Thanks Richard ... I will re-read the paper with this clarification in mind. On the face of it, I tend to agree that the concept of "explanation" is fuzzy and messy and probably is not, in its standard form, useful for dealing with consciousness
However, I'm still uncertain as to whether your deconstruction and reconstruction of the notion of explanation counts as a) a solution of Chalmers' hard problem b) an explanation of why Chalmer's hard problem is ill-posed I'll reflect on this more as I re-read the paper... ben On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:38 AM, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Ben Goertzel wrote: > >> >> Sorry to be negative, but no, my proposal is not in any way a >> modernization of Peirce's metaphysical analysis of awareness. >> >> >> >> Could you elaborate the difference? It seems very similar to me. You're >> saying that consciousness has to do with the bottoming-out of mental >> hierarchies in raw percepts that are unanalyzable by the mind ... and >> Peirce's Firsts are precisely raw percepts that are unanalyzable by the >> mind... >> > > It is partly the stance (I arrive at my position from a cognitivist point > of view, with specific mechanisms that must be causing the problem), where > Peirce appears to suggest the Firsts idea as a purely metaphysical proposal. > > So, what I am saying is that this superficial resemblance between his > position and mine is so superficial that it makes no sense to describe on > the latter as a modernization of the former. > > A good analogy would be Galilean Relativity and Einsten's Relativity. > Although there is a superficial resemblance, nobody would really say that > Einstein was "just" a modernization of Galileo. > > > >> *** >> The standard meaning of Hard Problem issues was described very well by >> Chalmers, and I am addressing the hard problem of concsciousness, not the >> other problems. >> *** >> >> Hmmm.... I don't really understand why you think your argument is a >> solution to the hard problem.... It seems like you explicitly acknowledge >> in your paper that it's *not*, actually.... It's more like a philosophical >> argument as to why the hard problem is unsolvable, IMO. >> > > No, that is only part one of the paper, and as you pointed out before, the > first part of the proposal ends with a question, not a statement that this > was a failure to explain the problem. That question was important. > > The important part is the analysis of "explanation" and "meaning". This > can also be taken to be about your use of the word "unsolvable" in the above > sentence. > > What I am claiming (and I will make this explicit in a revision of the > paper) is that these notions of "explanation", "meaning", "solution to the > problem", etc., are pushed to their breaking point by the problem of > consciousness. So it is not that there is a problem with understanding > consciousness itself, so much as there is a problem with what it means to > *explain* things. > > Other things are "easy" to explain, but when we ask for an explanation of > something like consciousness, the actual notion of "explanation" breaks down > in a drastic way. This is very closely related to the idea of an objective > observer in physics .... in the quantum realm that notion breaks down. > > What I gave in my paper was (a) a detailed description of how the confusion > about consciousness arises [peculiar behavior of the analysis mechanism], > but then (b) I went on to point out this peculiar behavior infects much more > than just our ability to explain consciousness, because it casts doubt on > the fundamental meaning of explanation and semantics and ontology. > > The conclusion that I then tried to draw was that it would be wrong to say > that consciousness was just an artifact or (ordinarily) inexplicable thing, > because this would be to tacitly assume that the sense of "explain" that we > are using in these statements is the same one we have always used. Anyone > who continued to use "explain" and "mean" (etc.) in their old context would > be stuck in what I have called "Level 0", and in that level the old meanings > [sic] of those terms are just not able to address the issue of > consciousness. > > Go back to the quantum mechanics analogy again: it is not right to cling > to old ideas of position and momentum, etc., and say that we simply do not > "know" the position of an electron. The real truth - the new truth about > how we should understand "position" and "momentum" - is that the position of > the electron is fundamentally not even determined (without observation). > > This analogy is not just an analogy, as I think you might begin to guess: > there is a deep relationship between these two domains, and I am still > working on a way to link them. > > > > > > Richard Loosemore. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
