Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Monday, September 17, 2012 5:44:16 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sep 17, 2012, at 3:26 PM, Stephen P. King step...@charter.net wrote: On 9/17/2012 1:20 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Stephen - the Matrix video is a faithful interpretation of comp, but Craig's story is not, unless he includes the crucial narrative - that of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal. I expect Craig to say that the simulated Craig, the one making the yummy noises, is a zombie, and has no actual experience or inner narrative. He is entitled of course to that position. He is just saying no to the doctor. Terren Dear Terren, You are completely missing his point. He is highlighting the fact that there is a difference that makes a difference between the case of of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal and of the real Craig eating the real meal. Unless the neurons themselves are directly and independently responsible for qualia, (which is doubtful because there would be no clear mechanism for an individual neuron to articulate the wonder of its sensations to the brain as a whole) There is no more or less of a mechanism within neurons than there is for the brain as a whole to explain qualia. Neurons have neuron qualia, humans have human qualia. While that may be, brains can only talk about brain qualia. They are silent on neuron qualia, carbon atom qualia, or electron qualia. There isn't a mechanism because qualia are not objects. They are sensitivities to other experiences. It is a circular to say qualia (sensations / experiences) are sensitivities (sensations) of experiences. They are presentations through which we access significant experiences. They are generated as much on our own anthropological level as they are on sub-personal physiological levels and super-personal evolutionary levels. Where do you get this stuff? , the only difference that makes a difference are the firings patterns of neurons. Patterns make no difference to anything without pattern recognition. There are no 'patterns' in and of themselves. The color of X-Rays, for instance, is just as patterned as the color green. The firing patterns of neurons is noticed by other neurons and groups of neurons. This is the only time information that makes a difference to other neurons is communicated. At each moment, all the differences, all the information a neuron has received is boiled down to one bit: to fire or not to fire. Pure speculation. Neurons fire, but single cell organisms respond to their environment without nervous systems. Neurons might respond to their environment independently, but neighboring neurons don't care what their neighbors might be thinking, what matters is whether their neighbors are firing. You are conflating the physiology associated with human experience with the ontology of subjective experience in general. Information and bits are not real, they are analytical abstractions that are not capable of any causes or effects. According to you, only experiences are real. If this is where you stand then you should admit that this idea gives up any hope of explaining anything about experience. Using information theory, and known limitations if information representation in physics, It could be shown that a biological brain has only some certain and finite information available to it. This places an upper bound on the things it knows and can talk about. An equivalent artificial brain could be engineered to contain the same information and the same knowledge. There would be nothing the biological brain could know that the artificial brain does not: they were created to have identical information content. If one knows 2+2 is 4, they both do, if one knows what red is like, they both do. Information feels nothing and knows nothing, and it never will. I didn't say information feels or knows, only that the brains, (biological or artificial), in the above hypothetical, have the same limited information and therefore neither is wiser or more knowledgeable than the other. Jason Craig Jason There has to be a grundlagen level at which there is not a simulation, there has to be a real thing that the simulations are some deformed copy of. I have postulated, following an idea from Stephen Woolfram, that a physical system (in its evolution) in the real word *is* the best possible simulation and thus it is literally the real thing that all images that we might have of it in our minds are mere simulations. Craig is diving deep into this idea and looking at it from the inside and reporting to us his observations. On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 12:32 PM, Stephen P. King step...@charter.net wrote: On 9/16/2012 9:29 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Background: After refusing to serve Bruno's brother in law with the simulated brain
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
Hi Richard Ruquist Obeying the commandments will not get you into heaven, only believing in Christ's sacrifice for us will do that. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allan - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 13:53:40 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. Jesus said that he likes people to be hot or cold, atheists and theists that keep all the commandments, even ones he added like praying in a closet. The other people are the least in heaven, which BTW implies that we all make to heaven. He especially dislikes those who change or reinterprete his words. Richard, who practices atheistic Buddhism and atheistic Hinduism (Samkhya). Even when I was a jew I could not keep all 613 commandments. Safer to be an atheist. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:40 PM, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: God loved the believers and hated the nonbelievers, at least that's what the Bible tells us. Yes that's what the Bible says, it says that a omnipotent omniscient being is pretending that He does not exist and He hates anyone that He has been successful at fooling and will torture that person as much as He can for a infinite number of years. But he loves you. It's easy to see why a human would push that load of crap because it gives influence over others, and its easy to see why they want it taught to the very young, at that age anything said by a authority figure bypasses the critical thinking areas of the brain and directly becomes a axiom, which he will eventually pass on to his children someday; trying to peddle that horseshit to a adult for the first time would never fly. The brain just works differently when we're very young, its much easier to learn a language and we believe everything we're told. Most adults don't believe in Santa Claus even though they once did because they were told by their parents when they were still quite young that he didn't exist, if they waited until they were 17 to be informed it would be too late and they wouldn't have believed them because Santa Claus exists would have already have become fixed as a axiom that cannot be questioned. And we'd be living in a world were most adults believed in Santa Claus and were dreaming up all sorts of ingenious excuses why we can never manage to detect him or his workshop at the north pole. What I don't understand, because it seems so out of character, is if God does exist why He would place belief, in particular the belief in something when there is absolutely no reason for doing so, as the ultimate virtue. 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. -- 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: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
Hi Richard Ruquist An excellent point us, because Jesus never condemned homosexuality. He never said anything about it. And as you say, it's not mentioned in the 10. And the 10 as far as I know were all that Jesus preserved. So Christianity doesn't have a case against homosexuality that I can think of. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allan - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 11:02:01 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. Roger, So you must think that the jewish law condemning homosexual behavior was eliminated by Jesus. It's not in the 10 and certainly Christians are making a big fuss over it. Richard On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Richard Ruquist I was irritated because I have already answered this question. Jesus did away with the laws of the jews, which to my mind were the laws of man, not God. The Laws of God are the 10 commandments. They held and still do, just as God declared them. To give you a for instgance, jesus said that it is not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean, it is whjat comes out of it. What does fulfillment of the law mean ? It means that Jesus died for breakers of those laws including you and me. So in that sense if you break the laws, his Gospel will save you. The Gospel is the fulfillment of the laws. You only need to accept that fact for it to be saved. o invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 07:01:49 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. I was waiting for your reply. Alas, Jesus was a Jew and Jews have 613 commandments, not just 10. Insults do not help your argument. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:56 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Richard Ruquist Another drive-by shooting. Just an unsupported denial and you speed off. How can you be taken seriously ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/17/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 12:03:08 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. Nonesense On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Richard Ruquist He was talking about the 10 commandments. He fulfilled them with his death and res. Jesus did away for example with the dietary laws when he said that it is not what a man puts into his mouth that can make him unclean, it is what comes out of it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 08:08:22 Subject: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. Jesus did not do away with any OT laws. He said so explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5: [17] Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. [18] For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. [19] Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Roger, are you one of the least? Richard On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi John Clark 1)Intelligence ? I don't think the word was available back then (Bible days). Russell also hadn't a clue (he admitted) as to the meaning of pragmatism. On the other hand, Proverbs says, Fear of God is beginning of wisdom (or knowledge). 2) To understand the Bible you have to read it as a little child, not a shark. 3) Those slaughter statements are mostly based on the old jewish laws in leviticus and numbers. Jesus did away with them. But God did order a few massacres. The forgiveness of Jesus also did away with the need for them. The Old Testament is the problem. The New Testament is the solution. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/15/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-14, 15:32:46 Subject: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Roger Clough wrote: You're a slow learner. Maybe, but I'm smarter than the people in the Bible. As Bertrand Russell said So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. Bible stories
Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Craig Weinberg According to Leibniz (and common sense) the monads or souls of rocks do not contain intelligence or feeling and are thus called bare naked monads. These should be much different from the monads of humans, which contain intelligence and feelings and are true souls (Leibniz however refers to human souls as spirits). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allan - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 16:39:12 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Monday, September 17, 2012 9:24:23 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Sep 16, 2012, at 10:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: Moreover, this set has subsets, and we can limit our discussion to these subsets. For example, if we are interested only in mass, we can simulate a human perfectly using the right number of rocks. Even someone who believes in an immortal soul would agree with this. No, I don't agree with it at all. You are eating the menu. A quantity of mass doesn't simulate anything except in your mind. Mass is a normative abstraction which we apply in comparing physical bodies with each other. To reduce a human being to a physical body is not a simulation is it only weighing a bag of organic molecules. I'm just saying that the mass of the human and the mass of the rocks is the same, not that the rocks and the human are the same. They share a property, which manifests as identical behaviour when they are put on scales. What's controversial about that? It isn't controversial, but I am suggesting that maybe it should be. It isn't that there is an independent and disembodied 'property' that human body and the rocks share, it is that we measure them in a way which allows us to categorize one's behavior as similar to another in a particular way. Think of the fabric of the universe being like an optical illusion where colors change when they are adjacent to each other but not if they are against grey. There is no abstract property being manifested as concrete experiences, only concrete experiences can be re-presented as abstract properties. Yes, but there are properties of the brain that may not be relevant to behaviour. Which properties are in fact important is determined by experiment. For example, we may replace the myelin sheath with a synthetic material that has similar electrical properties and then test an isolated nerve to see if action potentials propagate in the same way. If they do, then the next step is to incorporate the nerve in a network and see if the pattern of firing in the network looks normal. The step after that is to replace the myelin in the brain of a rat to see if the animal's behaviour changes. The modified rats are compared to unmodified rats by a blinded researcher to see if he can tell the difference. If no-one can consistently tell the difference then it is announced that the synthetic myelin appears to be a functionally identical substitute for natural myelin. Except it isn't identical. No imitation substance is identical to the original. Sooner or later the limits of the imitation will be found - or they could be advantages. Maybe the imitation myelin prevents brain cancer or heat stroke or something, but it also maybe prevents sensation in cold weather or maybe certain amino acids now cause Parkinson's disease. There is no such thing as identical. There is only 'seems identical from this measure at this time'. Yes, it's not *identical*. No-one has claimed this. And since it's not identical, under some possible test it would behave differently; otherwise it would be identical. Not in the case of consciousness. There is no reason to believe that it is possible to test quality of consciousness. What might seem identical to a child may be completely dysfunctional as an adolescent - or it might be that tests done in a laboratory fail to reveal real world defects. We have no reason to believe that it is possible for consciousness to be anything other than completely unique and maybe even tied to the place and time of its instantiation. But there are some changes which make no functional difference. Absolutely, but consciousness is not necessarily a function, and function is subject to the form of measurement and interpretation applied. If l have a drink of water, that changes my brain by decreasing the sodium concentration. But this change is not significant if we are considering whether I continue to manifest normal human behaviour, since firstly the brain is tolerant of moderate physical changes But a few milligrams of LSD or ricin (LD100 of 25 ?/kg) will have a catastrophic effect on normal human capacities, so that the brain's tolerance has nothing to do with how moderate the physical changes are. That's a blanket generalization that doesn't pan
IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
Hi Craig Weinberg IMHO conscousness is not really anything in itself, it is what the brain makes of its contents that the self perceives. The self is intelligence, which is able to focus all pertinent brain activity to a unified point. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 23:43:08 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Monday, September 17, 2012 11:02:16 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand that, but it still assumes that there is a such thing as a set of functions which could be identified and reproduced that cause consciousness. I don't assume that, because consciousness isn't like anything else. It is the source of all functions and appearances, not the effect of them. Once you have consciousness in the universe, then it can be enhanced and altered in infinite ways, but none of them can replace the experience that is your own. No, the paper does *not* assume that there is a set of functions that if reproduced will will cause consciousness. It assumes that something like what you are saying is right. By assume I mean the implicit assumptions which are unstated in the paper. The thought experiment comes out of a paradox arising from assumptions about qualia and the brain which are both false in my view. I see the brain as the flattened qualia of human experience. This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all forms of measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of any system. What is it that you don't think I understand? What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of behaviours is not required. Yes, it is. Not for prosthetic enhancements, or repairs to a nervous system, but to replace a nervous system without replacing the person who is using it, yes, there is no set of behaviors which can ever be exhaustive enough in theory to accomplish that. You might be able to do it biologically, but there is no reason to trust it unless and until someone can be walked off of their brain for a few weeks or months and then walked back on. The replacement components need only be within the engineering tolerance of the nervous system components. This is a difficult task but it is achievable in principle. You assume that consciousness can be replaced, but I understand exactly why it can't. You can believe that there is no difference between scooping out your brain stem and replacing it with a functional equivalent as long as it was well engineered, but to me it's a completely misguided notion. Consciousness doesn't exist on the outside of us. Engineering only deals with exteriors. If the universe were designed by engineers, there could be no consciousness. Yes, that is exactly what the paper assumes. Exactly that! It still is modeling the experience of qualia as having a quantitative relation with the ratio of brain to non-brain. That isn't the only way to model it, and I use a different model. I assume that my friends have not been replaced by robots. If they have been then that means the robots can almost perfectly replicate their behaviour, since I (and people in general) am very good at picking up even tiny deviations from normal behaviour. The question then is, if the function of a human can be replicated this closely by a machine does that mean the consciousness can also be replicated? The answer is yes, since otherwise we would have the possibility of a person having radically different experiences but behaving normally and being unaware that their experiences were different. The answer is no. A cartoon of Bugs Bunny has no experiences but behaves just like Bugs Bunny would if he had experiences. You are eating the menu. And if it were possible to replicate the behaviour without the experiences - i.e. make a zombie - it would be possible to make a partial zombie, which lacks some experiences but behaves normally and doesn't realise that it lacks those experiences. Do you agree that this is the implication? If not, where is the flaw in the reasoning? The word zombie implies that you have an expectation of consciousness but there isn't any. That is a fallacy from the start, since there is not reason to expect a simulation to have any experience at all. It's not a zombie, it's a puppet. A partial zombie is just someone who has brain damage, and yes if you tried to replace enough of a person's brain with a non-biological material, you would get brain damage, dementia, coma, and death.
