Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:22:06PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Free will is the ability to do something stupid. Well OK, but there sure as hell is a lot of free will going around these days, even a pair of dice can be pretty stupid, the smart thing for it to do would be to come up with a 7, but sometimes it comes up with a 2 even though that number is 6 times less likely. Only a idiot would pick 2 but sometimes the dice does. As Homer Simpson would say Stupid dice. Roulette wheels do what they do, they never do anything different. Sure they do, sometimes they produce a 12 and sometimes they produce a 21. John K Clark In both your examples, (dice and roulette wheels), they always do something stupid (generate a random number). There is no choice in their actions, so it is senseless to assign agency to them. There is no optimisation of utility. I think you may be deliberately taking my statement out of context. Nevertheless, randomness is a key component of free will. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
Your questions add nothing to the current duscussion and my time is limited. Please revise your wrong concept of positivism. It is almost thw opposite of what you think El 10/08/2012 20:05, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net escribió: On 8/10/2012 7:23 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: The modern positivist conception of free will has no scientific meaning. But all modern rephasings of old philosophy are degraded. Or appear so because they make clear the deficiencies of the old philosophy. Positivist philosophy pass everithing down to what-we-know-by-science of the physical level, That's not correct. Postivist philosophy was that we only know what we directly experience and scientific theories are just ways of predicting new experiences from old experiences. Things not directly experienced, like atoms, were merely fictions used for prediction. that is the only kind of substance that they admit. this what-we-know-by-science makes positivism a moving ground, a kind of dictatorial cartesian blindness which states the kind of questions one is permitted at a certain time to ask or not. Classical conceptions of free will were concerned with the option ot thinking and acting morally or not, that is to have the capability to deliberate about the god or bad that a certain act implies for oneself One deliberates about consequences and means, but how does one deliberate about what one wants? Do you deliberate about whether pleasure or pain is good? and for others, and to act for god or for bad with this knowledge. Roughly speaking, Men have such faculties unless in slavery. Animals do not. My dog doesn't think about what's good or bad for himself? I doubt that. The interesting parts are in the details of these statements. An yes, they are questions that can be expressed in more scientific terms. This can be seen in the evolutionary study of moral and law under multilevel selection theory: https://www.google.es/search?**q=multilevel+selectionsugexp=** chrome,mod=11sourceid=chrome**ie=UTF-8https://www.google.es/search?q=multilevel+selectionsugexp=chrome,mod=11sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 which gives a positivistic support for moral, and a precise, materialistic notion of good and bad. And thus suddenly these three concepts must be sanctioned as legitimate objects of study by the positivistic dictators, without being burnt alive to social death, out of the peer-reviewed scientific magazines, where sacred words of Modernity resides. We are witnessing this devolution since slowly all the old philosophical and theological concepts will recover their legitimacy, and all their old problems will stand as problems here and now. For example, we will discover that what we call Mind is nothing but the old concepts of Soul and Spirit. After stripping soul of it's immortality and acausal relation to physics. Concerning the degraded positivistic notion of free will, I said before that under an extended notion of evolution it is nor possible to ascertain if either the matter evolved the mind or if the mind selected the matter. So it could be said that the degraded question is meaningless and of course, non interesting. But the question of their relationship is still interesting. 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.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii -- 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.
The question of self. Dennet is here expanded through the use of Leibniz and Kant
The question of self. Dennet is here expanded through the use of Leibniz's monads as Kant's categories with self as a supercategory logically including all of Kant's categories. Dennet has painted himself into a corner by following the materialistic view of mind. The agent or self is a function of mind (Leibniz's dominant monad), not a material thing. Leibniz and Kant combine through kant's categorial structure of mind shown below. I, II, III and IV are all monads. The self or agent is not shown directly in Kant's categories. I will call it V. V contains the other four categories as subsets. V is the self or dominant monad. It is the active observer and agent. V Observing self or acting agent (contains Kant's functional categories below as logical subcategories) Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 04:08:29 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? The Dennet conception is made to avoid an agent in the first place because i so, it whould be legitimate to question what is the agent made of an thus going trough an infinite regression. The question of the agent is the vivid intuition for which there are ingenious evolutionary explanations which i may subscribe. But a robot would implement such computations and still I deeply doubt about his internal notion oof self, his quialia etc. The best response to many questions for the shake of avooiding premature dogmatic closeness is to say we don't know El 11/08/2012 07:57, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net escribi?: Hi Roger, ?? I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. kant categories of mind.jpg
Severe limitations of a computer as a brain model
Hi Alberto G. Corona Agreed. Computers are quantitative instruments and so cannot have a self or feelings, which are qualitative. And intution is non-computable IMHO. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 04:08:29 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? The Dennet conception is made to avoid an agent in the first place because i so, it whould be legitimate to question what is the agent made of an thus going trough an infinite regression. The question of the agent is the vivid intuition for which there are ingenious evolutionary explanations which i may subscribe. But a robot would implement such computations and still I deeply doubt about his internal notion oof self, his quialia etc. The best response to many questions for the shake of avooiding premature dogmatic closeness is to say we don't know El 11/08/2012 07:57, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net escribi?: Hi Roger, ?? I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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. -- 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. -- 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: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
