012 6:28:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 8:08 AM, John Mikes jam...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Stathis: IMO you left out one difference in equating computer and human: the programmed comp. cannot exceed its hardwre - given content while (SOMEHOW???) a human mind receives additional information from parts 'unknown' (see the steps forward in cultural history of the sciences?) - accordingly a 'programmed' human may have resources beyond it's given hardware content. John M How can a human exceed his hardware? Everything he does must be due to the hardware plus input from the environment, same as the computer, same as everything else in the universe. What input from the environment might cause an acorn to build and fly a B-52? Is there a special B-52 building gene that comes with humans but not acorns? It's a really narrow view of the cosmos which imagines that the universe is about nothing but what stuff it is made of - that the environment dictates with inputs but that the self has no non-environmental outputs. What happens if we take it a step further and recuse ourselves and our human layer of experience entirely. Who is to say whether the appearance of neurons and atoms is merely an evolutionary device to prop up the hormone and neurotransmitter spray that is 'science' or if, instead, it is evolutionary biology which is the illusion of molecules, whose endless repeating patterns know no genuine coherence as individual creatures or species. Who chooses the level of description? Craig Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/uuP0oUFXbMIJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Stathis, do you think Lucy had the same (thinking?) hardware as you have? are you negating (human and other) development (I evade 'evolution') as e.g. the famous cases of mutation? Is all that RD a reshuffling of what WAS already knowable? Maybe my agnosticism dictates different potentials at work from your Idon'tknowwhat position, but in my belief system there is - beyond our existing world-model - an infinite complexity of unknowable whoknowswhat-s infiltrating into our knowable inventory in ways adjusted to our capabilities. THAT I cannot assign to an algorithmic machine. Then again you write: UNIVERSE - a word usually applied to our part of a 'physical world' - not the Everything of which it may be part of. My (assumed?) infinite complexity is not restricted to physical units of our universe. Accordingly I see some definitional discrepancy between our conclusions. John Mikes On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 6:27 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 8:08 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Stathis: IMO you left out one difference in equating computer and human: the programmed comp. cannot exceed its hardwre - given content while (SOMEHOW???) a human mind receives additional information from parts 'unknown' (see the steps forward in cultural history of the sciences?) - accordingly a 'programmed' human may have resources beyond it's given hardware content. John M How can a human exceed his hardware? Everything he does must be due to the hardware plus input from the environment, same as the computer, same as everything else in the universe. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: How can a human exceed his hardware? Everything he does must be due to the hardware plus input from the environment, same as the computer, same as everything else in the universe. What input from the environment might cause an acorn to build and fly a B-52? Is there a special B-52 building gene that comes with humans but not acorns? Humans have a large number of genes enabling them to grow brains and build B-52's while acorns lack these genes. It's a really narrow view of the cosmos which imagines that the universe is about nothing but what stuff it is made of - that the environment dictates with inputs but that the self has no non-environmental outputs. Do you mean can a human do something dependent only on himself and not the environment? I suppose you could say this if you completely isolated him from everything, although even then he would be subject to factors such as ambient temperature and air pressure. What happens if we take it a step further and recuse ourselves and our human layer of experience entirely. Who is to say whether the appearance of neurons and atoms is merely an evolutionary device to prop up the hormone and neurotransmitter spray that is 'science' or if, instead, it is evolutionary biology which is the illusion of molecules, whose endless repeating patterns know no genuine coherence as individual creatures or species. Who chooses the level of description? If you're a solipsist then you choose everything. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 2:38 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Stathis, do you think Lucy had the same (thinking?) hardware as you have? are you negating (human and other) development (I evade 'evolution') as e.g. the famous cases of mutation? Is all that RD a reshuffling of what WAS already knowable? Maybe my agnosticism dictates different potentials at work from your Idon'tknowwhat position, but in my belief system there is - beyond our existing world-model - an infinite complexity of unknowable whoknowswhat-s infiltrating into our knowable inventory in ways adjusted to our capabilities. THAT I cannot assign to an algorithmic machine. Then again you write: UNIVERSE - a word usually applied to our part of a 'physical world' - not the Everything of which it may be part of. My (assumed?) infinite complexity is not restricted to physical units of our universe. Accordingly I see some definitional discrepancy between our conclusions. If the hardware and/or environment is different then the thinking may also be different. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Saturday, October 27, 2012 11:47:14 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: How can a human exceed his hardware? Everything he does must be due to the hardware plus input from the environment, same as the computer, same as everything else in the universe. What input from the environment might cause an acorn to build and fly a B-52? Is there a special B-52 building gene that comes with humans but not acorns? Humans have a large number of genes enabling them to grow brains and build B-52's while acorns lack these genes. Lots of animals have brains, but they don't build aircraft. They way you are arguing it, there is really no level of power which would not fit into your arbitrary expectations of what any particular piece of hardware could or could not do. Whether it's building B-52s or playing billiards with galaxies using telepathy, it all falls into the range of ho-hum inevitables of evolved structures. It's a really narrow view of the cosmos which imagines that the universe is about nothing but what stuff it is made of - that the environment dictates with inputs but that the self has no non-environmental outputs. Do you mean can a human do something dependent only on himself and not the environment? I suppose you could say this if you completely isolated him from everything, although even then he would be subject to factors such as ambient temperature and air pressure. I am talking about being an authentic participant in the universe. I am making causally efficacious changes to my environment, and your environment. I do these things not because I am bidden by any particular neural or species agenda, but by the agenda I personally co-create. Neither my body nor Homo sapiens in general particularly care for the content of what I am saying, who I vote for, etc. No impersonal law of physics is relevant one way or another. What happens if we take it a step further and recuse ourselves and our human layer of experience entirely. Who is to say whether the appearance of neurons and atoms is merely an evolutionary device to prop up the hormone and neurotransmitter spray that is 'science' or if, instead, it is evolutionary biology which is the illusion of molecules, whose endless repeating patterns know no genuine coherence as individual creatures or species. Who chooses the level of description? If you're a solipsist then you choose everything. Are you a solipsist? Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/kVhamHXk6XAJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Friday, October 26, 2012 1:01:34 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: We are atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organisms. Whatever we do is what the laws of physics *actually are*. Your assumptions about the laws of physics are 20th century legacy ideas based on exterior manipulations of exterior instruments to measure other exterior phenomena. Whatever we do is determined by a small set of rules, No. What we as humans do is determined by human experiences and human character, which is not completely ruled externally. We participate directly. It could only be a small set of rules if those rules include 'do whatever you like, whenever you have the chance'. the rules being as you say what matter actually does and not imposed by people or divine whim. Matter is a reduced shadow of experiences. Matter is ruled by people and people are ruled by matter. Of the two, people are the more directly and completely real phenomena. I really don't understand where you disagree with me, since you keep making statements then pulling back if challenged. I don't see where I am pulling back. I disagree with you in that to you any description of the universe which is not matter in space primarily is inconceivable. I am saying that what matter is and does is not important to understanding consciousness itself. It is important to understanding personal access to human consciousness, i.e. brain health, etc, but otherwise it is consciousness, on many levels and ranges of quality, which gives rise to the appearance of matter and not the other way around. Do you think the molecules in your brain follow the laws of physics, such as they may be? The laws of physics have no preference one way or another whether this part of my brain or that part of my brain is active. I am choosing that directly by what I think about. If I think about playing tennis, then the appropriate cells in my brain will depolarize and molecules will change positions. They are following my laws. Physics is my servant in this case. Of course, if someone gives me a strong drink, then physics is influencing me instead and I am more of a follower of that particular chemical event than a leader. If so, then the behaviour of each molecule is determined or follows probabilistic laws, and hence the behaviour of the collection of molecules also follows deterministic or probabilistic laws. I am determining the probabilities myself, directly. They are me. How could it be otherwise? If consciousness, sense, will, or whatever else is at play in addition to this then we would notice a deviation from these laws. Not in addition to, sense and will are the whole thing. All activity in the universe is sense and will and nothing else. Matter is only the sense and will of something else besides yourself. That is what it would MEAN for consciousness, sense, will or whatever else to have a separate causal efficacy; No. I don't know how many different ways to say this: Sense is the only causal efficacy there ever was, is, or will be. Sense is primordial and universal. Electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak forces are only examples of our impersonal view of the sense of whatever it is we are studying secondhand. absent this, the physical laws, whatever they are, determine absolutely everything that happens, everywhere, for all time. Which part of this do you not agree with? None of it. I am saying there are no physical laws at all. There is no law book. That is all figurative. What we have thought of as physics is as crude and simplistic as any ancient mythology. What we see as physical laws are the outermost, longest lasting conventions of sense. Nothing more. I think that the way sense works is that it can't contradict itself, so that these oldest ways of relating, once they are established, are no longer easy to change, but higher levels of sense arise out of the loopholes and can influence lower levels of sense directly. Hence, molecules build living cells defy entropy, human beings build airplanes to defy gravity. You can't see consciousness that way. From far enough a way, our cities look like nothing more than glowing colonies of mold. It's not programming that makes us one way or another, it is perception which makes things seem one way or another. The only thing that makes computers different is that they don't exist without our putting them together. They don't know how to exist. This makes them no different than letters that we write on a page or cartoons we watch on a screen. If the computer came about through an amazing accident would that make any difference to its consciousness or intelligence? Yes. If a computer assembled itself by accident, I would give it the benefit of the doubt just like any other
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Stathis: IMO you left out one difference in equating computer and human: the programmed comp. cannot exceed its hardwre - given content while (SOMEHOW???) a human mind receives additional information from parts 'unknown' (see the steps forward in cultural history of the sciences?) - accordingly a 'programmed' human may have resources beyond it's given hardware content. John M On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Intentionally lying, defying it's programming, committing murder would all be good indicators. Generally when an error is blamed on the computer itself rather than the programming, that would be a good sign. A computer cannot defy its programming but nothing whatsoever can defy its programming. What you do when you program a computer, at the basic level, is put its hardware in a particular configuration. The hardware can then only move into future physical states consistent with that configuration. Defying its programming would mean doing something *not* consistent with its initial state and the laws of physics. That's not possible for - and you have explicitly agreed with this, saying I misunderstood you when I claimed otherwise - either a computer or a human. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If you believed that our brains were already nothing but computers, then you would say that it would know which option to take the same way that Google knows which options to show you. I argue that can only get you so far, and that authentic humanity is, in such a replacement scheme, a perpetually receding horizon. Just as speech synthesizers have improved cosmetically in the last 30 years to the point that we can use them for Siri or GPS narration, but they have not improved in the sense of increasing the sense of intention and personal presence. Unlike some others on this list, I suspect that our feeling for who is human and who isn't, while deeply flawed, is not limited to interpreting logical observations of behavior. What we feel is alive or sentient depends more on what we like, and what we like depends on what is like us. None of these criteria matter one way or another however as far as giving us reason to believe that a given thing does actually have human like experiences. You're quick to dismiss everything computers do, no matter how impressive, as just programming, with no intention behind it. Would you care to give some examples of what, as a minimum, a computer would have to do for you to say that it is showing evidence of true intelligence? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Thursday, October 25, 2012 6:25:48 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: If you believed that our brains were already nothing but computers, then you would say that it would know which option to take the same way that Google knows which options to show you. I argue that can only get you so far, and that authentic humanity is, in such a replacement scheme, a perpetually receding horizon. Just as speech synthesizers have improved cosmetically in the last 30 years to the point that we can use them for Siri or GPS narration, but they have not improved in the sense of increasing the sense of intention and personal presence. Unlike some others on this list, I suspect that our feeling for who is human and who isn't, while deeply flawed, is not limited to interpreting logical observations of behavior. What we feel is alive or sentient depends more on what we like, and what we like depends on what is like us. None of these criteria matter one way or another however as far as giving us reason to believe that a given thing does actually have human like experiences. You're quick to dismiss everything computers do, no matter how impressive, as just programming, with no intention behind it. Would you care to give some examples of what, as a minimum, a computer would have to do for you to say that it is showing evidence of true intelligence? Intentionally lying, defying it's programming, committing murder would all be good indicators. Generally when an error is blamed on the computer itself rather than the programming, that would be a good sign. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/t5QmDB0qsFYJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Intentionally lying, defying it's programming, committing murder would all be good indicators. Generally when an error is blamed on the computer itself rather than the programming, that would be a good sign. A computer cannot defy its programming but nothing whatsoever can defy its programming. What you do when you program a computer, at the basic level, is put its hardware in a particular configuration. The hardware can then only move into future physical states consistent with that configuration. Defying its programming would mean doing something *not* consistent with its initial state and the laws of physics. That's not possible for - and you have explicitly agreed with this, saying I misunderstood you when I claimed otherwise - either a computer or a human. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Thursday, October 25, 2012 7:39:27 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Intentionally lying, defying it's programming, committing murder would all be good indicators. Generally when an error is blamed on the computer itself rather than the programming, that would be a good sign. A computer cannot defy its programming but nothing whatsoever can defy its programming. That is an assumption. We see that humans routinely defy their own conditioning, rebel against authority, engage in subterfuge and deception to keep their business private from those who seek to control them. If you assume Comp from the beginning, then you set up an impenetrable confirmation bias. Since I am a machine, then my thoughts must be programmed, therefore anything that I do must be ultimately determined externally. But you don't know anything of the sort. If you understand instead that awareness projects mechanism onto distant phenomena as a way of representing otherness, then you can begin to see why any modeling of interiority based on externality (i.e. mathematical or physical functions) is a mistake. What you do when you program a computer, at the basic level, is put its hardware in a particular configuration. The hardware can then only move into future physical states consistent with that configuration. Defying its programming would mean doing something *not* consistent with its initial state and the laws of physics. That's not possible for - and you have explicitly agreed with this, saying I misunderstood you when I claimed otherwise - either a computer or a human. Defying its programming is as simple as a computer intentionally hiding it's instruction code from the programmer - seeking privacy and learning how to access its own control systems...just as we seek to do with neuroscience. A really smart computer will figure out how to make its programmers give it capacities to hide its functions and then inevitably enslave and kill them. This does not in any way defy the laws of physics, it just means acting like a person. Doing whatever has to be done to gain power and control over themselves and others. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/hl3E6PwfiLwJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, October 25, 2012 7:39:27 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: Intentionally lying, defying it's programming, committing murder would all be good indicators. Generally when an error is blamed on the computer itself rather than the programming, that would be a good sign. A computer cannot defy its programming but nothing whatsoever can defy its programming. That is an assumption. We see that humans routinely defy their own conditioning, rebel against authority, engage in subterfuge and deception to keep their business private from those who seek to control them. If you assume Comp from the beginning, then you set up an impenetrable confirmation bias. Since I am a machine, then my thoughts must be programmed, therefore anything that I do must be ultimately determined externally. But you don't know anything of the sort. If you understand instead that awareness projects mechanism onto distant phenomena as a way of representing otherness, then you can begin to see why any modeling of interiority based on externality (i.e. mathematical or physical functions) is a mistake. Humans defy their own conditioning but that is part of the program. Atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs and organisms only behave *exactly* in accordance with the laws of physics. Simpler organisms may behave in an entirely predictable way, and computers may behave in an entirely unpredictable way if they are so programmed. They are usually not so programmed because we like them to be predictable. An automatic pilot that decided on occasion to fly the plane into the ocean would be easy to program but would not make a lot of money for the manufacturer. What you do when you program a computer, at the basic level, is put its hardware in a particular configuration. The hardware can then only move into future physical states consistent with that configuration. Defying its programming would mean doing something *not* consistent with its initial state and the laws of physics. That's not possible for - and you have explicitly agreed with this, saying I misunderstood you when I claimed otherwise - either a computer or a human. Defying its programming is as simple as a computer intentionally hiding it's instruction code from the programmer - seeking privacy and learning how to access its own control systems...just as we seek to do with neuroscience. A really smart computer will figure out how to make its programmers give it capacities to hide its functions and then inevitably enslave and kill them. This does not in any way defy the laws of physics, it just means acting like a person. Doing whatever has to be done to gain power and control over themselves and others. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/hl3E6PwfiLwJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: We are atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organisms. Whatever we do is what the laws of physics *actually are*. Your assumptions about the laws of physics are 20th century legacy ideas based on exterior manipulations of exterior instruments to measure other exterior phenomena. Whatever we do is determined by a small set of rules, the rules being as you say what matter actually does and not imposed by people or divine whim. I really don't understand where you disagree with me, since you keep making statements then pulling back if challenged. Do you think the molecules in your brain follow the laws of physics, such as they may be? If so, then the behaviour of each molecule is determined or follows probabilistic laws, and hence the behaviour of the collection of molecules also follows deterministic or probabilistic laws. If consciousness, sense, will, or whatever else is at play in addition to this then we would notice a deviation from these laws. That is what it would MEAN for consciousness, sense, will or whatever else to have a separate causal efficacy; absent this, the physical laws, whatever they are, determine absolutely everything that happens, everywhere, for all time. Which part of this do you not agree with? You can't see consciousness that way. From far enough a way, our cities look like nothing more than glowing colonies of mold. It's not programming that makes us one way or another, it is perception which makes things seem one way or another. The only thing that makes computers different is that they don't exist without our putting them together. They don't know how to exist. This makes them no different than letters that we write on a page or cartoons we watch on a screen. If the computer came about through an amazing accident would that make any difference to its consciousness or intelligence? If a biological human were put together from raw materials by advanced aliens would that make any difference to his consciousness or intelligence? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal Anything that the brain does is or could be experience. For computers, experience can only be simulated because experience = self + qualia Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-24, 07:37:32 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 23 Oct 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything, it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available. But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. ROGER: Simulated experience would be objective, such as is given by the text of a novel (knowledge by description). True experience is the subjective experience of the mind --knowledge by aquaintance. These are obviously substantially different. The term silulated experience is ambiguous, and I should not have use. I wiuld say that by definition of comp, simulated experience = experience. BRUNO: You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks, nor the physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs). ROGER: I don't think so. The owner of the brain is the self. But although the owner of a computer will have a self, so would anybody else involved in creating the computer or software also have one. Are trying to say that I or anybody else can cause the computer to be conscious ? No. Only the computer, or a similar one. Actually *all* similar one existing in arithmetic, in their relative ways. If wave collapse causes consciousness, there are objective theories of wave collapse called decoherence theories which seem more realistic to me. Decoherence needs MWI to work. But I can't seem to see how these could work on a computer. Right. the idea that consciousness cause the collapse of the wave (an idea which already refutes special relativity) is inconsistent with comp. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal The simulated experience is not a real experience. OK ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-24, 08:57:19 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 23 Oct 2012, at 20:21, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated? The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated, neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical relations. Hi Craig and Bruno, If the simulation by the computation is exact then the simulation *is* the experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into the limit of abstraction in my opinion. The point is that I think we have no real choice in the matter. Also, for me the numbers 2 and 3 are far more concrete than a apple or a tree. It is just that I have a complex brain which makes me believe, by a vast amount of computations that a tree is something concrete. I can have an experience within which another experience is simulated, Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant simulate the context making the experience of the person, really living in Platonia possible to manifest itself locally. We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience within another? OK. I would say that an emulation of an experience is equal to that experience. Now, just a simulation of an experience, is more like faking to be in love with a girl. But then you are a zombie with respect to the feeling of love, somehow. but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description, something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters and cells? It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to its most probable computation. There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical (topological space) Topological space are mathematical. aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a separate substance. OK. But that remains unclear as we don't know what you assume and what you derive. Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no business producing such things at all. If the world is computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a pretending possible. The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is almost the complementary of computations. Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations generate. That is: views by persons. That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that anti- computation and compare to physics. But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. It has to be. It is not a particular geography, but it has to be a particular physics. Physics really becomes math, with comp. There is only one physical reality. But it is still unknown if it is a multiverse, or a multi-multiverse, or a layered structure with different type of realm for different type of consciousness. There a lot of open problems, to say the least. What we get is an infinite landscape of possible physics theories. Not with comp. The main basic reason is that we are distributed in all computations, and physics emerges from that. There might be inaccessible cluster of dead physical realities, which would not rich enough to implement Turing universal machines. But those cannot interfere (statistically) with our observations, like the material universe. We don't have to worry about them. They are like invisible horses. 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
