Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: On 25 Aug, 14:32, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Let's say the alien brain in its initial environment produced a certain output when it was presented with a certain input, such as a red light. The reconstructed brain is in a different environment and is presented with a blue light instead of a red light. To deal with this, you alter the brain's configuration so that it produces the same output with the blue light that it would have produced with the red light. In terms of our discussion on the indispensability of an interpretative context for assigning meaning to 'raw data', I'm not sure exactly how much you're presupposing when you say that you alter the brain's configuration. You have a bunch of relational data purporting to correspond to the existing configuration of the alien's brain and its relation to its environment. This is available to you solely in terms of your interpretation, on the basis of which you attempt to come up with a theory that correlates the observed 'inputs' and 'outputs' (assuming these can be unambiguously isolated). But how would you know that you had arrived at a successful theory of the alien's experience? Even if you somehow succeeded in observing consistent correlations between inputs and outputs, how could you ever be sure what this 'means' for the alien brain? With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Photoreceptors are neurons and synapse with other neurons, further up the pathway of visual perception. The alien will compare his perception of the blue sky of Earth with his memory of the red sky of his home planet and declare it looks the same. Now it is possible that it doesn't look the same and he only thinks it looks the same, but the same could be said of ordinary life: perhaps yesterday the sky looked green, and today that it looks blue we only think it looks the same because we are deluded. I would say that in effect what you have posed here is 'the problem of other minds', and that consequently a 'successful' theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. And, mutatis mutandis, I guess this would apply to rocks too. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Against Physics
On 26 Aug 2009, at 05:26, Rex Allen wrote: On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 9:50 AM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: Recalling your interest in Chalmers: I was re-reading Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness recently, and I realised - I think for the first time - that his own double-aspect theory of information is effectively a reformulation, in less 'professionally-embarrassing' lingo, of eastern metaphysics! Indeed, Chalmers' double-aspect theory of information seemed like a good starting point when I first read it 18 months or so ago, but I guess the question is where do you go from there? Chalmers did a great job of articulating the mind-body problem, and I think in defending his initial position, but he doesn't seem to have made much progress in the 14 or so years since then. BUT, then...I guess that's the hard part for you. Though, just in the last month, I think I've kind of shifted gears here. Why should consciousness be an aspect of information (or anything else)? Why not consider information an aspect of consciousness? In an earlier thread, Brent mentioned Hume, and in response you referenced Kant, BUT I'm not very familiar with either. But just in the last week I've discovered that Kant has already given some thought to this topic, and kindly summarized his views in A Critique of Pure Reason! Who knew??? So now I'm interested in reading up on Kant, and particularly G. E. Schulze's subsequent response in Aenesidemus. SO...if you've already been down this path, then I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Though, obviously since A Critique of Pure reason was written in 1781, and yet we're still here discussing it almost 230 years later, it didn't offer any conclusive answers...but still... Of course even before Hume and Kant, we have Leibniz in Monadology (1714): Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for. BUT, I think my general criticism is that we seem to be mistaking descriptions of what we are conscious of, with an explanation of consciousness itself. So, for instance, if Bruno is correct in his mathematical theory of the origins of consciousness...what does that mean, really? Ultimately, how is it different than saying consciousness exists uncaused, but by pure chance there are these interesting patterns that can be seen in this record of our past observations. Chance is also a sort of filling-gap explanations. Assuming mechanism, chance cannot work. It cannot explain regularities. It cannot explain why we remain in stable realities. Be it matter or consciousness we may try theories, instead of postulating an absence of explanation at the start. Some theories can then explain why some phenomenological gaps have to exist, due to our embedding in reality/realities. SO...I dunno. Bruno made the dreaded accusation of solipsism, but I'm not sure how you avoid ending up there (at least in the epistemological sense of there being a limit to what can be known), regardless of which direction you go. You can take the long way, or you can take the short way, but all roads do seem to ultimately lead to some variety of solipsism. The only question is what kind of scenery will you get along the way. H. All babies are solipsist. We start from solipsism. Solipsism is correct, from the first person point of view. But science begins when we start betting in a third or perhaps a zero-person view, a transcendental reality, be it a universe, a god, a way (tao). We need this if only to be able to accept other minds, other consciousness, other people. Then we can make theories. Now, all universal machine does have that solipsist part, and we can explain why, and what exists beyond. A lot of what you say makes sense, but more as a description of important data, than as an attempt toward an explanation. Once you accept that something else (third person) can have a first person view, be it a machine, an animal, a human, an extraterrestrial entity or a god, you have to accept that solipsism, although an accurate feature of consciousness, is inaccurate as a fundamental explanation. We can believe in something greater than ourself. Somehow, the belief in matter is an intermediate between the correct, but third person pointless solipsism, and the many incorrect, but corrigible, pointers toward
Re: Learning binary numbers