Hi Alberto G. Corona Amen. Well said. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Alberto G. Corona Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-10, 10:23:24 Subject: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated! The modern positivist conception of free will has no scientific meaning. But all modern rephasings of old philosophy are degraded. Positivist philosophy pass everithing down to what-we-know-by-science of the physical level, that is the only kind of substance that they admit. this what-we-know-by-science makes positivism a moving ground, a kind of dictatorial cartesian blindness which states the kind of questions one is permitted at a certain time to ask or not. Classical conceptions of free will were concerned with the option ot thinking and acting morally or not, that is to have the capability to deliberate about the god or bad that a certain act implies for oneself and for others, and to act for god or for bad with this knowledge. Roughly speaking, Men have such faculties unless in slavery. Animals do not. The interesting parts are in the details of these statements. An yes, they are questions that can be expressed in more scientific terms. This can be seen in the evolutionary study of moral and law under multilevel selection theory: https://www.google.es/search?q=multilevel+selectionsugexp=chrome,mod=11sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 which gives a positivistic support for moral, and a precise, materialistic notion of good and bad. And thus suddenly these three concepts must be sanctioned as legitimate objects of study by the positivistic dictators, without being burnt alive to social death, out of the peer-reviewed scientific magazines, where sacred words of Modernity resides. We are witnessing this devolution since slowly all the old philosophical and theological concepts will recover their legitimacy, and all their old problems will stand as problems here and now. For example, we will discover that what we call Mind is nothing but the old concepts of Soul and Spirit. Concerning the degraded positivistic notion of free will, I said before that under an extended notion of evolution it is nor possible to ascertain if either the matter evolved the mind or if the mind selected the matter. So it could be said that the degraded question is meaningless and of course, non interesting. 2012/8/10, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au: On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote: It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the total. This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow, I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of consciousness is to select from among the course of action presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying (aka reductive) process may be sufficient. The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution is the key to any form of creative process. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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. -- 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
The persistence of intelligence
Hi Evgenii Rudnyi IMHO Intelligence is part of mind, so is platonic and outside of spacetime. It was there before the universe was created, used to create the universe and now guides and moves everything that happens i9n the unverse. That's a Leibnizian conjecture. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Evgenii Rudnyi Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 04:30:32 Subject: Re: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI ordescribing life On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii -- 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. -- 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: Re: Re: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AIordescribing life
Hi Russell Standish When I gave in to the AI point of view that computers can posess intelligence, I had overlooked the world of experience, which is not quantitative. Only living things can experience the world. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-10, 19:43:07 Subject: Re: Re: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AIordescribing life In which case, your concept of intelligence is not what AI researchers are studying. You can't have it both ways :). Cheers On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 08:45:34AM -0400, Roger wrote: Hi Russell Standish Life doesn't have to be intelligent in the IQ sense, but it still has to know, for example, however dimly, what's good to eat. I still call that dim awareness intelligence. IMHO I believe intelligence of some form extends through creation. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/10/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-09, 18:55:39 Subject: Re: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI ordescribing life The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. On Tue, Aug 07, 2012 at 06:47:59AM -0400, Roger wrote: Hi Russell Standish I like this list I have just joined because of the excellent thinkers here, who are already changing my view of what computers can do in AI. The differences in our interpretations of AI and the possibility of computers simulating life is due to our different interpretations of what is meant by the word intelligence. My own definition IMHO allows one to uyse the same definition for AI and for life. There is no generally agree-upon definition of intelligence. My own definition, as I had stated, is that intelligence is the ability to make choices of one's own. Autonomous choices. Self determinations. This ability is IMHO essential for life, for one has to choose which direction to move all on one's own (Aristotle) , to separate good food from bad food, to separate friend from foe, etc. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/7/2012 Is life a cause/effect activity ? If so, what is the cause agent ? - Receiving the following content - From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-06, 23:17:34 Subject: Re: scientists simulate an entire organism in software for the firsttime ever On Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 01:29:50AM -0700, rclough wrote: Perhaps I am wrong, but I have a problem with the concept of artificial intelligence and hence artificial life-- at least according to my understanding of what intelligence is. Artificial Life is an independent field to Artificial Intelligence, so I don't see how you can say that. True there is some cross-pollination, mostly ALife = AI, but sometimes AI philosophical issues has some relevance to ALife. An example of the difference: it is relatively easy to define and measure intelligence. Its virtually impossible to do the same for life. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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. - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5182 - Release Date: 08/06/12 -- 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. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics
A possible solution to the incomputability of experience
Hi Stephen P. King Personally I go with Roger Penrose and his conjecture that, as I personally understand it, conscious experience is noncomputable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFbrnFzUc0U Which is not to say that IMHO experience can be understood through Leibniz's metaphysics of substances (using category theory). IMHO, that's the only way. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 -- 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.
pre-established harmony
Hi Stephen P. King As I understand it, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to a musical score with God, or at least some super-intelligence, as composer/conductor. This prevents all physical particles from colliding, instead they all move harmoniously together*. The score was composed before the Big Bang-- my own explanation is like Mozart God or that intelligence could hear the whole (symphony) beforehand in his head. I suppose that this accords with Leibniz's belief that God, whoc is good, constructed the best possible world where as a miniomum, that least physics is obeyed. Hence Voltaire's foolish criticism of Leibniz in Candide that how could the volcanic or earthquake disaster in Lisbon be part of the most perfect world ? Thus, because physics must be obeyed, sometimes crap happens. * As a related and possibly explanatory point, L's universe completely is nonlocal. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 01:56:41 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? Hi Roger, I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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.
