Chip with simple program for Toy

[Daryl McCullough]

RichD says...

On Mar 24, "Kevin Aylward" <kevin_aylw...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Now try and define "aware" independently of consciousness.
Have you actually read my paper?
http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/replicators/thehardproblem.html

Kevin, it's bad form (desperation, really) to
cite YOUR OWN WEB PAGE!

"I refer you to this authoritative source, which
supports my position completely..."

I don't think that's fair. He's not citing that web page
as an argument from authority, he's citing it because it
explains his position in more detail than he could give
in a usenet post.

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Kevin Aylward wrote:

This is a very difficult problem, and for me, essentially,
impossible. There are some that even suggest that a baby is not truly
conscious, so we can do what we want with them, i.e there are claims
that they don't feel pain.

Yeah, good argument.

Consciousness is also influenced by your own feelings. Havin' chronic
pains makes you more angry, in most cases. And even a person is hiding
its pain, you can feel there is somthing not in order.

A consciuos behaviour is not always accepted by anyone , some may
feel the real stuff behind



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Kevin Aylward wrote:

No. mate, you are simply ill-informed as to what the hard problem is.
The overwhelming consensus in consciences studies is that
consciencesness is entirely the result of electro-chemical systems in
brain.essentially, no one disputes this.

You maybe Right. Because a well thought turn needs the Brain to flow it
out.
The Brain is nothing more than a Interface, just believe me. And as a
Computer can work w/o an Interface, ppl are doing things (acting) w/o
that interface.

Imagine a situation where you have gone Right instead of Left
(somewhere in Town for example). Afterwards you think, why have you gone
left.
When were it conscious? Before or after the Action?


Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Lawson English wrote:

By "zombie," you mean someone lacking "free will?"

But that's another definition issue.

Hmmmm, so far I followed this Thread. I would say "a overconcsious
Person, thinking about any actions he/she doer".

Mainly dual-thinker, IMHO. Not a bad thing, when not involving a
partner (strange person). Nature worker have to be able to do so....
Human-to-Human is halved, as you have to accept the Right (a real
right, not a double thought one) of the other.


Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Lawson English wrote:

It's a very muddy idea as you present it. Even spiritual traditions
that believe in souls and reincarnation and so on speak in terms of
"subtle bodies" and the like. If there is no differentiation, there
is no separate existence and hence no consciousness or emotions or
whatevers.

I must correct. That seems to be a function of the Brain. Givin' that a
Body what influences your mind. I think only Time is left, when someone
is not living anmyore. But Time is all and well perceived by Human
senses, and not of course (e.g. loosing time.... Damn dualism ).



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Daryl McCullough wrote:

The hallmark of science if falsifiabilty. It is the possibility of
changing your mind based on evidence. You don't seem to allow for such
a possibility, so what you're doing isn't science.

An absolutum (knowing exactly the matter to point One) would be the end
for any Science. (zitiert: Prof. Dr. Physics. Lesch)

Or believing an unimaginable thing (it must have an end and a start,
otherwise we cannot sense), IMO.... Falsifiabilty it is, you're
right!



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Daryl McCullough wrote:

The way I feel about it is that it's simply a matter of the
sophistication of the response to changing conditions. Plants
respond in extremely simple ways to changing conditions: they
bend towards the sunlight, they put out roots to seek out water.
Animals have a much more sophisticated repertoire of responses
to the environment. I think that that's all that "having experience"
means.

Hi Daryl!


Who can say which living-form gives a satisfying life. Some would
rather live as a tree somewhere in unsettled land, than in a big city
with no money in the pockets.



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Daryl McCullough wrote:

To quote someone else from this thread: "Its clear that you just
haven't thought this thing through at all."

Yes. No reply from Kevin would have been the right answer


Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Lawson English wrote:

snipo

And your assumptions are far more subtle than you realize.

You return with natural-science arguments. Cheap, but incorruptly.
(brain-cells individuality. Great argument!) (having some kind of
Language.... even better!)



