subject:"Re\: Dreamless Sleep\?"



On 27 Dec 2017, at 00:17, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/26/2017 8:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 15:31, David Nyman wrote:




On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"   
wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  
 wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write  
and

>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,  
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How  
does this

>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument  
as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct  
from an

> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and  
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also  
to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to  
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it  
does?

>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps  
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic  
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be  
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions,  
between

> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed  
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'  
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that  
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms  
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised  
'mechanistic'

> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains  
of the

> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,  
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to  
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD  
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to  
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with,  
the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But  
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk  
of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's  
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems  
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and  
the mechanisms

> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no  
longer be

> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a  
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory  
- adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between  
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,  
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that  
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the  
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems  
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position  
on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even  
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of  
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you  
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to  
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then  
be: The

> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.

OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually  
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the  
epistemological circularity

Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 27 Dec 2017, at 00:10, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/26/2017 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 11:25, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  
 wrote:



On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?


Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and  
the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How  
does this

help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?



Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree. Except  
that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or  
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed  
back to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.


Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain  
states of

consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so?


I think the "why" is explained by Digital Mechanism, by justifying  
why machine when introspecting themselves understand that there is  
a non 3p-reducible obeying to what we might take as axioms for  
consciousness (true, knowable, knowable-for-sure, not definable,  
not doubtable, not rationally provable, immediate, etc.)


It's not reducible to the machines 3p view, but that doesn't show  
that other machines cannot have a 3p view of the given machine, i.e.  
the machine cannot know which machine it is, but other machines can.





That is why we do have a 3p notion of self-reference in arithmetic  
(like with Gödel, of Davis definition of a Turing machine in  
arithmetic).


The gentle logical miracle, due to the set of computation being closed  
for diagoinalisation, we have all sorts of interesting fixed points,  
and here we get in particular an notion of first person, irreducible  
to anything 3p. The (Gödel-Löbian) machines know that they have a  
soul, and that it is not a machine, from that soul's point of view.









It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Absolutely. Then Mechanism shows that even if we understand how  
consciousness can be attributed to one machine, we have still, to  
get the complete explanation, to derive the physical laws by the  
indexical statistics on all computations.


We can, from outside, associate a mind to a machine, but a mind  
cannot associate itself to one machine, only to infinities of  
machines and infinities of histories.


When I read that I think there is an unstated condition,"...given  
that my theory is true."


That is not an unstated condition, is is a consequence of the stated  
computationalist assumption.


If you know a way a universal Turing machine can select a computation  
as more real than another computations, aamong the infinitely many  
equivalent with respect to their first person perspective, let us know  
that way.








The identity thesis is not one-one. That is of course our measure  
problem, which explains why there is a (apparent) universe, and  
make the whole thing testable, by comparing the universal  
introspective physics of the universal numbers, and what we  
actually observe. It fits. And that is nice, because with  
physicalism it does not fit, simply.



That generalizes Everett's embedding of the physicists in the  
physical reality through an embedding of the mathematician in  
mathematics (which is what Gödel did, somehow).


But only in a small part of mathematics.



Which is a quality given the range of explanations (quanta and qualia).

Bruno







Brent



Bruno



Telmo.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 26 Dec 2017, at 22:06, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/26/2017 6:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 23 Dec 2017, at 03:13, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"   
wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  
 wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a  
recorded MRI of you

>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I  
write and

>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,  
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely  
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How  
does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a  
zombie?

>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream  
Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct  
from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question  
becomes:

>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and  
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear  
also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to  
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way  
it does?

>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps  
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as  
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be  
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions,  
between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And  
also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever  
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether  
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that  
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of  
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised  
'mechanistic'

> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still  
remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and  
the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,  
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment  
to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an  
LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to  
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated  
with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising.  
But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the  
bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's  
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole  
seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and  
the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden  
of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can  
no longer be

> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a  
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical  
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between  
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,  
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory  
that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the  
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems  
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian'  
position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even  
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of  
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you  
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need  
to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then  
be: The

> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an  
objective

reality that is independent from any of us, and that is

Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 26 Dec 2017, at 21:48, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/26/2017 6:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 20:57, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  
 wrote:


On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?
Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write  
and

know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,  
and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How  
does this

help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree. Except  
that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or  
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed  
back to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain  
states of

consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly  
legitimate

scientific question, I would say.


Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer  
might be or how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with  
someone who has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so  
asks lots of questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?"  
or "Why are there only two electric charges?" or "Why did the  
universe expand?"   At the fundamental level science doesn't  
answer "why" questions, because an answer would have to invoke a  
more basic level (hence my virtuous circle model of explanation).   
Of course you can never know that you're at the fundamental  
level.   The point I'm gently trying to make is that the "hard  
problem of consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it  
above, and scientific progress is made by answering "how" questions.



It depends on the your theory of mind.

If you assume Digital Mechanism(DM)  and Weak-Materialism (WM),  
that is the existence of primitive, irreducible, matter: you get an  
inconsistent theory.


That's false.  If it were true you could derive a contradiction by  
assuming DM and WM...but you can't.


No, but I make primary matter into either invisible horse. The point  
is that we can test this, by comparing the quantum logic and  
mathematics of the "machine's observable" and the "observed" quantum  
logic. The measurable degree of "non-mechanism" can be seen as genuine  
metaphysical evidence for "primary matter". Well, that has not yet  
been detected.




You claim WM is otiose, which is not the same as contradictory, but  
I find that dubious since materialism (i.e. physics) is necessary  
for consciousness.


But that is the key idea of the whole story!  More precisely, in  
arithmetical term, consistency (<>t) is necessary for consciousness,  
making physic phenomenologically given by the nuance []p & <>p or []p  
& <>t.


It is the bet by default of taking it fro granted that there is a  
reality nearby. (consistency, <>t,  is equivalent with "having a  
model", or "having a reality" or having a meaning" or "having a  
semantic", etc. That is Gödel's completeness theorem).









You may object but it's not primitive/irreducible matter, but I'd  
say those are just honorifics.  You haven't shown it's derivative  
and if it's necessary, then it's in the virtuous circle of  
explanation.


I show it is testable.







If you assume WM, it is up to you to propose a non DM theory of  
mind, and explain the role of the primitive matter in it (and what  
it could be).


It instantiates the DMs.  My theory of mind is that it goes with  
intelligence and if I build an intelligence it will be conscious.


Either it is Turing universal, and no universal machine can localized  
themselves in arithmetic, but below their substitution level, there is  
a unique sum on all machines/histories, and above, well a finite  
number of universal machines, depending on the local geography and  
history.










DM is testable. If Nature disobey to the Arithmetical quantum  
logic, that would be the first confirmation on WM (and of ~DM).


That's a typical theologians argument: If I disprove your god then  
my god exists.



If you did not take your kids back from school where they were  
explained Euclides argument that each prime number is smaller that  
some other one, then you believe already with my god.


But all I say is that such a god is testable, by comparing the logic  
of the material hypostases with the

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-29 Thread David Nyman

On 23 December 2017 at 02:13, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> > On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of
> you
> >> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
> >>
> >> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
> >> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
> >> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
> >> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
> >> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
> >> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
> >> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
> >
> >
> > Well put.
> >
> > However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
> point
> > of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> > explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
> >
> > Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations
> (i.e.
> > the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer
> to
> > events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the
> case
> > that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
> >
> > When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then
> be
> > unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
> components
> > of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> > the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> > themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> > unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> > analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
> 'wider'
> > in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is
> just
> > the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> > might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> > environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> > 'self-observation' with which we began.
> >
> > So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> > precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> > transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
> and
> > especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
> analogy,
> > it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> > that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble
> point
> > for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> > ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the
> reason
> > of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> > burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> > the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> > for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
> mechanisms
> > of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> > 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> > 'externalised'.
> >
> > Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> > apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
> adequate
> > to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> > phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> > Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> > test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> > way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> > intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> > into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
> physics
> > itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in
> that
> > the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But
> if
> > you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve
> into
> > the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> > concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.
>
> David, excellent text.
>
> Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:
>
> A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
> reality that is independent from any

Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/26/2017 8:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 15:31, David Nyman wrote:




On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:


On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How
does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument
as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct
from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also
to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it
does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions,
between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains
of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment
to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an
LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole
seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and
the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no
longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position
on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then
be: The
> concrete is the subjective

Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/26/2017 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 11:25, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  
wrote:



On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI 
of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?


Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?



Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree. Except that 
I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or 
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back 
to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.


Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so?


I think the "why" is explained by Digital Mechanism, by justifying why 
machine when introspecting themselves understand that there is a non 
3p-reducible obeying to what we might take as axioms for consciousness 
(true, knowable, knowable-for-sure, not definable, not doubtable, not 
rationally provable, immediate, etc.)


It's not reducible to the machines 3p view, but that doesn't show that 
other machines cannot have a 3p view of the given machine, i.e. the 
machine cannot know which machine it is, but other machines can.







It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Absolutely. Then Mechanism shows that even if we understand how 
consciousness can be attributed to one machine, we have still, to get 
the complete explanation, to derive the physical laws by the indexical 
statistics on all computations.


We can, from outside, associate a mind to a machine, but a mind cannot 
associate itself to one machine, only to infinities of machines and 
infinities of histories. 


When I read that I think there is an unstated condition,"...given that 
my theory is true."


The identity thesis is not one-one. That is of course our measure 
problem, which explains why there is a (apparent) universe, and make 
the whole thing testable, by comparing the universal introspective 
physics of the universal numbers, and what we actually observe. It 
fits. And that is nice, because with physicalism it does not fit, simply.



That generalizes Everett's embedding of the physicists in the physical 
reality through an embedding of the mathematician in mathematics 
(which is what Gödel did, somehow).


But only in a small part of mathematics.

Brent



Bruno



Telmo.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/26/2017 6:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 23 Dec 2017, at 03:13, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I
write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the
keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles
are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision?
How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a
zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream
Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made
distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question
becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts
and sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they
appear also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it
come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular
way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should
perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to
be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating
transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action.
And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further
that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more
generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still
remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream
itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance
within it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a
moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on
an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails
to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically
correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into
realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider
the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the
viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such
loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream
and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final
burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter
can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is
a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation
between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms. At this
point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other
theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating

Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/26/2017 6:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 22 Dec 2017, at 20:57, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  
wrote:


On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI 
of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are 
activated by

nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does 
this

help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree. Except that 
I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or 
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back 
to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might 
be or how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with someone 
who has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of 
questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are 
there only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?"   
At the fundamental level science doesn't answer "why" questions, 
because an answer would have to invoke a more basic level (hence my 
virtuous circle model of explanation).  Of course you can never know 
that you're at the fundamental level.   The point I'm gently trying 
to make is that the "hard problem of consciousness" is a why 
question, as you've posed it above, and scientific progress is made 
by answering "how" questions.



It depends on the your theory of mind.

If you assume Digital Mechanism(DM)  and Weak-Materialism (WM), that 
is the existence of primitive, irreducible, matter: you get an 
inconsistent theory.


That's false.  If it were true you could derive a contradiction by 
assuming DM and WM...but you can't.  You claim WM is otiose, which is 
not the same as contradictory, but I find that dubious since materialism 
(i.e. physics) is necessary for consciousness.  You may object but it's 
not primitive/irreducible matter, but I'd say those are just 
honorifics.  You haven't shown it's derivative and if it's necessary, 
then it's in the virtuous circle of explanation.




If you assume WM, it is up to you to propose a non DM theory of mind, 
and explain the role of the primitive matter in it (and what it could 
be).


It instantiates the DMs.  My theory of mind is that it goes with 
intelligence and if I build an intelligence it will be conscious.




DM is testable. If Nature disobey to the Arithmetical quantum logic, 
that would be the first confirmation on WM (and of ~DM).


That's a typical theologians argument: If I disprove your god then my 
god exists.




The hard problem is solvable, and I would say solved. Indeed 
incompleteness explains most of what people agree on consciousness 
(true for universal machine/number, not definable, not rationally 
justifiable; not doubtable, etc.).






It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard 
problem" are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we 
explain gravity and metabolism and atoms.


But DM explains exactly that. It explains why consciousness and first 
person notion obeys different logic that the observable. And the 
explanation does not add anything to elementary arithmetic (PA).





I'm saying we can - it's just that all those explanations are how 
explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations of 
consciousness - the engineering approach.


That is intrumentalism. It is like let us try to NOT do science, and 
eventually it leads to materialism reductionism, minimizing when not 
obliterating the first person notion, and violating in that way the 
main data of the problem, and into making the quite speculative 
physicalism into a pseudo-religion.


You're the one doing theology and making a religion of modal logic.



I realize many people confuse evidence for some physical law, with 
evidence for the metaphysical assumption that there is a physical 
universe. But I think I am the first to propose a genuine empirical 
set of experiments capable of testing that idea, and up to now, thanks 
to the quantum, the test available today confirms DM, and disconfirms 
if not refute (with Aspect experience + assuming

Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 22 Dec 2017, at 15:31, David Nyman wrote:




On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman   
wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  
 wrote:

>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and  
the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does  
this

>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as  
our point

> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and  
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to  
refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be  
the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it  
does?

>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not  
then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic  
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be  
mechanisms (in

> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed  
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'  
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this  
is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms  
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised  
'mechanistic'

> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of  
the

> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,  
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to  
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD  
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to  
resemble point

> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But  
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of  
the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain,  
not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems  
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the  
mechanisms

> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no  
longer be

> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a  
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -  
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the  
dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,  
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that  
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter  
in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem  
less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on  
matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even  
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG,  
in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you  
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to  
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be:  
The

> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.

OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually  
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological  
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful  
in penetrating the mathematical structure of

Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 22 Dec 2017, at 11:25, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI  
of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?


Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to  
my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does  
this

help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?



Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except  
that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or  
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back  
to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.


Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so?


I think the "why" is explained by Digital Mechanism, by justifying why  
machine when introspecting themselves understand that there is a non  
3p-reducible obeying to what we might take as axioms for consciousness  
(true, knowable, knowable-for-sure, not definable, not doubtable, not  
rationally provable, immediate, etc.)





It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Absolutely. Then Mechanism shows that even if we understand how  
consciousness can be attributed to one machine, we have still, to get  
the complete explanation, to derive the physical laws by the indexical  
statistics on all computations.


We can, from outside, associate a mind to a machine, but a mind cannot  
associate itself to one machine, only to infinities of machines and  
infinities of histories. The identity thesis is not one-one. That is  
of course our measure problem, which explains why there is a  
(apparent) universe, and make the whole thing testable, by comparing  
the universal introspective physics of the universal numbers, and what  
we actually observe. It fits. And that is nice, because with  
physicalism it does not fit, simply.



That generalizes Everett's embedding of the physicists in the physical  
reality through an embedding of the mathematician in mathematics  
(which is what Gödel did, somehow).


Bruno



Telmo.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 23 Dec 2017, at 03:13, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:


On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"   
wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  
 wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write  
and

>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,  
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How  
does this

>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument  
as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct  
from an

> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and  
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also  
to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to  
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it  
does?

>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps  
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic  
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be  
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions,  
between

> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed  
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'  
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that  
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms  
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised  
'mechanistic'

> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains  
of the

> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,  
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to  
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD  
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to  
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with,  
the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But  
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk  
of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's  
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems  
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and  
the mechanisms

> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no  
longer be

> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a  
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory  
- adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between  
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,  
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that  
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the  
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems  
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position  
on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even  
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of  
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you  
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to  
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then  
be: The

> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.

OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually  
warranted by the

Re: Dreamless Sleep?



On 22 Dec 2017, at 20:57, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  
 wrote:


On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded  
MRI of you

brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and  
the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are  
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated  
to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does  
this

help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except  
that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or  
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back  
to why do

we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states  
of

consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer  
might be or how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with  
someone who has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks  
lots of questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why  
are there only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe  
expand?"   At the fundamental level science doesn't answer "why"  
questions, because an answer would have to invoke a more basic level  
(hence my virtuous circle model of explanation).  Of course you can  
never know that you're at the fundamental level.   The point I'm  
gently trying to make is that the "hard problem of consciousness" is  
a why question, as you've posed it above, and scientific progress is  
made by answering "how" questions.



It depends on the your theory of mind.

If you assume Digital Mechanism(DM)  and Weak-Materialism (WM), that  
is the existence of primitive, irreducible, matter: you get an  
inconsistent theory.


If you assume WM, it is up to you to propose a non DM theory of mind,  
and explain the role of the primitive matter in it (and what it could  
be).


DM is testable. If Nature disobey to the Arithmetical quantum logic,  
that would be the first confirmation on WM (and of ~DM).


The hard problem is solvable, and I would say solved. Indeed  
incompleteness explains most of what people agree on consciousness  
(true for universal machine/number, not definable, not rationally  
justifiable; not doubtable, etc.).






It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard  
problem" are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we  
explain gravity and metabolism and atoms.


But DM explains exactly that. It explains why consciousness and first  
person notion obeys different logic that the observable. And the  
explanation does not add anything to elementary arithmetic (PA).





I'm saying we can - it's just that all those explanations are how  
explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations of  
consciousness - the engineering approach.


That is intrumentalism. It is like let us try to NOT do science, and  
eventually it leads to materialism reductionism, minimizing when not  
obliterating the first person notion, and violating in that way the  
main data of the problem, and into making the quite speculative  
physicalism into a pseudo-religion.


I realize many people confuse evidence for some physical law, with  
evidence for the metaphysical assumption that there is a physical  
universe. But I think I am the first to propose a genuine empirical  
set of experiments capable of testing that idea, and up to now, thanks  
to the quantum, the test available today confirms DM, and disconfirms  
if not refute (with Aspect experience + assuming determinacy and  
locality) Mechanism.


Let us come back to reason, especially in metaphysics/theology where  
the human remains so emotional about this.


If you really believe in a non reducible physical universe, you *have  
to* explain what is that primitive matter and you have to explain its  
role in consciousness selection, because only invoking matter per se  
to avoid the arithmetical measure problem, and its arithmetical and  
empirically testable solution, is like to invoke a God to avoid the  
theory of evolution. It is not valid.


Bruno




Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to  
interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a  
mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/22/2017 4:50 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman
> wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I
write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the
keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision?
How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a
zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream
Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made
distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question
becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear
also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come
to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular
way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should
perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as
intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating
transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action.
And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever
detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether
'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further
that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of
mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still
remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself
and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within
it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a
moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on
an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails
to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising.
But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the
bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole
seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream
and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final
burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter
can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical
theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation
between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this
point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory
that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard'

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread David Nyman

On 22 Dec 2017 23:16, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of
you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations
(i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer
to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble
point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.


OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful in
penetrating the mathematical structure of matter, the less like any naive
version of

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/22/2017 6:31 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" > wrote:


On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman > wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded
MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,
and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated
to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How
does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument
as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also
to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to
be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it
does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps
not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that
this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains
of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's
brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and
the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no
longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory
- adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between
the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point,
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the
matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems
seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position
on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of
WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then
be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread David Nyman

On 22 Dec 2017 19:57, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>>> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
 brain and tell you what you were thinking?

>>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>>>
>>
>> Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I
>> then
>> ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected,
>> is
>> consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why
>> do
>> we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.
>>
> Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
> that we are both inclined to believe that:
>
> "Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
> consciousness, and it must be so."
>
> Yes?
>
> The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
> scientific question, I would say.
>

Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might be or
how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with someone who has a
naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of questions like
"Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are there only two electric
charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?"   At the fundamental level
science doesn't answer "why" questions, because an answer would have to
invoke a more basic level (hence my virtuous circle model of explanation).
Of course you can never know that you're at the fundamental level.

The point I'm gently trying to make is that the "hard problem of
consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it above, and scientific
progress is made by answering "how" questions.

Gently? OK buster, that's enough. Who are you and why are you pretending
to be Brent Meeker?

It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard problem" are
asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we explain gravity and
metabolism and atoms.  I'm saying we can - it's just that all those
explanations are how explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations
of consciousness - the engineering approach.

Well, whoever you are, that just sounds too bloody reasonable to disagree
with.

David

Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they
mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which,
with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed
phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and
precisely that it is expected to work.
--—John von Neumann

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I then
ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why do
we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.


Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer might be 
or how to test it.  But haven't you ever been engage with someone who 
has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks lots of 
questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why are there 
only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe expand?"   At the 
fundamental level science doesn't answer "why" questions, because an 
answer would have to invoke a more basic level (hence my virtuous circle 
model of explanation).  Of course you can never know that you're at the 
fundamental level.   The point I'm gently trying to make is that the 
"hard problem of consciousness" is a why question, as you've posed it 
above, and scientific progress is made by answering "how" questions.


It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard problem" 
are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we explain gravity 
and metabolism and atoms.  I'm saying we can - it's just that all those 
explanations are how explanations and so let's get some "how" 
explanations of consciousness - the engineering approach.


Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, 
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct 
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes 
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct 
is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

    --—John von Neumann

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread David Nyman

On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes"  wrote:

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of
you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations
(i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer
to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble
point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.


OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful in
penetrating the mathematical structure of matter, the less like any naive
version of an external 'world' it appears to be. The culmination of this is
the realisation that the entirety of what we

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman  wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:
>>
>> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
>> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory - adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David, excellent text.

Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:

A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter. We inhabit this reality, and the matter somehow generates the
minds that dream the dream. The hard problem becomes hard because the
dream takes a secondary role, and the hypothesized model is taken as
the "hard truth". This model is very useful: it is a good way of
thinking when one is trying to build rockets or computers. However, it
should be treated as a tool and not more than that, until further
notice. To tackle the "hard problem", a different tool is more
appropriate.

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-22 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>
>>> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
>>> brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>>
>> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
>> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
>> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
>> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
>> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
>> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
>> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>
>
> Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I then
> ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or detected, is
> consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back to why do
> we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.

Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:

"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states of
consciousness, and it must be so."

Yes?

The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.

Telmo.

> Brent
>
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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 21 Dec 2017 20:47, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 12:37 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 Dec 2017 19:25, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 5:01 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>
> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>

Well put.

However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:

Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations (i.e.
the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer to
events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?

When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic components
of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider'
in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
'self-observation' with which we began.

So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy, it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen, that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain,
not by the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden
of 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer
be 'externalised'.

Good explication.  And I think I agree on the reason for the scare quotes.
The 'self-observation' by introspection is really very limited and it seems
that external observation of action tells us things about what someone is
thinking that are not available to introspection.  One of the nice things
about Bruno's theory is that implies this division...but in an extremely
idealized form.

I don't get it Brent. You seem to either violently agree or equally
disagree with what I say, as in the case of your other most recent
comments. Can you clarify for me what differentiates the two cases?

OK, I'll try to agree and disagree more gently.

Thanks, but bear in mind that I meant it more as a plea for clarity than
charity. ;-)

David

Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 21 Dec 2017 20:46, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 12:28 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 Dec 2017 18:58, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 3:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you say above almost
>> makes it sound as though you just don't get the distinction Telmo is
>> pointing to. But based on what you have said at other times I think you do
>> get it, but because you also know that there's really no explicating that
>> distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes want to say that
>> that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the rest is just woo.
>>
>
Actually I think of it the other way around.  You and Chalmers et al are so
invested in the "hard problem" being hard

Please be advised that you have no sound basis for expounding on what I'm
supposedly 'invested' in. For the record, I would admit to being invested
in not sweeping a problem under the carpet because it's inconvenient. That
said, I have no particular commitment to one style of explanation above
another except to the extent that it seems to promise an advance or
impediment to understanding. For my part, any disagreement between us rests
wholly on those considerations, as in the present case.

that you overlook the fact that almost all problems are "hard"; they have
no fixed, objective ontological foundation.

You're changing the subject, not for the first time. That's not the
relevant sense of the term in this case, as I assumed you accepted. I said
I thought you understood what clearly and categorically differentiates this
problem from the ones you mention, or any other in the canon. But I'm
prepared to revise my opinion if you insist.

We showed that life was based on chemistry, and chemistry was based on
molecular physics, which was based on atomic physics, which was based on
quantum field theory, which assumes spacetime, which we don't understand.
Seems hard.  If we succeed in explaining spacetime in terms of entanglement
of quantum states will that be the end?  I doubt it.  "The end" may just be
the end of our grasp.

Well, yes it may be. That's even a philosophical position of sorts. But my
interest in Bruno's work is precisely because in my experience it's an
approach to the elusive relation between the mental and the physical that
seems capable of working with the relevant categories of both without
ignoring or distorting either. I haven't in all honesty encountered any
others about which I could say the same. That doesn't make it correct of
course, but it does, in my view, render your effective dismissal of the
problem area, as either illusory, irrelevant or insoluble, somewhat
premature.

When you write "there's really no explicating that distinction in a purely
third person way"  it seems analogous to a vitalist saying, "Sure, maybe
life is chemistry, but that doesn't explain what it feels like to be
alive."

That's a distortion of the vitalist position. What you say here about the
feeling of being alive is more like a restatement of the HP. Vitalism was
first and foremost an inability to clearly specify and hence differentiate
living and non-living processes, which seemed at a gross level of analysis
to be so unlike each other as to require the intervention of an additional
causal principle. When the the relation between chemistry and biology was
better understood, it became apparent that this was not the case. But the
matter never strayed, nor needed to, from the detailed explication of third
person processes of one sort or another. Hence nothing 'vital' is thereby
omitted.

You're insisting that the feeling of being conscious must be explicated in
a non-third person way...which is a contradiction in terms.  "Explication"
is a third person relation. You want an explanation but you want to keep
the mystery too.

It must be explicated in a way that differentiates first and third person
categories in the relevant and indispensable ways. Bruno for one has given
us at least a start in seeing how that could be handled at least in
principle. In particular, it must show why and how the first person is not
consigned, from a merely a posteriori position, to the status of an
arbitrarily superadded category, as it is and must always be in any purely
third person explication.

Suppose it were found, in the course of my "engineering solution" that
certain kinds of self referential information processing (which of course
would obey Goedel's limitations) were necessary or evolutionarily favored
aspects of AI.  Why would that not be just as satisfactory a solution as
Bruno's?  Why is self reference in abstract mathematical proofs a solution,
while an evolutionary explication not?

That would be a very interesting result, and indeed indispensable in its
own terms, but it would be indeterminate on the specifics of the relation
with first person experience, except as a a brute a posteriori

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 12/21/2017 12:37 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 Dec 2017 19:25, "Brent Meeker" > wrote:

On 12/21/2017 5:01 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
> wrote:

> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a
recorded MRI of you
> brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I
write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard,
and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely
correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How
does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?

Well put.

However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument
as our point of departure (which to a certain extent can be made
distinct from an explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the
question becomes:

Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e. the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that
they appear also to refer to events in an externalised field of
action, how does it come to be the case that all this appears to
play out in the very particular way it does?

When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps
not then be unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies,
as intrinsic components of the field of action in question,
appear precisely to be mechanisms (in the generalised sense for
now) for translating transactions, between themselves and the
remainder of that field, into action. And also unsurprising that
this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of analysis
is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or
'wider' in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further
that this is just the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent
set of mechanisms that we might expect to be picked out from an
even more generalised 'mechanistic' environment, owing to the
very particular requirements of the 'self-observation' with which
we began.

So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains
of the precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself
and the transactional mechanisms that make their appearance
within it, including and especially the aforementioned brains. If
we turn for a moment to an analogy, it doesn't surprise us, when
watching a movie play out on an LCD screen, that the mechanism
that implements this playing out fails to resemble point for
point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider
the bulk of the burden of such realisation to be shouldered by
the viewer's brain, not by the LCD device alone. So for that
reason, no such loophole seems possible for the final relation
between the phenomena of the dream and the mechanisms of the
brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no
longer be 'externalised'.

Good explication.  And I think I agree on the reason for the scare
quotes.  The 'self-observation' by introspection is really very
limited and it seems that external observation of action tells us
things about what someone is thinking that are not available to
introspection.  One of the nice things about Bruno's theory is
that implies this division...but in an extremely idealized form.

I don't get it Brent. You seem to either violently agree or equally 
disagree with what I say, as in the case of your other most recent 
comments. Can you clarify for me what differentiates the two cases?

OK, I'll try to agree and disagree more gently.

Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/21/2017 12:28 PM, David Nyman wrote:



On 21 Dec 2017 18:58, "Brent Meeker" > wrote:




On 12/21/2017 3:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Hi David,

Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you
say above almost
makes it sound as though you just don't get the
distinction Telmo is
pointing to. But based on what you have said at other
times I think you do
get it, but because you also know that there's really no
explicating that
distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes
want to say that
that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the
rest is just woo.


Actually I think of it the other way around.  You and Chalmers et
al are so invested in the "hard problem" being hard


Please be advised that you have no sound basis for expounding on what 
I'm supposedly 'invested' in. For the record, I would admit to being 
invested in not sweeping a problem under the carpet because it's 
inconvenient. That said, I have no particular commitment to one style 
of explanation above another except to the extent that it seems to 
promise an advance or impediment to understanding. For my part, any 
disagreement between us rests wholly on those considerations, as in 
the present case.


that you overlook the fact that almost all problems are "hard";
they have no fixed, objective ontological foundation.


You're changing the subject, not for the first time. That's not the 
relevant sense of the term in this case, as I assumed you accepted. I 
said I thought you understood what clearly and categorically 
differentiates this problem from the ones you mention, or any other in 
the canon. But I'm prepared to revise my opinion if you insist.


We showed that life was based on chemistry, and chemistry was
based on molecular physics, which was based on atomic physics,
which was based on quantum field theory, which assumes spacetime,
which we don't understand. Seems hard.  If we succeed in
explaining spacetime in terms of entanglement of quantum states
will that be the end?  I doubt it.  "The end" may just be the end
of our grasp.


Well, yes it may be. That's even a philosophical position of sorts. 
But my interest in Bruno's work is precisely because in my experience 
it's an approach to the elusive relation between the mental and the 
physical that seems capable of working with the relevant categories of 
both without ignoring or distorting either. I haven't in all honesty 
encountered any others about which I could say the same. That doesn't 
make it correct of course, but it does, in my view, render your 
effective dismissal of the problem area, as either illusory, 
irrelevant or insoluble, somewhat premature.



When you write "there's really no explicating that distinction in
a purely third person way"  it seems analogous to a vitalist
saying, "Sure, maybe life is chemistry, but that doesn't explain
what it feels like to be alive." 



That's a distortion of the vitalist position. What you say here about 
the feeling of being alive is more like a restatement of the HP. 
Vitalism was first and foremost an inability to clearly specify and 
hence differentiate living and non-living processes, which seemed at a 
gross level of analysis to be so unlike each other as to require the 
intervention of an additional causal principle. When the the relation 
between chemistry and biology was better understood, it became 
apparent that this was not the case. But the matter never strayed, nor 
needed to, from the detailed explication of third person processes of 
one sort or another. Hence nothing 'vital' is thereby omitted.


You're insisting that the feeling of being conscious must be
explicated in a non-third person way...which is a contradiction in
terms.  "Explication" is a third person relation. You want an
explanation but you want to keep the mystery too.


It must be explicated in a way that differentiates first and third 
person categories in the relevant and indispensable ways. Bruno for 
one has given us at least a start in seeing how that could be handled 
at least in principle. In particular, it must show why and how the 
first person is not consigned, from a merely a posteriori position, to 
the status of an arbitrarily superadded category, as it is and must 
always be in any purely third person explication.


Suppose it were found, in the course of my "engineering solution" that 
certain kinds of self referential information processing (which of 
course would obey Goedel's limitations) were necessary or evolutionarily 
favored aspects of AI.  Why would that not be just as satisfactory a 
solution as Bruno's?  Why is self reference in abstract mathematical 
proofs a solution, while an evolutionary explication

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 21 Dec 2017 19:25, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 5:01 AM, David Nyman wrote:

On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>
> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>

Well put.

However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:

Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations (i.e.
the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer to
events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?

When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic components
of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider'
in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
'self-observation' with which we began.

So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy, it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen, that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain,
not by the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden
of 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer
be 'externalised'.

Good explication.  And I think I agree on the reason for the scare quotes.
The 'self-observation' by introspection is really very limited and it seems
that external observation of action tells us things about what someone is
thinking that are not available to introspection.  One of the nice things
about Bruno's theory is that implies this division...but in an extremely
idealized form.

I don't get it Brent. You seem to either violently agree or equally
disagree with what I say, as in the case of your other most recent
comments. Can you clarify for me what differentiates the two cases?

David

Brent

Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory - adequate
to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG,
in that the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get.
But if you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then
be: The concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David

> Telmo.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 21 Dec 2017 18:58, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/21/2017 3:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you say above almost
>> makes it sound as though you just don't get the distinction Telmo is
>> pointing to. But based on what you have said at other times I think you do
>> get it, but because you also know that there's really no explicating that
>> distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes want to say that
>> that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the rest is just woo.
>>
>
Actually I think of it the other way around.  You and Chalmers et al are so
invested in the "hard problem" being hard

Please be advised that you have no sound basis for expounding on what I'm
supposedly 'invested' in. For the record, I would admit to being invested
in not sweeping a problem under the carpet because it's inconvenient. That
said, I have no particular commitment to one style of explanation above
another except to the extent that it seems to promise an advance or
impediment to understanding. For my part, any disagreement between us rests
wholly on those considerations, as in the present case.

that you overlook the fact that almost all problems are "hard"; they have
no fixed, objective ontological foundation.

You're changing the subject, not for the first time. That's not the
relevant sense of the term in this case, as I assumed you accepted. I said
I thought you understood what clearly and categorically differentiates this
problem from the ones you mention, or any other in the canon. But I'm
prepared to revise my opinion if you insist.

We showed that life was based on chemistry, and chemistry was based on
molecular physics, which was based on atomic physics, which was based on
quantum field theory, which assumes spacetime, which we don't understand.
Seems hard.  If we succeed in explaining spacetime in terms of entanglement
of quantum states will that be the end?  I doubt it.  "The end" may just be
the end of our grasp.

Well, yes it may be. That's even a philosophical position of sorts. But my
interest in Bruno's work is precisely because in my experience it's an
approach to the elusive relation between the mental and the physical that
seems capable of working with the relevant categories of both without
ignoring or distorting either. I haven't in all honesty encountered any
others about which I could say the same. That doesn't make it correct of
course, but it does, in my view, render your effective dismissal of the
problem area, as either illusory, irrelevant or insoluble, somewhat
premature.

When you write "there's really no explicating that distinction in a purely
third person way"  it seems analogous to a vitalist saying, "Sure, maybe
life is chemistry, but that doesn't explain what it feels like to be
alive."

That's a distortion of the vitalist position. What you say here about the
feeling of being alive is more like a restatement of the HP. Vitalism was
first and foremost an inability to clearly specify and hence differentiate
living and non-living processes, which seemed at a gross level of analysis
to be so unlike each other as to require the intervention of an additional
causal principle. When the the relation between chemistry and biology was
better understood, it became apparent that this was not the case. But the
matter never strayed, nor needed to, from the detailed explication of third
person processes of one sort or another. Hence nothing 'vital' is thereby
omitted.

You're insisting that the feeling of being conscious must be explicated in
a non-third person way...which is a contradiction in terms.  "Explication"
is a third person relation. You want an explanation but you want to keep
the mystery too.

It must be explicated in a way that differentiates first and third person
categories in the relevant and indispensable ways. Bruno for one has given
us at least a start in seeing how that could be handled at least in
principle. In particular, it must show why and how the first person is not
consigned, from a merely a posteriori position, to the status of an
arbitrarily superadded category, as it is and must always be in any purely
third person explication. Which was Telmo's point.

David

Brent
"One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before
having solved it."
   --- Carl Ludwig Siegel

Thanks for saying. This puzzles me too. It's not just Brent, I know a
> lot of smart people that do exactly the same.
>
> Cute but irrelevant. As has been said when we've discussed Telmo's point in
>> the past, the fact of the matter is that ontological reduction *just is*
>> ontological elimination. That's the whole point of the reductive project
>> and
>> precisely therein lies its explanatory power. But somehow that same
>> ontological reduction doesn't entail *epistemological* elimination.
>> There's
>> the rub.
>>
> Precisely.
> For me, and for these reasons, emergentism in its

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 12/21/2017 5:01 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes > wrote:

> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI
of you
> brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?

Well put.

However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our 
point of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct 
from an explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:

Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations 
(i.e. the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also 
to refer to events in an externalised field of action, how does it 
come to be the case that all this appears to play out in the very 
particular way it does?

When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not 
then be unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as 
intrinsic components of the field of action in question, appear 
precisely to be mechanisms (in the generalised sense for now) for 
translating transactions, between themselves and the remainder of that 
field, into action. And also unsurprising that this continues to 
generalise whatever detailed level of analysis is applied to the field 
in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider' in focus (i.e. the 
consistency requirement). And further that this is just the sort of 
tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we might 
expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic' 
environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the 
'self-observation' with which we began.

So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the 
precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the 
transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, 
including and especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a 
moment to an analogy, it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie 
play out on an LCD screen, that the mechanism that implements this 
playing out fails to resemble point for point, although is obviously 
systematically correlated with, the ultimate phenomena it stimulates 
the viewer into realising. But the reason of course for our lack of 
surprise is that we consider the bulk of the burden of such 
realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain, not by the LCD 
device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems possible for 
the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the 
mechanisms of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final 
burden of 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can 
no longer be 'externalised'.

Good explication.  And I think I agree on the reason for the scare 
quotes.  The 'self-observation' by introspection is really very limited 
and it seems that external observation of action tells us things about 
what someone is thinking that are not available to introspection.  One 
of the nice things about Bruno's theory is that implies this 
division...but in an extremely idealized form.

Brent

Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual 
apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory - 
adequate to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between 
the dream phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this 
point, enter the Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other 
theory that cares to test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that 
formulating the matter in this way genuinely makes any putatively 
remaining 'Hard' problems seem less intractable, at the cost of 
putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter into question (but 
arguably this is already a lost cause even within physics itself). 
However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG, in that the 
dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get. But if 
you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to delve 
into the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be: 
The concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David

Telmo.

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?


Well, you can't lie to the MRI.  But otherwise I agree.  Except that I 
then ask, "What mystery?"  If having thoughts, however expressed or 
detected, is consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately 
pushed back to why do we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/21/2017 3:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

Hi David,


Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you say above almost
makes it sound as though you just don't get the distinction Telmo is
pointing to. But based on what you have said at other times I think you do
get it, but because you also know that there's really no explicating that
distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes want to say that
that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the rest is just woo.


Actually I think of it the other way around.  You and Chalmers et al are 
so invested in the "hard problem" being hard that you overlook the fact 
that almost all problems are "hard"; they have no fixed, objective 
ontological foundation.  We showed that life was based on chemistry, and 
chemistry was based on molecular physics, which was based on atomic 
physics, which was based on quantum field theory, which assumes 
spacetime, which we don't understand.  Seems hard.  If we succeed in 
explaining spacetime in terms of entanglement of quantum states will 
that be the end?  I doubt it.  "The end" may just be the end of our grasp.


When you write "there's really no explicating that distinction in a 
purely third person way"  it seems analogous to a vitalist saying, 
"Sure, maybe life is chemistry, but that doesn't explain what it feels 
like to be alive."  You're insisting that the feeling of being conscious 
must be explicated in a non-third person way...which is a contradiction 
in terms.  "Explication" is a third person relation. You want an 
explanation but you want to keep the mystery too.


Brent
"One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before
having solved it."
   --- Carl Ludwig Siegel


Thanks for saying. This puzzles me too. It's not just Brent, I know a
lot of smart people that do exactly the same.


Cute but irrelevant. As has been said when we've discussed Telmo's point in
the past, the fact of the matter is that ontological reduction *just is*
ontological elimination. That's the whole point of the reductive project and
precisely therein lies its explanatory power. But somehow that same
ontological reduction doesn't entail *epistemological* elimination. There's
the rub.

Precisely.
For me, and for these reasons, emergentism in its current form is woo.



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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes  wrote:

> > So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
> > brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>
> Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
> know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
> The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
> fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
> nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
> neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
> help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
>

Well put.

However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as our
point of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:

Starting from the position that these present thoughts and sensations (i.e.
the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to refer to
events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be the case
that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it does?

When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not then be
unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic components
of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be mechanisms (in
the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed level of
analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower' or 'wider'
in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this is just
the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms that we
might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised 'mechanistic'
environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
'self-observation' with which we began.

So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of the
precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it, including
and especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to an
analogy, it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen, that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point for point, although is obviously systematically correlated
with, the ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk
of the burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain,
not by the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden
of 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no longer
be 'externalised'.

Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a conceptual
apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory - adequate
to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the dream
phenomena and their transactional mechanisms.  At this point, enter the
Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that cares to
test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter in this
way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem less
intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on matter
into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even within
physics itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG,
in that the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you get.
But if you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then
be: The concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.

David

> Telmo.
>
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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-21 Thread Telmo Menezes

> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
> brain and tell you what you were thinking?

Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?

Telmo.

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-21 Thread Telmo Menezes

Hi David,

> Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you say above almost
> makes it sound as though you just don't get the distinction Telmo is
> pointing to. But based on what you have said at other times I think you do
> get it, but because you also know that there's really no explicating that
> distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes want to say that
> that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the rest is just woo.

Thanks for saying. This puzzles me too. It's not just Brent, I know a
lot of smart people that do exactly the same.

> Cute but irrelevant. As has been said when we've discussed Telmo's point in
> the past, the fact of the matter is that ontological reduction *just is*
> ontological elimination. That's the whole point of the reductive project and
> precisely therein lies its explanatory power. But somehow that same
> ontological reduction doesn't entail *epistemological* elimination. There's
> the rub.

Precisely.
For me, and for these reasons, emergentism in its current form is woo.

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-18 Thread David Nyman

On 18 December 2017 at 07:08, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/17/2017 9:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Brent Meeker  
>  wrote:
>
> On 12/8/2017 2:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Brent Meeker  
> 
> wrote:
>
> On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker  
> 
> wrote:
>
> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
> environment
> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
> Intelligence,
> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
> when
> the
> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
> inference we do all the time.
>
> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
> found
> it
> not to match their predictions.
>
> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>
> ?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical system
> can be conscious just out of prejudice.
>
> Not at all. I remain agnostic on materialism vs. idealism. Maybe I am
> even a strong agnostic: I suspect that the answer to this question
> cannot be known.
>
> Assuming materialism, consciousness must indeed be a property or
> something that emerges from the interaction of fundamental particles,
> the same way that, say, life does. Ok. All that I am saying is that
> nobody has proposed any explanation of consciousness under this
> assumption that I would call a theory. The above is not a theory, in
> the same way that the Christian God is not a theory: it proposes to
> explain a simple thing by appealing to a pre-existing more complex
> thing -- in this case claiming that the act of forecasting at a very
> high level somehow leads to consciousness, but without proposing any
> first principles. It's a magical step.
>
> What would a satisfactory (to you) first principle look like.
>
> I cannot imagine one -- and this fuels my intuition that consciousness
> is more fundamental than matter,
>
>
> It fuels my intuition that it is a "wrong question".
>
> and that emergentism is a dead-end.
> But of course, my lack of imagination is not an argument. It could be
> that I am too dumb/ignorant/crazy to come up with a good emergentist
> theory. What I can -- and do -- is listen to any idea that comes up
> and have an open mind. If you have one, I will gladly listen.
>
>
> If we
> consider the analogy of life, in the early 1900's when it was considered as
> a chemical process all that could be said about it was that it involved
> using energy to construct carbon based compounds and at a high level this
> led to reproduction and natural selection and the origin of species.  Now,
> we have greatly elaborated on the molecular chemistry and can modify and
> even created DNA and RNA molecules that realize "life".  Where did we get
> past the "magical step"?  Or are you still waiting for "the atom of life" to
> be discovered?
>
> Here there is no magical step. Life can be understood all the way down
> to basic chemistry. Ok, we don't have all the details, but we are not
> missing anything fundamental. I am not waiting for the atoms of life
> because I already know what they are. You just described them above.
> Can you do that for consciousness?
>
>
> Maybe not yet, but I can imagine what they might be: self-awareness,
> construction of narratives about one's experiences, modeling other minds,...
>

Sometimes your responses really puzzle me Brent. What you say above almost
makes it sound as though you just don't get the distinction Telmo is
pointing to. But based on what you have said at other times I think you do
get it, but because you also know that there's really no explicating that
distinction in a purely third person way, you sometimes want to say that
that's as far as explanation can legitimately go and the rest is just woo.


>
> What makes the hard problem hard is that it relates to a qualitatively
> different phenomena than anything else that we try to understand. Life
> can be talked about purely in the third person, but consciousness is
> first person by definition.
>
>
> So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you
> brain and tell you what you were thinking?
>

Yeah, but notice also that there's only ever one person who can attest to
the truth of that.


>
>
> My view is that this sort of emergentism always smuggles a subtle but
> important switcheroo at some point: moving from epistemology to
> ontology.
>
> For me, emergence is an epistemic tool. It is not possible for a human
> to understand hyper-complex systems by

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-17 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/17/2017 9:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 12/8/2017 2:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Brent Meeker 
wrote:


On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
wrote:


On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
when
the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.


That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
found
it
not to match their predictions.

In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical system
can be conscious just out of prejudice.

Not at all. I remain agnostic on materialism vs. idealism. Maybe I am
even a strong agnostic: I suspect that the answer to this question
cannot be known.

Assuming materialism, consciousness must indeed be a property or
something that emerges from the interaction of fundamental particles,
the same way that, say, life does. Ok. All that I am saying is that
nobody has proposed any explanation of consciousness under this
assumption that I would call a theory. The above is not a theory, in
the same way that the Christian God is not a theory: it proposes to
explain a simple thing by appealing to a pre-existing more complex
thing -- in this case claiming that the act of forecasting at a very
high level somehow leads to consciousness, but without proposing any
first principles. It's a magical step.


What would a satisfactory (to you) first principle look like.

I cannot imagine one -- and this fuels my intuition that consciousness
is more fundamental than matter,


It fuels my intuition that it is a "wrong question".


and that emergentism is a dead-end.
But of course, my lack of imagination is not an argument. It could be
that I am too dumb/ignorant/crazy to come up with a good emergentist
theory. What I can -- and do -- is listen to any idea that comes up
and have an open mind. If you have one, I will gladly listen.


If we
consider the analogy of life, in the early 1900's when it was considered as
a chemical process all that could be said about it was that it involved
using energy to construct carbon based compounds and at a high level this
led to reproduction and natural selection and the origin of species.  Now,
we have greatly elaborated on the molecular chemistry and can modify and
even created DNA and RNA molecules that realize "life".  Where did we get
past the "magical step"?  Or are you still waiting for "the atom of life" to
be discovered?

Here there is no magical step. Life can be understood all the way down
to basic chemistry. Ok, we don't have all the details, but we are not
missing anything fundamental. I am not waiting for the atoms of life
because I already know what they are. You just described them above.
Can you do that for consciousness?


Maybe not yet, but I can imagine what they might be: self-awareness, 
construction of narratives about one's experiences, modeling other minds,...




What makes the hard problem hard is that it relates to a qualitatively
different phenomena than anything else that we try to understand. Life
can be talked about purely in the third person, but consciousness is
first person by definition.


So we are told.  But what if someone could look at a recorded MRI of you 
brain and tell you what you were thinking?





My view is that this sort of emergentism always smuggles a subtle but
important switcheroo at some point: moving from epistemology to
ontology.

For me, emergence is an epistemic tool. It is not possible for a human
to understand hyper-complex systems by considering all the variables
at the same time. We wouldn't be able to understand the human body
purely at the molecular level. So we create simplifying abstractions.
These abstractions have names such as "cells", "tissues", "organs",
"disease", etc etc. A Jupiter Brain might not need these tools. If
it's mind is orders of magnitude more complex than the human body,
then it could apprehend the entire thing at the molecular level, and
one could even say that this would lead to a higher level of
understanding than what we could hope for with our little monkey
brains.


In a sense, this would violate the very meaning of "understanding". If you
look at a website discussing the recent triumph of AlphaZero over Stockfish
in chess, there are arguments over whether the programs "understand" chess
or are they just very good at playing it.  Those that claim the programs

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-17 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/17/2017 8:46 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I guess you also know my position about this.
You are taking an a priori position of what consciousness is, and how
it fits reality and just running with it. It is irrelevant here if the
human-level AI already exists or not. Knowing how to make something
happen is not the same thing of understanding how it works.


But we never understand how anything works by your measure.  We 
understand more.  First, we learned how to make concrete.  Then we 
learned the chemistry of making and using cement and how it formed 
concrete.  Then we learned the molecular dynamics of that chemistry.  
Recently we learned that sea water in place of fresh water makes 
concrete last much longer.  But do we understand how those atoms do 
that?  Maybe we will someday.  But then someone will say, yes but you 
don't know how quantum field theory works...you just know how to use it.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-17 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:53 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/8/2017 2:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
 wrote:
>
>
> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
>> environment
>> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
>> Intelligence,
>> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
>> when
>> the
>> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
>> inference we do all the time.
>
>
> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
> found
> it
> not to match their predictions.

 In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
 run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>>>
>>>
>>> ?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical system
>>> can be conscious just out of prejudice.
>>
>> Not at all. I remain agnostic on materialism vs. idealism. Maybe I am
>> even a strong agnostic: I suspect that the answer to this question
>> cannot be known.
>>
>> Assuming materialism, consciousness must indeed be a property or
>> something that emerges from the interaction of fundamental particles,
>> the same way that, say, life does. Ok. All that I am saying is that
>> nobody has proposed any explanation of consciousness under this
>> assumption that I would call a theory. The above is not a theory, in
>> the same way that the Christian God is not a theory: it proposes to
>> explain a simple thing by appealing to a pre-existing more complex
>> thing -- in this case claiming that the act of forecasting at a very
>> high level somehow leads to consciousness, but without proposing any
>> first principles. It's a magical step.
>
>
> What would a satisfactory (to you) first principle look like.

I cannot imagine one -- and this fuels my intuition that consciousness
is more fundamental than matter, and that emergentism is a dead-end.
But of course, my lack of imagination is not an argument. It could be
that I am too dumb/ignorant/crazy to come up with a good emergentist
theory. What I can -- and do -- is listen to any idea that comes up
and have an open mind. If you have one, I will gladly listen.

> If we
> consider the analogy of life, in the early 1900's when it was considered as
> a chemical process all that could be said about it was that it involved
> using energy to construct carbon based compounds and at a high level this
> led to reproduction and natural selection and the origin of species.  Now,
> we have greatly elaborated on the molecular chemistry and can modify and
> even created DNA and RNA molecules that realize "life".  Where did we get
> past the "magical step"?  Or are you still waiting for "the atom of life" to
> be discovered?

Here there is no magical step. Life can be understood all the way down
to basic chemistry. Ok, we don't have all the details, but we are not
missing anything fundamental. I am not waiting for the atoms of life
because I already know what they are. You just described them above.
Can you do that for consciousness?

What makes the hard problem hard is that it relates to a qualitatively
different phenomena than anything else that we try to understand. Life
can be talked about purely in the third person, but consciousness is
first person by definition.

>>
>> My view is that this sort of emergentism always smuggles a subtle but
>> important switcheroo at some point: moving from epistemology to
>> ontology.
>>
>> For me, emergence is an epistemic tool. It is not possible for a human
>> to understand hyper-complex systems by considering all the variables
>> at the same time. We wouldn't be able to understand the human body
>> purely at the molecular level. So we create simplifying abstractions.
>> These abstractions have names such as "cells", "tissues", "organs",
>> "disease", etc etc. A Jupiter Brain might not need these tools. If
>> it's mind is orders of magnitude more complex than the human body,
>> then it could apprehend the entire thing at the molecular level, and
>> one could even say that this would lead to a higher level of
>> understanding than what we could hope for with our little monkey
>> brains.
>
>
> In a sense, this would violate the very meaning of "understanding". If you
> look at a website discussing the recent triumph of AlphaZero over Stockfish
> in chess, there are arguments over whether the programs "understand" chess
> or are they just very good at playing it.  Those that claim the programs
> don't understand chess mean that the programs just consult lots of

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-17 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:30 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/8/2017 2:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>>
 On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
>> environment
>> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
>> Intelligence,
>> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
>> when
>> the
>> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
>> inference we do all the time.
>
>
>
> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
> found
> it
> not to match their predictions.


 In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
 run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>>>
>>>
>>> Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
>>> boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or
>>> something
>>> unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
>>> consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.
>>>
>>>
>>>
 The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
 cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
 creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
 trigger consciousness.
>>>
>>>
>>> After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate
>>> judge:
>>> the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)
>>> decision
>>> in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
>>> responsibility.
>>>
>>>
>>>
 Then I want to know what these interactions
 are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
 principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
 wrong.
>>>
>>>
>>> The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
>>> forecasting
>>> ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs
>>> triggered
>>> by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the nest is
>>> attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will needs
>>> some
>>> order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
>>> delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown
>>> situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
>>> centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince
>>> the
>>> whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the
>>> doors,
>>> fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on
>>> something.
>>>
>>> In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what
>>> is
>>> important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning, decision,
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
>>> problem here).
>>>
>>> But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need
>>> to
>>> dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is
>>> handed
>>> at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/queen is
>>> confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants panic is
>>> genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...
>>
>> Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
>> the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
>> I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
>> This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
>> models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
>> a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
>> boss, as you say.
>>
>> In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
>> easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
>> problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.
>
>
> Progress is made by solving the problems you can.

Sure. And it is also true that progress is not made by pretending to
have solved problems that were not solved.

> But as you know I think
> "the hard problem" will go away when the "easy problem" is solved.  When we
> can produce AI's that are creative, humorous, compassionate, imaginative,
> etc  and adjust those attributes and understand how they are
> implemented...the "hard problem" will be seen as the wrong question.
>
> Instead AI engineers will ask, "Well, how much consciousness do you want?
> We recommend more subconscious competence for that task,"

I guess you also know my

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-10 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Dec 2017, at 19:30, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/8/2017 2:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:

On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker  


wrote:



On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur  
only when

the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic  
persistent

inference we do all the time.



That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes  
conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain  
have found

it
not to match their predictions.


In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being  
used to

run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go  
well, the
boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or  
something

unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.



The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and  
the

cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.


After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the  
ultimate judge:
the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps  
risky) decision

in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
responsibility.




Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not  
even

wrong.


The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved  
forecasting
ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs  
triggered
by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the  
nest is
attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will  
needs some

order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex  
unknown

situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to  
convince the
whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing  
the doors,
fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants  
complain on

something.

In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention  
on what is
important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning,  
decision,

etc.

I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part  
of the

problem here).

But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure  
we need to
dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which  
is handed
at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/ 
queen is
confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants  
panic is

genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...

Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
models already work like this. When an artificial neural network  
fails

a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
boss, as you say.

In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to  
the

easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.


Progress is made by solving the problems you can.  But as you know I  
think "the hard problem" will go away when the "easy problem" is  
solved.  When we can produce AI's that are creative, humorous,  
compassionate, imaginative, etc  and adjust those attributes and  
understand how they are implemented...the "hard problem" will be  
seen as the wrong question.  Instead AI engineers will ask, "Well,  
how much consciousness do you want?  We recommend more subconscious  
competence for that task,"


Already there seems to be a consensus that a philosophical zombie is  
impossible.  That entails that any AI with human level (or greater)  
intelligence must be conscious.  The AI engineers will develop  
different realizations of intelligent machines and invent terms for  
the different ways in which they are conscious.  Then  
"consciousness" will be seen as a vague generalization covering many  
somewhat different processes.


The "easy problem" will be solved when the AI will understand that  
there is an hard problem.


Then with mechanism, I would

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread David Nyman

On 8 Dec 2017 18:30, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 12/8/2017 2:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>> On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
>>> wrote:
>>>


 On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

>
> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
> environment
> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
> Intelligence,
> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
> when
> the
> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
> inference we do all the time.
>


 That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
 something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
 found
 it
 not to match their predictions.

>>>
>>> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
>>> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>>>
>>
>> Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
>> boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
>> unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
>> consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.
>>
>>
>>
>> The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
>>> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
>>> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
>>> trigger consciousness.
>>>
>>
>> After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate
>> judge:
>> the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)
>> decision
>> in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
>> responsibility.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then I want to know what these interactions
>>> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
>>> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
>>> wrong.
>>>
>>
>> The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
>> forecasting
>> ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs
>> triggered
>> by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the nest is
>> attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will needs
>> some
>> order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
>> delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown
>> situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
>> centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince
>> the
>> whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the
>> doors,
>> fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on
>> something.
>>
>> In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what
>> is
>> important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning, decision,
>> etc.
>>
>> I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
>> problem here).
>>
>> But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need
>> to
>> dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is
>> handed
>> at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/queen is
>> confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants panic is
>> genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...
>>
> Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
> the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
> I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
> This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
> models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
> a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
> boss, as you say.
>
> In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
> easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
> problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.
>

Progress is made by solving the problems you can.  But as you know I think
"the hard problem" will go away when the "easy problem" is solved.  When we
can produce AI's that are creative, humorous, compassionate, imaginative,
etc  and adjust those attributes and understand how they are
implemented...the "hard problem" will be seen as the wrong question.
Instead AI engineers will ask, "Well, how much consciousness do you want?
We recommend more subconscious competence for that task,"

Already there seems to be a consensus that a philosophical zombie is
impossible.  That entails that any AI with human level (or greater)
intelligence must be conscious.  The AI engineers will develop different
realizations of intelligent machines and invent terms for the different
ways in

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/8/2017 2:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
wrote:


On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.


That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found
it
not to match their predictions.

In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical system
can be conscious just out of prejudice.

Not at all. I remain agnostic on materialism vs. idealism. Maybe I am
even a strong agnostic: I suspect that the answer to this question
cannot be known.

Assuming materialism, consciousness must indeed be a property or
something that emerges from the interaction of fundamental particles,
the same way that, say, life does. Ok. All that I am saying is that
nobody has proposed any explanation of consciousness under this
assumption that I would call a theory. The above is not a theory, in
the same way that the Christian God is not a theory: it proposes to
explain a simple thing by appealing to a pre-existing more complex
thing -- in this case claiming that the act of forecasting at a very
high level somehow leads to consciousness, but without proposing any
first principles. It's a magical step.


What would a satisfactory (to you) first principle look like.  If we 
consider the analogy of life, in the early 1900's when it was considered 
as a chemical process all that could be said about it was that it 
involved using energy to construct carbon based compounds and at a high 
level this led to reproduction and natural selection and the origin of 
species.  Now, we have greatly elaborated on the molecular chemistry and 
can modify and even created DNA and RNA molecules that realize "life".  
Where did we get past the "magical step"?  Or are you still waiting for 
"the atom of life" to be discovered?




My view is that this sort of emergentism always smuggles a subtle but
important switcheroo at some point: moving from epistemology to
ontology.

For me, emergence is an epistemic tool. It is not possible for a human
to understand hyper-complex systems by considering all the variables
at the same time. We wouldn't be able to understand the human body
purely at the molecular level. So we create simplifying abstractions.
These abstractions have names such as "cells", "tissues", "organs",
"disease", etc etc. A Jupiter Brain might not need these tools. If
it's mind is orders of magnitude more complex than the human body,
then it could apprehend the entire thing at the molecular level, and
one could even say that this would lead to a higher level of
understanding than what we could hope for with our little monkey
brains.


In a sense, this would violate the very meaning of "understanding". If 
you look at a website discussing the recent triumph of AlphaZero over 
Stockfish in chess, there are arguments over whether the programs 
"understand" chess or are they just very good at playing it.  Those that 
claim the programs don't understand chess mean that the programs just 
consult lots of memorized positions and wether they led to a win or a 
loss.  To "understand" chess they should base their moves on some 
general principle which are simple enough to explain to an amateur.  In 
other words, to "understand" the game is a social attribute = being able 
to explain it to a person.  A lion knows how to catch an antelope, but 
she doesn't understand it because she can't explain it.




In the case of biological systems, although we couldn't do what the
Jupiter Brain does, we could understand what are the first principles
that said brain would make use of.

Emergentists switch to the ontological. As if "emergence" generates
something new. As if it's something akin to a fundamental law of
nature. It's a language trick. When we say that something emerges from
something else, we are building an epistemic tool, we are not being
literal.


Is it a trick to say life emerges from chemistry?



Could emergentism be true? Sure. But for it to be an actual theory, it
would have to provide some first principle. What I referred to as the
"atom" of consciousness, in the same way that a local trasaction
between two actors is the atom of economic models. Were is it?


The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right"

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/8/2017 2:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
wrote:



On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.



That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found
it
not to match their predictions.


In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.




The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.


After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate judge:
the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky) decision
in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
responsibility.




Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
wrong.


The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved forecasting
ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs triggered
by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the nest is
attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will needs some
order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown
situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince the
whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the doors,
fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on
something.

In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what is
important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning, decision,
etc.

I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
problem here).

But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need to
dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is handed
at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/queen is
confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants panic is
genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...

Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
boss, as you say.

In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.


Progress is made by solving the problems you can.  But as you know I 
think "the hard problem" will go away when the "easy problem" is 
solved.  When we can produce AI's that are creative, humorous, 
compassionate, imaginative, etc  and adjust those attributes and 
understand how they are implemented...the "hard problem" will be seen as 
the wrong question.  Instead AI engineers will ask, "Well, how much 
consciousness do you want?  We recommend more subconscious competence 
for that task,"


Already there seems to be a consensus that a philosophical zombie is 
impossible.  That entails that any AI with human level (or greater) 
intelligence must be conscious.  The AI engineers will develop different 
realizations of intelligent machines and invent terms for the different 
ways in which they are conscious.  Then "consciousness" will be seen as 
a vague generalization covering many somewhat different processes.


Brent
"One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having 
solved it."

   --- Carl Ludwig Siegel

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Dec 2017, at 11:09, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
wrote:




On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:



I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur  
only when

the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic  
persistent

inference we do all the time.




That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious  
of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain  
have found

it
not to match their predictions.



In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being  
used to

run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?



Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go  
well, the
boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or  
something

unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.




The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.



After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the  
ultimate judge:
the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)  
decision

in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
responsibility.




Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not  
even

wrong.



The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved  
forecasting
ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs  
triggered
by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the  
nest is
attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will  
needs some

order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown
situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to  
convince the
whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing  
the doors,
fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain  
on

something.

In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention  
on what is
important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning,  
decision,

etc.

I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part  
of the

problem here).

But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure  
we need to
dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which  
is handed
at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/ 
queen is
confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants  
panic is

genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...


Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.


Yes. But using mechanism, you have a theory of knowledge/consciousness  
attached to it, which justifies the presence of the non communicable/ 
justifiable qualia which accompanies such type of model. It is close  
to Helmholtz's theory of perception as a form of inductive inference.  
looking at some object is an inference that we might see some object  
when looking.





This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
boss, as you say.


Each times they do that, I think that they confuse []p with either p,  
or []p & p, or []p & <>t. Note that before Gödel, all mathematicians  
would have said that for the ideally correct machine all those  
modalities are trivially equivalent, and they are (!), but only at the  
truth-level, which is inacessible by the machine, making them obeying  
to different logics, splitting on justifiable and non-justifiable, by  
inheriting the G/G* separation.





In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.


That happens very often. The subject is irreducibly subtle (and hot).  
And it seems that the human beings want to "believe in some solution"  
before dying, of to transmit to the kids. In science, especially in  
metaphysics, (serious) philosophy and (serious) theology, the

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 07 Dec 2017, at 18:36, David Nyman wrote:




On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:

On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the  
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial  
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only  
when the

environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.


That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have  
found it

not to match their predictions.

In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?

Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go  
well, the boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some  
accident or something unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss.  
In this analogy, consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.





The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.

After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate  
judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps  
risky) decision in absence of complete information, and to take on  
its shoulder the responsibility.





Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
wrong.

The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved  
forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their  
usual jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close  
neighbors. But if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is  
missing, some species will needs some order of the queen (ike to  
fight or to move away. Some societies can delegate most of the power  
to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown situation, if they have  
to make important decision, they will need a centralization of the  
power, which can act much more quickly to convince the whole society  
of some unusual option, like running away, closing the doors,  
fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain  
on something.


In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on  
what is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up  
planning, decision, etc.


I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of  
the problem here).


I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side  
of the problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way,  
given that matter itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly  
speaking we should say that the "easy" part of the story is only  
what "appears" to be happening.


That is right. With comp, the "easy" part is only "easy" relatively to  
the solution of the "hard matter" problem. The problem is that  
Dennett, in his theory ofn consciousness, take matter, and  
physicalism, for granted. he does not even seem aware of the  
conceptual problem raised by QM, and still less of the comp-mind-bdy  
problem, where the mind-body problem is reduced into the problem of  
justifying the conscious-appearance (if I can say) of matter and  
physical laws.




So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and constrained)  
story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated in  
computation.


Yes, and it works only if the computations where such narrations occur  
have the right relative weigh, as is confirmed by the existence of the  
quantum logic for the "certain bet" ([]p & <>t, p semi-computable).





From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or  
meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each  
'level' has its own proper logic; and the logic of material  
appearance is that of the 'laws' of physics.


OK, as far as such laws of physics are covered by the statistics on  
all computations (which resides in elementary arithmetic or equivalent).




Nothing else is necessary, at least at that level, to account for  
the disposition and evolution of material states. So strictly  
speaking, when talking of prediction and other mentalistic concepts,  
we should nevertheless be aware that this isn't of itself the logic  
of the physical mechanisms with which these concepts are entangled.  
Of course it must be consistent with that logic for the mental to be  
capable of manifesting in the generalised environment of physical  
appearances, but we shouldn't expect the logic of the physical level

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread David Nyman

On 8 Dec 2017 03:31, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:



On 12/7/2017 5:05 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 7 December 2017 at 21:49, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/7/2017 9:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:
>
>
> On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>

 I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
 environment
 for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
 Intelligence,
 some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
 when the
 environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
 inference we do all the time.

>>>
>>>
>>> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
>>> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
>>> found it
>>> not to match their predictions.
>>>
>>
>> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
>> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>>
>
> Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
> boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
> unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
> consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.
>
>
>
>
> The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
>> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
>> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
>> trigger consciousness.
>>
>
> After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate
> judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)
> decision in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder
> the responsibility.
>
>
>
>
> Then I want to know what these interactions
>> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
>> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
>> wrong.
>>
>
> The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
> forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual
> jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But
> if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species
> will needs some order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some
> societies can delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex
> unknown situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need
> a centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince
> the whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the
> doors, fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain
> on something.
>
> In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what
> is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning,
> decision, etc.
>
> I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
> problem here).
>
>
> I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side of
> the problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way, given that
> matter itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly speaking we should
> say that the "easy" part of the story is only what "appears" to be
> happening. So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and
> constrained) story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated
> in computation.
>
> From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or
> meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each 'level' has
> its own proper logic; and the logic of material appearance is that of the
> 'laws' of physics. Nothing else is necessary, at least at that level, to
> account for the disposition and evolution of material states. So strictly
> speaking, when talking of prediction and other mentalistic concepts, we
> should nevertheless be aware that this isn't of itself the logic of the
> physical mechanisms with which these concepts are entangled. Of course it
> must be consistent with that logic for the mental to be capable of
> manifesting in the generalised environment of physical appearances, but we
> shouldn't expect the logic of the physical level to recapitulate the
> mentalistic logic in virtue of instantiating it.
>
> Hence when we speak of such things as predictions at the level of the
> brain, we mustn't forget that this is a 'manner of speaking' to be cashed
> out interpretatively or meaningfully only at the level of perceptual truth.
>
>
> That's "cashed out" if you're interpreting the process in a mental realm.
>

Yes.


> But there are other equally valid realms.  In the physical realm it is
> cashed out by action in the world.  In biology it is

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:47 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
 environment
 for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
 Intelligence,
 some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
 the
 environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
 inference we do all the time.
>>>
>>>
>>> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
>>> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found
>>> it
>>> not to match their predictions.
>>
>> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
>> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>
>
> ?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical system
> can be conscious just out of prejudice.

Not at all. I remain agnostic on materialism vs. idealism. Maybe I am
even a strong agnostic: I suspect that the answer to this question
cannot be known.

Assuming materialism, consciousness must indeed be a property or
something that emerges from the interaction of fundamental particles,
the same way that, say, life does. Ok. All that I am saying is that
nobody has proposed any explanation of consciousness under this
assumption that I would call a theory. The above is not a theory, in
the same way that the Christian God is not a theory: it proposes to
explain a simple thing by appealing to a pre-existing more complex
thing -- in this case claiming that the act of forecasting at a very
high level somehow leads to consciousness, but without proposing any
first principles. It's a magical step.

My view is that this sort of emergentism always smuggles a subtle but
important switcheroo at some point: moving from epistemology to
ontology.

For me, emergence is an epistemic tool. It is not possible for a human
to understand hyper-complex systems by considering all the variables
at the same time. We wouldn't be able to understand the human body
purely at the molecular level. So we create simplifying abstractions.
These abstractions have names such as "cells", "tissues", "organs",
"disease", etc etc. A Jupiter Brain might not need these tools. If
it's mind is orders of magnitude more complex than the human body,
then it could apprehend the entire thing at the molecular level, and
one could even say that this would lead to a higher level of
understanding than what we could hope for with our little monkey
brains.

In the case of biological systems, although we couldn't do what the
Jupiter Brain does, we could understand what are the first principles
that said brain would make use of.

Emergentists switch to the ontological. As if "emergence" generates
something new. As if it's something akin to a fundamental law of
nature. It's a language trick. When we say that something emerges from
something else, we are building an epistemic tool, we are not being
literal.

Could emergentism be true? Sure. But for it to be an actual theory, it
would have to provide some first principle. What I referred to as the
"atom" of consciousness, in the same way that a local trasaction
between two actors is the atom of economic models. Were is it?

>> The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
>> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
>> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
>> trigger consciousness.
>
>
> In Hawkins model the predictions fail from the "bottom up", i.e. from the
> subconscious, automatic responses up to the top/lanuage/conscious level.

I like Hawkins model and his work in general, but I think it is purely
about intelligence.

>> Then I want to know what these interactions
>> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
>> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
>> wrong.
>
>
> There is no "atom of consciousness".  In Hawkins model consciousness is the
> spreading to the 'failed prediction' signal across the top level of the
> neocortex.  As I said  earlier, this is not Hawkins main interest, it's more
> an aside.  He's more interested in intelligence.

Indeed. I read "On Intelligence" years ago (one decade?) so I might be
fuzzy on the details. I got the impression that he is completely
uninterested in consciousness, or that he doesn't even consider it a
serious question.

> But as has been discussed
> here many times, philosophical zombies are probably not possible.  That
> would imply that a sufficiently intelligent system, however constructed,
> will be conscious.

Yes, I tend to agree with this view.

Telmo.

> Brent
>
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-08 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
> On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
 environment
 for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
 Intelligence,
 some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
 the
 environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
 inference we do all the time.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
>>> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found
>>> it
>>> not to match their predictions.
>>
>>
>> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
>> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>
>
> Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
> boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
> unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
> consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.
>
>
>
>> The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
>> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
>> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
>> trigger consciousness.
>
>
> After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate judge:
> the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky) decision
> in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder the
> responsibility.
>
>
>
>> Then I want to know what these interactions
>> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
>> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
>> wrong.
>
>
> The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved forecasting
> ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual jobs triggered
> by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But if the nest is
> attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species will needs some
> order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can
> delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown
> situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need a
> centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince the
> whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the doors,
> fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on
> something.
>
> In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what is
> important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning, decision,
> etc.
>
> I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
> problem here).
>
> But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need to
> dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is handed
> at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the boss/queen is
> confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the ants panic is
> genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...

Yes, I agree with this model and what you say. I am just criticizing
the "trick" of confusing the several meanings of consciousness.
I would say that here we are in the realm of intelligence / learning.
This is about attention, and how attention is directed. Several AI
models already work like this. When an artificial neural network fails
a prediction, this triggers a cascade of changes. It wakes up the
boss, as you say.

In short, I feel that some scientists tend to propose an answer to the
easy problem and that try to smuggle it as a solution for the hard
problem, by relying on the overloading of terms.

Telmo.

> Bruno
>
> Bruno
>
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>>> "Everything List" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Everything List" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread David Nyman

On 7 December 2017 at 21:49, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/7/2017 9:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
>
> On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:
>
>
> On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>

 I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the
 environment
 for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
 Intelligence,
 some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only
 when the
 environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
 inference we do all the time.

>>>
>>>
>>> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
>>> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have
>>> found it
>>> not to match their predictions.
>>>
>>
>> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
>> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>>
>
> Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
> boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
> unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
> consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.
>
>
>
>
> The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
>> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
>> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
>> trigger consciousness.
>>
>
> After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate
> judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)
> decision in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder
> the responsibility.
>
>
>
>
> Then I want to know what these interactions
>> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
>> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
>> wrong.
>>
>
> The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
> forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual
> jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But
> if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species
> will needs some order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some
> societies can delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex
> unknown situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need
> a centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince
> the whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the
> doors, fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain
> on something.
>
> In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what
> is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning,
> decision, etc.
>
> I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
> problem here).
>
>
> I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side of
> the problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way, given that
> matter itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly speaking we should
> say that the "easy" part of the story is only what "appears" to be
> happening. So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and
> constrained) story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated
> in computation.
>
> From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or
> meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each 'level' has
> its own proper logic; and the logic of material appearance is that of the
> 'laws' of physics. Nothing else is necessary, at least at that level, to
> account for the disposition and evolution of material states. So strictly
> speaking, when talking of prediction and other mentalistic concepts, we
> should nevertheless be aware that this isn't of itself the logic of the
> physical mechanisms with which these concepts are entangled. Of course it
> must be consistent with that logic for the mental to be capable of
> manifesting in the generalised environment of physical appearances, but we
> shouldn't expect the logic of the physical level to recapitulate the
> mentalistic logic in virtue of instantiating it.
>
> Hence when we speak of such things as predictions at the level of the
> brain, we mustn't forget that this is a 'manner of speaking' to be cashed
> out interpretatively or meaningfully only at the level of perceptual truth.
>
>
> That's "cashed out" if you're interpreting the process in a mental realm.
>

Yes.


> But there are other equally valid realms.  In the physical realm it is
> cashed out by action in the world.  In biology it is cashed out by success
> or failure in reproduction and evolution.
>

Yes again. But I was speaking

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/7/2017 9:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:



On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal" > wrote:



On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker
> wrote:



On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer
to the environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in
Artificial Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane)
consciousness occur only when the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi
automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.



That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes
conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the
brain have found it
not to match their predictions.


In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being
used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go
well, the boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some
accident or something unusual. That is the time to wake up the
boss. In this analogy, consciousness is played by the
(incorrigible) boss.




The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm
and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.


After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the
ultimate judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take
a (perhaps risky) decision in absence of complete information, and
to take on its shoulder the responsibility.




Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are
not even
wrong.


The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do
their usual jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their
close neighbors. But if the nest is attacked, or if some important
food is missing, some species will needs some order of the queen
(ike to fight or to move away. Some societies can delegate most of
the power to the sub-unities, but in complex unknown situation, if
they have to make important decision, they will need a
centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to
convince the whole society of some unusual option, like running
away, closing the doors, fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen
when *many* ants complain on something.

In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention
on what is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up
planning, decision, etc.

I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part
of the problem here).


I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side 
of the problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way, given 
that matter itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly speaking we 
should say that the "easy" part of the story is only what "appears" to 
be happening. So neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and 
constrained) story, narrated in terms of physical action, itself 
emulated in computation.


From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or 
meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each 
'level' has its own proper logic; and the logic of material appearance 
is that of the 'laws' of physics. Nothing else is necessary, at least 
at that level, to account for the disposition and evolution of 
material states. So strictly speaking, when talking of prediction and 
other mentalistic concepts, we should nevertheless be aware that this 
isn't of itself the logic of the physical mechanisms with which these 
concepts are entangled. Of course it must be consistent with that 
logic for the mental to be capable of manifesting in the generalised 
environment of physical appearances, but we shouldn't expect the logic 
of the physical level to recapitulate the mentalistic logic in virtue 
of instantiating it.


Hence when we speak of such things as predictions at the level of the 
brain, we mustn't forget that this is a 'manner of speaking' to be 
cashed out interpretatively or meaningfully only at the level of 
perceptual truth.


That's "cashed out" if you're interpreting the process in a mental 
realm.  But there are other equally valid realms.  In the

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/7/2017 1:01 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:


On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when the
environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.


That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found it
not to match their predictions.

In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


?? Why surely.  It seems you're rejecting the idea that a physical 
system can be conscious just out of prejudice.



The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.


In Hawkins model the predictions fail from the "bottom up", i.e. from 
the subconscious, automatic responses up to the top/lanuage/conscious level.



Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
wrong.


There is no "atom of consciousness".  In Hawkins model consciousness is 
the spreading to the 'failed prediction' signal across the top level of 
the neocortex.  As I said  earlier, this is not Hawkins main interest, 
it's more an aside.  He's more interested in intelligence.  But as has 
been discussed here many times, philosophical zombies are probably not 
possible.  That would imply that a sufficiently intelligent system, 
however constructed, will be conscious.


Brent



Telmo.


Brent


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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread David Nyman

On 7 Dec 2017 15:08, "Bruno Marchal"  wrote:

On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the environment
>>> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial
>>> Intelligence,
>>> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
>>> the
>>> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
>>> inference we do all the time.
>>>
>>
>>
>> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
>> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found
>> it
>> not to match their predictions.
>>
>
> In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
> run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
>

Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well, the
boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or something
unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this analogy,
consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.

The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
> cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
> creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
> trigger consciousness.
>

After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate judge:
the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps risky)
decision in absence of complete information, and to take on its shoulder
the responsibility.

Then I want to know what these interactions
> are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
> principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
> wrong.
>

The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved
forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their usual
jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close neighbors. But
if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is missing, some species
will needs some order of the queen (ike to fight or to move away. Some
societies can delegate most of the power to the sub-unities, but in complex
unknown situation, if they have to make important decision, they will need
a centralization of the power, which can act much more quickly to convince
the whole society of some unusual option, like running away, closing the
doors, fighting the enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain
on something.

In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on what
is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up planning,
decision, etc.

I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of the
problem here).

I follow you here, but I'd like to make a comment on the "hard" side of the
problem. What comp implies in its ineffably strange way, given that matter
itself becomes an appearance, is that strictly speaking we should say that
the "easy" part of the story is only what "appears" to be happening. So
neurocognition itself is a sort of (very precise and constrained) story,
narrated in terms of physical action, itself emulated in computation.

>From the perspective of reality or truth we get an interpretation or
meaning in terms of which such stories can make sense, but each 'level' has
its own proper logic; and the logic of material appearance is that of the
'laws' of physics. Nothing else is necessary, at least at that level, to
account for the disposition and evolution of material states. So strictly
speaking, when talking of prediction and other mentalistic concepts, we
should nevertheless be aware that this isn't of itself the logic of the
physical mechanisms with which these concepts are entangled. Of course it
must be consistent with that logic for the mental to be capable of
manifesting in the generalised environment of physical appearances, but we
shouldn't expect the logic of the physical level to recapitulate the
mentalistic logic in virtue of instantiating it.

Hence when we speak of such things as predictions at the level of the
brain, we mustn't forget that this is a 'manner of speaking' to be cashed
out interpretatively or meaningfully only at the level of perceptual truth.
It's easy to miss this distinction because inevitably we can't help talking
about everything from an implicitly pre-interpreted perspective. This is
how Dennett for example is able to conceal from his readers (and possibly
from himself) that he is both denying and asserting the same thing at one
and the same time.

David

But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we need
to dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here, which is
handed at a different level, and concerned with the fact that the
boss/queen is confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure if the
ants

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 07 Dec 2017, at 10:01, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the  
environment
for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial  
Intelligence,
some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur  
only when the

environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
inference we do all the time.



That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have  
found it

not to match their predictions.


In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?


Imagine a society which builds some objects. When everything go well,  
the boss can sleep in his office. But then there is some accident or  
something unusual. That is the time to wake up the boss. In this  
analogy, consciousness is played by the (incorrigible) boss.





The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness.


After a moment of panic, the sub-entities dare to awake the ultimate  
judge: the one capable of "going out of the box" to take a (perhaps  
risky) decision in absence of complete information, and to take on its  
shoulder the responsibility.





Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
wrong.


The sub-unities have specialized task, and does not need evolved  
forecasting ability. You can think them as ants, when they do their  
usual jobs triggered by the local pheromones left by their close  
neighbors. But if the nest is attacked, or if some important food is  
missing, some species will needs some order of the queen (ike to fight  
or to move away. Some societies can delegate most of the power to the  
sub-unities, but in complex unknown situation, if they have to make  
important decision, they will need a centralization of the power,  
which can act much more quickly to convince the whole society of some  
unusual option, like running away, closing the doors, fighting the  
enemy, etc. That will happen when *many* ants complain on something.


In this case, the role of consciousness is focusing the attention on  
what is important (with respect to survival), and to speed-up  
planning, decision, etc.


I am not sure this answer the question (we are in the "easy" part of  
the problem here).


But you will help me by telling me what is missing. I am not sure we  
need to dig on the difficult part of the consciousness problem here,  
which is handed at a different level, and concerned with the fact that  
the boss/queen is confined in his office/chamber and can never be sure  
if the ants panic is genuine, or an illusion, and still decide ...


Bruno

Bruno




Telmo.


Brent


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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-07 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:50 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
> On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the environment
>> for relating consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial Intelligence,
>> some people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when the
>> environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic persistent
>> inference we do all the time.
>
>
> That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of
> something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have found it
> not to match their predictions.

In that sort of model, how does matter "know" that it is being used to
run a forecasting algorithm? Surely it doesn't right?
The only way this could work is if the forecasting algorithm and the
cascading effects of failing predictions have the side effect of
creating the "right" sort of interactions at a lower level that
trigger consciousness. Then I want to know what these interactions
are, and what if the "atom" of consciousness, what is the first
principle. Without this, I would say that such hypothesis are not even
wrong.

Telmo.

> Brent
>
>
> --
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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-06 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/6/2017 1:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I suspect that this is perhaps why Brent want to refer to the 
environment for relating consciousness to the machine, and in 
Artificial Intelligence, some people defend the idea that (mundane) 
consciousness occur only when the environment contradicts a little bit 
the quasi automatic persistent inference we do all the time.


That's Jeff Hawkins model of consciousness: one becomes conscious of 
something when all lower, more specialized levels of the brain have 
found it not to match their predictions.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 05 Dec 2017, at 02:36, David Nyman wrote:

On 5 December 2017 at 01:11, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/4/2017 4:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 01:57, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker   
wrote:



On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you  
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short term  
memory, at some point you will intuit that you have become  
effectively 'unconscious', or at least un-self-conscious, as you  
will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought or  
possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions  
or intuitions.
Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively  
'unconscious'.


Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point  
you will intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the  
thought experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In  
the latter case my contention was that "at some (i.e. the  
corresponding) point" you would in effect have become incapable  
of coherently intuiting even the thought of your 'lost  
consciousness', as you suggest.


Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He  
calls his model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based  
more on brain neurophysiology and research than on computation  
(although he's a computer guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).


Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint,  
leaving aside distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access'  
consciousness, one might speculate that the primary utility of  
conscious deliberation is that of more accurate prediction of the  
future and consequently improved individual and species  
survivability.


In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually  
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If a  
layer's prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer  
and each layer has more extensive lateral connections than the  
layer below it.  So consciousness is emergent engagement of the top  
layer; although Hawkins doesn't speculate much about this as he is  
more interested in intelligence than consciousness.


This seems consistent with Jaynes's model, I think. It does seem  
plausible that the predictive calculus would work its way up  
through the levels as and when necessary in something like the way  
Hawkins suggests and only 'emerge' fully at the neocortical level  
when 'all else has failed', as it were. Then, in Jaynes's bicameral  
model, the demand for a 'plan of action' would hopefully be  
satisfied with respect to something like a pre-existing template  
that would be communicated (principally in language) for reception  
and action by the 'non-self-conscious' actor.


This is very powerfully illustrated in the early scenes in the  
Iliad when Achilles is only prevented from slaughtering Agamemnon  
by the last minute intervention of Athena, who has to grab him by  
the hair to restrain him (in this case we apparently have full  
visual, auditory and tactile hallucination). Here we have the  
classically un-self-conscious actor in the full tide of his right- 
brained bravura, but with the fortunate intervention at the  
critical moment of his 'common-sense' hemisphere just in time to  
forestall mayhem. With the later breakdown of bicamerality in  
certain individuals (presumably as a consequence of relatively more  
efficient inter-hemispherical neurological integration) the  
'speaking' and 'listening' faculties located in the separate  
hemispheres would have begun to coalesce, in tandem with greater  
integration of planning and execution functions. Odysseus,  
especially as portrayed in the Odyssey, might be the Homeric  
exemplar of the newly 'integrated man', coping creatively and  
constructively with one unexpected and novel catastrophe after  
another.


Yes, as Jaynes speculates the bicameral mind breaks down when there  
is trade between different tribes and it becomes advantageous to be  
able to lie, like the Wily Odysseus.




Funnily enough, I've often entertained the question, in moments of  
reflection, of who is 'speaking' and who 'listening' with respect  
to my inner dialogue. It may not be completely fanciful to link the  
origin of these two aspects to separate though substantially  
integrated hemispheres. After all, in sum they're both 'me'. I  
wonder if there might be an experimental protocol that could settle  
the question?


Careful or you will find yourself agreeing with Dennett and his  
modular mind, which borders on heresy in this list.


Well it isn't heretical in my book. If we "can't know which  
machine" (i.e. program or computation) we

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 04 Dec 2017, at 21:51, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/4/2017 5:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 02 Dec 2017, at 04:55, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/1/2017 6:35 PM, David Nyman wrote:


I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the  
development of language.  Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The  
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?


You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's  
many years since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in  
general direction even if no particular detail of Jaynes's  
speculations were precisely accurate.


Yeah, I started it with the attitude, "That's an interesting idea  
but there couldn't possibly be any evidence to support it even if  
it's true."  But when I finished it I thought, "Damn, he didn't  
prove his theory but he did pretty well supporting it."