Re: Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
Hi Evgenii Rudnyi Brent has a pragmatic view of consciousness in that the meaning of things is what they do, not what they are. This is Peirce's view of reality. I tend to lean that way myself. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Evgenii Rudnyi Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 14:27:02 Subject: Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge On 16.09.2012 21:55 meekerdb said the following: On 9/16/2012 12:44 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 15.09.2012 21:56 meekerdb said the following: On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote: ... Hi Russell, That is far too inclusive a definition of computation. Not really, it only requires some way of representing the information such that it can be transformed. The integers are not the only kind of number that we can represent numbers (or any other mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature is hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We must never project our deficiencies on Nature. I would go even farther than Russell implies. A lot of the muddle about computation and consciousness comes about because they are abstracted out of the world. That's why I like to think in terms of robots or Mars rovers. Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. To find out what a string of 1s and 0s means a Mars rovers memory you need to see what effect they have on its actions. You know that 1+1=10 means 1+1=2 when 10 in a register causes it to pick up two rocks. So to further abstract computation to mean transformation of information will lead to even more of a muddle. Brent So this is some kind of enactive model of consciousness, similar to what Alva No? writes in Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. One question in this respect. Let me start with a quote from Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness Section Can qualia be reduced to the exercise of sensory-motor skills? p. 102 ?iloting a 747 no doubt feels like something to a human pilot, and the way that it feels is likely to have something to do with human biology. But why should it feel the same way to an electronic autopilot that replaces the skills exercised by a human being? Or why should it feel like anything to be the control system of a guided missile system? Anyone versed in the construction of electronic control systems knows that if one builds a system in the right way, it will function just as it is intended to do, whether it feels like anything to be that system or not. If so, functioning in an electronic (or any other) system is logically tangential to whether it is like anything to be that system, leaving the hard problem of why it happens to feel a certain way in humans untouched.? Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as by-product of its development by engineers? To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet another theory of epiphenomenalism. And your quote and question are yet another example of nothing buttery and argument by incredulity. Brent I am not sure if I understand you. I am not saying that I am right but I really do not understand you point. You say Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. and it seems that you imply that this could be applied for a robot as well. My thought were that engineers who have design a robot know everything how it is working. You comment suggests however that in the robot there is something else that has emerged independently from the will of engineers. I would be just interested to learn what it is. If you know the answer, I would appreciate it. 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On 9/18/2012 12:25 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:37 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Terren, Comp is false is too strong. He is explaining how comp is incomplete. The movie graph argument is flawed. I'm not sure what that means, that comp is incomplete. You either start from the assumption that your consciousness can be faithfully preserved (or duplicated) by a brain transplant, or you don't. What am I missing? I admit I haven't followed all of the list postings lately, but I haven't seen a coherent explanation of why the movie graph argument is flawed... if I missed it, can you point me to where this was articulated? T Hi Terren, I have no problem at all with the idea that my consciousness can be faithfully preserved (or duplicated) by a brain transplant so long as functional equivalence is exactly maintained. But the MGA seems to neglect the very real possibility that consciousness seems to depend on things that don't happen just as much as it depends on things that do happen. Maudlin and Bruno are effectively arguing that things that don't happen are thus irrelevant and should and even must be dismissed in considering consciousness. We are being sold a bill of goods if we continue to thing in terms of classical logic that does not look at both sides of a set (the members, boundary and the set's complement) as involved in a function. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Bruno's Restaurant
Hi Jason Resch If you get a duplicate of this, I apologize. I'm still working on the problem. Could it not be that just as our five senses (touch, sight, etc.) tell us what is going on in the outside world, that we also have sensors inside to detect pain and pleasure ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-18, 01:50:45 Subject: Re: Bruno's Restaurant On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I think that comp is almost true, except for when applied to consciousness itself, in which case it is exactly false. I wasn't asserting it so much as I was illustrating exactly why that is the case. Does anyone have any common sense analogy or story which makes sense of comp as a generator of consciousness? Craig, I'll give this a shot. Imagine there is a life form with only the most simple form of qualia. ?t can only experience two states of being: pain and the absence of pain. Further, let's say this creature has, say 10 semi-independent regions in its brain, each responsible for different functions but also each is connected to every other, to varying degrees. ?ach can affect any other region in various ways. When the creature is in a state of pain, each of the 10 regions of the brain are notified of this state. ?(This is communicated from the creature's pain receptors to all other parts of its brain). The awareness of this state has different effects on each region, and the regions in turn affect the creature's thoughts and behaviors. ?or example, one region begins telling the other regions of the brain to do whatever they can to make it stop. ?nother region expresses the associated behaviors and thoughts that pertain to stress and anxiety. ? third region of the brain might increase the readiness or propensity to flee, hide, cry for help, or scream. ?he states of the various regions have cascading and circular affects on other regions, and the entire focus of the brain may quickly shift (from what it was thinking before) to the single subject and pursuit of ending the pain. ?aken to the extreme, this effect might become all-encompassing, or even debilitating. In the above example, the perception of pain is described in terms of information and the effect that information has on the internal states of processes in the brain. The presence of the information, indicating pain, is through a very complex process, interpreted in numerous ways by different sub-agents in the brain to yield all the effects normally associated with the experience. Jason P.S. Try this little experiment from your own home: close your eyes and slowly begin to pinch the skin on the back of your hand. ?ay particular attention to the feeling as it crosses the threshold from mere feeling into pain. ?oncentrate on what it is that is different between that perception (of the light pinch) and the pain (of the string pinch). ?ou may find that it is just information, along with an increasing anxiety and desire to make it stop. ?xperiments have found that certain people with brain damage or on certain drugs can experience the pain without the discomfort. ?here is a separate part of the brain responsible for making pain?ncomfortable! -- 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.
Here's an example of a brain/computer device:
Hi Here's an example of a brain/computer device: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate BrainGate is a brain implant system built and previously owned by Cyberkinetics, currently under development and in clinical trials, designed to help those who have lost control of their limbs, or other bodily functions, such as patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. The Braingate technology and related Cyberkinetic? assets are now owned by privately held Braingate, LLC.[1] The sensor, which is implanted into the brain, monitors brain activity in the patient and converts the intention of the user into computer commands. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen -- 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: the nothing but fallacy.
