Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 7/30/2014 11:36 AM, Russell Standish wrote: On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 03:13:01PM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA. I don't think step 7 and the MGA have been overemphasised at all - although step 3 has been done to death it seems. The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7. I hope your paper will elucidate those last two inferences. If computational superveniece is only compatible with physical supervenience in a multiverse (eternal inflation or Everett?) and physical supervenience is well supported empirically then it seems that a *physical* multiverse is necessary for computational supervenience. Brent I'm in process of writing this up as a paper, which I'll hopefully post to this list in the next week or so to be shredded by the denizens here. On another note, I've done a calculation of the observer moment measure given by the universal dovetailer, which shows that the measure is indeed independent of the chosen reference machine, as we widely suspected, and hopefully might be comparable with Solomonoff-Levin's universal prior. More likely, it might be compared with the Bayesian probability after an infinite number of updates. Not sure if it belongs in the above paper, as it is necessarily more technical, but I'll post that to this list in one form or other soon. But I'm happy for there to me more discussion of the AUDA too :) The underpinnings of that theory still seem rather weakly motivated for me, as opposed to being mandated by computationalism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Book: Revolutions of Scientific Structure
Hi , My book is finally out. Hales CG. 2014. “The Revolutions of Scientific Structure” Press release here http://www.worldscientific.com/page/pressroom/2014-07-11-01 The book is here: http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9211 The Front-Matter (preface) and preamble (Chapter 1) are already accessible free from the publisher. The deeply impoverished (like me!) might want a preprint PDF. If so... just let me know. Enjoy. Colin Hales, PhD Researcher NeuroEngineering Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Melbourne, Australia -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
> On 31 Jul 2014, at 8:47 am, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > CTM = Comp (to use with moderation when tired of the sound of comp). Well, it's actuallyC omputationalist Theory (of) M ind. Cheers, Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 31 July 2014 10:26, Russell Standish wrote: > On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:08:52AM +1200, LizR wrote: > > > > PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of > the > > world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes > > expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that? > > > > Why? > Because if space-time isn't an infinitely divisible continuum, it presumably has some sort of granularity, and if it's blown up in size (or squashed down) the grain size may become relevant. It's one of the "end of the universe scenarios" mentioned by Max Tegmark in his recent book, that the expansion of the universe makes the quantum granularity too large for matter to continue to exist (in some way). I suppose that if you blow up space-time exponentially, you will rapidly reach any existing grain size. If inflation would have blown up Planck-cell sized chunks to anything vaguely macroscopic, for example, we wouldn't expect any detail to exist below the expanded size. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but once you have a universe in which some sort of structure size is defined, expanding it a lot might thereafter mean that size can't be supported anymore by quantum physics. (If you see what I mean...?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 10:08:52AM +1200, LizR wrote: > > PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the > world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes > expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that? > Why? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 27 Jul 2014, at 19:46, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 1:13 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 27 July 2014 17:27, Jesse Mazer wrote: > I don't see why that should follow at all, as long as there are multiple > infinite computations running rather than the UDA being the only one, I may be missing some other point you're making, but I think this is already dealt with after Step 8 of the UDA (universal dovetailer argument). By this point in the argument, we have abandoned the notion of a "primitively-physical universe". But when you say "by this point in the argument", do you mean there was some earlier step that established some good *reasons* for why we should abandon the notion of a "primitively-physical universe" (or primitive universal computation), or is it just something that was posited at some point for the purposes of exploring the consequences, without any claim that this posit was implied by earlier steps in the argument? As I said, it seems that someone could accept everything in steps 1-6 of Bruno's argument but still posit that the measure of each observer-moment would be determined by its limit frequency in some unique universe- computation U. At step 1-6. OK. But this is why there is step 7 and 8. At step six, you are still at the middle of the argument. At step seven, you can still save physicalism by assuming a unique small primitive physical universe. Small really means here FPI immune. Given that we are assuming CTM, we need some ontology to fix the notion of computation, and arithmetical relations suffice for this purpose. Sorry, what does "CTM" stand for? It doesn't appear anywhere in Bruno's "Comp (2013)" paper which I'm using for reference. CTM = Comp (to use with moderation when tired of the sound of comp). BTW, I suggested an ontology in the earlier comment to Bruno at http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg16244.html -- basically using an axiomatic system which allows you to deduce the truth-value of various propositions about a computation, propositions equivalent to statements like "after N time steps, the read/write head of the Turing machine moves to space 1185 on the Turing tape, finds a 0 there, changes its internal state from #5 to #8 