Re: MGA 1
Thanks, Brent, at least you read through my blurb. Of course I am vague - besides I wrote the post in a jiffy - not premeditatedly, I am sorry. Also there is no adequate language to those things I want to refer to, not even 'in situ', the ideas and terms about interefficient totality (IMO more than just the TOE) are still sought of. We have only the old language of the (models - based) quotidien and scientific terms like your in the physicists' sense and similar. BTW: no action at a distance? what would you call a Mars-to-Earth term when NASA is sending an order and the module on Mars starts digging? I think you may consider the beam a 'connecting' (physical) space-term? I hope to be in the ballpark of your model-based (physicalistic) causality's *extension* in a sense: (I never considered my position in an 'epistemic sense') but think of your (physical) distance as 'unrelated', relevant to more than just measurable space, in any 'dimension' we may (or still cannot) think. I consider sometimes 'causality' as some *backwards-deterministic* in the sense that everything is 'e/affected' by other changes (relations) - as in: nothing generates itself. (In this respect I shove the ORIGIN under the rag, because I acknowledge that it is beyond our limited mental capabilities - and I don't want to start with unreasonable assumptions. (Yes, in my 'narrative' about a Big Bang fantasy - closer to *human common sense logic* starts with a Plenitude-assumption, a pretty undetailed image, giving rise only to some physically-mathematically followable(?) process of the *mandatory* occurrence of the unlimited (both in quality and number) * universes*, but I am ready to change it to a better idea any time.) I wonder if I added to the obscurity of my language. If yes, I am sorry. John M On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: John Mikes wrote: Brent wrote: ... *But is causality an implementation detail? There seems to be an implicit assumption that digitally represented states form a sequence just because there is a rule that defines(*) that sequence, but in fact all digital (and other) sequences depend on(**) causal chains. ...* I would insert at (*): /*'in digitality'*/ - and at (**): /*'(the co-interefficiency of) unlimited'*/ - because in my vocabulary (and I do not expect the 'rest of the world to accept it) the conventional term /'causality'/, meaning to find /A CAUSE/ within the (observed) topical etc. model that entails the (observed) 'effect' - gave place to the unlimited inteconnections that - in their total interefficiency - result in the effect we observed within a model-domain, irrespective of the limits of the observed domain. Cause - IMO - is a limited term of ancient narrow epistemic (model based?) views, not fit for discussions in a TOE-oriented style. Using obsolete words impress the conclusions as well. I think I agree with that last remark (although I'm not sure because the language seems obscure). I meant causality in the physicists sense of no action at a distance, not in an epistemic sense. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Nov 2008, at 20:16, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent: I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. Bruno: In our setting, it means that the neuron/logic gates have some form of prescience. Brent: I'm not sure I agree with that. If consciousness is a process it may be instantiated in physical relations (causal?). But relations are in general not attributes of the relata. Distance is an abstract relation but it is always realized as the distance between two things. The things themselves don't have distance. If some neurons encode my experience of seeing a rose might not the experience depend on the existence of roses, the evolution of sight, and the causal chain as well as the immediate state of the neurons? With *digital* mechanism, it would just mean that we have not chosen the right level of substitution. Once the level is well chosen, then we can no more give role to the implementations details. They can no more be relevant, or we introduce prescience in the elementary components. But is causality an implementation detail? There seems to be an implicit assumption that digitally represented states form a sequence just because there is a rule that defines that sequence, but in fact all digital (and other) sequences depend on causal chains. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience are a case in point. If that was true, why would you say yes to the doctor without knowing the thickness of the artificial axons? How can you be sure your consciousness will not half diminish when the doctor proposes to you the new cheaper brain which use thinner fibers, or half the number of redundant security fibers (thanks to a progress in security software)? I would no more dare to say yes to the doctor if I could loose a fraction of my consciousness and become a partial zombie. But who would say yes to the doctor if he said that he would take a movie of your brain states and project it? Or if he said he would just destroy you in this universe and you would continue your experiences in other branches of the multiverse or in platonia? Not many I think. I agree with you. Not many will say yes to such a doctor! Even rightly so (with MEC). I think MGA 3 should make this clear. The point is just that if we assume both MEC *and* MAT, then the movie is also conscious, but of course (well: by MGA 3) it is not conscious qua computatio, so that we get the (NON COMP or NON MAT) conclusion. It's not so clear to me. One argument leads to CONSCIOUS and the other leads to NON-CONSCIOUS, but there is not direct contradiction - only a contradiction of intuitions. So it may be a fault of intuition in evaluating the thought experiments. Brent I keep COMP (as my working hypothesis, but of course I find it plausible for many reasons), so I abandon MAT. With comp, consciousness can still supervene on computations (in Platonia, or more concretely in the universal deployment), but not on its physical implementation. By UDA we have indeed the obligation now to explain the physical, by the computational. It is the reversal I talked about. Somehow, consciousness does not supervene on brain activity, but brain activity supervene on consciousness. To be short, because consciousness is now somehow related with the whole of arithmetical truth, and things are no so simple. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Brent wrote: ... *But is causality an implementation detail? There seems to be an implicit assumption that digitally represented states form a sequence just because there is a rule that defines(*) that sequence, but in fact all digital (and other) sequences depend on(**) causal chains. ...* I would insert at (*): *'in digitality'* - and at (**): *'(the co-interefficiency of) unlimited'* - because in my vocabulary (and I do not expect the 'rest of the world to accept it) the conventional term * 'causality'*, meaning to find *A CAUSE* within the (observed) topical etc. model that entails the (observed) 'effect' - gave place to the unlimited inteconnections that - in their total interefficiency - result in the effect we observed within a model-domain, irrespective of the limits of the observed domain. Cause - IMO - is a limited term of ancient narrow epistemic (model based?) views, not fit for discussions in a TOE-oriented style. Using obsolete words impress the coclusions as well. John Mikes On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Nov 2008, at 20:16, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent: I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. Bruno: In our setting, it means that the neuron/logic gates have some form of prescience. Brent: I'm not sure I agree with that. If consciousness is a process it may be instantiated in physical relations (causal?). But relations are in general not attributes of the relata. Distance is an abstract relation but it is always realized as the distance between two things. The things themselves don't have distance. If some neurons encode my experience of seeing a rose might not the experience depend on the existence of roses, the evolution of sight, and the causal chain as well as the immediate state of the neurons? With *digital* mechanism, it would just mean that we have not chosen the right level of substitution. Once the level is well chosen, then we can no more give role to the implementations details. They can no more be relevant, or we introduce prescience in the elementary components. But is causality an implementation detail? There seems to be an implicit assumption that digitally represented states form a sequence just because there is a rule that defines that sequence, but in fact all digital (and other) sequences depend on causal chains. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience are a case in point. If that was true, why would you say yes to the doctor without knowing the thickness of the artificial axons? How can you be sure your consciousness will not half diminish when the doctor proposes to you the new cheaper brain which use thinner fibers, or half the number of redundant security fibers (thanks to a progress in security software)? I would no more dare to say yes to the doctor if I could loose a fraction of my consciousness and become a partial zombie. But who would say yes to the doctor if he said that he would take a movie of your brain states and project it? Or if he said he would just destroy you in this universe and you would continue your experiences in other branches of the multiverse or in platonia? Not many I think. I agree with you. Not many will say yes to such a doctor! Even rightly so (with MEC). I think MGA 3 should make this clear. The point is just that if we assume both MEC *and* MAT, then the movie is also conscious, but of course (well: by MGA 3) it is not conscious qua computatio, so that we get the (NON COMP or NON MAT) conclusion. It's not so clear to me. One argument leads to CONSCIOUS and the other leads to NON-CONSCIOUS, but there is not direct contradiction - only a contradiction of intuitions. So it may be a fault of intuition in evaluating the thought experiments. Brent I keep COMP (as my working hypothesis, but of course I find it plausible for many reasons), so I abandon MAT. With comp, consciousness can still supervene on computations (in Platonia, or more concretely in the universal deployment), but not on its physical implementation. By UDA we have indeed the obligation now to explain the physical, by the computational. It is the reversal I talked about. Somehow, consciousness does not supervene on brain activity, but brain activity supervene on consciousness. To be short, because consciousness is now somehow related with the whole of arithmetical truth, and things are no so simple. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe
Re: MGA 1
John Mikes wrote: Brent wrote: ... *But is causality an implementation detail? There seems to be an implicit assumption that digitally represented states form a sequence just because there is a rule that defines(*) that sequence, but in fact all digital (and other) sequences depend on(**) causal chains. ...* I would insert at (*): /*'in digitality'*/ - and at (**): /*'(the co-interefficiency of) unlimited'*/ - because in my vocabulary (and I do not expect the 'rest of the world to accept it) the conventional term /'causality'/, meaning to find /A CAUSE/ within the (observed) topical etc. model that entails the (observed) 'effect' - gave place to the unlimited inteconnections that - in their total interefficiency - result in the effect we observed within a model-domain, irrespective of the limits of the observed domain. Cause - IMO - is a limited term of ancient narrow epistemic (model based?) views, not fit for discussions in a TOE-oriented style. Using obsolete words impress the coclusions as well. I think I agree with that last remark (although I'm not sure because the language seems obscure). I meant causality in the physicists sense of no action at a distance, not in an epistemic sense. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
2008/11/25 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The answer I *used* to give was that it doesn't matter, because no matter what accidental order you find in Platonia, you also find the real order. In other words, if you find some portion of the digits of PI that seems to be following the rules of Conway's Life, then there is also (of course) a Platonic object that represents the actual computations that the digits of PI seem to be computing. This is, essentially, Bostrom's Unification in the context of Platonia. It doesn't matter whether or not accidental order in the digits of PI can be viewed as conscious, because either way, we know the real order exists in Platonia as well, and multiple instantiations of the same pain in Platonia wouldn't result in multiple pains. I'm uncomfortable with the philosophical vagueness of some of this. At the very least, I want a better handle on why Unification is correct and Duplication is not in the context of Platonia (or why that question is confused, if it is). I'd agree with your first paragraph quoted above. It isn't possible to introduce, eliminate or duplicate Platonic objects; they're all just there, eternally. -- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 25 Nov 2008, at 20:16, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Brent: I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. Bruno: In our setting, it means that the neuron/logic gates have some form of prescience. Brent: I'm not sure I agree with that. If consciousness is a process it may be instantiated in physical relations (causal?). But relations are in general not attributes of the relata. Distance is an abstract relation but it is always realized as the distance between two things. The things themselves don't have distance. If some neurons encode my experience of seeing a rose might not the experience depend on the existence of roses, the evolution of sight, and the causal chain as well as the immediate state of the neurons? With *digital* mechanism, it would just mean that we have not chosen the right level of substitution. Once the level is well chosen, then we can no more give role to the implementations details. They can no more be relevant, or we introduce prescience in the elementary components. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience are a case in point. If that was true, why would you say yes to the doctor without knowing the thickness of the artificial axons? How can you be sure your consciousness will not half diminish when the doctor proposes to you the new cheaper brain which use thinner fibers, or half the number of redundant security fibers (thanks to a progress in security software)? I would no more dare to say yes to the doctor if I could loose a fraction of my consciousness and become a partial zombie. But who would say yes to the doctor if he said that he would take a movie of your brain states and project it? Or if he said he would just destroy you in this universe and you would continue your experiences in other branches of the multiverse or in platonia? Not many I think. I agree with you. Not many will say yes to such a doctor! Even rightly so (with MEC). I think MGA 3 should make this clear. The point is just that if we assume both MEC *and* MAT, then the movie is also conscious, but of course (well: by MGA 3) it is not conscious qua computatio, so that we get the (NON COMP or NON MAT) conclusion. I keep COMP (as my working hypothesis, but of course I find it plausible for many reasons), so I abandon MAT. With comp, consciousness can still supervene on computations (in Platonia, or more concretely in the universal deployment), but not on its physical implementation. By UDA we have indeed the obligation now to explain the physical, by the computational. It is the reversal I talked about. Somehow, consciousness does not supervene on brain activity, but brain activity supervene on consciousness. To be short, because consciousness is now somehow related with the whole of arithmetical truth, and things are no so simple. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 - (to B.M)
John, On 24 Nov 2008, at 00:19, John Mikes wrote: Bruno, right before my par on 'sharing a 3rd pers. opinion: more or less (maybe) resembling the original 'to be shared' one. In its (1st) 'personal' variation. (Cf: perceived reality). you included a remark not too dissimilar in essence, but with one word in it I want to reflect on: The third person part is what the first person variant is a variant of. I don't pretend we can know it. But if we don't bet on it, we become solipsist. Solipsist !! I don't consider it a 'dirty word'. WE ARE solipsists, The first person is solipsist. But in science we bet on sharable thrid person view, and in cognitive science (and in everyday life once we are grown up) we bet on the possibility of other first person, at least locally. I am betting right now that John Mikes has some inner knowledge, despite I cannot prove it. only our 1st person understanding represents the world for us, nothing else. I got that (and accepted) from Colin and use ever since the term (see above as well): perceived reality (I did not refer to that to Kim's question - sorry, Kim). Our variant is a manipulated version of the portion we indeed received - in any way and quality - by our 'mindset': the previous experience we collected, the genetic makeup of reacting to ideas, the actual state of our psyche (Stathis could tell all that much more professional...). Yet THAT variant is our (mini?) solipsism: that's what we are. Well that is what our first person are. So we should not fight being called a solipsist. Every soul is solipsist, in that sense. Even the universal machine agree on this (cf the interview). Only eliminative materialism denies this. But this is different of the doctrinal solipsism, that is, of the word solipsist as used in philosophy. Such solipsism asserts that I am the only first person which exists. This could be true for the universal soul (S4Grz, the third hypostases, etc.), but not for each of us right now, when entangled in a more probable computational history. I am not a solipsist just because I don't believe that you are a zombie. Without such there would be no discussion, just zombies' acceptance. Absolutely. But this means only that, thankfully, you do believe in the existence of other first persons, other solipsist. This means you are not a doctrinal solipsist, which consider other as zombie, actually as non existing at all, just fruits of their personal dream. I think we agree. Best, Bruno M http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ John M On 11/23/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 23 Nov 2008, at 17:41, John Mikes wrote: On 11/23/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: About mechanism, the optimist reasons like that. I love myself because I have a so interesting life with so many rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. So I love machine because machine *can* have rich experiences, indeed, myself is an example. The pessimist reasons like that. I hate myself because my life is boringly uninteresting without any rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. I knew it! My own life confirms that rumor according to which machine are stupid automata. No meaning no future. (JM): thanks Bruno, for the nice metaphor of 'machine' - It was the pessimist metaphor. I hope you know I am a bit more optimist, ... with regard to machines. In my vocabulary a machine is a model exercising a mechanism, but chacquun a son gout. We agree on the definition. (JM): Bruno, in my opinion NOTHING is 'third person sharable' - only a 'thing' (from every- or no-) can give rise to develop a FIRST personal variant of the sharing, The third person part is what the first person variant is a variant of. I don't pretend we can know it. But if we don't bet on it, we become solipsist. more or less (maybe) resembling the original 'to be shared' one. In its (1st) 'personal' variation. (Cf: perceived reality). Building theories help to learn how false we can be. We have to take our theories seriously, make then precise and clear enough if we want to see the contradiction and learn from there. Oh we can also contemplate, meditate, or listen to music; or use (legal) entheogen, why not, there are many paths, not incompatible. But reasoning up to a contradiction, pure or with the facts, is the way of the researcher. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
Re: MGA 1
Le 25-nov.-08, à 02:13, Kory Heath a écrit : On Nov 24, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: If your argument were not merely convincing but definitive, then I would not need to make MGA 3 for showing it is ridiculous to endow the projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness (in real space-time, like the physical supervenience thesis asked for). Ok, I think I'm following you now. You're saying that I'm failing to provide a definitive argument showing that it is ridiculous to endow the projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness. (Or, in my alternate thought experiment, I'm failing to provide a *definitive* reason why it's ridiculous to endow the playing back of the previously-computed block universe with consciousness.) Yes. I concur - my arguments are convincing, but not definitive. If MGA 3 (or MGA 4, etc.) is definitive, or even just more convincing, so much the better. Please proceed! So you agree that MGA 1 does show that Lucky Alice is conscious (logically). Normally, this means the proof is finished for you (but that is indeed what you say before I begun; everything is coherent). About MGA 3, I feel almost a bit ashamed to explain that. To believe that the projection of the movie makes Alice conscious, is almost like explaining why we should not send Roger Moore (James Bond) in jail, giving that there are obvious movie where he clearly does not respect the speed limitation (grin). Of course this is not an argument. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:55:37AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: About MGA 3, I feel almost a bit ashamed to explain that. To believe that the projection of the movie makes Alice conscious, is almost like explaining why we should not send Roger Moore (James Bond) in jail, giving that there are obvious movie where he clearly does not respect the speed limitation (grin). Of course this is not an argument. Bruno There is a world of difference between the James Bond movie, which is clearly not the same as the actor in flesh and blood, and the sort of movie used in your MGA, which by definition is indistinguishable in all important respects from the original conscious being. It is important not to let our intuitions misguide us at this point. Brent was effectively making the same point, about when unlikely events become indistinguishable from impossible. Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Just to be clear on this, I obviously agree. Best, Bruno Le 25-nov.-08, à 12:05, Russell Standish a écrit : On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:55:37AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: About MGA 3, I feel almost a bit ashamed to explain that. To believe that the projection of the movie makes Alice conscious, is almost like explaining why we should not send Roger Moore (James Bond) in jail, giving that there are obvious movie where he clearly does not respect the speed limitation (grin). Of course this is not an argument. Bruno There is a world of difference between the James Bond movie, which is clearly not the same as the actor in flesh and blood, and the sort of movie used in your MGA, which by definition is indistinguishable in all important respects from the original conscious being. It is important not to let our intuitions misguide us at this point. Brent was effectively making the same point, about when unlikely events become indistinguishable from impossible. Cheers -- --- - A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --- - 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So you agree that MGA 1 does show that Lucky Alice is conscious (logically). I think I have a less rigorous view of the argument than you do. You want the argument to have the rigor of a mathematical proof. You say Let's start with the mechanist-materialist assumption that Fully- Functional Alice is conscious. We can replace her neurons one-by-one with random neurons that just happen to do what the fully-functional ones were going to do. By definition none of her exterior or interior behavior changes. Therefore, the resulting Lucky Alice must be exactly as conscious as Fully-Functional Alice. To me, this argument doesn't have the full rigor of a mathematical proof, because it's not entirely clear what the mechanist-materialists really mean when they say that Fully-Functional Alice is conscious, and it's not clear whether or not they would agree that none of her exterior or interior behavior changes (in any way that's relevant). There *is* an objective physical difference between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice - it's precisely the (discoverable, physical) fact that her neurons are all being stimulated by cosmic rays rather than by each other. I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. Of course, in practice, Lucky Alice presents a conundrum for such mechanist-materialists. But it's not obvious to me that the conundrum is unanswerable for them, because the whole notion of consciousness in this context seems so vague. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience are a case in point. He clearly takes a mechanist-materialist view of consciousness, and he believes that a grid of randomly-flipping bits cannot be conscious, no matter what it does. He would argue that, during Fully-Functional Alice's slide into Lucky Alice, her subjective quality of consciousness doesn't change, but her quantity of consciousness gradually reduces until it becomes zero. That seems weird to me, but I don't see how to logically prove that it's wrong. All I have are messy philosophical arguments and thought experiments - what Dennett calls intuition pumps. That being said, I'm happy to proceed as if our hypothetical mechanist- materialists have accepted the force of your argument as a logical proof. Yes, they claim, given the assumptions of our mechanism- materialism, if Fully-Functional Alice is conscious, Lucky Alice must *necessarily* also be conscious. If the laser-graph is conscious, then the movie of it must *necessarily* be conscious. What's the problem (they ask)? On to MGA 3. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 25 Nov 2008, at 15:49, Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So you agree that MGA 1 does show that Lucky Alice is conscious (logically). I think I have a less rigorous view of the argument than you do. You want the argument to have the rigor of a mathematical proof. Yes. But it is applied mathematics, in a difficult domain (psychology/ theology and foundation of physics). There is a minimum of common sense and candidness which is asked for. The proof is rigorous in the way it should give to anyone the feeling that it could be entirely formalized in some intensional mathematics, S4 with quantifiers, or in the modal variant of G and G*. This is eventually the purpose of the interview of the lobian machine (using Theaetetus epistemological definition). But this is normally not needed for conscious english speaking being with enough common sense and some interest in the matter. You say Let's start with the mechanist-materialist assumption that Fully- Functional Alice is conscious. We can replace her neurons one-by-one with random neurons They are random in the sense that ALL strings are random. They are not random in Kolmogorov sense for example. MGA 2 should make this clear. that just happen to do what the fully-functional ones were going to do. It is not random for that very reason. It is luckiness in MGA 1, and the record of computations in MGA 2. By definition none of her exterior or interior behavior changes. I never use those terms in this context, except in comp jokes like the brain is in the brain. It is dangerous because interior/exterior can refer both to the in-the skull/outside-the-skull, and objective/ subjective. I just use the fact that you say yes to a doctor qua computatio (with or without MAT). Therefore, the resulting Lucky Alice must be exactly as conscious as Fully-Functional Alice. To me, this argument doesn't have the full rigor of a mathematical proof, because it's not entirely clear what the mechanist-materialists really mean when they say that Fully-Functional Alice is conscious, Consciousness does not need to be defined more precisely than it is needed for saying yes to the doctor qua computatio, like a naturalist could say yes for an artificial heart. Consciousness and (primitive) Matter don't need to be defined more precisely than needed to understand the physical supervenience thesis. Despite term like existence of a primitive physical universe or the very general supervenience term itself. You could have perhaps still a problem with the definitions or with the hypotheses? and it's not clear whether or not they would agree that none of her exterior or interior behavior changes (in any way that's relevant). There *is* an objective physical difference between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice - it's precisely the (discoverable, physical) fact that her neurons are all being stimulated by cosmic rays rather than by each other. There is an objective difference between very young Alice with her biological brain and very young Alice the day after the digital graft. But taking both MEC and MAT together, you cannot use that difference. If you want use that difference, you have to make change to MEC and/or to MAT. You can always be confused by the reasoning in a way which pushes you to (re)consider MEC or MAT, and to interpret them more vaguely so that those changes are made possible. But then we learn nothing clear from the reasoning. We learn if we do the same, but precisely. I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. In our setting, it means that the neuron/logic gates have some form of prescience. Of course, in practice, Lucky Alice presents a conundrum for such mechanist-materialists. But it's not obvious to me that the conundrum is unanswerable for them, because the whole notion of consciousness in this context seems so vague. No, what could be vague is the idea of linking consciousness with matter, but that is the point of the reasoning. If we keep comp, we have to (re)define the general notion of matter. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience are a case in point. If that was true, why would you say yes to the doctor without knowing the thickness of the artificial axons? How can you be sure your consciousness will not half diminish when the doctor proposes to you the new cheaper brain which use thinner fibers, or half the number of redundant security fibers (thanks to a progress in security software)? I would no more dare to say yes to the doctor if I could loose a fraction of my consciousness and become a partial zombie. He clearly takes a mechanist-materialist view of consciousness, Many believes in naturalism. At least, its move shows that he is aware
Re: MGA 1
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 25 Nov 2008, at 15:49, Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: So you agree that MGA 1 does show that Lucky Alice is conscious (logically). I think I have a less rigorous view of the argument than you do. You want the argument to have the rigor of a mathematical proof. Yes. But it is applied mathematics, in a difficult domain (psychology/ theology and foundation of physics). There is a minimum of common sense and candidness which is asked for. The proof is rigorous in the way it should give to anyone the feeling that it could be entirely formalized in some intensional mathematics, S4 with quantifiers, or in the modal variant of G and G*. This is eventually the purpose of the interview of the lobian machine (using Theaetetus epistemological definition). But this is normally not needed for conscious english speaking being with enough common sense and some interest in the matter. You say Let's start with the mechanist-materialist assumption that Fully- Functional Alice is conscious. We can replace her neurons one-by-one with random neurons They are random in the sense that ALL strings are random. They are not random in Kolmogorov sense for example. MGA 2 should make this clear. that just happen to do what the fully-functional ones were going to do. It is not random for that very reason. It is luckiness in MGA 1, and the record of computations in MGA 2. By definition none of her exterior or interior behavior changes. I never use those terms in this context, except in comp jokes like the brain is in the brain. It is dangerous because interior/exterior can refer both to the in-the skull/outside-the-skull, and objective/ subjective. I just use the fact that you say yes to a doctor qua computatio (with or without MAT). Therefore, the resulting Lucky Alice must be exactly as conscious as Fully-Functional Alice. To me, this argument doesn't have the full rigor of a mathematical proof, because it's not entirely clear what the mechanist-materialists really mean when they say that Fully-Functional Alice is conscious, Consciousness does not need to be defined more precisely than it is needed for saying yes to the doctor qua computatio, like a naturalist could say yes for an artificial heart. Consciousness and (primitive) Matter don't need to be defined more precisely than needed to understand the physical supervenience thesis. Despite term like existence of a primitive physical universe or the very general supervenience term itself. You could have perhaps still a problem with the definitions or with the hypotheses? and it's not clear whether or not they would agree that none of her exterior or interior behavior changes (in any way that's relevant). There *is* an objective physical difference between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice - it's precisely the (discoverable, physical) fact that her neurons are all being stimulated by cosmic rays rather than by each other. There is an objective difference between very young Alice with her biological brain and very young Alice the day after the digital graft. But taking both MEC and MAT together, you cannot use that difference. If you want use that difference, you have to make change to MEC and/or to MAT. You can always be confused by the reasoning in a way which pushes you to (re)consider MEC or MAT, and to interpret them more vaguely so that those changes are made possible. But then we learn nothing clear from the reasoning. We learn if we do the same, but precisely. I don't see why the mechanist-materialists are logically disallowed from incorporating that kind of physical difference into their notion of consciousness. In our setting, it means that the neuron/logic gates have some form of prescience. I'm not sure I agree with that. If consciousness is a process it may be instantiated in physical relations (causal?). But relations are in general not attributes of the relata. Distance is an abstract relation but it is always realized as the distance between two things. The things themselves don't have distance. If some neurons encode my experience of seeing a rose might not the experience depend on the existence of roses, the evolution of sight, and the causal chain as well as the immediate state of the neurons? Of course, in practice, Lucky Alice presents a conundrum for such mechanist-materialists. But it's not obvious to me that the conundrum is unanswerable for them, because the whole notion of consciousness in this context seems so vague. No, what could be vague is the idea of linking consciousness with matter, but that is the point of the reasoning. If we keep comp, we have to (re)define the general notion of matter. Bostrom's views about fractional quantities of experience
Re: MGA 1
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:16:55AM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote: But who would say yes to the doctor if he said that he would take a movie of your brain states and project it? Or if he said he would just destroy you in this universe and you would continue your experiences in other branches of the multiverse or in platonia? Not many I think. Brent Then perhaps nobody has sufficient faith in COMP! Interestingly, I pointed out an inherent contradiction in the Yes, doctor postulate a while back, which I gather you're still thinking of a response Bruno. Lets call it the Standish wager, after the Pascal wager about belief in God. If YD is true, then you must also accept the consequences, namely COMP-immortality. In which case you may as well say no to the doctor, as COMP-immortality guarantees that you will survive the terminal brain disease that brought you to the doctor in the first place. Of course, in reality, it may be a very different choice being presented. Perhaps Vinge's Singularity happens, and one is given the choice between uploading into the hive mind, or being put to death on the spot to conserve resources. Or more modestly, one is being given a choice of whether to have a direct internet connection implanted in your skull. In each of these cases, one should make the choice based on whether the new configuration offers a better life over your existing one, or not. Survival prospects really shouldn't enter into it. In the event YD is false, you will then not be any worse off than you were before. BTW - I watched the Prestige on the weekend. Good recommendation, Bruno! My wife enjoyed it greatly too, and wants to watch it again sometime. I can't get her to read my book, though :( Cheers -- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://www.hpcoders.com.au --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 25, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: You could have perhaps still a problem with the definitions or with the hypotheses? I think I haven't always been clear on our definitions of mechanism and materialism. But I can understand and accept definitions of those terms under which MGA 1 shows that it's logically necessary that Lucky Alice is conscious, and MGA 2 shows that it's logically necessary that the projection of the movie makes Alice conscious (your words from a previous email). I think we can proceed with that. But can you clarify exactly what MECH+MAT is supposed to be saying about the movie? Does MECH+MAT say that something special is happening when we project the movie, or is the simple existence of the movie enough? -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 23, 2008, at 4:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Let us consider your lucky teleportation case, where someone use a teleporter which fails badly. So it just annihilates the original person, but then, by an incredible luck the person is reconstructed with his right state after. If you ask him how do you know how to tie shoes, if the person answers, after that bad but lucky teleportation because I learn in my youth: he is correct. He is correct for the same reason Alice's answer to her exams were correct, even if luckily so. I think it's (subtly) incorrect to focus on Lucky Alice's *answers* to her exams. By definition, she wrote down the correct answers. But (I claim) she didn't compute those answers. A bunch of cosmic rays just made her look like she did. Fully-Functional Alice, on the other hand, actually did compute the answers. Let's imagine that someone interrupts Fully-Functional Alice while she's taking the exam and asks her, Do you think that your actions right now are being caused primarily by a very unlikely sequence of cosmic rays?, and she answers No. She is answering correctly. By definition, Lucky Alice will answer the same way. But she will be answering incorrectly. That is the sense in which I'm saying that Lucky Kory is making a false statement when he says I learned to tie my shoes in my youth. In the case of Lucky Kory, I concur that, despite this difference, his subjective consciousness is identical to what Kory's would have been if the teleportation was successful. But the reason I can view Lucky Kory as conscious at all is that once the lucky accident creates him out of whole cloth, his neurons are firing correctly, are causally connected to each other in the requisite ways, etc. I have a harder time understanding how Lucky Alice can be conscious, because at the time I'm supposed to be viewing her as conscious, she isn't meeting the causal / computational pre-requisites that I thought were necessary for consciousness. And I can essentially turn Lucky Kory into Lucky Alice by imagining that he is nothing but a series of lucky teleportations. And then suddenly I don't see how he can be conscious, either. Suppose I send you a copy of my sane paper by the internet, and that, the internet demolishes it completely, but that by an incredible chance your buggy computer rebuild it in its exact original form. This will not change the content of the paper, and the paper will be correct or false independently of the way it has flight from me to you. That's because the SANE paper doesn't happen to talk about it's own causal history. Imagine that I take a pencil and a sheet of paper and write the following on it: The patterns of markings on this paper were caused by Kory Heath. Of course, that doesn't mean that the molecules in this piece of paper touched the hands of Kory Heath. Maybe the paper has been teleported since Kory wrote it, and reconstructed out of totally different molecules. But there is an unbroken causal chain from these markings back to something Kory once did. If you teleport that paper normally, the statement on it remains true. If the teleportation fails, but a lucky accident creates an identical piece of paper, the statement on it is false. Maybe this has no bearing on consciousness or anything else, but I don't want to forget about the distinction until I'm sure it's not relevant. Of course, the movie has still some relationship with the original consciousness of Alice, and this will help us to save the MEC part of the physical supervenience thesis, giving rise to the notion of computational supervenience, but this form of supervenience does no more refer to anything *primarily* physical, and this will be enough preventing the use of a concrete universe for blocking the UDA conclusion. I see what you mean. But for me, these thought experiments are making me doubt that I even have a coherent notion of computational supervenience. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 24 Nov 2008, at 18:08, Kory Heath wrote: I see what you mean. But for me, these thought experiments are making me doubt that I even have a coherent notion of computational supervenience. You are not supposed to have a coherent idea of what is computational supervenience. This belongs to the conclusion of the reasoning, and this will need elaboration on what is a computation. This is not so hard with ... computer science. To understand that MEC+MAT is contradictory, you have only to understand them well enough so as to get up to the point where the contradiction occurs. You give us many quite good argument for saying that Lucky Alice, and even Lucky Kory, are not conscious. I do agree, mainly, with those argument. So let me be clear; you argument that , assuming MEC+MAT, Lucky Alice is not conscious are almost correct, and very convincing. And so, of course Lucky Alice is not conscious. Now, MGA 1 is an argument showing, that MEC+MAT, due to the physical supervenience thesis, and the non prescience of the neurons, entails that Lucky Alice is conscious. The question is: do you see this. too If you see this, we have: MEC+MAT entails Lucky Alice is not conscious (by your correct argument) MEC+MAT entails Lucky Alice is conscious (by MGA 1) Thus MEC+MAT entails (Lucky Alice is conscious AND Lucky Alice is not conscious), that is, MEC+MAT entails false, a contradiction. And that is the point. If your argument were not merely convincing but definitive, then I would not need to make MGA 3 for showing it is ridiculous to endow the projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness (in real space-time, like the physical supervenience thesis asked for). OK? Bruno -- Kory 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 22, 2008, at 6:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Similarly, whenever we interact with a computation, it must be realised on a physical computer, such as a human brain. But there is also the abstract computation, a Platonic object. It seems that consciousness, like threeness, may be a property of the Platonic object, and not of its physical realisation. This allows resolution of the apparent paradoxes we have been discussing. For reasons that are (mostly) independent of all of these thought experiments, I suspect that there's something deeply correct about the idea that an abstract computation can be the substrate for consciousness. Or at least, I think there's something deeply correct about replacing the idea of physical existence with mathematical facts-of-the-matter. This immediately eliminates weird questions like why is there something instead of nothing, which seem unanswerable in the context of the normal view of physical existence. But what I'm realizing is that I still don't have a clear conception of how consciousness is supposed to relate to these Platonic computations. (Or maybe I don't have a clear enough picture of what counts as a Platonic computation.) In a way, it feels to me as though I still have partial zombie problems, even in Platonia. Lets imagine a block universe in Platonia - a 3D block of cells filled (in some order that we specify) with the binary digits of PI. Somewhere within this block, there are (I think) regions which look as if they're following the rules of Conway's Life, and some of those regions contain creatures that look as if they're conscious. Are they actually conscious? The move away from physical existence to mathematical existence (what I've called mathematical physicalism) doesn't immediately help me answer this question. The answer I *used* to give was that it doesn't matter, because no matter what accidental order you find in Platonia, you also find the real order. In other words, if you find some portion of the digits of PI that seems to be following the rules of Conway's Life, then there is also (of course) a Platonic object that represents the actual computations that the digits of PI seem to be computing. This is, essentially, Bostrom's Unification in the context of Platonia. It doesn't matter whether or not accidental order in the digits of PI can be viewed as conscious, because either way, we know the real order exists in Platonia as well, and multiple instantiations of the same pain in Platonia wouldn't result in multiple pains. I'm uncomfortable with the philosophical vagueness of some of this. At the very least, I want a better handle on why Unification is correct and Duplication is not in the context of Platonia (or why that question is confused, if it is). -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 24, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: If your argument were not merely convincing but definitive, then I would not need to make MGA 3 for showing it is ridiculous to endow the projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness (in real space-time, like the physical supervenience thesis asked for). Ok, I think I'm following you now. You're saying that I'm failing to provide a definitive argument showing that it is ridiculous to endow the projection of a movie of a computation with consciousness. (Or, in my alternate thought experiment, I'm failing to provide a *definitive* reason why it's ridiculous to endow the playing back of the previously-computed block universe with consciousness.) I concur - my arguments are convincing, but not definitive. If MGA 3 (or MGA 4, etc.) is definitive, or even just more convincing, so much the better. Please proceed! -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 21 Nov 2008, at 10:45, Kory Heath wrote: However, the materialist-mechanist still has some grounds to say that there's something interestingly different about Lucky Kory than Original Kory. It is a physical fact of the matter that Lucky Kory is not causally connected to Pre-Teleportation Kory. When someone asks Lucky Kory, Why do you tie your shoes that way?, and Lucky Kory says, Because of something I learned when I was ten years old, Lucky Kory's statement is quite literally false. Lucky Kory ties his shoes that way because of some cosmic rays. I actually don't know what the standard mechanist-materialist way of viewing this situation is. But it does seem to suggest that maybe breaks in the causal chain shouldn't affect consciousness after all. You are right, at least when, for the sake of the argument, we continue to keep MEC and MAT, if only to single out, the most transparently possible, the contradiction. Let us consider your lucky teleportation case, where someone use a teleporter which fails badly. So it just annihilates the original person, but then, by an incredible luck the person is reconstructed with his right state after. If you ask him how do you know how to tie shoes, if the person answers, after that bad but lucky teleportation because I learn in my youth: he is correct. He is correct for the same reason Alice's answer to her exams were correct, even if luckily so. Suppose I send you a copy of my sane paper by the internet, and that, the internet demolishes it completely, but that by an incredible chance your buggy computer rebuild it in its exact original form. This will not change the content of the paper, and the paper will be correct or false independently of the way it has flight from me to you. In the bad-lucky teleporter case, even with MAT (and MEC) it is still the right person who survived, with the correct representation of her right memories, and so one. Even if just luckily so. MGA 2 then shows that the random appearance of the lucky event was a red hearing, so that we have to admit that consciousness supervenes on the movie graph (the movie of the running of the boolean optical computer). Of course I don't believe that consciousness supervene on the physical activity of such movie, but this means that I have to abandon the whole physical supervenience. I will read the other posts. I think many have understood and have already concluded. But from a strict logical point of view, perhaps some are willing to defend the idea that the movie-graph is conscious, and, in that case, I will present MGA 3, which is supposed to show that, well, a movie cannot think, through MEC (there is just no computation there). Of course, the movie has still some relationship with the original consciousness of Alice, and this will help us to save the MEC part of the physical supervenience thesis, giving rise to the notion of computational supervenience, but this form of supervenience does no more refer to anything *primarily* physical, and this will be enough preventing the use of a concrete universe for blocking the UDA conclusion. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 20 Nov 2008, at 21:27, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Absolutely so. Bruno, What about the state machine that included the injection of lucky noise from an outside source vs. one in which all information was derived internally from the operation of the state machine itself? At which times? How? Did MGA 2 clarify this? Would those two differently defined machines not differ and compute something different? Even though the computations are identical the information that is being computed comes from different sources and so carries with it a different connotation. But the supervenience principle and the non-prescience of the neurons makes it impossible to the machine to feel such connotations. Though the bits injected are identical, they inherently imply a different meaning because the state machine in the case of injection has a different structure than that of her normally operating brain. I believe the brain can be abstracted as a computer/ information processing system, but it is not simply the computations and the inputs into the logic gates at each step that are important, but also the source of the input bits, otherwise the computation isn't the same. If the source differs below the substitution level, the machine cannot be aware of it. If she was, it would mean we have been wrong with the choice of the substitution level. OK? We can come back on this. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On 20 Nov 2008, at 19:38, Brent Meeker wrote: Talk about consciousness will seem as quaint as talk about the elan vital does now. Then you are led to eliminativism of consciousness. This makes MEC+MAT trivially coherent. The price is big: consciousness does no more exist, like the elan vital. MEC becomes vacuoulsy true: I say yes to the doctor, without even meaning it. But it seems to me that consciousness is not like the elan vital. I do make the, admittedly non sharable, experience of consciousness all the time, so it seems to me that such a move consists in negating the data. If the idea of keeping the notion of primitive matter, which I recall is really an hypothesis, is so demanding that I have to abandon the idea that I am conscious, I will abandon the hypothetical notion of primitive matter instead. But you make my point. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 20 Nov 2008, at 21:40, Gordon Tsai wrote: Bruno: I think you and John touched the fundamental issues of human rational. It's a dilemma encountered by phenomenology. Now I have a question: In theory we can't distinguish ourselves from a Lobian Machine. Note that in the math part (Arithmetical UDA), I consider only *Sound* Lobian machine. Sound means hat they are never wrong (talking about numbers). Now no sound Lobian machine can know that she is sound, and I am not yet sure I will find an interesting notion of lobianity for unsound machines, and sound Lobian Machine can easily get unsound, especially when they begin to confuse deductive inference and inductive inference. We just cannot know if we are (sound) Lobian Machine. It is more something we should hope for ... But can lobian machines truly have sufficient rich experiences like human? You know, Mechanism is a bit like the half bottle of wine. The optimist thinks that the bottle is yet half full, and the pessimist thinks that the bottles is already half-empty. About mechanism, the optimist reasons like that. I love myself because I have a so interesting life with so many rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. So I love machine because machine *can* have rich experiences, indeed, myself is an example. The pessimist reasons like that. I hate myself because my life is boringly uninteresting without any rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. I knew it! My own life confirms that rumor according to which machine are stupid automata. No meaning no future. For example, is it possible for a lobian machine to still its mind' or cease the computational logic like some eastern philosophy suggested? Maybe any of the out-of-loop experience is still part of the computation/logic, just as our out-of-body experiences are actually the trick of brain chemicals? The bad news is that the singular point is, imo, behind us. The universal machine you bought has been clever, but this has been shadowed by your downloadling on so many particular purposes software. And then she need to be in a body so that you can use it, as a if it was a sort of slave, to send me a mail. It will take time for them too. And once a universal machine has a body or a relative representation, the first person and the third person get rich and complex, but possibly confused. Its soul falls, would say Plotin. She can get hallucinated and all that. With comp, to be very short and bit provocative, the notion of out-of- body experience makes no sense at all because we don't have a body to go out of it, at the start. Your body is in your head, if I can say. This is at least a *consequence* of the assumption of mechanism, and I'm afraid you have to understand that by yourself, a bit like a theorem in math. But it is third person sharable, for example by UDA, I think. it leads I guess to a different view on Reality (different from the usual Theology of Aristotle, but not different from Plato Theology, roughly speaking). You can ask any question, but my favorite one are the naive question :) Bruno Marchal 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 22 Nov 2008, at 11:06, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Q.E.D. Logically you could also abandon MEC, but I guess you think, as I tend to think myself, that this could be even more painful for those of scientific bent. In the long run physicists could be very happy that their foundations relies on numbers relations (albeit statistical). 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 23 Nov 2008, at 03:24, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2008/11/23 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Nov 22, 2008, at 2:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Q.E.D. Right. But the problem is that that conclusion doesn't tell me how to deal with the (equally persuasive) arguments that convince me there's something deeply correct about viewing consciousness in computational terms, and viewing computation in physical terms. So I'm really just left with a dilemma. As I've hinted earlier, I suspect that there's something wrong with the idea of physical matter and related ideas like causality, probability, etc. But that's pretty vague. We could say there are two aspects to mathematical objects, a physical aspect and a non-physical aspect. Whenever we interact with the number three it must be realised, say in the form of three objects. But there is also an abstract three, with threeness properties, that lives in Platonia independently of any realisation. Similarly, whenever we interact with a computation, it must be realised on a physical computer, such as a human brain. But there is also the abstract computation, a Platonic object. It seems that consciousness, like threeness, may be a property of the Platonic object, and not of its physical realisation. This allows resolution of the apparent paradoxes we have been discussing. I agree with you. It resolves the conceptual problems about mind and matter, but if forces us to redefine matter from how consciousness differentiate in Platonia (this comes from MGA + ... UDA(1..7). Comp really reduce the mind body problem to the body problem: it remains to show we don't have too much white rabbits. But the problem is a pure problem in computer science now. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 11/22/08, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Mikes wrote: Brent, did your dog communicate to you (in dogese, of course) that she has - NO - INNER NARRATIVE? or you are just ignorant to perceive such? (Of course do not expect such at the complexity level of your 11b neurons) John M Of course not. It's my inference from the fact that my dog has no outer narrative. Have you read Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? He argues, persuasively in my opinion, that our inner narrative arises from internalizing our outer narrative, i.e. spoken communication with other people. Brent Brent, I appreciate your 'consenting' replyG - however - yes, I read (long ago) J. Jaynes and appreciated MOST of his ideas, do not accept him as substitute (verbal) opinion in our presently ongoing discussion. We may have ideas generated after (in spite of?) J.J. Yet - in your reply - the spoken communication with other people refers in the present topic to communication in 'dogese' (with other dogs?) so your argument is still in limbo. Just for the fun of it John Mikes --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 11/23/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 20 Nov 2008, at 21:40, Gordon Tsai wrote: Bruno: I think you and John touched the fundamental issues of human rational. It's a dilemma encountered by phenomenology. Now I have a question: In theory we can't distinguish ourselves from a Lobian Machine. (JM): Dear Gordon, thanks for your consent. My reply is shorter than Bruno's (Indeed professional - long - one): If we say so: 'We' created a machine as we wish and if we created it 'that way', we cannot distinguish ourselves from it. (Bruno): Note that in the math part (Arithmetical UDA), I consider only *Sound* Lobian machine. Sound means hat they are never wrong (talking about numbers). Now no sound Lobian machine can know that she is sound, and I am not yet sure I will find an interesting notion of lobianity for unsound machines, and sound Lobian Machine can easily get unsound, especially when they begin to confuse deductive inference and inductive inference. We just cannot know if we are (sound) Lobian Machine. It is more something we should hope for ... But can lobian machines truly have sufficient rich experiences like human? You know, Mechanism is a bit like the half bottle of wine. The optimist thinks that the bottle is yet half full, and the pessimist thinks that the bottles is already half-empty. About mechanism, the optimist reasons like that. I love myself because I have a so interesting life with so many rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. So I love machine because machine *can* have rich experiences, indeed, myself is an example. The pessimist reasons like that. I hate myself because my life is boringly uninteresting without any rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. I knew it! My own life confirms that rumor according to which machine are stupid automata. No meaning no future. (JM): thanks Bruno, for the nice metaphor of 'machine' - In my vocabulary a machine is a model exercising a mechanism, but chacquun a son gout. With a mechanism I am differently: I like to expand it onto something like 'anything (process) that gets something entailed' without restrictions. But again, I do not propose this to universal acceptance. For example, is it possible for a lobian machine to still its mind' or cease the computational logic like some eastern philosophy suggested? Maybe any of the out-of-loop experience is still part of the computation/logic, just as our out-of-body experiences are actually the trick of brain chemicals? The bad news is that the singular point is, imo, behind us. The universal machine you bought has been clever, but this has been shadowed by your downloadling on so many particular purposes software. And then she need to be in a body so that you can use it, as a if it was a sort of slave, to send me a mail. It will take time for them too. And once a universal machine has a body or a relative representation, the first person and the third person get rich and complex, but possibly confused. Its soul falls, would say Plotin. She can get hallucinated and all that. With comp, to be very short and bit provocative, the notion of out-of- body experience makes no sense at all because we don't have a body to go out of it, at the start. Your body is in your head, if I can say. This is at least a *consequence* of the assumption of mechanism, and I'm afraid you have to understand that by yourself, a bit like a theorem in math. But it is third person sharable, for example by UDA, I think. it leads I guess to a different view on Reality (different from the usual Theology of Aristotle, but not different from Plato Theology, roughly speaking). (JM): Bruno, in my opinion NOTHING is 'third person sharable' - only a 'thing' (from every- or no-) can give rise to develop a FIRST personal variant of the sharing, more or less (maybe) resembling the original 'to be shared' one. In its (1st) 'personal' variation. (Cf: perceived reality). You can ask any question, but my favorite one are the naive question :) Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ (JM): John Mikes --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 23 Nov 2008, at 17:41, John Mikes wrote: On 11/23/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: About mechanism, the optimist reasons like that. I love myself because I have a so interesting life with so many rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. So I love machine because machine *can* have rich experiences, indeed, myself is an example. The pessimist reasons like that. I hate myself because my life is boringly uninteresting without any rich experiences. Now you tell me I am a machine. I knew it! My own life confirms that rumor according to which machine are stupid automata. No meaning no future. (JM): thanks Bruno, for the nice metaphor of 'machine' - It was the pessimist metaphor. I hope you know I am a bit more optimist, ... with regard to machines. In my vocabulary a machine is a model exercising a mechanism, but chacquun a son gout. We agree on the definition. (JM): Bruno, in my opinion NOTHING is 'third person sharable' - only a 'thing' (from every- or no-) can give rise to develop a FIRST personal variant of the sharing, The third person part is what the first person variant is a variant of. I don't pretend we can know it. But if we don't bet on it, we become solipsist. more or less (maybe) resembling the original 'to be shared' one. In its (1st) 'personal' variation. (Cf: perceived reality). Building theories help to learn how false we can be. We have to take our theories seriously, make then precise and clear enough if we want to see the contradiction and learn from there. Oh we can also contemplate, meditate, or listen to music; or use (legal) entheogen, why not, there are many paths, not incompatible. But reasoning up to a contradiction, pure or with the facts, is the way of the researcher. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 21, 2008, at 6:53 PM, Jason Resch wrote: What about a case when only some of Alice's neurons have ceased normal function and became dependent on the lucky rays? Yes, those are exactly the cases that are highlighting the problem. (For me. For Bruno, Lucky Alice is still conscious. But he has the analogous problem when we remove half of the neurons from Lucky Alice's head.) I'm beginning to see how truly frustrating the MGA argument is: If all her neurons break and are luckily fixed I believe she is a zombie, if only one of her neurons fails but we correct it, I don't think this would effect her consciousness in any perceptible way, but cases where some part of her brain needs to be corrected are quite strange, and almost maddeningly so. I agree. I think you are right in that the split brain cases are very different, but I think the similarity is that part of Alice's consciousness would disappear, though the lucky effects ensure she acts as if no change had occurred. The tough part is that it's not just that she outwardly acts as if no change had occurred. It's that, if the mechanistic view of consciousness is correct, her subjective experience can't change, either - at least, not in any noticeable way. If it did, she would notice it and (probably) say something about it. And that can't happen, because the act of noticing something or saying something requires her neurons and her mouth to do something different. The conclusion seems to be that, if mechanism is true, it's possible for any part of my brain, or all of it, to disappear without changing my conscious experience. That suggests a conceptual problem somewhere. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
2008/11/22 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But I also can't make any sense of the idea that Empty-Headed Alice is conscious. Therefore, I don't think this argument shows that Empty-Headed Alice (and by extension, Lucky Alice) must be conscious. I think it shows that there's a deeper problem - probably with one of our assumptions. Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Q.E.D. Even though I actually think that mechanist-materialists should view both Lucky Alice and Empty-Headed Alice as not conscious, I still think they have to deal with this problem. They have to deal with the spectrum of intermediate states between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice. (Or between Fully-Functional Alice and Empty-Headed Alice.) -- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
2008/11/22 Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED]: What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I saw on a documentary. He was able to respond to images presented to one eye, and ended up drawing them with a hand controlled by the other hemisphere, yet he had no idea why he drew that image when asked. The problem may not be that he isn't experiencing the visualization, but that the part of his brain that is responsible for speech is disconnected from the part of his brain that can see. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo This differs from the Lucky Alice example in that the split brain patient notices that something is wrong, for the reason you give: speech and vision are processed in different hemispheres. Another interesting neurological example to consider is Anton's Syndrome, a condition where people with lesions in their occipital cortex rendering them blind don't seem to notice that they're blind. They confabulate when they are asked to describe something put in front of them and make up excuses when they walk into things. One can imagine a kind of zombie vision if one of these patients were supplied with an electronic device that sends them messages about their environment: they would behave as if they can see as well as believe that they can see, even though they lack any visual experiences. It should be noted, however, that Anton's syndrome is a specific organic delusional disorder, where a patient's cognition is affected in addition to the perceptual loss, not just as a result of the perceptual loss. Blind or deaf people who aren't delusional know they are blind or deaf. -- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Hmm, However, I do start getting uncomfortable when I realize that this lucky teleportation can happen over and over again, and if it happens fast enough, it just reduces to sheer randomness that just happens to be generating an ordered pattern that looks like Kory. I have a hard time understanding how a mechanist can consider a bunch of random numbers to be conscious. If that's the kind of magic you're referring I think that is the major attraction of mathematical universes - that the order emerges after the fact - out of random patterns. The order would take over the function of causality in a materialist picture. Causality, as Brent (I think) has mentionend, is still not really understood. What physicists mean is actually a certain kind of locality - and macro-causality emerges as a statistical mean. This is already not so far from order from randomness (in platonia locality would also be an after the fact, a physical feature). Bruno takes the whole step, dumps matter, and let's mind emerge from arithmetic truth. What I think fascinating is why we then find ourselves as single persons - if one dumps matter, why is not an arbitrary ordering out of the number mess conscious of being many persons at once (in the matter picture: being aware of superpositions). Why then the feeling of being a single person? In Bruno's system: why are OM's tied to single persons? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Kory Heath wrote: If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But also can't make any I think a materialist would either have to argue that Lucky Alice is conscious (if he focuses on physical states) and that removing neurons would lead to fading qualia (the partial zombies) or simply assume that already Lucky Alice is a Zombie (because he focuses on causal dynamics). (I would like to note that I have dropped MAT in the meantime and tend to MECH. Just wanted to simulate a materialist argumentation :-) - maybe I can convince myself of MAT and not MECH again *grin*) Could we say that MAT focuses on _physical states_ (exclusively) and MECH on _dynamics_? And that MGA shows that one can't have both? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 22, 2008, at 2:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Q.E.D. Right. But the problem is that that conclusion doesn't tell me how to deal with the (equally persuasive) arguments that convince me there's something deeply correct about viewing consciousness in computational terms, and viewing computation in physical terms. So I'm really just left with a dilemma. As I've hinted earlier, I suspect that there's something wrong with the idea of physical matter and related ideas like causality, probability, etc. But that's pretty vague. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Günther Greindl wrote: Kory Heath wrote: If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But also can't make any I don't see why partial zombies are problematic. My dog is conscious of perceptions, of being an individual, of memories and even dreams, but he doesn't have an inner narrative - so is he a partial zombie? Brent I think a materialist would either have to argue that Lucky Alice is conscious (if he focuses on physical states) and that removing neurons would lead to fading qualia (the partial zombies) or simply assume that already Lucky Alice is a Zombie (because he focuses on causal dynamics). (I would like to note that I have dropped MAT in the meantime and tend to MECH. Just wanted to simulate a materialist argumentation :-) - maybe I can convince myself of MAT and not MECH again *grin*) Could we say that MAT focuses on _physical states_ (exclusively) and MECH on _dynamics_? And that MGA shows that one can't have both? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Brent, did your dog communicate to you (in dogese, of course) that she has - NO - INNER NARRATIVE? or you are just ignorant to perceive such? (Of course do not expect such at the complexity level of your 11b neurons) John M On 11/22/08, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Günther Greindl wrote: Kory Heath wrote: If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But also can't make any I don't see why partial zombies are problematic. My dog is conscious of perceptions, of being an individual, of memories and even dreams, but he doesn't have an inner narrative - so is he a partial zombie? Brent I think a materialist would either have to argue that Lucky Alice is conscious (if he focuses on physical states) and that removing neurons would lead to fading qualia (the partial zombies) or simply assume that already Lucky Alice is a Zombie (because he focuses on causal dynamics). (I would like to note that I have dropped MAT in the meantime and tend to MECH. Just wanted to simulate a materialist argumentation :-) - maybe I can convince myself of MAT and not MECH again *grin*) Could we say that MAT focuses on _physical states_ (exclusively) and MECH on _dynamics_? And that MGA shows that one can't have both? Cheers, Günther --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
John Mikes wrote: Brent, did your dog communicate to you (in dogese, of course) that she has - NO - INNER NARRATIVE? or you are just ignorant to perceive such? (Of course do not expect such at the complexity level of your 11b neurons) John M Of course not. It's my inference from the fact that my dog has no outer narrative. Have you read Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? He argues, persuasively in my opinion, that our inner narrative arises from internalizing our outer narrative, i.e. spoken communication with other people. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
2008/11/23 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Nov 22, 2008, at 2:06 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Yes, there must be a problem with the assumptions. The only assumption that I see we could eliminate, painful though it might be for those of a scientific bent, is the idea that consciousness supervenes on physical activity. Q.E.D. Right. But the problem is that that conclusion doesn't tell me how to deal with the (equally persuasive) arguments that convince me there's something deeply correct about viewing consciousness in computational terms, and viewing computation in physical terms. So I'm really just left with a dilemma. As I've hinted earlier, I suspect that there's something wrong with the idea of physical matter and related ideas like causality, probability, etc. But that's pretty vague. We could say there are two aspects to mathematical objects, a physical aspect and a non-physical aspect. Whenever we interact with the number three it must be realised, say in the form of three objects. But there is also an abstract three, with threeness properties, that lives in Platonia independently of any realisation. Similarly, whenever we interact with a computation, it must be realised on a physical computer, such as a human brain. But there is also the abstract computation, a Platonic object. It seems that consciousness, like threeness, may be a property of the Platonic object, and not of its physical realisation. This allows resolution of the apparent paradoxes we have been discussing. -- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 2008/11/23 Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't see why partial zombies are problematic. My dog is conscious of perceptions, of being an individual, of memories and even dreams, but he doesn't have an inner narrative - so is he a partial zombie? Your dog has experiences, and that seems to me to be the most important thing distinguishing zombie from non-zombie. If Lucky Alice is a partial zombie, she is lacking in experiences of a certain kind, such as visual perception, but behaves just the same and otherwise thinks and feels just the same. She remembers visual experiences from before she suffered brain damage and feels that they are just the same as present visual experiences: so in what sense could she have a deficit rendering her blind? -- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am afraid you are already too much suspect of the contradictory nature of MEC+MAT. Take the reasoning has a game. Try to keep both MEC and MAT, the game consists in showing the more clearly as possible what will go wrong. I understand what you're saying, and I accept the rules of the game. I *am* trying to keep both MEC and MAT. But it seems as though we differ on how we understand MEC and MAT, because in my understanding, mechanist-materialists should say that Bruno's Lucky Alice is not conscious (for the same reason that Telmo's Lucky Alice is not conscious). You mean the ALICE of Telmo's solution of MGA 1bis, I guess. The original Alice, well I mean the one in MGA 1, is functionally identical at the right level of description (actually she has already digital brain). The physical instantiation of a computation is completely realized. No neurons can know that the info (correct and at the right places) does not come from the relevant neurons, but from a lucky beam. I agree that the neurons don't know or care where their inputs are coming from. They just get their inputs, perform their computations, and send their outputs. But when it comes to the functional, physical behavior of Alice's whole brain, the mechanist-materialist is certainly allowed (indeed, forced) to talk about where each neuron's input is coming from. That's a part of the computational picture. I see the point that you're making. Each neuron receives some input, performs some computation, and then produces some output. We're imagining that every neuron has been disconnected from its inputs, but that cosmic rays have luckily produced the exact same input that the previously connected neurons would have produced. You're arguing that since every neuron is performing the exact same computations that it would have performed anyway, the two situations are computationally identical. But I don't think that's correct. I think that plain old, garden variety mechanism-materialism has an easy way of saying that Lucky Alice's brain, viewed as a whole system, is not performing the same computations that fully-functioning Alice's brain is. None of the neurons in Lucky Alice's brain are even causally connected to each other. That's a pretty big computational difference! I am arguing, in essence, that for the mechanist-materialist, causality is an important aspect of computation and consciousness. Maybe your goal is to show that there's something deeply wrong with that idea, or with the idea of causality itself. But we're supposed to be starting from a foundation of MEC and MAT. Are you saying that the mechanist-materialist *does* say that Lucky Alice is conscious, or only that the mechanist-materialist *should* say it? Because if you're saying the latter, then I'm playing the game better than you are! I'm pretty sure that Dennett (and the other mechanist-materialists I've read) would say that Lucky Alice is not conscious, and for them, they have a perfectly straightforward way of explaining what they *mean* when they say that she's not conscious. They mean (among other things) that the actions of her neurons are not being affected at all by the paper lying in front of her on the table, or the ball flying at her head. For Dennett, it's practically a non- sequitur to say that she's conscious of a ball that's not affecting her brain. But the physical difference does not play a role. It depends on what you mean by play a role. You're right that the physical difference (very luckily) didn't change what the neurons did. It just so happens that the neurons did exactly what they were going to do anyway. But the *cause* of why the neurons did what they did is totally different. The action of each individual neuron was caused by cosmic rays rather than by neighboring neurons. You seem to be asking, Why should this difference play any role in whether or not Alice was conscious? But for the mechanist-materialist, the difference is primary. Those kinds of causal connections are a fundamental part of what they *mean* when they say that something is conscious. If you invoke it, how could you accept saying yes to a doctor, who introduce bigger difference? Do you mean the teleportation doctor, who makes a copy of me, destroys me, and then reconstructs me somewhere else using the copied information? That case is not problematic in the way that Lucky Alice is, because there is an unbroken causal chain between the new me and the old me. What's problematic about Lucky Alice is the fact that her ducking out of the way of the ball (the movements of her eyes, the look of surprise, etc.) has nothing to do with the ball, and yet somehow she's still supposed to be conscious of the ball. A much closer analogy to Lucky Alice would be if the doctor accidentally destroys me without making the copy
Re: MGA 1
Hi Gordon, Le 20-nov.-08, à 21:40, Gordon Tsai a écrit : Bruno: I think you and John touched the fundamental issues of human rational. It's a dilemma encountered by phenomenology. Now I have a question: In theory we can't distinguish ourselves from a Lobian Machine. But can lobian machines truly have sufficient rich experiences like human? This is our assumption. Assuming comp, we are machine, so certainly some machine can have our rich experiences. Indeed, us. For example, is it possible for a lobian machine to still its mind' or cease the computational logic like some eastern philosophy suggested? Maybe any of the out-of-loop experience is still part of the computation/logic, just as our out-of-body experiences are actually the trick of brain chemicals? Eventually we will be led to the idea that it is the brain chemicals which are the result of a trick of universal consciousness, but here I am anticipating. Let us go carefully step by step. I think I will have some time this afternoon to make MGA 2, See you there ... 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Jason, Nice, you are anticipatiing on MGA 2. So if you don't mind I will answer your post in MGA 2, or in comments you will perhaps make afterward. ... asap. Bruno Le 20-nov.-08, à 21:27, Jason Resch a écrit : On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Absolutely so. Bruno, What about the state machine that included the injection of lucky noise from an outside source vs. one in which all information was derived internally from the operation of the state machine itself? Would those two differently defined machines not differ and compute something different? Even though the computations are identical the information that is being computed comes from different sources and so carries with it a different connotation. Though the bits injected are identical, they inherently imply a different meaning because the state machine in the case of injection has a different structure than that of her normally operating brain. I believe the brain can be abstracted as a computer/information processing system, but it is not simply the computations and the inputs into the logic gates at each step that are important, but also the source of the input bits, otherwise the computation isn't the same. Jason 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 21, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. The same argument can be used to show that Empty-Headed Alice must also be conscious. (Empty-Headed Alice is the version where only Alice's motor neurons are stimulated by cosmic rays, while all of the other neurons in Alice's head do nothing. Alice's body continues to act indistinguishably from the way it would have acted, but there's nothing going on in the rest of Alice's brain, random or otherwise. Telmo and Bruno have both indicated that they don't think this Alice is conscious. Or at least, that a mechanist-materialist shouldn't believe that this Alice is conscious.) Let's assume that Lucky Alice is conscious. Every neuron in her head (they're all artificial) has become causally disconnected from all the others, but they (very improbably) continue to do exactly what they would have done when they were connected, due to cosmic rays. Let's say that we remove one of the neurons from Alice's head. This has no effect on her outward behavior, or on the behavior of any of her other neurons (since they're already causally disconnected). Of course, we can remove two neurons, and then three, etc. We can remove her entire visual cortex. This can't have any noticeable effect on her consciousness, because the neurons that do remain go right on acting the way they would have acted if the cortex was there. Eventually, we can remove every neuron that isn't a motor neuron, so that we have an empty-headed Alice whose body takes the exam, ducks when I throw the ball at her head, etc. If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But I also can't make any sense of the idea that Empty-Headed Alice is conscious. Therefore, I don't think this argument shows that Empty-Headed Alice (and by extension, Lucky Alice) must be conscious. I think it shows that there's a deeper problem - probably with one of our assumptions. Even though I actually think that mechanist-materialists should view both Lucky Alice and Empty-Headed Alice as not conscious, I still think they have to deal with this problem. They have to deal with the spectrum of intermediate states between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice. (Or between Fully-Functional Alice and Empty-Headed Alice.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
This is one of those questions were I'm not sure if I'm being relevant or missing the point entirely, but here goes: There are multiple universes which implement/contain/whatever Alice's consciousness. During the period of the experiment, that universe may no longer be amongst them but shadows along with them closely enough that it certainly rejoins them upon its termination. So, was Alice conscious during the experiment? Well, from Alice's perspective she certainly has the memory of consciousness, and due to the presence of the implementing universes there was certainly a conscious Alice out there somewhere. Since consciousness has no intrinsic spatio-temporal quality, there's no reason for that consciousness not to count. 2008/11/21 Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Nov 21, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. The same argument can be used to show that Empty-Headed Alice must also be conscious. (Empty-Headed Alice is the version where only Alice's motor neurons are stimulated by cosmic rays, while all of the other neurons in Alice's head do nothing. Alice's body continues to act indistinguishably from the way it would have acted, but there's nothing going on in the rest of Alice's brain, random or otherwise. Telmo and Bruno have both indicated that they don't think this Alice is conscious. Or at least, that a mechanist-materialist shouldn't believe that this Alice is conscious.) Let's assume that Lucky Alice is conscious. Every neuron in her head (they're all artificial) has become causally disconnected from all the others, but they (very improbably) continue to do exactly what they would have done when they were connected, due to cosmic rays. Let's say that we remove one of the neurons from Alice's head. This has no effect on her outward behavior, or on the behavior of any of her other neurons (since they're already causally disconnected). Of course, we can remove two neurons, and then three, etc. We can remove her entire visual cortex. This can't have any noticeable effect on her consciousness, because the neurons that do remain go right on acting the way they would have acted if the cortex was there. Eventually, we can remove every neuron that isn't a motor neuron, so that we have an empty-headed Alice whose body takes the exam, ducks when I throw the ball at her head, etc. If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But I also can't make any sense of the idea that Empty-Headed Alice is conscious. Therefore, I don't think this argument shows that Empty-Headed Alice (and by extension, Lucky Alice) must be conscious. I think it shows that there's a deeper problem - probably with one of our assumptions. Even though I actually think that mechanist-materialists should view both Lucky Alice and Empty-Headed Alice as not conscious, I still think they have to deal with this problem. They have to deal with the spectrum of intermediate states between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice. (Or between Fully-Functional Alice and Empty-Headed Alice.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 21 Nov 2008, at 10:45, Kory Heath wrote: ... A much closer analogy to Lucky Alice would be if the doctor accidentally destroys me without making the copy, turns on the receiving teleporter in desperation, and then the exact copy that would have appeared anyway steps out, because (luckily!) cosmic rays hit the receiver's mechanisms in just the right way. I actually find this thought experiment more persuasive than Lucky Alice (although I'm sure some will argue that they're identical). At the very least, the mechanist-materialist has to say that the resulting Lucky Kory is conscious. I think it's also clear that Lucky Kory's consciousness must be exactly what it would have been if the teleportation had worked correctly. This does in fact lead me to feel that maybe causality shouldn't have any bearing on consciousness after all. Very good. Thanks. However, the materialist-mechanist still has some grounds to say that there's something interestingly different about Lucky Kory than Original Kory. It is a physical fact of the matter that Lucky Kory is not causally connected to Pre-Teleportation Kory. Keeping the comp hyp (cf the qua computatio) this would introduce magic. When someone asks Lucky Kory, Why do you tie your shoes that way?, and Lucky Kory says, Because of something I learned when I was ten years old, Lucky Kory's statement is quite literally false. Lucky Kory ties his shoes that way because of some cosmic rays. I actually don't know what the standard mechanist-materialist way of viewing this situation is. But it does seem to suggest that maybe breaks in the causal chain shouldn't affect consciousness after all. Yes. . Of course I'm entirely on board with the spirit of your thought experiment. You think MECH and MAT implies that Lucky Alice is conscious, but I don't think it does. I'm not sure how important that difference is. It seems substantial. But I can also predict where you're going with your thought experiment, and it's the exact same place I go. So by all means, continue on to MGA 2, and we'll see what happens. Thanks. A last comment on your reply on Stathis' recent comment. Stathis argument, based on Chalmers' fading qualia is mainly correct I think. And it could be that your answer to Stathis is correct too. And this would finish our work. We would have a proof that Telmo Alice is uncouscious and that Telmo Alice is conscious, finishing the reductio ad absurbo. Keep in mind that we are doing a reductio ad absurdo. Those who are convinced by bith Stathis and Russell Telmo, ... can already take holidays! Have to write MGA 2 for the others. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 3:45 AM, Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, the materialist-mechanist still has some grounds to say that there's something interestingly different about Lucky Kory than Original Kory. It is a physical fact of the matter that Lucky Kory is not causally connected to Pre-Teleportation Kory. When someone asks Lucky Kory, Why do you tie your shoes that way?, and Lucky Kory says, Because of something I learned when I was ten years old, Lucky Kory's statement is quite literally false. Lucky Kory ties his shoes that way because of some cosmic rays. I actually don't know what the standard mechanist-materialist way of viewing this situation is. But it does seem to suggest that maybe breaks in the causal chain shouldn't affect consciousness after all. This is very similar to an existing thought experiment in identity theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_man Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 5:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. Alice is sitting her exam, and a part of her brain stops working, let's say the part of her occipital cortex which enables visual perception of the exam paper. In that case, she would be unable to complete the exam due to blindness. But if the neurons in her occipital cortex are stimulated by random events such as cosmic rays so that they pass on signals to the rest of the brain as they would have normally, Alice won't know she's blind: she will believe she sees the exam paper, will be able to read it correctly, and will answer the questions just as she would have without any neurological or electronic problem. If Alice were replaced by a zombie, no-one else would notice, by definition; also, Alice herself wouldn't notice, since a zombie is incapable of noticing anything (it just behaves as if it does). But I don't see how it is possible that Alice could be *partly* zombified, behaving as if she has normal vision, believing she has normal vision, and having all the cognitive processes that go along with normal vision, while actually lacking any visual experiences at all. That isn't consistent with the definition of a philosophical zombie. Stathis, What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I saw on a documentary. He was able to respond to images presented to one eye, and ended up drawing them with a hand controlled by the other hemisphere, yet he had no idea why he drew that image when asked. The problem may not be that he isn't experiencing the visualization, but that the part of his brain that is responsible for speech is disconnected from the part of his brain that can see. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I am afraid you are already too much suspect of the contradictory nature of MEC+MAT. Take the reasoning has a game. Try to keep both MEC and MAT, the game consists in showing the more clearly as possible what will go wrong. I understand what you're saying, and I accept the rules of the game. I *am* trying to keep both MEC and MAT. But it seems as though we differ on how we understand MEC and MAT, because in my understanding, mechanist-materialists should say that Bruno's Lucky Alice is not conscious (for the same reason that Telmo's Lucky Alice is not conscious). You mean the ALICE of Telmo's solution of MGA 1bis, I guess. The original Alice, well I mean the one in MGA 1, is functionally identical at the right level of description (actually she has already digital brain). The physical instantiation of a computation is completely realized. No neurons can know that the info (correct and at the right places) does not come from the relevant neurons, but from a lucky beam. I agree that the neurons don't know or care where their inputs are coming from. They just get their inputs, perform their computations, and send their outputs. But when it comes to the functional, physical behavior of Alice's whole brain, the mechanist-materialist is certainly allowed (indeed, forced) to talk about where each neuron's input is coming from. That's a part of the computational picture. I see the point that you're making. Each neuron receives some input, performs some computation, and then produces some output. We're imagining that every neuron has been disconnected from its inputs, but that cosmic rays have luckily produced the exact same input that the previously connected neurons would have produced. You're arguing that since every neuron is performing the exact same computations that it would have performed anyway, the two situations are computationally identical. But I don't think that's correct. I think that plain old, garden variety mechanism-materialism has an easy way of saying that Lucky Alice's brain, viewed as a whole system, is not performing the same computations that fully-functioning Alice's brain is. None of the neurons in Lucky Alice's brain are even causally connected to each other. That's a pretty big computational difference! I am arguing, in essence, that for the mechanist-materialist, causality is an important aspect of computation and consciousness. Maybe your goal is to show that there's something deeply wrong with that idea, or with the idea of causality itself. But we're supposed to be starting from a foundation of MEC and MAT. Are you saying that the mechanist-materialist *does* say that Lucky Alice is conscious, or only that the mechanist-materialist *should* say it? Because if you're saying the latter, then I'm playing the game better than you are! I'm pretty sure that Dennett (and the other mechanist-materialists I've read) would say that Lucky Alice is not conscious, and for them, they have a perfectly straightforward way of explaining what they *mean* when they say that she's not conscious. They mean (among other things) that the actions of her neurons are not being affected at all by the paper lying in front of her on the table, or the ball flying at her head. For Dennett, it's practically a non- sequitur to say that she's conscious of a ball that's not affecting her brain. But the physical difference does not play a role. It depends on what you mean by play a role. You're right that the physical difference (very luckily) didn't change what the neurons did. It just so happens that the neurons did exactly what they were going to do anyway. But the *cause* of why the neurons did what they did is totally different. The action of each individual neuron was caused by cosmic rays rather than by neighboring neurons. You seem to be asking, Why should this difference play any role in whether or not Alice was conscious? But for the mechanist-materialist, the difference is primary. Those kinds of causal connections are a fundamental part of what they *mean* when they say that something is conscious. If you invoke it, how could you accept saying yes to a doctor, who introduce bigger difference? Do you mean the teleportation doctor, who makes a copy of me, destroys me, and then reconstructs me somewhere else using the copied information? That case is not problematic in the way that Lucky Alice is, because there is an unbroken causal chain between the new me and the old me. What's problematic about Lucky Alice is the fact that her ducking out of the way of the ball (the movements of her eyes, the look of surprise, etc.) has nothing to do with the ball, and yet somehow she's still supposed to be conscious of the ball. A much closer
Re: MGA 1
Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 21, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. The same argument can be used to show that Empty-Headed Alice must also be conscious. (Empty-Headed Alice is the version where only Alice's motor neurons are stimulated by cosmic rays, while all of the other neurons in Alice's head do nothing. Alice's body continues to act indistinguishably from the way it would have acted, but there's nothing going on in the rest of Alice's brain, random or otherwise. Telmo and Bruno have both indicated that they don't think this Alice is conscious. Or at least, that a mechanist-materialist shouldn't believe that this Alice is conscious.) Let's assume that Lucky Alice is conscious. Every neuron in her head (they're all artificial) has become causally disconnected from all the others, but they (very improbably) continue to do exactly what they would have done when they were connected, due to cosmic rays. Let's say that we remove one of the neurons from Alice's head. This has no effect on her outward behavior, or on the behavior of any of her other neurons (since they're already causally disconnected). Of course, we can remove two neurons, and then three, etc. We can remove her entire visual cortex. This can't have any noticeable effect on her consciousness, because the neurons that do remain go right on acting the way they would have acted if the cortex was there. Eventually, we can remove every neuron that isn't a motor neuron, so that we have an empty-headed Alice whose body takes the exam, ducks when I throw the ball at her head, etc. If Lucky Alice is conscious and Empty-Headed Alice is not conscious, then there are partial zombies halfway between them. Like you, I can't make any sense of these partial zombies. But I also can't make any sense of the idea that Empty-Headed Alice is conscious. Therefore, I don't think this argument shows that Empty-Headed Alice (and by extension, Lucky Alice) must be conscious. I think it shows that there's a deeper problem - probably with one of our assumptions. Even though I actually think that mechanist-materialists should view both Lucky Alice and Empty-Headed Alice as not conscious, I still think they have to deal with this problem. They have to deal with the spectrum of intermediate states between Fully-Functional Alice and Lucky Alice. (Or between Fully-Functional Alice and Empty-Headed Alice.) If they were just observing Alice's outward behavior they would say, It appears that Alice is a conscious being, but of course there's 1e-100 chance that she's just an automaton operated by by cosmic rays. If they were actually observing her inner workings, they'd say, Alice is just an automaton who in an extremely improbable coincidence has appeared as if conscious, but we can easily prove she isn't by watching her future behavior or even by blocking the rays. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 5:45 AM, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A variant of Chalmers' Fading Qualia argument (http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html) can be used to show Alice must be conscious. Alice is sitting her exam, and a part of her brain stops working, let's say the part of her occipital cortex which enables visual perception of the exam paper. In that case, she would be unable to complete the exam due to blindness. But if the neurons in her occipital cortex are stimulated by random events such as cosmic rays so that they pass on signals to the rest of the brain as they would have normally, Alice won't know she's blind: she will believe she sees the exam paper, will be able to read it correctly, and will answer the questions just as she would have without any neurological or electronic problem. If Alice were replaced by a zombie, no-one else would notice, by definition; also, Alice herself wouldn't notice, since a zombie is incapable of noticing anything (it just behaves as if it does). But I don't see how it is possible that Alice could be *partly* zombified, behaving as if she has normal vision, believing she has normal vision, and having all the cognitive processes that go along with normal vision, while actually lacking any visual experiences at all. That isn't consistent with the definition of a philosophical zombie. Stathis, What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I saw on a documentary. He was able to respond to images presented to one eye, and ended up drawing them with a hand controlled by the other hemisphere, yet he had no idea why he drew that image when asked. The problem may not be that he isn't experiencing the visualization, but that the part of his brain that is responsible for speech is disconnected from the part of his brain that can see. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo Jason I think experiments like this support the idea that consciousness is not a single thing. We tend to identify conscious thought with the thought that is reported in speech. But that's just because it is the thought that is readily accessible to experimenters. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 21, 2008, at 8:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Nov 2008, at 10:45, Kory Heath wrote: However, the materialist-mechanist still has some grounds to say that there's something interestingly different about Lucky Kory than Original Kory. It is a physical fact of the matter that Lucky Kory is not causally connected to Pre-Teleportation Kory. Keeping the comp hyp (cf the qua computatio) this would introduce magic. I'm not sure it has to. Can you elaborate on what magic you think it ends up introducing? In the context of mechanism-materialism, I am forced to believe that Lucky Kory's consciousness, qualia, etc., are exactly what they would have been if the teleportation had worked properly. But I don't see how that forces me to accept any magic. It doesn't (for instance) force me to say that Kory's real consciousness magically jumped over to Lucky Kory despite the lack of the causal connection. As a mechanist, I don't think there's any sense in talking about consciousness in that way. Dennett has a slogan: When you describe what happens, you've described everything. In this weird case, we have to fall back on describing what happened. A pattern of molecules was destroyed, and somewhere else that exact pattern was (very improbably) created by a random process of cosmic rays. Since we mechanists believe that consciousness and qualia are just aspects of patterns, the consciousness and qualia of the lucky pattern must (by definition) be the same as the original would have been. I don't think that causes any (immediate) problem for the mechanist. Is Lucky Kory the same person as Original Kory? I don't think the mechanist is committed to any particular answer to this question. We've already described what happened. Now it's just a matter of how we want to use our words. If we want to use them in a certain way, there is a sense in which we can say that Lucky Kory is not the same person as Original Kory, as long as we understand that *all* we mean is that Lucky Kory isn't causally connected to Original Kory (along with whatever else that implies). However, I do start getting uncomfortable when I realize that this lucky teleportation can happen over and over again, and if it happens fast enough, it just reduces to sheer randomness that just happens to be generating an ordered pattern that looks like Kory. I have a hard time understanding how a mechanist can consider a bunch of random numbers to be conscious. If that's the kind of magic you're referring to, then I agree. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 21, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote: This is very similar to an existing thought experiment in identity theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_man Cool. Thanks for that link! -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 21, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jason Resch wrote: What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I saw on a documentary. It might seem similar on the surface, but it's actually very different. The observers of the split-brain patient and the patient himself know that something is amiss. There is a real difference in his consciousness and his behavior. If cosmic rays randomly severed your corpus callosum right now, you would definitely notice a difference. (It's an empirical question whether or not you'd know it almost immediately, or if it would take a while for you to figure it out. I'm sure the neurologists and cognitive scientists already know the answer to that one.) At no point during the replacement of Alice's fully-functioning neurons with cosmic-ray stimulated neurons (or during the replacement of cosmic-ray neurons with no neurons at all) will Alice notice any difference in her consciousness. In principle, she cannot notice it, since every one of her full-functionally neurons always continues to do exactly what it would have done. This is a serious problem for the mechanistic view of consciousness. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Kory Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 21, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jason Resch wrote: What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I saw on a documentary. It might seem similar on the surface, but it's actually very different. The observers of the split-brain patient and the patient himself know that something is amiss. There is a real difference in his consciousness and his behavior. If cosmic rays randomly severed your corpus callosum right now, you would definitely notice a difference. (It's an empirical question whether or not you'd know it almost immediately, or if it would take a while for you to figure it out. I'm sure the neurologists and cognitive scientists already know the answer to that one.) At no point during the replacement of Alice's fully-functioning neurons with cosmic-ray stimulated neurons (or during the replacement of cosmic-ray neurons with no neurons at all) will Alice notice any difference in her consciousness. In principle, she cannot notice it, since every one of her full-functionally neurons always continues to do exactly what it would have done. This is a serious problem for the mechanistic view of consciousness. What about a case when only some of Alice's neurons have ceased normal function and became dependent on the lucky rays? Lets say the neurons in her visual center stopped working but her speech center was unaffected. In this manner could she talk about what she saw without having any conscious experience of sight? I'm beginning to see how truly frustrating the MGA argument is: If all her neurons break and are luckily fixed I believe she is a zombie, if only one of her neurons fails but we correct it, I don't think this would effect her consciousness in any perceptible way, but cases where some part of her brain needs to be corrected are quite strange, and almost maddeningly so. I think you are right in that the split brain cases are very different, but I think the similarity is that part of Alice's consciousness would disappear, though the lucky effects ensure she acts as if no change had occurred. If all of a sudden all her neurons started working properly again, I don't think she would have any recollection of having lost any part of her consciousess, the lucky effects should have fixed her memories as well, and the parts of her brain which remained functional would also not have detected any inconsitencies, yet the parts of her brain that depended on lucky cosmic rays generated no subjective experience for whatever set of information they were processing. (So I would think) Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On Nov 19, 2008, at 1:43 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: So I'm puzzled as to how answer Bruno's question. In general I don't believe in zombies, but that's in the same way I don't believe my glass of water will freeze at 20degC. It's an opinion about what is likely, not what is possible. I take this to mean that you're uncomfortable with thought experiments which revolve around logically possible but exceedingly unlikely events. I think that's understandable, but ultimately, I'm on the philosopher's side. It really is logically possible - although exceedingly unlikely - for a random-number-generator to cause a robot to walk around, talk to people, etc. It really is logically possible for a computer program to use a random-number-generator to generate a lattice of changing bits that follows Conway's Life rule. Mechanism and materialism needs to answer questions about these scenarios, regardless of how unlikely they are. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 11/19/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... Keep in mind we try to refute the conjunction MECH and MAT. Nevertheless your intuition below is mainly correct, but the point is that accepting it really works, AND keeping MECH, will force us to negate MAT. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ and lots of other things in the discussion. the concept of Zombie emerged as questioned. Thinking about it, (I dislike the entire field together with 'thought-experiments' and the fairy-tale processes of differentiated teleportations, etc.) I concluded that a 'zombie' as used mostly, is a 'person(??)' with NO HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS (whatever WE included in the 'C' term). I am willing to expand on it: a (humanly) zombie MAY HAVE mental functions beyond the (excluded) select ones WE use in our present potential as 'thinking humans'. It needs it, since assumed are the activities that must be directed by some form of mentality (call it 'physical?' ones). - Zombie does... It boils down to my overall somewhat negative position (although I have no better one) of UDA, MPG, comp, etc. - all of them are products of HUMAN thinking and restrictions as WE can imagine the unfathomable existence (the totality - real TOE). I find it a 'cousin' of the reductionistic conventional sciences, just a bit 'freed up'. Maybe a distant cousin. Meaning: it handles the totality WITHIN the framework of our limited (human) logic(s). The list's said 100 years 'ahead ways' of thinking (Bruno's 200) is still a mental activity of the NOW existing minds. Alas, we cannot do better. I just want to take all this mental exercise with the grain of salt of there may be more to all of it what we cannot even fancy (imagine, fantasize of) today, with our mind anchored in our restrictions. (Including 'digital', 'numbers', learned wisdom, etc.). Sorry if I offended anyone on the list, it was not intended. I am not up to the level of the list, just 'freed up' my thinking into alowing further (unknown?) domains into our ignorance. I call it 'my' scinetific agnosticism. John M --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On 19 Nov 2008, at 22:43, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Nov 2008, at 16:06, Telmo Menezes wrote: Bruno, If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). I also agree completely and am curious to see where this is going. Please continue! Thanks Telmo, thanks also to Gordon. I will try to send MGA 2 asap. But this asks me some time. Meanwhile I suggest a little exercise, which, by the way, finishes the proof of MECH + MAT implies false, for those who thinks that there is no (conceivable) zombies. (they think that exists zombie *is* false). Exercise (mat+mec implies zombie exists or are conceivable): Could you alter the so-lucky cosmic explosion beam a little bit so that Alice still succeed her math exam, but is, reasonably enough, a zombie during the exam. With zombie taken in the traditional sense of Kory and Dennett. Of course you have to keep well *both* MECH *and* MAT. Bruno As I understand it a philosophical zombie is someone who looks and acts just like a conscious person but isn't conscious, i.e. has no inner narrative. No inner narrative, no inner image, no inner souvenir, no inner sensation, no qualia, no subject, no first person notions at all. OK. Time and circumstance play a part in this. As Bruno pointed out a cardboard cutout of a person's photograph could be a zombie for a moment. I assume the point of the exam is that an exam is long enough in duration and complex enough that it rules out the accidental, cutout zombie. Well, given that it is a thought experiment, the resources are free, and I can make the cosmic lucky explosion as lucky as you need for making Alice apparently alive, and with COMP+MAT, indeed alive. All its neurons break down all the time, and, because she is so lucky, an event which occurred 10 billions years before, send to her, at all right moment and place (and thus this is certainly NOT random) the lucky ray plumber who fixes momentarily the problem by trigging the other neurons to which it was supposed to send the infos (for example). Keeping comp and mat, making her unconscious here would be equivalent to give Alice's neurons a sort of physical prescience. But then Alice has her normal behavior restored by a cosmic ray shower that is just as improbable as the accidental zombie, i.e. she is, for the duration of the shower, an accidental zombie. Well, with Telmo solution of the MGA 1bis exercise, where only the motor output neuron are fixed and where no internal neuron is fixed (almost all neurons), with MEC + MAT, Alice has no working brain at all, is only a lucky puppet, and she has to be a zombie. But in the original problem, all neurons are fixed, and then I would say Alice is not a zombie (if not, you give a magical physical prescience to the neurons). But now, you are right, that in both case, the luck can only be accidental. If, in the same thought experience, keeping the exact same no lucky cosmic explosion, but giving now a phone call to the teacher or to Alice, so that she moves 1mm away of the position she had in the previous version, she will miss the lucky rays, most probably some will go through in wrong places and most probably she will miss the exams, and perhaps even die. So you are right, in Telmo's solution of MGA 1bis exercise she is an accidental zombie. But in the original MGA 1, she should remain conscious (with MECH and MAT), even if accidentally so. So I'm puzzled as to how answer Bruno's question. Hope it is clear for every one now? In general I don't believe in zombies, but that's in the same way I don't believe my glass of water will freeze at 20degC. It's an opinion about what is likely, not what is possible. OK. Accidental zombie are possible, but are very unlikely (but wait for MGA 2 for a lessening of this statement). Accidental consciousness (like in MGA 1, with MECH+MAT) is possible also, and is as much unlikely (same remark). Of course, as unlikeley as possible, nobody can test if someone else is really conscious or is a accidental zombie, because for any series of test you can imagine, you can conceive a sufficiently lucky cosmic explosion. It seems similar to the question, could I have gotten in my car and driven to the store, bought something, and driven back and yet not be conscious of it. It's highly unlikely, yet people apparently have done such things. (I think here something different occurs, concerning intensity of attention with respect to different conscious streams, but it is out- of-topic, I think). 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more
Re: MGA 1
On 19 Nov 2008, at 23:26, Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 19 Nov 2008, at 20:17, Jason Resch wrote: To add some clarification, I do not think spreading Alice's logic gates across a field and allowing cosmic rays to cause each gate to perform the same computations that they would had they existed in her functioning brain would be conscious. I think this because in isolation the logic gates are not computing anything complex, only AND, OR, NAND operations, etc. This is why I believe rocks are not conscious, the collisions of their molecules may be performing simple computations, but they are never aggregated into complex patterns to compute over a large set of information. Actually I agree with this argument. But it does not concern Alice, because I have provide her with an incredible amount of luck. The lucky rays fix the neurons in a genuine way (by that abnormally big amount of pure luck). If the cosmic rays are simply keeping her neurons working normally, then I'm more inclined to believe she remains conscious, but I'm not certain one way or the other. I have no certainty either. But this I feel related with my instinctive rather big uncertainty about the assumptions MECH and MAT. Now if both MECH and MAT are, naively enough perhaps, assumed to be completely true, I think I have no reason for not attributing to Alice consciousness. If not MECH break down, because I have to endow neurons with some prescience. The physical activity is the same, as far as they serve to instanciate a computation (cf the qua computatio). If you doubt Alice remain conscious, how could you accept an experience of simple teleportation (UDA step 1 or 2). If you can recover consciousness from a relative digital description, how could that consciousness distinguish between a recovery from a genuine description send from earth (say), and a recovery from a description luckily generated by a random process? I believe consciousness can be recovered from a digital description, but I don't believe the description itself is conscious while being beamed from one teleporting station to the other. I think it is only when the body/computer simulation is instantiated can consciousness recovered from the description. I agree. No one said that the description was conscious. Only that consciousness is related to a physical instantiation of a computation, which unluckily break down all the time, but were fixed, at genuine places and moments., by an incredibly big (but finite) amount luck, (assuming consciously MECH+MAT) Consider sending the description over an encrypted channel, without the right decryption algorithm and key the description can't be differentiated from random noise. The same bits could be interpreted entirely differently depending completely on how the recipient uses it. The meaning of the transmission is recovered when it forms a system with complex relations, presumably the same relations as the original one that was teleported, even though it may be running on a different physical substrate, or a different computer architecture. No problem. I agree. I don't deny that a random process could be the source of a transmission that resulted in the creation of a conscious being, what I deny is that random *simple computations, lacking any causal linkages, could form consciousness. The way the lucky rays fixed Alice neurons illustrates that they were not random at all. That is why Alice is so lucky! * By simple I mean the types of computation done in discrete steps, such as multiplication, addition, etc. Those done by a single neuron or a small collection of logic gates. If you recover from a description (comp), you cannot know if that description has been generated by a computation or a random process, unless you give some prescience to the logical gates. Keep in mind we try to refute the conjunction MECH and MAT. Here I would say that consciousness is not correlated with the physical description at any point in time, but rather the computational history and flow of information, and that this is responsible for the subjective experience of being Alice. If Alice's mind is described by a random process, albeit one which gives the appearance of consciousness during her exam, she nevertheless has no coherent computational history and her mind contains no large scale informational structures. If it was random, sure. But it was not. More will be said through MGA 2. The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Absolutely so. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On 20 Nov 2008, at 00:19, Telmo Menezes wrote: Could you alter the so-lucky cosmic explosion beam a little bit so that Alice still succeed her math exam, but is, reasonably enough, a zombie during the exam. With zombie taken in the traditional sense of Kory and Dennett. Of course you have to keep well *both* MECH *and* MAT. I think I can... Instead of correcting the brain, the cosmic beams trigger output neurons in a sequence that makes Alice write the right answers. That is to say, the information content of the beams is no longer a representation of an area of Alice's brain, but a representation of the answers to the exam. An outside observer cannot distinguish one case from the other. In the first she is Alice, in the second she is a zombie. Right. I guess you see that such a zombie is an accidental zombie. We will have to come back later on this accidental part. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 19, 2008, at 1:43 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: So I'm puzzled as to how answer Bruno's question. In general I don't believe in zombies, but that's in the same way I don't believe my glass of water will freeze at 20degC. It's an opinion about what is likely, not what is possible. I take this to mean that you're uncomfortable with thought experiments which revolve around logically possible but exceedingly unlikely events. I think you really you mean nomologically possible. I'm not uncomfortable with them, I just maintain a little skepticism. For one thing what is nomologically possible or impossible is often reassessed. Less than a century ago the experimental results Elizer, Vaidman, Zeilenger, et al, on delayed choice, non-interaction measurement, and other QM phenomena would all have been dismissed in advance as logically impossible. I think that's understandable, but ultimately, I'm on the philosopher's side. It really is logically possible - although exceedingly unlikely - for a random-number-generator to cause a robot to walk around, talk to people, etc. It really is logically possible for a computer program to use a random-number-generator to generate a lattice of changing bits that follows Conway's Life rule. Mechanism and materialism needs to answer questions about these scenarios, regardless of how unlikely they are. I don't disagree with that. My puzzlement about how to answer Bruno's question comes from the ambiguity as to what we mean by a philosophical zombie. Do we mean its outward actions are the same as a conscious person? For how long? Under what circumstances? I can easily make a robot that acts just like a sleeping person. I think Dennett changes the question by referring to neurophysiological actions. Does he suppose wetware can't be replaced by hardware? In general when I'm asked if I believe in philosophical zombies, I say no, because I'm thinking that the zombie must outwardly behave like a conscious person in all circumstances over an indefinite period of time, yet have no inner experience. I rule out an accidental zombie accomplishing this as to improbable - not impossible. In other words if I were constructing a robot that had to act as a conscious person would over a long period of time in a wide variety of circumstances, I would have to build into the robot some kind of inner attention module that selected what was important to remember, compressed into short representation, linked it to other memories. And this would be an inner narrative. Similary for the other inner processes. I don't know if that's really what it takes to build a conscious robot, but I'm pretty sure it's something like that. And I think once we understand how to do this, we'll stop worrying about the hard problem of consciousness. Instead we'll talk about how efficient the inner narration module is or the memory confabulation module or the visual imagination module. Talk about consciousness will seem as quaint as talk about the elan vital does now. Brent -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 20 Nov 2008, at 08:23, Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 18, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The last question (of MGA 1) is: was Alice, in this case, a zombie during the exam? Of course, my personal answer would take into account the fact that I already have a problem with the materialist's idea of matter. But I think we're supposed to be considering the question in the context of mechanism and materialism. So I'll ask, what should a mechanist- materialist say about the state of Alice's consciousness during the exam? Maybe I'm jumping ahead, but I think this thought experiment creates a dilemma for the mechanist-materialist (which I think is Bruno's point). In contrast to many of the other responses in this thread, I don't think the mechanist-materialist should believe that Alice is conscious in the case when every gate has stopped functioning (but cosmic rays are randomly causing them to flip in the exact same way that they would have flipped if they were functioning). Alice is in that case functionally identical to a random-number generator. It shouldn't matter at all whether these cosmic rays are striking the broken gates in her head, or if the gates in her head are completely inert and the rays are striking the neurons in (say) her arms and her spinal chord, still causing her body to behave exactly as it would have without the breakdown. I agree with Telmo Menezes that the mechanist-materialist shouldn't view Alice as conscious in the latter case. But I don't think it's any different than the former case. I am afraid you are already too much suspect of the contradictory nature of MEC+MAT. Take the reasoning has a game. Try to keep both MEC and MAT, the game consists in showing the more clearly as possible what will go wrong. The goal is to help the other to understand, or to find an error (fatal or fixable: in both case we learn). It sounds like many people are under the impression that mechanism- materialism, with it's rejection of zombies, is committed to the view that Lucky Alice must be conscious, because she's behaviorally indistinguishable from the Alice with the correctly-functioning brain. But, in the sense that matters, Lucky Alice is *not* behaviorally indistinguishable from fully-functional Alice. You mean the ALICE of Telmo's solution of MGA 1bis, I guess. The original Alice, well I mean the one in MGA 1, is functionally identical at the right level of description (actually she has already digital brain). The physical instantiation of a computation is completely realized. No neurons can know that the info (correct and at the right places) does not come from the relevant neurons, but from a lucky beam. For the mechanist- materialist, everything physical counts as behavior. And there is a clear physical difference between the two Alices, which would be physically discoverable by a nearby scientist with the proper instruments. But the physical difference does not play a role. If you invoke it, how could you accept saying yes to a doctor, who introduce bigger difference? Lets imagine that, during the time that Alice's brain is broken but luckily acting as though it wasn't due to cosmic rays, someone throws a ball at Alice's head, and she (luckily) ducks out of the way. The mechanist-materialist may be happy to agree that she did indeed duck out of the way, since that's just a description of what her body did. OK, for both ALICE of Telmo's solution of MGA 1bis, and ALICE MGA 1. But the mechanist-materialist can (and must) claim that Lucky Alice did not in fact respond to the ball at all. Consciously or privately? Certainly not for ALICE MGA 1bis. But why not for ALICE MGA 1? Please remember to try to naively, or candidly enough, keep both MECH and MAT in mind. You are already reasoning like if we were concluding some definitive things, biut we are just trying to build an argument. In the end, you will say: I knew it, but the point is helping the others to know it too. Many here have already the good intuition I think. The point is to make that intuition the most communicable possible. And that statement can be translated into pure physics-talk. The movements of Alice's body in this case are being caused by the cosmic rays. They are causally disconnected from the movements of the ball (except in the incidental way that the ball might be having some causal effect on the cosmic rays). More on this after MGA 2. Hopefully tomorrow. When Alice's brain is working properly, her act of ducking *is* causally connected to the movement of the ball. And this kind of causal connection is an important part of what the mechanist- materialist means by consciousness. Careful: such kind of causality needs ... MAT. Dennett is able to - and in fact must - say that Alice is not conscious when all of her brain-gates are broken but very luckily being flipped by cosmic rays. When
Re: MGA 1
Hi John, It boils down to my overall somewhat negative position (although I have no better one) of UDA, MPG, comp, etc. - all of them are products of HUMAN thinking and restrictions as WE can imagine the unfathomable existence (the totality - real TOE). I find it a 'cousin' of the reductionistic conventional sciences, just a bit 'freed up'. Maybe a distant cousin. Meaning: it handles the totality WITHIN the framework of our limited (human) logic(s). I think that Human logic is already a progress compared to Russian, or Belgian, or Hungarian, or American logic, or ... And then you know how much I agree with you, once you substitute human by lobian (where a lobian machine/number is a universal machine who know she is universal, and bet she is a machine). Alas, we cannot do better. I'm afraid so. Thanks for acknowledging. just want to take all this mental exercise with the grain of salt of there may be more to all of it Sure. And if we take ourself too much seriously, we can miss the ultimate cosmic divine joke (if there is one). what we cannot even fancy (imagine, fantasize of) today, with our mind anchored in our restrictions. (Including 'digital', 'numbers', learned wisdom, etc.). Be careful and be open to your own philosophy. The idea that digital and numbers (the concept, not our human description of it) are restrictions could be due to our human prejudice. May be a machine could one day believes this is a form of unfounded prejudicial exclusion. I hope you don't mind my frank attitude, and I wish you the best, 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 19 Nov 2008, at 20:37, Michael Rosefield wrote: Are not logic gates black boxes, though? Does it really matter what happens between Input and Output? In which case, it has absolutely no bearing on Alice's consciousness whether the gate's a neuron, an electronic doodah, a team of well-trained monkeys or a lucky quantum event or synchronicity. Good summary. It does not matter, really, where or when the actions of the gate take place. As far as they represent, physically or materially, the relevant computation, assuming MEC+MAT. OK. MGA 2 will give one more step forward the idea that the materiality cannot play a relevant part in the computation. I will try to do MGA 2 tomorrow. (It is 21h22m23s here, I mean 9h22m31s pm :). I have to solve a conflict between two ways to make the MGA 2. If I don't succeed, I will make both. Thanks for trying to understand, 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Absolutely so. Bruno, What about the state machine that included the injection of lucky noise from an outside source vs. one in which all information was derived internally from the operation of the state machine itself? Would those two differently defined machines not differ and compute something different? Even though the computations are identical the information that is being computed comes from different sources and so carries with it a different connotation. Though the bits injected are identical, they inherently imply a different meaning because the state machine in the case of injection has a different structure than that of her normally operating brain. I believe the brain can be abstracted as a computer/information processing system, but it is not simply the computations and the inputs into the logic gates at each step that are important, but also the source of the input bits, otherwise the computation isn't the same. Jason --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:38 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: I think you really you mean nomologically possible. I mean logically possible, but I'm happy to change it to nomologically possible for the purposes of this conversation. I think Dennett changes the question by referring to neurophysiological actions. Does he suppose wetware can't be replaced by hardware? No, he definitely argues that wetware can replaced by hardware, as long as the hardware retains the computational functionality of the wetware. In general when I'm asked if I believe in philosophical zombies, I say no, because I'm thinking that the zombie must outwardly behave like a conscious person in all circumstances over an indefinite period of time, yet have no inner experience. I rule out an accidental zombie accomplishing this as to improbable - not impossible. I agree. But if you accept that it's nomologically possible for a robot with a random-number-generator in its head to outwardly behave like a conscious person in all circumstances over an indefinite period of time, then your theory of consciousness, one way or another, has to answer the question of whether or not this unlikely robot is conscious. Now, maybe your answer is The question is misguided in that case, and here's why... But that's a significant burden. -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 20, 2008, at 10:38 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: I think you really you mean nomologically possible. I mean logically possible, but I'm happy to change it to nomologically possible for the purposes of this conversation. Doesn't the question go away if it is nomologically impossible? I think Dennett changes the question by referring to neurophysiological actions. Does he suppose wetware can't be replaced by hardware? No, he definitely argues that wetware can replaced by hardware, as long as the hardware retains the computational functionality of the wetware. But that's the catch. Computational functionality is a capacity, not a fact. Does a random number generator have computational functionality just in case it (accidentally) computes something? I would say it does not. But referring the concept of zombie to a capacity, rather than observed behavior, makes a difference in Bruno's question. In general when I'm asked if I believe in philosophical zombies, I say no, because I'm thinking that the zombie must outwardly behave like a conscious person in all circumstances over an indefinite period of time, yet have no inner experience. I rule out an accidental zombie accomplishing this as to improbable - not impossible. I agree. But if you accept that it's nomologically possible for a robot with a random-number-generator in its head to outwardly behave like a conscious person in all circumstances over an indefinite period of time, then your theory of consciousness, one way or another, has to answer the question of whether or not this unlikely robot is conscious. Now, maybe your answer is The question is misguided in that case, and here's why... But that's a significant burden. I would regard it as an empirical question about how the robots brain worked. If the brain processed perceptual and memory data to produce the behavior, as in Jason's causal relations, I would say it is conscious in some sense (I think there are different kinds of consciousness, as evidenced by Bruno's list of first-person experiences). If it were a random number generator, i.e. accidental behavior, I'd say not. Observing the robot for some period of time, in some circumstances can provide strong evidence against the accidental hypothesis, but it cannot rule it out completely. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:33 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: Doesn't the question go away if it is nomologically impossible? I'm sort of the opposite of you on this issue. You don't like to use the term logically possible, while I don't like to use the term nomologically impossible. I don't see the relevance of nomological possibility to any philosophical question I'm interested in. For anything that's nomologically impossible, I can just imagine a cellular automaton or some other computational or mathematical physics in which that thing is nomologically possible. And then I can just imagine physically instantiating that universe on one of our real computers. And then all of my philosophical questions still apply. I can certainly imagine objections to that viewpoint. But life is short. My point was that, since you already agreed that it's nomologically possible for a random robot to outwardly behave like a conscious person for some indefinite period of time, we can sidestep the (probably interesting) discussion we might have about nomological vs. logical possibility in this case. Does a random number generator have computational functionality just in case it (accidentally) computes something? I would say it does not. But referring the concept of zombie to a capacity, rather than observed behavior, makes a difference in Bruno's question. I think that Dennett explicitly refers to computational capacities when talking about consciousness (and zombies), and I follow him. But Dennett's point is that computational capacity is always, in principle, observed behavior - or, at least, behavior that can be observed. In the case of Lucky Alice, if you had the right tools, you could examine the neurons and see - based on how they were behaving! - that they were not causally connected to each other. (The fact that a neuron is being triggered by a cosmic ray rather than by a neighboring neuron is an observable part of its behavior.) That observed behavior would allow you to conclude that this brain does not have the computational capacity to compute the answers to a math test, or to compute the trajectory of a ball. I would regard it as an empirical question about how the robots brain worked. If the brain processed perceptual and memory data to produce the behavior, as in Jason's causal relations, I would say it is conscious in some sense (I think there are different kinds of consciousness, as evidenced by Bruno's list of first-person experiences). If it were a random number generator, i.e. accidental behavior, I'd say not. I agree. But why do you say you're puzzled about how to answer Bruno's question about Lucky Alice? I think you just answered it - for you, Lucky Alice wouldn't be conscious. (Or do you think that Lucky Alice is different than a robot with a random-number-generator in its head? I don't.) -- Kory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
Kory Heath wrote: On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:33 PM, Brent Meeker wrote: Doesn't the question go away if it is nomologically impossible? I'm sort of the opposite of you on this issue. You don't like to use the term logically possible, while I don't like to use the term nomologically impossible. I don't see the relevance of nomological possibility to any philosophical question I'm interested in. For anything that's nomologically impossible, I can just imagine a cellular automaton or some other computational or mathematical physics in which that thing is nomologically possible. And then I can just imagine physically instantiating that universe on one of our real computers. And then all of my philosophical questions still apply. I can certainly imagine objections to that viewpoint. But life is short. My point was that, since you already agreed that it's nomologically possible for a random robot to outwardly behave like a conscious person for some indefinite period of time, we can sidestep the (probably interesting) discussion we might have about nomological vs. logical possibility in this case. Does a random number generator have computational functionality just in case it (accidentally) computes something? I would say it does not. But referring the concept of zombie to a capacity, rather than observed behavior, makes a difference in Bruno's question. I think that Dennett explicitly refers to computational capacities when talking about consciousness (and zombies), and I follow him. But Dennett's point is that computational capacity is always, in principle, observed behavior - or, at least, behavior that can be observed. In the case of Lucky Alice, if you had the right tools, you could examine the neurons and see - based on how they were behaving! - that they were not causally connected to each other. (The fact that a neuron is being triggered by a cosmic ray rather than by a neighboring neuron is an observable part of its behavior.) That observed behavior would allow you to conclude that this brain does not have the computational capacity to compute the answers to a math test, or to compute the trajectory of a ball. I would regard it as an empirical question about how the robots brain worked. If the brain processed perceptual and memory data to produce the behavior, as in Jason's causal relations, I would say it is conscious in some sense (I think there are different kinds of consciousness, as evidenced by Bruno's list of first-person experiences). If it were a random number generator, i.e. accidental behavior, I'd say not. I agree. But why do you say you're puzzled about how to answer Bruno's question about Lucky Alice? I think you just answered it - for you, Lucky Alice wouldn't be conscious. (Or do you think that Lucky Alice is different than a robot with a random-number-generator in its head? I don't.) I think Alice is different. She has the capacity to be conscious. This is potentially, temporarily interrupted by some mysterious failure of gates (or neurons) in her brain - but wait, these failures are serendipitously canceled out by a burst of cosmic rays, so they all get the same input/output as if nothing had happened. So, functionally, it's as if the gates didn't fail at all. This functionality is beyond external behavior; it includes forming memories, paying attention, etc. Of course we may say it is not causally related to Alice's environment, but this depends on a certain theory of causality, a physical theory. If the cosmic rays exactly replace all the gate functions to maintain the same causal chains then from an informational perspective we might say the rays were caused by the relations to her environment. Brent Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Le 19-nov.-08, à 07:13, Russell Standish a écrit : I think Alice was indeed not a zombie, I think you are right. COMP + MAT implies Alice (in this setting) is not a zombie. and that her consciousness supervened on the physical activity stimulating her output gates (the cosmic explosion that produced the happy rays). Are you suggesting that she was a zombie? Not at all. (Not yet ...). I can see the connection with Tim Maudlin's argument, but in his case, the machinery known as Olympia is too simple to be conscious (being nothing more than a recording - simpler than most automata anyway), and the machinery known as Klara was in fact stationary, leading to a rather absurd proposition that consciousness would depend on a difference in an inactive machine. In your case, the cosmic explosion is far from inactive, This makes the movie graph argument immune against the first half of Barnes objection. But let us not anticipate on the sequel. and if a star blew up in just such a way that its cosmic rays produced identical behaviour to Alice taking her exam (consciously), I have no problems in considering her consciousness as having supervened on the cosmic rays travelling from that star for that instant. It is no different to the proverbial tornado ripping through one of IBM's junk yards and miraculously assembling a conscious computer by chance. Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a zombie? I mean, is there someone who object? Remember we are proving implication/ MAT+MECH = something. We never try to argue about that something per se. Eventually we hope to prove MAT+MECH = false, that is NOT(MAT MECH) which is equivalent to MAT implies NOT MECH, MECH = NOT MAT, etc. (by MAT i mean materialism, or naturalism, or physicalism or more generally the physical supervenience thesis, according to which consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of the brain. If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). Of course you know my opinion that the whole argument changes once you consider the thought experiment taking place in a multiverse. We will see (let us go step by step for not confusing the audience). Thanks for answering. Bruno Marchal 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Bruno, If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). I also agree completely and am curious to see where this is going. Please continue! Cheers, Telmo Menezes. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
Bruno: I'm intested to see the second part. Thanks! --- On Wed, 11/19/08, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: MGA 1 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 3:59 AM Le 19-nov.-08, à 07:13, Russell Standish a écrit : I think Alice was indeed not a zombie, I think you are right. COMP + MAT implies Alice (in this setting) is not a zombie. and that her consciousness supervened on the physical activity stimulating her output gates (the cosmic explosion that produced the happy rays). Are you suggesting that she was a zombie? Not at all. (Not yet ...). I can see the connection with Tim Maudlin's argument, but in his case, the machinery known as Olympia is too simple to be conscious (being nothing more than a recording - simpler than most automata anyway), and the machinery known as Klara was in fact stationary, leading to a rather absurd proposition that consciousness would depend on a difference in an inactive machine. In your case, the cosmic explosion is far from inactive, This makes the movie graph argument immune against the first half of Barnes objection. But let us not anticipate on the sequel. and if a star blew up in just such a way that its cosmic rays produced identical behaviour to Alice taking her exam (consciously), I have no problems in considering her consciousness as having supervened on the cosmic rays travelling from that star for that instant. It is no different to the proverbial tornado ripping through one of IBM's junk yards and miraculously assembling a conscious computer by chance. Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a zombie? I mean, is there someone who object? Remember we are proving implication/ MAT+MECH = something. We never try to argue about that something per se. Eventually we hope to prove MAT+MECH = false, that is NOT(MAT MECH) which is equivalent to MAT implies NOT MECH, MECH = NOT MAT, etc. (by MAT i mean materialism, or naturalism, or physicalism or more generally the physical supervenience thesis, according to which consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of the brain. If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). Of course you know my opinion that the whole argument changes once you consider the thought experiment taking place in a multiverse. We will see (let us go step by step for not confusing the audience). Thanks for answering. Bruno Marchal 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
To add some clarification, I do not think spreading Alice's logic gates across a field and allowing cosmic rays to cause each gate to perform the same computations that they would had they existed in her functioning brain would be conscious. I think this because in isolation the logic gates are not computing anything complex, only AND, OR, NAND operations, etc. This is why I believe rocks are not conscious, the collisions of their molecules may be performing simple computations, but they are never aggregated into complex patterns to compute over a large set of information. Jason On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a zombie? I mean, is there someone who object? Remember we are proving implication/ MAT+MECH = something. We never try to argue about that something per se. Eventually we hope to prove MAT+MECH = false, that is NOT(MAT MECH) which is equivalent to MAT implies NOT MECH, MECH = NOT MAT, etc. (by MAT i mean materialism, or naturalism, or physicalism or more generally the physical supervenience thesis, according to which consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of the brain. Bruno, I am on the fence as to whether or not Alice is a Zombie. The argument for her not being conscious is related to the non causal effect of information in this scenario. A string of 1's and 0's which is simply defined out of nowhere, in my opinion cannot contain conscious observers, even if it could be considered to encode brain states conscious observers or a universe with conscious observers. To have meaningful information there must be relations between objects, such as the flow of information in the succession of states in a Turing machine. In the case of Alice, the information coming from the cosmic rays is meaningless, and might as well have occurred in isolation. If all of Alice's logic gates had been spread over a field, and made to fire in the same way due to cosmic rays and if all logic gates remained otherwise disconnected from each other, would anyone consider this field of logic gates be conscious? I have an idea that consciousness is related to hierarchies of information, at the lowest levels of neural activity, simple computations of small amounts of information combine information into a result, and then these higher level results are passed up to higher levels of processing, etc. For example the red/green/blue data from the eyes are combined into single pixels, these pixels are combined into an field of colors, this field of colors is then processed by object classification sections of the brain. So my argument that Alice might not be conscious would be related to the skipping of steps through the injection of information which is empty (not having been computed from lower level sets of information and hence not actually conveying any information). Jason ) I do not believe is --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On 19 Nov 2008, at 20:17, Jason Resch wrote: To add some clarification, I do not think spreading Alice's logic gates across a field and allowing cosmic rays to cause each gate to perform the same computations that they would had they existed in her functioning brain would be conscious. I think this because in isolation the logic gates are not computing anything complex, only AND, OR, NAND operations, etc. This is why I believe rocks are not conscious, the collisions of their molecules may be performing simple computations, but they are never aggregated into complex patterns to compute over a large set of information. Actually I agree with this argument. But it does not concern Alice, because I have provide her with an incredible amount of luck. The lucky rays fix the neurons in a genuine way (by that abnormally big amount of pure luck). If you doubt Alice remain conscious, how could you accept an experience of simple teleportation (UDA step 1 or 2). If you can recover consciousness from a relative digital description, how could that consciousness distinguish between a recovery from a genuine description send from earth (say), and a recovery from a description luckily generated by a random process? If you recover from a description (comp), you cannot know if that description has been generated by a computation or a random process, unless you give some prescience to the logical gates. Keep in mind we try to refute the conjunction MECH and MAT. Nevertheless your intuition below is mainly correct, but the point is that accepting it really works, AND keeping MECH, will force us to negate MAT. Bruno Jason On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a zombie? I mean, is there someone who object? Remember we are proving implication/ MAT+MECH = something. We never try to argue about that something per se. Eventually we hope to prove MAT+MECH = false, that is NOT(MAT MECH) which is equivalent to MAT implies NOT MECH, MECH = NOT MAT, etc. (by MAT i mean materialism, or naturalism, or physicalism or more generally the physical supervenience thesis, according to which consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of the brain. Bruno, I am on the fence as to whether or not Alice is a Zombie. The argument for her not being conscious is related to the non causal effect of information in this scenario. A string of 1's and 0's which is simply defined out of nowhere, in my opinion cannot contain conscious observers, even if it could be considered to encode brain states conscious observers or a universe with conscious observers. To have meaningful information there must be relations between objects, such as the flow of information in the succession of states in a Turing machine. In the case of Alice, the information coming from the cosmic rays is meaningless, and might as well have occurred in isolation. If all of Alice's logic gates had been spread over a field, and made to fire in the same way due to cosmic rays and if all logic gates remained otherwise disconnected from each other, would anyone consider this field of logic gates be conscious? I have an idea that consciousness is related to hierarchies of information, at the lowest levels of neural activity, simple computations of small amounts of information combine information into a result, and then these higher level results are passed up to higher levels of processing, etc. For example the red/green/blue data from the eyes are combined into single pixels, these pixels are combined into an field of colors, this field of colors is then processed by object classification sections of the brain. So my argument that Alice might not be conscious would be related to the skipping of steps through the injection of information which is empty (not having been computed from lower level sets of information and hence not actually conveying any information). Jason ) I do not believe is 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
MGA 1 bis (exercise)
On 19 Nov 2008, at 16:06, Telmo Menezes wrote: Bruno, If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). I also agree completely and am curious to see where this is going. Please continue! Thanks Telmo, thanks also to Gordon. I will try to send MGA 2 asap. But this asks me some time. Meanwhile I suggest a little exercise, which, by the way, finishes the proof of MECH + MAT implies false, for those who thinks that there is no (conceivable) zombies. (they think that exists zombie *is* false). Exercise (mat+mec implies zombie exists or are conceivable): Could you alter the so-lucky cosmic explosion beam a little bit so that Alice still succeed her math exam, but is, reasonably enough, a zombie during the exam. With zombie taken in the traditional sense of Kory and Dennett. Of course you have to keep well *both* MECH *and* MAT. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Nov 2008, at 16:06, Telmo Menezes wrote: Bruno, If no one objects, I will present MGA 2 (soon). I also agree completely and am curious to see where this is going. Please continue! Thanks Telmo, thanks also to Gordon. I will try to send MGA 2 asap. But this asks me some time. Meanwhile I suggest a little exercise, which, by the way, finishes the proof of MECH + MAT implies false, for those who thinks that there is no (conceivable) zombies. (they think that exists zombie *is* false). Exercise (mat+mec implies zombie exists or are conceivable): Could you alter the so-lucky cosmic explosion beam a little bit so that Alice still succeed her math exam, but is, reasonably enough, a zombie during the exam. With zombie taken in the traditional sense of Kory and Dennett. Of course you have to keep well *both* MECH *and* MAT. Bruno As I understand it a philosophical zombie is someone who looks and acts just like a conscious person but isn't conscious, i.e. has no inner narrative. Time and circumstance play a part in this. As Bruno pointed out a cardboard cutout of a person's photograph could be a zombie for a moment. I assume the point of the exam is that an exam is long enough in duration and complex enough that it rules out the accidental, cutout zombie. But then Alice has her normal behavior restored by a cosmic ray shower that is just as improbable as the accidental zombie, i.e. she is, for the duration of the shower, an accidental zombie. So I'm puzzled as to how answer Bruno's question. In general I don't believe in zombies, but that's in the same way I don't believe my glass of water will freeze at 20degC. It's an opinion about what is likely, not what is possible. It seems similar to the question, could I have gotten in my car and driven to the store, bought something, and driven back and yet not be conscious of it. It's highly unlikely, yet people apparently have done such things. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 19 Nov 2008, at 20:17, Jason Resch wrote: To add some clarification, I do not think spreading Alice's logic gates across a field and allowing cosmic rays to cause each gate to perform the same computations that they would had they existed in her functioning brain would be conscious. I think this because in isolation the logic gates are not computing anything complex, only AND, OR, NAND operations, etc. This is why I believe rocks are not conscious, the collisions of their molecules may be performing simple computations, but they are never aggregated into complex patterns to compute over a large set of information. Actually I agree with this argument. But it does not concern Alice, because I have provide her with an incredible amount of luck. The lucky rays fix the neurons in a genuine way (by that abnormally big amount of pure luck). If the cosmic rays are simply keeping her neurons working normally, then I'm more inclined to believe she remains conscious, but I'm not certain one way or the other. If you doubt Alice remain conscious, how could you accept an experience of simple teleportation (UDA step 1 or 2). If you can recover consciousness from a relative digital description, how could that consciousness distinguish between a recovery from a genuine description send from earth (say), and a recovery from a description luckily generated by a random process? I believe consciousness can be recovered from a digital description, but I don't believe the description itself is conscious while being beamed from one teleporting station to the other. I think it is only when the body/computer simulation is instantiated can consciousness recovered from the description. Consider sending the description over an encrypted channel, without the right decryption algorithm and key the description can't be differentiated from random noise. The same bits could be interpreted entirely differently depending completely on how the recipient uses it. The meaning of the transmission is recovered when it forms a system with complex relations, presumably the same relations as the original one that was teleported, even though it may be running on a different physical substrate, or a different computer architecture. I don't deny that a random process could be the source of a transmission that resulted in the creation of a conscious being, what I deny is that random *simple computations, lacking any causal linkages, could form consciousness. * By simple I mean the types of computation done in discrete steps, such as multiplication, addition, etc. Those done by a single neuron or a small collection of logic gates. If you recover from a description (comp), you cannot know if that description has been generated by a computation or a random process, unless you give some prescience to the logical gates. Keep in mind we try to refute the conjunction MECH and MAT. Here I would say that consciousness is not correlated with the physical description at any point in time, but rather the computational history and flow of information, and that this is responsible for the subjective experience of being Alice. If Alice's mind is described by a random process, albeit one which gives the appearance of consciousness during her exam, she nevertheless has no coherent computational history and her mind contains no large scale informational structures. The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Jason Nevertheless your intuition below is mainly correct, but the point is that accepting it really works, AND keeping MECH, will force us to negate MAT. Bruno Jason On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a zombie? I mean, is there someone who object? Remember we are proving implication/ MAT+MECH = something. We never try to argue about that something per se. Eventually we hope to prove MAT+MECH = false, that is NOT(MAT MECH) which is equivalent to MAT implies NOT MECH, MECH = NOT MAT, etc. (by MAT i mean materialism, or naturalism, or physicalism or more generally the physical supervenience thesis, according to which consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of the brain. Bruno, I am on the fence as to whether or not Alice is a Zombie. The argument for her not being conscious is related to the non causal effect of information in this scenario. A string of 1's and 0's which is simply defined out of nowhere, in my opinion cannot contain conscious observers, even if it could be considered to encode brain states conscious observers or a universe with conscious observers. To have meaningful
Re: MGA 1
Jason Resch wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 19 Nov 2008, at 20:17, Jason Resch wrote: To add some clarification, I do not think spreading Alice's logic gates across a field and allowing cosmic rays to cause each gate to perform the same computations that they would had they existed in her functioning brain would be conscious. I think this because in isolation the logic gates are not computing anything complex, only AND, OR, NAND operations, etc. This is why I believe rocks are not conscious, the collisions of their molecules may be performing simple computations, but they are never aggregated into complex patterns to compute over a large set of information. Actually I agree with this argument. But it does not concern Alice, because I have provide her with an incredible amount of luck. The lucky rays fix the neurons in a genuine way (by that abnormally big amount of pure luck). If the cosmic rays are simply keeping her neurons working normally, then I'm more inclined to believe she remains conscious, but I'm not certain one way or the other. If you doubt Alice remain conscious, how could you accept an experience of simple teleportation (UDA step 1 or 2). If you can recover consciousness from a relative digital description, how could that consciousness distinguish between a recovery from a genuine description send from earth (say), and a recovery from a description luckily generated by a random process? I believe consciousness can be recovered from a digital description, but I don't believe the description itself is conscious while being beamed from one teleporting station to the other. I think it is only when the body/computer simulation is instantiated can consciousness recovered from the description. Consider sending the description over an encrypted channel, without the right decryption algorithm and key the description can't be differentiated from random noise. The same bits could be interpreted entirely differently depending completely on how the recipient uses it. The meaning of the transmission is recovered when it forms a system with complex relations, presumably the same relations as the original one that was teleported, even though it may be running on a different physical substrate, or a different computer architecture. Right. That's why I think that a simulation instantiating a conscious being would have to include a lot of environment and the being would only be conscious *relative to that environment*. I think it is an interesting empirical question whether a person can be conscious with no interaction with their environment. It appears that it is possible for short periods of time, but I once read that in sensory deprivation experiments the subjects minds would go into a loop after a couple of hours. Is that still being conscious? Brent Meeker I don't deny that a random process could be the source of a transmission that resulted in the creation of a conscious being, what I deny is that random *simple computations, lacking any causal linkages, could form consciousness. * By simple I mean the types of computation done in discrete steps, such as multiplication, addition, etc. Those done by a single neuron or a small collection of logic gates. If you recover from a description (comp), you cannot know if that description has been generated by a computation or a random process, unless you give some prescience to the logical gates. Keep in mind we try to refute the conjunction MECH and MAT. Here I would say that consciousness is not correlated with the physical description at any point in time, but rather the computational history and flow of information, and that this is responsible for the subjective experience of being Alice. If Alice's mind is described by a random process, albeit one which gives the appearance of consciousness during her exam, she nevertheless has no coherent computational history and her mind contains no large scale informational structures. The state machine that would represent her in the case of injection of random noise is a different state machine that would represent her normally functioning brain. Jason Nevertheless your intuition below is mainly correct, but the point is that accepting it really works, AND keeping MECH, will force us to negate MAT. Bruno Jason On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Jason Resch [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does everyone accept, like Russell, that, assuming COMP and MAT, Alice is not a
Re: MGA 1 bis (exercise)
Could you alter the so-lucky cosmic explosion beam a little bit so that Alice still succeed her math exam, but is, reasonably enough, a zombie during the exam. With zombie taken in the traditional sense of Kory and Dennett. Of course you have to keep well *both* MECH *and* MAT. I think I can... Instead of correcting the brain, the cosmic beams trigger output neurons in a sequence that makes Alice write the right answers. That is to say, the information content of the beams is no longer a representation of an area of Alice's brain, but a representation of the answers to the exam. An outside observer cannot distinguish one case from the other. In the first she is Alice, in the second she is a zombie. Telmo. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: MGA 1
On Nov 18, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The last question (of MGA 1) is: was Alice, in this case, a zombie during the exam? Of course, my personal answer would take into account the fact that I already have a problem with the materialist's idea of matter. But I think we're supposed to be considering the question in the context of mechanism and materialism. So I'll ask, what should a mechanist- materialist say about the state of Alice's consciousness during the exam? Maybe I'm jumping ahead, but I think this thought experiment creates a dilemma for the mechanist-materialist (which I think is Bruno's point). In contrast to many of the other responses in this thread, I don't think the mechanist-materialist should believe that Alice is conscious in the case when every gate has stopped functioning (but cosmic rays are randomly causing them to flip in the exact same way that they would have flipped if they were functioning). Alice is in that case functionally identical to a random-number generator. It shouldn't matter at all whether these cosmic rays are striking the broken gates in her head, or if the gates in her head are completely inert and the rays are striking the neurons in (say) her arms and her spinal chord, still causing her body to behave exactly as it would have without the breakdown. I agree with Telmo Menezes that the mechanist-materialist shouldn't view Alice as conscious in the latter case. But I don't think it's any different than the former case. It sounds like many people are under the impression that mechanism- materialism, with it's rejection of zombies, is committed to the view that Lucky Alice must be conscious, because she's behaviorally indistinguishable from the Alice with the correctly-functioning brain. But, in the sense that matters, Lucky Alice is *not* behaviorally indistinguishable from fully-functional Alice. For the mechanist- materialist, everything physical counts as behavior. And there is a clear physical difference between the two Alices, which would be physically discoverable by a nearby scientist with the proper instruments. Lets imagine that, during the time that Alice's brain is broken but luckily acting as though it wasn't due to cosmic rays, someone throws a ball at Alice's head, and she (luckily) ducks out of the way. The mechanist-materialist may be happy to agree that she did indeed duck out of the way, since that's just a description of what her body did. But the mechanist-materialist can (and must) claim that Lucky Alice did not in fact respond to the ball at all. And that statement can be translated into pure physics-talk. The movements of Alice's body in this case are being caused by the cosmic rays. They are causally disconnected from the movements of the ball (except in the incidental way that the ball might be having some causal effect on the cosmic rays). When Alice's brain is working properly, her act of ducking *is* causally connected to the movement of the ball. And this kind of causal connection is an important part of what the mechanist- materialist means by consciousness. Dennett is able to - and in fact must - say that Alice is not conscious when all of her brain-gates are broken but very luckily being flipped by cosmic rays. When Dennett says that someone is conscious, he is referring precisely to these behavioral competences that can be described in physical terms. He means that this collection of physical stuff we call Alice really is responding to her immediate environment (like the ball), observing things, collecting data, etc. In that very objective sense, Lucky Alice is not responding to the ball at all. She's not conscious by Dennett's physicalist definition of consciousness. But she's also not a zombie, because she is behaving differently than fully-functional Alice. You just have to be able to have the proper instruments to know it. If you still think that Dennett would claim that Lucky Alice is a zombie, take a look at this quote from http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/zombic.htm : Just remember, by definition, a zombie behaves indistinguishably from a conscious being–in all possible tests, including not only answers to questions [as in the Turing test] but psychophysical tests, neurophysiological tests–all tests that any 'third-person' science can devise. Lucky Alice does *not* behave indistinguishably from a conscious being in all possible tests. The proper third-person test examining her logic gates would show that she is not responding to her immediate environment at all. Dennett should claim that she's a non- conscious non-zombie. Nevertheless, I think Bruno's thought experiment causes a problem for the mechanist-materialist, as it is supposed to. If we believe that the fully-functional Alice is conscious and the random-gate-brain Alice is not conscious, what happens when we start
MGA 1
Hi, Those who dislikes introduction can skip up to THE FIRST THOUGHT EXPERIMENT AND THE FIRST QUESTION. - INTRODUCTION MGA is for Movie Graph Argument (like UDA is for Universal Dovetailer Argument). By UDA(1...7), the seven first step of the UDA, we have a proof or argument that (COMP + there is a concrete universe with a concrete universal dovetailer running forever in it) implies that physics is emerging statistically from the computations (as seen from a first person points of view). Note: I will use computationalism, digital mechanism, and even just mechanism, as synonymous. MGA is intended to eliminate the hypothesis that: there is a concrete universe with a concrete universal dovetailer running forever) Leading to: comp implies that physics is a branch of (mathematical) computer science. Some nuances will have to be added. But I prefer to be slightly wrong, and understandable, than to make a long list of vocabulary and pursuing in some obscur jargon. But in case you have not read the UDA, there is no problem. MGA by itself shows something independent of the UDA, indeed it shows (is supposed to show) that the physical supervenience thesis is false. Consciousness does not supervene on the *physical activity* of the brain/computer/universe. This shows that mechanism is incompatible with materialism (even weak form) or naturalism or physicalism, because they traditionally assume the physical supervenience thesis. It is more subtle than UDA, and I expect possible infinite discussions. (Zombies will come back!) Now a preliminary remark for clarifying what we mean by MECHANISM. When the mechanist says yes to the doctor, it is because he believes (or hopes) he will survive QUA COMPUTATIO (sorry for the latin). I mean he believes that he will survive because the computational device he will get in place of its old brain does the right computations (which exists by hypothesis). he does not believe something like this (although he could!). I believe that there is God who will, by its magic means, pull out my soul, and then put it back in the new computational device. A mechanical theory of consciousness, as well explained by Dennett, should rely of the fact that we don't attribute knowledge or consciousness, still less prescience, to the neurons, or elementary logical gates, or quarks, ... that is to the elementary part of the computational device. (The elementary parts depends of course of the substitution level choice). This means, assuming both mechanism and naturalism (i.e. the physical supervenience thesis), that when consciousness supervenes on the physical activity of a brain, no neuron is aware of the other neurons to which they are related. Each neuron is aware only of some information they get of the neurons, not of the neurons themselves. If that was not the case, so that some neurons have some prescience of the identity of the neurons to which they are connected, it would just mean, when keeping the mechanist hypothesis, that we have not chosen the right level of substitution, and should go down further. Now come the first thought experiment and the first question. - THE FIRST THOUGHT EXPERIMENT AND THE FIRST QUESTIONS (MGA 1) : The lucky cosmic event. One billions years ago, at one billion light years away, somewhere in the universe (which exists by the naturalist hypo) a cosmic explosion occurred. And ... ... Alice had her math exam this afternoon. From 3h to 4h, she solved successfully a problem. She though to herself, oh, easy, Oh careful there is trap, yet I can solve it. What really happened is this. Alice already got an artificial brain, since a fatal brain tumor in her early childhood. At 3h17 pm one logical gate did broke, (resp. two logical gates, three, 24, 4567, 234987, ... all). But Alice was lucky (incredibly lucky). When the logical gate A did break, and for example did not send a bit to logical gate B, an energetic particle coming from the cosmic explosion, by pure chance, did trigger the logical gate B at the right time. And just after this happening another energetic particle fixed the gate problem. Question: did this change Alice's consciousness during the exam? I ask the same question with 2440 broken gates. They broke, let us say during an oral exam, and each time a gate broke, by sending a wrong info, or by not sending some info, an energetic particle coming from that cosmic explosion do the job, and at some point in time, a bunch of energetic particle fix Alice's brain. Suppose that ALL the neurons/logical gates of Alice are broken during the exam, all the time. But Alice, I told you, is incredibly lucky, and that cosmic beam again manage each logical gates to complete their work in the relevant places and times. And again at the end of the exam, a cosmic last beam fixed her