The ages of life When a child, you believe in Santa Claus When you grow up, you don't believe in Santa Claus. When you're old, you are Santa Claus.l Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 15:19:38 Subject: Re: the nothing but fallacy. On 9/17/2012 10:40 AM, John Clark wrote: Most adults don't believe in Santa Claus even though they once did because they were told by their parents when they were still quite young that he didn't exist, if they waited until they were 17 to be informed it would be too late and they wouldn't have believed them because Santa Claus exists would have already have become fixed as a axiom that cannot be questioned. Curiously, most members of this mailing list are committed to the view that Santa Claus does exist, along with the superhuman creator being with a long white beard. Although, Bruno mocks atheists for even recognizing the Big Guy in the Sky enough to disbelieve in Him, His existence is implicit in Everything exists. 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: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
On 9/18/2012 6:07 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg IMHO conscousness is not really anything in itself, it is what the brain makes of its contents that the self perceives. The self is intelligence, which is able to focus all pertinent brain activity to a unified point. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allen Hi Roger, The brain as just a lens or parabolic mirror, nice! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
Could those that beieve in global warming please explain how the earth warmed up after each ice age ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 12:41:51 Subject: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years On Sun, Sep 16, 2012? meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: ? ? If you adjust the scale of a graph you can always make a gentle rise look like a near vertical wall. ? Yes, that's why historical graphs covering hundreds of thousands of years make it appear that CO2 and? temperature changes in the past were as rapid as those over the past 100yrs. ? To life on Earth a hundred thousand years is the blink of an eye, life is nearly 4 billion years old, this graph goes back about 600 million years: As I said the Earth has almost always been warmer than it is now, and take a look at the lower right hand corner, does that look like a terrifying vertical wall to you indicating that all life is about to be boiled to death?? Whether clouds increase or decrease warming depends on how high they are and whether they are on the day side (cooling) or the night side (warming).? True.? But since they are a feedback effect they can't turn the warming effect of CO2 into net cooling, they can only damp or amplify it.? Well yeah, if you change something you've either dampened it or amplified it.? Uncertainty about clouds is one of the reasons climate models predict a wide range of temperatures, And that is one reason we shouldn't trust those climate models enough to put our lives in their hands. And I suppose I should admit that on a list of world problems I just wouldn't rank climate change very high, for one thing even if it's? happening and caused by humans global warming would probably be a good thing on the whole, the climate has always been changing and it's hard to believe that the exact temperature the Earth is at now is the perfect temperature for Human beings when far more freeze to death than die of heat stroke. And even if it is a bad thing most of the cures proposed would be far far worse than the disease; crazy green people like to jabber about eliminating coal but without coal the economic miracle in China that lifted 400 million people out of poverty in just 20 years would have never happened. And even if it does cause problems a century from now the best policy would be for us to do nothing because our descendents? would have far more powerful tools to solve the problem than we do; it would be as if you demanded that the Wright brothers solve the problem of airport congestion before they finished their airplane. But suppose I'm wrong and we need to do something now, is there anything we can do other than what the green nuts want and instantly abandon fossil fuels, which would cause a world wild economic depression unlike any seen before and cause the death of billions? Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technical officer at Microsoft has an idea, he wants to build an artificial volcano. Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 became the best studied large volcanic eruption in history, it put more sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere than any volcano since Krakatoa in 1883. There is no longer any dispute that stratospheric sulfur dioxide leads to more diffuse sunlight, a decrease in the ozone layer, and a general cooling of the planet. What was astonishing was how little stratospheric sulfur dioxide was needed. If you injected it in the arctic where it would be about 4 times more effective, about 100,000 tons a year would reverse global warming in the northern hemisphere. That works out to 34 gallons per minute, a bit more than what a standard garden hose could deliver but much less than a fire hose. We already spew out over 200,000,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each year, but all of that is in the lower troposphere where it has little or no cooling effect, the additional 100,000 tons is a drop in the bucket if you're looking at the tonnage, but it's in the stratosphere where its vastly more effective. Myhrvold wasn't suggesting anything as ambitious as a space elevator, just a light hose about 2 inches in diameter going up about 18 miles. In one design he burns sulfur to make sulfur dioxide, he then liquefies it and injects it into the stratosphere with a hose supported every 500 to 1000 feet with helium balloons. Myhrvold thinks this design would cost about 150 million dollars to build and about 100 million a year to operate. In another design that would probably be even cheaper he just slips a sleeve over the smokestack of any existing small to midsize coal power plant in the higher latitudes and uses the hot exhaust to fill hot air balloons to support the hose. If Myhrvold's cost estimate is correct (and I
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 1:50:47 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: I think that comp is almost true, except for when applied to consciousness itself, in which case it is exactly false. I wasn't asserting it so much as I was illustrating exactly why that is the case. Does anyone have any common sense analogy or story which makes sense of comp as a generator of consciousness? Craig, I'll give this a shot. Imagine there is a life form with only the most simple form of qualia. It can only experience two states of being: pain and the absence of pain. Further, let's say this creature has, say 10 semi-independent regions in its brain, each responsible for different functions but also each is connected to every other, to varying degrees. Each can affect any other region in various ways. When the creature is in a state of pain, each of the 10 regions of the brain are notified of this state. (This is communicated from the creature's pain receptors to all other parts of its brain). The awareness of this state has different effects on each region, and the regions in turn affect the creature's thoughts and behaviors. For example, one region begins telling the other regions of the brain to do whatever they can to make it stop. Another region expresses the associated behaviors and thoughts that pertain to stress and anxiety. A third region of the brain might increase the readiness or propensity to flee, hide, cry for help, or scream. The states of the various regions have cascading and circular affects on other regions, and the entire focus of the brain may quickly shift (from what it was thinking before) to the single subject and pursuit of ending the pain. Taken to the extreme, this effect might become all-encompassing, or even debilitating. In the above example, the perception of pain is described in terms of information and the effect that information has on the internal states of processes in the brain. The presence of the information, indicating pain, is through a very complex process, interpreted in numerous ways by different sub-agents in the brain to yield all the effects normally associated with the experience. Jason P.S. Try this little experiment from your own home: close your eyes and slowly begin to pinch the skin on the back of your hand. Pay particular attention to the feeling as it crosses the threshold from mere feeling into pain. Concentrate on what it is that is different between that perception (of the light pinch) and the pain (of the string pinch). You may find that it is just information, along with an increasing anxiety and desire to make it stop. Experiments have found that certain people with brain damage or on certain drugs can experience the pain without the discomfort. There is a separate part of the brain responsible for making pain uncomfortable! What you have then is 10 regions of the brain (are they self categorized? formally partitioned? who knows there are a such thing as brain regions besides us?) which have no experience or qualia whatsoever, yet can detect notifications of a presumably epiphenomenal state of pain. If the brain is doing all of the work, why does the top level organism have some other worthless abstraction layer of experience when, as blindsight proves, we are perfectly capable of processing information without any conscious qualia at all. Information is very close to consciousness, but ultimately fails to sustain itself. The pixels on your screen have no way to detect each other or process the image that you see as a coherent gestalt, and the processor behind the graphics generation has no way to detect the visual end result, and if it did, it would be completely superfluous. Your graphics card does not need to see anything. To me it makes more sense to see information as nothing but the semiotic protocols developed by perceptual participation (experience) to elaborate and deepen the qualitative richness of those experiences. Of course, the protocols which are maps of one level of experience are the territory of another, which is what makes it confusing to try to reverse engineer consciousness from such an incredibly complex example as a Homo sapien. Our pinch is a continuum of sensory, emotional, and cognitive interaction because we are made of the qualia of hundreds of billions of neurons and billions of lifetimes of different species and substances. That only means our pain can seem like information to us, not that all pain arises from information processing. Information does not concretely exist as an independent entity. There are forms which can be used to inform if they are intentionally treated that way, as a map, but nothing is just a map by itself. Every map is A territory (not THE territory). being used by another 'territory' as a
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
Hi John Clark Agreed, there is no indisputable reason to believe in God. Faith or trust is required, and that's exactly what God wants you to do. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 13:40:03 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: God loved the believers and hated the nonbelievers, at least that's what the Bible tells us. Yes that's what the Bible says, it says that a omnipotent omniscient being is pretending that He does not exist and He hates anyone that He has been successful at fooling and will torture that person as much as He can for a infinite number of years. But he loves you. It's easy to see why a human would push that load of crap because it gives influence over others, and its easy to see why they want it taught to the very young, at that age anything said by a authority figure bypasses the critical thinking areas of the brain and directly becomes a axiom, which he will eventually pass on to his children someday; trying to peddle that horseshit to a adult for the first time would never fly. The brain just works differently when we're very young, its much easier to learn a language and we believe everything we're told. Most adults don't believe in Santa Claus even though they once did because they were told by their parents when they were still quite young that he didn't exist, if they waited until they were 17 to be informed it would be too late and they wouldn't have believed them because Santa Claus exists would have already have become fixed as a axiom that cannot be questioned. And we'd be living in a world were most adults believed in Santa Claus and were dreaming up all sorts of ingenious excuses why we can never manage to detect him or his workshop at the north pole. What I don't understand, because it seems so out of character, is if God does exist why He would place belief, in particular the belief in something when there is absolutely no reason for doing so, as the ultimate virtue.? ? 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. -- 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.
Monad mereology. Can there be monads within monads ?
Hi Stephen P. King Thinking about mereologyand Leibniz... Since a monad is a whole, it can't have parts, so you can't break it into parts. That's in fact the definition of a monad, a whole without parts. So while some, including Leibniz, speak of man or whatever as being a colony of monads, I am having difficulty seeing that, if a monad has no parts. Also, Leibniz himself speaks of monads within monads within monads, so I obviously am missing something. It may be that you speak only over a range of resolution. It's still a puzzle. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 11:11:30 Subject: Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of computers On 9/17/2012 9:21 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Forgive me if I bring up Leibniz again, but to my mind he gives the most thorough descriptions as to how the world works. And so logical that you can figure out many things on your own. Dear Roger, I too have found Leibniz' Monadology to be a wonderful theory. I have my copy of Nicholas Rescher's translation and annotated Monadology always on my desk. One reason is that it sets up a mereology that is very different from the relation of wholes and parts that is implicit in classical physics and common intuition. Monads are capsules of objects of the mind consisting of mental substances if they have only 1 part, A monad is a complete whole and always is a complete whole. If you break a monad you will get two complete monads. If you combine two monads you will get a complete monad. I see the mind in the same way and thus a monad is the perfect model of a mind. and I suggest that composite substances must be composite monads No. That would be a violation of the complete wholeness principle. I have a question. In some religions there is the word Holy. What does it mean to you? Being nonextended, and also since there is no such thing as space, they have no locations. So they are nonlocal. They are mental. And they are alive. I use a different set of definitions for those words. I see a QM system as a Monad. Internally, it is never seen. Internally, it is a mind. Externally, it appears as a center of mass. Each monad has either a soul (animals and vegetables), a spirit (man), or, like rocks is a bare naked monad and has what I would call a dark, drowsy soul. All things are either a monad or part of the surface of a monad. We need to learn to see things from a point of view that is not bound to 2d surfaces bounding 3d volumes to understand fully what this means. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: The poverty of computers
Hi Stephen P. King The supreme monad (God) does everything (God causes all to happen) while the monads, being entirely passive, can do nothing except display the changes that God made for them as what is called their individual perceptions, meaning the universe from their own points of view. This is another way of saying that effectively (not actually) each man-monad is a self who (but through God) sees all in the phenomenal world from his own point of view. Here all is limited or filtered by the capabilities and biases of the man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 11:26:51 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/17/2012 8:08 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Monads are not rigidly separated. So change in one mind is reflected in all, the extent being how capable the others are of reading the content and their similarity to the subject. Dear Roger, Your defiction is what we get if we ignore the computational resources that are required by a mind. I am taking the resource requirement into account and thus showing that the mind does not 'always reflect all others. Only God's mind is free of contraint as it is the totality of existence itself. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/17/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-16, 11:34:14 Subject: Re: The poverty of computers On 9/16/2012 8:31 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Not sure I understand your objection, but faith, being subjective (hence personal) is at least to first order principally in one individual. Dear Roger, There is more to say! At the same time, however, since Mind is nonlocal, there has to be some spillover from other minds of like thinking. Yes! But we need a way of modeling this idea. I have tried with a concept of bisimulation but it seems that the symbolic representation that some friends and I have put together is incomprehensible and anti-intuitive for others... :_( I think of this spillover as the ability to have multiple expression of the same thing. We can represent this as what occurs when several independent computers, each with their own language and grammar, have an equivalence relation such that something that one does (computes) is the same as something that another does (computes). If two computers perform exactly the same set of computations then we say that they are *exactly* bisimilar. If there is only a few or one computation that they can both perform then there is a bisimulation between them. We then ask if it is possible for that one computation (that is bisimilar) in each to be related (by some transformation(s)) to some or all of the other computations (that are in the collection of possible computations ( a repertoire) that each can perform). If there does exist a transformation or sequence of transformations, then there is a way of transforming the pair into each other iff that transformation(s) can be implemented on both of them. According to the monadology, also, an individual with his perceptions has a limited ability to see into the future. I see this as the result of the limits on computational resources available to the observer (monad). I can see the past because I have (locally) already generated my computational simulation of it and have a trace of that computation in my memory. I cannot observe what I have not computed yet! Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/16/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Am I making any sense at all? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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.
science is often more politics than science.
