Re: Searles' Fundamental Error

[Stathis Papaioannou]

You've said this before, although you haven't come out and actually said
there is no such thing as first person experience. The only way I can think
of to use third person data to gain first person knowledge, aside from using
it to guess how close it is to your own first person experience, is to
actually emulate the mind in question using your own brain, effectively
joining the two minds so that they can directly share their experiences.
Maybe a being many times more intelligent than we are would be able to do
just this, and know true empathy.

Stathis Papaioannou

On 2/23/07, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Stathis: 'I can meaningfully talk about "seeing red" to a blind
> person who has no idea what the experience is like ... '
>
> MP: OK, but can he or she meaningfully understand you?
>
>
> They can understand many things about sight without actually
> understanding what it is like to have it, just as we can understand many
> things about a bat's sonar, in many ways much more than the bat
> understands. But that part of vision or bat sonar which cannot be
> understood unless the observer has it himself, no matter how good the
> collected empirical data, is what is meant by first person experience.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou

I'm not convinced that there is any such first person experience.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Searles' Fundamental Error

[Brent Meeker]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2/22/07, *Mark Peaty* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
...
> The idea of the Turing test is that "an algorithmic implementation of 
> rules" will give the required "degree of spontaneous creativity". If you 
> don't believe in this, then you don't even believe in weak AI, let alone 
> strong AI or computationalism. That is not a common position among 
> scientists and philosophers of mind; even John - anticomputationalism - 
> Searle agrees that the laws of physics necessitate that 
> human-indistinguishable AI should be theoretically possible. Roger 
> Penrose, and Colin, are very much in the minority.
> 
> Stathis: 'I can meaningfully talk about "seeing red" to a blind
> person who has no idea what the experience is like ... '
> 
> MP: OK, but can he or she meaningfully understand you?
> 
> 
> They can understand many things about sight without actually 
> understanding what it is like to have it, just as we can understand many 
> things about a bat's sonar, in many ways much more than the bat 
> understands. But that part of vision or bat sonar which cannot be 
> understood unless the observer has it himself, no matter how good the 
> collected empirical data, is what is meant by first person experience.
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou

I'm not convinced that there is any such first person experience.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Searles' Fundamental Error

[Brent Meeker]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2/22/07, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
>  > A patient says that his leg is paralysed, behaves as if his leg is
>  > paralysed, but the clinical signs and investigations are not
> consistent
>  > with a paralysed leg. The diagnosis of hysterical paralysis is
> made. A
>  > patient claims to hear voices of people nobody else sees, responds to
>  > the voices as if they are there, but the clinical signs and
> response to
>  > antipsychotic treatment is not consistent with the auditory
>  > hallucinations experienced by peopel with psychotic illness. The
>  > diagnosis of hysterical hallucinations is made: that is, they aren't
>  > hearing voices that aren't there, they only *think* they're hearing
>  > voices that aren't there.
> 
> How is this diagnosis made?  It sounds like an impossible
> distinction - a scientific resolution of the zombie question.
> 
> 
> The diagnosis of "pseudohallucinations" is made if they don't have the 
> characteristics typical of hallucinations in schizophrenia - that is, 
> there are third person observable differences. Without these differences 
> it would be impossible to tell and, since psychiatry at least aspires to 
> be an empirical science, the possibility is generally ignored. However, 
> you can have delusions about anything, so it should be at least 
> theoretically possible to have a delusion that you are having a 
> perception. Patients frequently report delusional memories of 
> perceptions: that is, they insist that they had a conversation or 
> experience that they could not even have hallucinated, because they were 
> under observation at the time of the alleged incident. Suppose this 
> process is happening "live", so that they believe they are hearing a 
> voice and responding as if they are hearing a voice even though they are 
> not even hallucinating such a thing. We might speculate that the actual 
> experience would surely feel different to the mere belief that they are 
> having the experience, but if they could notice such a difference they 
> would not be deluded.
> 
> Stathis Papaioannou

This comports with the idea that consciousness is a process of making up a 
narrative history of what the brain's various functional modules considered 
most important at a given time in order to commit it to memory.  I first 
learned of this theory from John McCarthy's discussion of how to make a 
conscious robot - but I don't know that he originated it.  If it is correct 
then a malfunction of the brain might cause a narrative to be confabulated that 
had nothing to do with perception - even perceptions that were acted on 
appropriately.