Kind regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Curt Welch wrote:

But these internal mental signals are not special, they are the same
types of signals that the brain uses to represent all our awareness -
our awareness of the physical world as well as the awareness of the
internal mental world. And they are nothing more than neural
activity. Stop the neural activity, and we stop being aware - it's
no different than turning a video camera off. Turn it off, and it
stops being aware. It stops being able to "see".

There's just nothing special and magical happening in the human brain.
It's just a straight forward signal processing machine that learns by
experience.

Hi Curt!


The Nature had outfitted us with RGB capable Eyes and Nerves, so that
we can select the right Fruits.

What is done today with it? Selecting the right plastic-plane grown
supermarket fruit?
No, it is misused for Digital crap retard-monitors pixel (8bit) ))))

The human is round, not angular...



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

P.S.: The dog barks to your vanity. Some may say, they can feel the
ghosts....
It's just your living fantasy and the Dog cannot make
sense of it, so it barks it away. Other ppl are aware of that effect
and have their pet (e.g. cat, dog) for getting rid of unneeded
influencers.

 

[Me]

Thanks very much for your help. I think that's helped some.

 

[Curt Welch]

"Kevin Aylward" <kevin_aylward@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Curt Welch wrote:

You misunderstand. The majority of those that are discussing qualia also
agree absolutely that such qualia are only due to the physical
construction of the brain. This however, don't address what the the hard
problem is about.

You need to read up and understand what "The hard problem" actually is.

You are only one in a long line of fools to tell me exactly that. I've
read the material they pointed to me and all I could see was more of the
blind leading the blind.

I do not misunderstand. You and the rest of the people hung up on the hard
problem are the ones that fail to see the obvious. You have created your
own hard problem by starting with false assumptions. What you refuse to
understand, or see, is that your assumptions are wrong. If you change your
assumptions, the hard problems goes away.

What you fail to answer, is where did your assumptions come from?

You say, it's obvious that you are conscious and watches are not. That is
a starting assumption that you have evidence to support, but yet you refuse
to even address the possibility that it's an invalid assumption. You are
absolutely addicted to your beliefs, but yet, you have no understand of
what a belief is, or where it comes from. Yet you know they must be
absolutely right.

It's the simple fact that your view of reality is based on an illusion that
creates the hard problem for you. You believe that there exists something
in you which is non-physical and you are unable to shake that belief even
though you have no fucking clue where that belief came from or why you have
it.

No. mate, you are simply ill-informed as to what the hard problem is. The
overwhelming consensus in consciences studies is that consciencesness is
entirely the result of electro-chemical systems in brain.essentially, no
one disputes this.

Those of that actually believe this don't have a hard problem to solve.
All there is in my brain, is the electro-chemical systems. You on the
other hand, are hung up with this belief that there is something more -
something which is not the neurons, but which is somehow created by the
neurons.

Have you actually ever been kicked in the balls?

Actually I haven't. But pain is easy to create. I've had no end of pain
in my life.

what is it in those brain signals that hurt you?

The simple way you asked that question makes it clear you are lost and
confused. Of course, everything else you wrote makes it clear as well.
Nothing you have written here is anything new. I've seen the argument 100
times from other people hung up on the same things you are hung up on.

I believe pain is nothing but my electrochemical reaction to the stimulus
that created the pain. There is simply nothing else there that needs to be
explained. I'm a monist - a physicalist. You on the other hand, are a
dualist. You believe there is something else there besides just the
movement of the matter in our bodies. You believe there is this thing
called "pain" which is created by, the physical action of our body parts.
This is the starting assumption that you believe to be true to such a high
degree, you can't even comprehend what I'm saying. It's so far out of your
radar, all you can do is assume I just don't understand. But I do. I
understand completely. You are a dualist but yet you refuse to even
understand that you are one. You think that since you believe the physical
gives rise to the pain, that you are a materialist. But you are NOT. You
believe pain is something separate from the physical body. And as such,
the hard problem is to try and explain what it is, and how the body gives
rise to this.

