Hi, RUSSEL > All I can say is that I don't understand your distinction. You have introduced a new term "necessary primitive" - what on earth is that? But I'll let this pass, it probably isn't important.
COLIN Oh no you don't!! It matters. Bigtime... Take away the necessary primitive: no 'qualititative novelty' Take away the water molecules: No lake. Take away the bricks, no building Take away the atoms: no molecules Take away the cells: no human Take away the humans: no humanity Take away the planets: no solar system Take away the X: No emergent Y Take away the QUALE: No qualia Magical emergence is when but claim Y exists but you can't identify an X. Such as: Take away the X: No qualia but then....you claim qualia result from 'information complexity' or 'computation' or 'function' and you fail to say what X can be. Nobody can. You can't use an object derived using the contents of consciousness(observation) to explain why there are any contents of consciousness(observation) at all. It is illogical. (see the wigner quote below). I find the general failure to recognise this brute reality very exasperating. COLIN <snip> > So this means that in a computer abstraction. >> d(KNOWLEDGE(t)) >> --------------- is already part of KNOWLEDGE(t) >> dt RUSSEL > No its not. dK/dt is generated by the interaction of the rules with the environment. No. No. No. There is the old assumption thing again. How, exactly, are you assuming that the agent 'interacts' with the environment? This is the world external to the agent, yes?. Do not say "through sensory measurement", because that will not do. There are an infinite number of universes that could give rise to the same sensory measurements. We are elctromagnetic objects. Basic EM theory. Proven mathematical theorems. The solutions are not unique for an isolated system. Circularity.Circularity.Circularity. There is _no interaction with the environment_ except for that provided by the qualia as an 'as-if' proxy for the environment. The origins of an ability to access the distal external world in support of such a proxy is mysterious but moot. It can and does happen, and that ability must come about because we live in the kind of universe that supports that possibility. The mysteriousness of it is OUR problem. RUSSEL > Evolutionary algorithms are highly effective > information pumps, pumping information from the environment into the genome, or whatever representation you're using to store the solutions. COLIN But then we're not talking about merely being 'highly effective' in a target problem domain, are we? We are talking about proving consciousness in a machine. I agree - evolutionary algoritms are great things... they are just irrelevant to this discussion. COLIN >> >> My scientific claim is that the electromagnetic field structure >> literally the third person view of qualia. >> > Eh? Electromagnetic field of what? The brain? If so, do you think that >> chemical potentiation plays no role at all in qualia? >> Chemical potentiation IS electric field. RUSSEL > Bollocks. A hydrogen molecule and an oxygen atom held 1m apart have chemical potential, but there is precious little electric field I am talking about the membrane and you are talking atoms so I guess we missed somehow...anyway....The only 'potentiation' that really matters in my model is that which looks like an 'action potential' longitudinally traversing dendrite/soma/axon membrane as a whole. Notwithstanding this.... The chemical potentiation at the atomic level is entirely an EM phenomenon mediated by QM boundaries (virtual photons in support of the shell structure, also EM). It is a sustained 'well/energy minimaum' in the EM field structure....You think there is such a 'thing' as potential? There is no such thing - there is something we describe as 'EM field'. Nothing else. Within that metaphor is yet another even more specious metaphor: Potential is an (as yet unrealised) propensity of the field at a particular place to do work on a charge if it were put it there. You can place that charge in it and get a number out of an electrophysiological probe... and 'realise' the work (modify the fields) itself- but there's no 'thing' that 'is' the potential. Not only that: The fields are HUGE > 10^11 volts/meter. Indeed the entrapment of protons in the nucleus requires the strong nuclear force to overcome truly stupendous repulsive fields. I know beause I am quite literally doing tests in molecular dynamics simulations of the E-M field at the single charge level. The fields are massive and change at staggeringly huge rates, especially at the atomic level. However....Their net level in the vicinity of 20Angstroms away falls off dramatically. But this is not the vicinity of any 'chemical reaction'. And again I say : there is nothing else there but charge and its fields. When you put your hand on a table the reason it doesn't pass through it even though table and hand are mostly space ...is because electrons literally meet and repulse electrons. > between them. Furthermore, the chemical potential is independent on the separation, unlike the electric field. Nope. There is a "potential well" close in to the relvent atoms, created on approach by the near-EM field interactions close in.....The field draws the atoms together and the resulting field stablises the result (emitting photons or creating other sources of kinetic energy as necessary). In femtochemistry the exquisite detail of the interrelationships of the fields determines the detail as they approach each other. The words "chemical potential" is just a metaphor for the potential well in close to the participants...no wonder it is independent of distance - the well is in close! . There is no such 'thing' as 'chemical'. There is no such 'thing' as mechanical, including 'quantum mechanical'. There is just something: ...where some of it bahaves like charge/fields with/without mass and the rest of it behaves like space. RUSSEL > You're obviously suggesting single neurons have qualia. Forgive me for being a little sceptical of this suggestion... There are so many good reasons to hold them accountable ..... Read the recent book by Jon Edwards...In any event - I hold the FIELD accountable. The fact that it happens to be delivered by astrocytes/neuron membranes is incidental. If you have to be skeptical about something, please be skeptical about the right thing for a good reason! In a critical argument about hypothesis viability it stacks up. I have truckloads of empirical correlates consistent with it. Neurons and astrocytes can have their own qualia. They can participate collaboratively to construct more complex qualia. It's all self-similar/recursive. And, as a result...I have a 'necessary primitive' in the electric field. No membrane field = No qualia. That the perfect field happens to be implemented in the membrane of astrocytes and neurons is not relvant. An inorganically produced field with the same spatiotemporal characteristics should be produce the same effect (virtual bosons). The fact that it may be difficult (at this stage) to see HOW this may deliver qualia is not relevant: especially when the circumstances of the claim are at an epistemological cul-de-sac that precisely predicts a-priori that very difficulty....consider Eugene Wigner in "Are we machines?" in 1960s...P96. Top right. In respect of scientific laws: "The primitive facts in terms of which the laws are formulated are not the positions of atoms, but the results of observations. It seems inconsistent, therefore, to explain the state of mind of the observer, his apperception of the result of an observation, in terms of concepts, such as positions of atoms, which have to be explained, then, in terms of the content of consciousness" Wigner is too reserved...Instead of "It seems inconsistent..." I would say "It's at best completely meaningless and at worst a grave mistake....". Over to Quentin's post... cheers colin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---