Re: Losing Control
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: All I am saying is that you should start with something that is not already loaded with your conclusion, then reach your conclusion through argument. If I intend to do something I do it because I want to do it. On the face of it, I could want to do it and do it whether my brain is determined or random. You can make the case that this is impossible, but you have to actually make the case, not sneak it into the definition. I'm not trying to sneak anything into the definition. The case that I make is that while it could be locally true that a given person could theoretically want something intentionally even if their brain were completely driven by unintentional influences, it doesn't make sense that there could be any such thing as 'intentional' if the entire universe were driven exclusively by unintentional influences. It is like saying that a dog could think that it is a cat if cats exist, but if you define the universe as having no cats, then there can be no such thing as cat-anything. No thoughts about cats, no cat-like feelings, no pictures of cats, etc. In an unintentional universe, intention is inconceivable in every way. You say it doesn't make sense that intentional could come from unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to have an insight that other people don't have. We are talking about third person observable determinism only. Who is? We are, because this is the normal sense of determinism and I thought this is how you have been using it all along. It's possible that you don't disagree with me at all if you were not actually talking about this. The brain could be third person observable deterministic and still conscious. The third person view always seems unintentional (deterministic-random). That goes along with it being a public body in space. You can't see intentions from third person. That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual sense? So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for experience. So their history is irrelevant: all the atoms in my body could be replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I would feel just the same. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 19.03.2013 22:25 Alberto G. Corona said the following: Since I´m more in the side of Aquinas/Aristotle -or even Plato sometimes- I don not share the Occam views.Occam was a nominalist, that is rejected the existence of universals, he did not like to think in terms universals, because if universals exist, for example Truth, Love and Peace then they impose some obligations to God: for example, God must do Good, and must not do Evil by definition. Then, why Evil exist? Nominalist did not like to think about these entitities, and wanted an omnipotent God. That was the original meaning of the Occam razor. But the secularization of this principle produced the modern concept of materialist science, separated from philosophy, via an empiricism science and the negation of the nous of the greek, the common sense and finally the negation of the possibility of objective understanding of anything but some phisical phenomena, and in general the negation of anything that can be not tested by experiments I see a bit of irony in the fact that people who believe in physical reality often call to a principle developed by Occam. A small note. At some time in the middle ages nominalist and realist philosophy departments co-existed in the same University. A lovely fact from the dark middle ages. Evgenii -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 19 Mar 2013, at 22:25, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Since I´m more in the side of Aquinas/Aristotle -or even Plato sometimes- ? I see Plato and Aristotle as the most opposite view we can have on reality. (To be sure by Aristotle I means its usual interpretation by the followers. Aristotle himself is still close to Plato, at least that can be accepted, if only because his treatise on metaphysics is quite unclear and hard to interpret). I don not share the Occam views.Occam was a nominalist, that is rejected the existence of universals, he did not like to think in terms universals, because if universals exist, for example Truth, Love and Peace then they impose some obligations to God: for example, God must do Good, and must not do Evil by definition. Then, why Evil exist? Nominalist did not like to think about these entitities, and wanted an omnipotent God. That was the original meaning of the Occam razor. In the least Occam refer only to the idea that between a simple (short) and a complex (long) theory, having the same explanative power for the same range of phenomena, we will choose the shorter, and this most often (but allowing exception). It is the idea that the conceptually simple is better than the ad hoc complex construct. In particular we don't introduce as axiom what is a theorem. But the secularization of this principle produced the modern concept of materialist science, I am not sure. materialism violate Occam directly. It is bad metaphysics at the start. No one has ever given a way to test the existence of primary matter. separated from philosophy, via an empiricism science and the negation of the nous of the greek, the common sense and finally the negation of the possibility of objective understanding of anything but some phisical phenomena, and in general the negation of anything that can be not tested by experiments This is more like Aristotle + a bit of positivism. Positivism has been refuted, mainly. But most scientist still believe that Aristotelianism is scientific. They confuse the physical reality with the primary physical reality. Bruno 2013/3/19 Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru On 19.03.2013 18:37 Alberto G. Corona said the following: No. ... Then, to escape the Feyerabend trap, there is necessary additional criteria, such is the economy of axioms or the Occam Razor as criteria for theory acceptance. Fortunately it works, because it seems that we live in a simple, mathematical universe, which is amazing per se. I have listened recently to a lecture by Maarten Hoenen about the philosophy of Occam. Hence the question. What does it mean when you use Occam's name? Do you share any of his philosophical/theological positions? Or in your paragraph his name is just an empty token? Evgenii -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Mind is a quantum computer
On 19 Mar 2013, at 23:40, meekerdb wrote: On 3/19/2013 11:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 18:35, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 17:34, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: snip (see the preview post) As an example, I could point you to the Genome Wager between Lewis Wolpert and Rupert Sheldrake http://www.sheldrake.org/DC/controversies/genomewager.html Make your bet. In such a form this is closer to real science, that is, to a predictive statement. That bet is far too vague for me. Define abnormalities. I bet that in 2029, they will not been able to judge the case, and will continue to disagree. I can bet that full simulation of higher mammals brain, ---glial, neuronal cells + some bacteries, at the molecular level, close to the Heisenberg uncertainty level,--- will be done this or the next century. And I am not betting that we will be able to simulate the folding of all proteins, but we will use the shape we already know. Many steps of the chemical metabolism will be simulated very roughly, in the (eternal) beginning. It might be an ethical problem, of doing this on animals. They did not say yes to the doctor, but we will do it anyway, and comp will be a practice before people begin to think on the theological implications, I'm afraid. Most humans will choose the level available in their time. It is a field where our terrestrial grand-children will never cease to progress. I think it likely that the first applications will be providing soldiers with augmented senses and communication. Just as AI research has been funded by the military. Threats of war are often used to justify bypassing ethical considerations and rushing into ill considered projects. Sadly very plausible. Bruno Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A philosopher making the Duplication argument
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/What-is-the-Nature-of-Personal-Identity-Peter-van-Inwagen-/176 He starts off with a straightforward, materialist position. Then he reveals he is a Christian, believes in the resurrection of the body. How is this to be accomplished? Not by reproducing the dead person, since then there could be multiple copies, which he finds unacceptable. So God must do it using some occult method neither science nor philosophy can fathom. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On 20 Mar 2013, at 00:14, meekerdb wrote: On 3/19/2013 3:19 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I'll agree on your terms, but you have to make it explicit. My terms are: Super-Personal Intentional (Intuition) | | | unintentional (determinism) +-- unintentional (random) | | | Sub-Personal Intentional (Instinct) + = Free will = Personal Intentional (Voluntary Preference) The x axis = Impersonal I don't think these are definitions, they are arguments. A definition of intentional in the common sense does not normally include neither determined nor random. You should start with the normal definition then show that it could be neither determined nor random. It is a serious problem in a debate if someone surreptitiously puts their conclusion into the definition of the terms. As a diagram of different action it implies there are, in each quadrant, actions that are both Intentional and unintentional. As I said there's no point in arguing with someone who contradicts himself. I would say that is the method of the scientist. To make one people contradicting himself. Then the one contradicted will change its mind and learn something ... unless it is a literary philosopher, which will repeat again and again the contradictory statements. In that case, there is no point in continuing the discussion indeed. Bruno Brent So, do you believe that it possible that an entity which is deterministic from a third person perspective could be conscious, or do you believe that an entity which is deterministic from a third person perspective could not possibly be conscious? Yes, I think all deterministic looking systems represent sensory- motor participation of some kind, but not necessarily on the level that we assume. What we see as a cloud may have sensory-motor participation as droplets of water molecules, and as a wisp in the atmosphere as a whole, but not at all as a coherent cloud that we perceive. The cloud is a human scale emblem, not the native entity. The native awareness may reside in a much faster or much slower frequency range or sample rate than our own, so there is little hope of our relating to it personally. It's like Flatland only with perceptual relativity rather than quant dimension. I'm not completely sure but I think you've just said the brain could be deterministic and still be conscious. What looks deterministic is not conscious, but what is consciousness can have be represented publicly by activity which looks deterministic to us. Nothing is actually, cosmically deterministic, only habitual. If something conscious can look deterministic in every empirical test then that's as good as saying that the brain could be deterministic. A computer is deterministic in every empirical test but you could also say without fear of contradiction that it is not actually, cosmically deterministic, only habitual. This is also why computers are not conscious. The native entity is microelectronic or geological, not mechanical. The machine as a whole is again an emblem, not an organic, self-invested whole. I don't understand what you think the fundamental difference is between a brain, a cloud and a computer. A brain is part of an animal's body, which is the public representation of an animal's lifetime. It is composed of cells which are the public representation of microbiological experiences. A cloud is part of an atmosphere, which is the public representation of some scale of experience - could be geological, galactic, molecular...who knows. A computer is an assembly of objects being employed by a foreign agency for its own motives. The objects each have their own history and nature, so that they relate to each other on a very limited and lowest common denominator range of coherence. It is a room full or blind people who don't speak the same language, jostling each other around rhythmically because that's all they can do. The brain and body are a four billion year old highly integrated civilization with thousands of specific common histories. The cloud is more like farmland, passively cycling through organic phases. I don't see the relevance of history here. How would it make any difference to me if the atoms in my body were put there yesterday by a fantastically improbably whirlwind? I'd still feel basically the same, though I might have some issues if I learned of my true origin. -- You received this message because
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:44:02 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Correlation, even 100% correlation, does not equal causation. BULLSHIT! If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? Instead of two flowers, think of one flower that blooms at sunrise, and something else that happens at sunrise that is completely unlike a flower - like a particular song plays. If we apply this metaphorically to consciousness, then the flower and the music are two perpendicular, correlated expressions of the sunrise. Our subjective consciousness is the music, and it is part of a history of music going back to the dawn of time, and the flower is what the music looks like from the outside, and it has a separate history of plants going back to the dawn of botany or matter. Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:03:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: All I am saying is that you should start with something that is not already loaded with your conclusion, then reach your conclusion through argument. If I intend to do something I do it because I want to do it. On the face of it, I could want to do it and do it whether my brain is determined or random. You can make the case that this is impossible, but you have to actually make the case, not sneak it into the definition. I'm not trying to sneak anything into the definition. The case that I make is that while it could be locally true that a given person could theoretically want something intentionally even if their brain were completely driven by unintentional influences, it doesn't make sense that there could be any such thing as 'intentional' if the entire universe were driven exclusively by unintentional influences. It is like saying that a dog could think that it is a cat if cats exist, but if you define the universe as having no cats, then there can be no such thing as cat-anything. No thoughts about cats, no cat-like feelings, no pictures of cats, etc. In an unintentional universe, intention is inconceivable in every way. You say it doesn't make sense that intentional could come from unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to have an insight that other people don't have. Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could come from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you to that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop intentions? We are talking about third person observable determinism only. Who is? We are, because this is the normal sense of determinism and I thought this is how you have been using it all along. It's possible that you don't disagree with me at all if you were not actually talking about this. Third person always appears unintentional, but it is no more of a reality than the first person experience of intention. That's what I am saying about the symmetry of private and public perceptual relativity. The universe seems intentional on the inside, unintentional on the outside. From a cosmic perspective, they are two sides of the same coin. The brain could be third person observable deterministic and still conscious. The third person view always seems unintentional (deterministic-random). That goes along with it being a public body in space. You can't see intentions from third person. That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual sense? No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness which we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous change in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it would look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to those patterns. So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for experience. So their history is irrelevant: No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every atom. all the atoms in my body could be replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I would feel just the same. Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:39:40 PM UTC, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:44:02 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Correlation, even 100% correlation, does not equal causation. BULLSHIT! If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? Instead of two flowers, think of one flower that blooms at sunrise, and something else that happens at sunrise that is completely unlike a flower - like a particular song plays. If we apply this metaphorically to consciousness, then the flower and the music are two perpendicular, correlated expressions of the sunrise. Our subjective consciousness is the music, and it is part of a history of music going back to the dawn of time, and the flower is what the music looks like from the outside, and it has a separate history of plants going back to the dawn of botany or matter. Hello, sorry to want to get involved ;-) I always hear an audible click very shortly after I see the light switch on. There is no direct causation, but the two phenomena are both related via the action of my finger, which if I am technologically unsophisticated may not be obvious (think of cargo cults.) Are you suggesting it might be a similar mistake to say that neural events cause qualia? i.e. there could be an as yet hidden cause for both. Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A philosopher making the Duplication argument