But I, being a monist and a physicalist, have nothing hard to explain.
When I feel pain, it's just me reacting. I say "ouch". That's just one
small external part of the large complex reaction of my body. What I feel
internally as pain is the internal behavior of my body. Nothing more.

In other words, I reject your reality and substitute my own. I know that
the reality you believe in is just an illusion created for us by the brain
and it's just not what it seems to be. When we see a bent stick in the
water, the brain is telling us it's bent, and not straight. But we have
all learned to reject the reality created for us by our brain in that case,
and substitute the "truth".

I have done the same for the illusion of dualism. You have not. You
accept it as real and then try to explain how it can be. You inability to
explain it, is the hard problem. It's the same type of problem you would
have run into if you stuck with the belief that the stick was actually
bent. The illusion of the bent stick is easier to overcome because we can
do things like pull the stick out of the water and see it's not bent. But
with conscious experience, there is no simple parallel experiment we can
do. We can't easily experiment with our own brain to see what it's doing
and how it works. If we could stick wires and probes into our own brain,
and see what we experience as we activate different parts of the brain, we
would all be able to break free of the illusion that something else was
there. But since we can't, most people are unable to break free of the
illusion. They accept on faith that what their brain is telling them is
the truth - even though they don't accept it in the case of a bent stick.

I've never met a dualist who was able to understand this argument and I
don't expect you to understand it either. But I keep trying just to see if
one day I come across one smart enough to grasp the obvious truth.
Unfortunately, all the people smart enough to understand it figured it out
on their own before I meet them. And all the people not smart enough to
understand never seem to be able to understand it.

It's exactly like religion. People that believe in God seem to have no
ability to shake their belief in God. They seem to have no ability to
understand why they believe in God and to understand why God doesn't exist.
No amount of logical debate with a person that believes in God makes them
understand what it is that is actually happening here. This is because
these beliefs, their belief in God, and your dualist beliefs, come from
something far stronger and far more primitive than logic. It comes from
operant conditioning of our behavior. We were made to believe these things
by a life time of conditioning. And even a long never ending thread on
Usenet will not shake a belief that was strongly formed in you (or me) by a
life time of conditioning.

Both religion, and dualism, are memes that are strongly conditioned into a
large segment of the population and will be removed, only by many
generations of re-training.

It won't be too long before we have machines walking around us acting like
humans - machines that are smarter, more intelligent, better educated, but
yet still have all the emotions and "free will" that we have. At the same
time, there will be robots that receive human-like education that condition
them to believe in the hard problem of consciousness and to believe in some
God. They will have the same confusions about this as you do. It will
become obvious to people of the future that these robots are as conscious
as any human - even more "conscious". And since we will know exactly what
makes these robots work, and since that will also lead to a full
understanding of what the brain is doing, there won't be much left to
debate about what all this "consciousness" nonsense is. But until that day
that we have robots that equal humans, confused people will still be
confused. None of you, however, are likely to be the ones that create
those first human level robots.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

 

[Curt Welch]

"Kevin Aylward" <kevin_aylward@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Curt Welch wrote:

I've argued these points for years so don't tell me I've not thought
about them.

Clearly with no success.

That's true! Everyone that understands my points understood them before I
tried to argue them and everyone that fails to understand them still fails
to understand them as far as I know.

So how can you judge if brain activity in a person is conscious brain
activity or not? If they "wake up" later, and you ask them if they
have a memory of what was happening and they say they have no memory,
were they conscious? There's no way to tell.

You have a valid point, in principle, however, they are unconscious by
definition. The result is indistinguishable. Occums razor is good enough
for me on this one.

So you use Occam's razor here but yet you fail to use it where it's most
important - in the belief that you have a property in you that is
extra-physical which doesn't exist in these other things. You have a basic
belief that you are more than just a pile of matter moving about as piles
of matter tend to do in reaction to the prime forces of physics.

There is no evidence to suggest that you have this extra property, so using
Occam's razor, the correct approach is to not add it when there's no need
for it. But yet you do it anyway. You add the assumption that there is a
special extra property in you which is hard to explain (your own conscious
awareness).