and changes the digit there to 1". Then, a given computation can be defined in terms of the logical relations between a set of propositions, so one computation A can "contain" an instance of another computation B if some subset of propositions about A have an isomorphic structure of logical relations to the logical relations between propositions about B. Since the structure of arithmetic can also be defined in terms of a set of propositions with logical relations between them, and any statement about a particular computation can be decided by determining the truth-value of a corresponding statement about arithmetic, it may be that defining computations in terms of "arithmetical relations" would lead to all the same conclusions as the definition I suggest above, though I'm not sure. Any sigma_1 complete theory, on arithmetic, or any other inductive collection of finite entities, will do. But such system can be extended in much more powerful (in terms of proving large set of arithmetical, or theoretical computer science) by admitting stronger induction axioms. Such a Library must in particular contain "universal dovetailers" that themselves generate every possible program and execute each of them in sequence by means of dovetailing. This must include recursively regenerating themselves in an infinitely "fractal" manner. This characteristic implies a quite extraordinarily explosive regenerative redundancy. Hence it seems plausible a priori, even without a detailed calculus, that the resulting computational structure (i.e. the infinite trace of the UD, or UD*) must completely dominate any measure competition within the computational landscape defined by arithmetical truth (or the small part of it needed for the assumption). That seems very handwavey to me, and while it might seem plausible initially I think it becomes less so when you think more carefully about how measure might actually be assigned. Do you disagree that if we use the particular definition of measure I suggest, in the example I gave with U and U' (both containing a universal dovetailer alongside a bunch of other computers churning out endless copies of me in Washington or me in Moscow) the UD will *not* dominate the "measure competition", in that U and U' will give very different answers to the relative likelihood that I find myself in Washington vs. Moscow in Bruno's thought-experiment? The UD is just the base. The simplest basic ontology. With such thesis it defines effectively what is computable, and it defines the relative measures, which will not depend on which UD you start with. But the view from
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 31 July 2014 06:36, Russell Standish wrote: > The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way > of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual > precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which > requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the > summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a > single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is > well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as > well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience > is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse > entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate > consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7. > I always run aground on those counterfactuals - that is I can't see the point of them. I hope your coming paper will help me out! I look forward to it. :-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 31 July 2014 04:43, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR wrote: > > > Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people >> needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains. >> > > Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world and > changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so why do > you call this thing a "spirit"? What exactly makes it more unmaterial than > an electron or a photon or even a baseball? > Not necessarily. We could assume consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just along for the ride. A p-zombie would act the same way, by hypothesis. Note that this is all just for the sake of argument, to see where it leads (if anywhere). > > > Then materialism would explain the experiences that this spirit had, but >> not the existence of consciousness itself, which by hypothesis requires >> this supernatural extra. >> > > The sequence of "what explains that?" questions either comes to a end or > it does not. If it does come to a end then we might as well stop with > consciousness because the God hypothesis adds nothing new and is just a > useless complication, therefore we conclude that consciousness is > fundamental and thus after saying that consciousness is the way data feels > like when it is being processed there is simply nothing more that can be > said on the subject. > It's true that explanatory chains have to start and end somewhere, which is why I gave up arguing with Brent, since he claimed (via a circular explanatory diagram) that he doesn't think this is so. I'm not sure where you got God from, though. So if we stop with consciousness, and consciousness is data being processed, then we need to take seriously any consequences of this, which takes us back to comp, the UDA and so on (unless we can prove otherwise). > > On the other hand if the sequence of "what explains that? questions never > comes to a end then the next element in the sequence is obviously "what > explains God?". Either way the God hypothesis adds nothing. > > >> I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, >>> and that changes from day to day. >>> >> >> > Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me, >> give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language. >> > > If Bruno is not fluent in English then he has no business inventing a new > English word. Bruno claims that "comp" is just short for computationalism > but I don't think even Bruno really believes that, if he did he could avoid > all this by simply adding a few extra letters but he knows he can't do that > because he is constantly saying things like "according to comp X is true" > when computationalism is saying nothing of the sort. Therefore Bruno has > no choice but to invent a new word in a unfamiliar language that means > whatever he wants it to mean. > Well, he gives the arguments for why X is true according to comp. That is, it's a consequence of computationalism, not one of its assumptions. > > >> > But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety. >> > > That is to your credit because there is no there there to grok > Eventually I hope to grok that for myself, if it is in fact the case. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 31 July 2014 00:36, David Nyman wrote: > On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, >> by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* >> incomprehensible. > > > Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point > is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the > assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact > leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use > comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise. > Ah, yes, although I tend to get confused about this I think (when I think) that the bottom lines are ... Comp assumes that consciousness can be explained at some level as a digital computation. This would at least seem to accord with quantum mechanics, which hints that things go awry when we try to construct the world from continua and uncountable infinities, as relativity suggests. Based on that assumption, it then purports to show that materialism is incapable of providing the relevant substrate to support those computations, and that the only available source for these is in arithmetic, assumed to exist independently of us, at least in a simple form (since QM indicates there are no continua etc in the real world, I guess "arithmetical realism" isn't obliged to include real numbers). Is that right so far? PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 7/30/2014 5:36 AM, David Nyman wrote: On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote: I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* incomprehensible. Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise. The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the logical steps of the argument, particularly in assumptions about the scope of "reasonable" explanation. Brent and others point to parallel accounts of neural activity and conscious self-reporting and ask "what more could be required in the way of explanation?". AUDA may indeed give a clue to the direction in which explanation could be extended, beyond ostensive parallelism of this kind, particularly with respect to the central logical puzzles of mutual reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would require us to relinquish any prior commitment to primitive materialist assumptions. There are no such commitments - just requests that other theories meet the same standards of empirical prediction. My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to articulate my own (still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of reductionist explanation under strictly materialist assumptions (i.e. without either tacit or explicit reliance on supernumerary posits). ISTM that one of the problems in reaching any kind of stable agreement (or even disagreement) on these issues is equivocation over the terms of reference. Consequently I've tried to make my own view of the reductionist assumption clear: i.e. that explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in principle be reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite class of "primitive" physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends to lead to disputation over the sense of "without loss", but I'll come to that in due course. But you assume a cartoon version of reduction to "primitive physical entitities". You seem to envision the atoms of Democritus. If you read some modern physics you'll find that (as Bruno sometimes points out) primitive physical matter is never defined or even mentioned. Many physicists hope to base their theories on information. Some on 'strings' in very abstract, 11 dimensionsal spacetime. Some propose to make spacetime a derivative phenomena. So you need to think about what exactly you are attacking as "reductionism". ISTM that it's any theory that doesn't take consciousness as primitive. Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism entails that it is misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon, above the level of the chosen explanatory basement, as having "independent existence". But only in a narrow sense of "independent". Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes of the argument) such phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically dispensable. ?? A good explanation must always be in terms of something understood. We understand our perceptions and we infer a material world. I think you must have some restricted concept of "explanatory" in mind and I think it is implicitly "explanation in terms of physical causation." It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little longer! I've offered analogies in terms of such things as societies and football teams (you can easily supplement these with your own) in terms of which this consequence of reductionism is rather obvious. But for some reason it stops being "obvious" in the matter of matter itself. On reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we "directly experience" such higher-level phenomena in an unreduced form. Hence none of us (and that includes Professor Dennett) can avoid the fact of encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a "reality" in unreduced high-level terms, even though our "best" explanations actually rule out the other-than-metaphorically-independent significance of any such levels. Now you mix in "significance" - having value or standing in place of something? If you doubt the degree of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the general tenor of disputes over "free will". This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist analogy breaks down. Nobody would seriously claim, beyond a manner of speaking, that football teams amount to anything other than the aggregate action of the persons that constitute them. But on the other hand almost everyone (pace Daniel Dennett) would claim direct access to a reality that is something (even if we can't agree exactly what) that is, at least, categorica
Re: New study confirms importance of astrocytes a type of glial cells in the formation of object memories.