On 20 Mar 2013, at 11:43, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/What-is-the-Nature-of-Personal-Identity-Peter-van-Inwagen-/176 He starts off with a straightforward, materialist position. Then he reveals he is a Christian, believes in the resurrection of the body. How is this to be accomplished? Not by reproducing the dead person, since then there could be multiple copies, which he finds unacceptable. So God must do it using some occult method neither science nor philosophy can fathom. Of course the Christians have an easy way to answer this: '---God's way are not human conceivable'. This of course leads to arbitrariness in the argument. That might be true, but still cannot be used in an argument. It reminds me the book by Ford(*), a priest who argued that the soul is not duplicable (which in comp can be said correct from the soul's point of view, and false from the third person point of view). From this he inferred that God will not endow something duplicable with a soul, and so he concluded ... that a woman can abort her pregnancy during the first three weeks of the embryogenesis, as during that time there are case of embryo duplications. That book is well written, and is good philosophy (with disputable premises, though). Bruno (*) FORD N. M., 1988, When did I begin?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? I don't know, I'd have to perform some experiment's to find out. Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens then we can say with great confidence that X causes Y because that's what the word causes means. Thus if when the flower blooms the sun always comes up AND when the flower does not bloom (such as when the experimenter ties the bloom closed) the Earth changes its rotational speed and the sun never comes above the horizon then we can say with great confidence that the flower caused the sun to rise because that's what the word causes means. We might not fully understand how or why botany and astronomy are related in this way but there would be no doubt that they are. However we DON'T get these experimental results in the real world so we say the flower does not cause the sun to rise. When the chemistry of the brain changes the conscious experience that the brain produces always changes, AND when the chemistry does not change the conscious experience never changes, thus we can say with great confidence that chemistry causes consciousness because that's what the word causes means. We might not fully understand how or why chemistry and consciousness are related in this way but there is no doubt that they are. We DO get these experimental results in the real world so we say that if matter is organized in certain ways it produces consciousness. Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Besides that Mrs Lincoln how did you like the play? I am unrelated to my sister except for our mutual relation to our parents, obviously. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On 20 Mar 2013, at 17:09, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? I don't know, I'd have to perform some experiment's to find out. Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens then we can say with great confidence that X causes Y because that's what the word causes means. Does this not imply that X causes Y if and only if Y causes X? In many-world terms it means that in all worlds where you have X you have Y, and in all worlds where you have Y you have X. In general we want X causes Y be different from Y causes X. More useful is saying just that when X happens Y always happens. In all worlds with X you have Y. X causes Y iff[] (X - Y), (and then there will be as many notions of causality that there are possible modal logics, and the causality appears to be a high level domain and context relative notion). Bruno Thus if when the flower blooms the sun always comes up AND when the flower does not bloom (such as when the experimenter ties the bloom closed) the Earth changes its rotational speed and the sun never comes above the horizon then we can say with great confidence that the flower caused the sun to rise because that's what the word causes means. We might not fully understand how or why botany and astronomy are related in this way but there would be no doubt that they are. However we DON'T get these experimental results in the real world so we say the flower does not cause the sun to rise. When the chemistry of the brain changes the conscious experience that the brain produces always changes, AND when the chemistry does not change the conscious experience never changes, thus we can say with great confidence that chemistry causes consciousness because that's what the word causes means. We might not fully understand how or why chemistry and consciousness are related in this way but there is no doubt that they are. We DO get these experimental results in the real world so we say that if matter is organized in certain ways it produces consciousness. Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Besides that Mrs Lincoln how did you like the play? I am unrelated to my sister except for our mutual relation to our parents, obviously. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:35:00 AM UTC-4, Tom Bayley wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:39:40 PM UTC, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:44:02 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: Correlation, even 100% correlation, does not equal causation. BULLSHIT! If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? Instead of two flowers, think of one flower that blooms at sunrise, and something else that happens at sunrise that is completely unlike a flower - like a particular song plays. If we apply this metaphorically to consciousness, then the flower and the music are two perpendicular, correlated expressions of the sunrise. Our subjective consciousness is the music, and it is part of a history of music going back to the dawn of time, and the flower is what the music looks like from the outside, and it has a separate history of plants going back to the dawn of botany or matter. Hello, sorry to want to get involved ;-) I always hear an audible click very shortly after I see the light switch on. There is no direct causation, but the two phenomena are both related via the action of my finger, which if I am technologically unsophisticated may not be obvious (think of cargo cults.) Are you suggesting it might be a similar mistake to say that neural events cause qualia? i.e. there could be an as yet hidden cause for both. I would say that cause is not even an appropriate term to address it. Cause is a function of temporal sequence, memory, and inference, all of which supervene on awareness to begin with. Neural events coincide with qualia simultaneously. There is no converting homunculus or Cartesian theater where any causal transduction takes place. The neurology is the public view, the qualia is the private view. The human qualities of our our consciousness can be said to be caused by human history going back to the beginning of Homo Sapiens, and that history correlates to the structures of the human nervous system, but there is no cause and effect relation - qualia is not generate by anything, everything already is nothing but qualia. Neurological events can of course have an effect on our personal *access* to qualia. Craig Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Tom Bayley tjp.bay...@gmail.com wrote: I always hear an audible click very shortly after I see the light switch on. There is no direct causation, Yes but how do you know that, how can you prove there is no causation? It's easy, just buy another light switch of the same manufacturer but don't connect it up to any wires. When you flip the switch it will make a identical audio click, if the lights don't go on then you know it's not the sound of the click that makes the lights go on. Alternately you could get some soundproofing material and put it around your existing switch, the one already hooked up to the wires; now when you flip the switch you hear nothing and if the lights still come on then you know the sound does not cause the lights coming on. We say that X causes Y If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens, and we know for a fact that when the chemistry of the brain changes consciousness always changes AND when the chemistry doesn't change consciousness never changes, thus the conclusion is obvious. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:09:24 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: If when X is changed there is ALWAYS a change in Y in the same direction, and when Y changes you can ALWAYS find a change in X that preceded it, then X causes Y. IT'S WHAT THE WORD CAUSES MEANS! Two flowers bloom at sunrise every day without fail. Does one cause the other to bloom? I don't know, I'd have to perform some experiment's to find out. I see that sophistry blooms and eclipses common sense as well. Do the flowers cause the sun to rise? If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens then we can say with great confidence that X causes Y because that's what the word causes means. I just showed you why that is not true. The purple flower always blooms when the orange flower blooms. Your great confidence is misplaced and your meaning for the word causes is inadequate. Thus if when the flower blooms the sun always comes up AND when the flower does not bloom (such as when the experimenter ties the bloom closed) the Earth changes its rotational speed and the sun never comes above the horizon then we can say with great confidence that the flower caused the sun to rise because that's what the word causes means. Then all we have to do is tie back all awareness in the universe and see if anything is still there - without using awareness to do it. We might not fully understand how or why botany and astronomy are related in this way but there would be no doubt that they are. However we DON'T get these experimental results in the real world so we say the flower does not cause the sun to rise. You are assuming that you know that the data you have access to and that you can control is all the data that there is. Certainly with consciousness that is not the case. You can't run a control against consciousness, since consciousness can never not be present. When the chemistry of the brain changes the conscious experience that the brain produces always changes, AND when the chemistry does not change the conscious experience never changes, thus we can say with great confidence that chemistry causes consciousness because that's what the word causes means. No, we can just as easily say that the conscious experience cause the brain to produce changes. Why do you arbitrarily privilege the chemistry? Cause has to occur before an effect. That is not the case with brain changes and awareness. We can decide to do something tomorrow and our brain will change tomorrow because of the cause we have set in motion today. We might not fully understand how or why chemistry and consciousness are related in this way but there is no doubt that they are. They are related by virtue of being synchronized and part of a larger whole. There is no way for any body to 'cause' an experience though. They can modulate access to experience, but experience cannot be caused any more than physics can be caused. We DO get these experimental results in the real world so we say that if matter is organized in certain ways it produces consciousness. That's because we are working backwards from physics rather than from both consciousness and physics to the common ground. It's a catastrophic mistake, as bad as religious fundamentalism makes. Two unrelated systems can both be related to a third, If they are both related to the same thing then they are not unrelated. They can be unrelated except for their mutual relation to the third thing though, obviously. Besides that Mrs Lincoln how did you like the play? I am unrelated to my sister except for our mutual relation to our parents, obviously. Well, no, if all that was between you and your sister was the relation to your parents, then you would have never seen or heard her in your entire life. If you had a secret sister that you just found out about then you would be related by your parents and by knowing about her existence. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens then we can say with great confidence that X causes Y because that's what the word causes means. Does this not imply that X causes Y if and only if Y causes X? The if-then operation as well as the very word causes implies a direction to time. If X then Y AND if not X then not Y then X causes Y. We could get into the question of why time seems to have a preferred direction if you like. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:37:54 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 Tom Bayley tjp.b...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: I always hear an audible click very shortly after I see the light switch on. There is no direct causation, Yes but how do you know that, how can you prove there is no causation? It's easy, just buy another light switch of the same manufacturer but don't connect it up to any wires. We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. When you flip the switch it will make a identical audio click, if the lights don't go on then you know it's not the sound of the click that makes the lights go on. Alternately you could get some soundproofing material and put it around your existing switch, the one already hooked up to the wires; now when you flip the switch you hear nothing and if the lights still come on then you know the sound does not cause the lights coming on. We say that X causes Y If when X happens Y always happens AND when X doesn't happen Y never happens, and we know for a fact that when the chemistry of the brain changes consciousness always changes AND when the chemistry doesn't change consciousness never changes, thus the conclusion is obvious. If a conclusion about consciousness seems obvious, then it is probably wrong. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:55:50 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? Books aren't neurological, right? There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's brain. Just like the light switch - you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still transmitted from one to the other. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? Books aren't neurological, right? Right, but they are certainly material. There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's brain. There is never a direct link between one mind and another, there is always a material middle man, usually many, such as photons reflected off paper in a book, or air vibrations from vocal cords, or in chemical changes in the nerves of fingers, or whatever. Just like the light switch There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still transmitted from one to the other. When you write books I don't always read them AND if I don't read your book your book still exists, so I can say with great confidence that my reading of your books does not cause your books to exist. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Mind is a quantum computer
On 3/20/2013 6:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 23:40, meekerdb wrote: I think it likely that the first applications will be providing soldiers with augmented senses and communication. Just as AI research has been funded by the military. Threats of war are often used to justify bypassing ethical considerations and rushing into ill considered projects. Sadly very plausible. I would claim that it is not only implausible but inevitable given the current reluctance in the West to commit humans to the in person task to the destruction of its enemies. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex *as a whole*. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific *part* of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. Craig -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:44:23 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? Books aren't neurological, right? Right, but they are certainly material. They don't conduct potassium ions from the brain though. There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's brain. There is never a direct link between one mind and another, there is always a material middle man, usually many, such as photons reflected off paper in a book, or air vibrations from vocal cords, or in chemical changes in the nerves of fingers, or whatever. Then by your reasoning, since there is *always* a material middle man, then the middle man must cause consciousness of the book rather than neurochemistry. Just like the light switch There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. Now apply that to the brain. Chemical changes in the neurons cause...nothing but more chemical changes in cells. From our point of view however, our intention to stand up causes our body to stand up. you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still transmitted from one to the other. When you write books I don't always read them AND if I don't read your book your book still exists, so I can say with great confidence that my reading of your books does not cause your books to exist. But all books that are read cause a similar awareness. Just like a neurotransmitter might cause a similar awareness. Craig John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 3/20/2013 2:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 19.03.2013 22:25 Alberto G. Corona said the following: Since I´m more in the side of Aquinas/Aristotle -or even Plato sometimes- I don not share the Occam views.Occam was a nominalist, that is rejected the existence of universals, he did not like to think in terms universals, because if universals exist, for example Truth, Love and Peace then they impose some obligations to God: for example, God must do Good, and must not do Evil by definition. Then, why Evil exist? Nominalist did not like to think about these entitities, and wanted an omnipotent God. That was the original meaning of the Occam razor. But the secularization of this principle produced the modern concept of materialist science, separated from philosophy, via an empiricism science and the negation of the nous of the greek, the common sense and finally the negation of the possibility of objective understanding of anything but some phisical phenomena, and in general the negation of anything that can be not tested by experiments I see a bit of irony in the fact that people who believe in physical reality often call to a principle developed by Occam. What's the irony? Occam is about our theories and models. One generally believes in some reality; that why you develop theories about it and try to model it. I'm not sure what 'physical' adds to 'reality'? Brent A small note. At some time in the middle ages nominalist and realist philosophy departments co-existed in the same University. A lovely fact from the dark middle ages. Evgenii -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 20.03.2013 20:18 meekerdb said the following: On 3/20/2013 2:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 19.03.2013 22:25 Alberto G. Corona said the following: ... I see a bit of irony in the fact that people who believe in physical reality often call to a principle developed by Occam. What's the irony? Occam is about our theories and models. One generally believes in some reality; that why you develop theories about it and try to model it. I'm not sure what 'physical' adds to 'reality'? Let us take an atom as an example (you may replace it by an elementary particle or a superstring, your choice). Physicists using such a concept usually believe that the atom does exist, aren't they? In this sense, physicists are realists. At the Occam's time, realists were people who have believed that universals exist. Occam has employed his razor to strip universals from the reality and his position has led to nominalism. That is, universals are just creation of the mind and it does not make sense to search for them in the real world. Presumably his positions about atoms were the same, an atom is just a concept created by the mind - hence it does not make sense to search for it in reality. Here is the irony. Evgenii -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Mind is a quantum computer
On 3/20/2013 10:59 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 23:40, meekerdb wrote: I think it likely that the first applications will be providing soldiers with augmented senses and communication. Just as AI research has been funded by the military. Threats of war are often used to justify bypassing ethical considerations and rushing into ill considered projects. Sadly very plausible. I would claim that it is not only implausible but inevitable given the current reluctance in the West to commit humans to the in person task to the destruction of its enemies. You write 'current reluctance' as though it were different in the past and might change in the future. The obvious reason for this reluctance is that if you commit humans to the task then they are more exposed to risk. Only an irrational society would risk it's members unnecessarily. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A philosopher making the Duplication argument
