Dear Bruno,
although I donot want to participate in the discussion of Russel's paper,
may I pick out a Brent(?) par :
>
>
>
> *(BrM)...I don't understand. How is having DNA relevant to
> havingconsciousness? It is quite plausible that non-DNA-based forms
> areconscious (eg a computer running a suitable AI program), and thatsome
> DNA-based forms are not conscious (trees, for example)....*
and your remark to that:
(BrM) *I agree.*
Let me apply MY agnosticism in the questions and ask: HOW MUCH do we know -
indeed - about DNA and it's functions? We represent them by a formula of
symbols (atomic signs?) and assign whatever is coming up as their function
strictly as molecular portions. We have no idea what ELSE is involved
BEHIND those symbols assigning changes transpiring into our assumptions
(what most of us like to call "consciousness"). There may be lots of
unknowable facets, relations, trends, forces(?) and whatever beyond our
model of our reductionist sciences. Relations (of unknowable qualia) we
cannot even anticipate.
And - that a tree CANNOT have consciousness? Well, not a human one. But the
animal kingdom has different ones as well, especially the insects (ants,
bees?)
who's collective(?) Ccness we so far could not penetrate. Trees (plants)
react
to events (cf: my definition of Ccness: to RESPOND to relations) and so do
we, the other animals, insects, microbes and who knows what else
(stones-fluids)?
And we have "beneficial(??)" deals (Mitch) with microbes in our gut and the
symbiotic ones built into our organs (sometimes not-so-beneficial, but who
is to say?)
Please forgive my BrM for both Brent and yourself.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Hi Russell, Hi Others,
>
> Sorry for the delay. Some comments on your (Russell) MGA paper appear
> below.
>
>
> On 25 Aug 2014, at 00:30, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 01:22:51PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/24/2014 12:55 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I don't think that can be the case. I don't see how it can be anything
>>>> to be like a tree, yet trees are clearly DNA-based beings. So you
>>>> would get skewed results if you were to reason as though you could be
>>>> a tree.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Exactly. It's a reductio on the pattern of argument you used to
>>> prove ants can't be conscious. I used it to prove ants can't be DNA
>>> based.
>>>
>>
>> I don't understand. How is having DNA relevant to having
>> consciousness? It is quite plausible that non-DNA-based forms are
>> conscious (eg a computer running a suitable AI program), and that
>> some DNA-based forms are not conscious (trees, for example).
>>
>
>
> I agree.
>
> Incidentally, when you see the complexity of the interaction between the
> roots of trees and the soils, chemicals and through bacteria, and when you
> believe, as some experiences suggest, that trees and plant communicate, I
> am not so sure if trees and forest, perhaps on different time scale, have
> not some awareness, and a self-awareness of some sort. (I take awareness
> as synonymous with consciousness, although I change my mind below!).
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> The reference class cannot be larger than the class of conscious
>>>> beings. Obviously it can be quite a bit smaller, but there must be a
>>>> maximal reference class for which anthropic reasoning is valid,
>>>> although it is quite controversial what it is - some suggest it may
>>>> even be as small as those people capable of understanding the
>>>> anthropic argument, a sizable fraction of which inhabits this list!
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's what bothers me. If you exclude ants because they're not
>>> conscious (and I assume you've read "Godel, Escher, and Bach") and
>>> hence can't understand the argument, why not exclude people who
>>> can't understand the argument?
>>>
>>>
>> "Ant Fugue" is about the possibility that ant _colonies_ might be
>> conscious. My argument has nothing to say about ant colonies, even
>> though I consider "Ant Fugue" to be just an interesting speculation,
>> rather than a serious claim about ant colonies.
>>
>
>
> I am a bit agnostic on this. But I have few doubt that individual ants
> have some consciousness, though.
>
>
>
>
>> Oh - perhaps you mean "can't understand the argument" as in organisms
>> that can't understand the anthropic argument must be excluded from the
>> reference class. This seems a rather implausible claim - just because
>> anthropic argument has not occurred to you yet, shouldn't really
>> exclude you. The idea that self-awareness is a necessary requirement
>> of the reference class is a perhaps more believable claim - in order to
>> even
>> think anthropically requires a concept of self - but then I'm still
>> not sure what it even means to be conscious, but not self-aware. What
>> does it even mean to "be an amoeba", as Bruno seems to think is possible.
>>
>
>
> OK. I will make a try. Awareness in its most basic forms comes from the
> ability to distinguish a good feeling from a bad feeling. The amoeba, like
> us, knows (in a weak sense) that eating some paramecium is good, but that
> hot or to cold place are bad, and this makes it reacts accordingly with
> some high degrees of relative self-referential correctness. The genome of
> the amoeba, which is really a collection of cooperating many genomes (lot
> of "nucleus") is Turing universal or "complete", and the amoeba incarnates
> it relatively to her (our) probable lower substitution level (which defines
> by the FPI the physical reality). So she get a life, a first person life,
> of some sorts. Little consciousness, if you want, because from the first
> person view of the amoeba it is the whole big thing. The life of protozoans
> are similar to ours. They keep moving for eating, try to avoid the possible
> predators, get sleepy (very deeply so) when it get cold (the cell
> transforms into a sort of egg), and they really dislike when being eaten,
> and try to avoid it instinctively, but with a possible "bad" experience.