For those interested in new developments in brain science. In a study published July 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salk Institute for Biological Sciences researchers have found that brain cells called astrocytes — not neurons — can control the brain’s gamma waves. Abstract from PNAS paper Glial cells are an integral part of functional communication in the brain. Here we show that astrocytes contribute to the fast dynamics of neural circuits that underlie normal cognitive behaviors. In particular, we found that the selective expression of tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT) in astrocytes significantly reduced the duration of carbachol-induced gamma oscillations in hippocampal slices. These data prompted us to develop a novel transgenic mouse model, specifically with inducible tetanus toxin expression in astrocytes. In this in vivo model, we found evidence of a marked decrease in electroencephalographic (EEG) power in the gamma frequency range in awake-behaving mice, whereas neuronal synaptic activity remained intact. The reduction in cortical gamma oscillations was accompanied by impaired behavioral performance in the novel object recognition test, whereas other forms of memory, including working memory and fear conditioning, remainedunchanged. These results support a key role for gamma oscillations in recognition memory. Both EEG alterations and behavioral deficits in novel object recognition were reversed by suppression of tetanus toxin expression. These data reveal an unexpected role for astrocytes as essential contributors to information processing and cognitive behavior. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 03:13:01PM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > > Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be > imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading > lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally > accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA. > I don't think step 7 and the MGA have been overemphasised at all - although step 3 has been done to death it seems. The MGA, in particular, is very subtle. I think I have now found a way of coming to grips with it, and it is a little different to the usual precis given here. Fundamentally, computational supervenience (which requires counterfactual correctness, a factor often overlooked in the summaries) is incompatible with physical supervenience, but only in a single universe, not a multiverse. Since physical supervenience is well supported empirically (something JC has banged on a bit about, as well as Brent), the only way of rescuing computational supervenience is to insist that we do, in fact, live in a multiverse. But that multiverse entails the universal dovetailer, or at least enough of it to emulate consciousness, which suffices to get the reversal result of step 7. I'm in process of writing this up as a paper, which I'll hopefully post to this list in the next week or so to be shredded by the denizens here. On another note, I've done a calculation of the observer moment measure given by the universal dovetailer, which shows that the measure is indeed independent of the chosen reference machine, as we widely suspected, and hopefully might be comparable with Solomonoff-Levin's universal prior. More likely, it might be compared with the Bayesian probability after an infinite number of updates. Not sure if it belongs in the above paper, as it is necessarily more technical, but I'll post that to this list in one form or other soon. But I'm happy for there to me more discussion of the AUDA too :) The underpinnings of that theory still seem rather weakly motivated for me, as opposed to being mandated by computationalism. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 4:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > you confuse comp and its consequence. > And you confuse your made-up word "comp" with the English word "computationalism". > a rather systematic confusion of first person and third person. > Oh yes, the world is full of people who are confused by the extremely subtle difference between the words "I" and "him". John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Kim Jones wrote: > Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different people > Yes and that's exactly the trouble! In contrast computationalism means the same thing for everybody, a useful property for a word to have if it is to be used for communication. Computationalism means that thinking is a form of computing. But as you said nobody knows what "comp" means, therefore all we know for certain is that "comp" is NOT short for computationalism. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 5:51 PM, LizR wrote: > Suppose for the sake of argument that in order to be conscious, people > needed a Descartes-style spirit to be attached to their brains. > Then changes in the Descartes-style spirit changes the material world and changes in the material world changes the Descartes-style spirit; so why do you call this thing a "spirit"? What exactly makes it more unmaterial than an electron or a photon or even a baseball? > Then materialism would explain the experiences that this spirit had, but > not the existence of consciousness itself, which by hypothesis requires > this supernatural extra. > The sequence of "what explains that?" questions either comes to a end or it does not. If it does come to a end then we might as well stop with consciousness because the God hypothesis adds nothing new and is just a useless complication, therefore we conclude that consciousness is fundamental and thus after saying that consciousness is the way data feels like when it is being processed there is simply nothing more that can be said on the subject. On the other hand if the sequence of "what explains that? questions never comes to a end then the next element in the sequence is obviously "what explains God?". Either way the God hypothesis adds nothing. >> I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, >> and that changes from day to day. >> > > > Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me, > give or take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language. > If Bruno is not fluent in English then he has no business inventing a new English word. Bruno claims that "comp" is just short for computationalism but I don't think even Bruno really believes that, if he did he could avoid all this by simply adding a few extra letters but he knows he can't do that because he is constantly saying things like "according to comp X is true" when