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smcder
Guest
My Dogma perked up when you said Karma . . .
tell me this One doesn't have Buddha nature . . .
-
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Consciousness and the Paranormal
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My Dogma perked up when you said Karma . . .
tell me this One doesn't have Buddha nature . . .
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smcder
Guest
More on Zombies:
He offers the thought experiment of the zombies; but it's a thought experiment, not a real experiment. We don't know if zombies really would behave the same as humans experiencing qualia. It's one thing to say they would, it's quite another to actually do an experiment to find out for sure. (My guess is they wouldn't behave the same.)
30. Zombies: conceivable but not metaphysically possible 35.6%; metaphysically possible 23.3%; inconceivable 16.0%; other 25.1%.
from: http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP
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smcder
Guest
Consciousness and the Singularity
David Chalmers on the Singularity (42 minutes)
at the Singularity Institute 2009
Singularity Summit | Machine Intelligence Research Institute
This talk gives a sense of Chalmers' personality and ties problems of consciousness to the singularity.
Here's a link to a Powerpoint of his presentation:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...pIGQDw&usg=AFQjCNEJ6yijrXcpG7GGE7XTAVjAGZcF-w
At 26:40, he talks about consciousness:
Two problems:
1. will an uploaded system be conscious (or a Zombie)?
2. will it be me?
27:15
I don't think we have a clue how a computational system could be conscious . . . we also don't have a clue how a brain could be conscious. That's the hard problem of consciousness. If someone tells you they've figured that out, they're kidding themselves. A very serious problem here. Still, I don't think computers and brains are in different situations. There's no reason I can see for a lack of parity between wetware and dryware. No difference in principal between neurons and sillicone.
. . .
Will I stay conscious during upload? Three possibilities:
1. gradually fade
2. wink out
3. stay constant
Chalmers believes number three most likely.
"So far, so good . . . "
Consciousness as an organizational invariant: systems with the same pattern of causal organization have the same sort of consciousness . . . systems in a simulation can be conscious. (quantum computation goes through just fine too, he says)
. . . if anything, the talk gets more interesting from here, touching on the Matrix, life in the simulation and whether it preserves what is important to us, and the question of personal identity . . . will I be me after upload?
David Chalmers on the Singularity (42 minutes)
at the Singularity Institute 2009
Singularity Summit | Machine Intelligence Research Institute
This talk gives a sense of Chalmers' personality and ties problems of consciousness to the singularity.
Here's a link to a Powerpoint of his presentation:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...pIGQDw&usg=AFQjCNEJ6yijrXcpG7GGE7XTAVjAGZcF-w
At 26:40, he talks about consciousness:
Two problems:
1. will an uploaded system be conscious (or a Zombie)?
2. will it be me?
27:15
I don't think we have a clue how a computational system could be conscious . . . we also don't have a clue how a brain could be conscious. That's the hard problem of consciousness. If someone tells you they've figured that out, they're kidding themselves. A very serious problem here. Still, I don't think computers and brains are in different situations. There's no reason I can see for a lack of parity between wetware and dryware. No difference in principal between neurons and sillicone.
. . .
Will I stay conscious during upload? Three possibilities:
1. gradually fade
2. wink out
3. stay constant
Chalmers believes number three most likely.
"So far, so good . . . "
Consciousness as an organizational invariant: systems with the same pattern of causal organization have the same sort of consciousness . . . systems in a simulation can be conscious. (quantum computation goes through just fine too, he says)
. . . if anything, the talk gets more interesting from here, touching on the Matrix, life in the simulation and whether it preserves what is important to us, and the question of personal identity . . . will I be me after upload?
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smcder
Guest
Nice article on shaving with Ockham's Razor - comes up often in para-philosophical discussions:
On Values and the Razor: How Clarifying is Ockham’s Shave? | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog
On Values and the Razor: How Clarifying is Ockham’s Shave? | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
This is helpful.
Since I can remember, I’ve always wondered what thoughts were made out of. Is that a similar question? Is that the same question?
I don’t disagree with the bolded statement, but I’m not that what follows is that experience/qualia are therefore non physical.
In other words: Is our current inability to describe experience via physical terms due to the nature of experiences or is it due to a lack of knowledge on our part. Chalmers thinks it’s the former, an issue of ontological uniqueness.