Hi Marty, thanks a lot for your reply. I was really interested in whether the lesson would work with you. I had the pleasure to teach the binary arithmetic to kids in summer school camps, in the grammar school and to university students as well. Some kids/students got it quite easily some did not. And then, recently, I have read that socratic article. Since I really like and enjoy teaching, I spent some time analyzing the article and one of the points I realized is that there was always some sort of satisfaction and accomplishment at each step taken. And you said you was missing these feelings during the introduction to the set theory. So if you have said that you got hooked-up to math by that socratic method... Bruno would definitely took the hint in his seveth step serii. Cheers, Mirek m.a. wrote: Mirek, My previous answer to your question was glib and evasive, I apologize for that, but I think your question was misleading as well. In an attempt to be kind, you asked my opinion, from a pedagogical POV, of a lesson designed to make binary arithmetic simple enough for third-grade students. I think that what you really wondered was whether the lesson would work with a math-challenged adult like me. So, because I believe you to be genuinely and unmaliciously curious and in the interest of science, I'll try to describe my experience of this lesson. Did it teach me about binary numbers? The answer must be Yes and No. As I studied the lesson step by step, I understood each point and felt at the end, that I had a solid grasp of the topic. Will it become part of my general knowledge? /No/. Will I remember it tomorrow? /No/. Why not? Because my sorry excuse for a brain won't try to absorb it; in fact it will try strenuously to forget it. I can think of several reasons for this. 1) I won't leave the safety and familiarity of base ten. After a lifetime of base-ten, base-two is disorienting and disturbing. If I were forced to live in a house with pyramidal rooms, I could do it; but as soon as I was released, I would return to a cubical house. Someone who is shaky in math to begin with, clings to the part that he finds to be solid and doesn't venture into the whirlwind of incomprehensible artifacts outside. 2) The space in my head set aside for mathematics is entirely occupied by base-ten. I use it constantly and value it as a trusty tool. I can see no way, since I don't design computers, that binary can be useful in my everyday life. 3) This is purely subjective, but perhaps worth mentioning. Binary arithmetic seems to me like a language of ants. I am not an entomologist or even a biologist. I don't want to know what the ants are saying. I /do/ want to know what the Russians and Italians and Spanish are saying and I study their literatures. My mind accepts and always finds more room for information about these languages even as it refuses/ /to accommodate binary. I know that computers and the modern world could not exist without the ants and I am grateful for all of it. But I am resigned to the sad fact that their language will always be inaccessible to me. Hope this helps, marty a . - Original Message - From: Mirek Dobsicek m.dobsi...@gmail.com mailto:m.dobsi...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 11:05 AM Subject: Re: The seven step series m.a. wrote: a towel into the ring. I simply don't have the sort of mind that takes to juggling letters, numbers and symbols in increasingly fine-grained, complex arrangements. [...] Marty, If I can ask, I'd be really interested what do you think of this socratic experiment http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html Cheers, mirek --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Learning binary numbers
Hello Mirek, Let us recall that Socrates was famous for setting up straw men who usually agreed to every step of his proof and were finally forced by logic, against their previous judgments, to accept his conclusions. I would dearly love to see an unedited video of the Binary lesson you cite. As a former teacher, I suspect there would be a lot more noise of every variety than is communicated by the clear, short questions and even shorter answers of this lesson. To his credit, Bruno has definitely tried to supply interesting situations to illustrate his points, but either they weren't interesting enough or the problem was too complex to master no matter how imaginative the presentation. I may never reach the seventh step but from here, the mountain top looks magnificent with the sun rising behind it. Best, marty a. - Original Message - From: Mirek Dobsicek m.dobsi...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 7:10 AM Subject: Re: Learning binary numbers Hi Marty, thanks a lot for your reply. I was really interested in whether the lesson would work with you. I had the pleasure to teach the binary arithmetic to kids in summer school camps, in the grammar school and to university students as well. Some kids/students got it quite easily some did not. And then, recently, I have read that socratic article. Since I really like and enjoy teaching, I spent some time analyzing the article and one of the points I realized is that there was always some sort of satisfaction and accomplishment at each step taken. And you said you was missing these feelings during the introduction to the set theory. So if you have said that you got hooked-up to math by that socratic method... Bruno would definitely took the hint in his seveth step serii. Cheers, Mirek --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Learning binary numbers
On 26 Aug 2009, at 13:10, Mirek Dobsicek wrote: So if you have said that you got hooked-up to math by that socratic method... Bruno would definitely took the hint in his seveth step serii. I appreciate very much the Socratic method, and I apply it as much as possible. The UDA itself is a sequence of questions, and I teach students mainly by asking questions. But this really can work only if the students ask themselves questions too. For some reason some people does not dare to ask question. I think they could be afraid to slow me down, but it does not matter, given that there is no deadline. I try to encourage to ask questions, even out-of-line, but without too much success. I guess a question of taste is involved, and personal history with math, lack of thrust in oneself, and I can't force anybody to take the time to study, prepare questions, etc. Of course, I don't think I could use a pure socratic method, like in your example, because there is much more material involved. Another difficulty comes from the fact that the level and background of those participating are very different, and it is hard, especially with so few feedback to satisfy everybody. It is already very different according to the fact that you have or not get some modern math in high school or not ... I am preparing, slowly (I'm rather busy), the next seven step serie. Please ask question if anything is unclear. Any question or remark can help, you, me, and some others. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: On 25 Aug, 14:32, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Let's say the alien brain in its initial environment produced a certain output when it was presented with a certain input, such as a red light. The reconstructed brain is in a different environment and is presented with a blue light instead of a red light. To deal with this, you alter the brain's configuration so that it produces the same output with the blue light that it would have produced with the red light. In terms of our discussion on the indispensability of an interpretative context for assigning meaning to 'raw data', I'm not sure exactly how much you're presupposing when you say that you alter the brain's configuration. You have a bunch of relational data purporting to correspond to the existing configuration of the alien's brain and its relation to its environment. This is available to you solely in terms of your interpretation, on the basis of which you attempt to come up with a theory that correlates the observed 'inputs' and 'outputs' (assuming these can be unambiguously isolated). But how would you know that you had arrived at a successful theory of the alien's experience? Even if you somehow succeeded in observing consistent correlations between inputs and outputs, how could you ever be sure what this 'means' for the alien brain? With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Photoreceptors are neurons and synapse with other neurons, further up the pathway of visual perception. The alien will compare his perception of the blue sky of Earth with his memory of the red sky of his home planet and declare it looks the same. Now it is possible that it doesn't look the same and he only thinks it looks the same, but the same could be said of ordinary life: perhaps yesterday the sky looked green, and today that it looks blue we only think it looks the same because we are deluded. I would say that in effect what you have posed here is 'the problem of other minds', and that consequently a 'successful' theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. And, mutatis mutandis, I guess this would apply to rocks too. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Does functionalism mean nothing more than if the same inputs produce the same outputs then the experience will be the same? I think this is to simplistic. To reduce it to a really simple example, suppose your brain functions so that: You look at sky. Blue detectors fire. You say, Blue. Now the doctor replaces some neurons so that You look at sky. Blue detectors fire. The blue detectors excite frabjous detectors. Frabjous detectors fire You say, Blue. Is your experience the same? Do you experience frabjous? If you put melody for frabjous, you've got synsathesia. I'd say that functional equivalence is relative to the level. At *some* level equal-input-output=equal-experience, but not at higher levels. What about lower levels? Surely it doesn't matter whether 10,000 K+ cross the axon membrane or 10,001 cross. So somehow looking at just the right level matters in the hypothesis of functionalism. Maybe that level corresponds to the level at which the organism acts; the functions evolved to support and direct actions. Rocks don't act so they don't have any functional level. Brent --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
On 26 Aug 2009, at 17:58, Brent Meeker wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: On 25 Aug, 14:32, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: snip I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Does functionalism mean nothing more than if the same inputs produce the same outputs then the experience will be the same? I think this is to simplistic. To reduce it to a really simple example, suppose your brain functions so that: You look at sky. Blue detectors fire. You say, Blue. Now the doctor replaces some neurons so that You look at sky. Blue detectors fire. The blue detectors excite frabjous detectors. Frabjous detectors fire You say, Blue. Is your experience the same? Do you experience frabjous? If you put melody for frabjous, you've got synsathesia. I'd say that functional equivalence is relative to the level. At *some* level equal-input-output=equal-experience, but not at higher levels. What about lower levels? Surely it doesn't matter whether 10,000 K+ cross the axon membrane or 10,001 cross. So somehow looking at just the right level matters in the hypothesis of functionalism. Maybe that level corresponds to the level at which the organism acts; the functions evolved to support and direct actions. Rocks don't act so they don't have any functional level. You are right. A simpler example is a dreamer and a rock, and the whole universe. They have locally the same input and output: none! So they are functionally identical, yet very different from the first person perspective. This is why in comp I make explicit the existence of a level of substitution. It is the only difference with functionalism which is usually vague on that point. It is a key point. It is a key point in real life too. An enterprise will survive if you get fired and be replaced by someone doing your job, but your personal perspective will be different. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The seven step series
Hi,
I sum up, a little bit, and then I go quickly, just to provide some
motivation for the sequel.
We have seen the notion of set. We have seen examples of finite sets
and infinite sets.
For example the sets
A = {0, 1, 2},
B = {2, 3}
are finite.
The set N = {0, 1, 2, 3, ...} is infinite.
We can make the union of sets, and their intersection:
A union B = {x such-that x is in A OR x is in B} = {0, 1, 2, 3}
A intersection B = {x such-that x is in A AND x (the same x) is in B}
= {2}. 2 is the only x being both in A and B.
OK?
We have seen the notion of subset. X is a subset of Y, if each time
that x is in X, x is also in Y.
And we have seen the notion of powerset of a set. The powerset is the
set of all subset of a set.
Example: the powerset of {2, 3} is the set {{ }, {2}, {3}, {2, 3}}.
OK?
In particular we have seen that the number of element of the powerset
of a set with n elements is 2^n.
Example: {2, 3} has two elements, and the powerset of {2, 3}, i.e.
{{ }, {2}, {3}, {2, 3}} has 2^2 = 4 elements. OK?
We have seen the notion of function from a set A to a set B.
It is just a set of couples (x, y) with x in A and y in B. x is
supposed to be any elements of A, and y some element of B.
To be a function, a set of couples has to verify the *functional
condition* that no x is send to two or more different y. This is
because we want y be depending on x. Think about the function which
describes how the temperature evolves with respect to time: an
instant t cannot be send on two different temperature.