I share this feeling. Jayne uses "consciousness" in a more  
particular sense than we usually use it here, though, it is more  
the high level reflective consciousness, and not the primitive one  
we share with most animals---and perhaps plants ... :)


Right.  And I have frequently brought up the different kinds of  
consciousness: perception, self location, instrumental reflection,  
social reflection, self reflection.  Some of those require language  
which evolves among social animals (even wolves have a simple  
language).  But in the past you have rejected this, saying that  
consciousness is unitary and marked by understanding something like  
mathematical induction.


I know that you are under that impression, but I did reject only that  
consciousness is not "1 or 0", i.e. either we are conscious or not.  
But I am particularly aware that there are many different sort of  
consciousness state, indeed the "altered one", etc.


Turing universality does not require "induction", and is already  
enough for being "conscious" (a non standard dissociative state,  
though). Induction is the thing required for the high level form of  
reflexive consciousness (Löbianity). It makes the universal machine  
aware of its universality (and the bad consequences which go with it).


Bruno



Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-06 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 04 Dec 2017, at 15:28, David Nyman wrote:

On 4 December 2017 at 13:16, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 02 Dec 2017, at 00:48, David Nyman wrote:

On 1 December 2017 at 17:45, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Nov 2017, at 01:28, David Nyman wrote:

https://www.sciencealert.com/your-consciousness-does-not-switch-off-during-a-dreamless-sleep-say-scientists

Wonderful! Thanks! It confirms Mechanism, both the one of Descartes
and the "theology" of the machine. And the salvia plant!

I have always personally suspect this "experientially", noticing
that the reason we "miss" it is that it very hard to memorize. It
confirms the idea that non-consciousness is relative amnesia, less
neurons makes you more conscious, the brain is something like a
filter, nature is a product of contemplation (Plotinus!),...

Yes, funnily enough I've always strongly suspected there to be
a very tight relation between what we mean by consciousness, or at
least self-consciousness, and certain features of memory. One
reason was suggested by clinical cases of catastrophic damage to
short term memory, where anything beyond the last five minutes or
so is immediately forgotten. In one case featured in a BBC
documentary, the unfortunate sufferer witnessed a video of himself
conducting an orchestra (he was a professional musician and oddly
enough could still conduct music with which he was already
familiar). Since he had no memory of having done it, and ultimately
conceding that it was indeed himself that he was witnessing, he
concluded "Then I must have been unconscious".

Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short term
memory, at some point you will intuit that you have become
effectively 'unconscious', or at least un-self-conscious,

Yes. That nuance is the key. Note that some meditation technic leads
to what you say. When we succeed in calming down our thought and
mind, short term memory becomes useless somehow, and "I" disappear.
But like sleep, one car in the street can wake you up from that state.

as you will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought
or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions
or intuitions.

Yes, that is where the "I" plays its role of coherence builder.

On reflection, phenomenal consciousness could plausibly be
characterised in essence as the successive, coherent construction
and 'memorisation' of momentary, dynamical perspectives. It is only
memory that links and weaves such momentary phenomenal perspectives
into coherent spatial-temporal narratives.

It is the building of the "model/reality", but it makes sense only
through some reality, and consciousness is on the side of that
reality, which lead to the utter counter-intuitive idea that to get
individual coherence, we need a brain making us less conscious in
some sense. But I will not insist on this ... today.

I do know what you mean though. In the eternal battle between
remembering and forgetting, the latter must inevitably achieve an
almost total victory. But that 'almost' is the difference between
something and nothing.

It is hard to convey with words. Translated in arithmetic/mechanism,
it is like if focusing on our "terrestrial/mundane life" makes us
forget that we are truly living there (in arithmetic), so when
forgetting about here (enough) we can suddenly remember what it is
like to be "there". It is like there a balance: there we forget here,
and here we forget there. But "there", there is no time, and although
there is an "experience", it is hard to attach the experience to
anything we are used to attach experience to. It is not memorizable,
although it changes the way we conceive things. Mathematics offers a
sort of analogy, because the personal understanding of non temporal
truth can be related with that feeling of being out of time (and
space), but that is only a very pale image. Another analogy is like if
life was a sort of movie, and suddenly you live the end of the movie +
the departure from the cinema, yet still "in" the movie somehow. Here
I was saying that "consciousness" is on the side of reality/truth, and
at the antipode of "represented". In Bp & p, it means that
consciousness side with "p", and not with Bp. I suspect that this is
perhaps why Brent want to refer to the environment for relating
consciousness to the machine, and in Artificial Intelligence, some
people defend the idea that (mundane) consciousness occur only when
the environment contradicts a little bit the quasi automatic
persistent inference we do all the time. Hemholtz developped similar
ideas. The image is that you can take your car each morning quasi-
unconsciously, but if your key drops on the ground, suddenly you wake
up "from something" (you were not here). Consciousness would be deeply

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread David Nyman

On 5 December 2017 at 01:11, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/4/2017 4:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 December 2017 at 01:57, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>>


 On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


 Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
 reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
 will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
 un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating an
 articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense
 impressions or intuitions.

 Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
 'unconscious'.

>>>
>>> Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you will
>>> intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought
>>> experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case my
>>> contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in
>>> effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the thought of
>>> your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.
>>>
>>>
>>> Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He calls his
>>> model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based more on brain
>>> neurophysiology and research than on computation (although he's a computer
>>> guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving aside
>> distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one might
>> speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is that of
>> more accurate prediction of the future and consequently improved individual
>> and species survivability.
>>
>>
>> In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
>> predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If a layer's
>> prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer and each layer
>> has more extensive lateral connections than the layer below it.  So
>> consciousness is emergent engagement of the top layer; although Hawkins
>> doesn't speculate much about this as he is more interested in intelligence
>> than consciousness.
>>
>
> This seems consistent with Jaynes's model, I think. It does seem
> plausible that the predictive calculus would work its way up through the
> levels as and when necessary in something like the way Hawkins suggests and
> only 'emerge' fully at the neocortical level when 'all else has failed', as
> it were. Then, in Jaynes's bicameral model, the demand for a 'plan of
> action' would hopefully be satisfied with respect to something like a
> pre-existing template that would be communicated (principally in language)
> for reception and action by the 'non-self-conscious' actor.
>
> This is very powerfully illustrated in the early scenes in the Iliad when
> Achilles is only prevented from slaughtering Agamemnon by the last minute
> intervention of Athena, who has to grab him by the hair to restrain him (in
> this case we apparently have full visual, auditory and tactile
> hallucination). Here we have the classically un-self-conscious actor in the
> full tide of his right-brained bravura, but with the fortunate intervention
> at the critical moment of his 'common-sense' hemisphere just in time to
> forestall mayhem. With the later breakdown of bicamerality in certain
> individuals (presumably as a consequence of relatively more efficient
> inter-hemispherical neurological integration) the 'speaking' and
> 'listening' faculties located in the separate hemispheres would have begun
> to coalesce, in tandem with greater integration of planning and execution
> functions. Odysseus, especially as portrayed in the Odyssey, might be the
> Homeric exemplar of the newly 'integrated man', coping creatively and
> constructively with one unexpected and novel catastrophe after another.
>
>
> Yes, as Jaynes speculates the bicameral mind breaks down when there is
> trade between different tribes and it becomes advantageous to be able to
> lie, like the Wily Odysseus.
>
>
> Funnily enough, I've often entertained the question, in moments of
> reflection, of who is 'speaking' and who 'listening' with respect to my
> inner dialogue. It may not be completely fanciful to link the origin of
> these two aspects to separate though substantially integrated hemispheres.
> After all, in sum they're both 'me'. I wonder if there might be an
> experimental protocol that could settle the question?
>
>
> Careful or you will find yourself agreeing with Dennett and his modular
> mind, which borders on heresy in this list.
>

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/4/2017 4:59 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 01:57, Brent Meeker > wrote:




On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker > wrote:



On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker
> wrote:



On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective
short term memory, at some point you will intuit that
you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine
formulating an articulate thought or possibly even
assembling a coherent series of sense impressions or
intuitions.

Including the coherent thought that you have become
effectively 'unconscious'.


Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some
point you will intuit" only with reference to the relevant
point in the thought experiment, not to the imagined
situation itself. In the latter case my contention was that
"at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in effect
have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the
thought of your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.


Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence". 
He calls his model of intelligence memory+prediction and it
is based more on brain neurophysiology and research than on
computation (although he's a computer guy, inventor the Palm
Pilot).


Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint,
leaving aside distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access'
consciousness, one might speculate that the primary utility of
conscious deliberation is that of more accurate prediction of the
future and consequently improved individual and species
survivability.


In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If
a layer's prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next
layer and each layer has more extensive lateral connections than
the layer below it.  So consciousness is emergent engagement of
the top layer; although Hawkins doesn't speculate much about this
as he is more interested in intelligence than consciousness.


This seems consistent with Jaynes's model, I think. It does seem 
plausible that the predictive calculus would work its way up through 
the levels as and when necessary in something like the way Hawkins 
suggests and only 'emerge' fully at the neocortical level when 'all 
else has failed', as it were. Then, in Jaynes's bicameral model, the 
demand for a 'plan of action' would hopefully be satisfied with 
respect to something like a pre-existing template that would be 
communicated (principally in language) for reception and action by the 
'non-self-conscious' actor.


This is very powerfully illustrated in the early scenes in the Iliad 
when Achilles is only prevented from slaughtering Agamemnon by the 
last minute intervention of Athena, who has to grab him by the hair to 
restrain him (in this case we apparently have full visual, auditory 
and tactile hallucination). Here we have the classically 
un-self-conscious actor in the full tide of his right-brained bravura, 
but with the fortunate intervention at the critical moment of his 
'common-sense' hemisphere just in time to forestall mayhem. With the 
later breakdown of bicamerality in certain individuals (presumably as 
a consequence of relatively more efficient inter-hemispherical 
neurological integration) the 'speaking' and 'listening' faculties 
located in the separate hemispheres would have begun to coalesce, in 
tandem with greater integration of planning and execution functions. 
Odysseus, especially as portrayed in the Odyssey, might be the Homeric 
exemplar of the newly 'integrated man', coping creatively and 
constructively with one unexpected and novel catastrophe after another.


Yes, as Jaynes speculates the bicameral mind breaks down when there is 
trade between different tribes and it becomes advantageous to be able to 
lie, like the Wily Odysseus.




Funnily enough, I've often entertained the question, in moments of 
reflection, of who is 'speaking' and who 'listening' with respect to 
my inner dialogue. It may not be completely fanciful to link the 
origin of these two aspects to separate though substantially 
integrated hemispheres. After all, in sum they're both 'me'. I wonder 
if there might be an experimental protocol that could settle the question?


Careful or you will find yourself

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread David Nyman

On 2 December 2017 at 01:57, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
>>> reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
>>> will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
>>> un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating an
>>> articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense
>>> impressions or intuitions.
>>>
>>> Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
>>> 'unconscious'.
>>>
>>
>> Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you will
>> intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought
>> experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case my
>> contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in
>> effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the thought of
>> your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.
>>
>>
>> Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He calls his
>> model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based more on brain
>> neurophysiology and research than on computation (although he's a computer
>> guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
>>
>
> Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving aside
> distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one might
> speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is that of
> more accurate prediction of the future and consequently improved individual
> and species survivability.
>
>
> In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
> predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If a layer's
> prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer and each layer
> has more extensive lateral connections than the layer below it.  So
> consciousness is emergent engagement of the top layer; although Hawkins
> doesn't speculate much about this as he is more interested in intelligence
> than consciousness.
>

This seems consistent with Jaynes's model, I think. It does seem plausible
that the predictive calculus would work its way up through the levels as
and when necessary in something like the way Hawkins suggests and only
'emerge' fully at the neocortical level when 'all else has failed', as it
were. Then, in Jaynes's bicameral model, the demand for a 'plan of action'
would hopefully be satisfied with respect to something like a pre-existing
template that would be communicated (principally in language) for reception
and action by the 'non-self-conscious' actor.

This is very powerfully illustrated in the early scenes in the Iliad when
Achilles is only prevented from slaughtering Agamemnon by the last minute
intervention of Athena, who has to grab him by the hair to restrain him (in
this case we apparently have full visual, auditory and tactile
hallucination). Here we have the classically un-self-conscious actor in the
full tide of his right-brained bravura, but with the fortunate intervention
at the critical moment of his 'common-sense' hemisphere just in time to
forestall mayhem. With the later breakdown of bicamerality in certain
individuals (presumably as a consequence of relatively more efficient
inter-hemispherical neurological integration) the 'speaking' and
'listening' faculties located in the separate hemispheres would have begun
to coalesce, in tandem with greater integration of planning and execution
functions. Odysseus, especially as portrayed in the Odyssey, might be the
Homeric exemplar of the newly 'integrated man', coping creatively and
constructively with one unexpected and novel catastrophe after another.

Funnily enough, I've often entertained the question, in moments of
reflection, of who is 'speaking' and who 'listening' with respect to my
inner dialogue. It may not be completely fanciful to link the origin of
these two aspects to separate though substantially integrated hemispheres.
After all, in sum they're both 'me'. I wonder if there might be an
experimental protocol that could settle the question?

David

>
> I've been reading a book of Jonathan Haidt's called "The Righteous Mind".
> One of the speculations based on his research into what he calls moral
> intuitions is the importance to human evolutionary success of 'shared
> intentionality'. This is the ability to intuit, share and enact common
> purposes with others.
>
> It is striking that other primates apparently have the ability to copy or
> even originate certain behaviours of benefit to themselves individually but
> not to intuit and hence share in others' intentions to the point

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/4/2017 5:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
It is the building of the "model/reality", but it makes sense only 
through some reality, and consciousness is on the side of that 
reality, which lead to the utter counter-intuitive idea that to get 
individual coherence, we need a brain making us less conscious in some 
sense. But I will not insist on this ... today.


If you look a little way into the future, the world may be dominated by 
AI robots.  One great difference between AI robots and humans is that an 
AI can directly transmit what it has learned to another AI. It will be 
as if you could directly transmit what you know to your child.  I have 
sometimes considered what a great advantage it would be if my child 
could start from what I know and go on to learn more from there.  There 
is so much to know in any technical field that you are 25yrs old before 
you've learned enough to advance the field.  But then I also reflect 
that there advantages to "starting over" which will bring different 
perspectives.  It's like Darwinian evolution of ideas.  You teach kids 
what you know but that's replicatiion with variation.  AI could lead to 
replication without variation.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/4/2017 5:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


On 02 Dec 2017, at 04:55, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/1/2017 6:35 PM, David Nyman wrote:



I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the
development of language. Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?


You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's many 
years since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in general 
direction even if no particular detail of Jaynes's speculations were 
precisely accurate.


Yeah, I started it with the attitude, "That's an interesting idea but 
there couldn't possibly be any evidence to support it even if it's 
true."  But when I finished it I thought, "Damn, he didn't prove his 
theory but he did pretty well supporting it."



I share this feeling. Jayne uses "consciousness" in a more particular 
sense than we usually use it here, though, it is more the high level 
reflective consciousness, and not the primitive one we share with most 
animals---and perhaps plants ... :)


Right.  And I have frequently brought up the different kinds of 
consciousness: perception, self location, instrumental reflection, 
social reflection, self reflection.  Some of those require language 
which evolves among social animals (even wolves have a simple 
language).  But in the past you have rejected this, saying that 
consciousness is unitary and marked by understanding something like 
mathematical induction.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread David Nyman

On 4 December 2017 at 13:16, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 02 Dec 2017, at 00:48, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 1 December 2017 at 17:45, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 28 Nov 2017, at 01:28, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>> https://www.sciencealert.com/your-consciousness-does-not-swi
>> tch-off-during-a-dreamless-sleep-say-scientists
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Wonderful! Thanks! It confirms Mechanism, both the one of Descartes and
>> the "theology" of the machine. And the salvia plant!
>>
>> I have always personally suspect this "experientially", noticing that the
>> reason we "miss" it is that it very hard to memorize. It confirms the idea
>> that non-consciousness is relative amnesia, less neurons makes you more
>> conscious, the brain is something like a filter, nature is a product of
>> contemplation (Plotinus!),...
>>
>
> Yes, funnily enough I've always strongly suspected there to be a very
> tight relation between what we mean by consciousness, or at least
> self-consciousness, and certain features of memory. One reason was
> suggested by clinical cases of catastrophic damage to short term memory,
> where anything beyond the last five minutes or so is immediately forgotten.
> In one case featured in a BBC documentary, the unfortunate sufferer
> witnessed a video of himself conducting an orchestra (he was a professional
> musician and oddly enough could still conduct music with which he was
> already familiar). Since he had no memory of having done it, and ultimately
> conceding that it was indeed himself that he was witnessing, he concluded
> "Then I must have been unconscious".
>
> Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
> reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
> will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
> un-self-conscious,
>
>
> Yes. That nuance is the key. Note that some meditation technic leads to
> what you say. When we succeed in calming down our thought and mind, short
> term memory becomes useless somehow, and "I" disappear. But like sleep, one
> car in the street can wake you up from that state.
>
>
>
> as you will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought or
> possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions or
> intuitions.
>
>
> Yes, that is where the "I" plays its role of coherence builder.
>
>
>
> On reflection, phenomenal consciousness could plausibly be characterised
> in essence as the successive, coherent construction and 'memorisation' of
> momentary, dynamical perspectives. It is only memory that links and weaves
> such momentary phenomenal perspectives into coherent spatial-temporal
> narratives.
>
>
> It is the building of the "model/reality", but it makes sense only through
> some reality, and consciousness is on the side of that reality, which lead
> to the utter counter-intuitive idea that to get individual coherence, we
> need a brain making us less conscious in some sense. But I will not insist
> on this ... today.
>

I do know what you mean though. In the eternal battle between remembering
and forgetting, the latter must inevitably achieve an almost total victory.
But that 'almost' is the difference between something and nothing.

David


>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>> Since 2008 I write in a diary all my salvia experiences, but also tobacco
>> experience, occasional cannabis experience, occasional alcohol experiences,
>> and the usual coffee experiences and actually any pertinent, for the
>> consciousness study, experiences (as they all influences the outcomes).
>> Since 2008, the first salvia experience, the mentions of the deep-sleep
>> consciousness experiences has grown up systematically, and since some years
>> they are mentionned almost every morning.  It is very weird. I made once
>> two "perpendicular sort-of-dreams", which brought my attention on relations
>> between quantum logic and octonions, which I found also in a very
>> interesting paper by John Baes. This plunges me back in my feeling that
>> little numbers could quickly play a special role, like the number 24, and
>> the exceptional simple groups, and relation between groups of permutations
>> of solution of diophantine polynomials. We understand the metamathematical
>> content of arithmetic through big numbers
>> (indeed Gödel represented "2+2=4", that is
>>
>> "ffa+ffa=a" , (with f, a, +, = equal to even numbers: f is 3, a is 5,
>> + is 7, = is 9)
>>
>> by
>>
>> (2^f)(3^f)(5^a)(7^+)(11^f)(13^f)(17^a)(19^=)(23^f)(29^f)(31^
>> f)(37^f)(39^a)
>>
>> which is an astromical numbers. Today we use efficient coding, of course,
>> which adds intensional and modal relations. But it could be that little
>> numbers have already a rich and deep metamathematical content, arithmetic
>> would understand itself more quickly than our apparent current detour
>> through a quantum vacuum fluctuation going wrong make us to think...
>>
>> Otto Rossler once summed up

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 02 Dec 2017, at 00:48, David Nyman wrote:

On 1 December 2017 at 17:45, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Nov 2017, at 01:28, David Nyman wrote:

https://www.sciencealert.com/your-consciousness-does-not-switch-off-during-a-dreamless-sleep-say-scientists

Wonderful! Thanks! It confirms Mechanism, both the one of Descartes
and the "theology" of the machine. And the salvia plant!

Yes, funnily enough I've always strongly suspected there to be
a very tight relation between what we mean by consciousness, or at
least self-consciousness, and certain features of memory. One reason
was suggested by clinical cases of catastrophic damage to short term
memory, where anything beyond the last five minutes or so is
immediately forgotten. In one case featured in a BBC documentary,
the unfortunate sufferer witnessed a video of himself conducting an
orchestra (he was a professional musician and oddly enough could
still conduct music with which he was already familiar). Since he
had no memory of having done it, and ultimately conceding that it
was indeed himself that he was witnessing, he concluded "Then I must
have been unconscious".

Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some
point you will intuit that you have become effectively
'unconscious', or at least un-self-conscious,

Yes. That nuance is the key. Note that some meditation technic leads
to what you say. When we succeed in calming down our thought and mind,
short term memory becomes useless somehow, and "I" disappear. But like
sleep, one car in the street can wake you up from that state.

as you will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought
or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions
or intuitions.

Yes, that is where the "I" plays its role of coherence builder.

It is the building of the "model/reality", but it makes sense only
through some reality, and consciousness is on the side of that
reality, which lead to the utter counter-intuitive idea that to get
individual coherence, we need a brain making us less conscious in some
sense. But I will not insist on this ... today.

Bruno

David

Since 2008 I write in a diary all my salvia experiences, but also
tobacco experience, occasional cannabis experience, occasional
alcohol experiences, and the usual coffee experiences and actually
any pertinent, for the consciousness study, experiences (as they all
influences the outcomes). Since 2008, the first salvia experience,
the mentions of the deep-sleep consciousness experiences has grown
up systematically, and since some years they are mentionned almost
every morning. It is very weird. I made once two "perpendicular
sort-of-dreams", which brought my attention on relations between
quantum logic and octonions, which I found also in a very
interesting paper by John Baes. This plunges me back in my feeling
that little numbers could quickly play a special role, like the
number 24, and the exceptional simple groups, and relation between
groups of permutations of solution of diophantine polynomials. We
understand the metamathematical content of arithmetic through big
numbers

(indeed Gödel represented "2+2=4", that is

"ffa+ffa=a" , (with f, a, +, = equal to even numbers: f is 3, a
is 5, + is 7, = is 9)

(2^f)(3^f)(5^a)(7^+)(11^f)(13^f)(17^a)(19^=)(23^f)(29^f)(31^f)(37^f)
(39^a)

which is an astromical numbers. Today we use efficient coding, of
course, which adds intensional and modal relations. But it could be
that little numbers have already a rich and deep metamathematical
content, arithmetic would understand itself more quickly than our
apparent current detour through a quantum vacuum fluctuation going
wrong make us to think...

Otto Rossler once summed up Descartes Mechanism with "consciousness
is a prison". Mechanism seems a bit pernicious, as it predicts
somehow that we might get the solution of the mind-body problem when
we die, or "sleep" deep enough (cf Shakespeare), unfortunately we
don't memorize, and our billions years of prejudices can strikes
back in a second.

Very interesting (and relevant) studies!

Bruno

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You received this message because

Re: Dreamless Sleep?

2017-12-04 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 02 Dec 2017, at 04:55, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 12/1/2017 6:35 PM, David Nyman wrote:


I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the  
development of language.  Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The  
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?


You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's many  
years since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in general  
direction even if no particular detail of Jaynes's speculations  
were precisely accurate.


Yeah, I started it with the attitude, "That's an interesting idea  
but there couldn't possibly be any evidence to support it even if  
it's true."  But when I finished it I thought, "Damn, he didn't  
prove his theory but he did pretty well supporting it."



I share this feeling. Jayne uses "consciousness" in a more particular  
sense than we usually use it here, though, it is more the high level  
reflective consciousness, and not the primitive one we share with most  
animals---and perhaps plants ... :)


Bruno



Brent


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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/1/2017 6:35 PM, David Nyman wrote:



I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the
development of language.  Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?


You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's many 
years since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in general 
direction even if no particular detail of Jaynes's speculations were 
precisely accurate.


Yeah, I started it with the attitude, "That's an interesting idea but 
there couldn't possibly be any evidence to support it even if it's 
true."  But when I finished it I thought, "Damn, he didn't prove his 
theory but he did pretty well supporting it."


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 2 Dec 2017 01:57, "Brent Meeker"  wrote:

On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>>
>> Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
>> reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
>> will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
>> un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating an
>> articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense
>> impressions or intuitions.
>>
>> Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
>> 'unconscious'.
>>
>
> Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you will
> intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought
> experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case my
> contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in
> effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the thought of
> your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.
>
>
> Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He calls his
> model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based more on brain
> neurophysiology and research than on computation (although he's a computer
> guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
>

Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving aside
distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one might
speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is that of
more accurate prediction of the future and consequently improved individual
and species survivability.

In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If a layer's
prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer and each layer
has more extensive lateral connections than the layer below it.  So
consciousness is emergent engagement of the top layer; although Hawkins
doesn't speculate much about this as he is more interested in intelligence
than consciousness.

I've been reading a book of Jonathan Haidt's called "The Righteous Mind".
One of the speculations based on his research into what he calls moral
intuitions is the importance to human evolutionary success of 'shared
intentionality'. This is the ability to intuit, share and enact common
purposes with others.

It is striking that other primates apparently have the ability to copy or
even originate certain behaviours of benefit to themselves individually but
not to intuit and hence share in others' intentions to the point of
benefitting significantly from novel forms of group cooperation. Plausibly
this is indeed related, amongst other neurocognitive deficits, to a less
than human capacity to retain complex memories and hence make sophisticated
extrapolations from a rich repertoire of experience.

I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the development of
language.  Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?

You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's many years
since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in general direction even
if no particular detail of Jaynes's speculations were precisely accurate.

David

Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker > wrote:




On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:

On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker > wrote:



On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short
term memory, at some point you will intuit that you have
become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine
formulating an articulate thought or possibly even
assembling a coherent series of sense impressions or intuitions.

Including the coherent thought that you have become
effectively 'unconscious'.


Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point
you will intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the
thought experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the
latter case my contention was that "at some (i.e. the
corresponding) point" you would in effect have become incapable
of coherently intuiting even the thought of your 'lost
consciousness', as you suggest.


Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He
calls his model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based
more on brain neurophysiology and research than on computation
(although he's a computer guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).


Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving 
aside distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one 
might speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is 
that of more accurate prediction of the future and consequently 
improved individual and species survivability.


In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually 
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs.  If a 
layer's prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer and 
each layer has more extensive lateral connections than the layer below 
it.  So consciousness is emergent engagement of the top layer; although 
Hawkins doesn't speculate much about this as he is more interested in 
intelligence than consciousness.


I've been reading a book of Jonathan Haidt's called "The Righteous 
Mind". One of the speculations based on his research into what he 
calls moral intuitions is the importance to human evolutionary success 
of 'shared intentionality'. This is the ability to intuit, share and 
enact common purposes with others.


It is striking that other primates apparently have the ability to copy 
or even originate certain behaviours of benefit to themselves 
individually but not to intuit and hence share in others' intentions 
to the point of benefitting significantly from novel forms of group 
cooperation. Plausibly this is indeed related, amongst other 
neurocognitive deficits, to a less than human capacity to retain 
complex memories and hence make sophisticated extrapolations from a 
rich repertoire of experience.


I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the development 
of language.  Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The Origin of 
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>>
>>
>> Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
>> reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
>> will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
>> un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating an
>> articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense
>> impressions or intuitions.
>>
>> Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
>> 'unconscious'.
>>
>
> Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you will
> intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought
> experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case my
> contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in
> effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the thought of
> your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.
>
>
> Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He calls his
> model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based more on brain
> neurophysiology and research than on computation (although he's a computer
> guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
>

Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving aside
distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one might
speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is that of
more accurate prediction of the future and consequently improved individual
and species survivability. I've been reading a book of Jonathan Haidt's
called "The Righteous Mind". One of the speculations based on his research
into what he calls moral intuitions is the importance to human evolutionary
success of 'shared intentionality'. This is the ability to intuit, share
and enact common purposes with others.

It is striking that other primates apparently have the ability to copy or
even originate certain behaviours of benefit to themselves individually but
not to intuit and hence share in others' intentions to the point of
benefitting significantly from novel forms of group cooperation. Plausibly
this is indeed related, amongst other neurocognitive deficits, to a less
than human capacity to retain complex memories and hence make sophisticated
extrapolations from a rich repertoire of experience.

David

>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
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>

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker > wrote:




On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short term
memory, at some point you will intuit that you have become
effectively 'unconscious', or at least un-self-conscious, as you
will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought or
possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions
or intuitions.

Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
'unconscious'.


Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you 
will intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought 
experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case 
my contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you 
would in effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the 
thought of your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.


Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence".  He calls his 
model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based more on brain 
neurophysiology and research than on computation (although he's a 
computer guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?

On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:

>
>
> On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
>
>
> Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively
> reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point you
> will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
> un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating an
> articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense
> impressions or intuitions.
>
> Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively
> 'unconscious'.
>

Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point you will
intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the thought
experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the latter case my
contention was that "at some (i.e. the corresponding) point" you would in
effect have become incapable of coherently intuiting even the thought of
your 'lost consciousness', as you suggest.

David


>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
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> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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>

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?




On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:


Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you progressively 
reduce the duration of your effective short term memory, at some point 
you will intuit that you have become effectively 'unconscious', or at 
least un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine formulating 
an articulate thought or possibly even assembling a coherent series of 
sense impressions or intuitions.
Including the coherent thought that you have become effectively 
'unconscious'.


Brent

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Re: Dreamless Sleep?