Brent Meeker

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Re: The Meaning of Life

[Tom Caylor]

On Feb 20, 3:47 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Tom Caylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Ultimate meaning is analogous to axioms or arithmetic truth (e.g. 42
> > is not prime).  In fact the famous quote of Kronecker "God created the
> > integers" makes this point.  I think Bruno takes arithmetic truth as
> > his ultimate source of meaning.  If you ask the same positivist
> > questions of arithmetic truth, you also have the same problem.  The
> > problem lies in the positivist view that there can be no given truth.
>
> > Tom
>
> This is indeed related to the ontological argument, first formulated by
> Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century: We say that God is a being than
> which nothing more perfect can be imagined. If God did not exist, then we
> can imagine an entity just like God, but with the additional attribute of
> existence - which is absurd, because we would then be imagining something
> more perfect than that than which nothing more perfect can be imagined.
> Therefore, God the most perfect being imaginable must necessarily have
> existence as one of his attributes. Versions of the argument from first
> cause and the argument from design also reduce to the ontological argument,
> answering the question "who made God?" with the assertion that God exists
> necessarily, with no need for the creator/designer (or, you might add,
> external source of meaning) that the merely contingents things in the
> universe need.
>
> The problem with defining God in this way as something which necessarily
> exists is that you can use the same trick to conjure up anything you like:
> an "existent pink elephant" can't be non-existent any more than a bachelor
> can be married. This objection pales a little if we admit that imagined
> existence (i.e Platonia and the conscious computations therein) is all the
> existence there is, but I am not sure that you would be happy with this
> explanation as despite the Kronecker quote (which I always understood as
> rhetorical anyway) mathematical truths are beyond even God's power to
> change.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou

My point in quoting Kronecker was to simply to allude to the fact that
the foundations of mathematics are axiomatic in a similar way that
ultimate meaning is ultimate.  We have a feeling that the foundation
of math is ultimately right, even though we can't prove it.  In my
"logical reason" (reason #1 a few posts back), I am simply arguing for
realism (vs. positivism).  Your arguments that you are trying to
enforce here would apply equally well (if valid) to realism in general
(not just God), and therefore put you in the positivist camp.

Tom


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Re: Searles' Fundamental Error

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 2/22/07, Mark Peaty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>
> Stathis:
>
> > "Stathis [from the other posting again]: 'There is good reason to
> > believe that the third person observable behaviour of the brain can be
> > emulated, because the brain is just chemical reactions and chemistry is a
> > well-understood field.'
> >
> > MP: Once again it depends what you mean. Does 'Third person observable
> > behaviour of the brain' include EEG recordings and the output of MRI
> > imaging? Or do you mean just the movements of muscles which is the main
> > indicator of brain activity? If the former then I think that would be very
> > hard, perhaps impossible; if the latter however, that just might be
> > achievable.
> >
>
> Huh? I think it would be a relatively trivial matter to emulate MRI and
> EEG data, certainly compared to emulating behaviour as evidenced by muscle
> activity (complex, intelligent behaviour such as doing science or writing
> novels is after all just muscle activity, which is just chemical reactions
> in the muscles triggered by chemical reactions in the brain). "
>
> MP: 'relatively trivial'? I think perhaps you underestimate what it
> involved; '... the brain is just chemical reactions, and chemistry is a
> well-understood field' reinforces this view. My point is that it is NOT just
> chemical reactions, but chemical reactions which take place in embodiment of
> multiple overlapping, inter-penetrating and self-organising hierarchies of
> dynamic structures. I think that various avenues of research are showing
> that a key feature of brain functioning which 'binds' together the 'just
> chemical' activities of multiple brain regions at any given moment and
> simultaneously at multiple scales of size, intensity and frequencies, is the
> harmonic resonance and interference patterns generated by wave forms which
> are made up of the combined actions of billions of neurons propagating
> thousands of impulses per second to form dynamic interaction patterns.
>

How could it not be chemical reactions? The fact that they are large and
complex macromolecules with some very complex physical chemistry involved
does not mean it's not chemistry, and neither does the fact that it is
easier to look at the emergent behaviour of the brain as a whole. If all the
relevant chemical reactions occur in the right order and the right
configuration, that is necessary and sufficient for a functioning brain.