Let A = {1, 2} and B = {a, b, c}
F1 = {(1, a), (2, a)}
F2 = {(1, c}, (2, a)}
F1 and F2 are functions.
But the following are not:
G1 = {(1, a), (2, b}, (2, c)} because 2 is send on two different
elements
G2 = {(1, a), (2, b), (1, b)} because 1 is send on two different
elements.
OK?
We have then consider the set of all functions from A to B, written
B^A, and seen that this number is equal to
card(B) ^card(A) where card(A) is the number of elements of A.A
is supposed to be a finite set, and later we will see how Cantor will
generalize the notion of cardinal for infinite sets.
We have then studied the notion of bijection.
A function from A to B is a bijection from A to B when it is both
- ONE-ONE two different elements of A are send to two different
elements of B
- ONTO, this means that all elements of B are in the range of the
function, i.e. for any y in B there is some couple (x, y) in the
function.
Example: F from {a, b} to {1, 2} with F = {(a, 1}, (b, 2)} is a
bijection, but G = {(a, 1), (b, 1)} is not because G is not ONTO, nor
ONE-ONE.
OK?
We have seen that if A and B are two finite sets, then we have
A and B have the same number of element if and only if there exists a
bijection from A to B.
OK?
Now I can give you the very ingenious idea from Cantor. Cantor will
say that two INFINITE sets have the same cardinality if and only if
there exists a bijection between them.
This leads to some surprises.
Let N = {0, 1, 2, 3, ...} be the usual set of all natural numbers.
This is obviously an infinite set, all right?
Let 2N = {0, 2, 4, 6, } be the set of even numbers. This is
obviously a subset of N OK?, and actually an infinite subset of N.
Now consider the function from N to 2N which send each n on 2*n. This
function is one-one. Indeed if n is different from m, 2*n is different
from 2*m. OK?
And that function, from N to 2N is onto. Indeed any element of 2N, has
the shape 2*n for some n, and (n, 2*n) belongs to the function.
In extension the bijection is {(0, 0), (1, 2), (2, 4), (3, 6), (4, 8),
(5, 10), (6, 12), ...}
So here we have the peculiar fact that a bijection can exist between a
set and some of its proper subset. (A subset of A is a proper subset
of A if it is different of A).
The first who discovered this is GALILEE. But, alas, he missed Cantor
discovery. Like Gauss later, such behavior was for them an argument to
abandon the study of infinite sets. They behave too much weirdly for
them.
OK?
At first sight we could think that all infinite sets have the same
cardinality. After all those sets are infinite, how could an infinite
set have a bigger cardinality than another infinite set? This is the
second surprise, and the main discovery of Cantor: the fact that there
are some infinite sets B such that there is no bijection between N and
B.
Cantor will indeed show that there is no bijection between N and N^N,
nor between N and 2^N. We will study this.
Cantor will prove a general theorem, know as Cantor theorem, which
asserts that for ANY set A, there are no bijection between A and the
powerset of A.
The powerset operation leads to a ladder of bigger infinities. I
will come back with some detail later.
Some surprises were BAD surprises. Conceptual problems which Cantor
will hide in its desk, to treat them later. The so-called paradoxes
of naïve set
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com:
I sometimes have the feeling you're saying something interesting...and
wishing I knew what it was.
Alas, I'm filled with chagrin. On reflection, I share both of those
feelings fairly regularly! I've spent a lot of time over the years -
too much probably - reading, thinking and talking around the range of
topics we love on this list, and have no very definitive conclusions
to show for it. But I continue to be fascinated by decoding and
contrasting the assumptions and vocabularies of what seem to be
different approaches to the same problem, and this has sensitised me
to the ways theories characteristically mask their deepest
assumptions, even from their proponents - perhaps *especially* from
their proponents.
It's because of this that I try sometimes to define my own terms in
what I (forlornly!) hope are modestly articulated ways that struggle
very hard to assume no more and no less than what is stated. In this
way I try to avoid some of the theoretical baggage that gets carried
along willy-nilly with established terminology. But I know this is
demanding a lot of others' available attention, or sometimes even my
own! It works better in 'non-virtual' company, just because more
channels of communication are available and people can more easily ask
why are you making such a point of this or that?
All that said, I appreciate the spirit of your comment very much.
I've been thinking again about what I've been arguing recently, and
the challenges posed by some of the excellent responses. I've still
got some things I want to say, and I will consider carefully the best
way to articulate them. As ever, feedback - not least your own - will
be indispensable.
David
David Nyman wrote:
2009/8/25 John Mikes jami...@gmail.com:
David, (and Stathis?)
I appreciate David's 1,2,3, variations on the it's or our, but you just
destroyed my position with
I should perhaps emphasise that purely for the purposes of the
argument I'm assuming brain = mind to be a one-for-one correlation.
Well, not entirely.
If WE cannot desipher the 'meanings' ('context') of our brainwork how can an
alien observer do it? Or better: if we need the
historic and current context of experience and action
what 'meanings will the alien decipher in THEIR context and action in THEIR
experience?
Do the aliens base the world on human numbers?
Just musing
John M
Just so. To recapitulate the (approximate) history of this part of the
discussion, Peter and I had been delving into the question - posed by
him - of whether a complete scan of a brain at the subatomic level
could in principle capture all the available 'information'. So my
rider about brain-mind correlation was in the context of that specific
question posed in that specific way.
