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I was thinking more about emotion being intrinsic to awareness. BTW, it is now over cast in my area from this thinking. I don't think does have to be "intrinsic" to awareness. I keep thinking about "why" and "why not". Or, can a life form process "information" with having to "feel" things. The three things that kept cropping up in my limited thoughts is "learning", "response time/intensity", and "reproduction". All of which can be addressed without emotion, Of course, that is totally dependent on the design of the machine.
Forgive the delay in reply. A change in approach on how I was doing paternity leave - took me off line mostly.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Ozzy . . . the atheists will always eventually resort to solipsism . . .
Nice complete dodge of my point there. It has nothing to do with atheism. Or solipsism. You are just throwing out buzz words to attack peoples posts without actually having to refer to anything in them. Nothing new there I guess.
To repeat - if our brains are just a biological machine - then I simply ask how would consciousness in some other kind of machine be any less real or valid or any more "simulated" - you like Ozzyrules appear unable to offer an answer.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
I have been unable to understand how anyone can actually believe they do not exist as anything but individual chemical processes in a brain.
Mainly because of your ongoing inability to support the notion we are anything else. What you find hard to understand about "I do not believe your claim because you have not supported your claim in any way" is beyond me - but it is your failing not ours.
Mainly because of your ongoing inability to support the notion we are anything else. ...
I think it is correct to say that a conscious being essentially just IS a physical system (either a "brain" or a larger "brain/body/world" system that necessarily includes a brain). But, of course, I've been pushing the idea that physical systems have properties that cannot be fully understood in purely objective terms (thus the thought experiment about Mary, the blind neuroscientist who has complete understanding of a perfect physical model of a conscious creature, and the claim that she cannot fully comprehend "what it's like to see red" based purely on her knowledge of the model and other objective information - unless, by some mysterious means, her understanding of the objective knowledge triggers her own subjective experience of "what it is like to see red" - but even in this case we have the trivial logical truth that she can't "experience what it is like to see red" without "she, herself, subjectively experiencing what it is like to see red." So the question comes down to this: Can she completely understand "what it's like to see red" without having her own subjective experience of what it is like to see red? Perhaps I can boil this down to two questions:
(1) Can Mary experience red without she herself subjectively experiencing red?
(2) Can Mary completely understand the experience of red without she, herself, subjectively experiencing red in some way?
I say no to both. But I don't characterize this as a red quale being "something more" than a physical process, rather, I characterize it in terms of properties. I don't think it is any sort of mysticism to claim that a physical process can have many properties or aspects. Saying that object X has length=5 inches, mass=6 kg, and is composed of carbon does not imply that there is something more to X than its physical constituents. There is just one X, and X happens to have multiple properties. The problem, of course is that, according to my way of thinking, some of the properties of X could depend on a unique perspective - namely, the perspective of BEING X. The only thing that can be X is X itself, so X is the only one who can know if there is a "unique property" of "what it is like to be X." And this is where we hit the epistemological wall. I will try to summarize this wall with 2 more questions:
(3) How can X know that this seemingly unique property, Q, ("What it is like to be X") can only be known from a unique perspective?
(4) How can anyone other than X know whether or not X's claim to the uniqueness of Q is a valid claim? (Basically: How can you objectively test my claim that Q is unique to my indexically defined perspective?)
As I see it, the epistemological difficulty implied in (4) counts as a strong argument for believing that Q can, in fact, only be known from a unique perspective. After all, if we could think of some way to objectively disprove the claim that Q is unique to "this" indexically-defined perspective (i.e., "being X"), then the epistemological wall would come tumbling down and we would not even need to have this conversation. You could simply prove - to my own satisfaction - that Q is does not require my unique perspective. For me, the burden of proof is not on me to prove that Q is not dependent on my unique perspective. Rather, the burden is on you to show me that Q does not depend on my unique perspective.
When you ask me for "proof" that Q depends on a unique perspective, you are obviously making an illogical request because the very concept of Q implies that I can't prove the uniqueness of my experience of Q to you. You might as well be asking me to draw a triangle with 4 sides. So I come back to my on-going claim: I agree with physicalism in saying that there is only one basic kind of stuff (physical stuff), but I still think that some properties of physical systems can be index-dependent.
Ozzy . . . the atheists will always eventually resort to solipsism . . . despite it resounding defeat and refutation. A materialist or empirical reductionist is at heart a solipsist-in-hiding under the atheist label. I have been unable to understand how anyone can actually believe they do not exist as anything but individual chemical processes in a brain. It is something I am unable to have faith in. The only thing I know for certain is that I exist and I am not my brain or my body. Even Gaylen . . . who knows enough about the philosophical issues surrounding our sense of being . . . somehow manages to reconcile himself to such lack of existence. After all . . . when you say something is an illusion . . . you are saying it doesn't exist.
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Originally Posted by monumentus
Nice complete dodge of my point there. It has nothing to do with atheism. Or solipsism. You are just throwing out buzz words to attack peoples posts without actually having to refer to anything in them. Nothing new there I guess.
To repeat - if our brains are just a biological machine - then I simply ask how would consciousness in some other kind of machine be any less real or valid or any more "simulated" - you like Ozzyrules appear unable to offer an answer.
The machine would not be alive and therefore would not have the property of "Being" . . . as Gaylen would phrase it. To know what it is like to "BE an entity experiencing Red" . . . you have to "BE" to begin with . . . i.e. you must be alive. Pretending that machines mimicking the output of consciousness are alive is simply ludicrous.
I think it is correct to say that a conscious being essentially just IS a physical system (either a "brain" or a larger "brain/body/world" system that necessarily includes a brain). But, of course, I've been pushing the idea that physical systems have properties that cannot be fully understood in purely objective terms (thus the thought experiment about Mary, the blind neuroscientist who has complete understanding of a perfect physical model of a conscious creature
Yes, we've already discussed how this thought experiement has nothing to do with how actual human brains work. Feel free to point to anyone with a perfect physical model of anything. No such things exist - humans aren't capable of that. So asking questions based on an impossible situation is all well and good, but has very little to say about what happens back here in reality. The answers say much more about one wishes to be true rather than what is actually real.
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(3) How can X know that this seemingly unique property, Q, ("What it is like to be X") can only be known from a unique perspective?
Again, no one has demonstrated that having a feeling is knowledge, so talking about how it can arise as knowledge is putting the cart before the horse.
and therefore would not have the property of "Being"
Proof of this claim?
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Pretending that machines mimicking the output of consciousness are alive is simply ludicrous.
Please prove that you are not simply a machine mimicking the output of consciousness. I'm curious to find out how to objectively distinguish between that and Real Consciousness[tm].
The machine would not be alive and therefore would not have the property of "Being"
That depends on your definition of "alive". But we are not just talking about "alive". We are specifically talking about consciousness. And if conciousness in us is just the result of a biological machine - I can see no argument from you as to why consciousness from a non-biological machine would be any less real or valid.
As was already said on the thread - the recent Johnny Depp movie hit this nail on the head. When challenged on whether it can prove itself to be conscious the AI simply answered the human "Can you?"
I get it - your need to think there is a god _requires_ you to believe consciousness is something really special and unique and much more than we observe it to be - and you believe this despite having zero support for it except for the occasional vague reference to "dark matter" when talking about consciousness. But it does not make it into fact for you.
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
I think it is correct to say that a conscious being essentially just IS a physical system (either a "brain" or a larger "brain/body/world" system that necessarily includes a brain). But, of course, I've been pushing the idea that physical systems have properties that cannot be fully understood in purely objective terms
All you are saying then is that consciousness is complicated. No other meaning is coming out of this than that.
However I would always urge people to be careful using phrases like "_cannot_ be fully understood". That something is not understood now - only means - and only ever means - that we do not understand it now. This is massively different from declaring it _cannot_ be understood.
But the simply fact remains - we have much and many evidences showing consciousness wholly and totally linked to the brain. That the former is simply something the latter produces. We have no evidence right now - at all - of any type - showing any separation - disconnection - or anything similar between the two. So our resident "Mystic" here is simply talking about nothing.
The machine would not be alive and therefore would not have the property of "Being" . . . as Gaylen would phrase it. To know what it is like to "BE an entity experiencing Red" . . . you have to "BE" to begin with . . . i.e. you must be alive. Pretending that machines mimicking the output of consciousness are alive is simply ludicrous.
If a thing exists and has an experience, it exists and has that experience regardless of whether it is by your definition "living".
Perhaps we have not adequately defined terms. What is meant exactly by "alive" or "conscious"?
I would define "alive" as autonomous interaction with existence; and "conscious" as being aware of that interaction and able to direct it by some freedom of choice, however circumscribed that may be. As such, an alive and conscious entity need not be carbon-based.
Check out how a machine-based intelligence might react if it encountered us, and we turned out to be the exception in the universe:
Your incredulousness at machine intelligence is exactly the mirror image of how a machine intelligence that knows nothing of biological intelligence is reacting with shock and disbelief in this story.
Yes, we've already discussed how this thought experiement has nothing to do with how actual human brains work. Feel free to point to anyone with a perfect physical model of anything. No such things exist - humans aren't capable of that. So asking questions based on an impossible situation is all well and good, but has very little to say about what happens back here in reality.
Here you seem to be missing the point (or perhaps grasping at straws in an attempt to avoid directly grappling with the central point?) It is, of course, partly my fault. I did refer to a "perfect physical model" but this was an attempt to cut to the chase rather than engaging in an endless exercise of adding more and more refinements to the anticipated physical models. Mary's model does not really need to be "perfect" - it simply needs to be "good enough" to inspire high confidence when applying the model to various realms of practical application (e.g., Einstein's Relativity is probably not perfect, but it's good enough to make GPS systems work, etc.). Mary's model needs to be good enough so that it could be used with high confidence as, say, a "lie detector."
You say: "I swear I did not see the red traffic light" and Mary can look at your brain scans and say: "I know you are lying. My scans indicate that you did see the red light, and you know that you saw the red light. You can't fool me." In other words, Mary's theory of brain function is the cognitive science equivalent of Einstein's Relativity. It is:
(1) A highly successful theory of brain function that tells her everything she needs to know, for all objective practical purposes, about my behavior when I see red.
In fact, it might be such a good brain theory that:
(2) Even though she has been blind since birth, Mary's understanding of the model somehow evokes, for her, the feeling of what it is like to see red.
But notice an important distinction between (1) and (2). My point is that a full knowledge of red would require something like (2). To fully understand red, Mary needs to experience what it is like to see red for herself. No one else can do the experiencing for her, and no textbook explanation alone will do the trick - unless the textbook explanation is so amazingly good that it evokes within Mary's brain her own personal experience of what it is like to see red. There is simply no way to avoid the subjective aspect of the experience. To really understand "red" Mary needs to experience what it is like to see red for herself. To me this seems like a trivial logical fact that shouldn't even require any sort of debate. But this leads to:
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Again, no one has demonstrated that having a feeling is knowledge, so talking about how it can arise as knowledge is putting the cart before the horse.
I think I dealt with this in a previous post, but I will try again. I asked you (or someone?) to explain what you mean by "knowledge." I don't recall seeing your (or whoever's) answer. I characterized knowledge in terms of "justified belief." After Mary sees red for the first time in her life, you could ask her: "Do you see red now?" and she would say "Yes" - which indicates that she believes she is seeing red. Is Mary justified in having this belief? I would say yes. If she is looking at a red wall and she believes that she is seeing red, then she justifiably believes that she is seeing red.
You might be correct to make a distinction between "the raw feeling of seeing red" and Mary's "belief that she is seeing red" and then you could say that the raw feeling of seeing red is not knowledge - but in the process of making this distinction you would be making my central point for me: the "raw feeling of seeing red" (which serves as the basis for her belief that she is seeing red) is precisely what I am referring to as the red quale, which is Mary's own personal experience of what it is like to see red. Mary acquires the knowledge of what it is like to see red (i.e., the justified belief that she sees red) based on her ability to have her own first-person experience of what it is like to see red. To put it another way: To see red as red is to know (justifiably believe) that "I am seeing red." Mary can only acquire this justified belief when she, herself, personally (i.e., subjectively) experiences what it is like to see red.
My question to you is: Can you give me a definition of the word 'knowledge' then use this definition to show that Mary's first experience of the color red does not imply any knowledge of seeing red?
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Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof I think it is correct to say that a conscious being essentially just IS a physical system (either a "brain" or a larger "brain/body/world" system that necessarily includes a brain). But, of course, I've been pushing the idea that physical systems have properties that cannot be fully understood in purely objective terms
Quote:
Originally Posted by monumentus
All you are saying then is that consciousness is complicated. No other meaning is coming out of this than that.
However I would always urge people to be careful using phrases like "_cannot_ be fully understood". That something is not understood now - only means - and only ever means - that we do not understand it now. This is massively different from declaring it _cannot_ be understood.
You are radically missing the point if you think that all I'm saying is that "consciousness is complicated." It is true that consciousness only emerges in complex systems, but this is irrelevant to what I said. (I could just as well believe that consciousness is fundamentally simple, and still make exactly the same argument in favor of property dualism.) What I'm saying is that some properties of physical systems are indexical (specifically: what it is like to BE a particular system), and thus these properties can only be known insofar as you adopt the unique perspective of the system (i.e., you need to BE the system to know the properties of what it is like to be the system).
I could be wrong about this. (This was the point of #3 in my earlier post: (3) How can X know that this seemingly unique property, Q, ("What it is like to be X") can only be known from aunique perspective?
#3 says that I cannot know with certainty that the property I'm experiencing is unique. Nevertheless, IF I am correct (i.e., IF, in fact, there is this indexical property of "what it is like to be" system X), then it is not just a matter of developing better technology. IF qualia are indexical properties, then our epistemic limits are logical limits - not just technological limits. No future technology will allow us to prove that 2+2=5 because it is not an issue of technology; it is an issue of logic. IF there is something it is like to BE X, then the logical law of identity implies that the only way to know, with certainty, what it is like to be X is to be X (because X is the only entity that can BE X).
Future technology might allow me to know what it is like to be a bat and fly around using echolocation, but my knowledge of what it is like to be a bat will always (by logical necessity - not merely because of technological limitation) involve a form of uncertainty that does not apply to my knowledge of what it is like to be me. I can know "what it is like to be me" to a level of certainty that (for logical reasons) no other being can match. You can know what it is like to be me, but you can't know it with the same level of certainty that I know it because I am me and you are not me. This is what I keep calling the "logic of subjectivity." It implies epistemological limits based on the logical implications of the concepts "being me", "being not-me", "knowledge", etc. - not limits based on inadequate technology.
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