computationalism is saying nothing of the sort. Therefore Bruno has no choice but to invent a new word in a unfamiliar language that means whatever he wants it to mean. > > But I have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety. > That is to your credit because there is no there there to grok John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On 29 July 2014 18:41, Bruno Marchal wrote: It is thought as a reductio ad absurdum. If consciousness supervenes on the > physical activity, then it supervenes on the movie, But there is no > computation in the movie, only a description of a computation, so > consciousness does not supervene on the physical activity of the brain, it > supervenes "directly" on the "abstract self-referential number relation > with themselves and with respect to their most probable universal > neighbors, from your laptop to gravitation and many others. Yes, that is the only possible move to salvage CTM. But one isn't forced to take this second step. One could claim that, since there is no computation in the movie, CTM is thereby falsified. But, since Alice's overt behaviour and hence her relation to her environment are by assumption unchanged, it might not be unreasonable to suppose that her consciousness continued to supervene on the physical activity. Of course a claim of that sort could no longer be "qua computatio", but in some sense "qua materia". It's unclear how such a position could be distinguished from eliminativism about consciousness (at least, pace Brent, elimination of the possibility of *explanation* beyond physical parallelism), but it isn't prima facie incoherent. That apart, at this point in the argument, assuming one accepts the reversal and salvages CTM, some things are still not quite clear (at least to me). For example let's now assume that Alice remains conscious at the conclusion of the thought experiment, qua computatio. What is the nature of the relation between her observable brain processes and the computations that are supposed to be associated with her consciousness? And what is the relation between what is observable in general and any deeper level we may suppose to be reponsible for it? I tried to develop some intuition about this latter point with an analogy based on the distinction between an LCD screen and the movies that could be presented on it (though unfortunately it seems as if this may have got mixed up in your response with the movie in the MGA). In any case, in my analogy, all the characters and action at the level of the movie are of course generated at the deeper level of a rendering engine (which I rather inaccurately called the level of the screen). Now let's assume that this movie is some futuristic, fully-immersive, self-interpreting presentation. For the analogy to hold, the "physical constitution" of the embedded characters and environments must be fully consistent both with the action at the level of the movie and the self-interpretation of the characters. Nonetheless all these internal "observations" and "observables" are a consequence of a deeper level of "rendering", which itself has no necessity of isomorphism with anything at the level of observation. Does the idea of such a level (which must of course be "noumenal" or unobservable in principle with respect to the "level of internal observation") still make any sense in comp terms? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: > > > > 2014-07-29 16:30 GMT+02:00 John Clark : > > On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR wrote: >> >> >>> whatever a computer does is "just" the movement of electrons around > circuits > >> And whatever a human brain does is "just" the movement of molecules and ions around neurons. That word "just" sure covers a lot! >>> >>> > Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I "just" love being quoted out of >>> context. >>> >> >> I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using the >> word "just" in the same way I was. >> >> > If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case. >>> >>> > It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain >>> consciousness >>> >> >> Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but I >> know for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing the >> material in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most certainly does) >> and changes in consciousness changes the material in my brain (and it most >> certainly does) then in what sense does materialism fail to explain >> consciousness? >> >> > according to comp >>> >> >> I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, >> and that changes from day to day. >> >> > Sure Liar Clark... as said a million times now, comp is a shorthand for > *computationalism* and it has always meant that... and always will... the > only retarded changing the meaning day to day is you. > I applaud your firmness on this as his tireless repetition has the same effect as spam/advertising sensationalism... regardless of the vacuity, you just start singing the jingle in your head. The leaders of the chart on this list are: 1) Wow, calling a guy known for disliking religion religious, never heard that one before, at least I never heard it before I was 12. 2) There is nothing in step 3 to understand. 3) (Some final personal attack to distract from discussion closing the post, like:) Bruno Marchal is not a logician. The repetition is low resolution brainwash. I appreciate a lot John Clark's contributions on astrophysics and that he engages UDA up to step 3 however, but I think everybody can see why his "arguments" always culminate in personal attack. Better than to keep reacting like monkey to his post, which I do, would be imho for the list to focus on precise prerequisites, exercises, reading lists to get firmer grasp of AUDA, and make that more universally accessible than perhaps overemphasizing Step 7 and MGA. Yes, I know everybody comes at it from differing background, but AUDA with more generalized, clear sequence of pedagogical felicity conditions would be cool. I know it's out there in bits and pieces in different threads; but to bundle and focus it would be nice. It would be a fine step forward, if the list and Bruno could advance on sharing these kinds of questions, "just do it" style, instead of servicing the meta spam and droning on about UDA, Step 7 and MGA. Maybe resurrecting an old thread that I haven't seen could stop having to start from scratch. Just my virtual 2 cents. Apologies for length, but not much time :-) PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: One in the eye for Hoyle?
On 30 July 2014 00:26, LizR wrote: And there I was worrying about CERN destroying the world Yeah, I was careful to take this shot on a long lens! David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal wrote: I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by > using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* > incomprehensible. Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise. The trouble is, there are a lot of nuances that tend to obscure the logical steps of the argument, particularly in assumptions about the scope of "reasonable" explanation. Brent and others point to parallel accounts of neural activity and conscious self-reporting and ask "what more could be required in the way of explanation?". AUDA may indeed give a clue to the direction in which explanation could be extended, beyond ostensive parallelism of this kind, particularly with respect to the central logical puzzles of mutual reference between 1p and 3p regimes. But this would require us to relinquish any prior commitment to primitive materialist assumptions. My recent forays into thought experiment have been an attempt to articulate my own (still persisting) intuitions about the intrinsic limitations of reductionist explanation under strictly materialist assumptions (i.e. without either tacit or explicit reliance on supernumerary posits). ISTM that one of the problems in reaching any kind of stable agreement (or even disagreement) on these issues is equivocation over the terms of reference. Consequently I've tried to make my own view of the reductionist assumption clear: i.e. that explanation of phenomena at any level whatsoever can in principle be reduced without loss to accounts of the action of a finite class of "primitive" physical entities and relations. Of course, this tends to lead to disputation over the sense of "without loss", but I'll come to that in due course. Stated thus baldy and strictly eschewing equivocation, reductionism entails that it is misleading to consider any derivative phenomenon, above the level of the chosen explanatory basement, as having "independent existence". Strictly speaking (and strictness is essential for the succes of the argument) such phenomena are both explanatorily and ontologically dispensable. It's just that in extenso the proofs are a little longer! I've offered analogies in terms of such things as societies and football teams (you can easily supplement these with your own) in terms of which this consequence of reductionism is rather obvious. But for some reason it stops being "obvious" in the matter of matter itself. On reflection, the reason is not so elusive: i.e. we "directly experience" such higher-level phenomena in an unreduced form. Hence none of us (and that includes Professor Dennett) can avoid the fact of encountering, and discoursing in terms of, a "reality" in unreduced high-level terms, even though our "best" explanations actually rule out the other-than-metaphorically-independent significance of any such levels. If you doubt the degree of cognitive dissonance this engenders, consider the general tenor of disputes over "free will". This is the point at which the parallel with any other reductionist analogy breaks down. Nobody would seriously claim, beyond a manner of speaking, that football teams amount to anything other than the aggregate action of the persons that constitute them. But on the other hand almost everyone (pace Daniel Dennett) would claim direct access to a reality that is something (even if we can't agree exactly what) that is, at least, categorically distinct from any description of the aggregate action of the material processes of the brain. The same distinction, however, can't be claimed for "computation", on the assumption of material reduction. Just as in the case of the football team no instance of computation can escape reduction to material tokens that have been contrived, under suitable interpretation, to embody the necessary physical action. There isn't even the saving grace that we directly perceive computation in unreduced form. What we actually perceive are macroscopic physical devices that, by assumption, produce all their effects entirely in terms of basic material processes that are fully subject to reductive explanation. Every explanation we give in terms of computation can in principle be replaced without loss by a description of a physical process. This is the underlying reason that Alice's net behaviour can persist unaltered even after disruption of any putatively "computational" organisation of her brain. Under physicalist assumptions, Alice is first, last and always a physical device. Indeed, were that not the case, it would be difficult to see how any "physical computer" could ever be manufactured! On this analysis then, it can hardly be coherent to claim that any
Re: John Searle on consciousness