As to your more general musings John, I suppose the line I've been
pursuing is questioning the applicability of the soi-disant 'view from
nowhere' - i.e. the notion of 'information' as being comprehensible in
any totally extrinsic, abstracted, uninterpreted sense. Because we
can't help being fish, we can't help but swim in our interpretations.
And we can only guess what oceans alien fish may swim in.
It seems as though we can comprehend 'mind' only in terms of some
self-instantiating, self-interpreting context, in which meaning
depends always on the self-relating logic of differentiation and
interaction. Hence the 'perspective' of mind is always intrinsic,
and 'meaning' doesn't survive abstraction to any extremity of
'external' observation. We can comprehend the 'externalised' flux -
i.e. what is abstractable out-of-context - as somehow correlative of
mind with mind, and mind with matter. But whatever meaning is finally
recoverable will again be 'as received' - i.e. as re-interpreted in
its context of arrival.
I sometimes have the feeling you're saying something interesting...and
wishing I knew what it was.
Brent
This reminds me of the aphorism that the meaning of a communication
is the response it elicits. Just consider the regress of nested
interpretations *that* implies!
David
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 8:33 AM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/24 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com:
In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the
context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local
embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example
of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether
simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable
exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current
context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis,
that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally
meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise
relational causal configurations against their intelligible
reinstantiation in some
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com: To me, 60% of David's posts are intricately worded works of Ciceronian prose that eloquently make points of great depth and insight...and the other 40% are intricately worded works of eye-crossingly impenetrable prose of which I can make neither heads nor tails. My prose, such as it is, must be somewhat of a product of the Scottish grammar school system of the 1950s, where spelling, punctuation, grammar and composition, both English and classical, were drilled into us with ferocious intensity and liberal application of the stout leather 'tawse'. There remains, as I've said to Brent, the problem of vocabulary, and I intend to give this more attention. If you are willing to enquire whenever clarification is needed, I'm more than willing to respond. David On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I sometimes have the feeling you're saying something interesting...and wishing I knew what it was. Brent To me, 60% of David's posts are intricately worded works of Ciceronian prose that eloquently make points of great depth and insight...and the other 40% are intricately worded works of eye-crossingly impenetrable prose of which I can make neither heads nor tails. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Ah, so the alien has photoreceptors and retinas? That's an assumption worth knowing! This is why I said a successful theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Well, it's precisely the conjunction of functionalism with a primitively material assumption that prompted this part of the thread. Peter asked me if I thought a brain scan at some putatively fundamental physical level would be an exhaustive account of all the information that was available experientially, and I was attempting to respond specifically to that. Given what you say above, I would again say - for all the reasons I've argued up to this point - that a purely functional account on the assumption of PM gives me no reason to attribute experience of any kind to the system in question. The way you phrase it rightly emphasises the focus on invariance of inputs and outputs as definitive of invariance of experience, rather than the variability of the actual PM process that performs the transformation. As Brent has commented, this seems a somewhat arbitrary assumption, with the implied rider of what else could it be? Well, whatever else could provide an account of experience, this particular conjecture happens to fly directly in the face of the simultaneous assumption of primitively physical causation. There's something trickier here, too. When you say unless you are the system, this masks an implicit - and dualistic - assumption in addition to PM monism. It is axiomatic that any properly monistic materialist account must hold all properties of a system to be extrinsic, and hence capable of *exhaustive* extrinsic formulation. IOW if it's not extrinsically describable, it doesn't exist in terms of PM. So what possible difference could it make, under this restriction, to 'be' the system? If the reply is that it makes just the somewhat epoch-making difference of conjuring up an otherwise unknowable world of qualitative experience, can we still lay claim to a monistic ontology, in any sense that doesn't beggar the term? David 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: On 25 Aug, 14:32, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Let's say the alien brain in its initial environment produced a certain output when it was presented with a certain input, such as a red light. The reconstructed brain is in a different environment and is presented with a blue light instead of a red light. To deal with this, you alter the brain's configuration so that it produces the same output with the blue light that it would have produced with the red light. In terms of our discussion on the indispensability of an interpretative context for assigning meaning to 'raw data', I'm not sure exactly how much you're presupposing when you say that you alter the brain's configuration. You have a bunch of relational data purporting to correspond to the existing configuration of the alien's brain and its relation to its environment. This is available to you solely in terms of your interpretation, on the basis of which you attempt to come up with a theory that correlates the observed 'inputs' and 'outputs' (assuming these can be unambiguously isolated). But how would you know that you had arrived at a successful theory of the alien's experience? Even if you somehow succeeded in observing consistent correlations between inputs and outputs, how could you ever be sure what this 'means' for the alien brain? With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Photoreceptors are neurons and synapse with other neurons, further up the pathway of visual perception. The alien will compare his perception of the blue sky of Earth with his memory of the red sky of his home planet and declare it looks the same. Now it is possible that it doesn't look the same and he only thinks it looks the same, but the same could be said of ordinary life: perhaps yesterday the sky looked green, and today that it looks blue we only think it looks the same because we are deluded. I would say that in effect what you have posed here is 'the problem of other minds', and that