I think the only way to truly grasp the scope of what is occurring is
> through visual imagination but linking one's ideas also to the experience of
> musical polyphony and rhythms. The trick is to 'see' in the mind's eye that
> the *effective* structures which make things happen and which constitute our
> experiences are in fact the wave patterns composed of swarms [or flocks,
> herds, shoals, clouds] of depolarisations. The neurons, ganglia, and
> whatever other 'physical' structural features you like to think about, are
> WHERE the dynamic interaction structures take place. Much work has been done
> to show that synapses vary in a metastable way in response to how they are
> used by the interaction patterns in which they participate, as also do
> dendrites which may move, extend, contract or die off in response to how
> they are used. The figurative nature of these patterns is embodied in the
> multiple, distributed locations in which most of their activity takes place
> and also in the characteristic temporal consistency of interaction between
> the spatially discrete or contiguous but contrastive locations. Furthermore
> it seems very likely, if not yet certain, that many synergistic effects will
> be occurring such as the occurrence of electric fields oscillating in
> directions orthogonal to the propagation of impulses.
>

Sure, but it's still just chemical reactions underlying all this.

MRI scans may be very good for pinpointing the topological features of this
> dynamic activity but not so the temporal details. On the other hand EEG
> records can give much better detail for some temporal features but the
> spatial resolution is very course and confined to areas near the skull. New
> techniques using laser beams passed through parts of the brain are capable
> of giving millisecond resolution to some events occurring deeper within. So
> also can very thin electrodes which report events within or near individual
> neurons, but here the problem is the limit to how many needles are allowed
> to be inserted into a human cortical pin cushion: not many! One day though
> someone is going to develop a kind of nanobot which can migrate
> unobtrusively through brain tissue and broadcast radio pulses describing the
> activity of neurons near by as well as key features of electric fields and
> other ambient conditions.
>

OK, but I thought you said that MRI and EEG data is difficult to emulate,
which it is not.

Stathis:'As for scientific research, I never managed to understand why Colin
> thought this was more than just a 

Re: Searles' Fundamental Error

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 2/22/07, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> > A patient says that his leg is paralysed, behaves as if his leg is
> > paralysed, but the clinical signs and investigations are not consistent
> > with a paralysed leg. The diagnosis of hysterical paralysis is made. A
> > patient claims to hear voices of people nobody else sees, responds to
> > the voices as if they are there, but the clinical signs and response to
> > antipsychotic treatment is not consistent with the auditory
> > hallucinations experienced by peopel with psychotic illness. The
> > diagnosis of hysterical hallucinations is made: that is, they aren't
> > hearing voices that aren't there, they only *think* they're hearing
> > voices that aren't there.
>
> How is this diagnosis made?  It sounds like an impossible distinction - a
> scientific resolution of the zombie question.


The diagnosis of "pseudohallucinations" is made if they don't have the
characteristics typical of hallucinations in schizophrenia - that is, there
are third person observable differences. Without these differences it would
be impossible to tell and, since psychiatry at least aspires to be an
empirical science, the possibility is generally ignored. However, you can
have delusions about anything, so it should be at least theoretically
possible to have a delusion that you are having a perception. Patients
frequently report delusional memories of perceptions: that is, they insist
that they had a conversation or experience that they could not even have
hallucinated, because they were under observation at the time of the alleged
incident. Suppose this process is happening "live", so that they believe
they are hearing a voice and responding as if they are hearing a voice even
though they are not even hallucinating such a thing. We might speculate that
the actual experience would surely feel different to the mere belief that
they are having the experience, but if they could notice such a difference
they would not be deluded.

Stathis Papaioannou

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