I’m not convinced we know enough about the physical world of matter/energy to say that experience/qualia are not composed of matter/energy. I also thinks it’s possible that subjective experiences - qualia - are composed of matter/energy, but we currently don’t have the knowledge and/or ability to objectively observe them. (I think the same is possible for thoughts: they may be composed of matter/energy, but we don’t have the knowledge and/or ability to objectively observe them.)
What is the nature of qualia?
Are qualia like sound waves? If a tree falls down in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
It seems that Chalmers/Nagel, by suggesting that consciousness is an irreducible property of reality, are suggesting that qualia are indeed like sound waves.
Sound waves exist independent of ears, but they don’t make noise unless they are received by an ear-like device. (Nevermind for a second that noise would be qualia. Ugh!)
I’m confused about the relationship between qualia and consciousness as far the statement “consciousness is irreducible.” Shouldn’t it rather be “qualia are irreducible?” Can anybody clarify?
If consciousness is irreducible, are we to believe that qualia (experiences) exist independent of mind-like devices that can receive them?
I should probably wait for clarity on the above before proceeding with this next thought/question, but here goes:
If qualia are irreducible, are we to think of them like units such as atoms/waves of which complex experiences are made?
For example, the experience of the smell of vanilla is made out of a unique combination of qualia, while the experience of the emotion joy is made out of a different unique combination of qualia.
If they are to be thought of as units, how do we know that these qualia are not made of the same primal element that matter/energy are made of?
Or, are we to believe that there is a unique, irreducible qualia for each experience? If so, do these qualia exist independent of the experiencer (the mind), and if they are independent, do they exist prior to the experience? How about after?
Is John's experience of the taste of a rotten apple in the spring of the year 2014 floating around in reality waiting for John to experience it?
Do they believe that reality (what is) is composed then of two fundamental elements: matter/energy and qualia/consciousness?
I think they are recursive or in someway self-sustaining. In other words, they only exist in relation to others, which also exist only in relation to others.
I’ve heard consciousness described in the same way: Picture 5-6 people arranged in a circle whereas each person is sitting on the lap of the person behind them. What is holding them up? They are all holding each other up.
So they are individual units, but they cease to exist outside of their relationship to other like units.
These units are also self-organizing by way of attracting and repelling one another.
Why should the primal element have these properties? Because if it didn’t have these properties, it wouldn’t exist.
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smcder
Guest
Why should the primal element have these properties? Because if it didn’t have these properties, it wouldn’t exist.
That's either almost as or more circular than "we have consciousness because it's adaptive"! ;-) I'm just giving you a hard time . . . great questions, I think. Wish I had some great answers, but I do have some answers or at least some information . . . will take me a bit. I do think read Nagel's What It's Like to Be a Bat (should be easy to find on the net) and this essay on it:
What is it like to be a bat?
. . . then look at your questions about subjective experiences being made up of matter and energy . . . this one drives me crazy, it's a koan, or worse. And then . . . search your soul and ask yourself why you want it to be true that qualia are composed of matter/energy (let's just go ahead and call it mattergy) . . . because I know you do! ;-) I don't think you're not so agnostic as I'm not sure you might be after all.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
It's absolutely circular. It's the same idea as the Weak Anthropic Principle which some people intuitively hate but which feels exactly right to me. I could be wrong, they could be right.
What all three of these have in common, I believe, is they are a result of selection bias: A reality that is self-sustaining exists because one that isn't self-sustaining can't; humans with consciousness exist because ones without consciousness can't [reproduce as well]; and our universe appears fine-tuned for life because if it didn't there would be no life for it to appear to.
To me, this is simply taking things in context, not the human context, but the context of reality.
To me, saying that all of reality is made of matter, except for the parts we don't understand, and that the parts we don't understand are made of X, is similar to saying reality was made by God.
And then when someone asks who made God, they say, "Oh, well, God is irreducible. Nobody made him."
Qualia may not be made of matter. I won't argue otherwise. It very well may be ontologically unique. What I would argue, though, if that were the case, was that both matter and qualia are made of an even more primal element. (Can I call that element soupia?)
On the other hand, maybe it's a matter of yin-yang, where matter is the yin and qualia is the yang, and reality is their relationship. Maybe, matter and qualia have a self-sustaining relationship like my primal element described above.
This is my belief as well.Chalmers said:
I will watch the video asap. Very intrigued.