> here an amoeba eats two paramecia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
> v=pvOz4V699gk
>
> Now, amoeba are universal, but not Löbian, and so they lack the Kp -> KKp
> law, and are not self-aware. Nor do have them memories, or only few one, so
> they live in the instant present, happy when eating, unhappy when being
> eaten. At least they will not philosophize and be unhappy when eating
> because they know they *might* be eaten, nor happy when being eaten because
> they got the point that it is part of the game of life and be serene about
> this, or because they believe in christ or someone. You need to be Löbian
> to develop those form of craziness. I think this came with lower
> invertebrate, like jumping spiders and cuttlefishes. But they are lucky,
> their brain are not enough big to develop much of the craziness. They
> probably live a little bit less in the present, but still don't get the
> point of the existential question.
>
> To be aware is to feel the cold, the hot, the yummy, the acidity level,
> and capable of interpreting it "self-referentially", and reacting.
>
> To be self-aware add the memories and one more reflexive loop (which you
> get in RA when adding the induction axioms, leading to PA). As long as you
> are correct, you obey the modal logic G and G* in that case. But the 1p
> views obeys the intensional variants.
>
>
>>
>>
>> But that smacks of parochialism, much like the notion of
>>>> geocentrism. I just haven't found a convincing argument that the
>>>> maximal reference class is not just the class of conscious organisms,
>>>> of beings for whom there is a something it is like to be.
>>>>
>>>> But my question (which you haven't answered) is what you think this
>>>> maximal reference class is from your four part classification of
>>>> consciousness.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If I had to pick, I'd say it was those entities who were aware of
>>> their own thoughts and had sufficient language to formulate Bayesian
>>> inference.
>>>
>>>
>> The Bayesian theory is a bit stringent don't you think. There are
>> plenty of formulations of the doomsday argument that don't use
>> Bayesian reasoning. Take Gott's version for example.
>>
>> Self-awareness, as I mentioned, is more defensible property. The
>> question is whether non-self-aware consciousness (your koi) is a
>> coherent concept.
>>
>
> I agree that to have awareness, you need a self, a third person self. But
> that is well played by the relative body (actually bodies, incarnate
> through the UD).
>
> Maybe we should define consciousness by self-awareness, and then
> self-consciousness would be the higher form of self-self-awareness? That
> makes one "self" per reflexive loop.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Attacks on anthropic reasoning will work better by choosing a
>> reference class which is indisputably a subset of the reference class,
>> such as all human beings, and then demonstrating a contradiction. I
>> thought I had come up with such an example with my "Chinese paradox",
>> but it turned out anthropic reasoning was rescued from that by the
>> peculiar distribution of country population sizes that happens to hold
>> in reality. AR has proved remakably resilient to empirical tests.
>>
>
> I am still a bit agnostic for its use in the fundamentals, as the
> probability, with computationalism, are always relative. It is the same in
> quantum mechanics, where the probabilities are not on states, but on
> relative states: they have always the form <a I b>^2, the probability for
> finding b when being in the state a.
> But we can extract useful information from the Anthropic principle, and
> even from the most general Turing-thropic. Just saying that the laws of
> physics should be a calculus of relative probabilities.
>
>
> PS I have printed your MGA paper, and so read it and comment it despite
> being in a busy period.
>
> Let me say here, as we are in the good thread, two main points, where we
> might have vocabulary issue, or perhaps disagree on something? So you might
> think about this and be prepared :)
>
> The first point concerns the relation between counterfactualness and modal
> realism, that you link in a way which makes me a bit uneasy. I do believe
> in some links between them, though, but it might not correspond to yours.
> Examples will follow later.
>
> The second point is the one we have already discussed, and concerns the
> definition of supervenience. We do both agree on the Stanford definition,
> but I am still thinking you are misusing it when apply to the Alice and Bob
> in the classroom situation.
>
> You agree that
> C supervenes on B if to change C it is necessary to change B.
> For example, consciousness C supervenes on a brain activity B, because to
> change that consciousness you need to change that brain activity.
>
> Now take the (physical) union of B and A: B-and-A.
> If you change B, you automatically change B-and-A.
>
> So if consciousness C supervenes on B, you need to make a change to
> B-and-A (indeed to the B part), and so automatically C will supervenes on
> the union of B and A.
>
> So when Alice and Bob are in the classroom, we have that
>
> - Alice's consciousness supervenes on Alice's brain activity
> - Alice's consciousness supervenes on Alice + the entire room (including
> Bob's brain activity)
> - Bob consciousness supervenes on Bob's brain activity.
> - Bob consciousness supervenes on Bob + the entire room (including Alice's
> brain activity).
>
> It is not a problem that both Bob's and Alice's consciousness supervenes
> on the same classroom, as to make a change in either Alice or Bob's
> consciousness, you need to make a change of the A+B system.
>
> It is the same for UD*. My and your consciousness supervenes on UD*. To
> make a change to my or your's consciousness here and now, we would need to
> make the (impossible) change in the UD*.
>
> Are you OK with:
>
> (C supervenes on B) entails (C supervenes on B+D), with B+D being some
> physical union of B and some C.
>
>
> I have to go, sorry for the delays, and possible other delays.
> September-october are particularly heavy this year, but we have all the
> time, OK?
>
> Best,
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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