Re: Astigmatism Example
On 03 Apr 2013, at 23:53, Jesse Mazer wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I don't think the function in functionalism is supposed to refer to utility or purpose. Functionalism as I understand it just refers to the idea that if you replaced each part of the brain with a functionally identical part, meaning that its input/output relationship is the same as the original part, then this will result in no change in conscious experience, regardless of the material details of how the part produces this input/output relation (a miniature version of the Chinese room thought experiment could work, for example). It's also self-evident that there should be no behavioral change, *if* we assume the reductionist idea that the large-scale behavior of any physical system is determined by the rules governing the behavior and interactions of each of its component parts (you would probably dispute this, but the point is just that this seems to be one of the assumptions of 'functionalism', and of course almost all modern scientific theories of systems composed of multiple parts work with this assumption). For example, if you have a tumor which is altering your consciousness and disrupting some other abilities like speech, that is obviously not serving any useful function, but functionalism wouldn't claim it should, it would just say that if you replaced the tumor with an artificial device that affected the surrounding neurons in exactly the same way, the affected patient wouldn't notice any subjective difference (likewise with more useful parts of the brain, of course). There may of course be different meanings that philosophers have assigned to the term functionalism, but I think this is one, and I'm pretty sure it's part of what COMP is taken to mean on this list. You are right. Functionalism means that we can substitute a part with functionally equivalent part. Comp, in the weak sense I use it, means that functionalism occurs at some description level. Then we can explain that a machine cannot know for sure its own substitution level, but it can bet on it, and the physics around him can give some indication. If the comp physics gives exactly the usual quantum mechanics, it could be an evidence that pour substitution level is given by the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. Note that this is not the level needed to survive, but to survive in the exact same mental state. People will accept much higher level brain substitution, because they will be cheaper, and they will not mind so much loosing some memories or even personality treats. Bruno 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak eye*, I find that after a few seconds, the image from the strong eye, even though it is closed, tries to creep into my visual field. It is not difficult at this point to 'look through' the eye that is closed (seeing phosphenes or just darkness). Reversing the test, with my weak eye closed, there is no creeping effect and it is not really possible for me to look through the eye that is closed. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. The fact that closing the weak eye instead does not produce the creeping image effect demonstrates that there is no functional purpose which could be served by favoring the strong eye when it is the one which is closed. In some people astigmatism progresses until the develop a wandering eye. The physicalist can claim victory over the functionalist here in that the atrophy of nerve connections to the weak eye and the relative hypertrophy of the nerve connections to the strong eye clearly dominate the functional considerations of the visual mechanism. The creeping image effect also is not immediate, so that it is not the case that the hardware is incapable of maintaining clear vision through the weak eye, it is obviously the inertia of purely physical-perceptual processes which is dragging the function down. Between the physical and the perceptual, which one is driving? It would seem that physics would win here, because the creeping image is not the more aesthetically rich image - however, this is not a case where the aesthetics are determined only from the top down. Remember that both eyes are exposed to the same light. The retinas receive the same total number of photons. The strong eye develops more robust connections to it not because it has more light, but because the shape of the eye is such that the cells (sub-personal agents) of the retina are able to make more sense out of the better focused light. There are not more signals being generated, but clearer signals which carry farther up the ladder from sub-personal optical detection to personal visual sensation. The nerve growth follows the coherence of visual consciousness, not a just a photological nutrient supply. The eye becomes stronger because the brain population is prioritizing higher sensitivity, not because neurons are being pushed around by blind ionic concentration gradients. That sensory priority is the cause of the neurological investment in that eye's sensitivity, so that it is perceptual inertia which drives the creeping image effect not just biological morphology. *which is my left eye. Curious if any of you left brainy types have an astigmatism in the right eye. -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost completely undetectable except for in the processing of a few organisms scattered on planets after billions of years of silent darkness. If you run it the other way, with the Universal Mind as the Universal Experience instead, then complexity becomes a symptom of elaborated qualities of that experience rather than a cause of experience itself appearing into an unconscious world of matter. Our own quality of consciousness is not just a mind full of practical or logical thoughts, but also of feelings, images, intuitions, visions, etc. Our world has never been unconscious or conscious like us, but is rather filled with every sort of in-between semi-conscious, from primate to mammal, reptile, etc.. The transition to inorganic matter is both smooth and sudden, as phenomena like viruses and crystals bridge the gap but also on another level, leave no obvious link. From the Universal Experience, comp is derived as a second order strategy to manage the interaction between sub-experiences, and that interaction is what we perceive as physics. This way, representation arises naturally through any multiplicity of presentations, and both the presentation problem and de-presentation problems are resolved. Comp exists to serve sensory presence, since sensory presence cannot plausibly serve comp in any way. The universe is never silent and unconscious, but is always an experience defined by whatever participants are available, regardless of the complexity. The Universal Experience, I suggest, has the property of conserving appearances of separateness between different kinds of sub-experiences, and this accounts for the mistaken impression that non-human experiences are objectively and absolutely unconscious - they are 'as if unconscious' relative to our local realism, but that is necessary to insulate our experience from an implosion of significance. Thanks, Craig Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak eye*, I find that after a few seconds, the image from the strong eye, even though it is closed, tries to creep into my visual field. It is not difficult at this point to 'look through' the eye that is closed (seeing phosphenes or just darkness). Reversing the test, with my weak eye closed, there is no creeping effect and it is not really possible for me to look through the eye that is closed. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize
Re: Astigmatism Example
My google account is forcing me to reply here rather than interspersed, which is very inconvenient. But I will try. 1. As far as I know the universal mind is not aesthetic 2. Not sure what your 2nd question means 3. The universe has existed for 13.82 ly with little or no consciousness to detect it unless you consider a universal consciousness. I do not see how that is a criticism. Seems to be a fact of nature. 4.I cannot run the other way with my model. That's your model On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost completely undetectable except for in the processing of a few organisms scattered on planets after billions of years of silent darkness. If you run it the other way, with the Universal Mind as the Universal Experience instead, then complexity becomes a symptom of elaborated qualities of that experience rather than a cause of experience itself appearing into an unconscious world of matter. Our own quality of consciousness is not just a mind full of practical or logical thoughts, but also of feelings, images, intuitions, visions, etc. Our world has never been unconscious or conscious like us, but is rather filled with every sort of in-between semi-conscious, from primate to mammal, reptile, etc.. The transition to inorganic matter is both smooth and sudden, as phenomena like viruses and crystals bridge the gap but also on another level, leave no obvious link. From the Universal Experience, comp is derived as a second order strategy to manage the interaction between sub-experiences, and that interaction is what we perceive as physics. This way, representation arises naturally through any multiplicity of presentations, and both the presentation problem and de-presentation problems are resolved. Comp exists to serve sensory presence, since sensory presence cannot plausibly serve comp in any way. The universe is never silent and unconscious, but is always an experience defined by whatever participants are available, regardless of the complexity. The Universal Experience, I suggest, has the property of conserving appearances of separateness between different kinds of sub-experiences, and this accounts for the mistaken impression that non-human experiences are objectively and absolutely unconscious - they are 'as if unconscious' relative to our local realism, but that is necessary to insulate our experience from an implosion of significance. Thanks, Craig Richard On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote: If any of you have a moderate astigmatism, you may have observed this - if not, you'll have to take my word for it. If I close my weak
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I don't think the function in functionalism is supposed to refer to utility or purpose. Functionalism as I understand it just refers to the idea that if you replaced each part of the brain with a functionally identical part, meaning that its input/output relationship is the same as the original part, then this will result in no change in conscious experience, regardless of the material details of how the part produces this input/output relation (a miniature version of the Chinese room thought experiment could work, for example). It's also self-evident that there should be no behavioral change, *if* we assume the reductionist idea that the large-scale behavior of any physical system is determined by the rules governing the behavior and interactions of each of its component parts (you would probably dispute this, but the point is just that this seems to be one of the assumptions of 'functionalism', and of course almost all modern scientific theories of systems composed of multiple parts work with this assumption). For example, if you have a tumor which is altering your consciousness and disrupting some other abilities like speech, that is obviously not serving any useful function, but functionalism wouldn't claim it should, it would just say that if you replaced the tumor with an artificial device that affected the surrounding neurons in exactly the same way, the affected patient wouldn't notice any subjective difference (likewise with more useful parts of the brain, of course). There may of course be different meanings that philosophers have assigned to the term functionalism, but I think this is one, and I'm pretty sure it's part of what COMP is taken to mean on this list. Jesse -- 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?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:30:44 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: My google account is forcing me to reply here rather than interspersed, which is very inconvenient. But I will try. 1. As far as I know the universal mind is not aesthetic Exactly, which is why it can't be responsible for any aesthetic agenda, and as far as I can tell, consciousness is a purely aesthetic agenda. No mind (or logic, or set of computations) can be responsible for consciousness. 2. Not sure what your 2nd question means 3. The universe has existed for 13.82 ly with little or no consciousness to detect it unless you consider a universal consciousness. Little to no consciousness is what I am saying is a bad assumption. Any given non-human experience may have little or no consciousness which we relate to as human beings, but just as comp (especially Bruno's implementation of comp) points to a vast infinity of unfamiliar and invisible perfections, my expectation is that the universe without human beings is still overflowing with experience. This is a different kind of panexperientialism, not one which says that a planet is a living being, but that what we see as a planet is a contrived representation of vast set of experience on a completely different scale than humans can directly interact with. Just as a human brain reveals no clue as to the particular feelings and memories of the person who is associated with it, all experiences associated with Earth are represented by the Earth itself. My panexperientialism is about all phenomena which appear to us as public bodies being tokens of the underlying reality, which is not matter, not computation, but an eternity of interwoven experiences and meta-experiences. I do not see how that is a criticism. Seems to be a fact of nature. Seems is the key word. Of course nature seems to contain a universe of unconscious matter to us, because that perceptual relativity is what allows us to develop our own rich perceptual inertial frame (niche or umwelt). Just as the mites that live in our eyelids have no possible sense of the actions which exist on our level, we have no opportunity to view the universe from a non-human vantage point - where millions of years pass in seconds and solar systems bounce off of each other like spinning tops. 4.I cannot run the other way with my model. That's your model The truth of nature belongs to everyone, not just me. All that it takes for you to be able to run the model my way is some curiosity, bravery, and humility. Craig On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:10:29 PM UTC-4, yanniru wrote: I am a leftist astigmatic. But you raise an interesting point that I believe supports a mind/brain duality. In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I agree. However, in a mind/brain dualism, the mind may be due to comp and the brain due to evolution of physical biological organisms, influenced by the mind comp but not controlled by the mind comp. (However, below the substitution level the universal mind comp controls all particle interactions and such a duality does not exist.) So in a mind/brain duality, the prioritization you mention cannot exist if it has not physically evolved. In my model, all physical particles and energy are created by comp in the big bang and are conserved thereafter, subject to the laws and constants of nature that also come from comp. Consciousness is a property of the universal mind and also manifests in biological organisms as a mind consciousness when the complexity of the organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit derived from the Bekenstein bound of the universe. My view is similar to what you describe as far as mind-brain dualism proscribing a different evolution of the agendas of mind and the consequences of brain conditions. I think that in a complex organism there is feedback on multiple levels - the mind and brain influence each other constantly, and, in my view, are as the head and tail of the Ouroboros serpent - opposite ends of the same unbroken continuum. The problem that I have with what you propose, as I understand it is twofold: The presentation problem. If the universal mind is comp, why does the universe have any aesthetic content at all? Why does comp create formal localizations as a physical phenomenon when it could use the digital localizations that it already consists of. The de-presentation problem. What would be the point of physical particles and energy being created by comp if there could be nothing able to detect them until some organism exceeds the 10^120 bit comp power limit? You are looking at a universe which is almost
Re: Astigmatism Example
On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:53:40 PM UTC-4, jessem wrote: On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: In a universe of functionalism or comp, I would expect that this would never happen, as my brain should always prioritize the information made available by any eye that is open over that of an eye which is closed. I don't think the function in functionalism is supposed to refer to utility or purpose. Functionalism as I understand it just refers to the idea that if you replaced each part of the brain with a functionally identical part, meaning that its input/output relationship is the same as the original part, then this will result in no change in conscious experience, regardless of the material details of how the part produces this input/output relation (a miniature version of the Chinese room thought experiment could work, for example). Right, but in the nervous system, the input/output relationship is the same as utility or purpose. Think of it this way. If I make a cymatic pattern in some sand spread out on top of a drum head by vibrating it with a certain frequency of sound, then functionalism says that whatever I do to make that pattern must equal a sound. We know that isn't true though. I could make that cymatic pattern simply by making a mold of it and filling that mold with sand. I could stamp out necklaces with miniature versions of that pattern in bronze. I could design a device which records the motion of the sand as the pattern forms optically and then reproduces the same motion and the same pattern in some other medium, like a TV screen. All of these methods reproduce the input/output relationship which creates the pattern, yet none of them involve carrying over the sound which I initially used to make the pattern. It's a little different because we can change our conscious experience by changing the pattern of our brain activity, and that activity can be changed in the same way by different means, so that functionalist assumptions can be used legitimately to understand brain physiology - but - that does not mean that the functionalist assumptions automatically tell the whole story. If they did, then we would not need subjective reports to correlate with brain activity, we would be able to simply detect subjective qualities as functions, which of course we cannot do in any way. Just as there is more than one way to make a pattern in sand, there is more than one expression of any given experience. On one level it is hundreds of billions of molecules reconfiguring each other, and on another is a single experience which contains within it a billion times that number of experiences on different levels. It's also self-evident that there should be no behavioral change, *if* we assume the reductionist idea that the large-scale behavior of any physical system is determined by the rules governing the behavior and interactions of each of its component parts (you would probably dispute this, but the point is just that this seems to be one of the assumptions of 'functionalism', and of course almost all modern scientific theories of systems composed of multiple parts work with this assumption). Look at how freeway traffic works. We can statistically analyze the positions and actions of the cars and with a few simple rules, predict a model of general traffic flow. Such a model is very effective for predicting and controlling traffic, but it does not have access to the meaning of the traffic - which is in fact the narrative agendas of each individual driver trying to leave one location and get to another. That is the reason the traffic exists; because drivers are using vehicles to realize their motives. We could model traffic instead as a torrent of automotive particles, which attract drivers inside of them automatically through a wave like field which happens to be synchronized with rush hour and lunch hour, and our model would not be incorrect in its predictions, but of course, it would lead us to a completely false conclusion about the nature of cars. For example, if you have a tumor which is altering your consciousness and disrupting some other abilities like speech, that is obviously not serving any useful function, but functionalism wouldn't claim it should, it would just say that if you replaced the tumor with an artificial device that affected the surrounding neurons in exactly the same way, the affected patient wouldn't notice any subjective difference (likewise with more useful parts of the brain, of course). There may of course be different meanings that philosophers have assigned to the term functionalism, but I think this is one, and I'm pretty sure it's part of what COMP is taken to mean on this list. Point taken. I was referring more to the 'ontological implications of functionalism' rather than functionalism itself. It's important to