Hi Stephen P. King Absolutely. Science is supposed to be impersonal, but an individual has to decide what to measure (this can be influenced by politics) how to measure it-- including how accurately what theory to compare the results with (this can be influenced by politics) How to interpret the results (this can be influenced by politics) Infer some meaning from the results (this can be influenced by politics) So science is often more politics than science. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 11:30:13 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 9/17/2012 8:59 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King The physical is, and only is, what you can measure. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/17/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. Yes, exactly. But what about what we do not measure, what about what we infer from what we measure? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 5:41 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 9/18/2012 12:25 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:37 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Terren, Comp is false is too strong. He is explaining how comp is incomplete. The movie graph argument is flawed. I'm not sure what that means, that comp is incomplete. You either start from the assumption that your consciousness can be faithfully preserved (or duplicated) by a brain transplant, or you don't. What am I missing? I admit I haven't followed all of the list postings lately, but I haven't seen a coherent explanation of why the movie graph argument is flawed... if I missed it, can you point me to where this was articulated? T Hi Terren, I have no problem at all with the idea that my consciousness can be faithfully preserved (or duplicated) by a brain transplant so long as functional equivalence is exactly maintained. But the MGA seems to neglect the very real possibility that consciousness seems to depend on things that don't happen just as much as it depends on things that do happen. Maudlin and Bruno are effectively arguing that things that don't happen are thus irrelevant and should and even must be dismissed in considering consciousness. We are being sold a bill of goods if we continue to thing in terms of classical logic that does not look at both sides of a set (the members, boundary and the set's complement) as involved in a function. Stephen, I think I addressed this point in another thread. Things do happen in what you and I might call physical universes, and they do matter and are relevant for our experience. Bruno's first point is only that due to indeterminacy, we never see any one physical universe underlying ourselves, but an infinite continuum. His second point is that this makes physics explainable in terms of something else (physics is no longer the bottom layer in the sciences). I don't see that you, Bruno, or I disagree regarding computationalism or arithmatical realism. 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: Re: Bruno's Restaurant
Roger, Comments below: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 7:04 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Jason Resch If you get a duplicate of this, I apologize. I'm still working on the problem. I did see some duplicates from you yesterday, but this message was not duplicated. In general, I think there has also been an overall improvement to the formatting of your messages, I no longer see unrecognized characters, or long black lines, so whatever you have done on your e-mail client, it's created a big improvement. Could it not be that just as our five senses (touch, sight, etc.) tell us what is going on in the outside world, that we also have sensors inside to detect pain and pleasure ? The sense of touch is complex, there are actually several different types of touch sensitive nerves. Different cells detect: heat, cold, pressure, vibration, and chemical irritation. However, this only constitutes information sent to the brain. Whether it is interpreted as pain or pleasure depends not on the type of the nerve but on how the brain is set up to interpret those signals. Jason Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-18, 01:50:45 Subject: Re: Bruno's Restaurant On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I think that comp is almost true, except for when applied to consciousness itself, in which case it is exactly false. I wasn't asserting it so much as I was illustrating exactly why that is the case. Does anyone have any common sense analogy or story which makes sense of comp as a generator of consciousness? Craig, I'll give this a shot. Imagine there is a life form with only the most simple form of qualia. ?t can only experience two states of being: pain and the absence of pain. Further, let's say this creature has, say 10 semi-independent regions in its brain, each responsible for different functions but also each is connected to every other, to varying degrees. ?ach can affect any other region in various ways. When the creature is in a state of pain, each of the 10 regions of the brain are notified of this state. ?(This is communicated from the creature's pain receptors to all other parts of its brain). The awareness of this state has different effects on each region, and the regions in turn affect the creature's thoughts and behaviors. ?or example, one region begins telling the other regions of the brain to do whatever they can to make it stop. ?nother region expresses the associated behaviors and thoughts that pertain to stress and anxiety. ? third region of the brain might increase the readiness or propensity to flee, hide, cry for help, or scream. ?he states of the various regions have cascading and circular affects on other regions, and the entire focus of the brain may quickly shift (from what it was thinking before) to the single subject and pursuit of ending the pain. ?aken to the extreme, this effect might become all-encompassing, or even debilitating. In the above example, the perception of pain is described in terms of information and the effect that information has on the internal states of processes in the brain. The presence of the information, indicating pain, is through a very complex process, interpreted in numerous ways by different sub-agents in the brain to yield all the effects normally associated with the experience. Jason P.S. Try this little experiment from your own home: close your eyes and slowly begin to pinch the skin on the back of your hand. ?ay particular attention to the feeling as it crosses the threshold from mere feeling into pain. ?oncentrate on what it is that is different between that perception (of the light pinch) and the pain (of the string pinch). ?ou may find that it is just information, along with an increasing anxiety and desire to make it stop. ?xperiments have found that certain people with brain damage or on certain drugs can experience the pain without the discomfort. ?here is a separate part of the brain responsible for making pain?ncomfortable! -- 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
Re: Monad mereology. Can there be monads within monads ?
On 9/18/2012 9:03 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Thinking about mereologyand Leibniz... Since a monad is a whole, it can't have parts, so you can't break it into parts. That's in fact the definition of a monad, a whole without parts. So while some, including Leibniz, speak of man or whatever as being a colony of monads, I am having difficulty seeing that, if a monad has no parts. Also, Leibniz himself speaks of monads within monads within monads, so I obviously am missing something. It may be that you speak only over a range of resolution. It's still a puzzle. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Dear Roger, The trick is to solve the puzzle. The decomposition of a monad only yeilds other complete and different monads. Never is there any pieces. A whole is indistinguishable from a part, in the logic of monads. They are infinite! Thus they behave as such. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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 poverty of computers
On 9/18/2012 9:16 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King The supreme monad (God) does everything (God causes all to happen) while the monads, being entirely passive, can do nothing except display the changes that God made for them as what is called their individual perceptions, meaning the universe from their own points of view. Dear Roger, THus we can truthfully say that we are expressions of God's Will. This is another way of saying that effectively (not actually) each man-monad is a self who (but through God) sees all in the phenomenal world from his own point of view. Here all is limited or filtered by the capabilities and biases of the man. We are also muddy and corrupt mirrors of Its perfection. All we have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. The Fall - the original sin - was the separation from God, and thus we acquired the ability to know Right from Wrong, or, in reality, fool ourselves into believing that we can. To perceive Valuation (such as numbers) is one result from our fall. God does not see numbers, or any other Particular Thing. It is ALL. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 1:50:47 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: I think that comp is almost true, except for when applied to consciousness itself, in which case it is exactly false. I wasn't asserting it so much as I was illustrating exactly why that is the case. Does anyone have any common sense analogy or story which makes sense of comp as a generator of consciousness? Craig, I'll give this a shot. Imagine there is a life form with only the most simple form of qualia. It can only experience two states of being: pain and the absence of pain. Further, let's say this creature has, say 10 semi-independent regions in its brain, each responsible for different functions but also each is connected to every other, to varying degrees. Each can affect any other region in various ways. When the creature is in a state of pain, each of the 10 regions of the brain are notified of this state. (This is communicated from the creature's pain receptors to all other parts of its brain). The awareness of this state has different effects on each region, and the regions in turn affect the creature's thoughts and behaviors. For example, one region begins telling the other regions of the brain to do whatever they can to make it stop. Another region expresses the associated behaviors and thoughts that pertain to stress and anxiety. A third region of the brain might increase the readiness or propensity to flee, hide, cry for help, or scream. The states of the various regions have cascading and circular affects on other regions, and the entire focus of the brain may quickly shift (from what it was thinking before) to the single subject and pursuit of ending the pain. Taken to the extreme, this effect might become all-encompassing, or even debilitating. In the above example, the perception of pain is described in terms of information and the effect that information has on the internal states of processes in the brain. The presence of the information, indicating pain, is through a very complex process, interpreted in numerous ways by different sub-agents in the brain to yield all the effects normally associated with the experience. Jason P.S. Try this little experiment from your own home: close your eyes and slowly begin to pinch the skin on the back of your hand. Pay particular attention to the feeling as it crosses the threshold from mere feeling into pain. Concentrate on what it is that is different between that perception (of the light pinch) and the pain (of the string pinch). You may find that it is just information, along with an increasing anxiety and desire to make it stop. Experiments have found that certain people with brain damage or on certain drugs can experience the pain without the discomfort. There is a separate part of the brain responsible for making pain uncomfortable! What you have then is 10 regions of the brain (are they self categorized? formally partitioned? who knows there are a such thing as brain regions besides us?) Here is an example: Functional MRI scans have indicated that an area of the brain, called the *anterior cingulate cortex*, processes pain information to determine how a person is affected. Severing the link to this part of the brain has a curious effect on one's reaction to pain. A condition known as *pain dissociation* is the result. Along with brain surgery such as lobotomy or cingulotomy, the condition may also occur through the administration of certain drugs such as morphine. Those with pain dissociation still perceive pain; they are aware of its location and intensity but pain is no longer unpleasant or distressing. Paul Brand, a surgeon and author on the subject of pain recounted the case of a woman who had suffered with a severe and chronic pain for more than a decade: She agreed to a surgery that would separate the neural pathways between her frontal lobes and the rest of her brain. The surgery was a success. Brand visited the woman a year later, and inquired about her pain. She said, “Oh, yes, its still there. I just don't worry about it anymore.” With a smile she continued, “In fact, it's still agonizing. But I don't mind.” The conclusion: even seemingly simple qualia, like pain are far from simple. I think Marvin Minksy understands this well, and provides a good explanation: Marvin Minsky considers it to be “a huge mistake-that attempt to reify 'feeling' as an independent entity, with an essence that's indescribable. As I see it, feelings are not strange alien things. It is precisely those cognitive changes themselves that constitute what 'hurting' is-and this also includes all those clumsy attempts to represent and summarize those changes. The big mistake comes from looking for some single, simple, 'essence' of hurting, rather than
