On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 3:14 PM John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 1:58 PM Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > > *>>> ** I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, >>>> not a "byproduct".* >>> >>> >>> >>I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can >>> natural selection, and that's why we have it. It aids in getting our genes >>> transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness >>> not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think >>> consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, >>> and yet we have it, or at least I have it. >>> >> >> *> you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible,* >> > > Zombies are possible, it's philosophical zombies, a.k.a. smart zombies, > that are impossible because it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way > data behaves when it is being processed intelligently, or at least that's > what I think. Unless you believe that all iterated sequences of "why" or > "how" questions go on forever then you must believe that brute facts > exist; and I can't think of a better candidate for one than consciousness. > > *> so then epiphenomenalism is false* >> > > According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy "*Epiphenomenalism > is a position in the philosophy of mind according to which mental states or > events are caused by physical states or events in the brain but do not > themselves cause anything*". If that is the definition then I believe in > Epiphenomenalism. > If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove consciousness without altering behavior). I view mental states as high-level states operating in their own regime of causality (much like a Java computer program). The java computer program can run on any platform, regardless of the particular physical nature of it. It has in a sense isolated itself from the causality of the electrons and semiconductors, and operates in its own realm of the causality of if statements, and for loops. Consider this program, for example: [image: twin-prime-program2.png] What causes the program to terminate? Is it the inputs, and the logical relation of primality, or is it the electrons flowing through the CPU? I would argue that the higher-level causality, regarding the logical relations of the inputs to the program logic is just as important. It determines the physics of things like when the program terminates. At this level, the microcircuitry is relevant only to its support of the higher level causal structures, but the program doesn't need to be aware of nor consider those low-level things. It operates the same regardless. I view consciousness as like that high-level control structure. It operates within a causal realm where ideas and thoughts have causal influence and power, and can reach down to the lower level to do things like trigger nerve impulses. Here is a quote from Roger Sperry, who eloquently describes what I am speaking of: "I am going to align myself in a counterstand, along with that approximately 0.1 per cent mentalist minority, in support of a hypothetical brain model in which consciousness and mental forces generally are given their due representation as important features in the chain of control. These appear as active operational forces and dynamic properties that interact with and upon the physiological machinery. Any model or description that leaves out conscious forces, according to this view, is bound to be pretty sadly incomplete and unsatisfactory. The conscious mind in this scheme, far from being put aside and dispensed with as an "inconsequential byproduct," "epiphenomenon," or "inner aspect," as is the customary treatment these days, gets located, instead, front and center, directly in the midst of the causal interplay of cerebral mechanisms. Mental forces in this particular scheme are put in the driver's seat, as it were. They give the orders and they push and haul around the physiology and physicochemical processes as much as or more than the latter control them. This is a scheme that puts mind back in its old post, over matter, in a sense-not under, outside, or beside it. It's a scheme that idealizes ideas and ideals over physico-chemical interactions, nerve impulse traffic-or DNA. It's a brain model in which conscious, mental, psychic forces are recognized to be the crowning achievement of some five hundred million years or more of evolution. [...] The basic reasoning is simple: First, we contend that conscious or mental phenomena are dynamic, emergent, pattern (or configurational) properties of the living brain in action -- a point accepted by many, including some of the more tough-minded brain researchers. Second, the argument goes a critical step further, and insists that these emergent pattern properties in the brain have causal control potency -- just as they do elsewhere in the universe. And there we have the answer to the age-old enigma of consciousness. To put it very simply, it becomes a question largely of who pushes whom around in the population of causal forces that occupy the cranium. There exists within the human cranium a whole world of diverse causal forces; what is more, there are forces within forces within forces, as in no other cubic half-foot of universe that we know. [...] Along with their internal atomic and subnuclear parts, the brain molecules are obliged to submit to a course of activity in time and space that is determined very largely by the overall dynamic and spatial properties of the whole brain cell as an entity. Even the brain cells, however, with their long fibers and impulse conducting elements, do not have very much to say either about when or in what time pattern, for example, they are going to fire their messages. The firing orders come from a higher command. [...] In short, if one climbs upward through the chain of command within the brain, one finds at the very top those overall organizational forces and dynamic properties of the large patterns of cerebral excitation that constitute the mental or psychic phenomena. [...] Near the apex of this compound command system in the brain we find ideas. In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring brains, and in distant, foreign brains. And they also interact with real consequence upon the external surroundings to produce in toto an explosive advance in evolution on this globe far beyond anything known before, including the emergence of the living cell." -- Roger Sperry <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Wolcott_Sperry> in "Mind, Brain, and Humanist Values <https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/sperry/Mind_Brain_and_Humanist_Values.html>" (1966) Jason > > >> *> As you said previously, if consciousness had no effects, there would >> be no reason for it to evolve in the first place.* >> > > What I said in my last post was "It must be because consciousness is the > byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other > possibilities". > > *> There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless.* >> > > If consciousness is not useless from Evolution's point of view then it > must produce "something" that natural selection can see, and if natural > selection can see that certain "something" then so can you or me. So the > Turing Test is not just a good test for intelligence it's also a good test > for consciousness. The only trouble is, what is that "something"? > Presumably whatever it is that "something" must be related to mind in some > way, but If it is not intelligent activity then what the hell is it"? > > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > > > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3kar8%3De8dFmYXiBLzY-29kYGKyk%2BnNF9xuhK3m_qipEQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3kar8%3De8dFmYXiBLzY-29kYGKyk%2BnNF9xuhK3m_qipEQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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