Koyaanisqatsi

(edited to put in luvluv's <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000416" target="_blank">new thread</a> so that our pointless bickering about absolutely nothing of relevance no longer interrupts this thread, with my apologies to all...except luvluv, of course - Koy)

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Gurdur

Really ?

Koyaanisqatsi

You should try it some time, Gurdur and find out!

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Only in a colloquial sense and then only as a result of an external gestalt after a series of notes are played in a particular sequence that was pre-determined, so that the notes follow the necessary order.

Just hiting random notes does not make a song.

No, again, they do not. We just call it water. There is, however, a fundamental quality to consciousness/sentience that is not analogous in this way, unless, as I contend, all matter is conscious/sentient as a necessary condition.

Again, no it does not. Pain is inflicted and/or "registered" (whichever way you want to go with it) by an external source (primarily), so that the fingertip without pain remains the fingertip with pain at all times, since it is the fingertip that is being acted upon.

In other words, there is no transition point. It is "Fingertip without pain." Then it is "Fingertip with pain."

Once again, I'm flying blind on this, so feel free to rip it to shreads. It's the transition point that I think simply cannot be discovered taking the emergent qualities route.

Thus, remove the necessity for a transition point and many things fall into place. Other questions arise, of course, but it does reconcile just about every single metaphysical question, except for, as I said, "whence consciousness."

Is there any other way?

Koyaanisqatsi

Excellent question, but probably triggered more from my less-than-adequately qualified comment "in the same manner as we say that we are all conscious/alive." By that I meant self-aware.

So, to your question, since matter is energy and energy cannot be destroyed only diverted and, according to me, it is "self-aware," then yes, an exploded body is still "conscious/alive," but there is no longer a unified "they," I suppose.

Though there may be a phantom limb phenomenon happening, or, and this might address DRF's questions as well as address emergent qualities, perhaps the effects of this self aware hypothesis are accumulative in some manner, so that the complexity of a system (or some other organizing factor) results in levels of consciousness/self-awareness?

This would go back to what DRF was getting at with notes, in the sense that one note two notes, twenty notes, etc., don't make a song, but a forty of them arranged in a certain manner does (to our ears, not to a dog's, etc.).

Hmmmmmm. Perhaps consciousness/self-awareness (from now on I'll just call it SA and deal with exactly what that is later) is hierarchical?

It's like soup. You just can't have soup without water. You can add a whole bunch of other stuff and change the flavor and texture and temperature, etc., etc., but without a fundamental ability to become soup as provided by the "pre-existing" qualities of H2O, if you'll indulge this analogy, there can be no soup.

Again with the rocks. You can group all of the rocks in the universe into one giant pile--you can even smash them together; break them apart; melt them down and mingle their components, but you're just never going to get George C. Scott, even though all of the fundamental elements of GCS's body are right there in that pile of rocks.

Well, "never" is an absolute that I shouldn't use, because those piles of rocks broken down over millions of years and smashed together and torn apart arguably did "become" GCS, though I would have to say that the GCS consciousness used those elements to form himself, thus my quandary.

As an artist, I know that the masterpiece is never the finished product; that the true brilliance and the ultimate beauty is in the idea of the Mona Lisa, with the finished painting little more than the expression (poor, at that) of the initial idea, so my prejudice definitely goes to the mind over matter default (which is why I've sought to reconcile that misnomer with mindmatter), but, again, I contend that is nothing more than the fourth dimensional "navigator" conceit; the auto-pilot thinking its the actual pilot since its actively flying the plane the majority of the flight.

Let me leave these musings for a moment and address the rest of your post.

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?

Agreed, and perhaps this ties into my flights above regarding a hierarchical structure to SA in matter. Some might call it "instinct," but perhaps that, too, should be rethought.

Again, back to those damn rocks. We consider them inanimate and definitely unaware, but perhaps (as I contended earlier) they are aware, it's just that their awareness is limited to "I am (currently) a rock?"

But is that merely homocentrism rearing its ugly head? I contend it is. I can't necessarily back it up, of course, but it seems to me that we base most of our observations on the only model available to us (ourselves), but consider the light spectrum.

It we only said that, what we refer to as the "visible" spectrum was all that existed (precisely because it's what we can see), then we'd be doing the same thing I contend (posit, offer up for consideration) we are doing with SA.

Necessarily so, perhaps, but take Dolphins, for example. Again, no expert, but I would certainly assert that dolphins are just as SA as are we, perhaps even more so considering their known "social" habits. To the best of my knowledge, none of them sacrifice virgins on altars to appease their gods.

(that one was for luvluv as a joke and peace offering...did he notice or is he still pissed?)

Agreed and again perhaps this goes to the accumulative levels of mindmatter? There is definitely "one" and there is definitely "two," but any mathematician can tell you that there is an infinite amount of decimal points in between, so, mathematically speaking (technically), it is literally impossible to count from "one" to "two," unless you simply accept that 1.9999999 repeating is equivalent to 2.

Technically, it is not, but we say that it is and as a result, computers, moonwalks and particle accelerators. Still no common, everyday jetpacks, of course, the bastards, but still...

It is that miniscule .999999999 that haunts me here, because that is what the word "becomes" obfuscates; we simply say that .9999 is equivalent to 1 just as we say a human becomes conscious.

As I said, it grates.

Is a rock "autonomous?"

But, with AI, wouldn't that be precisely what it would be doing? Programmed to "infer" and "learn" from itself; i.e., have the ability to create new memory feedback loops; goals programmed into it with the addendum, "seek new goals based on new data," or whatever?

Again, it seems to me that there is a paradox in what you're saying, in that there must be a self that is self aware in order for it to be self aware.

But it is "preprogrammed" in the sense that the programming states, "seek new goals," right? "If not X, then seek Y," yes?

Or a human.

Yes, but they can be programmed to ("they" meaning machines, so let's leave the camcorder out of this from now on since the analogy I used was flawed for that reason). So, as with Piaget, a machine that is programmed to "learn" and walks like a duck and talks like a duck, etc., etc., we would ultimately simply say, "Well it is equivalent to 1 for all intents and purposes, so let's just call it a duck," right?

Ahh! See above (I've been going through this point by point and didn't read it first, so, great minds and all... )

True.

Well, there have been many cases of people doing precisely that--taking themselves off of what I call "auto-pilot"--though not necessarily in the extreme of the comic book, of course. Firewalkers; glass eaters; gymnasts (athletes in general); Einstein, etc., etc.

I swear to you I didn't read ahead! Creepy.

It doesn't "instantly" turn one into Einstein, but it certainly could be argued that one can "turn oneself" into Einstein-esque...Einstein lite...

As a result of homocentrism, I would contend, since we consider anything that is not explainable according to a human model as "default" to be mystical, yes? I know I do.

Yes, indeed, that is a stumbling block, since that's what I'm truly going after and haven't adequately explored it, my apologies to all involved.

It's interesting that we have such hierarchies and perhaps (as I mentioned earlier) that's the key? Just as there may (or may not) be a fundamental particle and all matter is built upon that, so would there be a fundamental element of SA that is accumulative?

It's tough because I always get into an either/or paradox, which is where Einstein's brilliant breakthrough with spacetime leads me to mindmatter. Just avoid the paradox by marrying the two as a necessary condition.

Again, it's by no means complete, but perhaps if we (I) grant mindmatter as true for the sake of argument and extrapolate from there (what that would necessarily entail) it will lead to a more coherent whole?

Not that coherency proves or establishes anything, of course.

As a matter of fact, I do, to some extent. I called it the "life" camera as a kid.

It was an analogy that I had hoped would illustrate the concept of matter being nothing more than an expression of consciousness (and vice versa); tha the use of matter (or, actually, of fourth dimensional spacetime) to communicate was the equivalence of speaking French.

Oh. Cool.

And I'm saying that without the fundamental, base of H2O, for example, you can't have chicken noodle soup on "up to" beef stew.

That "fuzzy region" is where I contend my theory to a larger degree makes things clearer.

Now, whether or not that's legitimate or not, of course, is a question. After all, "goddidit" certainly answers questions, but is it a legitimate answer.

Of course, it is not, but at least, as I mentioned several times, my theory doesn't necessarily dismiss "mystical thinking" so much as it seeks to reconcile it and cull from it in a more scientific manner.

Again, our art, our science, our relationships, our surroundings all, I contend, tell us things about our subconscious needs, desires, emotions and I contend, about our fundamental "selves."

Take a movie, for example. Depending upon the size of the negative, a movie must be projected at a certain rate of speed (normally 24 frames per second) in order for us to perceive it as "reality." Too many frames and you get slow motion; too few and it looks like a silent movie.

Where does this "come from?" Why would that be a necessity of human perception? Is it--possibly--that this "comes from" a clue that we give ourselves about how reality actually works? After all, there is no actual linear time. Time simply does not "progress;" that is an illusion of our own processing abilities.

Thus, like a film when you deconstruct it, it is actually a series of individual photographs (specific events isolated in spacetime) that only when placed next to one another and projected at a certain rate of speed gives us all the illusion of linear time.

So, a natural, logical question to ask in this regard is, how fast our we being projected at in order for all of us to perceive each other in the same manner? The speed of light, perhaps?

On a quantum level, we know that our bodies are literally nothing more than a fog of atoms that can only be said to exist in a state of infinite possibility until observed; the space between our most fundamental particles so vast as to be almost equivalent to the distances between planets and stars in a solar system (now there's a poetic symbol), yet on "our level" we say that the distances are so miniscule as to be equivalent to 1, thus the micro world--the fundamental levels--do not affect us.

But what if that were nothing more than a necessary condition of the "auto-pilot?" The "superman" you asked about before being the one who can simply communicate, let us say, "consciously" (i.e., directly by the fourth dimensional "navigator") to that fundamental fog of infinitely possible particles that make up our consciousness?

I know, I know, it all certainly echoes mystical thinking, but then that's the whole point; the reconciliation of the scientific with the mystical, which, come to think of it, might be better interpreted as the "intuitive."

Of course, a lot of what I am contending is largely dependent upon the acceptance of my extension of Freud's projection theory; that what we see all around us on a constant basis is quite literally messages we send ourselves over and over and over again that beg for interpretation, but then, isn't that the fundamental quality of scientific investigation shared with theology? That there are answers "out there somewhere?"

The scientist (in general) says, "There are answers 'out there.'"

The theist (in general) says, "There are answers 'in here.'"

To me, this dichotomy is nothing more than a limitation of two dimensional thinking, much less three or four dimensional thinking, which is why I've simply skipped over the paradox in much the same way I contend Einstein did with spacetime.


Ok, but those "goals/desires and beliefs" could only be learned if the system were programmed to seek out and fulfill and hold onto "goal/desires and beliefs," yes, which takes us ultimately and necessarily to a programmer, which is where the snake-oil salesmen come in with "Goddidit."

Now, is the programmer necessarily a similar being, as the theists claim? Possibly not. Perhaps, again, that would be my own (and their) homocentrism, since, as you pointed out earlier, the programmer could be "nature."

I don't know and I'm sure my own childhood indoctrination plays a large factor in this (perhaps I'm more an animist than atheist ), but it seems to me that a specific program necessarily entails a meta understanding of some factor that acts as the programmer.

If that's the case--if consciousness is nothing more than an emergent quality--and matter the inanimate (i.e., non-self aware) building blocks, then I guess I simply cannot see how billions upon trillions of years would ever change that pile of rocks into Sarah Jessica Parker.

Perhaps I just need to get the image of Frosty the Snowman out of my skull .

Well, here then I have a problem with the verb, since "to learn" necessarily implies a self who is actively engaged in the action, so, again, the paradox of a necessary self that must be self aware in order to become self aware.

There is no "self" to be actively engaged in learning to be a self, yet there must be to some degree, hence the paradox, which, again, I seek to avoid with mindmatter.

It doesn't solve all of the problems, but it does, I contend, allow the sidestep so that more questions can be accessed.

I guess I see this .999999 repeating as the fundamental roadblock that has trapped science on one side and theists on the other, yet just about everything that current theoretical science has arrived at, to me, literally screams "mystical thinking!"

So, instead of standing on either side of that roadblock (it's the same road, ultimately, so what's the point), why not just simply toss the roadblock aside? Doesn't that seem the logical thing to do?

Well, that's another interesting point. If that's the case--if spacetime actually is a linear process, then that would mean the future is just as linear as the past and therefore just as accessible/immutable, yet quantum mechanics tells us (for the time being anyway) that this is not the case. A particle is said to be in an infinite state of possibility until observed; until the wave collapses; until the audience watches the movie projected at a certain, proscribed rate of speed.

But if time is linear--as this position seems to imply--then we do not affect any of our experiences and are necessarily simply following an already existing line like those tissue paper ghosts we used to make for Halloween; sliding down their strings to give the illusion of flight.

I think the reason we care about our experiences is precisely because all matter is conscious and therefore necessarily, fundamentally "free willed" (if you will), which allows for infinite possibility until observed (until a decision is made) and we speak French, thus determining progression.

We make our own movies instantaneously as part and parcel to consciousness and the "past" is actually just the filing away of that movie once it is made and edited in our subconscious.

It's ancillary, but it should be noted (I'm also a filmmaker/videographer) that a director normally is so sick of his or her movie by the time it finally makes it into a theater that they don't want to see it for itself, just to see how others react to it.

And if all matter is not conscious, then it is nothing more than immutable, inanimate blocks, which in turn could not be changeable for us to be anything more than passive observers, yet observation is what collapses the wave.

There's yet another symbol, IMO, that would be a "clue" for us as to our meta or "true" selves; the fact that matter is said to remain in an infinite state of possibility until observed and that the observation alters the event!

The act of observing means that we can never "truly" know what the "natural" state of any given particle is unless one removes that paradox by understanding that the paradox is the "natural" state; that the reason the act of observing alters the natural, objective state (shall we say) tells us that "observation" and "physical event" are simultaneous at the same time that they are distinct; hence mindmatter.

So, for the first time, I present "Koy's Razor: A paradox is its own solution."

Hmmm. I like it, but it may ultimately be nothing more than poetic gibberish. I'll work on that one; though I should remind everyone what Koyaanisqatsi means: "Life out of balance; a state of life that calls for another way of living."


I know, I see it and believe me when I say it's perfectly sound, yet still, for me, does not address that central paradox of a self that is self aware as necessary condition of becoming self aware, because ultimately this is the case I see with your explanation.

Feedback loops, motivation, seeking goals, learning; all of that requires a centralized "I" that simply must "pre-exist" in some fashion.

Though, I suppose that's a bit hypocritical of me, considering what I'm proposing is based on the same kind of paradox that I simply avoid, so why not simply sidestep in the same manner in your scenario?

Again, I think it must come down to a hierarchy of some nature to SA; that SA is a quantifiable particle, almost, that when accumulated in whatever necessary manner allows for (becomes, results in?) "meta" consciousness?

I know it's all over the map, but it beats work.

Again, perhaps this is a function of accumulation based upon DNA in some manner? The DNA being the blueprint that accumulates the mindmatter in such a way that results in (I like that better than "becomes," but that may be a cheat) the various configurations and designations of awareness?

Again, I'm seeking that final .9 that actually does not technically exist so far as we currently know (though the quantum leap certainly gets closest to the change from .9 to 1).

I got it.

I get it and it's obviously viable/sound, but, again, I fear it does not address that missing .9SA, shall we say; that final quantum leap other than the same verbal one we all make; i.e., .99999 repeating is equivalent to 1, which, as I granted previously, certainly works just fine for intents and purposes.

Then what does it mean to say "humans have the potential" if it is not some form of dormant quality?

It's interesting here to note, I think, that the theology on all of this coincides; the notion of the "ability to be" evil or the "ability to be" good; a favored theist "out" when attempting to exonerate God.

I keep going back to something I learned through directing my first play in college (not one I had written). One of the actresses would make her entrance in such a manner that just didn't "work," so I asked her what it was she was doing; what goals she was seeking (a necessary quality to acting, interestingly enough) and she said, "none. I didn't want to think or do anything yet, because I'm just entering into the restaurant like a normal person."

Of course, we got into a back and forth on it, but, being the director I naturally "won" (and was proved correct by the audience later), but what I told her (and I didn't know myself where it had "come from" for me, but it I just opened my mouth and out it came) that the audience had to know literally everything possible about her character the very second she hit the stage or else they would never buy anything that happened between her character and the other character she meets in the restaurant and falls in love with.

She was vehement that that didn't make sense, that that wasn't how reality worked, and I pointed out, of course, that this wasn't reality, it was the stage, but looking back on it later, of course, I realized just the opposite; that this is precisely what we all do whenever we do anything--we project everything about ourselves on some level in order to interact.

The reason her entrance wasn't working was because she was actively attempting to project absolutely nothing at all about herself, which was so unnatural and downright creepy that we all went, "What the hell?" before we found out what it was she was doing.

I don't know if that addresses, necessarily what you were talking about, but I think it does in that the reason everything that character later did in the play made sense to the audience and was accepted by the audience is precisely because I made her enter with a full and consciously projected "idea" in her head about every possible thing that character could do and therefore would do later on.

The difference was extraordinary and instantaneous, and all it took the actress (very reluctantly I should add) was an extremely brief moment where she entered the restaurant, saw her future lover, had a very, very small "moment" and boom, the whole rest of the play "worked."

Without that "moment;" without that conscious projection of everything that character could do, nothing she did do (in the rehearsals prior to my direction) worked at all.

It was very odd, but, as you can see, very memorable and, I think, something in there that is applicable.

That I don't know (like so much else). I think that the modifications I've introduced regarding the accumulative qualities of SA might address this (as well as other holes that emergent theory covers).

Your thoughts?

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

By the way, everyone, please pardon my dyslexia in my last few posts (and more, apparently).

Alarmingly, I've noticed it seems to be getting worse, which I hope is only a result of my mind (matter) racing ahead of my limited typing skills.

It's an odd feeling to read the same sentence five or six times and only on the seventh do you notice you've left off an "is" or an "of" or spelled "you're" your five out of eight times.

Thanks.

(or spelled "an" and, as I did just now and didn't discover until after posting -- creepy)

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

DRFseven

OK, let's take pain (maybe you read what I recently posted to ex about pain in the "Mind/Body Border" thread, <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000212&p=12" target="_blank">here</a>). Pain, we all know, is a subjective phenomena that involves sensory input, cortical and emotional mechanism. Without all of it together, we don't experience pain as we know it. Take away the negative emotion and what is pain? It's less than a pale ghost of itself; it's a different sensation altogether, because pain needs to be suffered to be pain. To say, "Yes, I have pain, but it doesn't hurt", doesn't make sense.. The physiology of different body/brain systems interacts in such a way that the input is experienced negatively. Without the synthesis of those systems, we don't have pain; with that synthesis, we do. Do you see the emergence of pain perception out of these physical processes as spooky or non-spooky?

Koyaanisqatsi

Not necessarily, because you've been doing the same thing that the quoted person is doing, using colloquial phrases to obfuscate (not in a deliberate sense; in a technical sense) that nexus point I was referring to earlier.

For example, you use the phrase, "It's less than a pale ghost of itself; it's a different sensation altogether, because pain needs to be suffered to be pain."

"Pain" is indeed an interpretation of sensory input; of detrimental sensory input, but it is the input that comes first and the interpretation "painful" that comes after the input is registered as being injurious.

However, one can feel pain (register the auto-pilot functions) and then make a further subjective "override," if you will, to say, "I feel pain, but it doesn't hurt."

This is precisely the problem with language and words like "becomes," because it obfuscates (glosses over) a critical nexus point.

In your capacity as a cognitive scientist, you know exactly what the word "pain," for example, means, so to you when someone says, "I feel pain, but it doesn't hurt," it makes no sense to you, but to anyone else it does, because it's spoken in a colloquial sense. It simply means that they have registered their hand is in the fire, but have overcome the throb and the alarm bells and can negate those bodily claxons.

I respond the same way when somebody says, "We become conscious." There is no way (that I can see digging down deep into that .99999 repeating) that this can be true. One is either conscious (self aware) or one is not; a zero or a one, which means that something--external to you--has to flip that switch, unless, as I argue, there is no switch and all matter is conscious as a necessary condition; an innate quality.

Even my using the term "flip a switch," is too colloquial and confusing, since "self-awareness" is not a tangible, physical quality unless it is precisely that in the manner I argue (a necessary quality).

Yes, but there must be a centralized "I" (or "we") to some degree--the self aware meta systems operator--in order for that "synthesis" to occur, yes?

The "body" doesn't feel (aka, synthesize) the sensory input into "Pain," we do, meaning our consciousness. It is only after the synthesis is processed that the "I" screams out, "OUCH!"

Or, as in the case with your quote, overcomes the accumulated information and pulls a G. Gordon Liddy with hand over the flame until the skin crackles.

Frankly, I see everything around me as "spooky," my friend .

