On Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at 21:35, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote: > 1) You raise an interesting point. Can you give another example in that > direction beside the qualia of good and bad ? Because you made me think about > the case that you mentioned, and it seems to me that it only works for cases > of good and bad. A similar example to yours would be: blue and green emerge > on top of shades-of-gray, but I like blue and I don't like green, so where > does the good and bad appear in my final experience of a quale ? So it might > be the case that aesthetic components might be something special. That's why > I would like to hear if you can come up with a similar example besides > aesthetic components, to pinpoint more precisely where there might be a > problem with my ideas about emergence.
People describe colors as "warm" and "cold", and alcoholic beverages as "fiery". Another thing that occurs to me are the classical elements: water, air, fire, earth. Also the fact that separate cultures believed at some point in similar sets of elemental substances. > > 2) This is interesting again. And I thought about it before writing my paper > about emergence. And indeed I think that your proposal that it might just be > something related to brain functioning cannot be discarded. The reason why I > prefer to see it as something related directly to consciousness is simply > because it can give me the possibility to further pursue the issue. If it is > something related to brain, then it might be contingent, and I cannot see how > the phenomenon can be understood any further. If it is something related to > consciousness, then it is interesting because then it is related to > fundamental problems regarding the nature of meaning and how meaning is > generated, so deep thinking in these directions can further help us > understand consciousness. To be fair, I am playing devil's advocate here. I like mantra meditation, so obviously I find something more profound in this dissolution of meaning than simply a brain quirk. My hunch on this is a bit boring: that it is both things at the same time. > > 3) There is no ontological/epistemological confusion here. I state that even > if you are to take into account the entire history that you mention, the > electron would still not follow the same laws as in simple systems, because > in the brain it will receive top-down influence from a higher consciousness. My counter-argument is that the laws remain exactly the same, but they become impossible to apply in practice because one would have to know the value of too many variables, and with too much precision. Are you familiar with chaos theory? > And the more complex the system, the more the consciousness is evolved and > its intentions are beyond comprehension, so the ability to describe the > movement of electrons using coherent laws vanishes. The electron will simply > appear to not follow any law, because the intentions of consciousness would > be more and more complex and diverse. I follow several things that you say with no problem. My biggest point of disagreement is with the type of statements like the one above, these ideas of an "interactive consciousness" that I find reminiscent of the interface problem: if consciousness is not matter, then how does it interact with matter? I am more inclined towards explanations where consciousness is the stage itself, not one of the actors. > > Btw, you can find my ideas also published for free in papers: > https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan So if you want to get more > details about my ideas regarding emergence and self-reference, you can as > well read the papers. Thanks! I will try to read your book, my problem is lack of time... Telmo. > > On Friday, 19 April 2019 15:09:54 UTC+3, telmo wrote: >> >> 1) >> >> There is something here that still does not convince me. For example, you >> say that the "chocolate taste" qualia emerges from simpler qualia, such as >> "sweet". Can you really justify this hierarchical relation without >> implicitly alluding to the quanti side? Consider the qualias of eating a >> piece of chocolate, a spoonful of sugar and french fries. You can feel that >> the first two have something in common that distinguishes them from the >> third, and you can give it the label "sweet". At the same time, you could >> say that the chocolate and french fries are pleasant to eat, while the >> spoonful of sugar not so much. You can also label this abstraction with some >> word. Without empirical grounding, nothing makes one distinction more >> meaningful than another. >> >> What makes the "sweat" abstraction so special? Well, it's that we know about >> sweet receptors in the tongue and we know it's one of the four(five?) basic >> flavors because of that. I'm afraid you smuggle this knowledge into the pure >> qualia world. Without it, there is no preferable hierarchical relation and >> emergence becomes nonsensical again. There's just a field of qualia. >> >> >> 2) >> >> >> I was referring to your observation that things lose meaning by repetition, >> like staring at yourself in the mirror for a long time. I to find this >> interesting, but I can imagine prosaic explanations. For example, that our >> brain requires a certain amount of variety in its inputs, otherwise it tends >> to a simpler state were apprehension of meaning is no longer possible. In >> other words, I am proposing a plumber-style explanation, and asking you >> why/if you think it can be discarded? >> >> >>> >>> 3) The difference is that in an emergent system you have top-down influence >>> in levels. Electrons in simple systems like the ones in physical >>> experiments have little input from any top level, so they behaving >>> according to their own level and display certain laws. But when they are >>> part of a greater holistic system, like in the brain (which is just an >>> appearance of internal workings in consciousness) they receive top-down >>> influence from the intentions in consciousness, and so they behave >>> according to the will of consciousness. Is the same phenomenon when we >>> speak, that I also gave in my presentation. When we speak, we act from the >>> level of intending to transmit certain ideas. And this level exercises >>> top-down influence in levels and the sentences, words and letters are >>> coming out in accordance with the intention from the higher level. >> 3) >> >> >> Here I think you are making the ontological/epistemological confusion. >> Another way to describe what you are alluding to above is this: the more >> complex a system, the higher the amount of branching in the trees of >> causation that extend into the past. To describe the movement of an election >> in the ideal conditions of some laboratory experiment, you might just >> require a couple of equations and variables. To describe the movement of an >> election in the incredible wet mess that is the human brain, you require >> trillions of equations with trillions of variables. >> >> The identification of patterns across scales allows us to vastly compress >> the information of the object we are looking at, making it somewhat >> tractable by our limited intellects. Some of these patters have names such >> as "speaking", "word", "presentation", "red", etc. These patterns are not >> arbitrarily grounded, they are grounded by some correspondence with qualia, >> as I argue above. Why? I don't have the answer, I think it's a mystery. >> >> I am not saying that the point of view you describe above is not valid or >> interesting, but I am saying that it is nothing more than epistemology. >> >> Telmo. >> >>> >>> On Thursday, 18 April 2019 16:22:18 UTC+3, telmo wrote: >>>> Hi Cosmin, >>>> >>>> 1) >>>> >>>> Ok, I saw your presentation. We agree on several things, but I don't quite >>>> get your qualia emergence idea. The things you describe make sense, for >>>> example the dissolution of meaning by repetition, but what makes you think >>>> that this is anything more than an observation in the domain of the >>>> cognitive sciences? Or, putting it another way, and observation / model on >>>> how our cognitive processes work? >>>> >>>>> >>>>> 2) Consciousness is not mysterious. And this is exactly what my book is >>>>> doing: demystifying consciousness. If you decide to read my book, you >>>>> will gain at the end of it a clarity of thinking through these issues >>>>> that all people should have such that they will stop making the >>>>> confusions that robots are alive. >>>> >>>> I don't mean to discourage or attack you in anyway, but one in a while >>>> someone with a book to promote shows up in this mailing list. No problem >>>> with me, I have promoted some of my work sometimes. My problem is with "if >>>> you read my book...". There are many books to read, please give the main >>>> ideas. Then I might read it. >>>> >>>>> >>>>> 3) No, they are not extraordinarily claims. They are quite trivial. And >>>>> they start from the trivial realization that the brain does not exist. >>>>> The "brain" is just an idea in consciousness. >>>> >>>> I have no problem with "the brain is just an idea in consciousess". I am >>>> not sure if this type of claim can be verified, or if it falls into the >>>> category of things we cannot assert, as Bruno would say. I do tend to >>>> think privately in those terms. >>>> >>>> So ok, the brain does not exist. It is just a bunch of qualia in >>>> consciousness. But this is then true of every single thing! Again, no >>>> problem with this, but also no reason to abandon science. The machine >>>> doesn't exist either, but its elections (that don't exist either) follow a >>>> certain pattern of behavior that we call the laws of physics. Why not the >>>> electrons in the brain? What's the difference? >>>> >>>> Telmo. >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> 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 everyth...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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