Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Soupie]

Well, if we reproduce it, it's a reproduction and therefore has a suitable SEH. (that's your hint)

So if it's the organization/structure we're after, then in principle this organization/structure is substrate independent.

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie

the bee detects it [it = coloured light—apparently light transmits the information that is 'colour'] and the bee's nervous system uses the information...

i.e. light is information... colour information apparently.
If light is a causal input it is causing in virtue of having some property that informs in a causally potent fashion.
Is this supporting my or your interpretation? I see it as supporting me... (?)

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie
i.e. light is information... colour information apparently.
If light is a causal input it is causing in virtue of having some property that informs in a causally potent fashion.
Is this supporting my or your interpretation? I see it as supporting me... (?)

Again, em waves are only considered information to the bee because it is relevant to the bee. Ergo information is interprant dependent.

Re coloured

You have been known to accidently use the term color/light instead of em waves as well.

 

[Soupie]

So if it's the organization/structure we're after, then in principle this organization/structure is substrate independent.

@smcder

But we would need to have the same environment as well, right?

Which begs the question: if the organism was totally removed from the environment would it still be conscious?

Is consciousness environment independent?

(Of course from the right vantage point organisms are the environment but you know what I mean.)

 

[Pharoah]

But the stimuli is only considered information in this instance because it is relevant to the organism.

Ah. I get it now.
It is true what you say. So my wife's handbag doesn't make anything of light because it hasn't the intreprant capabilities... therefore, the infomation is dependent on the interprant.
What I am saying is that the orthodoxy says the information exists. Some mechanisms can read it others cannt. Evolution, to the orthodox way of thinking, is about the evolution of the necessary mechanisms that can ' read' the information that exists out there and then 'represent' the information as meaningful content to its (intentional) purposes.

 

[Soupie]

What I am saying is that the orthodoxy says the information exists. Some mechanisms can read it others cannt. Evolution, to the orthodox way of thinking, is about the evolution of the necessary mechanisms that can ' read' the information that exists out there and then 'represent' the information as meaningful content to its (intentional) purposes.

Right. But what I am saying is that I understand the orthodox position to hold that the whole notion of the existence of information is contingent on there being interprants.

I.e. Environmental stimuli are commonly (sloppily) referred to as information, but it is understood that various stimuli are only information/informative to systems/organisms capable of sensing and interpreting them.

That's my understating if the orthodox position.

Having said that, some conceptions of Shannon information may hold that information exists independently of an interprant—but I would argue that humans are the implicit interprants in that case.

 

[Pharoah]

The Emergence of Qualitative attribution, Phenomenal experience and Being

I think this is a well written abstract, with a lot of information - @Pharoah I'm trying to lay bare my thought processes as I go, so not everything noted here is a question or problem, but marginalia, that I hope to go back to and put everything back together later off of -

Abstract

• I argue that the physiological, phenomenal and conceptual constitute a three-part hierarchy of emergent classes.
• Each class employs a distinctive type of interactive mechanism that facilitates a meaningful class of environmental discourse.

interactive mechanism
environmental discourse (see more later in this paper)

From 1 and 2

• each class has a causal relation with the environment through physical interaction. (causality)

smcder the “distinctive type of interactive mechanism that facilitates a meaningful class of environmental discourse” is a physical interaction, a physical mechanism

• BUT the specific class of mechanism qualifies distinctively the meaningfulness of that interaction and subsequent responses to it.

• I argue that the causal chain of physical interaction feeds distinctive axiological? constructions that are ontologically distinct for each class.
  • Axiology the branch of philosophy dealing with values, as those of ethics, aesthetics, or religion.
• Within the limitations of the interactive mechanisms of each class, increasingly sophisticated forms tend to evolve.
  
  
• The increase in sophistication in each class inevitably leads to the emergence of the novel mechanism particular to the next class in the hierarchy.
  
  
• In essence, there is an emergent hierarchy of evolving classes delineated by the nature of their mechanism of environmental engagement.