The prison of language and the meanings of words
Hi Stephen P. King Here would be Peter Berger's (The Social Construction of Reality) version: The meanings of all words are established (invented) pragmatically--through use, just as our mothers taught us the meanings of words through use, though conversation. Thus language is a cultural artifact as are names. So no wonder God wouldn't give his name, because there is no name, no word, completely free of culture. In the Christian tradition, however, the Holy Spirit has revealed what God weanted to be revealed in the best way possible. Hence YHWH, a non -word. We can however escape from the prison of language through pure experience. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 01:21:52 Subject: Re: God has no name You live by symbols. You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it. This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name. This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world's perception is achieved. You see something where nothing is, and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you. Thus do you think that you have given life in separation. By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will. What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things ununified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awarenesses? You gave these names to them, establishing perception as you wished to have perception be. The nameless things were given names, and thus reality was given them as well. For what is named is given meaning and will then be seen as meaningful; a cause of true effect, with consequence inherent in itself. This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth. Its enemy is wholeness. It conceives of little things and looks upon them. And a lack of space, a sense of unity or vision that sees differently, become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with and deny. Yet does this other vision still remain a natural direction for the mind to channel its perception. It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names, and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved, and concepts can be meaningfully shared. This is the sum of the inheritance the world bestows. And everyone who learns to think that it is so accepts the signs and symbols that assert the world is real. It is for this they stand. They leave no doubt that what is named is there. It can be seen, as is anticipated. What denies that it is true is but illusion, for it is the ultimate reality. To question it is madness; to accept its presence is the proof of sanity. Such is the teaching of the world. It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through. But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable are its premises, how doubtful its results, the sooner does he question its effects. Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, and all the arbitrary names the world bestows can be withdrawn as they are raised to doubt. Think not you made the world. Illusions, yes! But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming. When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true Identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his. It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to take a teaching function. You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought that will release you from them. They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found. Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget
Leibniz on the unconscious
Hi meekerdb Leibniz seems to be the first philosopher (and one of the few) to discuss the unconscious, which was necessary, since like God (or some Cosmic intelligence), it is an integral part of his metaphysical system. In Leibniz's metaphysics, the lowest or bare naked monads (as in rocks) are unconscious bodies. Leibniz ways that they are very drowsy or asleep. They lie in darkness. Animals can feel but not think. Man has conscious thought, feelings, and body intelligence. And these are non-local (universal), since they (the entire universe) are reflected in man's perceptions, which are only given to us indirectly, since substances cannot act on one another. This suggest a possible mechanism of myth construction, since all of man's unconscious thoughts are nonlocal, although to a limited extent. These perceptions (including possibly elepathy) however are limited in scope in man, since they may be darkened by ignorance and lack of intgelligence and are always distorted to some exxtent. Only the supreme monad has perfect vision of everything. Knows all. Does all. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-10, 12:18:46 Subject: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated! On 8/10/2012 3:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. I have never supposed that asleep=unconscious. When one is asleep, one is still perceptive; just trying whispering a sleeping person's name near them. This is quite different from being unconscious due to a concussion. I agree that being unconscious might be a combination of loss of all bodily control plus a loss of memory. But that seems an unlikely coincidence. Rather it is evidence that memory is physical and that consciousness requires memory. 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.
Positivism and intelligence
Positivism seems to rule out native intelligence. I can't see how knowledge could be created on a blank slate without intelligence. Or for that matter, how the incredibly unnatural structure of the carbon atom could have been created somehow somewhere by mere chance. Fred Hoyle as I recall said that it was very unlikely that it was created by chance. All very unlikely things in my opinion show evidence of intelligence. In order to extract energy from disorder as life does shows that, like Maxwell's Demon, some intelligence is required to sort things out. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-10, 14:05:31 Subject: Re: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated! On 8/10/2012 7:23 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: The modern positivist conception of free will has no scientific meaning. But all modern rephasings of old philosophy are degraded. Or appear so because they make clear the deficiencies of the old philosophy. Positivist philosophy pass everithing down to what-we-know-by-science of the physical level, That's not correct. Postivist philosophy was that we only know what we directly experience and scientific theories are just ways of predicting new experiences from old experiences. Things not directly experienced, like atoms, were merely fictions used for prediction. that is the only kind of substance that they admit. this what-we-know-by-science makes positivism a moving ground, a kind of dictatorial cartesian blindness which states the kind of questions one is permitted at a certain time to ask or not. Classical conceptions of free will were concerned with the option ot thinking and acting morally or not, that is to have the capability to deliberate about the god or bad that a certain act implies for oneself One deliberates about consequences and means, but how does one deliberate about what one wants? Do you deliberate about whether pleasure or pain is good? and for others, and to act for god or for bad with this knowledge. Roughly speaking, Men have such faculties unless in slavery. Animals do not. My dog doesn't think about what's good or bad for himself? I doubt that. The interesting parts are in the details of these statements. An yes, they are questions that can be expressed in more scientific terms. This can be seen in the evolutionary study of moral and law under multilevel selection theory: https://www.google.es/search?q=multilevel+selectionsugexp=chrome,mod=11sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 which gives a positivistic support for moral, and a precise, materialistic notion of good and bad. And thus suddenly these three concepts must be sanctioned as legitimate objects of study by the positivistic dictators, without being burnt alive to social death, out of the peer-reviewed scientific magazines, where sacred words of Modernity resides. We are witnessing this devolution since slowly all the old philosophical and theological concepts will recover their legitimacy, and all their old problems will stand as problems here and now. For example, we will discover that what we call Mind is nothing but the old concepts of Soul and Spirit. After stripping soul of it's immortality and acausal relation to physics. Concerning the degraded positivistic notion of free will, I said before that under an extended notion of evolution it is nor possible to ascertain if either the matter evolved the mind or if the mind selected the matter. So it could be said that the degraded question is meaningless and of course, non interesting. But the question of their relationship is still interesting. 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. -- 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: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?