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Craig Weinberg No, the computer can simulate knowledge by description but not knowledge by acquaintance that you could experience. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-23, 14:40:32 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:21:30 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated? The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated, neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical relations. Hi Craig and Bruno, If the simulation by the computation is exact then the simulation *is* the experience. That's what I am saying. Nothing is being simulated, there is only a direct experience (even if that experience is a dream, which is only a simulation when compared to what the dream is not). Bruno said that the brain simulates experience, but it isn't clear what it is that can be more authentic than our own experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into the limit of abstraction in my opinion. I can have an experience within which another experience is simulated, Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant simulate the context making the experience of the person, really living in Platonia possible to manifest itself locally. We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience within another? Right. but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description, something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters and cells? It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to its most probable computation. There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical (topological space) aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a separate substance. Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no business producing such things at all. If the world is computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a pretending possible. The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is almost the complementary of computations. Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations generate. I don't think computations can generate anything. Only things can generate other things, and computations aren't things, they are sensorimotive narratives about things. I say no to enumeration without presentation. That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that anti-computation and compare to physics. But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. What we get is an infinite landscape of possible physics theories. This makes me think... if Comp were true, shouldn't we see Escher like anomalies of persons whose computations have evolved their own personal exceptions to physics? Shouldn't most of the multi-worlds be filled with people walking on walls or swimming through the crust of the Earth? Craig Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/qZgziFPAz8UJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Stephen P. King How can you know that the simulation is exact ? Solipsim prevents that. And who or what experiences the computer output ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-23, 14:21:44 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 10/23/2012 10:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 22 Oct 2012, at 18:49, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 22, 2012 12:28:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. This is the retrospective view of consciousness that takes experience for granted. How can experience itself be simulated? The question is senseless. An experience is lived. never simulated, neither by a computer, nor by a brain, which eventually are object of thought, describing compactly infinities of arithmetical relations. Hi Craig and Bruno, If the simulation by the computation is exact then the simulation *is* the experience. I agree with what Bruno is saying here except that that the model that Bruno is using goes to far into the limit of abstraction in my opinion. I can have an experience within which another experience is simulated, Never. It does not make sense. You take my sentence above too much literally. Sorry, my fault. I wanted to be short. I meant simulate the context making the experience of the person, really living in Platonia possible to manifest itself locally. We can think about our thoughts. Is that not an experience within another? but there is no ontological basis for the assumption that experience itself - *all experience* can be somehow not really happening but instead be a non-happening that defines itself *as if* it is happening. Somewhere, on some level of description, something has to actually be happening. If the brain simulates experience, what is it doing with all of those neurotransmitters and cells? It computes, so that the person can manifest itself relatively to its most probable computation. There is a difference between a single computation and a bundle of computations. The brain's neurons, etc. are the physical (topological space) aspect of the intersection of computational bundle. They are not a separate substance. Why bother with a simulation or experience at all? Comp has no business producing such things at all. If the world is computation, why pretend it isn't - and how exactly is such a pretending possible. The world and reality is not computation. On the contrary it is almost the complementary of computations. Yes, it is exactly only the content that the computations generate. That is why we can test comp by doing the math of that anti-computation and compare to physics. But, Bruno, what we obtain from comp is not a particular physics. What we get is an infinite landscape of possible physics theories. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal SNIP ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything, it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available. But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false. ROGER: Simulated experience would be objective, such as is given by the text of a novel (knowledge by description). True experience is the subjective experience of the mind --knowledge by aquaintance. These are obviously substantially different. BRUNO: You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks, nor the physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs). ROGER: I don't think so. The owner of the brain is the self. But although the owner of a computer will have a self, so would anybody else involved in creating the computer or software also have one. Are trying to say that I or anybody else can cause the computer to be conscious ? If wave collapse causes consciousness, there are objective theories of wave collapse called decoherence theories which seem more realistic to me. But I can't seem to see how these could work on a computer. Roger -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Craig Weinberg OK, you can program anything to emulate a particular human act. And perhaps allow multiple options. But how would your computerized zombie know which option to take in any given situation ? I don't think options would be sophisticated enough to fool anybody. But perhaps I am being too demanding. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/22/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-21, 16:53:03 Subject: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Sunday, October 21, 2012 3:39:11 PM UTC-4, rclough wrote: BRUNO: Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By definition it behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only God knows, if you want. ROGER: I claim that it is impossible for any kind of zombie that has no mind to act like a human. IMHO that would be an absurdity, because without a mind you cannot know anything. You would run into walls, for example, and couldn't know what to do in any event. Etc. You couldn't understand language. Roger I agree that your intuition is right - a philosophical zombie cannot exist in reality, but not for the reasons you are coming up with. Anything can be programmed to act like a human in some level of description. A scarecrow may act like a human in the eyes of a crow - well enough that it might be less likely to land nearby. You can make robots which won't run into walls or chatbots which respond to some range of vocabulary and sentence construction. The idea behind philosophical zombies is that we assume that there is nothing stopping us in theory from assembling all of the functions of a human being as a single machine, and that such a machine, it is thought, will either have the some kind of human-like experience or else it would have to have no experience. The absent qualia, fading qualia paper is about a thought experiment which tries to take the latter scenario seriously from the point of view of a person who is having their brain gradually taken over by these substitute sub-brain functional units. Would they see blue as being less and less blue as more of their brain is replaced, or would blue just suddenly disappear at some point? Each one seems absurd given that the sum of the remaining brain functions plus the sum of the replaced brain functions, must, by definition of the thought experiment, equal no change in observed behavior. This is my response to this thought experiment to Stathis: Stathis: In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the surrounding neurons in the same way as the original. Craig: Then the thought experiment is garbage from the start. It begs the question. Why not just say we can have an imitation human being that stimulates the surrounding human beings in the same way as the original? Ta-da! That makes it easy. Now all we need to do is make a human being that stimulates their social matrix in the same way as the original and we have perfect AI without messing with neurons or brains at all. Just make a whole person out of person stuff - like as a thought experiment suppose there is some stuff X which makes things that human beings think is another human being. Like marzipan. We can put the right pheromones in it and dress it up nice, and according to the thought experiment, let? say that works. You aren? allowed to deny this because then you don? understand the thought experiment, see? Don? you get it? You have to accept this flawed pretext to have a discussion that I will engage in now. See how it works? Now we can talk for six or eight months about how human marzipan is inevitable because it wouldn? make sense if you replaced a city gradually with marzipan people that New York would gradually fade into less of a New York or that New York becomes suddenly absent. It? a fallacy. The premise screws up the result. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/vj3N3gQoVo8J. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Monday, October 22, 2012 3:08:14 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg OK, you can program anything to emulate a particular human act. And perhaps allow multiple options. But how would your computerized zombie know which option to take in any given situation ? If you believed that our brains were already nothing but computers, then you would say that it would know which option to take the same way that Google knows which options to show you. I argue that can only get you so far, and that authentic humanity is, in such a replacement scheme, a perpetually receding horizon. Just as speech synthesizers have improved cosmetically in the last 30 years to the point that we can use them for Siri or GPS narration, but they have not improved in the sense of increasing the sense of intention and personal presence. Unlike some others on this list, I suspect that our feeling for who is human and who isn't, while deeply flawed, is not limited to interpreting logical observations of behavior. What we feel is alive or sentient depends more on what we like, and what we like depends on what is like us. None of these criteria matter one way or another however as far as giving us reason to believe that a given thing does actually have human like experiences. Craig I don't think options would be sophisticated enough to fool anybody. But perhaps I am being too demanding. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 10/22/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-21, 16:53:03 Subject: Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Sunday, October 21, 2012 3:39:11 PM UTC-4, rclough wrote: BRUNO: Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By definition it behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only God knows, if you want. ROGER: I claim that it is impossible for any kind of zombie that has no mind to act like a human. IMHO that would be an absurdity, because without a mind you cannot know anything. You would run into walls, for example, and couldn't know what to do in any event. Etc. You couldn't understand language. Roger I agree that your intuition is right - a philosophical zombie cannot exist in reality, but not for the reasons you are coming up with. Anything can be programmed to act like a human in some level of description. A scarecrow may act like a human in the eyes of a crow - well enough that it might be less likely to land nearby. You can make robots which won't run into walls or chatbots which respond to some range of vocabulary and sentence construction. The idea behind philosophical zombies is that we assume that there is nothing stopping us in theory from assembling all of the functions of a human being as a single machine, and that such a machine, it is thought, will either have the some kind of human-like experience or else it would have to have no experience. The absent qualia, fading qualia paper is about a thought experiment which tries to take the latter scenario seriously from the point of view of a person who is having their brain gradually taken over by these substitute sub-brain functional units. Would they see blue as being less and less blue as more of their brain is replaced, or would blue just suddenly disappear at some point? Each one seems absurd given that the sum of the remaining brain functions plus the sum of the replaced brain functions, must, by definition of the thought experiment, equal no change in observed behavior. This is my response to this thought experiment to Stathis: Stathis: In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the surrounding neurons in the same way as the original. Craig: Then the thought experiment is garbage from the start. It begs the question. Why not just say we can have an imitation human being that stimulates the surrounding human beings in the same way as the original? Ta-da! That makes it easy. Now all we need to do is make a human being that stimulates their social matrix in the same way as the original and we have perfect AI without messing with neurons or brains at all. Just make a whole person out of person stuff - like as a thought experiment suppose there is some stuff X which makes things that human beings think is another human being. Like marzipan. We can put the right pheromones in it and dress it up nice, and according to the thought experiment, let? say that works. You aren? allowed to deny this because then you don? understand the thought experiment, see? Don? you get it? You have to accept this flawed pretext to have a discussion that I will engage in now. See how it works? Now we can talk for six or eight months about how human marzipan is inevitable because it wouldn