Specifically, I argue that biochemical mechanisms have a tendency (inevitably,?) to evolve meaningfully, specifically in a way that is both qualitatively relevant and responsive to environmental particulars. I explain that these mechanisms set in play an organizational imperative that leads to the emergence of the capacity to evaluate and prioritize qualitative biochemical assimilations which, inevitably, generates a subjectively individuated experience phenomenon. I then relate this to the novel characteristics of the human perspective.

***@Soupie - the last two lines (in the full context of the Abstract are the how/why of consciousness offered under HCT. I want to keep this in mind.

on 'axiological'
I had used the term 'value laden' and a nice reviewer suggested I use alternatvely the term 'axiological'. but I am not so sure...

 

[smcder]

on 'axiological'
I had used the term 'value laden' and a nice reviewer suggested I use alternatvely the term 'axiological'. but I am not so sure...

Yeah, I really don't know either - I just made a note on it ...

 

[smcder]

So if it's the organization/structure we're after, then in principle this organization/structure is substrate independent.

It depends on which principle you have in mind ... ;-) Try making an Eiffel Tower out of soap bubbles (on this planet) in principle, it's possible. I am thinking that the engineering project, one of the ingredients, may be an evolutionary time frame ... I can say more, if I need to.

I do think HCT will have some SD elements, biochemistry is explicitly discussed and it is a physical theory, after all, it might not have to be our familiar carbon based biochemistry though - but I do read HCT as requiring certain constituents that have the properties needed to bring forth an ontological emergence (for sentience).

 

[Constance]

@Constance. I forgot about that quote stuck on at the end of the paper!! wish I knew where I got it from! Any idea?

It appears to be from MP's The Structure of Behavior. It is quoted in the excellent overview of the elements of MP's phenomenological thought that I linked last night, at the end of section [2]:

Philosophical Connections: Merleau-Ponty

 

[Constance]

ps to @Pharoah, The Structure of Behavior as a whole would likely be the most useful text by MP for you to read (in addition to Phenomenology of Perception) for the purposes of your development of HCT.

 

[Constance]

I'm not following how the SEH is necessary.

For ex

Imagine a scenario where we can completely reproduce an apparently conscious organism from scratch in the lab. Same materials and everything. It didn't evolve but was made in the lab.

Since it didn't have a SEH would it not be conscious?

Are we saying the individual organism must have a SEH or just the structure of the organism must have a SEH.

Either way I don't see the significance.

The question is 'how do we get life, living organisms that experience the actuality of their situatedness {the situatedness of their being} within a surrounding world extending beyond the boundary of their skin -- a capability appearing at first as an inchoate awareness [autopoiesis] and in succeeding stages of evolution achieving prereflective consciousness leading ultimately to reflective 'consciousness' -- the condition and capability we have been attempting to understand here over the last three years of research and discussion. Is 'life' a 'miracle' or a natural consequence of the increasing complexity of physical systems we can identify in nature? Is life 'thrown' into the world or does it emerge naturally in the world? 'Thrown-ness' is of course Heidegger's concept, but as Stevens wrote, and MP would agree, "I am a native in this world and think in it as a native thinks."

Re robots [I keep typing 'ribits'] and artificial 'intelligence', how similar to and how different from life and mind as evolved from nature can some form of 'sentience' [something mechanically/digitally engineered in computational systems] actually be? How much 'world' will be accessible to computer intelligences? Will they, can they be expected to, absorb, sense, feel, struggle with, and comprehend to any degree the deep connections we feel in our bones as well as our minds to the natural world out of which we have evolved? Will they become philosophers, and what will they philosophize about?

 

[Soupie]

I am thinking that the engineering project, one of the ingredients, may be an evolutionary time frame ... I can say more, if I need to.

Yeah if you could flesh that out for me, that would helpful bc I don't follow.

For example, it may have taken millions of years for organism x to evolve a nervous system capable of differentiating between dozens of em wave frequencies. We could say this ability weakly emerges over millions of years.

However we could in principle build a silicon system capable of differentiating em waves just as well as the organism that evolved. It would have the same ability, but it wouldn't have the same evolutionary time frame. It could be constructed in a day, say.

From whence emerges the phenomenal consciousness? Is the suggestion that the SEH plays a direct role in an organism having consciousness?

Are we saying that evolution allows such tight coupling between organism and environment that p-con strongly emerges and in practice such tight coupling can't be artificially captured ergo no p-consciousness via design processes, only evo processes?

 

[smcder]

Yeah if you could flesh that out for me, that would helpful bc I don't follow.

For example, it may have taken millions of years for organism x to evolve a nervous system capable of differentiating between dozens of em wave frequencies. We could say this ability weakly emerges over millions of years.

However we could in principle build a silicon system capable of differentiating em waves just as well as the organism that evolved. It would have the same ability, but it wouldn't have the same evolutionary time frame. It could be constructed in a day, say.

From whence emerges the phenomenal consciousness? Is the suggestion that the SEH plays a direct role in an organism having consciousness?

Are we saying that evolution allows such tight coupling between organism and environment that p-con strongly emerges and in practice such tight coupling can't be artificially captured ergo no p-consciousness via design processes, only evo processes?

It depends on how you throw the organism.

 

[smcder]

Yeah if you could flesh that out for me, that would helpful bc I don't follow.

For example, it may have taken millions of years for organism x to evolve a nervous system capable of differentiating between dozens of em wave frequencies. We could say this ability weakly emerges over millions of years.

However we could in principle build a silicon system capable of differentiating em waves just as well as the organism that evolved. It would have the same ability, but it wouldn't have the same evolutionary time frame. It could be constructed in a day, say.

From whence emerges the phenomenal consciousness? Is the suggestion that the SEH plays a direct role in an organism having consciousness?

Are we saying that evolution allows such tight coupling between organism and environment that p-con strongly emerges and in practice such tight coupling can't be artificially captured ergo no p-consciousness via design processes, only evo processes?

No, not a direct role, but an "in practice" one. Design practices should include a lot of considerations, ethical ones primarily, but also questions of stability - I think consciousness, emotions, meaning, intelligence are probably "in practice" inseparable - which is the the seriousness behind my "thrown" comment. How likely is an engineered sentience to be sane?

There is also an article we posted about how long it would take to "evolve" an AI using genetic algorithms, how complex the environment (if it's artificial) would have to be, etc. Which is along the lines I am thinking. Right now, we have no idea how to design a consciousness and part of what I am saying is that, in practice, it might not be possible to design one -

And now I think it's time to kick it up to @Pharoah and see what he says HCT says ... we are well on our way down the garden path! ;-)

 

[Pharoah]

Not a demand ... that's what the ;-) is indicates ...

Here is the post (#1081) with my notes in bold italics
-----------
And here is your "elevator speech" for HCT smcder an "elevator speech" is something you can use to briefly explain a complex topic to someone you happen to catch on an elevator - this statement (below) is a compact statement of that type

Pharoah "The alternative provides a unified concept of information as a relation of meaning in a world of interactions where self-regulatory processes lead to increasingly complex structures that have an observer-dependent informational relation to and about the world with which they interact. *The view that information is not some thing that exists independently of the observer but is solely a function of an observer’s dynamic construction inverts the syntactic–semantic dilemma for there is no requisite translation of one to the other in the derivation of meaningful content. The observer is itself a construction that defines the environment qualitatively and quantitatively and from that position then qualifies information in those self-referential terms."

*Now ... all you gotta do is explain how. ;-) smcder I made a post this morning to @Soupie about the "how" and "why" of HCT ... again, the smile above is meant to note that it has been a long standing part of the discussion of HCT.
-----------

@Constance writes:

I'm not having a problem following @Pharoah's reasoning and arguments and I can't figure out why you are.

I'm not sure I am either ... ? I know that I am improving my understanding of HCT.

@Constance writes:

I can't find anything to argue with there except perhaps for the continued use of the word 'mechanism', which in my view perpetuates the physicalist/objectivist assumption that the world as experienced in and through consciousness can be accounted for mechanically and thus deterministically.

I noted in a post this morning that @Pharoah says he is a "physicalist" and that I want to keep that and your concerns above re:

the physicalist/objectivist assumption that the world as experienced in and through consciousness can be accounted for mechanically and thus deterministically

... in mind as I read his paper ... I don't necessarily think HCT ultimately makes these assumptions, but it is a question we can go ahead and put to @Pharoah:

Does (or to what extent) does HCT make the physicalist/objectivist assumption that the world as experienced in and through consciousness can be accounted for mechanically and thus deterministically ?

I don't think of a mechanism as being mechanical or mechanistic

 

[Constance]

Yeah if you could flesh that out for me, that would helpful bc I don't follow.

For example, it may have taken millions of years for organism x to evolve a nervous system capable of differentiating between dozens of em wave frequencies. We could say this ability weakly emerges over millions of years.

I would say that life emerges strongly from the outset. Why else has it generated the separate disciplines of the biological and botanical sciences? Maybe we should read Schrodinger's What is Life?. I did a long time ago and would have to re-read it now if we discuss it.

However we could in principle build a silicon system capable of differentiating em waves just as well as the organism that evolved. It would have the same ability, but it wouldn't have the same evolutionary time frame. It could be constructed in a day, say.

Do living organisms "'differentiate' em waves" or rather in some sense feel them, become affected by them? Differentiation among em waves is something our species' physicists can do at this stage of the evolution of our minds. Perhaps an AI could be equipped with mechanical sensors and trained to measure and differentiate among em waves, but that does not mean that the AI experiences them, responds to their effects.

From whence emerges the phenomenal consciousness? Is the suggestion that the SEH plays a direct role in an organism having consciousness?

Are we saying that evolution allows such tight coupling between organism and environment that p-con strongly emerges and in practice such tight coupling can't be artificially captured ergo no p-consciousness via design processes, only evo processes?

I think the evidence lies all around us that evolution not just 'allows' but enables tight coupling between organism and environment. A few years ago you mentioned having a baby in your household? Did you not observe the gradual development of that infant's awareness of the meaning of its encounters with its mother, also perhaps with you? The newborn in animal species experience a natal bond with their parents, who nourish, nurture, and protect them in the first stages of their existence outside the womb. Transpersonal psychologists have explored the extent to which memories of existence in the womb and of the birthing experience itself are held in the subconscious mind and affect humans (and likely other animals) throughout their lives -- especially in cases of difficult births and traumatic entrances into the 'outer world' beyond the safety of the womb.

Psychologists also know that chronic emotional conflict between the parents and the resulting stress hormones in the mother's body affect/disturb the tranquility of the prenatal foetus and have negative effects on early childhood adjustment, perhaps continuing into adult life in especially hard cases. Ideally, the foetus is unstressed in the womb, experiences itself as part of an encompassing whole that meets/fulfills all its needs. And ideally too, the needs of the infant in its early years are met by the parents (or in many animal species, as in humans, by other adults in the natal group), and the infant's needs are met consistently and gently, joyfully in the best cases.

Babyhood can be, should be, so comfortable and reassuring that children on the cusp of recognizing their separate identities begin to sense with nostalgia what has been called "the lush baby life" they have to grow beyond. How could such felt connections with the natural world be engineered into a computer 'intelligence'. What felt connection with and concern for the condition, the state, of the environing world could be expected to 'evolve' in AI? Even if we imagine, in our extraordinary hubris, that we could create 'artificial life', what expectations can we have that it would sense, see, and think the natural world in the ways in which the living can and do? How could ethical thinking develop in mechanical intelligences?

It depends on how you throw the organism.

 

[Constance]

I don't think of a mechanism as being mechanical or mechanistic

Maye we should take some time to explore the effects wrought in our thinking {what we can think} by the limitations and constraints embedded in our language systems, in the terminologies we inherit, take up, and continue to use.

 

[smcder]

I don't think of a mechanism as being mechanical or mechanistic

STOP THAT

 

[smcder]

I don't think of a mechanism as being mechanical or mechanistic

... even though I saw that coming ...