Seriously, though, I would argue that the "pain perception" you are talking about is not emergent. It is interpretive, a subtle but I think salient point.

Your hand falls in the fire. The damage (and the threat of more damage) gets communicated to your brain (I'm simplifying) where the information is synthesized. The interpretation of all of that information is then "Pain" (instead of say, pleasure, etc.).

I don't see that as emergent, considering the fact that this once again relies upon a meta self that would have to pre-exist to some degree in order to correctly interpret.

Yes, there is definitely a Pavlovian aspect to our "auto-pilot," no question, but don't we differentiate "intellect" (or self-awareness, I know, I need to nail that down) precisely by saying it is the ability to not just react to stimulus or be conditioned by stimulus, but to avoid possible future adverse stimulus through inference and comprehension; a synthesis of not just what is occuring, but what might also occur?

Abstract processing as well?

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

excreationist

Koyaanisqatsi:
Sorry I took so long to reply...
...Perhaps consciousness/self-awareness (from now on I'll just call it SA and deal with exactly what that is later) is hierarchical?...
That's what I've been saying...
I wrote this:
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?
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.

...Again, no expert, but I would certainly assert that dolphins are just as SA as are we, perhaps even more so considering their known "social" habits. To the best of my knowledge, none of them sacrifice virgins on altars to appease their gods...
Well there is no evidence that they are pondering the distant future and distant past and their inevitable death and the possibility of an afterlife, etc. Rocks don't sacrifice virgins to their gods but that doesn't mean rocks are more aware/intelligent than humans who do those things. To say that dolphins are as self-aware as we are means that they sometimes philosophize about what the purpose of their lives is and what they should achieve in their lifetimes, etc. Just because they socialize in sophisticated ways it doesn't mean they philosophize like that. And real philosophy is when you start to question your senses and knowledge and language, etc. Do you think dolphins debate what can be known for certain or whether everything is matter or everything is mind, etc?

any mathematician can tell you that there is an infinite amount of decimal points in between, so, mathematically speaking (technically), it is literally impossible to count from "one" to "two," unless you simply accept that 1.9999999 repeating is equivalent to 2.
That is like Zeno's(?) paradox... that the athlete will never catch up to the tortoise... but if you go towards 2 at the rate of 0.01 per unit of time, you'd reach 2 eventually. It's not like the unit of time keeps on halving so that you never reach the moment in time when the athlete catches up to the tortoise.

we simply say that .9999 is *equivalent* to 1 just as we say a human *becomes* conscious.
You mean .999 recurring. BTW, I am saying they *actively* learn intelligent behaviours themselves... they don't just wait around and turn into a conscious being like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And this .999 recurring thing is like Zeno's paradox, which I talked about earlier.

Is a rock "autonomous?"
No. And neither is a car. Autonomous things do things intelligently without the intervention of others. Rocks don't do anything by themselves - they either sit around - or they roll because they were bumped. Thermostats on the other hand are autonomous I think - they can keep the temperature of a room constant - without being manually controlled by a person who sits there turning the heater on and off. Being autonomous is part of what is needed for something to be aware but it's not the only thing. (see my earlier definitions) I think autonomous is a similar word to "self-motivated".

But, with AI, wouldn't that be precisely what it would be doing? Programmed to "infer" and "learn" from itself; i.e., have the ability to create new memory feedback loops; goals programmed into it with the addendum, "seek new goals based on new data," or whatever?
Our ability to learn skills is also genetically "programmed" in... but the specific skills that we learn aren't programmed in. e.g. we might learn to play chess, but the rules of chess aren't encoded in our DNA. So our genetic programs give our brains the ability to learn things and infer things for itself (without the help of others)... the general mechanism is preprogrammed but the things we learn aren't. In the same way, it would be necessary for *some* things in AI to be preprogrammed - to make it capable of learning/inferring new things. But if *everything* is preprogrammed then it hasn't learnt things for itself - it was just programmed the skills!

Again, it seems to me that there is a paradox in what you're saying, in that there must be a self that is self aware in order for it to be self aware.
The brain as a whole (or perhaps the personality/memories/thoughts, or the body) is the self. There is a self. The self (however it is defined - e.g. the brain) can be aware of the self.