2014-07-29 16:30 GMT+02:00 John Clark : > On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR wrote: > > >>> whatever a computer does is "just" the movement of electrons around circuits >>> >>> >> And whatever a human brain does is "just" the movement of molecules >>> and ions around neurons. That word "just" sure covers a lot! >>> >> >> > Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I "just" love being quoted out of >> context. >> > > I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using the > word "just" in the same way I was. > > > If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that >>> humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case. >>> >> >> > It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain >> consciousness >> > > Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but I know > for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing the material > in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most certainly does) and > changes in consciousness changes the material in my brain (and it most > certainly does) then in what sense does materialism fail to explain > consciousness? > > > according to comp >> > > I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, and > that changes from day to day. > > Sure Liar Clark... as said a million times now, comp is a shorthand for *computationalism* and it has always meant that... and always will... the only retarded changing the meaning day to day is you. Quentin > John K Clark > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 29 Jul 2014, at 16:30, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 7:22 PM, LizR wrote: >>> whatever a computer does is "just" the movement of electrons around circuits >> And whatever a human brain does is "just" the movement of molecules and ions around neurons. That word "just" sure covers a lot! > Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I "just" love being quoted out of context. I wasn't trying to criticize you, I understand that you were using the word "just" in the same way I was. > If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case. > It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain consciousness Then it also explains why a human being can never be conscious, but I know for a fact that at least one human being is. And if changing the material in my brain changes my consciousness (and it most certainly does) and changes in consciousness changes the material in my brain (and it most certainly does) then in what sense does materialism fail to explain consciousness? > according to comp I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, and that changes from day to day. Comp has the same meaning since day one on this list. I told you already that you confuse comp and its consequence. It is up to you to explain why you think we can avoid those consequences. Up to now, your "refutation" is based on a rather systematic confusion of first person and third person. You have not replied to my last detailed explanation of this. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: John Searle on consciousness
On 29 Jul 2014, at 01:22, LizR wrote: On 29 July 2014 02:35, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 5:55 PM, LizR wrote: > I think he falls into the same camp as Fred Hoyle - someone who manages to get something completely wrong Fred Hoyle's Steady State Theory started out as a perfectly respectable scientific idea, it turned out to be false but that's OK, it happens to the best of us. However he also stuck to it even when the evidence to the contrary was completely overwhelming. But I don't think the cosmologists and astrophysicists interviewed by Nigel Calder were ONLY talking about the Steady State. The "prove Fred wrong" meme involved a number of ideas - and "Violent Universe" was published in the early 70s, or around then, so it was most likely to do with other cosmological ideas, since I'm pretty sure that was before Sir Fred decided AIDS came from space and evolution was like a typhoon in a junkyard, and so on. (And it was when he was still writing decent SF.) > whatever a computer does is "just" the movement of electrons around circuits And whatever a human brain does is "just" the movement of molecules and ions around neurons. That word "just" sure covers a lot! Hence the quote marks. Don't worry I "just" love being quoted out of context. If that proves a computer can't be conscious then it also proves that humans aren't conscious; and except for me maybe that's the case. It supposedly proves that the materialist paradigm doesn't explain consciousness, according to comp. Personally I have yet to be convinced (hence those damn quote marks.) I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* incomprehensible. The problem is that with comp, materialism is no more able to explain matter. Even assuming matter (making it primitive) do no more work. Matter can only be explained by a measure on all computations, and this, when translated in math, seems to lead to the quantum, making the quantum a conceptual confirmation of comp. The quantum appears as a the digital seen by the machine internal to arithmetic. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