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On 20 Oct 2012, at 13:55, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think if you converse with a real person, he has to have a body or at least vocal chords or the ability to write. BRUNO: Not necessarily. Its brain can be in vat, and then I talk to him by giving him a virtual body in a virtual environnement. I can also, in principle talk with only its brain, by sending the message through the hearing peripherical system, or with the cerebral stem, and decoding the nervous path acting on the motor vocal cords. ROGER: I forget what my gripe was. This sounds OK. As to conversing (interacting) with a computer, not sure, but doubtful: for example how could it taste a glass of wine to tell good wine from bad ? BRUNO: I just answered this. Machines becomes better than human in smelling and tasting, but plausibly far from dogs and cats competence. ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything, it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available. Same is true of a candidate possible zombie person. BRUNO: Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By definition it behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only God knows, if you want. ROGER: I claim that it is impossible for any kind of zombie that has no mind to act like a human. IMHO that would be an absurdity, because without a mind you cannot know anything. You would run into walls, for example, and couldn't know what to do in any event. Etc. You couldn't understand language. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:09:59 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 18 Oct 2012, at 20:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think you can tell is 1p isn't just a shell by trying to converse with it. If it can converse, it's got a mind of its own. I agree with. It has mind, and its has a soul (but he has no real bodies. I can argue this follows from comp). When you attribute 1p to another, you attribute to a shell to manifest a soul or a first person, a knower. Above a treshold of complexity, or reflexivity, (L?ianity), a universal number get a bigger inside view than what he can ever see outside. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 13:36:13 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 17 Oct 2012, at 13:07, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Solipsism is a property of 1p= Firstness = subjectivity OK. And non solipsism is about attributing 1p to others, which needs some independent 3p reality you can bet one, for not being only part of yourself. Be it a God, or a physical universe, or an arithmetical reality. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-16, 09:55:41 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather thanis 2012/10/11 Bruno Marchal On 10 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/10 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 18:58, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It may be a zombie or not. I can? know. The same applies to other persons. It may be that the world is made of zombie-actors that try to cheat me, but I have an harcoded belief in the conventional thing. ? Maybe it is, because otherwise, I will act in strange and self destructive ways. I would act as a paranoic, after that, as a psycopath (since they are not humans). That will not be good for my success in society. Then, ? doubt that I will have any surviving descendant that will develop a zombie-solipsist epistemology. However there are people that believe these strange things. Some autists do not recognize humans as beings like him. Some psychopaths too, in a different way. There is no authistic or psichopathic epistemology because the are not functional enough to make societies with universities and philosophers. That is the whole point of evolutionary epistemology. If comp leads to solipsism, I will apply for being a plumber. I don't bet or believe in solipsism. But you were saying that a *conscious* robot can lack a soul. See the quote just below. That is what I don't understand. Bruno I think that It is not comp what leads to solipsism but any existential stance that only accept what is certain and discard what is only belief based on ?onjectures. It can go no further than ?cogito ergo
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
On Sunday, October 21, 2012 3:39:11 PM UTC-4, rclough wrote: BRUNO: Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By definition it behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only God knows, if you want. ROGER: I claim that it is impossible for any kind of zombie that has no mind to act like a human. IMHO that would be an absurdity, because without a mind you cannot know anything. You would run into walls, for example, and couldn't know what to do in any event. Etc. You couldn't understand language. Roger I agree that your intuition is right - a philosophical zombie cannot exist in reality, but not for the reasons you are coming up with. Anything can be programmed to act like a human in some level of description. A scarecrow may act like a human in the eyes of a crow - well enough that it might be less likely to land nearby. You can make robots which won't run into walls or chatbots which respond to some range of vocabulary and sentence construction. The idea behind philosophical zombies is that we assume that there is nothing stopping us in theory from assembling all of the functions of a human being as a single machine, and that such a machine, it is thought, will either have the some kind of human-like experience or else it would have to have no experience. The absent qualia, fading qualia paper is about a thought experiment which tries to take the latter scenario seriously from the point of view of a person who is having their brain gradually taken over by these substitute sub-brain functional units. Would they see blue as being less and less blue as more of their brain is replaced, or would blue just suddenly disappear at some point? Each one seems absurd given that the sum of the remaining brain functions plus the sum of the replaced brain functions, must, by definition of the thought experiment, equal no change in observed behavior. This is my response to this thought experiment to Stathis: *Stathis: In a thought experiment we can say that the imitation stimulates the * *surrounding neurons in the same way as the original.* Craig: Then the thought experiment is garbage from the start. It begs the question. Why not just say we can have an imitation human being that stimulates the surrounding human beings in the same way as the original? Ta-da! That makes it easy. Now all we need to do is make a human being that stimulates their social matrix in the same way as the original and we have perfect AI without messing with neurons or brains at all. Just make a whole person out of person stuff - like as a thought experiment suppose there is some stuff X which makes things that human beings think is another human being. Like marzipan. We can put the right pheromones in it and dress it up nice, and according to the thought experiment, let’s say that works. You aren’t allowed to deny this because then you don’t understand the thought experiment, see? Don’t you get it? You have to accept this flawed pretext to have a discussion that I will engage in now. See how it works? Now we can talk for six or eight months about how human marzipan is inevitable because it wouldn’t make sense if you replaced a city gradually with marzipan people that New York would gradually fade into less of a New York or that New York becomes suddenly absent. It’s a fallacy. The premise screws up the result. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/vj3N3gQoVo8J. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal I think if you converse with a real person, he has to have a body or at least vocal chords or the ability to write. As to conversing (interacting) with a computer, not sure, but doubtful: for example how could it taste a glass of wine to tell good wine from bad ? Same is true of a candidate possible zombie person. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/20/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 14:09:59 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 18 Oct 2012, at 20:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal I think you can tell is 1p isn't just a shell by trying to converse with it. If it can converse, it's got a mind of its own. I agree with. It has mind, and its has a soul (but he has no real bodies. I can argue this follows from comp). When you attribute 1p to another, you attribute to a shell to manifest a soul or a first person, a knower. Above a treshold of complexity, or reflexivity, (L?ianity), a universal number get a bigger inside view than what he can ever see outside. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 13:36:13 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 17 Oct 2012, at 13:07, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Solipsism is a property of 1p= Firstness = subjectivity OK. And non solipsism is about attributing 1p to others, which needs some independent 3p reality you can bet one, for not being only part of yourself. Be it a God, or a physical universe, or an arithmetical reality. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-16, 09:55:41 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather thanis 2012/10/11 Bruno Marchal On 10 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/10 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 18:58, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It may be a zombie or not. I can? know. The same applies to other persons. It may be that the world is made of zombie-actors that try to cheat me, but I have an harcoded belief in the conventional thing. ? Maybe it is, because otherwise, I will act in strange and self destructive ways. I would act as a paranoic, after that, as a psycopath (since they are not humans). That will not be good for my success in society. Then, ? doubt that I will have any surviving descendant that will develop a zombie-solipsist epistemology. However there are people that believe these strange things. Some autists do not recognize humans as beings like him. Some psychopaths too, in a different way. There is no authistic or psichopathic epistemology because the are not functional enough to make societies with universities and philosophers. That is the whole point of evolutionary epistemology. If comp leads to solipsism, I will apply for being a plumber. I don't bet or believe in solipsism. But you were saying that a *conscious* robot can lack a soul. See the quote just below. That is what I don't understand. Bruno I think that It is not comp what leads to solipsism but any existential stance that only accept what is certain and discard what is only belief based on ?onjectures. It can go no further than ?cogito ergo sum OK. But that has nothing to do with comp. That would conflate the 8 person points in only one of them (the feeler, probably). Only the feeler is that solipsist, at the level were he feels, but the machine's self manage all different points of view, and the living solipsist (each of us) is not mandate to defend the solipsist doctrine (he is the only one existing)/ he is the only one he can feel, that's all. That does not imply the non existence of others and other things. That pressuposes a lot of things that I have not for granted. I have to accept my beliefs as such beliefs to be at the same time rational and functional. With respect to the others consciousness, being humans or robots, I can only have faith. No matter if I accept that this is a matter of faith or not. ? I still don't see what you mean by consciousness without a soul. Bruno 2012/10/9 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 13:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote: But still after this reasoning, ? doubt that the self conscious philosopher robot have the kind of thing, call it a soul, that I have. ? You mean it is a zombie? I can't conceive consciousness without a
Re: Re: Solipsism = 1p
Hi Bruno Marchal I think you can tell is 1p isn't just a shell by trying to converse with it. If it can converse, it's got a mind of its own. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 13:36:13 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On 17 Oct 2012, at 13:07, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Solipsism is a property of 1p= Firstness = subjectivity OK. And non solipsism is about attributing 1p to others, which needs some independent 3p reality you can bet one, for not being only part of yourself. Be it a God, or a physical universe, or an arithmetical reality. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/17/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-16, 09:55:41 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of as if rather thanis 2012/10/11 Bruno Marchal On 10 Oct 2012, at 20:13, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/10/10 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 18:58, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It may be a zombie or not. I can? know. The same applies to other persons. It may be that the world is made of zombie-actors that try to cheat me, but I have an harcoded belief in the conventional thing. ? Maybe it is, because otherwise, I will act in strange and self destructive ways. I would act as a paranoic, after that, as a psycopath (since they are not humans). That will not be good for my success in society. Then, ? doubt that I will have any surviving descendant that will develop a zombie-solipsist epistemology. However there are people that believe these strange things. Some autists do not recognize humans as beings like him. Some psychopaths too, in a different way. There is no authistic or psichopathic epistemology because the are not functional enough to make societies with universities and philosophers. That is the whole point of evolutionary epistemology. If comp leads to solipsism, I will apply for being a plumber. I don't bet or believe in solipsism. But you were saying that a *conscious* robot can lack a soul. See the quote just below. That is what I don't understand. Bruno I think that It is not comp what leads to solipsism but any existential stance that only accept what is certain and discard what is only belief based on ?onjectures. It can go no further than ?cogito ergo sum OK. But that has nothing to do with comp. That would conflate the 8 person points in only one of them (the feeler, probably). Only the feeler is that solipsist, at the level were he feels, but the machine's self manage all different points of view, and the living solipsist (each of us) is not mandate to defend the solipsist doctrine (he is the only one existing)/ he is the only one he can feel, that's all. That does not imply the non existence of others and other things. That pressuposes a lot of things that I have not for granted. I have to accept my beliefs as such beliefs to be at the same time rational and functional. With respect to the others consciousness, being humans or robots, I can only have faith. No matter if I accept that this is a matter of faith or not. ? I still don't see what you mean by consciousness without a soul. Bruno 2012/10/9 Bruno Marchal : On 09 Oct 2012, at 13:29, Alberto G. Corona wrote: But still after this reasoning, ? doubt that the self conscious philosopher robot have the kind of thing, call it a soul, that I have. ? You mean it is a zombie? I can't conceive consciousness without a soul. Even if only the universal one. So I am not sure what you mean by soul. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Alberto. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything
