Freethought & Rationalism Archive

excreationist · 07-19-2002, 08:50 PM

Koyaanisqatsi:

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You said it with the "fuzzy border."

The word "becomes" doesn't actually mean anything if you deconstruct it. It is literally the equivalent of just heaping on another handful of rice, as you put it.

But that's not legitimate when asking (as I am) precisely what we mean when we say we "become" conscious.

...

I would contend that this is the same thing that Piaget is saying and you are saying when you simply declare "humans then become conscious."

Well, wait a minute. That's not true. Consciousness is an absolute, yes? One is either conscious or one is not. So the question I am getting at is the transition point from "not conscious" to "conscious" that is currently in fuzzy land with the word "becomes."

What about this? There is a baby that grows into a tall boy. The border between tall and not tall is somewhat arbitrary... e.g. 6 feet tall is tall for a boy... 2 feet definitely isn't. At the fuzzy border (let's say it is at about 5-6 feet) it isn't definite whether the boy is tall or not. It is basically just hard to tell.
That's what I'm talking about when I'm saying that a person develops mature-level consciousness...
So about the baby becoming tall... do you think that it is impossible since there is no *exact* border for being tall and not tall?

Koyaanisqatsi · 07-23-2002, 05:18 AM

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Originally posted by DRFseven:
But, that's just the thing; I DON'T say "no one at all is home"; I say that there are varying degrees of "being home." And I wonder how, looking at some of these conditions, you would say otherwise.

Well, then I must have misunderstood you as I agree there are varying degrees, I just think it must be based upon a basic, fundamental state of matterenergy to include as a necessary condition (or, to keep it in "tune" with a natural universe as a side effect) consciousness so that it all becomes matterenergyconsciousness (can you tell I speak German

); a triumvirate? (signal another religious flare)

I don't know. At this point I think I'm probably just rooting out the last crumbs of childhood cult indoctrination, but I will say it "rings true" to me that consciousness is a fundamental if incidental function of or result of matterenergy, and that therefore all matterenergy is "self-aware" and that is what accounts for the quantum configurations of fourth dimensional spacetime and ninety-eight percent of our art, culture and religions.

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MORE: If everything is conscious, then it appears to me that we are struggling to define something other than consciousness.

Hmmm...

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MORE: What everyone wants to know about is the nature of this thing we humans have that that seems so different from what other animals have.

True and I'm not interested in that at all. I don't see anything beyond homocentrism accounting for why we think humans are any great stuff.

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MORE: It's not just intelligence, as studies show, since autistic children clearly have problems with sense of self, while other mentally retarded children without autism do not show those deficits. I can bring in a discussion of the neural underpinnings of autism and how that might relate to other consciousness studies, but we do need to pin down consciousness first, at least for purposes of THIS discussion, even if we fail to lluminate the whole world.

But I MUST! The world must see!

Although I think those studies would be interesting, I don't think they will help me with my quest, since you're right, I'm really not concerned with how we define our particular brand of consciousness so much as I am in theorizing about a fundemantal quality of quantum mechanics that binds what amounts to nothing more than a glowing fog of atoms (the human body) into a recognizable shape, extrapolated out to the entire fourth dimensional universe.

Who here can get us some THC eye drops...?

Thank you both for indulging me and if you feel there is anything else you'd like to point out, please do, but I have a feeling I've scraped the bottom of the barrel on this theory of mine and slammed dead on into a "just how do you intend to go beyond wild speculation at this point, fella?" wall.

Koyaanisqatsi · 07-23-2002, 05:21 AM

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Originally posted by excreationist:
What about this? There is a baby that grows into a tall boy. The border between tall and not tall is somewhat arbitrary...So about the baby becoming tall... do you think that it is impossible since there is no *exact* border for being tall and not tall?

Well, again I would say that's only a matter of semantics since the baby at any given age would only be considered "tall" in a comparative sense (either compared to itself at a younger age or to another baby or object, etc.) not necessarily as a fundamental quality of its own existence.

DRFseven · 07-23-2002, 02:04 PM

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Koy: True and I'm not interested in that at all. I don't see anything beyond homocentrism accounting for why we think humans are any great stuff.

Who's talking about humans being "great stuff"? We were originally talking about "free will", which you seemed to me to be saying demonstrates consciousness, which is not something I was originally concerned about (I think organisms intend things whether they are conscious of intending them or not). And I don't think humans are the only animals with consciousness. However, I do think we exhibit much more of the decision-making behavior that is commonly considered as representative of free will and though we have trouble expressing what we mean when we say we are conscious, we have no idea what other animals who might be conscious experience. So that's why I say that if we're trying to figure out the nature of purposive or decision-making behavior, it wouldn't do much good to look at some quality we share with rocks, flowers, or even snails and bats.

Koyaanisqatsi · 07-26-2002, 05:23 AM

Oh yeah, that's right! Free will!

You're quite right, DRF, and again my apologies to all for my sidetrack and thanks to all for indulging me.

DRFseven · 07-26-2002, 02:05 PM

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Koy: You're quite right, DRF, and again my apologies to all for my sidetrack and thanks to all for indulging me.

No need to apologize, Koy, I always enjoy your posts, and I have enjoyed this discussion, too..

excreationist · 07-26-2002, 07:13 PM

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Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi:
<strong>Well, again I would say that's only a matter of semantics since the baby at any given age would only be considered "tall" in a comparative sense (either compared to itself at a younger age or to another baby or object, etc.) not necessarily as a fundamental quality of its own existence.</strong>

Well I think mature human-level consciousness is the same - it involves a comparison between the toddler/child and other things, such as ourselves. If there was no comparison, we wouldn't know if the toddler/child possessed that property/quality to a sufficient degree.
Well what about this analogy - a baby can eventually learn how to walk. The border for this is somewhat arbitrary - being able to walk could mean being able to walk unassisted for at least 2 steps - or it could mean being able to walk unassisted for at least 100 steps.

Xyzzy · 07-28-2002, 04:52 AM

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But, hierarchical based upon a fundamental consciousness particle, shall we say, is what I was addending; such that, one consciousparticle adds to another (and so on) and the consciousness expands in the grouping in the same or similar manner as the organism (or construct)?

We have no idea what a "conscious particle" might be, but we do understand to a large degree neural signalling. There is no need to resort to a magical explanation for a perfectly pedestrian phenomena. Do we need to explain the processing of a computer by positing "computation particles"?

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In the case of the robot, it is the programmer that acts as the self-aware determinant that instructed the robot to mimic self-awareness, yes?

In other words, to say that a robot with AI is self aware would be a misnomer, ultimately, since it was the "orginal creator" (aka, human AI specialist) that "infused" the concept of self-awareness (again, note the inescapable religious analogy).

Only through a historical accident. If there had been no programmer, and the self aware system had evolved instead.. we would not need the programmer.

Likewise if the programmer does not design the robot, but uses an evolutionary algorithms to produce the robot, there is no link between the programmer and the robot. The self-awareness emerged on its own accord. The programmer is only responsible for the robots existence, and not its design.

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In other words, semantics games along the lines of "Well, we say .9999 repeating equals 1."

It doesn't, but we say it does for all intents and purposes.

It does. This is trivially true, and if you think about it, you'll soon understand why.

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Likewise with the introduction of "self-motivated" intelligence. It seems to me that you are merely using terms we use to describe one another in an illegitimate fashion, without regard for the nexus point, perhaps because you're not considering the fact that a robot AI would have a pre awareness factored in; the pre-awareness of the designer/programmer.

It seems to me that the awareness of the programmer is irrelevant to the awareness of the robot. Awareness and "free will" is not voodoo, it exists independently of the programmers will, and when the robot operates in the same manner as the programmer does, it has free will and awareness. Simply because the programmer made the robot does not mean that there is any practical difference between the robot after its made and the programmer.

Free will consists simply of responding to environmental stimulus with a complex set of behaviors. This stimulus can include macro stimulus such as danger, food, etc., or minute stimulus such as the subtle timing of the firing of neurons (or robotic virtual neurons) in the brain, or even (in very very very rare cases in my opinion) the particular quantum state of a particular atom in a particular synapse in a particular network.

These types of systems exhibit controlled but complex and unpredictable behavior. Since we can not know the totality of the stimulus being processed, we can never know completely ahead of time the state of the system, or what it will do. The system itself is deterministic, but unpredictable because the number of factors that go into predicting its state are overly large.

This description applies to BOTH the robot and the human, even though one made the other. And since this is the fundamental explanation for "free will", both the robot and the human have it.

In other words, you can program a machine all you like, but in the end, that's all it will be; a series of programs initially infused with intent by the programmer (again the religious overtones).

Why? This is simply an assertion by you, and there seems to be nothing other than your personal incredulity to back it up.

If we have a robot that functions with mechanisms analogous to the human mind, and it exhibits behavior that is consistent with a humans behavior, why would it not be aware and have the same sort of unpredictable "deterministic free will" that we have? It is completely irrelevant where it came from.. the only relevant issue is "what it is", and "how it works".

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So long as, I argue, you do not accept that all matter is conscious as a necessary condition and that consciousness--true "self" awareness; aka, autonomous awareness--is therefore a universal and fundamental element to all matter.

I don't. The only things that exhibit awareness are living creatures, some robots, and some computers. We are not sure about self awareness, but it is likely that all creatures have it to some limited degree (i.e. the ability to reflectively access inforamtion on its internal state, and possibly self model some of its systems).

We derive our "self-awareness" from our own reflective use of our social modeling of other humans on ourselves. This is useful in that it allows us to symbolically evaluate both our own motivations and plans, as well as others at the same time, and integrate these into a state of awareness that is usefull for planning our actions. However, again, this type of awareness is not voodoo, it is information processing of a certain specific type, and is easily described and understood in my opinion.

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It just obfuscates the nexus point by doing the exact same thing mathematicians do with .99999 repeating; we simply say it equals 1, but the fact is, it does not and can never unless the rules change (or our perceptions of the rules changes, yes?).

Since anything tha is infinitely close to a value "is" that value, .999 repeating is a synonym for 1. Think about it this way, how big is an infinitely small quantity? As a matter of fact, it is 0, and that's what separates .999 repeating from 1.

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ME: Perhaps we should get into as thorough a deconstruction of what it means to be "self" aware, since right there we have the paradox; a self that somehow exists in order to be aware of itself?

YOU: The "self" is the body and the brain or just the personality/memories contained in it. It is the original... if the person was duplicated, the original would be the "real" self, the other would be a copy - another self.

ME is wrong, and so is YOU. ME says that there is a paradox in self awareness. There is no paradox, unless you find the idea of a circle a paradox. YOU is wrong because we can concieve of a situation in which we would not be able to distinguish between the "real" self and the "copy", both are legitimate.

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That's impossible for you to justify or qualify. Rocks have an exceedingly long "life" and could therefore be processing at a thought per one million years for all we know.

And so could empty space as well, and flowers, and chrome car bumpers.. but we have no reason to think so.

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True, but not applicable to mathematics, since it is not a function that is subject to human limitation. An infinite being would never be able to count to 1, since it would always have to add the next decimal point for all eternity into the calculation.

So he would reach 1 at infinity. Since we're saying that that's where he already is at when we say 0.9999 repeating, we're saying he's at 1. After all, we didn't say that he's only at the 9 quadrillionth digit, or the .9 repeated 10^100 (google) or even .9 repeated 10^100^100 (googleplex).. when we say .9 repeating.. we're talking about all of those infinite number of nines.

Infinity is a difficult subject, but you'll catch on if you think about it a little more.

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Correct, but the OS would be and necessarily so by a programmer, yes? So the OS would require at least two sets of programs; one would be "seek new goals" and the other would be "eventually seek self-referential reflection based upon 'seek new goals'" (aka, philosophy).

The "seek new goals" is understandable, I suppose, from a "natural" explanation, but what would the "seek self-referential reflection" goal serve, if, as you seem to imply, matter is dumb, to use a colloquialism for effect?

See what I'm getting at? The second program would be unnecessary from a "dumb" matter perspective. There would be no need for a rock, for example, to self-reflect and in a dumb matter universe, a human is identical to a rock; we're just a collection of minerals and elements.

Actually that's not true. We're a collection of minerals and elements in a "specific configuration".

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So, why would humanity--or even, the animal kingdom--have an such programming (either dormant or otherwise) "pre-programmed" into it by a dumb matter universe and how would that occur?

It starts with a feedback system. A set of replicating chemicals that just so happens to have one or more elements which replicate imperfectly, and confer some sort of advantage or disadvantage.

This "feedback" is the root of all awareness in the dumb universe. This system responds to its environment by changing the arrangement of its structure through evolution to maximize its numbers. This is a dumb process, but this process isn't just described as purposeful, it is the essence of what we understand as purpose. Responding to stimulus to maximize ones numbers.

Basically all purposeful activity of all life derive from this one mechanical imperative derived from the feedback loop of environment and genetic replication. Our purposeful "self-aware" mind is simply a very complex derivation of this process that came about through its operation over billions of years.

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If dumb matter is only goal seeking, then there is no requirement for anything more than seeking goals, so where (and why) does "self-reflect upon goals already sought and transcend initial programming" come into the picture and what is it that's painting it in? Cosmology? A super nova?

Dumb matter is not goal seeking, only evolving systems seek goals, and the goals they seek generally have to do with increasing their own numbers, and ancillary goals that stem from this fundamental overarching goal.

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Again, this is where, I contend, science hits a roadblock and stares at religion head to head. So, again, let's simply toss aside the roadblock and grant that all matter is conscious as a necessary condition of matter and see where that leads.

I see your roadblock and steer around it. Matter is not conscious, nor is dumb matter incapable of producing purpose, awareness, or goal seeking behavior. There is a mechanism known by which this can occur, and it leads invariably to the types of phenomena we see in animal and even human brains (though the invariably part probably doesn't apply to "intelligence" on the scale that we possess).

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Then a rock being a rock makes perfect sense just as a human being a human makes perfect sense; it has autonomously decided to express itself in that manner.

If it had a brain, perhaps this might apply, but it doesn't.

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It also puts an end to the arrogance of dissociation we all feel; the idea that we aren't a part of nature, rather above or separate from nature, when precisely the opposite is the truth, though this, of course, could very well be explained more from social conditioning.

Laudable goals that are not well served by an appeal to rank nonsense I'm afraid.

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I don't know. As I've said many times, it's incomplete and highly speculative.

If your speculation is simply to support another unrelated opinion or philosophical belief, I would have to say that your efforts are misguided. An explanation or description of something must stand on its own.. it can not be supported by what it would mean to another unrelated idea.

excreationist · 07-28-2002, 06:07 AM

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Originally posted by Xyzzy:
The "self" is the body and the brain or just the personality/memories contained in it. It is the original... if the person was duplicated, the original would be the "real" self, the other would be a copy - another self.
-------------------------------
...wrong because we can concieve of a situation in which we would not be able to distinguish between the "real" self and the "copy", both are legitimate.

Then there would be more than one "self" then - there would be "selves". Anyway, when copies are made, they become independent of one another and diverge... unless they remain synchronized (with the same goals, memories, etc) then there is still *one* self.
It doesn't matter if we can't distinguish between the real self and the copy... information wise, they'd be the same, but the original would be sitting in the same place that the original was just after the copying took place and the copy would be elsewhere. (assuming the two can't simultaneously be distinct yet occupy the same space) The knowledge about which is the original and which is the copy would be theoretically knowable.

[ July 28, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi · 07-29-2002, 05:53 AM

Xyzzy, I know you're coming in late to all of my ramblings, so kindly go through every post before pouring on the unwarranted condescension, yes?

All of your points have been addressed and discussed ad nauseum with the conclusion being that my theory is most likely the result of residual christian cult conditioning more than anything else and therefore not tenable.

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07-26-2002, 05:23 AM	#145
Koyaanisqatsi Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Yes, I have dyslexia. Sue me. Posts: 6,508	Oh yeah, that's right! Free will! You're quite right, DRF, and again my apologies to all for my sidetrack and thanks to all for indulging me.

07-29-2002, 05:53 AM	#150
Koyaanisqatsi Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Yes, I have dyslexia. Sue me. Posts: 6,508	Xyzzy, I know you're coming in late to all of my ramblings, so kindly go through every post before pouring on the unwarranted condescension, yes? All of your points have been addressed and discussed ad nauseum with the conclusion being that my theory is most likely the result of residual christian cult conditioning more than anything else and therefore not tenable.

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