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:02:20 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, September 17, 2012 5:44:16 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sep 17, 2012, at 3:26 PM, Stephen P. King step...@charter.net wrote: On 9/17/2012 1:20 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Stephen - the Matrix video is a faithful interpretation of comp, but Craig's story is not, unless he includes the crucial narrative - that of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal. I expect Craig to say that the simulated Craig, the one making the yummy noises, is a zombie, and has no actual experience or inner narrative. He is entitled of course to that position. He is just saying no to the doctor. Terren Dear Terren, You are completely missing his point. He is highlighting the fact that there is a difference that makes a difference between the case of of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal and of the real Craig eating the real meal. Unless the neurons themselves are directly and independently responsible for qualia, (which is doubtful because there would be no clear mechanism for an individual neuron to articulate the wonder of its sensations to the brain as a whole) There is no more or less of a mechanism within neurons than there is for the brain as a whole to explain qualia. Neurons have neuron qualia, humans have human qualia. While that may be, brains can only talk about brain qualia. They are silent on neuron qualia, carbon atom qualia, or electron qualia. My hypothesis is that human qualia is an iconic capitulation of sub-personal and super-personal qualia - meta qualia which synergistically recovers richer qualities of experience from the Totality. There isn't a mechanism because qualia are not objects. They are sensitivities to other experiences. It is a circular to say qualia (sensations / experiences) are sensitivities (sensations) of experiences. It isn't in the case of qualia. If I'm right, sensation is always a capitulation and a diffraction of itself. It is the a-mereological and trans-rational nature of the ground of being from which the mereological and logical antithesis is foregrounded. They are presentations through which we access significant experiences. They are generated as much on our own anthropological level as they are on sub-personal physiological levels and super-personal evolutionary levels. Where do you get this stuff? From the future? , the only difference that makes a difference are the firings patterns of neurons. Patterns make no difference to anything without pattern recognition. There are no 'patterns' in and of themselves. The color of X-Rays, for instance, is just as patterned as the color green. The firing patterns of neurons is noticed by other neurons and groups of neurons. Because they host entities which can recognize each others patterns. If we look at neuron patterns, they are meaningless to us unless we can correlate them to something familiar. This is the only time information that makes a difference to other neurons is communicated. At each moment, all the differences, all the information a neuron has received is boiled down to one bit: to fire or not to fire. Pure speculation. Neurons fire, but single cell organisms respond to their environment without nervous systems. Neurons might respond to their environment independently, but neighboring neurons don't care what their neighbors might be thinking, what matters is whether their neighbors are firing. It's the same as saying that cars in traffic don't care what their neighbors might be thinking as long as they follow the flow of traffic and show normative judgment and awareness of driving laws. The point is that the purpose of the communication between neurons is only the tip of the iceberg. Their common purpose is to facilitate human perception and participation in a human scale world. There is firing, but those are only the semaphores and gestures which correlate with experiences but are only the vehicle through which the sharing of experience is modulated. You are conflating the physiology associated with human experience with the ontology of subjective experience in general. Information and bits are not real, they are analytical abstractions that are not capable of any causes or effects. According to you, only experiences are real. If this is where you stand then you should admit that this idea gives up any hope of explaining anything about experience. Not at all. Admitting that experience is the ground of being is the necessary starting point to explain anything about experience. There is a whole new universe to explore. Using information theory, and known limitations if information representation in
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:02:20 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: On Monday, September 17, 2012 5:44:16 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sep 17, 2012, at 3:26 PM, Stephen P. King step...@charter.net wrote: On 9/17/2012 1:20 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Stephen - the Matrix video is a faithful interpretation of comp, but Craig's story is not, unless he includes the crucial narrative - that of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal. I expect Craig to say that the simulated Craig, the one making the yummy noises, is a zombie, and has no actual experience or inner narrative. He is entitled of course to that position. He is just saying no to the doctor. Terren Dear Terren, You are completely missing his point. He is highlighting the fact that there is a difference that makes a difference between the case of of the simulated Craig eating the simulated meal and of the real Craig eating the real meal. Unless the neurons themselves are directly and independently responsible for qualia, (which is doubtful because there would be no clear mechanism for an individual neuron to articulate the wonder of its sensations to the brain as a whole) There is no more or less of a mechanism within neurons than there is for the brain as a whole to explain qualia. Neurons have neuron qualia, humans have human qualia. While that may be, brains can only talk about brain qualia. They are silent on neuron qualia, carbon atom qualia, or electron qualia. My hypothesis is that human qualia is an iconic capitulation of sub-personal and super-personal qualia - meta qualia which synergistically recovers richer qualities of experience from the Totality. Okay. But it will remain only a hypothesis until you (or someone else) shows how it explains new things or gathers some evidence for it. There isn't a mechanism because qualia are not objects. They are sensitivities to other experiences. It is a circular to say qualia (sensations / experiences) are sensitivities (sensations) of experiences. It isn't in the case of qualia. If I'm right, sensation is always a capitulation and a diffraction of itself. It is the a-mereological and trans-rational nature of the ground of being from which the mereological and logical antithesis is foregrounded. James Hutton, considered a father of Geology, was largely unread because his prose was so difficult to parse. He had many great ideas, he even beat Charles Darwin regarding the idea of natural selection ( http://www.strangescience.net/hutton.htm ). Yet, his style of writing was so impenetrable that most of his ideas were ignored in his life time. After he died one of his friends took up re-writing his books and it became a huge success. They are presentations through which we access significant experiences. They are generated as much on our own anthropological level as they are on sub-personal physiological levels and super-personal evolutionary levels. Where do you get this stuff? From the future? , the only difference that makes a difference are the firings patterns of neurons. Patterns make no difference to anything without pattern recognition. There are no 'patterns' in and of themselves. The color of X-Rays, for instance, is just as patterned as the color green. The firing patterns of neurons is noticed by other neurons and groups of neurons. Because they host entities which can recognize each others patterns. If we look at neuron patterns, they are meaningless to us unless we can correlate them to something familiar. If you look at some MRI scan of them, they are meaningless, but not if you *are* them. Then they do the correlation for you. This is the only time information that makes a difference to other neurons is communicated. At each moment, all the differences, all the information a neuron has received is boiled down to one bit: to fire or not to fire. Pure speculation. Neurons fire, but single cell organisms respond to their environment without nervous systems. Neurons might respond to their environment independently, but neighboring neurons don't care what their neighbors might be thinking, what matters is whether their neighbors are firing. It's the same as saying that cars in traffic don't care what their neighbors might be thinking as long as they follow the flow of traffic and show normative judgment and awareness of driving laws. The point is that the purpose of the communication between neurons is only the tip of the iceberg. Their common purpose is to facilitate human perception and participation in a human scale world. There is firing, but those are only the semaphores and gestures which correlate with experiences but are only the vehicle through which the sharing of experience is
Re: Prime Numbers
On 17 Sep 2012, at 22:25, meekerdb wrote: But did anybody think z' = z^2 + c was interesting before that? Yes. This was known by people like Fatou and Julia, in the early 1900. Iterating analytical complex functions leads to the Mandelbrot fractal sets, or similar. The computer has made those objects famous, but the mathematicians know them both from logic (counterexamples to theorem in analysis, like finding a continuous function nowhere derivable), or from dynamic system and iteration. If you iterate the trigonometric cosec function on the Gauss plane C, you can't miss the Mandelbrot set. In nature too as the following video does not illustrate too much seriously :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGxbhdr3w2I Bruno Bretn On 9/17/2012 1:17 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I would say computers were the tool that allowed us to see it, like a microscope allowed us to see bacteria, and a telescope stars. On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 3:14 PM, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/17/2012 10:36 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view How can you make sense of it otherwise. The Mandelbrot set is only interesting because it became possible to construct it by use of computers. Brent that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. Terren -- 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 . 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: Prime Numbers
On 9/18/2012 8:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 17 Sep 2012, at 22:25, meekerdb wrote: But did anybody think z' = z^2 + c was interesting before that? Yes. This was known by people like Fatou and Julia, in the early 1900. I knew they considered what are now called fractal sets, but not that particular one. Iterating analytical complex functions leads to the Mandelbrot fractal sets, or similar. The computer has made those objects famous, but the mathematicians know them both from logic (counterexamples to theorem in analysis, like finding a continuous function nowhere derivable), or from dynamic system and iteration. If you iterate the trigonometric cosec function on the Gauss plane C, you can't miss the Mandelbrot set. But this iteration is a tedious and impractical *construction* which in practice depends on computers. In nature too as the following video does not illustrate too much seriously :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGxbhdr3w2I In such beautiful imagery it is generally overlooked that it is not the Mandelbrot set you are looking at, but rather regions colored according how close they are to the set (which cannot be seen at all). 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 11:02:21 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: My hypothesis is that human qualia is an iconic capitulation of sub-personal and super-personal qualia - meta qualia which synergistically recovers richer qualities of experience from the Totality. Okay. But it will remain only a hypothesis until you (or someone else) shows how it explains new things or gathers some evidence for it. Sure, yeah it's only a hypothesis. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. What it explains is old things: consciousness, the hard problem, explanatory gap, maybe some important things about physics (how quantum mechanics actually makes sense empirically). It's a way to interpret in a realistic way what we have until now accepted unrealistic interpretations of. There isn't a mechanism because qualia are not objects. They are sensitivities to other experiences. It is a circular to say qualia (sensations / experiences) are sensitivities (sensations) of experiences. It isn't in the case of qualia. If I'm right, sensation is always a capitulation and a diffraction of itself. It is the a-mereological and trans-rational nature of the ground of being from which the mereological and logical antithesis is foregrounded. James Hutton, considered a father of Geology, was largely unread because his prose was so difficult to parse. He had many great ideas, he even beat Charles Darwin regarding the idea of natural selection ( http://www.strangescience.net/hutton.htm ). Yet, his style of writing was so impenetrable that most of his ideas were ignored in his life time. After he died one of his friends took up re-writing his books and it became a huge success. It would be great to collaborate with someone who can write about it in a more accessible way. Sign me up. They are presentations through which we access significant experiences. They are generated as much on our own anthropological level as they are on sub-personal physiological levels and super-personal evolutionary levels. Where do you get this stuff? From the future? , the only difference that makes a difference are the firings patterns of neurons. Patterns make no difference to anything without pattern recognition. There are no 'patterns' in and of themselves. The color of X-Rays, for instance, is just as patterned as the color green. The firing patterns of neurons is noticed by other neurons and groups of neurons. Because they host entities which can recognize each others patterns. If we look at neuron patterns, they are meaningless to us unless we can correlate them to something familiar. If you look at some MRI scan of them, they are meaningless, but not if you *are* them. Then they do the correlation for you. No, they're still meaningless. Just as an mp3 file that you look at visually is not the song that you think the file represents aurally. The file is just a form. You need perception to in-form your experience of the form (which itself is only a perception of a lower level of more physical-tangible qualia). This is the only time information that makes a difference to other neurons is communicated. At each moment, all the differences, all the information a neuron has received is boiled down to one bit: to fire or not to fire. Pure speculation. Neurons fire, but single cell organisms respond to their environment without nervous systems. Neurons might respond to their environment independently, but neighboring neurons don't care what their neighbors might be thinking, what matters is whether their neighbors are firing. It's the same as saying that cars in traffic don't care what their neighbors might be thinking as long as they follow the flow of traffic and show normative judgment and awareness of driving laws. The point is that the purpose of the communication between neurons is only the tip of the iceberg. Their common purpose is to facilitate human perception and participation in a human scale world. There is firing, but those are only the semaphores and gestures which correlate with experiences but are only the vehicle through which the sharing of experience is modulated. So in your theory the firing plays is only a minor role in the operation and function of the brain? It's the same role that traffic signals, airports, and harbors play in the operation and function of all of the cities on Earth. Minor in the sense that they aren't the purpose or the content of the cities, but not minor in the sense that malfunctions will be catastrophic. Our brains are civilizations of sub-persons. They do things together but they also experience things, which we experience as well but in this iconicized presentation. Our personal experience comes through our sub-personal experience, not through sub-personal functions. On the personal level, we
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On 9/18/2012 9:05 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: My hypothesis is that human qualia is an iconic capitulation of sub-personal and super-personal qualia - meta qualia which synergistically recovers richer qualities of experience from the Totality. Okay. But it will remain only a hypothesis until you (or someone else) shows how it explains new things or gathers some evidence for it. Sure, yeah it's only a hypothesis. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. What you do with an hypothesis is test it; see whether it makes a false prediction that is observable. Brent What it explains is old things: consciousness, the hard problem, explanatory gap, maybe some important things about physics (how quantum mechanics actually makes sense empirically). It's a way to interpret in a realistic way what we have until now accepted unrealistic interpretations of. -- 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: Thorium!