Now, don't get confused here, because most people like you do get lost at
this point. I'm not trying to argue that your internal mental events don't
exist. I know for a fact they do exist. I'm simply trying to argue that
the correct assumption to make, is that the internal events are simply the
physical actions of our brain and body and nothing more. The assumption
you have to make to support all the stuff you write, is that there is
"something more". The hard problem is trying to define what that
"something more" is, and why it is in us, and not in a watch. It's in us,
and not in the watch, only because you decided to pick that belief as a
starting assumption, as an axiom of your belief system, not because there
was any evidence to support that belief.

Well, if you want to believe electrons feel pain, feel free to do so.

I also argue that rocks are conscious. Not because I believe a single
electron is equal to a human or that a rock can equal a human, but simply
because I believe there is nothing "extra" in us that needs to be
explained. All we are, is a large complex machine made out of normal
physical matter. Our conscious experience is nothing more than the
operation of a large signal processing machine. There's nothing special
about what it is doing. It's the same type of stuff our computers and
other signal processing machines (analog and digital) are already doing.
If you want to say we have this special property of being "conscious" they
you have to say they are conscious as well.

You start with an assumption that we are different, even though there is no
evidence to suggest that, and then you cry about how hard it is to figure
out why we are different. You created the problem for yourself by staring
with an invalid assumption. We aren't different. Stop believing all the
other idiots that keep telling you we are different. They are all wrong.

Step back, and ask yourself, why is it that you believe we have some magic
property about us that you call consciousness which you believe is missing
from something like a watch or a complex computer. Why do you believe we
have a magic property that no instrument ever built can detect?

Why do people believe in a God which no instrument every created is able to
detect?

I can make an operational definition of any emotion.
http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/replicators/emotions.html

OK, I read a little of that and generally I think you are on the right
track. However, you seem to have failed to actually define much. For
example, you say:

Love - recognition that someone has something to aid your interests

But you never seem to explain what "recognition" is (and no, I didn't read
all your pages to see if somewhere you might explain it). Generally, I
assume you would make it fall into this magic black hole of "conscious
awareness" which remains undefined.

To me, it's very simple. It's all defined in terms of behavior of the
object in question. For the object to recognize that something is an aid
to their interests simply means that the object will emit behaviors that
tend to preserve the thing that is an aid to its interests. In other
words, if the object takes a hammer and kills it, it has no love for it.
If on the other hand, it does things to preserve it, then there is love
there.

However, we have plenty of examples of machines that already do this.
Chess problems love their king. They love their king more than they love
their pawns. They will take actions to preserve the king even if it means
losing a pawn.

I believe the chess program has emotions. I believe the chess program has
conscious awareness. Not the same level and extent of human consciousness
awareness and emotions as we do, but it has them to a degree. There's no
confusion over how the chess program works, and there should be no
confusion about this magic "awareness" that exists in humans. It's nothing
more than the action of a large complex reaction machine which learns (aka
changes the way it will react in the future) through experience. The human
brain is simply a reinforcement learning machine. There's nothing else
needed to explain what it is or why it is here. And we already have lots
of different reinforcement learning machines that work just fine. They
just don't yet have the complexity and power the brain has. But they will
in short order.

Human behavior and human consciousness is far simpler than most people
believe it to be. They are looking for something complex and magical when
there just isn't anything complex or magical there to be found. We are
just survival machines built by evolution. The process of evolution
created in us a learning controller to move our body parts which learns new
survival behaviors through simple trial and error learning. There's
nothing more complex here to be explained. The only hard problem here is
to figure out how to build a learning controller that is as advanced as the
one evolution built in us - one that is able to learn language for example
by interacting with humans. Or one that can learn basic things like
plugging it's power cord into an outlet to charge it's battery just by
trial and error learning. Those are the only hard problems that need to be
solved. The hard problem of philosophy is just a failure to understand
that the error is in your starting assumptions - they are self created. I
choose not to use starting assumptions that create obvious contradictions
when I have access to starting assumptions that create no contradictions.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/

 

On Mar 26, 11:36 am, "Bob Myers" <nospample...@address.invalid> wrote:

forbisga...@msn.com> wrote in message

news:1174910947.139641.285440@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...