Re: Dreaming On
David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/26 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Ah, so the alien has photoreceptors and retinas? That's an assumption worth knowing! This is why I said a successful theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Well, it's precisely the conjunction of functionalism with a primitively material assumption that prompted this part of the thread. Peter asked me if I thought a brain scan at some putatively fundamental physical level would be an exhaustive account of all the information that was available experientially, and I was attempting to respond specifically to that. Given what you say above, I would again say - for all the reasons I've argued up to this point - that a purely functional account on the assumption of PM gives me no reason to attribute experience of any kind to the system in question. The way you phrase it rightly emphasises the focus on invariance of inputs and outputs as definitive of invariance of experience, rather than the variability of the actual PM process that performs the transformation. As Brent has commented, this seems a somewhat arbitrary assumption, with the implied rider of what else could it be? Well, whatever else could provide an account of experience, this particular conjecture happens to fly directly in the face of the simultaneous assumption of primitively physical causation. I don't see that. I conjectured that with sufficient knowledge of the environment in which the alien functioned and input-outputs at the corresponding level, one could provide and account of the alien's experience. I was my point that simply looking at the alien's brain, without the context of its function, would not suffice. There's something trickier here, too. When you say unless you are the system, this masks an implicit - and dualistic - assumption in addition to PM monism. It is axiomatic that any properly monistic materialist account must hold all properties of a system to be extrinsic, and hence capable of *exhaustive* extrinsic formulation. IOW if it's not extrinsically describable, it doesn't exist in terms of PM. So what possible difference could it make, under this restriction, to 'be' the system? The question is whether PM is sufficient to describe the system. Language is almost certainly inadequate to describing what it is like to 'be' the system - you cannot even fully describe what it is like to be you. That's why I think the hard problem of consciouness will not be solved it will just wither away. Eventually we will understand brains sufficiently to create AI with specifically designed memories, emotions, and cogitation, as evidenced by their behavior and the similarity of their processes to human ones. We won't *know* that they are conscious, but we'll believe they are. Brent If the reply is that it makes just the somewhat epoch-making difference of conjuring up an otherwise unknowable world of qualitative experience, can we still lay claim to a monistic ontology, in any sense that doesn't beggar the term? David 2009/8/26 David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com: On 25 Aug, 14:32, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Let's say the alien brain in its initial environment produced a certain output when it was presented with a certain input, such as a red light. The reconstructed brain is in a different environment and is presented with a blue light instead of a red light. To deal with this, you alter the brain's configuration so that it produces the same output with the blue light that it would have produced with the red light. In terms of our discussion on the indispensability of an interpretative context for assigning meaning to 'raw data', I'm not sure exactly how much you're presupposing when you say that you alter the brain's configuration. You have a bunch of relational data purporting to correspond to the existing configuration of the alien's brain and its relation to its environment. This is available to you solely in terms of your interpretation, on the basis of which you attempt to come up with a theory that correlates the observed 'inputs' and 'outputs' (assuming these can be unambiguously isolated). But how would you know that you had arrived at a
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I don't see that. I conjectured that with sufficient knowledge of the environment in which the alien functioned and input-outputs at the corresponding level, one could provide and account of the alien's experience. I was my point that simply looking at the alien's brain, without the context of its function, would not suffice. I can't tell what you mean by provide an account. Do you mean that one could provide some account of all this in functional terms that *we could interpret* in ways that made contextual sense *for us* - standing in, as it were, for the alien? If so, this is what I meant when I said to Stathis that it really becomes equivalent to the problem of other minds, in that if we can coax the data into making sense for us, we can extrapolate this by implication to the alien. But that would tend to make it a rather human alien, wouldn't it? The question is whether PM is sufficient to describe the system. Language is almost certainly inadequate to describing what it is like to 'be' the system - you cannot even fully describe what it is like to be you. I'm questioning something more subtle here, I think. First, one could simply decide to be eliminativist about experience, and hold that the extrinsic PM account is both exhaustive and singular. In this case, 'being' anything is simply an extrinsic notion. But if we're not in this sort of denial, then the idea of 'being' the system subtly encourages the intuition that there's some way to be that simultaneously satisfies two criteria: 1) Point-for-point isomorphism - in some suitable sense - with the extrinsic description. 2) An intrinsic nature that is incommunicable in terms of the extrinsic description alone. This intuition has a lot of work to do to stay monistic - i.e. to claim to refer to a unique existent. First it has to justify why there's still a gap between the 'extrinsic' system-as-described and the 'intrinsic' system-as-instantiated - i.e. the description can no longer be considered exhaustive. Then it has to explain the existence of the former as some mode of the latter. Finally, it has to dispense with any implied referent of the former, except in the guise of the latter - i.e. it has to dispense with any fundamental notion of the extrinsic except as a metaphor or mode of the intrinsic. Dispensing with the extrinsic in this way leaves us with 'being' as a fundamentally intrinsic notion. Not doing so is an implicit appeal to dualism. David David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/26 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Ah, so the alien has photoreceptors and retinas? That's an assumption worth knowing! This is why I said a successful theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Well, it's precisely the conjunction of functionalism with a primitively material assumption that prompted this part of the thread. Peter asked me if I thought a brain scan at some putatively fundamental physical level would be an exhaustive account of all the information that was available experientially, and I was attempting to respond specifically to that. Given what you say above, I would again say - for all the reasons I've argued up to this point - that a purely functional account on the assumption of PM gives me no reason to attribute experience of any kind to the system in question. The way you phrase it rightly emphasises the focus on invariance of inputs and outputs as definitive of invariance of experience, rather than the variability of the actual PM process that performs the transformation. As Brent has commented, this seems a somewhat arbitrary assumption, with the implied rider of what else could it be? Well, whatever else could provide an account of experience, this particular conjecture happens to fly directly in the face of the simultaneous assumption of primitively physical causation. I don't see that. I conjectured that with sufficient knowledge of the environment in which the alien functioned and input-outputs at the corresponding level, one could provide and account of the alien's experience. I was my point that simply looking at the alien's brain, without the context of its function, would not suffice. There's something trickier here,
Re: Dreaming On
David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/26 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I don't see that. I conjectured that with sufficient knowledge of the environment in which the alien functioned and input-outputs at the corresponding level, one could provide and account of the alien's experience. I was my point that simply looking at the alien's brain, without the context of its function, would not suffice. I can't tell what you mean by provide an account. Do you mean that one could provide some account of all this in functional terms that *we could interpret* in ways that made contextual sense *for us* - standing in, as it were, for the alien? If so, this is what I meant when I said to Stathis that it really becomes equivalent to the problem of other minds, in that if we can coax the data into making sense for us, we can extrapolate this by implication to the alien. But that would tend to make it a rather human alien, wouldn't it? The question is whether PM is sufficient to describe the system. Language is almost certainly inadequate to describing what it is like to 'be' the system - you cannot even fully describe what it is like to be you. I'm questioning something more subtle here, I think. First, one could simply decide to be eliminativist about experience, and hold that the extrinsic PM account is both exhaustive and singular. In this case, 'being' anything is simply an extrinsic notion. But if we're not in this sort of denial, then the idea of 'being' the system subtly encourages the intuition that there's some way to be that simultaneously satisfies two criteria: 1) Point-for-point isomorphism - in some suitable sense - with the extrinsic description. 2) An intrinsic nature that is incommunicable in terms of the extrinsic description alone. Even if there PM and functionalism is true, (1) and (2) are dubious. Extrinsic descriptions are necessarily in terms of shared experiences and so may not be complete. Incommunicable is ambiguous. It could mean impossible in principle or it could mean we haven't developed the words or pictures for it. Assuming there's something incommunicable in the later sense doesn't imply that PM or functionalism are false. The idea of 'being' somebody (or thing) else already assumes dualism. It assumes some 'I' that could move to be Stathis or a bat and yet retain some identity. But on a functionalist view 'I' already am Stathis and a bat - in other words there is no 'I', it's the creation of viewpoint by each functional entity. In that case being someone else in incommunicable in principle because the concept in incoherent. Brent This intuition has a lot of work to do to stay monistic - i.e. to claim to refer to a unique existent. First it has to justify why there's still a gap between the 'extrinsic' system-as-described and the 'intrinsic' system-as-instantiated - i.e. the description can no longer be considered exhaustive. Then it has to explain the existence of the former as some mode of the latter. Finally, it has to dispense with any implied referent of the former, except in the guise of the latter - i.e. it has to dispense with any fundamental notion of the extrinsic except as a metaphor or mode of the intrinsic. Dispensing with the extrinsic in this way leaves us with 'being' as a fundamentally intrinsic notion. Not doing so is an implicit appeal to dualism. David David Nyman wrote: 2009/8/26 Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com: With the example of the light, you alter the photoreceptors in the retina so that they respond the same way when to a blue light that they would have when exposed to a red light. Ah, so the alien has photoreceptors and retinas? That's an assumption worth knowing! This is why I said a successful theory wouldn't be very distant from the belief that the alien was, in effect, human, or alternatively that you were, in effect, alien. I think what I have proposed is consistent with functionalism, which may or may not be true. A functionally identical system produces the same outputs for the same inputs, and functionalism says that therefore it will also have the same experiences, such as they may be. But what those experiences are like cannot be known unless you are the system, or perhaps understand it so well that you can effectively run it in your head. Well, it's precisely the conjunction of functionalism with a primitively material assumption that prompted this part of the thread. Peter asked me if I thought a brain scan at some putatively fundamental physical level would be an exhaustive account of all the information that was available experientially, and I was attempting to respond specifically to that. Given what you say above, I would again say - for all the reasons I've argued up to this point - that a purely functional account on the assumption of PM gives me no reason to attribute experience of any kind to the system in question.
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/26 Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com: It seems as though we can comprehend 'mind' only in terms of some self-instantiating, self-interpreting context, in which meaning depends always on the self-relating logic of differentiation and interaction. Hence the 'perspective' of mind is always intrinsic, and 'meaning' doesn't survive abstraction to any extremity of 'external' observation. We can comprehend the 'externalised' flux - i.e. what is abstractable out-of-context - as somehow correlative of mind with mind, and mind with matter. But whatever meaning is finally recoverable will again be 'as received' - i.e. as re-interpreted in its context of arrival. This, for instance, seems to be a somewhat Kantian thought. I think. Based on my single week of reading about Kant's views. Well, as I've said before, a lot of my thinking is stimulated by reconsideration of a broadly eastern worldview, and many western thinkers - Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Schrödinger and many others - have also, explicitly or implicitly, articulated positions more or less compatible with this. I've felt for a long time that this style of thinking casts more light on mind-body issues than the Aristotelian alternative, and most of the conventional criticism of this tends to miss the point completely, IMO. You might have a look at my summary of this in a recent response to Stathis in this thread. I wouldn't expect all of it necessarily to be immediately transparent, but I'd be happy to amplify where required. David On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:00 PM, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: It seems as though we can comprehend 'mind' only in terms of some self-instantiating, self-interpreting context, in which meaning depends always on the self-relating logic of differentiation and interaction. Hence the 'perspective' of mind is always intrinsic, and 'meaning' doesn't survive abstraction to any extremity of 'external' observation. We can comprehend the 'externalised' flux - i.e. what is abstractable out-of-context - as somehow correlative of mind with mind, and mind with matter. But whatever meaning is finally recoverable will again be 'as received' - i.e. as re-interpreted in its context of arrival. This, for instance, seems to be a somewhat Kantian thought. I think. Based on my single week of reading about Kant's views. On the other hand, maybe when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dreaming On
2009/8/27 Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com: I'm questioning something more subtle here, I think. First, one could simply decide to be eliminativist about experience, and hold that the extrinsic PM account is both exhaustive and singular. In this case, 'being' anything is simply an extrinsic notion. But if we're not in this sort of denial, then the idea of 'being' the system subtly encourages the intuition that there's some way to be that simultaneously satisfies two criteria: 1) Point-for-point isomorphism - in some suitable sense - with the extrinsic description. 2) An intrinsic nature that is incommunicable in terms of the extrinsic description alone. Even if there PM and functionalism is true, (1) and (2) are dubious. Extrinsic descriptions are necessarily in terms of shared experiences and so may not be complete. You do realise I was arguing *against* any possibility of a monistic conjunction of 1) and 2)? I was heading step-by-step for the conclusion that all our notions of being should supervene on the intrinsic account, with the extrinsic part representing what is shareable between contexts. Aside from this, I'm not sure what you mean by even if PM and functionalism is true. I'll assume that you're not taking the eliminativist line, since then there would be nothing further for you to claim vis-a-vis mind. It's difficult for me to follow arguments on the basis of PM+CTM, because I'm with Bruno in believing them to be hollow. So if we're to stay with PM, then for me it would have to be on the basis of a theory of mind that was reducible to physical causation in the *hierarchical* - rather than functional - sense that 'life' is, in the typical example of a higher-order organisational concept you've previously suggested to me. Your statement extrinsic descriptions are necessarily in terms of shared experiences and so may not be complete is interesting to me, not exclusively because I happen to agree with it! Do you agree that extrinsic descriptions are thereby *necessarily* incomplete, or merely contingently so - i.e. that we are ignorant? Incommunicable is ambiguous. It could mean impossible in principle or it could mean we haven't developed the words or pictures for it. Assuming there's something incommunicable in the later sense doesn't imply that PM or functionalism are false. I meant it in the former sense. To be more precise, I mean that there is information available in context that can't be directly incorporated in what can be communicated out-of-context - hence incommunicable. But that's not the end of the story. The uninterpreted - and thus incomplete - data are re-instantiable in another interpretative context, and hence there is the possibility of re-completing the picture, at least to some tolerance. Hence we can refer to what's left out of the abstractable, and hence - crucially - shareable, part *ostensively*. In effect, we're saying to each other take this contextless relational dataset and instantiate it in terms of your local interpretation, take a look at the bit I appear to be pointing at, and then let's compare notes. The idea of 'being' somebody (or thing) else already assumes dualism. It assumes some 'I' that could move to be Stathis or a bat and yet retain some identity. But on a functionalist view 'I' already am Stathis and a bat - in other words there is no 'I', it's the creation of viewpoint by each functional entity. In that case being someone else in incommunicable in principle because the concept in incoherent. Well, I completely agree with all of that, but what made you think that what I was saying was anything to do with being somebody else? I think I did a bad job of articulating my line of argument. As I've said, I can't make any sense of a functionalist view on the basis of PM. To be coherent, functionalism must treat physical entities as mere relational placeholders, and hence the supplementary assumption of PM or any other primitively non-functional ontology is either simply redundant or weirdly dualistic AFAICS. I thought this before ever encountering Bruno's ideas, but his articulation of comp has given me another angle of attack on this key intuition. To be clear: I'm not per se arguing against functionalist accounts, but like Bruno I believe that their task is to explain the *appearance* of the material, not their own spooky emergence from it. But beyond even that, what I was articulating was my own version of strict eliminativism. IOW if we sincerely want to be monists we must be ready in principle to reduce *all* our various conceptual accounts to one in terms of the differentiables of a single ontic context. And unless we're eliminativists about personal existence, that had better be the one we already occupy. There's a tendency to argue this context away as merely epistemic and not ontic, but this distinction can be shown to collapse with very little logical effort. I know not everyone accepts