On 3/20/2013 6:43 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/What-is-the-Nature-of-Personal-Identity-Peter-van-Inwagen-/176 He starts off with a straightforward, materialist position. Then he reveals he is a Christian, believes in the resurrection of the body. How is this to be accomplished? Not by reproducing the dead person, since then there could be multiple copies, which he finds unacceptable. So God must do it using some occult method neither science nor philosophy can fathom. Dear Stathis, I agree with your critisms of what Peter van Inwagen is saying. This is mostly because I find the concept of an entity, God', that has the capacities (attributed by implication) in the discussion to be inconsistent, for example it is not possible for an entity that does not have a continuous extension of itself in a realm to have any causal efficacy (power to cause a change in the state of affairs) on that realm. My motivation of posting a link to this video is that I believe that Prof. van Inwagen's argument is qualitatively identical to Bruno's discussion of Platonic Numbers. If Bruno's argument is coherent (not self-contradictory) then there must be some finite physical way to implement it, for example: Does comp explain how computer programs and physical stuff, such as the laptop of desktop computer that you are using to read this post and compose a reply and sent it out, etc., are related such that actions 'in the software' and actions of the physical stuff are correlated with each other? I believe that comp should be capable of explaining this relation. I have been trying to explain how Pratt's theory should that the relation between the two (software and hardware) is one of mutual constraint between dual aspects, but I have not stated such explicitly. I wanted to see if the members of this list could see the implication for themselves without my having to point this out... I see this as a test of Pratt's idea. So far I have failed. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex *as a whole*. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific *part* of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. Craig Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 3/20/2013 4:01 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 20.03.2013 20:18 meekerdb said the following: On 3/20/2013 2:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 19.03.2013 22:25 Alberto G. Corona said the following: ... I see a bit of irony in the fact that people who believe in physical reality often call to a principle developed by Occam. What's the irony? Occam is about our theories and models. One generally believes in some reality; that why you develop theories about it and try to model it. I'm not sure what 'physical' adds to 'reality'? Let us take an atom as an example (you may replace it by an elementary particle or a superstring, your choice). Physicists using such a concept usually believe that the atom does exist, aren't they? In this sense, physicists are realists. At the Occam's time, realists were people who have believed that universals exist. Occam has employed his razor to strip universals from the reality and his position has led to nominalism. That is, universals are just creation of the mind and it does not make sense to search for them in the real world. Presumably his positions about atoms were the same, an atom is just a concept created by the mind - hence it does not make sense to search for it in reality. Here is the irony. Evgenii Dear Evgenii, I agree! What is almost worse is that immaterialism makes the very idea that a 'reality' has any existence outside one the mind of the individual. This makes escape from solipsism impossible. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Mind is a quantum computer
On 3/20/2013 4:04 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 10:59 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 23:40, meekerdb wrote: I think it likely that the first applications will be providing soldiers with augmented senses and communication. Just as AI research has been funded by the military. Threats of war are often used to justify bypassing ethical considerations and rushing into ill considered projects. Sadly very plausible. I would claim that it is not only implausible but inevitable given the current reluctance in the West to commit humans to the in person task to the destruction of its enemies. You write 'current reluctance' as though it were different in the past and might change in the future. The obvious reason for this reluctance is that if you commit humans to the task then they are more exposed to risk. Only an irrational society would risk it's members unnecessarily. Brent Hi Brent, I am trying to be optimistic. You make a good point as it shows the irrationality of current policies. My argument is that the severance of the immediate physical conenction between actions and actors leads inevitably to objectification of 'the enemy' and a general reduction in the reluctance to take extreme measure against them. Warfare become indistinguishable from playing a FPS game. We see a very real example of this in the currect US policy of Drone usage. Are we training our children to be 'remote control killers' by allowing them to play FPS games? What happens when we implement full synthetic sapience in drones? -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 4:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. Craig Hi Craig, What difference does that make? -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: True?
On 3/20/2013 1:01 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 20.03.2013 20:18 meekerdb said the following: On 3/20/2013 2:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 19.03.2013 22:25 Alberto G. Corona said the following: ... I see a bit of irony in the fact that people who believe in physical reality often call to a principle developed by Occam. What's the irony? Occam is about our theories and models. One generally believes in some reality; that why you develop theories about it and try to model it. I'm not sure what 'physical' adds to 'reality'? Let us take an atom as an example (you may replace it by an elementary particle or a superstring, your choice). Physicists using such a concept usually believe that the atom does exist, aren't they? In this sense, physicists are realists. At the Occam's time, realists were people who have believed that universals exist. Occam has employed his razor to strip universals from the reality and his position has led to nominalism. That is, universals are just creation of the mind and it does not make sense to search for them in the real world. Presumably his positions about atoms were the same, an atom is just a concept created by the mind - hence it does not make sense to search for it in reality. Here is the irony. That's a false dichotomy. You are assuming that because something, like an atom, is an element of a model which was invented to describe reality that it is *just* a concept. No, it is a concept which is part of very successful model and which we therefore have reason to believe captures some aspect of reality. It makes perfect sense to search for it in the sense of test the predictions of the model to see if they agree with observation. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 1:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. There is nothing in the cited article to show that particular information is never stored in some area. If you looked at a computer you would also see electrical activity that was not local and constantly moved from one part to another. And if it were perceiving its surroundings, as a Mars rover might, to evaluate its next move it would obviously have to process data stored in memory as well as sensor information. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:30:58 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex *as a whole*. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific *part* of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. Craig Hi Craig, What difference does that make? Hi Stephen, The difference it makes to me that it is yet another example that the mechanistic of view that the brain is increasingly unworkable, and that top down organic qualities of consciousness are increasingly supported. The brain is not a collection of neurons so much as neurons are fragments of a nervous system. Craig -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 6:11:18 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 1:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex *as a whole*. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific *part* of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. There is nothing in the cited article to show that particular information is never stored in some area. Except for the part where they say *When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific part of our brain*.. You'll have to take it up with the people who concluded that in their study if you disagree. If you looked at a computer you would also see electrical activity that was not local and constantly moved from one part to another. No, not like this. What the brain does would be as if you plugged in a flash drive and waves propagated the contents of the flash drive throughout the RAM, HD, and CPU, rolling back and forth mingled in with all of the other processes going on. And if it were perceiving its surroundings, as a Mars rover might, to evaluate its next move it would obviously have to process data stored in memory as well as sensor information. It would be hard for it to process data stored in memory if it was circulating around the entire system, mixed with everything else. As time goes on, I suspect that we will see more and more of these kinds of studies. The brain does have mechanisms, but it is not a machine. It does computer, but it is not just a computer. Craig Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Mind is a quantum computer