What is the evidence that God doesn't exist?

A bit off-subject, but I would like to strongly recommend the following
books as extremely interesting reads, no matter which side of the
"God" question you're on:

Maybe a bit off-subject. It's not really clear.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins,

and

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger.

I went to
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/03/god_the_failed.html
and listened.

Keep an open mind, and you can get a LOT out of these two.
Up to and including, possibly, a whole new perspective on both
the truth and desirability of the sort of thinking we call "religious."

I'm well behind in books to read. I'm not a very fast reader.
One has to pay close attention to the arguments. The ones Victor
Stenger
make are more like limits rather than "proofs". He even says as much.
I take a similar approach but there are differences between the
topics,
the main one is empirical science holds the subjective a priori--it
can't
be avoided, even by way of instrumentation. Likewise empirical
science
hold the other a priori--one cannot approach objective data without a
multiplicity of entities with independent subjective existence.

Almost all humans believe they have volitional control over their
behavior.
It is taken as a given that humans can report their experiences but
these
reports may have errors. Empiricism wouldn't have much value if one
couldn't rely upon acquiring objective evidence from these reports.

Unlike for God, the issues isn't evidence for the existence of
experineces
but rather what entities have experiences.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Curt Welch wrote:

"Kevin Aylward" <kevin_aylward@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:

A Book.




Well, Curt. Then show me your singularity. I think you think to be God.



A women with near-death experience told, she heard a voice while being
clinical dead. That voice was so enlighting, informative and familiarly
to her.

And she said furthermore: "Believe me, I couldn't reply to that
voice.... just listen."



You are far away from that and I'll always reply to your voice. hehe.



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[jasen]

On 2007-03-26, John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

On 26 Mar 2007 10:19:36 GMT, jasen <jasen@free.net.nz> wrote:

On 2007-03-25, John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

Other than physically moving the laser back and forth (toward and
away from the receiver) at an audio rate, just how would you propose
going about frequency modulating the laser?

Attach a mirror to a loudspeaker cone, it has less mass and you get twice as
much modulation, (but this is really phase modulation)

No, it's FM. What you get reflected is light of a slightly
different wavelength because of Doppler shift, so it's a change in
frequency/color.

but you can't maintain the changed frequency indefinately...

Hmmm, I think I see what you're saying the velocity of the cone is
reasonably proportional to the coil current, so in that way it's FM.

Also, if the rate of change and the amplitude of the mechanical
motion is the same in both systems the carrier deviation will be
identical.

The moving mirror shortens the path by twice the distance it moves.
I see twice the effect.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Daryl McCullough wrote:

Kevin Aylward says...

Daryl McCullough wrote:
Kevin Aylward says...

We say that feelings aren't physical. Memories aren't physical.
Ideas aren't physical. Qualia aren't physical. Tangible objects
are physical, intangible objects are not physical. But that's all
pure bull shit created by people that didn't even know we had a
physical brain.

Oh dear. Its clear that you just haven't thought this thing through
at all. A machine doesn't have "experience".

On what basis do you say that? I can understand how one could use
introspection as evidence that he has experience, what counts as
evidence that something *doesn't* have experience?

All due respect, here, but if someone actually wants to debate
whether of a wind up watch has "experience". to wit, consciousness,
there will need to do it without me. I don't have the time to
engage in such pointless debates.

If the debate is about experience, then how in the world is it
pointless to ask how you know that something doesn't have experience?

I dont have time to detailed debate with someone that wants to prove to me
that watches have consciousness.

I'm not arguing that a wind up watch has experience, I'm asking you
on what basis are you saying one way or the other? What counts as
evidence on such a question?

Out of any even vague ideas of how to define consciousness, a watch is
conscious is simple a non-starter. Those that dont understand this point
for a watch need to do 101 first.

On the other hand, if one is attempting some arguments as to whether a fly
is conscious, that deserves much more attention.

For reference, I am strongly influenced by the Darwinian evolution algorithm
(http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/replicators/index.html). Known,
consciousness, is a direct result of properties that have evolved to
maximise replication numbers of replicates. What good is it for a watch to
be conscious? It cant walk, it cant talk. Consciousness is no advantage to
it, so it doesn't make sense evolutionary wise, so I reject it. If something
is not consistent, with evolution, its wrong. Period.

To quote someone else from this thread: "Its clear that you just
haven't thought this thing through at all."

I have, and as I have mentioned in another post, you try getting any
university physics expert to engage in conversation with the 1000s of loons
about their pet theories of quantum mechanics, special relativity etc.

Kevin Aylward
ka@anasoftEXTRACT.co.uk
www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Curt Welch wrote:

"Kevin Aylward" <kevin_aylward@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:

You misunderstand. The majority of those that are discussing qualia
also agree absolutely that such qualia are only due to the physical
construction of the brain. This however, don't address what the the
hard problem is about.

You need to read up and understand what "The hard problem" actually
is.

You are only one in a long line of fools to tell me exactly that.
I've read the material they pointed to me and all I could see was
more of the blind leading the blind.

I do not misunderstand. You and the rest of the people hung up on
the hard problem are the ones that fail to see the obvious. You have
created your own hard problem by starting with false assumptions.
What you refuse to understand, or see, is that your assumptions are
wrong. If you change your assumptions, the hard problems goes away.

What you fail to answer, is where did your assumptions come from?

You say, it's obvious that you are conscious and watches are not.
That is a starting assumption that you have evidence to support, but
yet you refuse to even address the possibility that it's an invalid
assumption. You are absolutely addicted to your beliefs,

Some, certainly.

but yet,
you have no understand of what a belief is, or where it comes from.
Yet you know they must be absolutely right.

That is the absolute point of my "no magic" axiom. To state quite clearly
where my belief that consciousness is the pure result of electro-chemical
activity comes from.

It's the simple fact that your view of reality is based on an
illusion that creates the hard problem for you. You believe that
there exists something in you which is non-physical and you are
unable to shake that belief even though you have no fucking clue

No, you wont read what I have posted, even after I have tried to correct you
complete misunderstanding that I belive no such thing as you keep
pontificatating about.

For the last time.

from, http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/replicators/magic.html

4th Axiom/Postulate
4th - All physical phenomena is explainable by the physics of mass-energy.

This axiom states that there is no supernatural, or otherwise outside of
physics effects required in order to explain any physical observation. It
directly prohibits concepts such as god or souls being involved in any
aspect of human behavior, other than that associated with "belief" in such
entities.

....

....

We first identify another axiom/postulate. This postulate is not provable,
and simply taking as being true, based on the evidence.

1) Consciousness exists.

Axiom 4, tells us that, whatever consciousness is, any physical actions
attributed to it, is something that is explainable by mass-energy physics.
Specifically, in light of known brain construction, axiom 4 tells us that
consciences awareness, and subsequently emotions, must be the sole result of
the electro-chemical processes of the brain and or body. That is, there is
no external soul or ethereal type, non physical process that causes
awareness.

{snip without reading until some evidence is presented that shows some
understanding}

--
Kevin Aylward
ka@anasoftEXTRACT.co.uk
www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Daryl McCullough wrote:

Kevin Aylward says...

The word "experience" in consciousness contexts mean the things that
only conscious entities have. Like, a kick in the balls *hurts*.

You see a colour and it makes an impression that you are "aware" of,
sensations, etc. Its impossible to give a circular free definition
of any of theses terms, because, as I have noted, its all circular.

We just have to assume as an axiom "consciousness " exits,
and go from there. Just as we do in any other science.

No, it's not the way we do in any other science.

Oh...?

You are introducing
a new quality of systems called "consciousness".

Indeed yes. That the point. Actually, it was David Chalmers, not me, who
first proposed that is how one should look at consciousness

If you really want
it to be a *scientific* concept, then you have to ask questions such
as: How do we detect whether a system has this quality?