Here's an article related to our discussion of experience:
How Animals See the World - Issue 11: Light - Nautilus
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Not all so great, I think. Examples from Soupie's list of questions, beginning with one of his statements . . .
Exactly, and that should make the point. We call them 'sound waves', but aren't they more simply electromagnetic waves existing in nature? We refer to sound waves as those waves we can hear (dogs and cats hear 'sound waves' at other frequencies than we can hear). Our sense of hearing is one of the aspects of our sensual (bodily) experience that points us to the reality of the physical world we are part of. Contemplating 'noise' in it makes you say "Ugh." Do you respond the same way to music, built in part on diatonic ratios and mathematical harmonics that exist in the EM spectrum, show up in sacred geometry, and appeal to our ears? Or to the sounds of rain falling into pools of water or onto the pavement in our currently overbuilt world? I doubt it. I think you share the aesthetic responses most of us still have to much of what we see, hear, touch, and feel in the palpable natural world. The sounds and sights of this world we live in draw us out toward its being, verify its reality, gradually compose a sense that we are natives of and participants in it.
Qualia refer to the qualitative experiences of embodied consciousnesses in the world -- and they are experiences of the world as well as of the being that enjoys or suffers them. That's us and all the animals that possess consciousness to various extents. Try to imagine earth without the presence of a single consciousness, human or animal. An unexperienced world; an unknown, unknowable, place. Not conceivably a 'world' but what phenomenologists and existentialists refer to as 'brute being', trackless in its depths, unknown, unthought, unrealized.
I am endlessly surprised by how strange and even 'unreal' personal consciousness has become to people in the English-speaking world, how unaware they seem to have become of their own continuous stream of consciousness.
On what basis would that follow?
smcder said:
Here's a poem about someone who "wants it to be true that qualia are composed of matter/energy":
Landscape with Boat
An anti-master man, floribund ascetic.
He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds,
Then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still
The sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air.
He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see
And not be touched by blue. He wanted to know,
A naked man who regarded himself in the glass
Of air, who looked for the world beneath the blue,
Without blue, without any turquoise hint or phase,
Any azure under-side or after-color. Nabob
Of bones, he rejected, he denied, to arrive
At the neutral center, the ominous element,
The single colored, colorless, primitive.
It was not as if the truth lay where he thought,
Like a phantom, in an uncreated night.
It was easier to think it lay there. If
It was nowhere else, it was there and because
It was nowhere else, its place had to be supposed,
Itself had to be supposed, a thing supposed
In a place supposed, a thing he reached
In a place that he reached, by rejecting what he saw
And denying what he heard. He would arrive.
He had only not to live, to walk in the dark,
To be projected by one void into
Another.
It was his nature to suppose
To receive what others had supposed, without
Accepting. He received what he denied.
But as truth to be accepted, he supposed
A truth beyond all truths.
He never supposed
That he might be truth, himself, or part of it,
That the things that he rejected might be part
And the irregular turquoise part, the perceptible blue
Grown dense, part, the eye so touched, so played
Upon by clouds, the ear so magnified
By thunder, parts, and all these things together,
Parts, and more things, parts. He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.
Had he been better able to suppose:
He might sit on a sofa on a balcony
Above the Mediterranean, emerald
Becoming emeralds. He might watch the palms
Flap green ears in the heat. He might observe
A yellow wine and follow a steamer's track
And say, "The thing I hum appears to be
The rhythm of this celestial pantomime"
-Wallace Stevens
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Jeff Davis
Paranormal Adept
Steve,
You are without question one of the most positive human beings I have ever encountered on a forum, of any type. There is no question that this forum GREATLY profits from your participation here, both educationally, as well as your routine fun vibe. Seriously, thank you.
Ps. I was inspired to state as much due to the fact that if one were to substitute the word consciousness for "group intelligence" in your quoted statement above, you would pretty much have one of the most "stick figure" efficient depictions of my own philosophical consciousness meanderings, possible. Thoroughly accurate and I mean on the leanest platform possible.
Go from start to finish starting with, "I agree", and throw in that word. From there to the period describes a linear consciousness process no different from the views I myself find the greatest and most reasonable favor with. peace out and again, TY/Salute.
boomerang
Paranormal Adept
As usual, I find myself lost in the enormous volume of well considered thought and opinion here. But I think there is one area of physics that illustrates our cognitive limitations in an especially poignant way. Maybe I can toss in a tidbit or two.
The mention of "point particles" sparked a dim connection in my mind to post-modern physics' struggle to understand the concept of physical emptiness, or the hypothetical perfect vacuum. It seems to turn out that our concept of "nothing" is just that, another flawed cognitive and traditionally accepted model for a phenomenon that cannot exist in nature. The fabric of empty space teems with energy. It is suffused with waves. It is never utterly still or non-dynamic. Perhaps one of the reasons we have difficulty imagining a universe created from an expanding singularity arising from nothing, is that 'nothing' is itself a null concept.
So we are back to the process of continually refining whatever is going on in this virtual reality generator between our ears, regardless of whether or not the neural tissue from which it's world seemingly arises also defines its absolute limits in space and time.
What I feel as the glue holding mind and matter together is "information". (Reality has an annoying habit of disregarding what I feel. ) Mind cannot exist without information, nor information without some manner of interpretive mind. But this is at best a circular argument that chases its own tail.
The mention of "point particles" sparked a dim connection in my mind to post-modern physics' struggle to understand the concept of physical emptiness, or the hypothetical perfect vacuum. It seems to turn out that our concept of "nothing" is just that, another flawed cognitive and traditionally accepted model for a phenomenon that cannot exist in nature. The fabric of empty space teems with energy. It is suffused with waves. It is never utterly still or non-dynamic. Perhaps one of the reasons we have difficulty imagining a universe created from an expanding singularity arising from nothing, is that 'nothing' is itself a null concept.
So we are back to the process of continually refining whatever is going on in this virtual reality generator between our ears, regardless of whether or not the neural tissue from which it's world seemingly arises also defines its absolute limits in space and time.
What I feel as the glue holding mind and matter together is "information". (Reality has an annoying habit of disregarding what I feel. ) Mind cannot exist without information, nor information without some manner of interpretive mind. But this is at best a circular argument that chases its own tail.
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smcder
Guest
Qualia refer to the qualitative experiences of embodied consciousnesses in the world -- and they are experiences of the world as well as of the being that enjoys or suffers them. That's us and all the animals that possess consciousness to various extents. Try to imagine earth without the presence of a single consciousness, human or animal. An unexperienced world; an unknown, unknowable, place. Not conceivably a 'world' but what phenomenologists and existentialists refer to as 'brute being', trackless in its depths, unknown, unthought, unrealized.
This reads like a description of the arctic . . . there is something alluring in that austerity, is it possible that this shaped some part of the phenomenologist/existentialist thinking? I know it did Nietzsche:
He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings is conscious that it is the air of the heights, a bracing air. A man must be built for it otherwise there is a real chance that one will catch a chill. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine! How freely one can breathe! How much one feels lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have understood it so far is a voluntary living in regions of ice and high mountains—the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything which hitherto morality has forbidden.
I understand Nietzsche suffered from a number of physical and nervous ailments and took long walks as a restorative - but he may have been a man profundly uncomfortable in his body . . . he was aware that philosophy is biography and physiology (our own natural history) - a fore-runner to ideas of embodied consciousness. There was also his idea that man was to be over-come, maybe an early sign of self-alienation and of what has headed us into thinking about the Singularity.
I am endlessly surprised by how strange and even 'unreal' personal consciousness has become to people in the English-speaking world, how unaware they seem to have become of their own continuous stream of consciousness.
This is reinforced by the media, it at least takes advantage of this self-alienation - takes and externalizes our imagination, in the name of democratizing it - tells you in effect what dreams you can have . . . our attention has been commodified, it's what is for sale - if you see the commercial, your behavior will be affected, unless you are very aware of the process (which involves talking back to the commercial, not passively absorbing it - better still, don't turn the TV on, better still, don't own one ;-) media evolves to take advantage of ever shorter windows of attention, one second to sell us, movies are built on increasingly rapid cuts. I think anyone suffering from anxiety and depression should consider a complete media fast. The first thing you notice is how much time you suddenly have!
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smcder
Guest
Can you tell us more about this poem, Constance?
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smcder
Guest
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smcder
Guest
To me, saying that all of reality is made of matter, except for the parts we don't understand, and that the parts we don't understand are made of X, is similar to saying reality was made by God.
And then when someone asks who made God, they say, "Oh, well, God is irreducible. Nobody made him."
Which is pretty much the structure of and state of our current scientific knowledge, but in the form of the singularity (Big Bang), beyond which, by definition - we can't know anything (what started the Big Bang?) and where the tiniest particles (below Planck's constant) wink in and out of existence . . . so . . . for the time being, pick your mythos. If that seems a simplification of science, then the above is a simplification of theology.
Here is an interesting article on the question of why is there something rather than nothing question (to harken back to Langan) and go deeper into the structure of how we think about these questions:
Why Do We Ask Why? | The Prosblogion
"Several of the essays in The Puzzle of Existence argue, in one way or another, that no non-trivial answer can be given to those who ask why there is something rather than nothing. This may be because the question is somehow confused or mistaken, as in the case of Ross who argues that there is no such entity as everything (the totality of contingent concrete things, the Cosmos, etc.), and hence there can be no explaining the existence of everything. Or it may be because the Principle of Sufficient Reason is false, and so not every legitimate why question has an answer. This line is taken by Kleinschmidt. John Heil aims to go further: to show that the question arises only within a certain sort of philosophical paradigm. Heil aims, further, to call this paradigm into question and show that an alternative paradigm is possible."
How Animals See the World - Issue 11: Light - Nautilus
interesting, someone else posted something very similar about animal vision a while back in respoonse to another discussion of the What Is It Like To Be a Bat essay . . .
“We will never know what a cat would experience,” says Dan-Eric Nilsson, a zoology professor at the University of Lund in Sweden and coauthor of the book Animal Eyes. But we can come close to seeing what it sees. Unlike humans, cats are dichromats; they have only two kinds of cones in their retinas. They see similarly to humans with red-green colorblindness, Nilsson says. To model a cat’s vision, one has to pool everything that’s red or green into one color.
So . . . this is no answer to Nagel's (rhetorical) question, right?
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smcder
Guest
Steve,
You are without question one of the most positive human beings I have ever encountered on a forum, of any type. There is no question that this forum GREATLY profits from your participation here, both educationally, as well as your routine fun vibe. Seriously, thank you.
Ps. I was inspired to state as much due to the fact that if one were to substitute the word consciousness for "group intelligence" in your quoted statement above, you would pretty much have one of the most "stick figure" efficient depictions of my own philosophical consciousness meanderings, possible. Thoroughly accurate and I mean on the leanest platform possible.
Thank you sir! I try to be upbeat and I think the paranormal is a good place for healthy humor.
And I like the substitution for group intelligence . . . very wise.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
This was nice. (I'd like to find one where he discusses the hard problem of consciousness.)
I agree with him on just about every point. (I'm not pretending we're "peers" just saying I agree with him. In a way, I feel we view the world the same way, which is why I want to better understand his thinking re qualia.)
I disagree with him re how AI+ will come about (if it comes about). He suggests AI+ will evolve in a man made simulation. He suggests in this talk that AI+ will come first, and then humans will merge with AI+. I think it is more likely AI+ (or should it be I+) will come about by man gradually merging with technology; our wetware will merge with dryware and will eventually reach a point where "we" can be completely dryware.
Why do you want it to be true that qualia are not composed of matter/energy?smcder said:
Thomas Nagel has posited that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible only to the individual undergoing them), while physical states are essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). Wiki.
Perhaps I'm being dense, but I don't understand why experiences can't be physical states that are only accessible to the mind that is experiencing them. In other words, for me, it does not follow that objective = physical and subjective = non-physical.
However, if the definition of physical/material hinges on it being objective, then by definition, subjective experiences could not be physical/material.
Picture the brain as a black box. What happens in one black box is unknowable to the other black boxes, because if one black box where to see what happened in another black box, the very act of observing would change what happened.
However, that does not mean that what happened was not physical.
I see no reason that physical experiences cannot be subjective experiences.
Qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term derives from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind". Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the perceived redness of an evening sky. Wiki.
I'm simply asking whether qualia exist independent of the mind or whether qualia are produced by the mind.
@smcder
Chalmers says:
So the residual question is whether there are viable alternatives. If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world: to use Kripke's metaphor, after fixing all the physical truths, God had to do more work to fix all the truths about consciousness. That is, there must be ontologically fundamental features of the world over and above the features characterized by physical theory. We are used to the idea that some features of the world are fundamental: in physics, features such as spacetime, mass, and charge, are taken as fundamental and not further explained. If the arguments against materialism are correct, these features from physics do not exhaust the fundamental features of the world: we need to expand our catalog of the world's basic features. ...
Chalmers, in arguing for panpsychism, would say not just the sound waves but the qualia are produced by the event and no matter if no one is around to hear them. ...
The question then arises: how do these novel fundamental properties relate to the already acknowledged fundamental properties of the world, namely those invoked in microphysics? In general, where there are fundamental properties, there are fundamental laws. So we can expect that there will be some sort of fundamental principles — psychophysical laws — connecting physical and phenomenal properties. Like the fundamental laws of relativity or quantum mechanics, these psychophysical laws will not be deducible from more basic principles, but instead will be taken as primitive.
But this is exactly what I am arguing, and you seem to be arguing against... Chalmers is saying that we have these two elements: matter and qualia that are fundamental and they operate according to fundamental laws.
We know that matter (point particles) are not irreducible, and thus it's very likely that qualia aren't irreducible either.
You and Constance seemed to like the analogy of sound waves. 1) sound waves aren't irreducible, and 2) they are a "unit" that interacts to make the plethora of sounds ear-like devices can detect. I'd like to say "and which minds experience" but it seems that minds don't experience sounds... they experience qualia...
Smcder, you say "qualia are produced by the event." What event? How are qualia produced? If the mind doesn't create qualia, then where do they come from? If they don't come from anywhere, then they just are. If they just are, then what follows is:
Tim's experience of the smell of burning tires in the fall of 2025 is floating around somewhere waiting for him to experience it.
Chalmer's says:
there must be ontologically fundamental features of the world over and above the features characterized by physical theory
Why are anti-materialists and anti-monists so pleased with this concept? How does this concept preserve the magic and majesty of experience? It doesn't. The magic, mystery, and majesty of the wonder of being that some are nostalgic for was not "destroyed" by the materialists. It was destroyed by self-awareness: awareness that the self is distinct from the rest of nature.
Qualia being fundamentally different from matter doesn't change our awareness/feeling of being tiny islands in the ocean of reality. We can only relieve the anxiety of self-awareness by temporarily experiencing the oneness of reality, and we do that by temporarily shedding the ego from time to time. Or all the time if one is a Brahman. (But that then becomes a different type of isolation.)
Modern man prides himself on his rationality without realizing it is won at the expense of his vitality. ~ Carl Jung
@smcder So . . . this is no answer to Nagel's (rhetorical) question, right?
Right.
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smcder
Guest
This ties a lot of these posts together very nicely. I think it's interesting to pay close attention to the imagery that comes in mind when we talk about these things - if you look at it closely you can see that some of these aren't right - if someone describes an infinite concentration of everything in a point I still tend to locate that point in space (in my imagination) and paradoxes, Russell's paradox, the liar's paradox - this sentence is false - Koans, all produce an intense physical discomfort when I think about them - my insides twist with the logic! I remember as a kid trying to grasp how the Moon could be outside the Earth. I had all kinds of imagery about that.
A little more formal thinking on intuition.
http://consc.net/papers/intuition.pdf
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
NOT IDEAS ABOUT THE THING BUT THE THING ITSELF
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.
That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
Wallace Stevens
VS.
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.
That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
Wallace Stevens
VS.
S
smcder
Guest
here is the uber-source for Chalmers:
David Chalmers
YouTube "chalmers hard problem of consciousness" here is a fifty video list:
also John Searle and Patricia and Paul Churchland, P&P take the "eliminative materialist" position, Dennett too is in there - consciousness as an illusion . . . .
also:
http://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf
and
Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem (some of this content is on his web-site too)
I disagree with him re how AI+ will come about (if it comes about). He suggests AI+ will evolve in a man made simulation. He suggests in this talk that AI+ will come first, and then humans will merge with AI+. I think it is more likely AI+ (or should it be I+) will come about by man gradually merging with technology; our wetware will merge with dryware and will eventually reach a point where "we" can be completely dryware.
I think he’s actually recommending that we take the process in hand and develop it in simulation, instead of just letting it happen and suggests ways to make this “safer” (no red pills!) . . . at the end of the talk folks ask how likely it would be that we could actually keep control of the process with corporate and military interests and he admits it is, well . . . complicated. ;-)
Why do you want it to be true that qualia are not composed of matter/energy?
Well, what makes you think I do?? ;-) Do you want me to argue it the other way for a while? It's an interesting, mind-bending concept and right now we seem stuck with physical intuitions, so if we say qualia is fundamental, we still turn around and want to treat it like some kind of matter. That's where some of this confusion comes in, I think. Subjectivity seems another matter still. But may also be a confusion.
I just alway tend to suspect more basic motivations behind philosophical stances - biography and physiology play a role and we are what we think. Like I said in the previous posts – there are already other fundamental elements – and you have to have rules, are the rules made of matter and energy? The fundamental constants? Is the speed of light made up of matter? So already we need more than matter. We have to have forces at least and rules. And that’s Nagel’s point about subjectivity - it’s not a literal thing that could be made of matter and energy. Either there is no such thing as subjectivity, it's an illusion or meaningless (and this is the folk psychology of eliminative materialism) or if we take subjectivity as obvious - then it's not a thing made of matter and energy, it's a basic feature of the world - but we don't look for it, it's where we stand. That's I think the rhetorical point of Nagel and he spends some time showing the difference about objective and subjective - I'll try and pull that bit out and post it.
And see the post on Ockham’s Razor if it’s parsimony that drives you. I suspect there are other consequences that are assumed to follow from the world being physical, being made of Soup or mattergy and I want to tease out what they are but also not mistakenly assume something follows that doesn't. That's not saying there's hidden agendas - although we caqn have hidden assumptions in our thought, it's awfully hard to dig them out - but anyway, it's just digging deeper - "Well, why do you think that?" that sort of thing.
Tim's experience of the smell of burning tires in the fall of 2025 is floating around somewhere waiting for him to experience it.
It kind of is in a material/deterministic universe too, right?
Chalmer's says:
there must be ontologically fundamental features of the world over and above the features characterized by physical theory
Why are anti-materialists and anti-monists so pleased with this concept?
I don't know . . . ?
How does this concept preserve the magic and majesty of experience? It doesn't. The magic, mystery, and majesty of the wonder of being that some are nostalgic for was not "destroyed" by the materialists. It was destroyed by self-awareness: awareness that the self is distinct from the rest of nature.
I've not experienced that nostalgia - so I can't speak to it.
Qualia being fundamentally different from matter doesn't change our awareness/feeling of being tiny islands in the ocean of reality. We can only relieve the anxiety of self-awareness by temporarily experiencing the oneness of reality, and we do that by temporarily shedding the ego from time to time. Or all the time if one is a Brahman. (But that then becomes a different type of isolation.)
It can definitely help! - getting absorbed in a task - simple relaxation techniques, deep breathing, exercise is great too - gets you back in the body and out of the head.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Thanks. I didn't mean to imply that I couldn't find this myself; it's just a matter of finding time to watch.
If I recall correctly, he made a list of the ways AI+ will come about, and he felt via evolutionary simulations would be the most likely to work seeing as how "dumb" evolution had already succeeded at creating intelligence. He then talked about attempting to make this simulation leak proof.
Well, what makes you think I don't?
Hmm, I've always believed that the fundamental constants emerged from the interactions of the primal elements. Similar to the way water emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules. I've always assumed the mind was similar: it emerged from the brain's interaction with the world.
Would a similar idea apply to qualia/experiences: that they emerge from the interaction of the brain with the world? See, if that is the case, I don't consider that a fundamental constant... I also don't consider that non-material.
To me, that's like saying the concept of "fun" is not made of matter and energy. What is fun? It's a concept. What is a concept? It's a symbol. Meh.
The point I was trying to make is that experiences are a product of the brain interacting with the world. To argue that experiences/qualia are just "out there" floating around disconnected from the brain seems ludicrous to me.
Nostalgia is probably not the word I was looking for... it's more of a disgust or disappointment some have with the way others view reality. I sense that some people feel that reality must have or exist for some ultimate meaning, while others - such as myself - are content to think reality just is because it can.
I've really learned a lot via this discussion. Thanks to everyone, and especially you, Smcder! I've been waiting for an opportunity to bring the paranormal back into the discussion, but we can't seem to get past the topic of consciousness.
- Status