Hi meekerdb No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial. It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime. Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed). Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-10, 15:16:55 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hi Russell Standish But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals. To perceive. To judge. To cause action. If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything - he would have just pushed the problem off into the agent. To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus-- and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy. But that's Dennett's point. Humans aren't that way. They may do something because of X and yet think they did it because of Y. This is blatant in split brain experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable decision based on the information available to it; while the other side, which doesn't have that information, confabulates a completely different story about the decision. This is most obvious in split brain patients, but it happens to the rest of us too. There is only one action because a physical body can't do two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the person is not of two minds. Brent Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- 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: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On 8/11/2012 4:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii Dear Evgenii, A bacterium and a rock should not be put head to (no)head in this question. A bacterium has autonomy while a rock does not. It is better to see that the rock is just a small piece of an autonomous whole and then compare that whole to the (whole) bacterium. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
On 10 Aug 2012, at 14:04, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote: It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the total. This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow, I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of consciousness is to select from among the course of action presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying (aka reductive) process may be sufficient. The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution is the key to any form of creative process. The brain parts I was talking about must be enough big and integrated, like an half hemisphere, or the limbic system, etc. What I said should not contradict Daniel Dennett pandemonia or Fodor modularity theory, which are very natural in a computationalist perspective. Only sufficiently big part of the brain can have their own consciousness as dissociation suggests, but also other experience, like splitting the brain, or the removing of half brain operation(*) suggest. The sleeping or paralysis of the corpus callosum can also leads to a splitting consciousness, and people can awake in the middle of doing two dreams at once. This consciousness multiplication does echoed Darwinian evolution as well, I think. Yet, I am not sure that Darwin evolution is a key to creativity. It might be a key to the apparition of creativity on earth, but creativity is a direct consequence of Turing universality. Emil Post called creative his set theoretical notion of universal probably for that reason: the fact that universal machine can somehow contradict any theories done about them, and transform itself transfinitely often. Or look at the Mandelbrot set. The formal description is very simple (less than 1K), yet its deployment is very rich and grandiose. It might be creative in Post sense, and most natural form, including biological, seem to appear in it. So very simple iteration can lead to creative process, and this echoes the fact that consciousness and creativity might appear more early than we usually thought. I was of course *not* saying that all parts of the brain are conscious, to be clear, only big one and structurally connected. Bruno (*) See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSu9HGnlMV0 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: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On 11.08.2012 15:13 Stephen P. King said the following: On 8/11/2012 4:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii Dear Evgenii, A bacterium and a rock should not be put head to (no)head in this question. A bacterium has autonomy while a rock does not. It is better to see that the rock is just a small piece of an autonomous whole and then compare that whole to the (whole) bacterium. My goal was just to try to understand what Russell meant by life is unintelligent. Say let us take some creations of AI and compare them with a bacterium. Where do we find more intelligence? Evgenii -- 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: God has no name
On 10 Aug 2012, at 18:45, Brian Tenneson wrote: Yeah but you can't define what a set is either, so... The difference, but is there really one?, is that we the notion of set we can agree on axioms and rules, so that we can discuss independently on the metaphysical baggage, as you pointed out once. This can be done both formally, in which case what we really do is an interview of a machine that we trust, or informally, betting on the human willingness to reason. For example, with sets, we can agree on the fact that they are identified by their elements: the extensionality axiom: For all x, y, z, if (x belongs to y - x belongs to z) then y = z. We might prefer to work in an intensional set theory, where a set is defined by their means of construct, and which is more relevant for the study of machines and processes. But then we do lambda calculus or elementary topoi, or we work in a variety of combinatory algebra. But it will not be a disagreement, as we know there can be different notion of set, and so different tools. Likewise with consciousness. We might not been able to define it, but we can agree on principle on it, notably that, assuming comp, it is invariant for a set of computable transformations, like the lower level substitutions, and reason from that. We can agree that if X is conscious, then X cannot justify that through words. Likewise with God. An informal definition could be that God is Reality, not necessarily as we observe or experience it but as it is. We can only hope or bet for such a thing. It might be a physical universe, or it might be a mathematical universe, or an arithmetical universe, but with comp it is a theological universe in the sense that comp separates clearly the communicable and the non communicable part of that reality, if it exists. Life and creativity develop on that frontier, as it develops also in between equilibrium and non equilibrium, between computable and non computable, between controllable and non controllable, etc. And we can agree on axioms on GOD, that is REALITY or TRUTH. For example that it is unique, that we can search on it, that it is not definable, so that such words are really only meta pointer to it, etc. The advantage of the definition of GOD by REALITY, or GOD = TRUTH, is that no honest believers, in any confessions, should have a problem with it, and for the atheists or the materialist GOD becomes a material physical universe a bit like 0, 1, and 2 became number when 'number' meant first 'numerous'. Mathematicians always does that trick, to extend the definition of a concept so that we simplify the key general statements. Is GOD a person? That might be an open problem for some, and an open problem for others. Truth might be subtile: in NeoPlatonism GOD (the ONE) is not a person, nor a creator, but from it emanates two other GODS (in the ancient greek sense, Plotinus call them hypostases) the third one being a person (the universal soul). For all matter, we need only to agree on semi-axiomatic definition, the rest is (a bit boring imo) vocabulary discussions. It hides the real conceptual differences in the attempt to apprehend what is, or could be. Bruno On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Roger, On 07 Aug 2012, at 11:53, Roger wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal OUR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVBEN, HALLOWED BE THY NAME. Luther said that to meditate of the sacredness of God according to this phrase is the oldest prayer. In old testament times, God's name was considered too sacred to speak by the Jews. The King James Bible uses YHWH, the Jews never say God as far as I know, they sometimes write it as G*d. We have relaxed these constrictions in the protestant tradition, use Jehovah and all sorts of other sacfed names. It is the problem with the notions of God, Whole, Truth, consciousness, etc. we can't define them. You can sum up Damascius by one sentence on the ineffable is already one sentence too much, it can only miss the point. (But Damascius wrote thousand of pages on this!). Like Lao Tseu said that the genuine wise man is mute, also. John Clark said it recently too! This is actually well explained (which does not mean that the explanation is correct) by computer science: a universal machine can look inward and prove things about itself, including that there are true proposition that she cannot prove as far as she is consistent, that machine-truth is not expressible, etc. My last paper (in french) is entitled la machine mystique (the mystical machine) and concerns all the things that a machine might know without being able to justify it rationally and which might be counter-intuitive from her own point of view. The word god is not problematical ... as long as we don't take the word too much seriously. You can say I search God, but you can't say I found God, and
Re: The question of self. Dennet is here expanded through the use of Leibniz and Kant
On 8/11/2012 3:33 AM, Roger wrote: *The question of self. Dennet is here expanded through the use of Leibniz's monads* *as Kant's categories with self as a supercategory logically including all of Kant's* *categories.* Dennet has painted himself into a corner by following the materialistic view of mind. Do you agree with Dennett that we can make a machine that has a mind? 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
On 10 Aug 2012, at 18:18, meekerdb wrote: On 8/10/2012 3:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. I have never supposed that asleep=unconscious. When one is asleep, one is still perceptive; just trying whispering a sleeping person's name near them. This is quite different from being unconscious due to a concussion. OK. But I think we remain conscious after concussion, except that the first person go through amnesia or sequence of amnesia, and also that the notion of you can momentarily change a lot, and this followed by amnesia. I agree that being unconscious might be a combination of loss of all bodily control plus a loss of memory. I am not sure. It is conceivable that we can remain conscious and lost all memories. But I thought before that we were still obliged to have a short term memory of the immediate conscious experience itself, so that consciousness implies a short term memory of elementary time events, but I am no more sure about this. Like Brouwer I related strongly consciousness with subjective time, but I am relinquishing that link since more recently. That's just more doubts and foods for thought! But that seems an unlikely coincidence. Rather it is evidence that memory is physical ? and that consciousness requires memory. The conscious feeling of identity requires memory, but I am not sure that consciousness needs more memory than the minimal number of flip- flop needed to get a universal system, to which I begin to think has already a disconnected form of consciousness. Again, it is not the system itself which is conscious it is the abstract person it represents, or can represent. 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
On 10 Aug 2012, at 18:36, meekerdb wrote: On 8/10/2012 5:04 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote: It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the total. This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow, I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of consciousness is to select from among the course of action presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying (aka reductive) process may be sufficient. But a course of action could be 'selected', i.e. acted upon, without consciousness (in fact I often do so). I think what constitutes consciousness is making up a narrative about what is 'selected'. The evolutionary reason for making up this narrative is to enter it into memory so it can be explained to others and to yourself when you face a similar choice in the future. That the memory of these past decisions took the form of a narrative derives from the fact that we are a social species, as explained by Julian Jaynes. This explains why the narrative is sometimes false, and when the part of the brain creating the narrative doesn't have access to the part deciding, as in some split brain experiments, the narrative is just confabulated. I find Dennett's modular brain idea very plausible and it's consistent with the idea that consciousness is the function of a module that produces a narrative for memory. OK. Not just a narrative though, but the meaning associated to it. If were designing a robot which I intended to be conscious, that's how I would design it: With a module whose function was to produce a narrative of choices and their supporting reasons for a memory that would be accessed in support of future decisions. This then requires a certain coherence and consistency in robots decisions - what we call 'character' in a person. OK. I don't think that would make the robot necessarily conscious according to Bruno's critereon. I think it would, if the system is universal it will potentially represent itself, and the consciousness is the meaning attached to the fixed point. In the worst case, it is trivially conscious. But if it had to function as a social being, it would need a concept of 'self' and the ability for self-reflective reasoning. That is already self-consciousness, which ask for one more loop of self-awareness. Like the K4 reasoners in Smullyan Forever Undecided, or any Löbian machine (universal machine believe correctly that they are universal). Robinson arithmetic is conscious (the person defined by Robinson arithmetic, to be sure), and Peano Arithmetic is already self-conscious (but still disconnected, without further memories). I think currently, but I can change my mind on this later. Then it would be conscious according to Bruno. OK. Bruno Brent The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution is the key to any form of creative process. Cheers -- 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 . 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: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 3:45 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.auwrote: In both your examples, (dice and roulette wheels), they always do something stupid (generate a random number). But you said free will is the ability to do something stupid so both dice and roulette wheels have free will. But perhaps it's the always that bothers you, after all sometimes people do smart things; so then rig up some dice with a pocket calculator and make a hybrid machine, usually the calculator produces the correct answer but on average of one time in 6 it does not and it does something dumb, like give the wrong answer. Now it has free will. There is no choice in their actions Just like you, and me, and the dog, and a thermostat, and a rock, and a electron, and everything else in the universe, the dice and roulette wheel did what they did for a reason OR they did what they did for no reason. The word choice does not help because there is no third alternative. I think you may be deliberately taking my statement out of context. Please note that I am not rejecting your definition, all I'm doing is using logic to see where it leads; if it ends up endowing things with free will that you don't want to have free will don't blame me, it's your definition not mine. John K Clark -- 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: pre-established harmony
As I understand it, the Leibniz's rational for advocating the pre-established harmony idea was Newton's discovery of conservation of momentum. Descartes knew that energy was conserved, but not momentum. This would have permitted a non-physical mind to alter the trajectories of particles in the mind so long as the speed of the particles remained unchanged. Newton's revelation however was that in order for the motion of one particle to be changed, another physical particle must have an equal and opposite change in momentum. This does not permit a non physical force to change the motion of particles, and hence Leibniz concluded that the mental world does not affect the physical word, or vice versa. Rather, they were made to agree beforehand (you might think of it as a bunch of souls watching a pre-recorded movie of the physical world, but this pre-recorded movie also agrees with the intentions of the souls watching it). In *Monadology*, published in 1714, Leibniz wrote “Descartes recognized that souls cannot impart any force to bodies, because there is always the same quantity of force in matter. Nevertheless he was of opinion that the soul could change the direction of bodies. But that is because in his time it was not known that there is a law of nature which affirms also the conservation of the same total direction in matter. Had Descartes noticed this he would have come upon my system of pre-established harmony.” Jason On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Roger rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Stephen P. King As I understand it, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to a musical score with God, or at least some super-intelligence, as composer/conductor. This prevents all physical particles from colliding, instead they all move harmoniously together*. The score was composed before the Big Bang-- my own explanation is like Mozart God or that intelligence could hear the whole (symphony) beforehand in his head. I suppose that this accords with Leibniz's belief that God, whoc is good, constructed the best possible world where as a miniomum, that least physics is obeyed. Hence Voltaire's foolish criticism of Leibniz in Candide that how could the volcanic or earthquake disaster in Lisbon be part of the most perfect world ? Thus, because physics must be obeyed, sometimes crap happens. * As a related and possibly explanatory point, L's universe completely is nonlocal. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - *From:* Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-08-11, 01:56:41 *Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? Hi Roger, I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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. -- 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: Severe limitations of a computer as a brain model
Roger, You say computers are quantitative instruments which cannot have a self or feelings, but might you be attributing things at the wrong level? For example, a computer can simulate some particle interactions, a sufficiently big computer could simulate the behavior of any arbitrarily large amount of matter. The matter in the simulation could be arranged in the form of a human being sitting in a room. Do you think this simulated human made of simulated matter, all run within the computer not have a self, feelings, and intuition? After all, we are made up of material which lacks feelings, nonetheless, we have feelings. Where do you believe these feelings originate? Jason On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Roger rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona Agreed. Computers are quantitative instruments and so cannot have a self or feelings, which are qualitative. And intution is non-computable IMHO. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - *From:* Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-08-11, 04:08:29 *Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? The Dennet conception is made to avoid an agent in the first place because i so, it whould be legitimate to question what is the agent made of an thus going trough an infinite regression. The question of the agent is the vivid intuition for which there are ingenious evolutionary explanations which i may subscribe. But a robot would implement such computations and still I deeply doubt about his internal notion oof self, his quialia etc. The best response to many questions for the shake of avooiding premature dogmatic closeness is to say we don't know El 11/08/2012 07:57, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net escribi�: Hi Roger, 牋� I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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. -- 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. -- 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. -- 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: Leibniz on the unconscious
On 8/11/2012 5:13 AM, Roger wrote: Hi meekerdb Leibniz seems to be the first philosopher (and one of the few) to discuss the unconscious, which was necessary, since like God (or some Cosmic intelligence), it is an integral part of his metaphysical system. In Leibniz's metaphysics, the lowest or bare naked monads (as in rocks) are unconscious bodies. Leibniz ways that they are very drowsy or asleep. They lie in darkness. Animals can feel but not think. And your evidence for this is? Man has conscious thought, feelings, and body intelligence. And these are non-local (universal), since they (the entire universe) are reflected in man's perceptions, which are only given to us indirectly, since substances cannot act on one another. ? This suggest a possible mechanism of myth construction, since all of man's unconscious thoughts are nonlocal, although to a limited extent. These perceptions (including possibly elepathy) however are limited in scope in man, since they may be darkened by ignorance and lack of intgelligence and are always distorted to some exxtent. Only the supreme monad has perfect vision of everything. Knows all. Does all. Brent Peter: What would you say if I told you there was Master of all we see, a Creator of the universe, who watches and judges everything we do. Curls: I'd say you were about to take up a collection. --- Johnny Hart, in B.C. -- 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: Positivism and intelligence
On 8/11/2012 5:56 AM, Roger wrote: Positivism seems to rule out native intelligence. I can't see how knowledge could be created on a blank slate without intelligence. Or for that matter, how the incredibly unnatural structure of the carbon atom could have been created somehow somewhere by mere chance. Fred Hoyle as I recall said that it was very unlikely that it was created by chance. All very unlikely things in my opinion show evidence of intelligence. How likely is the shape of Japan? In order to extract energy from disorder as life does shows that, like Maxwell's Demon, some intelligence is required to sort things out. Life extracts energy by increasing disorder. 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: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ?
On 8/11/2012 6:00 AM, Roger wrote: Hi meekerdb No, the agent is not part of the material world, it is nonmaterial. It has no extension and so is outside of spacetime. Mind itself is such (as Descartes observed). Maybe. But wherever 'the agent' is, it is a non-explanation of agency. If you're going to explain something you have to explain it in terms of something else that is better understood. So to 'explain' mind as being an immaterial agent is vacuous. Brent Roger , rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 - Receiving the following content - *From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net *Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-08-10, 15:16:55 *Subject:* Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? On 8/10/2012 5:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hi Russell Standish But Dennet has no agent to react to all of those signals. To perceive. To judge. To cause action. If he had an agent he would have failed to explain anything - he would have just pushed the problem off into the agent. To do those, an agent has to be unified and singular -- a point of focus-- and there's no propect for such in current neuroscience/neurophilosophy. But that's Dennett's point. Humans aren't that way. They may do something because of X and yet think they did it because of Y. This is blatant in split brain experiments where the subjects brain on one side makes a reasonable decision based on the information available to it; while the other side, which doesn't have that information, confabulates a completely different story about the decision. This is most obvious in split brain patients, but it happens to the rest of us too. There is only one action because a physical body can't do two different things at the same time; but that doesn't mean the person is not of two minds. Brent Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- 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. -- 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: Leibniz on the unconscious
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 5:14 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/11/2012 5:13 AM, Roger wrote: Hi meekerdb Leibniz seems to be the first philosopher (and one of the few) to discuss the unconscious, which was necessary, since like God (or some Cosmic intelligence), it is an integral part of his metaphysical system. In Leibniz's metaphysics, the lowest or bare naked monads (as in rocks) are unconscious bodies. Leibniz ways that they are very drowsy or asleep. They lie in darkness. Animals can feel but not think. And your evidence for this is? Here is some disproof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo Jason -- 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
On 8/11/2012 9:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2012, at 18:36, meekerdb wrote: On 8/10/2012 5:04 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote: It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the total. This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow, I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his pandemonia theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of consciousness is to select from among the course of action presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying (aka reductive) process may be sufficient. But a course of action could be 'selected', i.e. acted upon, without consciousness (in fact I often do so). I think what constitutes consciousness is making up a narrative about what is 'selected'. The evolutionary reason for making up this narrative is to enter it into memory so it can be explained to others and to yourself when you face a similar choice in the future. That the memory of these past decisions took the form of a narrative derives from the fact that we are a social species, as explained by Julian Jaynes. This explains why the narrative is sometimes false, and when the part of the brain creating the narrative doesn't have access to the part deciding, as in some split brain experiments, the narrative is just confabulated. I find Dennett's modular brain idea very plausible and it's consistent with the idea that consciousness is the function of a module that produces a narrative for memory. OK. Not just a narrative though, but the meaning associated to it. If were designing a robot which I intended to be conscious, that's how I would design it: With a module whose function was to produce a narrative of choices and their supporting reasons for a memory that would be accessed in support of future decisions. This then requires a certain coherence and consistency in robots decisions - what we call 'character' in a person. OK. I don't think that would make the robot necessarily conscious according to Bruno's critereon. I think it would, if the system is universal it will potentially represent itself, That is a point of your ideas which frequently brings me up short. Perhaps it is because of your assumption of everythingness, but I see a distinction between what my robot will be and do, per my design, and what it can *potentially* do. As I understand the defintion of universal it is in terms of what a machine can potentially do - given the right program when we're referring to computers. But if it is not given all possible programs it will not realize all potentialities. Yet you often interject, as above, as though all potentialities are necessarily realized? And this is not merely a metaphysical question. John McCarthy has pointed out that it would be unethical to create robots with certain levels of consciousness in certain circumstances, e.g. it would certainly be wrong to have programmed Curiosity with the potential to feel lonely. Brent and the consciousness is the meaning attached to the fixed point. In the worst case, it is trivially conscious. But if it had to function as a social being, it would need a concept of 'self' and the ability for self-reflective reasoning. That is already self-consciousness, which ask for one more loop of self-awareness. Like the K4 reasoners in Smullyan Forever Undecided, or any Löbian machine (universal machine believe correctly that they are universal). Robinson arithmetic is conscious (the person defined by Robinson arithmetic, to be sure), and Peano Arithmetic is already self-conscious (but still disconnected, without further memories). I think currently, but I can change my mind on this later. Then it would be conscious according to Bruno. OK. Bruno Brent The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution is the key to any form of creative process. Cheers -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Re: The prison of language and the meanings of words
On 8/11/2012 9:34 AM, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Roger rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net wrote: So no wonder God wouldn't give his name God's true name is Bob but He's reluctant for that to become well known because He's in the Witness Protection Program. John K Clark :-) Or maybe he's on the lam. Brent I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He did not. --- Jules Renard -- 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: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 12:10:04PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 3:45 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.auwrote: In both your examples, (dice and roulette wheels), they always do something stupid (generate a random number). But you said free will is the ability to do something stupid so both dice and roulette wheels have free will. But perhaps it's the always that If you look at what I actually say (page 167 of ToN), It is the ability for a conscious entity to do somthing irrational. Sometimes I replace irrational with stupid, for effect, but irrational is what I really mean. Clearly the concept of rationality is also a can of worms, as per recent discussions, but I use the term in its usual philosophical and economics meaning. But I don't think that's at all the issue with your examples - are you really claiming that roulette wheels are conscious? Free will requires randomness, but it is more than just randomness. A random device will very rarely do something smart. bothers you, after all sometimes people do smart things; so then rig up some dice with a pocket calculator and make a hybrid machine, usually the calculator produces the correct answer but on average of one time in 6 it does not and it does something dumb, like give the wrong answer. Now it has free will. There is no choice in their actions Just like you, and me, and the dog, and a thermostat, and a rock, and a electron, and everything else in the universe, the dice and roulette wheel did what they did for a reason OR they did what they did for no reason. The word choice does not help because there is no third alternative. Only when considered at the syntactic level. At the semantic level, there are many alternatives. One of these is choice. For an explanation of syntactic versus semantic levels, see section 2.2 of my book. I think you may be deliberately taking my statement out of context. Please note that I am not rejecting your definition, all I'm doing is using logic to see where it leads; if it ends up endowing things with free will that you don't want to have free will don't blame me, it's your definition not mine. I never thought that any of your examples were conscious, thus immediately ruling out those examples. If you think they are, I'd need some convincing. A more interesting case is some complicated automaton, endowed with the ability to perform a random course of actions at appropriate times. I won't deny there are some grey areas there. For example, if it makes sense to speak of the robot having a mind, regardless of whether the robot is actually conscious or not, then I can see it could make sense to say the robot has free will. John K Clark -- 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. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 04:22:44PM +0200, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 11.08.2012 15:13 Stephen P. King said the following: On 8/11/2012 4:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii Dear Evgenii, A bacterium and a rock should not be put head to (no)head in this question. A bacterium has autonomy while a rock does not. It is better to see that the rock is just a small piece of an autonomous whole and then compare that whole to the (whole) bacterium. My goal was just to try to understand what Russell meant by life is unintelligent. Say let us take some creations of AI and compare them with a bacterium. Where do we find more intelligence? Evgenii It seems like a nonsensical question to me. Neither rocks nor bacteria are intelligent. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: Libet's experimental result re-evaluated!
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 03:52:29PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: I was of course *not* saying that all parts of the brain are conscious, to be clear, only big one and structurally connected. Bruno Thanks for this clarification. And to be sure, the split brain example shows that conscousiousness within a brain need not be unified. I still think that the vast bulk of brain processes are unconscious, though. That was the original bone of contention. But I am not a neuroscientist - others may know better. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On 8/12/2012 1:18 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 04:22:44PM +0200, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 11.08.2012 15:13 Stephen P. King said the following: On 8/11/2012 4:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii Dear Evgenii, A bacterium and a rock should not be put head to (no)head in this question. A bacterium has autonomy while a rock does not. It is better to see that the rock is just a small piece of an autonomous whole and then compare that whole to the (whole) bacterium. My goal was just to try to understand what Russell meant by life is unintelligent. Say let us take some creations of AI and compare them with a bacterium. Where do we find more intelligence? Evgenii It seems like a nonsensical question to me. Neither rocks nor bacteria are intelligent. Hi Russell, I was considering the autonomy of organisms... I agree with you, neither are intelligent. Intelligence seems to require the means to express itself such that, baring the ability, there is none to be had. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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.