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 1:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think most reactors using Hastelloy plumbing (one of several nickel alloys). The containment vessels are steel and concrete. They differ a lot depending on whether they are pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, sodium cooled,... One advantage of molten-salt reactors is that they aren't pressurized. True. In the last operating thorium reactor on this planet, the MSRE at Oak Ridge that was shut down in 1969, even with tough Hastelloy plumbing there was some damage to the metal in the pipes of the MSRE caused by neutrons and other forms of radiation, however in a full sized production reactor the pipes would be largely protected by the Thorium blanket that breeds the U233. I think its a scandal that a extraordinary promising technology like liquid fueled Thorium reactors has been frozen like a fly in amber for over 40 years because nobody will spend a dime on it. 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: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Obeying the commandments will not get you into heaven, only believing in Christ's sacrifice for us will do that. And you know that because you were told it over and over again from the very moment you learned language, and everything that adults tell young children is always 100% true. 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:09:54 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 9/18/2012 9:05 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: My hypothesis is that human qualia is an iconic capitulation of sub-personal and super-personal qualia - meta qualia which synergistically recovers richer qualities of experience from the Totality. Okay. But it will remain only a hypothesis until you (or someone else) shows how it explains new things or gathers some evidence for it. Sure, yeah it's only a hypothesis. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. What you do with an hypothesis is test it; see whether it makes a false prediction that is observable. I have been testing it in the sense that I can't come up with any counterfactuals, whereas I can with all of the other competing hypothesis. It's not the same thing as having a hypothesis about a particular phenomenon, because this phenomenon, if I am right, contains all others, including 'hypothesis testing' itself. Craig Brent What it explains is old things: consciousness, the hard problem, explanatory gap, maybe some important things about physics (how quantum mechanics actually makes sense empirically). It's a way to interpret in a realistic way what we have until now accepted unrealistic interpretations of. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/QUD4pM_SelYJ. 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: Re: Re: Re: the nothing but fallacy.
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: there is no indisputable reason to believe in God. Yes. Faith or trust is required In other words stupidity is required. and that's exactly what God wants God wants? GOD WANTS??!! The guy's omnipotent, God doesn't want, God has. 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Sep 18, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:29:44 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: Here is an example: Functional MRI scans have indicated that an area of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex, processes pain information to determine how a person is affected. Severing the link to this part of the brain has a curious effect on one's reaction to pain. A condition known as pain dissociation is the result. Along with brain surgery such as lobotomy or cingulotomy, the condition may also occur through the administration of certain drugs such as morphine. Those with pain dissociation still perceive pain; they are aware of its location and intensity but pain is no longer unpleasant or distressing. Paul Brand, a surgeon and author on the subject of pain recounted the case of a woman who had suffered with a severe and chronic pain for more than a decade: She agreed to a surgery that would separate the neural pathways between her frontal lobes and the rest of her brain. The surgery was a success. Brand visited the woman a year later, and inquired about her pain. She said, “Oh, yes, its still there. I just don't worry about it anymor e.” With a smile she continued, “In fact, it's still agonizing. But I don't mind.” The conclusion: even seemingly simple qualia, like pain are far from simple. That is a conclusion, but I think the wrong one. Human qualia are not simple, but that does not at all mean that qualia re not simple. I agree with this. We are titanically enormous organisms made of other organisms. Our human experience is loaded with cognitive, emotional, and sensory qualia, corresponding to the evolution of life, our species, cultures, families, and individuals. Our pain is a Taj Mahal, and if you remove enough bricks, some towers fall and maybe one part of the palace no longer relates to another part. What you describe suggests exactly that - some part of us feels the pain on a sub-personal level, but the personal level is not alarmed by it because it's qualia has lost the red end of it's spectrum so to speak and now is blue-shifted toward an anesthetized intellectual quality of being. I mostly agree with what you are saying here. I think Marvin Minksy understands this well, and provides a good explanation: Marvin Minsky considers it to be “a huge mistake-that attempt to rei fy 'feeling' as an independent entity, with an essence that's indesc ribable. As I see it, feelings are not strange alien things. It is precisely those cognitive changes themselves that constitute what ' hurting' is-and this also includes all those clumsy attempts to repr esent and summarize those changes. The big mistake comes from looki ng for some single, simple, 'essence' of hurting, rather than recogn izing that this is the word we use for complex rearrangement of our disposition of resources.” He's right that there is no essence of hurting (qualia is always a subject, not an object, so it's essence is the same as it's 'envelope'. It's a-mereological. He's completely wrong about hurting being something other than what it is though. He didn't claim they are something they are not, just that they are not irreducable. Hurting is an experience. A complex rearrangement of our disposition of resources is completely irrelevant. Complex to who? Why would 'rearrangements' 'feel' like something? Consciousness is awareness of information. You might be aware of the information, like the fact that you are looking at a computer screen, or the knowledge of what the text on that screen is. You might be aware that you are in a state of pain, and you might also be aware of the fact that it is uncomfortable and want it to end. Some people, like the woman in my example, can have the awareness of being in pain without the awareness that they want it to end. It only seems to make sense form the retrospective view of consciousness where we take it for granted. If we start instead from a universe of resources and dispositions, then the idea that a rearrangement of them should entail some kind of experience is a completely metaphysical, magical just-so story that has no basis in science. No it is absolutely necessary. If you had no knowledge regarding what you were seeing, no qualia at all, you would be blind and dysfunctional. You might cite blund sighr as a counter example, but actually i think it is evidence of modularity if mind. Those with blind sight appear to have a disconnect between the visual processing parts of their brain and others. For example, they may still have reflexes, like the ability to avoid obsticles or catch a thrown ball, but the language center of their brain is disconnected, and so the part of the brain that talks says it can't see. Sure, to us it makes sense that the feeling of pain should
Re: Re: Before the automobile: Reconstructed global temperature over thepast 420,000 years
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Could those that beieve in global warming please explain how the earth warmed up after each ice age ? Nobody knows for certain. There was a Mega Ice age 2.4 billion years ago and another one 700 million years ago where the entire oceans froze over, even at the equator there were hundreds of feet of ice covering the sea. The most popular theory is that they both ended when huge volcanic eruptions injected vast amounts of black soot and greenhouse gases into the air that warmed things up. Interestingly Evolution seemed to take a big jump right after both Mega Ice Ages ended. Right after the first one advanced eukaryote cells started to show up, and right after the second we had the Cambrian Explosion and multicellular lifeforms. Why that should be is not clear. 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: Thorium!
On 9/18/2012 9:44 AM, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 1:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think most reactors using Hastelloy plumbing (one of several nickel alloys). The containment vessels are steel and concrete. They differ a lot depending on whether they are pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, sodium cooled,... One advantage of molten-salt reactors is that they aren't pressurized. True. In the last operating thorium reactor on this planet, the MSRE at Oak Ridge that was shut down in 1969, even with tough Hastelloy plumbing there was some damage to the metal in the pipes of the MSRE caused by neutrons and other forms of radiation, however in a full sized production reactor the pipes would be largely protected by the Thorium blanket that breeds the U233. I think its a scandal that a extraordinary promising technology like liquid fueled Thorium reactors has been frozen like a fly in amber for over 40 years because nobody will spend a dime on it. Of course there are historical reasons: the desire to produce plutonium for weapons in the early reactors, which meant that uranium based reactors got the development work. Rickover's impatience and arrogance with Argonne and Oak Ridge, which caused him to take the Navy's money to Westinghouse. Having developed PLWR, regulations and standards have been written around them. Without the imprimatur of the NRC an investor would be foolish to invest in building a power reactor in the U.S. But now I think the main obstacle is public ignorance of the advantages of a MSRE thorium reactor. One of the lobbyist for the Thorium Energy Alliance said that Congressional staff on the energy committee were knowledgeable and supportive but no Congressman wants his name on a bill that includes the word thorium - it will scare constituents. The Congressmen are probably right in their assessment - hence my small effort to educate a little of the public. 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 1:17:08 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:03 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, September 17, 2012 6:18:00 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: Craig, Do you think if your brain were cut in half, but then perfectly put back together that you would still be conscious in the same way? There is no such thing as perfectly put back together. If you cut a living cell in half, it dies. The only way of putting it perfectly back together is to travel back in time and not cut it in half. Why do you believe this? We can put machines back together. Cells are machines on a very small scale. It would be difficult, but there is no physical reason that prevents us from putting a cell back together after it has come apart. I'm sure when electricity was first being understood it was assumed that a dead body could be revived by electrical stimulation. The reality is that there are processes which are thermodynamically irreversible. This is why cryogenics has not been successful yet also. It's not that simple. Living bodies and cells are more than the sum of their parts, and if you reduce the wholes to parts, there is no guarantee that if you could force the parts into a whole again, that it would be the same whole. Machines don't die, but living organisms do. Machines are assembled from the outside, but organisms are born of their own internal nature. The two approaches could not be more opposite. What if cut into a thousand pieces and put back together perfectly? Same answer. What if every atom was taken apart and put back together? If you could take every atom in a living cell 'apart' and put it back together without killing the cell, then it seems like it would work, but I don't think that the cells would necessarily be 'the same' cells. What is different about them? They could have the same exact quantum state, and yet you believe that because at one point in the past some atoms had some distance put between, and this somehow rules out the possibility of those atoms ever being used to build a person or life form, or be conscious? What's different is that everything in the universe has changed. It's a different moment. Particles are entangled through time as well as across space. You assume that there is a such thing as two identical instances of consciousness, when everything that we have to go on tells us exactly the opposite. No two moments, no two people, no two experiences are identical. They can't be because every experience is shaped and influenced by every other experience. Why would this be? Our bodies continually take in and use atoms from things that were once not alive. What is different here? Yet mainly what we need to survive is molecules from things that were alive. Why would that be? Different levels of evolutionary development correspond to different layers of qualitative elaboration. A human being needs more than sunlight and water, more even than nutrients and shelter. People need social participation and perceptual stimulation to be truly human. It's irreducible. There is no information-only substitute. To me consciousness is an event in time, not a structure in space. The structure is the vehicle of the event. If you mess with the vehicle, you mess with the event. What the difference between putting someone back together and a baby slowly being constructed through a set of complex chemical reactions from previously lifeless matter? The difference is that the baby is growing by itself. It is the embodiment of a self-expressing human story as a lifetime-long event in the cosmos. It's like asking, if we beat and torture someone for ten years, but then restore their body and put them back into society, what could go wrong? Experience is the underlying reality, structure only represents the control of experience. In either case would the result not be a fully alive and conscious human? Do you suppose life also requires that life forms be built in certain natural ways (rather than artificial ways)? Life forms aren't built, they grow. If you create the right conditions, you can cause life to grow, but only because the potential for life to exist in the universe is already present over and above any mechanistic or informative purpose. If you grow a human being from human DNA then you get a human. If you assemble a machine that you think should behave like human DNA, then you'd get something else - maybe an alternate biology, maybe a cybernetic non-entity, but not a Homo sapien with human experiences. What if every atom was taken apart, and then atoms from a different pile were used to put you back together? When the atoms are taken apart, you die. If you put them together in what you think is the same way, it is still a different performance of atoms, whether they
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On 9/18/2012 10:31 AM, Jason Resch wrote: No it is absolutely necessary. If you had no knowledge regarding what you were seeing, no qualia at all, you would be blind and dysfunctional. You might cite blund sighr as a counter example, but actually i think it is evidence of modularity if mind. Those with blind sight appear to have a disconnect between the visual processing parts of their brain and others. For example, they may still have reflexes, like the ability to avoid obsticles or catch a thrown ball, but the language center of their brain is disconnected, and so the part of the brain that talks says it can't see. I agree. But it raises a question about the woman who feels pain but doesn't care. Who is it that doesn't care? Obviously the conscious person who tells you they don't care. But is there another, inarticulate person who feels the pain? or does care? 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: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 6:08:46 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg IMHO conscousness is not really anything in itself, it is what the brain makes of its contents that the self perceives. It gets tricky. Depends what you mean by a thing. I would say that consciousness is the less-than-anything and the more-than-anything which experiences the opposite of itself as somethings. It is otherthanthing. In order to think or talk about this, we need to represent it as a subjective idea 'thing'. Make no mistake though. The brain is nothing but an experience of many things, of our mind's experience of our body using our body's experience of medical instruments. The capacity to experience is primary. No structure can generate an experience unless it is made out of something which already has that capacity. If I make a perfect model of H2O out of anything other than actual hydrogen and oxygen atoms, I will not get water. The self is intelligence, which is able to focus all pertinent brain activity to a unified point. You don't need intelligence to have a self. Infants are pretty selfish, and not terribly intelligent. Brain activity is overrated as well. Jellyfish and worms have no brain. Bacteria have no brains, yet they behave intelligently (see also quorum sensing). Intelligence is everywhere - just not human intelligence. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 23:43:08 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Monday, September 17, 2012 11:02:16 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand that, but it still assumes that there is a such thing as a set of functions which could be identified and reproduced that cause consciousness. I don't assume that, because consciousness isn't like anything else. It is the source of all functions and appearances, not the effect of them. Once you have consciousness in the universe, then it can be enhanced and altered in infinite ways, but none of them can replace the experience that is your own. No, the paper does *not* assume that there is a set of functions that if reproduced will will cause consciousness. It assumes that something like what you are saying is right. By assume I mean the implicit assumptions which are unstated in the paper. The thought experiment comes out of a paradox arising from assumptions about qualia and the brain which are both false in my view. I see the brain as the flattened qualia of human experience. This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all forms of measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of any system. What is it that you don't think I understand? What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of behaviours is not required. Yes, it is. Not for prosthetic enhancements, or repairs to a nervous system, but to replace a nervous system without replacing the person who is using it, yes, there is no set of behaviors which can ever be exhaustive enough in theory to accomplish that. You might be able to do it biologically, but there is no reason to trust it unless and until someone can be walked off of their brain for a few weeks or months and then walked back on. The replacement components need only be within the engineering tolerance of the nervous system components. This is a difficult task but it is achievable in principle. You assume that consciousness can be replaced, but I understand exactly why it can't. You can believe that there is no difference between scooping out your brain stem and replacing it with a functional equivalent as long as it was well engineered, but to me it's a completely misguided notion. Consciousness doesn't exist on the outside of us. Engineering only deals with exteriors. If the universe were designed by engineers, there could be no consciousness. Yes, that is exactly what the paper assumes. Exactly that! It still is modeling the experience of qualia as having a quantitative relation with the ratio of brain to non-brain. That isn't the only way to model it, and I use a different model. I assume that my friends have not been replaced by robots. If they have been then that means the robots can almost perfectly replicate their behaviour, since I (and people in general) am very good at picking up even tiny deviations from normal
Re: Bruno's Restaurant
On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:53 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/18/2012 10:31 AM, Jason Resch wrote: No it is absolutely necessary. If you had no knowledge regarding what you were seeing, no qualia at all, you would be blind and dysfunctional. You might cite blund sighr as a counter example, but actually i think it is evidence of modularity if mind. Those with blind sight appear to have a disconnect between the visual processing parts of their brain and others. For example, they may still have reflexes, like the ability to avoid obsticles or catch a thrown ball, but the language center of their brain is disconnected, and so the part of the brain that talks says it can't see. I agree. But it raises a question about the woman who feels pain but doesn't care. Who is it that doesn't care? Obviously the conscious person who tells you they don't care. But is there another, inarticulate person who feels the pain? or does care? Brent, Good question, and a scary thought. I think this might be likely in the case of a fully split brain, but correspondingly less likely the smaller the isolated (disconnected) part of the brain is. Unconsciousness under anesthesia results from brain regions becoming isolated from each other. Maybe they are still conscious but cut off from the memory, motion control, and speaking areas, so we have no evidence of the consciousness of the sub-regions. Jason 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: Bruno's Restaurant
On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:16:25 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:53 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net javascript: wrote: On 9/18/2012 10:31 AM, Jason Resch wrote: No it is absolutely necessary. If you had no knowledge regarding what you were seeing, no qualia at all, you would be blind and dysfunctional. You might cite blund sighr as a counter example, but actually i think it is evidence of modularity if mind. Those with blind sight appear to have a disconnect between the visual processing parts of their brain and others. For example, they may still have reflexes, like the ability to avoid obsticles or catch a thrown ball, but the language center of their brain is disconnected, and so the part of the brain that talks says it can't see. I agree. But it raises a question about the woman who feels pain but doesn't care. Who is it that doesn't care? Obviously the conscious person who tells you they don't care. But is there another, inarticulate person who feels the pain? or does care? Brent, Good question, and a scary thought. I think this might be likely in the case of a fully split brain, but correspondingly less likely the smaller the isolated (disconnected) part of the brain is. Unconsciousness under anesthesia results from brain regions becoming isolated from each other. Maybe they are still conscious but cut off from the memory, motion control, and speaking areas, so we have no evidence of the consciousness of the sub-regions. Jason That's where the concepts of level and depth of qualia come in. For something to rise to the top level of human awareness means a lot. It may not mean as much to swat a mosquito. Would the experience of being a mosquito calibrate so that it's lifetime (short in our terms) seemed long to them? Do mosquito children mourn the loss of their swatted parents? I doubt it. They may very well have experiences that we wouldn't dream of, but the depth - the gravitas of human consciousness is either much greater than theirs is objectively, or it will just always seem that way anthropically from our perspective. Either way, we don't care about the mosquito so much, unless we take certain Eastern philosophies to their most literal extreme. My guess is that their qualia is orders of magnitude less significant. They may feel pain, but like the woman whose experience of pain has been sub-personalized, they may not care so much. The cohesiveness of the qualia - the figurative height of the tower of privacy and the enormous history of intentional significance which built it since the beginning of time...that is what makes this whole thing liveable. That's what keeps us from weeping for the grated carrots and avoiding eating our own foot for a snack. Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/T_wX_SkcTIQJ. 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: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
Ha ha: so not consciousness is the 'thing', but 'intelligence'? or is this one also a function (of the brain towards the self?) who is the self? how does the brain *DO **something * (as a homunculus?) on its own? Any suggestions? John M On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:07 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg IMHO conscousness is not really anything in itself, it is what the brain makes of its contents that the self perceives. The self is intelligence, which is able to focus all pertinent brain activity to a unified point. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/18/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-17, 23:43:08 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Monday, September 17, 2012 11:02:16 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I understand that, but it still assumes that there is a such thing as a set of functions which could be identified and reproduced that cause consciousness. I don't assume that, because consciousness isn't like anything else. It is the source of all functions and appearances, not the effect of them. Once you have consciousness in the universe, then it can be enhanced and altered in infinite ways, but none of them can replace the experience that is your own. No, the paper does *not* assume that there is a set of functions that if reproduced will will cause consciousness. It assumes that something like what you are saying is right. By assume I mean the implicit assumptions which are unstated in the paper. The thought experiment comes out of a paradox arising from assumptions about qualia and the brain which are both false in my view. I see the brain as the flattened qualia of human experience. This is the point of the thought experiment. The limitations of all forms of measurement and perception preclude all possibility of there ever being a such thing as an exhaustively complete set of third person behaviors of any system. What is it that you don't think I understand? What you don't understand is that an exhaustively complete set of behaviours is not required. Yes, it is. Not for prosthetic enhancements, or repairs to a nervous system, but to replace a nervous system without replacing the person who is using it, yes, there is no set of behaviors which can ever be exhaustive enough in theory to accomplish that. You might be able to do it biologically, but there is no reason to trust it unless and until someone can be walked off of their brain for a few weeks or months and then walked back on. The replacement components need only be within the engineering tolerance of the nervous system components. This is a difficult task but it is achievable in principle. You assume that consciousness can be replaced, but I understand exactly why it can't. You can believe that there is no difference between scooping out your brain stem and replacing it with a functional equivalent as long as it was well engineered, but to me it's a completely misguided notion. Consciousness doesn't exist on the outside of us. Engineering only deals with exteriors. If the universe were designed by engineers, there could be no consciousness. Yes, that is exactly what the paper assumes. Exactly that! It still is modeling the experience of qualia as having a quantitative relation with the ratio of brain to non-brain. That isn't the only way to model it, and I use a different model. I assume that my friends have not been replaced by robots. If they have been then that means the robots can almost perfectly replicate their behaviour, since I (and people in general) am very good at picking up even tiny deviations from normal behaviour. The question then is, if the function of a human can be replicated this closely by a machine does that mean the consciousness can also be replicated? The answer is yes, since otherwise we would have the possibility of a person having radically different experiences but behaving normally and being unaware that their experiences were different. The answer is no. A cartoon of Bugs Bunny has no experiences but behaves just like Bugs Bunny would if he had experiences. You are eating the menu. And if it were possible to replicate the behaviour without the experiences - i.e. make a zombie - it would be possible to make a partial zombie, which lacks some experiences but behaves normally and doesn't realise that it lacks those experiences. Do you agree that this is the implication? If not, where is the flaw in the reasoning? The word zombie implies that you have an expectation of consciousness but there isn't any. That is a fallacy from the start, since there is not reason to expect a simulation to have any experience
Re: Thorium!