But it is "preprogrammed" in the sense that the programming states, "seek new goals," right? "If not X, then seek Y," yes?
But over time it would learn new skills and develop new beliefs, etc. e.g. the brain (or artificial brain) might learn to make houses of cards or how to have a Jim Carey sense of humour or how to make money in the share-market or how to con people out of millions of dollars. Those skills weren't programmed in explicitly. The underlying routines were there - the "OS" (operating system)... but the other beliefs/goals/skills were learnt by that brain.

So, as with Piaget, a machine that is programmed to "learn" and walks like a duck and talks like a duck, etc., etc., we would ultimately simply say, "Well it is equivalent to 1 for all intents and purposes, so let's just call it a duck," right?
It has to be able to *actively* learn by trying to solve problems and it has to be able to learn *new* skills... so basically it would be able to interact intelligently with an unlimited number of unfamiliar environments and adapt. I'm not talking about a "Turing test" where a person from the public has to have a short conversation with it and see if it seems human.

Well, there have been many cases of people doing precisely that--taking themselves off of what I call "auto-pilot"--though not necessarily in the extreme of the comic book, of course. Firewalkers;
I went to a Tony Robbins-style firewalking seminar. I walked through it twice - the second time I stomped in it slow and hard and walked very slowly. I got a blister the second time though. You're supposed to walk swiftly. see <a href="http://www.skepdic.com/firewalk.html" target="_blank">skepdic.com</a>

glass eaters;
I think someone in the Guinness Book of Records has eaten many things, including a plane. I don't think doctors think it is supernatural... it is amazing though.

gymnasts (athletes in general);
Well look at leopards and cats and things... they are even better at that type of thing than gymnasts are... do you think some kind of "mind over matter" thing is involved?

Einstein, etc., etc.
Well Einstein never believed that quantum physics was true (I think) even though he died about 50 years after they started theorizing about it (I think).

"Saying that a radio is conscious and doesn't talk back simply because it *chooses* to behave like a radio sounds pretty mystical to me."

As a result of homocentrism, I would contend, since we consider anything that is not explainable according to a human model as "default" to be mystical, yes? I know I do.
But your explanation of consciousness seems at least as mysterious as consciousness is supposed to be.

...Take a movie, for example. Depending upon the size of the negative, a movie must be projected at a certain rate of speed (normally 24 frames per second) in order for us to perceive it as "reality." Too many frames and you get slow motion; too few and it looks like a silent movie...
If you show a 24 fps movie at 48 fps it will appear to be going twice as *fast*. And also, I think DVD's are at 29.97 frames per second.

Where does this "come from?" Why would that be a necessity of human perception?...
Because our brain only works at about 20 or 40 cycles per second - it is a machine which has physical limitations.

Well I'll take a break now... this just keeps on growing exponentially.

DRFseven

Actually, I was refering to lesion studies; specifically an example in which neurologist, Antonio Damasio, has shown that cutting off a patient's emotional spin to pain interpretation by severing contact between the prefrontal cortices and the emotion-mediating amygdala. The result is that the patient then admits to the presence of pain but claims there is no longer any negative aspect: Quoted by Restak: I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, with NACBT certification in cognitive-behavioral therapy.

On the contrary, there are states of "altered sensorium", brought about by trauma or organic degenerative conditions in which varying degrees of consciousness are maintained in the individual. Sometimes these states precede coma; sometimes they occur without subsequent coma, but they all involve disturbance in integration of function through reticular activating system of the brain relative to that function. These conditions manifest as drowsiness with impairment of higher intellectual functioning and disorientation, stupor (with preservation of superficial and deep tendon reflexes), delirium, illusions, hallucinations, delusions, confusional state, akinetic mutism, coma, persistent vegetative state, in which reflexes such as blinking and chewing are intact, and brain death.

But the body is a functioning contributive factor in the resulting conclusion of "pain." I know you're going to think of phantom pain, but that involves pain memory, a physical association (learned through memory) between previous experience of pain exposure and negative emotion. It takes all of us to Tango.

Which is my point about a total systems involvement. Without it, we don't get the "ouch!"

Most definitely! I never want to imply that I think mentation does not happen or that it is not, itself, a stimulus (as well as a response), though, for some reason, people always think that's what I'm saying. I'm saying, it's a part of the loop; part of the "open system" between our various systems and the environment, that cause us to move, behaving, through our environment.