On 3/20/2013 2:19 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:04 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 10:59 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 19 Mar 2013, at 23:40, meekerdb wrote: I think it likely that the first applications will be providing soldiers with augmented senses and communication. Just as AI research has been funded by the military. Threats of war are often used to justify bypassing ethical considerations and rushing into ill considered projects. Sadly very plausible. I would claim that it is not only implausible but inevitable given the current reluctance in the West to commit humans to the in person task to the destruction of its enemies. You write 'current reluctance' as though it were different in the past and might change in the future. The obvious reason for this reluctance is that if you commit humans to the task then they are more exposed to risk. Only an irrational society would risk it's members unnecessarily. Brent Hi Brent, I am trying to be optimistic. You make a good point as it shows the irrationality of current policies. If you mean current use of armed drones, my point is that it's perfectly rational. My argument is that the severance of the immediate physical conenction between actions and actors leads inevitably to objectification of 'the enemy' War leads inevitably to the objectification of the enemy. Not killing your enemy up close and personal may allow better preservation of empathy. and a general reduction in the reluctance to take extreme measure against them. Warfare become indistinguishable from playing a FPS game. But is that bad or good. The rate of suicides among Marines who've served in the Iraq/Afghanistan war is about one per day. I'll bet it's essentially zero among drone operators. We see a very real example of this in the currect US policy of Drone usage. Are we training our children to be 'remote control killers' by allowing them to play FPS games? What happens when we implement full synthetic sapience in drones? Depends on whether they figure out how to reproduce. Brent To initiate a war of aggression, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. --- Nuremberg Tribunal rejecting German arguments of the necessity for pre-emptive attacks against its neighbors -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. Brent - Hi, Let me bounce an idea of your statement here. Is there a constraint on the software that can run on a computer related to the functions that those transistors and magnetic domains can implement? Is this not a form of interaction between hardware and software? Sure, a program to calculate f(x) has to be compiled differently depending on the computer. Some early computers even used trinary instead of binary. But assuming it's general purpose computer then it is always possible to translate a program from one computer to another so that they calculate the same function (except for possible space limits). Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 3:31 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 6:11:18 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 1:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. There is nothing in the cited article to show that particular information is never stored in some area. Except for the part where they say *When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain*.. That refers to *when* we are perceiving it. That doesn't show that the information gained from that perception is not stored in some area in memory. Notice they refer to when the subject is given a task, implying that not all information is waving around all the time. You'll have to take it up with the people who concluded that in their study if you disagree. If you looked at a computer you would also see electrical activity that was not local and constantly moved from one part to another. No, not like this. What the brain does would be as if you plugged in a flash drive and waves propagated the contents of the flash drive throughout the RAM, HD, and CPU, rolling back and forth mingled in with all of the other processes going on. Actually that's exactly what my computer would do if I plugged in a thumb drive with a big complex program, e.g. a multi-player simulation game. And if it were perceiving its surroundings, as a Mars rover might, to evaluate its next move it would obviously have to process data stored in memory as well as sensor information. It would be hard for it to process data stored in memory if it was circulating around the entire system, mixed with everything else. On the contrary it can only process data in memory by copying it to registers and the CPU(s). And if it's a multi-tasking OS it will be mixed time-wise with everything else. As time goes on, I suspect that we will see more and more of these kinds of studies. The brain does have mechanisms, but it is not a machine. It does computer, but it is not just a computer. And I suspect you will still be saying that when Bruno's daughter marries a robot. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:51 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: You say it doesn't make sense that intentional could come from unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to have an insight that other people don't have. Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could come from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you to that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop intentions? How could something non-living lead to something living? How could something non-computational could lead to something computational? That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual sense? No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness which we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous change in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it would look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to those patterns. Please show one piece of evidence demonstrating that a physical process occurs in the brain that cannot be completely explained as caused by another physical process. Note that it isn't good enough to point to complex behaviour and say in there somewhere. So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for experience. So their history is irrelevant: No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every atom. Could you explain this? all the atoms in my body could be replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I would feel just the same. Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. At least you now agree that the atoms in my body could be replaced and I would feel the same. What if the atoms were replaced by a person: would I still have free will or would I, as you claim for a computer, only have the will of the programmer? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:44:23 PM UTC, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? Books aren't neurological, right? Right, but they are certainly material. There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's brain. There is never a direct link between one mind and another, there is always a material middle man, usually many, such as photons reflected off paper in a book, or air vibrations from vocal cords, or in chemical changes in the nerves of fingers, or whatever. Just like the light switch There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still transmitted from one to the other. When you write books I don't always read them AND if I don't read your book your book still exists, so I can say with great confidence that my reading of your books does not cause your books to exist. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On 3/20/2013 4:51 PM, Tom Bayley wrote: There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? I don't think you have considered carefully enough explanations that you do think are plausible: Did Newton explain gravity? Did Gell-Mann explain quarks. Is life explained by chemistry? An explanation is satisfying when we can used it to predict or manipulate. When we can build robots that act just like people and report their qualia to us - then we'll think we've explained qualia, and questions like Yes, but what is it really? will seem anachronistic. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 6:37 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. Brent - Hi, Let me bounce an idea of your statement here. Is there a constraint on the software that can run on a computer related to the functions that those transistors and magnetic domains can implement? Is this not a form of interaction between hardware and software? Sure, a program to calculate f(x) has to be compiled differently depending on the computer. Some early computers even used trinary instead of binary. But assuming it's general purpose computer then it is always possible to translate a program from one computer to another so that they calculate the same function (except for possible space limits). Brent OK, but let's zoom in a bit more on this. How much can the translation (from one program to another so that they can calculate the same (identity is assumed here!) function) exactly cancel out the constraint that one physical machine places on logical functions that could run on it? Surely we can see that is we consider an infinite number of physical machines to cover the variation of physical systems we can show that the computation of the function becomes independent of physics, but that is an 'in principle' proof of the Universality of computations. Bruno rightly points out that this Universality can be used to argue that computer programs have nothing at all to do with the physical world and he uses that argument to good effect. I don't wish to cancell out the physical worlds. I am asking a different question. How much does a given physical computer constrain the class of all possible computer programs? Are physical computers truly universal Turing Machines? No! They do not have infinite tape, not precise read/write heads. They are subject to noise and error. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 7:51:50 PM UTC-4, Tom Bayley wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:44:23 PM UTC, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 , Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: We can write books and other people can read them, so that must prove that consciousness is not caused by neurochemistry. What the hell??? Books aren't neurological, right? Right, but they are certainly material. There is no direct link between the author's brain and the reader's brain. There is never a direct link between one mind and another, there is always a material middle man, usually many, such as photons reflected off paper in a book, or air vibrations from vocal cords, or in chemical changes in the nerves of fingers, or whatever. Just like the light switch There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) Exactly. (singular of qualia is quale, btw. pronounced 'quall'). itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? That's why the whole picture needs to be turned upside down. Begin with the certainty that there is no complicated step, no simple step, no step at all because no set of steps is any better than magic. There is clearly no functional justification for qualia, no matter how you try to squirm out of it, no programmer has every felt the need to create some universe of feelings and flavors and thoughts to act as a nebulous, epiphenomenal medium between two sets of precise data. All descriptions are private - only some are more basic than others. The descriptions which are beneath the privacy threshold of a given experience are said to be public or 'physical'. Craig you remove any connection between neurons, yet the words of one brain (or brain activity ostensibly associated with the words) are still transmitted from one to the other. When you write books I don't always read them AND if I don't read your book your book still exists, so I can say with great confidence that my reading of your books does not cause your books to exist. John K Clark -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 8:26:04 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:51 PM, Tom Bayley wrote: There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? I don't think you have considered carefully enough explanations that you do think are plausible: Did Newton explain gravity? Did Gell-Mann explain quarks. Is life explained by chemistry? An explanation is satisfying when we can used it to predict or manipulate. When we can build robots that act just like people and report their qualia to us - then we'll think we've explained qualia, and questions like Yes, but what is it really? will seem anachronistic. That isn't a rebuttal to the promissory functionalism which Tom and I point out. You are only saying that you don't care about our objections, because of your faith in the future of your particular view of science. What reason do you offer to share your optimism, completely blind as it is? What explanations do you accuse Tom of not considering carefully enough? Craig Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 6:52:20 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:20 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 5:30:58 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:07:10 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex *as a whole*. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific *part* of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. But it is eventually stored in particular addressed memory locations. It is not part of a continuous wave of activity of the entire computer. Craig Hi Craig, What difference does that make? Hi Stephen, The difference it makes to me that it is yet another example that the mechanistic of view that the brain is increasingly unworkable, and that top down organic qualities of consciousness are increasingly supported. The brain is not a collection of neurons so much as neurons are fragments of a nervous system. Hi Craig, Yes, the cogwork model of the world and its constituent subsets is a rotting corpse, but there is still not a wide consensus on an alternative. What we are seeing is a knock-down drag out fight for the next paradigm. I agree, and I don't pretend to have a handle on the specifics of the next paradigm in neuroscience, but I think we have some of the broad strokes. Still, on this list, the rotting corpse is still strolling around... :) Craig -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 6:32 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:37 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. Brent - Hi, Let me bounce an idea of your statement here. Is there a constraint on the software that can run on a computer related to the functions that those transistors and magnetic domains can implement? Is this not a form of interaction between hardware and software? Sure, a program to calculate f(x) has to be compiled differently depending on the computer. Some early computers even used trinary instead of binary. But assuming it's general purpose computer then it is always possible to translate a program from one computer to another so that they calculate the same function (except for possible space limits). Brent OK, but let's zoom in a bit more on this. How much can the translation (from one program to another so that they can calculate the same (identity is assumed here!) function) exactly cancel out the constraint that one physical machine places on logical functions that could run on it? Surely we can see that is we consider an infinite number of physical machines to cover the variation of physical systems we can show that the computation of the function becomes independent of physics, but that is an 'in principle' proof of the Universality of computations. Bruno rightly points out that this Universality can be used to argue that computer programs have nothing at all to do with the physical world and he uses that argument to good effect. I don't wish to cancell out the physical worlds. I am asking a different question. How much does a given physical computer constrain the class of all possible computer programs? Are physical computers truly universal Turing Machines? No! They do not have infinite tape, not precise read/write heads. They are subject to noise and error. I agree, but the same constraints would also apply to brains. Brent -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: 'Brain Waves' Challenge Area-Specific View of Brain Activity
On 3/20/2013 9:41 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:32 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:37 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 2:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 3/20/2013 11:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115111.htm We are examining the activity in the cerebral cortex /as a whole/. The brain is a non-stop, always-active system. When we perceive something, the information does not end up in a specific /part/ of our brain. Rather, it is added to the brain's existing activity. If we measure the electrochemical activity of the whole cortex, we find wave-like patterns. This shows that brain activity is not local but rather that activity constantly moves from one part of the brain to another. Not looking very charitable to the bottom-up, neuron machine view. The same description would apply to a computer. Information moves around and it is distributed over many transistors and magnetic domains. Brent - Hi, Let me bounce an idea of your statement here. Is there a constraint on the software that can run on a computer related to the functions that those transistors and magnetic domains can implement? Is this not a form of interaction between hardware and software? Sure, a program to calculate f(x) has to be compiled differently depending on the computer. Some early computers even used trinary instead of binary. But assuming it's general purpose computer then it is always possible to translate a program from one computer to another so that they calculate the same function (except for possible space limits). Brent OK, but let's zoom in a bit more on this. How much can the translation (from one program to another so that they can calculate the same (identity is assumed here!) function) exactly cancel out the constraint that one physical machine places on logical functions that could run on it? Surely we can see that is we consider an infinite number of physical machines to cover the variation of physical systems we can show that the computation of the function becomes independent of physics, but that is an 'in principle' proof of the Universality of computations. Bruno rightly points out that this Universality can be used to argue that computer programs have nothing at all to do with the physical world and he uses that argument to good effect. I don't wish to cancell out the physical worlds. I am asking a different question. How much does a given physical computer constrain the class of all possible computer programs? Are physical computers truly universal Turing Machines? No! They do not have infinite tape, not precise read/write heads. They are subject to noise and error. I agree, but the same constraints would also apply to brains. YES!! So, can we discuss this? -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 7:32:11 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:51 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You say it doesn't make sense that intentional could come from unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to have an insight that other people don't have. Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could come from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you to that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop intentions? How could something non-living lead to something living? Non-living and living are just different qualities of experience. Living systems are nested non-living systems, which gives rise to mortality and condenses an eternal perceptual frame into a more qualitatively saturated temporary perceptual frame. How could something non-computational could lead to something computational? Easily. You have a bunch of junk in your closet, so you organize it. That is what computation is. A system for organizing experience. That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual sense? No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness which we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous change in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it would look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to those patterns. Please show one piece of evidence demonstrating that a physical process occurs in the brain that cannot be completely explained as caused by another physical process. Note that it isn't good enough to point to complex behaviour and say in there somewhere. Laughing at a joke demonstrates that semantic content causes physical responses. Any activity in the brain which relates to anything in the world or the mind has nothing to do with neurochemistry. Physical processes can induce experiences, but only because experiences are a priori part of the cosmos. There is nothing about the physical processes which you recognize which could possibly relate laughter to a joke, or anger to an injustice, etc. There is no way for your physics of the brain to represent anything except the brain. So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for experience. So their history is irrelevant: No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every atom. Could you explain this? It means that it isn't enough that hydrogen is shaped like we think hydrogen should be shaped, or that it reacts the way we think that it should react. What matters is that it knows how to be hydrogen - that it has a continuous history dating back to the creation of hydrogen. The atom is just one presentation of hydrogen, the deeper reality is a collection of capacities to interact with the universe - possibly to generate spacetime. all the atoms in my body could be replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I would feel just the same. Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. At least you now agree that the atoms in my body could be replaced and I would feel the same. What if the atoms were replaced by a person: would I still have free will or would I, as you claim for a computer, only have the will of the programmer? What do you mean by replacing the atoms with a person? Like the China Brain? Quintillions of human beings each pretending to act like hydrogen? That wouldn't work, although you might be able to model chemistry that way. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: G.K. Chesterton on Materialism
On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 9:44:38 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 6:37 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 8:26:04 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 3/20/2013 4:51 PM, Tom Bayley wrote: There is not a direct link between the light switch and the light going on either, the closing of the light switch just caused a current to flow in the wire, the current flow didn't cause the light either it just caused the filament in the light bulb to get hot, it was the hot electrons in the filament that caused the electromagnetic waves to be produced. I think explanations are important to prove causation ;-) and it's interesting that you can break this example down. Each explanatory step is materially plausible (it has a satisfactory public explanation), right up to the perception of the light. But the qualia (qualium?) itself doesn't have a public description, and there isn't any sense of satisfaction that it has been explained. It's tempting to believe that's because it's a complicated step, but there seems no obvious way to reduce it. So as far as I can see it is still only an assumption, with the hope/faith that some plausible explanation will one day be found. I'm not sure there are many other widely-held scientific explanations like this one? I don't think you have considered carefully enough explanations that you do think are plausible: Did Newton explain gravity? Did Gell-Mann explain quarks. Is life explained by chemistry? An explanation is satisfying when we can used it to predict or manipulate. When we can build robots that act just like people and report their qualia to us - then we'll think we've explained qualia, and questions like Yes, but what is it really? will seem anachronistic. That isn't a rebuttal to the promissory functionalism which Tom and I point out. You are only saying that you don't care about our objections, because of your faith in the future of your particular view of science. What reason do you offer to share your optimism, completely blind as it is? What explanations do you accuse Tom of not considering carefully enough? It's not just my view. It was Newton's too which he expressed as Hypothesi non fingo. And it's not optimism. It's a recognition of the limits of explanation. I listed three for consideration. When we can build robots that act just like people and report their qualia to us - then we'll think we've explained qualia, and questions like Yes, but what is it really? will seem anachronistic That is not a statement of modesty, it is an empty brag. Yours is 'Hypothesi non dubium'. In my opinion, these assumptions will seem anachronistic, like the flying cars and vast space colonies of 20th century Sci-Fi. Craig Bret -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: At least you now agree that the atoms in my body could be replaced and I would feel the same. What if the atoms were replaced by a person: would I still have free will or would I, as you claim for a computer, only have the will of the programmer? What do you mean by replacing the atoms with a person? Like the China Brain? Quintillions of human beings each pretending to act like hydrogen? That wouldn't work, although you might be able to model chemistry that way. No, I meant if a person did the replacing of the atoms in my body. I would then have been created and programmed by that person. Would I still have free will? Would I think I had free will? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Fwd: Re: [FOM] From theorems of infinity to axioms of infinity
Hi Folks, I apologize for crossforwarding a post, but this one is too good to not... Original Message Subject:Re: [FOM] From theorems of infinity to axioms of infinity Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:23:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Timothy Y. Chow tc...@alum.mit.edu Reply-To: tc...@alum.mit.edu, Foundations of Mathematics f...@cs.nyu.edu To: f...@cs.nyu.edu I've found the responses to Michael Detlefsen's original question very interesting and educational. Before the thread diverges completely onto a different track, though, I'd like to comment on one issue that Detlefsen implicitly raised in his original post. Michael Detlefsen mdetl...@nd.edu wrote: Problem: Dedekind's proof of the assertion of the existence of an infinite collection is flawed, perhaps fatally so. Solution: Make the proposition purportedly proved by Dedekind's flawed proof an axiom! I'm guessing I'm not the only one who finds this a little funny, and a little bewildering. This seems funny *if* you equate the *desire to provide a proof* for something with *a worry that it might be proved false*. That is, if you think that the reason Russell and others felt an urge to provide proofs for the axiom of infinity was that they *doubted its truth* and therefore did not want to accept it without proof, then it is certainly bewildering to observe them accepting the statement as an axiom when the proofs fell through, rather than treating the statement as an open question. But I think that the desire to provide a proof isn't always motivated by doubt, and the axiom of infinity is just an example of that. For another example, consider Euclid's parallel postulate. For a long time, many people struggled to prove it from the other axioms. None of them ever doubted that it was true. They just had a strong intuition that it should follow from the other axioms and that postulating it separately was redundant and inelegant. Similarly, Russell never doubted the axiom of infinity, but just had a strong intuition that it was redundant to postulate it separately. When this intuition proved to be wrong, it should not be bewildering to find him effectively shrugging his shoulders and saying, Oh well, I guess we'll just have to postulate it separately after all. The difference between wanting proof and having doubt can be seen even in the context of famous conjectures, e.g., P != NP or the Riemann hypothesis. Although there is not quite enough consensus about these statements for them to achieve axiomatic status, in practice they are treated much like axioms, in that people feel free to assume them whenever they need to. There's still an intense desire to find proofs for them, even among people who are totally convinced that the statements are true. Tim ___ FOM mailing list f...@cs.nyu.edu http://www.cs.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/fom -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