On 9/18/2012 12:44 PM, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 1:59 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think most reactors using Hastelloy plumbing (one of several nickel alloys). The containment vessels are steel and concrete. They differ a lot depending on whether they are pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, sodium cooled,... One advantage of molten-salt reactors is that they aren't pressurized. True. In the last operating thorium reactor on this planet, the MSRE at Oak Ridge that was shut down in 1969, even with tough Hastelloy plumbing there was some damage to the metal in the pipes of the MSRE caused by neutrons and other forms of radiation, however in a full sized production reactor the pipes would be largely protected by the Thorium blanket that breeds the U233. I think its a scandal that a extraordinary promising technology like liquid fueled Thorium reactors has been frozen like a fly in amber for over 40 years because nobody will spend a dime on it. John K Clark - Given the scare that the china Syndrome and its hype generated, there has been little interest in a public discussion of reactor design. The Greenies have caused this, in their hysterics. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
On 9/18/2012 5:17 PM, John Mikes wrote: Ha ha: so not consciousness is the 'thing', but 'intelligence'? or is this one also a function (of the brain towards the self?) who is the self? how does the brain *_DO _**_something_ * (as a homunculus?) on its own? Any suggestions? John M Hi John, I recommend this article: http://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/the-cartesian-theater-philosophy-of-mind-versus-aerography/ -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 9/17/2012 11:27 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as by-product of its development by engineers? To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet another theory of epiphenomenalism. And your quote and question are yet another example of nothing buttery and argument by incredulity. Brent I am not sure if I understand you. I am not saying that I am right but I really do not understand you point. You say Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. and it seems that you imply that this could be applied for a robot as well. My thought were that engineers who have design a robot know everything how it is working. But they don't a robot, even one as simple as a Mars Rover perceives and acts on things the engineers don't know. A more advanced robot will also learn from experience and become as unpredictable as a person from the engineer's standpoint. Brent You comment suggests however that in the robot there is something else that has emerged independently from the will of engineers. I would be just interested to learn what it is. If you know the answer, I would appreciate it. -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 1:43 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: No, the paper does *not* assume that there is a set of functions that if reproduced will will cause consciousness. It assumes that something like what you are saying is right. By assume I mean the implicit assumptions which are unstated in the paper. The thought experiment comes out of a paradox arising from assumptions about qualia and the brain which are both false in my view. I see the brain as the flattened qualia of human experience. Chalmer's position is that functionalism is true, and he states this in the introduction, but this is not *assumed* in the thought experiment. The thought experiment explicitly assumes that functionalism is *false*; that consciousness is dependent on the substrate and swapping a brain for a functional equivalent will not necessarily give rise to the same consciousness or any consciousness at all. Isn't that what you believe? And if it were possible to replicate the behaviour without the experiences - i.e. make a zombie - it would be possible to make a partial zombie, which lacks some experiences but behaves normally and doesn't realise that it lacks those experiences. Do you agree that this is the implication? If not, where is the flaw in the reasoning? The word zombie implies that you have an expectation of consciousness but there isn't any. That is a fallacy from the start, since there is not reason to expect a simulation to have any experience at all. It's not a zombie, it's a puppet. Replace the word zombie with puppet if that makes it easier to understand. A partial zombie is just someone who has brain damage, and yes if you tried to replace enough of a person's brain with a non-biological material, you would get brain damage, dementia, coma, and death. Not if the puppet components perform the same purely mechanical functions as the original components. In order for this to happen according to the paper you have to accept that the physics of the brain is in fact computable. If it is computable, then we can model the behaviour of the brain, although according to the assumptions in the paper (which coincide with your assumptions) modeling the behaviour won't reproduce the consciousness. All the evidence we have suggests that physics is computable, but it might not be. It may turn out that there is some exotic physics in the brain which requires solving the halting problem, for example, in order to model it, and that would mean that a computer could not adequately simulate those components of the brain which utilise this physics. But going beyond the paper, the argument for functionalism (substrate-independence of consciousness) could still be made by considering theoretical components with non-biological hypercomputers. -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 3:44 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I'm sure when electricity was first being understood it was assumed that a dead body could be revived by electrical stimulation. The reality is that there are processes which are thermodynamically irreversible. This is why cryogenics has not been successful yet also. It's not that simple. Living bodies and cells are more than the sum of their parts, and if you reduce the wholes to parts, there is no guarantee that if you could force the parts into a whole again, that it would be the same whole. Machines don't die, but living organisms do. Machines are assembled from the outside, but organisms are born of their own internal nature. The two approaches could not be more opposite. It's difficult having a discussion with you when you believe something contrary to all biological science for the last two centuries. -- 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: Prime Numbers
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.comwrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? If not - what makes them impossible intelligences? =*= What are the limits of belief, do you think? Is there any belief that is so preposterous that even the maddest of the mad could not believe such a thing? And if there is no such belief - then is it conceivable that quarks and electrons could configure themselves in such a way as to *cause* a being who holds such beliefs to come into existence? And if this is beyond the capacity of quarks and electrons, does it seem possible that there might be some other form of matter with more exotic properties that might be up to the task? And if not - why not? Rex -- 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: Prime Numbers
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. I'm curious about what a plausible fictionalist account of the Mandelbrot set could be. Is fictionalism the same as constructivism, or the idea that knowledge doesn't exist outside of a mind? But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? I think just doing logic and math - starting from axioms and proving things from them - is interacting with the Platonic realm. It is reliable because such proofs are necessarily valid no matter what sort of computational agent is computing them. Bruno really takes it to the next level though when he talks of interviewing ideally correct machines and treating them as entities (strictly platonic, of course) that can talk about what they can prove (believe). I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? I didn't understand the above... what do quarks and electrons have to do with arithmetical platonism? How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. I only meant that all possible intelligences that start from a mathematics that includes addition, multiplication, and complex numbers will find that if they iterate the function z' = z^2 + c, they will find that some orbits become periodic or settle on a point, and some escape to infinity. If they draw a graph of which orbits don't escape, they will draw the Mandelbrot Set. All possible intelligences that undertake that procedure will draw the same shape... and this seems like discovery, not creation. Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? Of course, but then what they are doing doesn't relate to the Mandelbrot Set. If not - what makes them impossible intelligences? =*= What are the limits of belief, do you think? Is there any belief that is so preposterous that even the maddest of the mad could not believe such a thing? I don't think so... based on my understanding of how mad maddest of the mad can get. And if there is no such belief - then is it conceivable that quarks and electrons could configure themselves in such a way as to *cause* a being who holds such beliefs to come into existence? I'm guessing you meant to say and if there is such a belief I'm having a tough time understanding where you're going with this... it seems like an interesting line of questions, but I have no idea how it relates to what we were discussing. Terren And if this is beyond the capacity of quarks and electrons, does it seem possible that there might be some other form of matter with more exotic properties that might be up to the task? And if not - why not? Rex -- 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: Prime Numbers
On Sep 18, 2012, at 9:19 PM, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Rex, Do you have a non-platonist explanation for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set and the infinite complexity therein? I find fictionalism to be the most plausible view of mathematics, with all that implies for the Mandelbrot set. But ;et me turn the question around on you, if I can: Do you have an explanation for how we discover mathematical objects and otherwise interact with the Platonic realm? We study and create theories about objects in the mathematical realm just as we study and create theories about objects in the physical realm. It's not much different from how we develop theories about other things we cannot interact with: the early universe, the cores of stars, the insides of black holes, etc. We test these theories by following their implications and seeing if they lead to contridictions with other, more established, facts. Just as with physical theories, we ocasionally find that we need to throw out the old set of theories (or axioms) for a new set which has greater explanatory power. How is it that we are able to reliably know things about Platonia? The very idea of knowing implies a differentiation between true and false. This leads quite directly to boolean algebra. Boolean algebra leads to concepts of numbers. (e.g., even numbers of not operators cancel out, so counting them becomes an issue). Once you get counting and numbers, you get the uncapturable infinite truths concerning them, and infinite hierarchies if ever more powerful consistent theories. Nearly any intelligent civilization that notices a partition between true and false will eventyally get here. I would have thought that quarks and electrons from which we appear to be constituted would be indifferent to truth. The unreasonable effectiveness of math in the physical sciences is yet further support if Platonism. If this, and seemingly infinite physical universes exist, and they are mathematical structures, why can't others exist? Which would fit with the fact that I seem to make a lot of mistakes. But you think otherwise? We are imperfect beings. Jason How can you make sense of that in terms of the constructivist point of view that you are (I think) compelled to take if you argue against arithmetical platonism? It seems obvious that all possible intelligences would discover the same forms of the Mandelbrot so long as they iterated on z' = z^2 + c, but maybe I am missing the point of your argument. I will agree with you that all intelligences that start from the same premises as you, and follow the same rules as inference as you, will also draw the same conclusions about the Mandelbrot set as you do. However - I do not agree with you that this amenable group exhausts the set of all *possible* intelligences. Could there be intelligences who start from vastly difference premises, and use vastly different rules of inference, and draw vastly different conclusions? If not - what makes them impossible intelligences? =*= What are the limits of belief, do you think? Is there any belief that is so preposterous that even the maddest of the mad could not believe such a thing? And if there is no such belief - then is it conceivable that quarks and electrons could configure themselves in such a way as to *cause* a being who holds such beliefs to come into existence? And if this is beyond the capacity of quarks and electrons, does it seem possible that there might be some other form of matter with more exotic properties that might be up to the task? And if not - why not? Rex -- 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: Prime Numbers
On 9/18/2012 9:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote: The unreasonable effectiveness of math in the physical sciences is yet further support if Platonism. I don't see that this follows. If we invent language, including mathematics, to describe our theories of the world that explains their effectiveness. But it doesn't imply that every description refers. The mathematics of Maxwell's equations was (and is) very effective, but we now believe they only approximately describe what exists. Brent If this, and seemingly infinite physical universes exist, and they are mathematical structures, why can't others exist? -- 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.