Prior to Special Relativity, there were aspects of light hat could not be
reconciled with existing knowledge. After extensive examination, it was
discovered that a new quality of light existed, that was simply irreducible
to previous ideas, and contradicted them. This new quality, or property was
the invariance of the speed of light. That is, no matter how fast the source
or observer was traversing with respect to the light source, the speed of
light, in any inertial frame, was always the same.

It was thus decided to indrodce a new axiom. To wit, the speed of light is
an invariant.

Prior, to Quantum mechanics etc.. etc.... we now postulate the axiom H|psi>
= E|psi>, to wit the shrodinger equation.

Science is about discovering the minimal set axioms to predict the most. The
axioms, by definition, are not reducible.

A scientist
would never say something like.
"if someone actually wants to debate whether of a
wind up watch has "experience". to wit, consciousness,
there will need to do it without me.

would never say something like.
That isn't a scientific attitude, at all.

Have you actually tried getting a General Relativity expert to engage
conversation in the 1000s of loons all going "Einstein was wrong about
relativity". Not a chance, they just roll their eyes...

You introduce a supposedly
scientific property of matter, and then without any experiment or
argument, you rule out a possibility and declare it beyond the pale
to argue for that possibility. What a thoroughly unscientific
attitude!

Out of millions on possible valid debating ideas, I have already concluded
that a watch is consciousness is not one of them. Neither are green men
from mars, or the flying spaghetti monster.

A good scientist need to know what is worth investigating and what is not.
This is the real world. Many ideas are simple worthless. That's just the way
it is. If you want to starve yourself because you believe carrots feel pain,
go ahead, but don't expect many to take that idea seriously either.

That would *never* happen in physics.

It happens as a rule, not the exception. Scientist are far to busy to
entertain every hair brained idea from non-experts.

Why, when you are dealing with
concepts that are much murkier, more ill-defined than those physicists
typically deal with, you are *more* unshakably certain in your
beliefs? The hallmark of science if *falsifiabilty*. It is the
possibility of changing your mind based on evidence. You don't seem
to allow for such a possibility, so what you're doing isn't science.

There is no chance that anyone can make a reasonable person belive that a
watch is conscious.

I didn't wake up one day and go, a watch is not conscious. I have already
went through detailed reasons as to why it isn't, that I simply cant be
bothered to discuss such a daft idea anymore.

--
Kevin Aylward
ka@anasoftEXTRACT.co.uk
www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Robin Faichney wrote:

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:10:18 GMT, "Kevin Aylward"
kevin_aylward@ntlworld.com> wrote:

we can argue pretty
convincingly that simple systems are not conscious beyond reasonable
doubt, i.e. we can observe billions of simple systems.

This seems to imply that if something can be observed, it cannot be
conscious. Presumably that's not what you mean.

Oh .... didn't quite expect anyone would read that idea into that
statement. I am merely noting the fact that we can observe systems and
conclude whether or not they are conscious.

I'm guessing what you
have in mind is, a simple system is one whose behaviour can be
predicted, and where behaviour is predictable, there's no
consciousness.

I am not really giving at this point any specifics in identifying non
conscious, just that for example, it would take a lot to convince anyone
that a wind up watch is conscious. Its a given that absolute proof cannot
exist on this matter, so one makes a best go at beyond reasonable doubt.
after all, thats enough to hang someone, somewhere.

But that conflates consciousness with "free will". I
think it quite likely that consciousness and the experience of "free
will" are closely related, but (a) we don't know that, perhaps there
could be a perfectly passive variety of consciousness, and (b) what
looks absolutely determined to us might not seem so to a sufficiently
simple, but conscious, system.

Consciousness is independent of strict "free will", as strict free will, if
we assume the "no magic" axiom. (prior posts), can not exit, yet
consciousness does exist. The illusion of free will is obviously only
possible with consciousness.

--
Kevin Aylward
ka@anasoftEXTRACT.co.uk
www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice