Against Physics
rexal...@gmail.com
Let me go through my full chain of reasoning here, before I draw my
conclusion:
So the world that I perceive seems pretty orderly. When I drive to
work, it's always where I expect it to be. The people are always the
same. I pick up where I left off on the previous day, and life
generally proceeds in an orderly and predictable way. Even when
something unexpected happens, I can generally trace back along a chain
of cause and effect and determine why it happened, and understand both
why I didn't expect it and why I probably could have.
In my experience thus far, there have been no "Alice in Wonderland"
style white rabbits that suddenly appear in a totally inexplicable
way, make a few cryptic remarks while checking their pocket watch, and
then scurry off.
Why do I never see such white rabbits?
Well, at first glance, something like physicalism seems like the
obvious choice to explain my reality's perceived order - to explain
both what I experience AND what I *don't* experience. The world is
reducible to fundamental particles (waves, strings, whatever) which
have certain properties (mass, velocity, spin, charge, etc) that
determine how they interact, and it all adds up to what I see.
In this view, what I see is ultimately determined by the starting
conditions of the universe, plus the physical laws that govern the
interaction of the fundamental elements of the universe, applied over
how-many-ever billions of years. While no explanation is given for
the initial conditions, or why the fundamental laws of physics are
what they are, if you get past that then from a cause-and-effect stand
point physicalism offers a pretty solid explanation for why my world
is orderly and predictable, and why I don't see white rabbits.
And in the form of functionalism/computationalism + evolution it even
offers a pretty good foundation for explaining the existence and
mechanism of human behavior and ability.
But physicalism has a major drawback: It doesn't obviously explain
the experience of consciousness that goes with human behavior and
ability. Particles, waves, mass, spin, velocity...no matter how you
add them up, there doesn't seem to be any way to get conscious
experience.
Which is a problem, since consciousness is the portal through which we
access everything else. My conscious experience is what I know. I
"know" of other things only when they force themselves (or are forced)
into my conscious awareness.
So, physicalism does explain why we see, what we see, and why we don't
see white rabbits. But it doesn't seem to explain the conscious
experience OF seeing what we see.
Further, by positing an independently existing and well ordered
external universe to explain our orderly perceptions, we have just
pushed the question back one level. The new questions are, why does
this external universe exist and why is it so orderly? BUT, this
initially seems justified by the fact that physicalism explains how it
is possible for us to make correct predictions.
BUT, actually it explains nothing.
Nothing has been explained because we are PART of the system that we
are trying to explain by appealing to physicalism. If the order and
predictability of our experiences are due to the initial conditions of
the universe and the laws of physics, then we inhabit a universe whose
entire future, including our existence and all of our activities and
experiences, is fixed. Frozen in place by unbreakable causal
chains.
Effectively (and maybe actually), the entire future of the universe
can be seen as existing simultaneously with its beginning. We could
just as well say that the entire past, present, and future came into
being at one instant, and we are just experiencing our portion of it
in slices.
But there is no "explanation" here. This "block universe" just IS.
It just exists. It came into being for no reason, for no purpose,
with no meaning. It exists in the form that it does, and there is no
answer to the question "why?". We are part of that universe, existing
entirely within it and contained by it. Therefore we also just
exist. For no reason, for no purpose, with no meaning, our future
history also frozen in place by causal chains. What is true for the
universe as a whole is true for it's contents.
Any explanation we derive is purely local to our particular
viewpoint. In reality there is no explanation. Explanations are as
subjective as experience. Of course this doesn't mean that I get to
pick my preferred explanations, BUT I don't get to pick my experiences
either.
To try an make what I'm saying more clear: let's imagine a real
block. Say, a block of speckled granite. Now let's consider two
adjacent specks of white and gray. Why are they adjacent? What
caused them to be adjacent? Well, if we consider this block of
granite within the context of our universe, then we can say that there
is a reason in that context as to why they are adjacent. There is an
explanation, which has to do with the laws of physics and the
contingent details of the geologic history of the area where this
block of granite was formed (which is in turn derived from the
contingent details of the initial state of our entire universe).
BUT if we take this block of granite to be something that just exists,
uncaused and unique, like our universe, then there can be no
explanation. The two specks are just adjacent. That's it. No
further explanation is possible. The block of granite just exists as
it is and that's the way it is. We CAN say something like, "there's a
vein of white and a vein of gray in this block, and those two specks
exist at the boundary of the veins and so they are adjacent", BUT
while this sounds like an explanation, it really is just a statement
of observed fact. It doesn't "explain" anything. And even this
observation is made from "outside" the block, an option not available
with our universe.
If some sort of conscious intelligence exists within speck patterns of
the 2-D slices of the granite block (2-D because we've lost a
dimension on our example...the third spatial dimension of the block
will be time for these speck-beings), then who knows whether they will
even be conscious of being made from specs of granite and of existing
within this granite block with it's grey and white veins. Maybe the
speck-patterns that they are formed from will be such that their
experience is of living in a 3+1 dimensional world such as ours. But
regardless, there can be no explanation as to why their experiences
are what they are. Their experiences will be as uncaused as the
existence of the block whose speckled nature gives rise to those
experiences.
So physicalism in fact offers no advantage over just asserting that
our conscious experience just exists. Why are my perceptions orderly
and why are my predictions about what will happen next usually
correct? Because that's just the way it is...and this is true whether
you posit an external universe or just conclude that conscious
experience exists uncaused.
Bruno Marchal
On 08 Aug 2009, at 22:44, rexal...@gmail.com wrote:
> So physicalism in fact offers no advantage over just asserting that
> our conscious experience just exists. Why are my perceptions orderly
> and why are my predictions about what will happen next usually
> correct? Because that's just the way it is...and this is true whether
> you posit an external universe or just conclude that conscious
> experience exists uncaused.
This is not against physicalism, it is again rationalism.
I would say that consciousness has a reason, a purpose, and a power.
A reason: the many universal numbers and the way they reflect each
other.
A purpose: truth quest, satisfaction quest.
A power: relative self-acceleration (can lead to catastrophes, (like
all power)).
Physicists explain by finding elegant laws relating the quanta we can
measure, but fail indeed linking those quanta to the qualia we live,
and fail saying where those quanta comes from. But computer science
suggest a solution, we are universal machine mirroring doing science
"automatically" betting on "big picture" all the time, relatively to
other possible universal machines. Then theoretical computer science
can explain why we feel consciousness unexplainable and explain its
reason, purpose and power. This explains the mind, but we get the
problem of justifying the computability and the existence of the
physical laws from a vast set of computations. The white rabbits and
white noises. Those universal machine are self-multiplying and self-
differencing infinitely often in arithmetic. This is a big price: if
we are machine (a theory which explains consciousness as an
unconscious bet on a reality), we have to explain the physical laws
from computer science and logic alone. But now that explanation can be
tested in nature, making that theory refutable. And this illustrates
we don't have to abandon rationalism.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
> Against Physics
>
> Let me go through my full chain of reasoning here, before I draw my
> conclusion:
> So physicalism in fact offers no advantage over just asserting that
> our conscious experience just exists.
If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage.
would do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that, since it wouldn't be in my
future.
Your advice is beneficial only to those who receive it and benefit
from it. Please keep this in mind in the future, if that is what is
in your future.
Rex Allen
BTW, this was intended as a (mostly) sincere response to your point.
Rex Allen
>
>
> On 08 Aug 2009, at 22:44, rexal...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> So physicalism in fact offers no advantage over just asserting that
>> our conscious experience just exists. Why are my perceptions orderly
>> and why are my predictions about what will happen next usually
>> correct? Because that's just the way it is...and this is true whether
>> you posit an external universe or just conclude that conscious
>> experience exists uncaused.
>
>
>
> This is not against physicalism, it is again rationalism.
Ha! Well, maybe. What is the flaw that you see in my reasoning?
I think that both the argument and conclusion are rational, just not intuitive.
So earlier you asked this:
> By the way, what is the status of your theory with respect to comp?
Which in part prompted this new thread.
So I think that one of the things that we can be conscious of is a
descriptive theory referred to as "comp" that attempts to map the
contents of our "conscious experience over time" to
mathematically/logically defined "machines".
And, I will not be surprised if you or someone else is ultimately
successful in doing so. But while this would be interesting, I don't
think that it means anything deeper. All that it will mean is "look,
here's an interesting way of representing the contents of your
conscious experience over time".
It would just be a way of representing what "is". By which I mean:
It would just be a way of representing conscious experience.
>
> I would say that consciousness has a reason, a purpose, and a power.
>
> A reason: the many universal numbers and the way they reflect each
> other.
This doesn't sound like a "reason" to me. It sounds like an
observation, along the lines of "adjacent gray and white veins exist
within this block of granite" (from my original post).
>
> A purpose: truth quest, satisfaction quest.
This purpose would only exist as part of someone's conscious
experience. The desire for truth and/or satisfaction are things that
only exist in the context of conscious experience.
>
> A power: relative self-acceleration (can lead to catastrophes, (like
> all power)).
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
>
> Physicists explain by finding elegant laws relating the quanta we can
> measure, but fail indeed linking those quanta to the qualia we live,
> and fail saying where those quanta comes from. But computer science
> suggest a solution, we are universal machine mirroring doing science
> "automatically" betting on "big picture" all the time, relatively to
> other possible universal machines.
So our machineness precedes our conscious experience? Machines are
more fundamental than consciousness? Or machines are just a way of
representing conscious experience?
> Then theoretical computer science
> can explain why we feel consciousness unexplainable and explain its
> reason, purpose and power.
I don't see that it explains anything. Though it may be a
useful/enjoyable way of thinking about the contents of our conscious
experience.
> This explains the mind, but we get the
> problem of justifying the computability and the existence of the
> physical laws from a vast set of computations. The white rabbits and
> white noises.
So it seems to me that you aren't explaining the fact that we have
experiences. It seems to me that you are focused entirely on finding
a way of generating mathematical/logical representations of what you
and I experience that doesn't also generate representations of strange
white-rabbit experiences.
> Those universal machine are self-multiplying and self-
> differencing infinitely often in arithmetic. This is a big price: if
> we are machine (a theory which explains consciousness as an
> unconscious bet on a reality), we have to explain the physical laws
> from computer science and logic alone.
The physical laws can't be explained except in terms of other
unexplained laws, as mentioned in my previous post.
Though, I'd say that physical laws can't be explained because they
only exist in our perceptions, which are themselves uncaused and
therefore unexplainable.
> But now that explanation can be
> tested in nature, making that theory refutable. And this illustrates
> we don't have to abandon rationalism.
I think the rational conclusion from what we perceive is that
conscious experience is fundamental and uncaused.
You are saying that consciousness is NOT fundamental, and thus it IS
caused. By...numbers?
I think that you are mistaking representation for causation. Even if
numbers exist in some platonic sense, and can be related in a way that
can be seen as mirroring, representing, or even predicting my
conscious experience...I think that all this shows is that math/logic
is a really flexible tool for representing processes, relationships,
patterns, etc.
As far as the significance of accurate predictions, I refer you back
to the last paragraph of my original post. You read the part about
the granite block, right? Though, I do need to find some more
succinct way of stating that point that doesn't require the setup of
all the preceding paragraphs.
Hmmmm.
ALSO, this discussion between Sean Carroll and Mark Trodden was great,
and I think goes with my original post pretty well, especially the
last third of their discussion.
Bruno Marchal
On 09 Aug 2009, at 08:41, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 08 Aug 2009, at 22:44, rexal...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> So physicalism in fact offers no advantage over just asserting that
>>> our conscious experience just exists. Why are my perceptions
>>> orderly
>>> and why are my predictions about what will happen next usually
>>> correct? Because that's just the way it is...and this is true
>>> whether
>>> you posit an external universe or just conclude that conscious
>>> experience exists uncaused.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is not against physicalism, it is again rationalism.
>
>
> Ha! Well, maybe. What is the flaw that you see in my reasoning?
>
> I think that both the argument and conclusion are rational, just not
> intuitive.
I don't see the theory. What do you ask us to agree on, if only for
the sake of the argument.
In the conclusion I don't understand the last sentence, which seems to
me a proposition for abandoning theorizing in that field.
>
>
>
> So earlier you asked this:
>
>> By the way, what is the status of your theory with respect to comp?
>
> Which in part prompted this new thread.
>
> So I think that one of the things that we can be conscious of is a
> descriptive theory referred to as "comp" that attempts to map the
> contents of our "conscious experience over time" to
> mathematically/logically defined "machines".
No, comp is a "theology" in which you believe that you can survive a
concrete artificial brain/body transplants.
comp does not attempt this, it presupposes a level where it can be
done. Among the first consequences appears the fact that such an
attempt provably necessitates an act of faith.
>
>
> And, I will not be surprised if you or someone else is ultimately
> successful in doing so.
Being successful here means only being able to explain (physical)
observations. It is already successful in explaining the existence of
sensations, and in situating quanta with respect to qualia.
> But while this would be interesting, I don't
> think that it means anything deeper. All that it will mean is "look,
> here's an interesting way of representing the contents of your
> conscious experience over time".
Not at all, the comp theory, thanks to its Church Thesis part, and
some mathematical logic, is particularly cautious in distinguishing
the representation and the represented, and what will and will not
depend on the choice of representations. By definition of comp we bet
that there is a digital representation correct with respect to the
most probable local universal number, or computation, but the comp
theory, which is just computer science/number theory/mathematical
logic will still take the many nuances into account.
For example: it is a theorem, not depending of the choice of any
representation that all universal machines have to have a local
representation to develop a third person notion.
>
>
> It would just be a way of representing what "is". By which I mean:
> It would just be a way of representing conscious experience.
Comp explains, or if you prefer, the Löbian machine can already
explains, about simpler Löbian machines, why those simpler machine
cannot represent their notions of truth and consciousness.
Consciousness of machine M is not representable by machine M.
Comp provides a theory of consciousness, and this theory prevents us
to represent our consciousness, except by betting on a sufficiently
low level description and making an act of faith. A Löbian machine, I
recall, is a universal machine which can prove (in technical weak
sense) that she is universal. Most known Löbian machine are Peano
Arithmetic and Zermelo Frankel Set Theory.
>
>
>
>>
>> I would say that consciousness has a reason, a purpose, and a power.
>>
>> A reason: the many universal numbers and the way they reflect each
>> other.
>
> This doesn't sound like a "reason" to me. It sounds like an
> observation, along the lines of "adjacent gray and white veins exist
> within this block of granite" (from my original post).
It is a theorem in arithmetic. It is a reason, in the sense that if
you agree with some axioms of arithmetic, you can agree that those
universal numbers exist, and contemplate a sequence of unexpected
facts about them.
>
>
>
>>
>> A purpose: truth quest, satisfaction quest.
>
> This purpose would only exist as part of someone's conscious
> experience. The desire for truth and/or satisfaction are things that
> only exist in the context of conscious experience.
OK. No problem.
>
>
>
>>
>> A power: relative self-acceleration (can lead to catastrophes, (like
>> all power)).
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Hmm... I refer often to another result by Gödel, or similar discovered
by Blum and others in computer science, that universal machine/number
are infinity accelerable, and that lobian machine can shorten
arbitrarily the length of infinities of theorems. Consciousness can be
related by the inference of self-consistency, and it makes the machine
able to add that consistency as new belief leading to a new machine
provably more powerful, in its communicating or proving abilities, in
the length or speed of proofs, and the same occur for its anticipating
abilities, by a theorem of Royer.
Consciousness has probably developed with the relatively self-moving
entities for letting them anticipate their neighborhoods more and more
quickly. Comp explain both the role of consciousness and the reason
why we cannot really defined it or capture the notion in any formal
theory. Consciousness escapes representation, but feed on
representations.
>
>
>
>>
>> Physicists explain by finding elegant laws relating the quanta we can
>> measure, but fail indeed linking those quanta to the qualia we live,
>> and fail saying where those quanta comes from. But computer science
>> suggest a solution, we are universal machine mirroring doing science
>> "automatically" betting on "big picture" all the time, relatively to
>> other possible universal machines.
>
> So our machineness precedes our conscious experience?
Assuming comp:
From the third person sharable ontology you are right. First the
numbers, then consciousness.
From the first person point of view it is the contrary. First
consciousness, then the numbers.
Both view, although contradictories, fit well with what a Löbian
machine can already explain about itself.
(and fit well with Plotinus amanation/conversion transform
> Machines are
> more fundamental than consciousness? Or machines are just a way of
> representing conscious experience?
Machines/numbers cannot represent conscious experiences. They may live
them, assuming comp.
They can represent piece of computation, but, those are not
computation, they are representation of computation. No consciousness
there. It is a key point to get UDA-8 (the movie graph, MGA).
>
>
>
>> Then theoretical computer science
>> can explain why we feel consciousness unexplainable and explain its
>> reason, purpose and power.
>
> I don't see that it explains anything.
?
It explains why machine can feel consciousness uncaused, like if they
could remember in a first person way their belongness to arithmetic.
Lobian machine can explain a "strangely similar" for simpler or
actually any "definably correct by definition" Löbian machine. They
can study themselves and explore their ignorance space.
> Though it may be a
> useful/enjoyable way of thinking about the contents of our conscious
> experience.
>
>
>> This explains the mind, but we get the
>> problem of justifying the computability and the existence of the
>> physical laws from a vast set of computations. The white rabbits and
>> white noises.
>
> So it seems to me that you aren't explaining the fact that we have
> experiences.
I think this is what comp explain the best, thanks to the (rather
incredible) discovery of the universal machine(s), and then by the
work of Gödel, Löb, Solovay, for those universal machines which know
their are universal.
> It seems to me that you are focused entirely on finding
> a way of generating mathematical/logical representations of what you
> and I experience that doesn't also generate representations of strange
> white-rabbit experiences.
I reduce the mind-body into a body problem.
What I say is just: oh look, if brain works like machine then we have
to justify the appearance of physical laws by numbers only". This is
UDA. And then I add, "oh look thanks to Gödel, Löb and Solovay we can
already chat with the Lobian machine, and ask her opinion, and she can
already explain some feature of physics, up to now confirmed by
Quantum Mechanics.
>
>
>
>> Those universal machine are self-multiplying and self-
>> differencing infinitely often in arithmetic. This is a big price: if
>> we are machine (a theory which explains consciousness as an
>> unconscious bet on a reality), we have to explain the physical laws
>> from computer science and logic alone.
>
> The physical laws can't be explained except in terms of other
> unexplained laws, as mentioned in my previous post.
Of course. Without theory (axioms) we cannot explain anything. But
here the unexplained laws are just succession, addition, and
multiplication. Without them or equivalent, we just cannot get them.
Any one believing that the concept of prime number makes sense,
already believe in the theory. With comp, we can say that the theory
of everything is already taught in high school, although not presented
in that way, of course.
>
>
> Though, I'd say that physical laws can't be explained because they
> only exist in our perceptions,
Comp forces us to (re)define physics as what is first person
observable by ALL universal machine.
Physics loses its status of fundamental science, but is elevated as
sharable laws of arithmetic ("seen from inside").
All the rest is contingent geographies.
> which are themselves uncaused and
> therefore unexplainable.
They are uncaused "physically", but comp explains their logic-
arithmetical origin, which is beyond time and space. Indeed time and
space appears as inside first person psycho-theo-bio-logical category
(a place where people can easily fight on voacabularies).
Consciousness is a mathematical phenomenon, a fixed point of self-
doubting, an elementary belief in a reality if not the reality of the
doubter.
>
>
>
>> But now that explanation can be
>> tested in nature, making that theory refutable. And this illustrates
>> we don't have to abandon rationalism.
>
> I think the rational conclusion from what we perceive is that
> conscious experience is fundamental and uncaused.
Comp can make the conscious experience much more fundamental than the
Aristotelian materialist usually think, yet consciousness is
arithmetically "caused". It is an attribute of universal machine (in
an even weaker sense than usual) related to their ideal self-
consistency. It generates the belief in a reality, and the infinities
of corrections which ensue.
>
>
> You are saying that consciousness is NOT fundamental, and thus it IS
> caused. By...numbers?
Together with succession, addition and multiplication. In classical
logic.
>
>
> I think that you are mistaking representation for causation.
I don't think so at all. On the contrary, I even distinguish a
computation and a representation of a computation, like I distinguish
numbers and their relation with representations of numbers and
representations of their relations. It is where mathematical logicians
have an advantage, because such distinction is the key to comprehend
most results in logic.
I know some have still problem with this in step 7 and 8, and that's
why I propose a few math and logic.
> Even if
> numbers exist in some platonic sense, and can be related in a way that
> can be seen as mirroring, representing, or even predicting my
> conscious experience...I think that all this shows is that math/logic
> is a really flexible tool for representing processes, relationships,
> patterns, etc.
I am afraid you underestimate mathematical logic. I would defined it
here as the science of the relation between realities and their
possible representations. Comp makes possible to, exploit this to put
many light on the hard problem of consciousness. It explains there is
a an unbridgeable personal third person gap, and how the first person
can bridge it, yet.
>
>
> As far as the significance of accurate predictions, I refer you back
> to the last paragraph of my original post. You read the part about
> the granite block, right? Though, I do need to find some more
> succinct way of stating that point that doesn't require the setup of
> all the preceding paragraphs.
>
> Hmmmm.
>
> ALSO, this discussion between Sean Carroll and Mark Trodden was great,
> and I think goes with my original post pretty well, especially the
> last third of their discussion.
>
> http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/21709
I did not see the relation with consciousness. Physicsts, thanks to
Everett and decoherence explains rather well the disappearance of the
observable white rabbits, and this in a elegant way (phases
randomization of waves of coherent interactions), this may explain why
apparently we live in a quantum universal machine. My point is just
that if you "say yes to the digital medication", then we have to
justify that quantum universal machine from a sum on all classical
computations.
Bit from qubit, is already understood,
I say comp gives an inverse, Qubit from bit, and that its main
usefulness is that the inverse is enriched by its distinction between
the sharable quanta and its incommunicable qualia extension. This is
AUDA where the modalities are given by two mathematical theories of
self-reference G and G*.
Assuming comp you can no more invoke quantum fluctuations, you have to
derive them from universal specification. That works not too bad.
I don't like the idea to consider matter as fundamental, 'cause I want
an explanation there.
I don't like the idea to put consciousness as fundamental, ' cause I
want an explanation, there too.
I like numbers and their relations as fundamental, because many
persons can share them, and tshare heir beliefs on them, and yet
numbers and their relation have been discovered to lead to
uncomputable richness. Besides, betting on comp makes me bet that I
am , well not really one of them, but (one of them) multiplied by
infinities.
Comp invites to study theoretical computer science.
And computer can already shows us the infinite complex border of a
simple universal thing, like an iterated enlargement of the Mandelbrot
Set:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C95kKDH-ecc&feature=channel_page
Bruno
David Nyman
Rex, just a few general points on your posts. The various 'existence'
arguments I've been putting forward recently are intended precisely to
show how our first-person world of meaning and intention is embedded
in a more general environment that is congruent with, rather than
alien to, these self-evident features. What of course is striking
about your proposals is that in reality nobody behaves as though they
believe this sort of thing: which is not of course to say that this
makes it uninteresting. In fact exactly the opposite: the very fact
that the world according to physics presents itself in this chilling
way makes challenging its assumptions all the more urgent.
Hence my attempts to pump intuitions about the source of the presence,
self-access and self-motivation inherent in the ontologically real, as
contrasted with the provisional and fundamentally epistemological
status of the theoretical constructions of physics. By ontologically
real I mean of course what is self-evident in the form of the
ontological first person. And in fact it really doesn't take that
much intuitive tweaking to achieve this, whether applied to the
putative primitive entities of physics, comp, or any other schema.
Essentially the intuition is that these primitives reduce in the final
analysis to the self-encounter of a primary, self-evident continuum:
i.e. a primitive self-relativisation that collapses both perception
(primitive self-access) and intention (primitive self-action) Such a
self-relativising duality of continuousness and discreteness is
indispensable to any personal account of 'owned' experience and
action, via the inheritance of such ownership from the primitive
context. From this it can naturally follow that whatever is perceived
is MY perception, whatever is done is MY action, and whatever is
determined is MY determination.
The key to seeing this is a simple appeal to the reductio ad
absurdum. Just assume the opposite (as the dogma asserts) and - pouf!
- the very appearance and sensation of anything whatsoever is
irretrievably lost. And it turns out that this assuming of the
opposite is quite unjustified by the facts. It is merely the dogmatic
adoption of the externalised 'view from nowhere' - a useful heuristic
in context - as a universal alethiometer. Of course, these basic
concepts find historic kinship with Vedantic and Buddhist insights,
and in the Western tradition via Plotinus, Kant, et al - and even in
the world-views of practising physicists such as Schroedinger and
Eddington..
I wonder if I can encourage you to take a break from contemplating the
block universe 'out there' and meditate on the intrinsic inwardness
that lies all around us?
David
> On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Bruno Marchal<marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Rex Allen
>
> I don't see the theory. What do you ask us to agree on, if only for
> the sake of the argument.
So, while the contents of my experience...the things that I'm
conscious OF are complex and structured, my conscious experience of
these things is singular and indivisible.
As such, I feel that it is reasonable to say that conscious experience
itself is uncaused and fundamental.
Given that conscious experience is uncaused, it can't be explained in
terms of other things, like quarks and electromagnetism or numbers and
arithmetic.
Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
No explanation can be given for uncaused fundamental events or
entities. And further, no meaningful explanation can be given for
events or entities that are themselves *wholly* caused by uncaused
events. These things just are.
So let's say a closed system of entities comes into being uncaused.
Any properties that the individual components of this system have are
also uncaused, and the ways that the components interact are uncaused
as well. This system is a universe unto itself.
So I am saying that no matter how this system evolves, no aspect of
the system can ever be given a meaningful explanation. The
meaningless of it's initial state means that all subsequent states are
equally meaningless in an absolute sense. All that we can do is
describe what the system does. But description is not explanation.
Further, even if the system seems predictable, there is no reason to
think that it will continue in it's predicitablity. And neither is
there any reason to think that it won't continue it's predictable
pattern. The system follows it's own "uncaused" rules, which we may
be able to guess at, but which we cannot know, due to the system's
fundamentally uncaused nature.
I think this is more obvious if you look at the system as a "block
universe", where time is treated as a sort of spatial dimension, and
so all states of the system exist simultaneously, like my previous
example of the block of granite. Why does state B follow state A?
Why is slice B adjacent to slice A? Because that's just the way this
uncaused system is.
Looking for meaning in the system is like looking for hidden messages
in randomly generated character strings. You may find them, but the
messages can not have any real meaning, no matter how meaningful they
look.
> In the conclusion I don't understand the last sentence, which seems to
> me a proposition for abandoning theorizing in that field.
Well, the search for a theoretical model that is fully consistent what
what we consciously observed is still a reasonable goal in terms of
challenging intellectual endeavor. And if that's what your future
conscious experiences hold for you, then that's what you will do (no
free will here).
>> Machines are
>> more fundamental than consciousness? Or machines are just a way of
>> representing conscious experience?
>
> Machines/numbers cannot represent conscious experiences.
You are correct, I misspoke. I should have said "machines are just a
way of representing the CONTENTS of conscious experience."
> Comp can make the conscious experience much more fundamental than the
> Aristotelian materialist usually think, yet consciousness is
> arithmetically "caused". It is an attribute of universal machine (in
> an even weaker sense than usual) related to their ideal self-
> consistency. It generates the belief in a reality, and the infinities
> of corrections which ensue.
To me this has as much of an "explanatory gap" as materialism.
Consciousness is caused by arithmetical relationships? Why would this
be? Why would arithmetical relationships result in conscious
experience?
Rex Allen
>
> What of course is striking
> about your proposals is that in reality nobody behaves as though they
> believe this sort of thing: which is not of course to say that this
> makes it uninteresting.
You speak as if though we have a choice as to how we behave! This I
can't see at all.
Whether our behavior is caused subatomic particles or arithmetic, or
is completely uncaused, there is no room for libertarian free will.
> I wonder if I can encourage you to take a break from contemplating the
> block universe 'out there' and meditate on the intrinsic inwardness
> that lies all around us?
Well, I'm just using the block universe as a way of trying to make my
point more clear.
My point being that consciousness is fundamental and uncaused.
My secondary point being that even if consciousness is NOT
fundamental, then it is STILL ultimately uncaused if it results from
any system that is itself uncaused...
My tertiary point being that if we have no evidence which points one
way or the other between consciousness being fundamental or not, the
default position would seem to be that it is fundamental.
David Nyman
> You speak as if though we have a choice as to how we behave! This I
> can't see at all.
>
> Whether our behavior is caused subatomic particles or arithmetic, or
> is completely uncaused, there is no room for libertarian free will.
Whether will is free, and whether it is mine, are different issues.
Complete freedom of will involves a contradiction - randomness is not
choice, and choice always entails constraints. Indeed it is ironical
that when we are most self-willed we often say how 'determined' we
feel. Freedom of will consists in my not being prevented from doing
whatsoever I am capable of, and this is something that evolves. For
example, today I am both capable of, and not prevented from, being in
New York tomorrow; 100 years ago I would not have had such capability,
and hence no freedom in this matter.
However, 'free' or not, the willing can still be *ours*. The standard
view of physics is that things are causally closed 'out there', and
this seems to rule out that such causation can in any sense be 'owned'
by us. This is the view that I think is mistaken, precisely because
it is contradicted by our very experience. And far from being
'illusory', this is the most cogent reason possible to doubt such a
view. Illusions, it should be recalled, are not incorrect
perceptions; the perceptions are correct, even if the object of
perception is other than we imagine. And here it is precisely the
ownership self-evidently present to us that requires explanation.
Such an explanation entails that ownership be intrinsic to the whole
of existence, and thus that every "I" is a point-of-view of that
whole, not an isolated soul.
> Well, I'm just using the block universe as a way of trying to make my
> point more clear.
>
> My point being that consciousness is fundamental and uncaused.
>
> My secondary point being that even if consciousness is NOT
> fundamental, then it is STILL ultimately uncaused if it results from
> any system that is itself uncaused...
>
> My tertiary point being that if we have no evidence which points one
> way or the other between consciousness being fundamental or not, the
> default position would seem to be that it is fundamental.
Well of course any regress must stop somewhere, and in this sense
everything is fundamentally uncaused (unless one subscribes to the
magic power of arithmetical truth to pluck up reality by its
hair-roots). But beyond this, causation still retains a vital sense
in the inter-relation of the essential features of existence. To be
willing to say nothing on this strikes us more or less dumb, and I
don't think this aspect is what Wittgenstein had in mind in his famous
dictum.
As to whether consciousness is fundamental, there I am in sympathy,
although as you know by now I put a slightly different slant on it by
seeking to show that existence itself is in effect equivalent to what
we call consciousness. The reason I do this is to eliminate any need
to invoke something like panpsychism as an adjunct to physicalism - in
my view this is tantamount to dualism, with all the incoherencies that
entails. I don't believe that this is arbitrary in the least: the
notion of a species of 'existence' conceived as totally devoid of
self-access, such as that usually assumed to be implied by physics, is
self-annihilating. IOW it is an 'existence' that nobody would ever
know about, thus falling victim to Occam's razor in the most egregious
degree. So on this basis, we may assert two axioms:
1) Existence simply IS a self-causing self-accessing continuity
2) All phenomena appear as self-relativisations of 1)
From these axioms, we can build a subsidiary notion of causation which
achieves 'closure' step-by-step through the indivisibility of
self-cause and self-access. My contention is that any causal schema
must have these features even to begin to account for our presence in
the context of what we observe. Having questioned Bruno pretty
closely I now feel reasonably convinced that he takes COMP to fulfil
these criteria via the self-reflecting, self-relating characteristics
of the number realm. This is not at all to say that COMP is thereby
true; only that it isn't obviously false on this basis.
Standard physicalism, on the other hand, by banishing self-access from
its fundamental notions of causal adequacy (though arrogating the
right to whisk a mysteriously powerless ghost of it back later by
sleight of intuition) is clearly false (incomplete is the more politic
term). The reason this isn't more widely understood rests of course
on the prestige of science, the authority of which has reached the
point where we're apparently willing to take seriously the absurdity
that the universe is a sterile pointless farago that could as well
play out in the absence of all experience.
BTW Rex, your recent presence on the list has been welcome and
thought-provoking. It would be interesting to know a little about the
background you bring to your thinking.
David
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Bruno Marchal
On 11 Aug 2009, at 07:13, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>> I don't see the theory. What do you ask us to agree on, if only for
>> the sake of the argument.
>
> So, while the contents of my experience...the things that I'm
> conscious OF are complex and structured, my conscious experience of
> these things is singular and indivisible.
I can be OK with this.
>
>
> As such, I feel that it is reasonable to say that conscious experience
> itself is uncaused and fundamental.
This has no meaning for me. It is like saying "don't ask".
Also, what do your theory say about accepting or not an artificial
brain?
More generally, how do you see the relation between brain and
conscience?
>
>
> Given that conscious experience is uncaused, it can't be explained in
> terms of other things, like quarks and electromagnetism or numbers and
> arithmetic.
But quarck and electromanetism have been unified, and can be explain
from more primitive things (group theory, invariance, etc.).
Natural numbers are the rare object which we cannot derive from
anything simpler. And natural numbers + addition and multiplication
can explain why it has to be like that. This is indeed an argument for
accepting numbers, or theories as rich as numbers, as giving the
simplest primitive elements.
And since Skolem, Gödel, etc. we know that arithmetical truth is
*big*. Bigger that what any machine can really explore, but machine
can dream about it, and get genuine big picture of it.
>
>
> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>
> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
? I can't accept this, because I am interested in the how and why of
complexity of things and happenings.
>
>
> No explanation can be given for uncaused fundamental events or
> entities.
But what are your assumptions about those entities? You theory does
look like what the guardian G* tells to the "enlightened machine" G:
you will not prove your consistency. But the machine can prove that IF
she is consistent, then G* is right about that. So, on one level, I
understand why you say so, and at another level I explain why you say
so.
"understanding" is a complex notion. Theories are not build to
understand, but to get a coherent (hopefully correct) picture.
> And further, no meaningful explanation can be given for
> events or entities that are themselves *wholly* caused by uncaused
> events. These things just are.
>
> So let's say a closed system of entities comes into being uncaused.
> Any properties that the individual components of this system have are
> also uncaused, and the ways that the components interact are uncaused
> as well. This system is a universe unto itself.
>
> So I am saying that no matter how this system evolves, no aspect of
> the system can ever be given a meaningful explanation.
You put something which cannot be explained in the hat.
You get something which cannot be explained in the hat.
> The
> meaningless of it's initial state means that all subsequent states are
> equally meaningless in an absolute sense. All that we can do is
> describe what the system does. But description is not explanation.
OK.
>
> Further, even if the system seems predictable, there is no reason to
> think that it will continue in it's predicitablity. And neither is
> there any reason to think that it won't continue it's predictable
> pattern. The system follows it's own "uncaused" rules, which we may
> be able to guess at, but which we cannot know, due to the system's
> fundamentally uncaused nature.
>
> I think this is more obvious if you look at the system as a "block
> universe", where time is treated as a sort of spatial dimension, and
> so all states of the system exist simultaneously, like my previous
> example of the block of granite. Why does state B follow state A?
> Why is slice B adjacent to slice A? Because that's just the way this
> uncaused system is.
It is big amorphous blob. Weird theory. I don't see the relation with
the universe, nor even with consciousness.
>
>
> Looking for meaning in the system is like looking for hidden messages
> in randomly generated character strings. You may find them, but the
> messages can not have any real meaning, no matter how meaningful they
> look.
>
>
>> In the conclusion I don't understand the last sentence, which seems
>> to
>> me a proposition for abandoning theorizing in that field.
>
> Well, the search for a theoretical model that is fully consistent what
> what we consciously observed is still a reasonable goal in terms of
> challenging intellectual endeavor. And if that's what your future
> conscious experiences hold for you, then that's what you will do (no
> free will here).
Free will is an oxymoron. "Free" will makes sense for numbers.
>
>
>
>>> Machines are
>>> more fundamental than consciousness? Or machines are just a way of
>>> representing conscious experience?
>>
>> Machines/numbers cannot represent conscious experiences.
>
> You are correct, I misspoke. I should have said "machines are just a
> way of representing the CONTENTS of conscious experience."
OK. relatively to other universal numbers.
>
>
>
>> Comp can make the conscious experience much more fundamental than the
>> Aristotelian materialist usually think, yet consciousness is
>> arithmetically "caused". It is an attribute of universal machine (in
>> an even weaker sense than usual) related to their ideal self-
>> consistency. It generates the belief in a reality, and the infinities
>> of corrections which ensue.
>
> To me this has as much of an "explanatory gap" as materialism.
Except that comp explains where the gap originates from. Better, it
gives it a geometry and its relation with the appearances, making the
theory testable.
>
> Consciousness is caused by arithmetical relationships? Why would this
> be?
Any rational agent (be it a god or a machine) can understand that once
we accept a material physical artificial digital brain, then it has to
be like that. This is in part due to the fact that if the brain act
digitally, its functioning is entirely equivalent with relation
between numbers. It is part of computer science. (This is eaxctly what
I explain now in the seventh thread).
> Why would arithmetical relationships result in conscious
> experience?
Because arithmetical relationship described the theology and the
science of self-observing machine. No machine can know as such its own
theology, but machine can get the theological science about simpler
machine, and then lift its logic on themselves (so they can remain
consistent in the process), and escape locally the incompleteness.
I am not saying that truth is like that, but that if you say yes to a
doctor and survive the graft, then it has to be like that.
Bruno
Brent Meeker
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>> I don't see the theory. What do you ask us to agree on, if only for
>> the sake of the argument.
>>
>
> So, while the contents of my experience...the things that I'm
> conscious OF are complex and structured, my conscious experience of
> these things is singular and indivisible.
>
> As such, I feel that it is reasonable to say that conscious experience
> itself is uncaused and fundamental.
>
> Given that conscious experience is uncaused, it can't be explained in
> terms of other things, like quarks and electromagnetism or numbers and
> arithmetic.
>
> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>
Didn't anyone ever explain arithmetic or geometry to you? Not every
explanation needs to be a causal one. And being uncaused doesn't
prevent explanation - for example decay of an unstable nucleus is
uncaused, i.e. it is random, but it is still explained by quantum mechanics.
I think you point is better made by observing that an explanation must
be of something less known in terms of something better known. Since
nothing can be better known than our own subjective experience, it
cannot be explained.
I'm not sure I buy that, but I understand it.
Brent
> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
>
> No explanation can be given for uncaused fundamental events or
> entities. And further, no meaningful explanation can be given for
> events or entities that are themselves *wholly* caused by uncaused
> events. These things just are.
>
> So let's say a closed system of entities comes into being uncaused.
> Any properties that the individual components of this system have are
> also uncaused, and the ways that the components interact are uncaused
> as well. This system is a universe unto itself.
>
> So I am saying that no matter how this system evolves, no aspect of
> the system can ever be given a meaningful explanation.
Now you've introduced another term "meaningful" explanation. If one can
understand it, it must be meaningful.
> The
> meaningless of it's initial state means that all subsequent states are
> equally meaningless in an absolute sense. All that we can do is
> describe what the system does. But description is not explanation.
>
It can be if it's a description of something you don't understand in
terms of something you do.
> Further, even if the system seems predictable, there is no reason to
> think that it will continue in it's predicitablity.
If it has been predictable in the past, that is a reason to think it
will be predictable in the future. That's virtuous circularity.
> And neither is
> there any reason to think that it won't continue it's predictable
> pattern. The system follows it's own "uncaused" rules, which we may
> be able to guess at, but which we cannot know, due to the system's
> fundamentally uncaused nature.
>
You seem to take the position that because knowledge isn't certain no
knowledge is possible.
> I think this is more obvious if you look at the system as a "block
> universe", where time is treated as a sort of spatial dimension, and
> so all states of the system exist simultaneously, like my previous
> example of the block of granite. Why does state B follow state A?
> Why is slice B adjacent to slice A? Because that's just the way this
> uncaused system is.
>
The block universe is model we use for thinking about some problems.
It's not a good one for thinking about whether to have a cup of coffee.
Good question.
Brent
russell standish
> Didn't anyone ever explain arithmetic or geometry to you? Not every
> explanation needs to be a causal one. And being uncaused doesn't
> prevent explanation - for example decay of an unstable nucleus is
> uncaused, i.e. it is random, but it is still explained by quantum mechanics.
>
Thank you for that comment! Sometimes I feel like I'm alone in the
wilderness with only people who believe all explanations must be
causal for company.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rex Allen
David:
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:38 AM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The standard view of physics is that things are causally closed
> 'out there', and this seems to rule out that such causation can
> in any sense be 'owned' by us.
Exactly. This is a good way of putting it. In this case our choices
would be 'owned' by the physical universe as whole. Not just the bits
of matter that had some causal influence on the choice, but also the
physical laws by which that causal influence was transmitted.
> Illusions, it should be recalled, are not incorrect
> perceptions; the perceptions are correct, even if the object of
> perception is other than we imagine. And here it is precisely the
> ownership self-evidently present to us that requires explanation.
I agree with this also. I think. The feeling of free will is a type
of qualia. There's something that it's like to be in pain. There's
something that it's like to make a decision.
BUT I don't think this "free will" issue is a particularly crucial
point. I could say more about it, but it seems like a tangent. Not
entirely unrelated, but not central either. So I'll move on.
> My contention is that any causal schema
> must have these features even to begin to account for our presence in
> the context of what we observe.
Causality. Causality. Causalty. Hmmm.
So really I am arguing against causal explanations. I think this the
core of my current argument. The feeling that something is happening
*NOW* is just another example of qualia I think. The certainty of
feeling that *that* caused *this*...more qualia.
Causality doesn't get you anywhere, because it doesn't start cleanly.
This is why I keep bringing up "uncaused" beginnings. If *this*
happened because of *that*, then why did *that* happen? You can't get
to the start of it in a way that makes sense.
If you have the starting conditions (which are uncaused) and the laws
that govern the evolution of the system (also uncaused), then the rest
is basically a given, right? A mere formality. Anything that follows
was implicit within the starting conditions and the governing laws.
Every step in the evolution of the system can be seen as existing
simultaneously with it's beginning. And as such the entire system
JUST EXISTS. Uncaused. Acausal. Fundamental.
If you exist within such a system, your entire experience exists as a
result of the starting conditions and governing laws, and exists
simultaneously with the system's beginning and all it's subsequent
states. Again, there is no answer to any question of "why" in
reference to the system. The system just is the way it is. It's
starting conditions are axiomatic, it's governing rules are
inferential, it's results are tautological.
> The reason this isn't more widely understood rests of course
> on the prestige of science, the authority of which has reached the
> point where we're apparently willing to take seriously the absurdity
> that the universe is a sterile pointless farago that could as well
> play out in the absence of all experience.
I agree. A lot of inconvenient questions seem to have gotten swept
under the rug.
So as I've mentioned, it seems to me that science's role is to
construct theoretical models that accurately match what we have
observed. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. But obviously
they've had great success with this, thus their authority. But, as I
mentioned above, it is what it is. Things will play out the way they
play out. Tautology.
> BTW Rex, your recent presence on the list has been welcome and
> thought-provoking.
Ah! Thanks, glad to hear it!
> It would be interesting to know a little about the
> background you bring to your thinking.
Well, I have a BS in computer systems engineering, and 2 years of
graduate school in the same, though I never quite got around to
finishing my thesis, so no MSCSEG degree to show for my efforts. And
I've been a computer programmer for 15 years, in various
areas...mainly cartography, communications, business accounting
software, web development, and gaming.
So not to go into too much detail, but probably the key moments in the
development of my philosophical world view were:
1) Realizing that deterministic classical physics meant no
libertarian free will when I was 21 years old or so, about 2 minutes
before a professor wrote on the chalk board in big letters "NO FREE
WILL". For those 2 minutes though, I was really thunderstruck. I
thought "Holy crap, this is incredible! Am I the first person to
realize this???" So I spent the next 9 years or so trying to come to
grips with the implications of that, which was hard, because I really
wanted to take full credit for all the great things I'd done. But,
then as my 30th birthday came and went, I decided maybe I didn't have
that many great things to take credit for after all, so screw free
will. Who needs it anyway.
2) My introduction to functionalism and computationalism and some of
the related issues like the strange implications of multiple
realizeability via Hans Moravec's book "Robot: Mere Machine to
Transcendent Mind" in the late 1990s. This gave me something to think
about in my spare time for several years.
3) AND, most recently, about 18 months ago, when I finally got around
to reading David Chalmers' paper "Facing Up to the Problem of
Consciousness". I'd heard a little about the "hard problem" of
consciousness prior to that, and I was familiar with the basic issues,
but I didn't fully understand until that moment. It wasn't quite the
shock that my free will "discovery" had been, but it was still a
moment of revelation, where one second I didn't see the problem at
all, and the next second I couldn't believe that I had failed to see
it for so long.
Since then I've put a lot more time into trying to understand what it
all means. And I'm leaning towards concluding that it doesn't "mean"
anything. It just is. Which is a strange conclusion to come to after
18 months of pretty intense thought...
David Nyman
> Causality. Causality. Causalty. Hmmm.
>
> So really I am arguing against causal explanations. I think this the
> core of my current argument. The feeling that something is happening
> *NOW* is just another example of qualia I think. The certainty of
> feeling that *that* caused *this*...more qualia.
>
> Causality doesn't get you anywhere, because it doesn't start cleanly.
> This is why I keep bringing up "uncaused" beginnings. If *this*
> happened because of *that*, then why did *that* happen? You can't get
> to the start of it in a way that makes sense.
vocabulary here. Perhaps the sense of 'causal' you're having a
problem with is summed up in Wittgenstein's (other ) well-known
dictum: "Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery". The
sense in which I've been using it focuses on 'how', not 'that', which
at least leaves us something to say.
> 1) Realizing that deterministic classical physics meant no
> libertarian free will when I was 21 years old or so, about 2 minutes
> before a professor wrote on the chalk board in big letters "NO FREE
> WILL". For those 2 minutes though, I was really thunderstruck. I
> thought "Holy crap, this is incredible! Am I the first person to
> realize this???" So I spent the next 9 years or so trying to come to
> grips with the implications of that, which was hard, because I really
> wanted to take full credit for all the great things I'd done. But,
> then as my 30th birthday came and went, I decided maybe I didn't have
> that many great things to take credit for after all, so screw free
> will. Who needs it anyway.
we've said, the real insight only comes when we see *whose* will we're
talking about. What we choose is ours; that part we can be sure of -
the freedom bit is more of an exploration. But as they say, the sign
of maturity is taking ownership. And exploring can be fun.
> 2) My introduction to functionalism and computationalism and some of
> the related issues like the strange implications of multiple
> realizeability via Hans Moravec's book "Robot: Mere Machine to
> Transcendent Mind" in the late 1990s. This gave me something to think
> about in my spare time for several years.
discussion of this stuff here and elsewhere. Bruno's work sheds real
light on this, I believe. Again, if the 'ownership' issues aren't
faced head-on: confusion and paradox.
> 3) AND, most recently, about 18 months ago, when I finally got around
> to reading David Chalmers' paper "Facing Up to the Problem of
> Consciousness". I'd heard a little about the "hard problem" of
> consciousness prior to that, and I was familiar with the basic issues,
> but I didn't fully understand until that moment. It wasn't quite the
> shock that my free will "discovery" had been, but it was still a
> moment of revelation, where one second I didn't see the problem at
> all, and the next second I couldn't believe that I had failed to see
> it for so long.
think he finks out. He doesn't seem to get that the whole zombie
thing is caused by his dogmatic assumption of the 'causal closure' of
physics. He's still mesmerised by an epistemology he takes to have
been incontrovertibly established as the unique ontological substrate
("Theory of Everything" - what a great slogan!) Or rather he seems to
glimpse the problem - and what the fix is - but in the end he backs
away into yet another version of epiphenomenal psycho-physical
parallelism. This is what I mean by paradox and confusion.
> Since then I've put a lot more time into trying to understand what it
> all means. And I'm leaning towards concluding that it doesn't "mean"
> anything. It just is. Which is a strange conclusion to come to after
> 18 months of pretty intense thought...
something, don't you? Hang on though - just who is this 'you' anyway?
Didn't we conclude earlier on that 'you' - your point of view, your
experience, your intentions, your very 'self' - are just on loan from
'it'? Mightn't that suggest that 'it' has rights of possession on
anything of 'yours'? Hmm...
Still sure it doesn't mean anything?
David
>
> >
>
Rex Allen
>>
>> As such, I feel that it is reasonable to say that conscious experience
>> itself is uncaused and fundamental.
>
> This has no meaning for me. It is like saying "don't ask".
Hmmmmm. You don't at all see what I'm trying to say?
Okay, how about this: Reality is tautological.
So if our conscious experience is caused by a rule-following system,
based on a sequence of determinisitc transforms applied to an initial
state...and this is true of both physicalism and your theory I
think...then our conscious experience just is what it is. Tautology.
Everything that follows was implicit in the setup.
And there's no obvious reason that the "unpacked" version, where what
follows is made *explicit*, shouldn't be considered as a whole - with
the beginning, middle, and end states seen as existing simultaneously
and timelessly. This makes the view that "it just is what it is" even
more obvious.
> Also, what do your theory say about accepting or not an artificial
> brain?
IF consciousness is caused, then whether you accept or not is a
forgone conclusion, implicit in the initial setup (initial state +
transformation rules) of the system that caused your conscious
experience. So there is no real choice to "accept or decline". Only
the conscious experience of a choice.
If consciousness is UNCAUSED and fundamental, then...same answer.
There is no real choice to "accept or decline". Only the conscious
experience of a choice.
> More generally, how do you see the relation between brain and
> conscience?
Brains only exist as something that we consciously perceive.
I'm sure that my brain can be viewed as representing the contents of
my experience. And I'm sure that a computer program could also be
written that would represent the contents of my conscious experience
and whose representational state would evolve as the program ran so
that it continued to match the contents of my experience over time.
But this would not mean that the program was conscious, or that my
brain is the source of my consciousness.
The living brain and the executing computer program both just
represent the contents of my conscious experience, in the same way
that a map represents the actual terrain.
>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>>
>> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
>> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
>
> ? I can't accept this, because I am interested in the how and why of
> complexity of things and happenings.
So you can look for patterns in what you observe, and interesting ways
to represent what you have observed in the past. But this is as far
as you can go I think. For the reasons outlined above. Your
observations just are what they are. There's no real explanation for
them...only pseudo-explanations.
>> No explanation can be given for uncaused fundamental events or
>> entities.
>
> But what are your assumptions about those entities? You theory does
> look like what the guardian G* tells to the "enlightened machine" G:
> you will not prove your consistency. But the machine can prove that IF
> she is consistent, then G* is right about that. So, on one level, I
> understand why you say so, and at another level I explain why you say
> so.
So I lean towards the idea that only our conscious experiences are
"real". Things obviously exist as contents of conscious experiences.
I don't have any assumptions about them. They just are what they are,
because the conscious experience that "contains" them is what it is.
Tautology.
I *think* I'm leaning towards saying that a lot of this stuff about
"knowing" is just a type of qualia. But I'm not sure. I'm still
thinking that part out.
> "understanding" is a complex notion. Theories are not build to
> understand, but to get a coherent (hopefully correct) picture.
So I think it's reasonable to speak as though quarks and electrons are
real, if that helps the process of developing mathematical/narrative
models that fit our observations. There are *useful fictions*, and
then there's what actually is. Quarks and electrons are useful
fictions. Conscious experience is what actually is.
>> I think this is more obvious if you look at the system as a "block
>> universe", where time is treated as a sort of spatial dimension, and
>> so all states of the system exist simultaneously, like my previous
>> example of the block of granite. Why does state B follow state A?
>> Why is slice B adjacent to slice A? Because that's just the way this
>> uncaused system is.
>
> It is big amorphous blob. Weird theory. I don't see the relation with
> the universe, nor even with consciousness.
So I'm saying that IF physicalism is true, then our universe is just
like that. If physicalism is true then how else could it be? And if
this physical universe is what causes our conscious experience, then
our conscious experience is just like that.
>> Why would arithmetical relationships result in conscious
>> experience?
>
> Because arithmetical relationship described the theology and the
> science of self-observing machine. No machine can know as such its own
> theology, but machine can get the theological science about simpler
> machine, and then lift its logic on themselves (so they can remain
> consistent in the process), and escape locally the incompleteness.
>
> I am not saying that truth is like that, but that if you say yes to a
> doctor and survive the graft, then it has to be like that.
So I can (sort of) see how a logical machine might symbolically
represent reality in this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question
of why there should be a conscious experience associated with the
machine symbolically representing reality this way.
Does it?
--
To put it slightly differently, the machine might be in a state that
could be 3rd-person interpreted as the machine representing reality
this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question of why there should
be a conscious experience associated with the machine being in this
state.
Does it?
Brent Meeker
When you set fire to a map the land doesn't burn.
Brent
Rex Allen
>>
>> The living brain and the executing computer program both just
>> represent the contents of my conscious experience, in the same way
>> that a map represents the actual terrain.
>
> When you set fire to a map the land doesn't burn.
>
If you set fire to the computer running the simulation of my brain and
it's virtual environment, would my conscious experience burn?
Rex Allen
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>
> Didn't anyone ever explain arithmetic or geometry to you? Not every
> explanation needs to be a causal one.
Well, I think that's what I'm saying. Causal explanations are not
really explanations, because you can never trace the causal chain back
to it's ultimate source. Or if you do, the ultimate source is itself
uncaused. So, if you rephrase the answer in terms of ultimate causes,
you end up inserting either "unknown" or "uncaused" everywhere.
So causal explanations are subjective...only meaningful within a
limited context. Going back to my granite block example:
Let's consider two adjacent specks of white and gray found within a
block of granite. Why are they adjacent? What caused them to be
adjacent? Well, if we consider this block of granite within the
context of our universe, then we can say that there is a reason in
that context as to why they are adjacent. There is an explanation,
which has to do with the laws of physics and the contingent details of
the geologic history of the area where this block of granite was
formed (which is in turn derived from the contingent details of the
initial state of our entire universe).
BUT if we take an identical block of granite to be something that just
exists uncaused, like our universe, then there can be no explanation.
The two specks are just adjacent. That's it. No further explanation
is possible.
So in the first case, the geologic explanation makes sense in a local
subjective way, but not in an absolute way, because the universe that
provides the context for the geologic explanation has no reason behind
its initial state or it's governing laws of physics. The universe
just is the way it is. Therefore, ultimately the block of granite
just is the way it is.
> And being uncaused doesn't
> prevent explanation - for example decay of an unstable nucleus is
> uncaused, i.e. it is random, but it is still explained by quantum mechanics.
So you can explain it within the context of the laws of our universe,
but this just raises the question of why the laws of our universe are
what they are.
Ultimately your answer is: unstable nuclei decay because that's what
unstable nuclei do. Tautology.
> I think you point is better made by observing that an explanation must
> be of something less known in terms of something better known. Since
> nothing can be better known than our own subjective experience, it
> cannot be explained.
Well, that is pretty good. I'll file it away for future use. Thanks!
>> So I am saying that no matter how this system evolves, no aspect of
>> the system can ever be given a meaningful explanation.
>
> Now you've introduced another term "meaningful" explanation. If one can
> understand it, it must be meaningful.
So when people find hidden messages in the Old Testament using the
"Bible Code", these are meaningful messages? Really?
If something means something to me...that's subjective. It means
something TO ME. I have a conscious experience of finding that thing
meaningful. There's something that it's like to find it meaningful.
Qualia.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this point, but...I think it means
something. To me. Ha!
>> And neither is
>> there any reason to think that it won't continue it's predictable
>> pattern. The system follows it's own "uncaused" rules, which we may
>> be able to guess at, but which we cannot know, due to the system's
>> fundamentally uncaused nature.
>>
> You seem to take the position that because knowledge isn't certain no
> knowledge is possible.
Well, no. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the conscious
experience of knowing is somehow more fundamental and important than
what is known.
If conscious experience is uncaused and acausal, then in some sense
knowledge is irrelevant. Your uncaused experience could be of
believing that you "know" something which is actually false (e.g.,
that 121 is prime).
If conscious experience is caused, then knowledge is...still
irrelevant. But for a different reason...in this case what you *can*
know is determined by those external causes. You could be caused to
believe that you *know" something which is actually false (e.g., that
121 is prime). But if you then trace the causal chain back, you will
never find what ultimately caused you to be wrong...when you phrase
your answer in terms of the ultimate causes, it will just be "I was
wrong because that's the way the universe is".
Do you see what I'm getting at with all of this "uncaused" stuff, and
the equivalence between an uncaused universe and just an isolated
uncaused conscious experience? At all? Anyone?
Brent Meeker
environment in which the whole world is simulated - not just your brain
interacting with an external world. I think that's relevant.
Intelligence and consciousness only exist relative to an environment
because to be conscious is to be conscious of something, i.e. to have a
point-of-view.
Brent
1Z
> >> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>
> > Didn't anyone ever explain arithmetic or geometry to you? Not every
> > explanation needs to be a causal one.
>
> Well, I think that's what I'm saying. Causal explanations are not
> really explanations, because you can never trace the causal chain back
> to it's ultimate source.
> If conscious experience is uncaused and acausal, then in some sense
> knowledge is irrelevant. Your uncaused experience could be of
> believing that you "know" something which is actually false (e.g.,
> that 121 is prime).
For instance ingesting LSD could cause you
to believe that. Alternaitvely, if there is no
causality guaranteeing that you believe the truth,
maybe there is something else, such as Descartes'
God implanting clear and distinct ideas in your head.
> If conscious experience is caused, then knowledge is...still
> irrelevant. But for a different reason...in this case what you *can*
> know is determined by those external causes. You could be caused to
> believe that you *know" something which is actually false (e.g., that
> 121 is prime). But if you then trace the causal chain back, you will
> never find what ultimately caused you to be wrong...when you phrase
> your answer in terms of the ultimate causes, it will just be "I was
> wrong because that's the way the universe is".
quickly. Knowiing that you re wrong is not the same
as knowing ultimately why. I don't see how this
adds up to the irrelevance of knowledge at all,
> Do you see what I'm getting at with all of this "uncaused" stuff, and
> the equivalence between an uncaused universe and just an isolated
> uncaused conscious experience? At all? Anyone?
Brent Meeker
> Brent,
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>> Didn't anyone ever explain arithmetic or geometry to you? Not every
>> explanation needs to be a causal one.
>
> Well, I think that's what I'm saying. Causal explanations are not
> really explanations, because you can never trace the causal chain back
> to it's ultimate source.
That's silly. If my wife's car won't start and I explain that it's out of gas, that's
really an explanation even if I don't know why it's out of gas. The operational
definition of an explanation of an event is what you would do to effect or prevent that
event. In general there are multiple things you could do and hence multiple causes of an
event. The image of a causal chain leading back to an ultimate link is misleading - it is
more like causal chain mail that branches out as you trace it back. But just because you
can't trace it back to a single ur-cause doesn't nullify my advice to my wife to put gas
in the tank.
>Or if you do, the ultimate source is itself
> uncaused. So, if you rephrase the answer in terms of ultimate causes,
> you end up inserting either "unknown" or "uncaused" everywhere.
>
> So causal explanations are subjective...only meaningful within a
> limited context. Going back to my granite block example:
>
> Let's consider two adjacent specks of white and gray found within a
> block of granite. Why are they adjacent? What caused them to be
> adjacent? Well, if we consider this block of granite within the
> context of our universe, then we can say that there is a reason in
> that context as to why they are adjacent. There is an explanation,
> which has to do with the laws of physics and the contingent details of
> the geologic history of the area where this block of granite was
> formed (which is in turn derived from the contingent details of the
> initial state of our entire universe).
>
> BUT if we take an identical block of granite to be something that just
> exists uncaused, like our universe, then there can be no explanation.
There can in the same way QM explains the decay of unstable nuclei. That's what
cosmogonists are searching for.
> The two specks are just adjacent. That's it. No further explanation
> is possible.
>
> So in the first case, the geologic explanation makes sense in a local
> subjective way, but not in an absolute way, because the universe that
> provides the context for the geologic explanation has no reason behind
> its initial state or it's governing laws of physics. The universe
> just is the way it is. Therefore, ultimately the block of granite
> just is the way it is.
>
>
>> And being uncaused doesn't
>> prevent explanation - for example decay of an unstable nucleus is
>> uncaused, i.e. it is random, but it is still explained by quantum mechanics.
>
> So you can explain it within the context of the laws of our universe,
> but this just raises the question of why the laws of our universe are
> what they are.
>
> Ultimately your answer is: unstable nuclei decay because that's what
> unstable nuclei do. Tautology.
No, it's not a tautology because there is an underlying theory that explains why some
nuclei are stable and some aren't and exactly how unstable they are.
Was the conscious experience of knowing the Earth is flat more fundamental and important
than the fact that the Earth is spherioidal?
>
> If conscious experience is uncaused and acausal, then in some sense
> knowledge is irrelevant. Your uncaused experience could be of
> believing that you "know" something which is actually false (e.g.,
> that 121 is prime).
Why do you suppose you have uncaused experiences?
>
> If conscious experience is caused, then knowledge is...still
> irrelevant. But for a different reason...in this case what you *can*
> know is determined by those external causes. You could be caused to
> believe that you *know" something which is actually false (e.g., that
> 121 is prime). But if you then trace the causal chain back, you will
> never find what ultimately caused you to be wrong
Why do you think this? Maybe I found 121 in a table of prime numbers that was erroneous.
Maybe a friend told me 121 was prime. Maybe my calculator malfunctioned due to a cosmic
ray hit.
>...when you phrase
> your answer in terms of the ultimate causes, it will just be "I was
> wrong because that's the way the universe is".
Why would I try to phrase my answer in terms of "the ultimate cause"? Why would I even
suppose there is such a thing as "the ultimate cause"? And why would the absence of an
ultimate cause have any relevance to my explanation in terms of proximate causes?
>
> Do you see what I'm getting at with all of this "uncaused" stuff, and
> the equivalence between an uncaused universe and just an isolated
> uncaused conscious experience? At all? Anyone?
Nope.
Brent
"It does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter."
--- Thomas Nagel
Rex Allen
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I think that's what I'm saying. Causal explanations are not
>> really explanations, because you can never trace the causal chain back
>> to it's ultimate source.
>
> That's silly. If my wife's car won't start and I explain that it's out of gas, that's
> really an explanation even if I don't know why it's out of gas. he operational
> definition of an explanation of an event is what you would do to effect or prevent that
> event.
Oh. Is that what we're interested in here? Operationally defined explanations?
I apologize. I had not realized. I thought we were discussing deeper
issues. So sure, if you want to stick to "operational explanations",
things are pretty straightforward. Physics is indeed the language for
operational explanations and perhaps we should confine ourselves to
discussions of the latest developments in physics. I propose a name
change, from the "Everything List" to "Everything Physics-related
List".
Though, actually, I thought that we were discussing the *ultimate*
underlying nature of reality. Not operational explanations that
provide us with strategies for avoiding car problems in that reality.
So, upon further reflection, I think I'm in the right list. You,
however, may not be.
Okay, sarcasm over, though I think my point above is valid.
BUT, actually I do very much appreciate your response, as it forces me
to examine, clarify, and articulate my own thoughts. Which is the
whole point of this exercise I think. So, the only thing worse than a
negative response is no response! Ha!
> In general there are multiple things you could do and hence multiple causes of
> an event.
There are many ways the history of the world could have played out
differently that would have resulted in your wife's car not having an
empty gas tank (many of them quite gruesome) but if physicalism is
correct then there's only ONE way the world DID play out...and that is
the causal structure that led to your wife's situation.
> The image of a causal chain leading back to an ultimate link is misleading - it is
> more like causal chain mail that branches out as you trace it back.
I follow your meaning, but it just means that the chain is a directed
acyclic (presumably!) graph, that can be divided into layers, with
each layer viewed as a link in the chain. But there must be a base
layer, right? An infinite past is a possibility too, I suppose, but I
don't think that negates my argument, it just changes the wording a
bit. But let's not go there just yet.
> But just because you can't trace it back to a single ur-cause doesn't nullify
> my advice to my wife to put gas in the tank.
Okay, two scenarios:
1) Physicalism is true, you're in the real world, and your wife ran out of gas.
2) Physicalism is true, you're in a computer simulation of the real
world, and your virtual-wife ran out of virtual-gas.
SO, in both scenarios, your operational approach to explanation is
useful. But it isn't meaningful in the context of what I take us to
be discussing: the underlying nature of reality.
Your operational explanations have SUBJECTIVE MEANING. Not absolute
meaning. If they had absolute meaning, then they wouldn't apply in
both scenario 1 and scenario 2.
My point is that there IS NO absolute meaning. And where there is no
meaning, there can be no explanation. In an absolute sense, things
just are what they are. Tautology.
>> BUT if we take an identical block of granite to be something that just
>> exists uncaused, like our universe, then there can be no explanation.
>
> There can in the same way QM explains the decay of unstable nuclei. That's what
> cosmogonists are searching for.
Same argument as above. QM is a theoretical framework that is
consistent with our observations. As such, it has subjective meaning,
since observations are subjective.
Anywhere you subjectively make the same types of observations that you
make here on earth, then QM will be a good framework to use when
attempting to anticipate future events. Even if you are *really* in a
computer simulation.
What are unstable nuclei? They are nuclei that have lower energy
configurations that they can relatively easily be jostled into. Why
are those other configurations lower energy? Why the relative ease of
jostling? Why does there exist a phenomenon capable of jostling in
the right way? Because that's the way things work in this universe.
Apparently.
But if the laws of physics were different, then what we observed would
be different. If physicalism is true, maybe there are yet other
universes with different physical laws out there where all nuclei are
stable. Unstable nuclei just cannot form under those alternate laws.
Seems possible, right?
The existence of unstable nuclei is consistent with our observations.
Even if they don't actually exist, using them as theoretical
constructs makes sense when thinking in terms of QM, which we
ultimately only bother to do because it makes useful predictions.
It's useful. Even if we were actually in a computer simulation being
run on an alien computer in an alternate universe whose physical laws
didn't produce unstable nuclei, for our subjective purposes inside the
simulation, we would want to talk about unstable nuclei, because they
fit our simulated observations, and it's easier to think in terms of
unstable nuclei rather than in terms of mathematical equations which
could be interpreted as such.
>> Ultimately your answer is: unstable nuclei decay because that's what
>> unstable nuclei do. Tautology.
>
> No, it's not a tautology because there is an underlying theory that explains why some
> nuclei are stable and some aren't and exactly how unstable they are.
No, it's a tautology because it just takes what we observe and
restates it in an alternate form without supplying any absolute
explanation for why it should be that way. It only gives us a
subjectively useful "operational explanation". See above.
>> If conscious experience is uncaused and acausal, then in some sense
>> knowledge is irrelevant. Your uncaused experience could be of
>> believing that you "know" something which is actually false (e.g.,
>> that 121 is prime).
>
> Why do you suppose you have uncaused experiences?
A trap? Nice try, Mr. Meeker.
I don't think that there is a reason I suppose this. That's just the way it is.
I have the subjective feeling that it is because I've had the
conscious experience of concluding:
1) Physicalism has an explanatory gap
2) Platonism, which initially seemed better, also has an explanatory gap
3) Uncaused things cannot have meaning or explanations in an absolute sense
4) All causal explanations of consciousness ultimately lead to uncaused origins
5) Things which follow entirely from uncaused beginnings are
themselves ultimately uncaused
6) Therefore, one way or another, directly or indirectly,
consciousness is uncaused.
7) Given the choice between directly uncaused or indirectly uncaused,
I'll take directly uncaused.
>> If conscious experience is caused, then knowledge is...still
>> irrelevant. But for a different reason...in this case what you *can*
>> know is determined by those external causes. You could be caused to
>> believe that you *know" something which is actually false (e.g., that
>> 121 is prime). But if you then trace the causal chain back, you will
>> never find what ultimately caused you to be wrong
>
> Why do you think this? Maybe I found 121 in a table of prime numbers that was erroneous.
What caused the table to be erroneous? What caused that? What caused
what caused that? Etc.
> Maybe a friend told me 121 was prime.
What caused him to do that? Etc.
> Maybe my calculator malfunctioned due to a cosmic ray hit.
Why are the laws physics that we observe such that cosmic rays are
generated and calculators are susceptible to malfunctioning when hit?
What caused your calculator and the comic ray to be in the same place
at the same time and thus collide? What caused you to use a
calculator instead of just remembering that 11 * 11 is 121? What
caused what caused all these things? Etc.
1Z...that's my response to your post as well.
> Why would I try to phrase my answer in terms of "the ultimate cause"?
Because you want to understand the underlying nature of reality?
> Why would I even suppose there is such a thing as "the ultimate cause"?
Human nature?
> And why would the absence of an ultimate cause have any relevance
> to my explanation in terms of proximate causes?
It would have no relevance to that particular "operational
explanation". But we're not here to discuss operational explanations.
That's for physics blogs.
Further, we're not here primarily to discuss what kinds of entities
might exist which would also be consistent with our observations AND
subjectively useful in our operational explanations. That's also for
physics blogs.
We're here to discuss what really is. Absolute explanations that
account for "Everything", the entire ontological stack of what exists.
>> Do you see what I'm getting at with all of this "uncaused" stuff, and
>> the equivalence between an uncaused universe and just an isolated
>> uncaused conscious experience? At all? Anyone?
>
> Nope.
How about now? Even if you don't agree, surely you see?
Brent Meeker
There seems to be a lot switching back and forth between cause and meaning and explanation
as though were interchangable. And even those have different modes, e.g. first cause,
effective cause, proximate cause,... Meaning=standing for something else. Meaning=having
inherent value (to someone).
I agree that one can always ask "Why?" as children sometimes do; and the ultimate answer
is, "Because I say so." So you may well say, "Things are just what they are." but that
doesn't mean that we cannot have and explanation of QM and gravity and consciousness, and
after than an explanation of the explanation ad infinitum. So I guess I'm unclear on your
point. Are you advising that we give up all explanation and just chant "It is what it is."
Incidentally, there is a different form of explanation/cause which people schooled in
logic tend to reject at first sight, but which I think actually has merit. Bruno wrote it
once as: NUMBERS -> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS -> NUMBERS
Yes, I know it's circular. Thats the point. But I think it can be a virtuous rather than
a vicious circle, and the wider the circle the more virtuous.
Brent
David Nyman
> 1) Physicalism has an explanatory gap
>
> 2) Platonism, which initially seemed better, also has an explanatory gap
>
> 3) Uncaused things cannot have meaning or explanations in an absolute sense
>
> 4) All causal explanations of consciousness ultimately lead to uncaused origins
>
> 5) Things which follow entirely from uncaused beginnings are
> themselves ultimately uncaused
>
> 6) Therefore, one way or another, directly or indirectly,
> consciousness is uncaused.
>
> 7) Given the choice between directly uncaused or indirectly uncaused,
> I'll take directly uncaused.
1) No notion of causation has any leverage outside the context and
rationale of a given explanatory scheme. We can understand the
evolution of such a system in causal terms; but the system itself is
neither caused nor uncaused. It's irreducibly contextual: without it
you just can't have an explanation. Which leads to:
2) Meaning and explanation cannot derive their legitimacy from a
transcendent or 'absolute' source (i.e. from 'outside' the system).
Any idea that they do stems from the pervasive distortion of the 'view
from nowhere'. We try to imagine standing somewhere 'outside'
everything, and this seems to offer a viewpoint that should possess
some 'absolute' relation to the system we have left. But any such
'relation' is by its nature detached, void, empty of meaning. To
restore meaning, we must climb back inside the system: IOW
significance is inherently systemic, internal and relational.
But the lack of an appeal to some 'absolute' source doesn't weaken
meaning; to the contrary, it is its touchstone. The attempt to
justify meaning by appeal to absolute standards collapses. What if
some 'absolute' authority claimed that it was absolutely OK to murder
someone? Would you still be capable of dissent? If so, how would you
perform such an evaluation? Clearly by applying criteria independent
of any supposedly 'absolute' legitimacy. IOW, any ability to evaluate
meaningfully entails the existence of relevant criteria in terms of
the system itself: the appeal to external sources for their legitimacy
is futile.
David
Bruno Marchal
On 14 Aug 2009, at 09:11, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>>
>>> As such, I feel that it is reasonable to say that conscious
>>> experience
>>> itself is uncaused and fundamental.
>>
>> This has no meaning for me. It is like saying "don't ask".
>
> Hmmmmm. You don't at all see what I'm trying to say?
>
> Okay, how about this: Reality is tautological.
"I exist" could be, perhaps, tautological. But "Reality"? I don't
think so. Certainly not from inside.
>
> So if our conscious experience is caused by a rule-following system,
> based on a sequence of determinisitc transforms applied to an initial
> state...and this is true of both physicalism and your theory I
> think...then our conscious experience just is what it is. Tautology.
> Everything that follows was implicit in the setup.
It is hard for me to understand.
First in the comp theory, consciousness is not caused by a rule-
following system.
The most we can say is that "my" consciousness is preserved through a
local substitution of my body.
This can be done with remaining agnostic on what is and where
consciousness comes from.
The conclusion will be that consciousness, or anything apprehended by
a person in some stable way has to be realted to an infinity of
relations between numbers. And most are not "caused" by a rule-
following system.
>
> And there's no obvious reason that the "unpacked" version, where what
> follows is made *explicit*, shouldn't be considered as a whole - with
> the beginning, middle, and end states seen as existing simultaneously
> and timelessly. This makes the view that "it just is what it is" even
> more obvious.
Well, I can accept this for the true relations between numbers, and
that is a motivation for a comp-like theory. But neither consciousness
nor matter are tautological there. Important, and certainly
fundamental in some sense: yes. But secondary and emerging from the
numbers.
>
>
>> Also, what do your theory say about accepting or not an artificial
>> brain?
>
> IF consciousness is caused, then whether you accept or not is a
> forgone conclusion, implicit in the initial setup (initial state +
> transformation rules) of the system that caused your conscious
> experience.
I think, with all my respect, that you missed the movie-graph
argument. Consciousness is not caused or produced by anything which
could be described by a system or a theory. Consciousness is more a
view from inside. It is a view of the border between the mechanical
and the non mechanical, and it is not something caused by something.
Locally it is more something causing something.
> So there is no real choice to "accept or decline". Only
> the conscious experience of a choice.
>
> If consciousness is UNCAUSED and fundamental, then...same answer.
> There is no real choice to "accept or decline". Only the conscious
> experience of a choice.
I have the same opinion on the notion of causality and of "free-will".
Those are higher-order logical/semantical construction.
>
>
>> More generally, how do you see the relation between brain and
>> conscience?
>
> Brains only exist as something that we consciously perceive.
If by "we" you mean the universal machine, and really all of them,
then I can make sense from your sentence.
If by "we" you mean the animal of the planet earth, I doubt it. In our
plausibly shared long history, the moebas invented the cable even
before going out of the sea.
Remember that with comp a brain is not a physical object. It is local
summary of infinities of computational (in the math sense) relations
between all the numbers.
>
> I'm sure that my brain can be viewed as representing the contents of
> my experience. And I'm sure that a computer program could also be
> written that would represent the contents of my conscious experience
> and whose representational state would evolve as the program ran so
> that it continued to match the contents of my experience over time.
> But this would not mean that the program was conscious, or that my
> brain is the source of my consciousness.
We are in complete agreement here. But then you can say yes to the
doctor, and follows the consequence of the hypothesis that your
personal consciousness don't see any change.
You see Rex, I have never been happy with the idea of those who say
that matter or physics, is fundamental-basic, and to say that
consciousness is fundamental-basic seems to me the same sort of "don't
ask principle".
>
> The living brain and the executing computer program both just
> represent the contents of my conscious experience, in the same way
> that a map represents the actual terrain.
Assuming comp there is a big difference, which is that when you say
"yes" to the doctor, you don't say yes because he put the right map in
your skull, you say yes because it put the right relevant relative
number. The artificial brain will just simulate your biological brain,
but it will, supposing the doctor has choose the right level, emulate
your first person (relatively to your infinity of most probable
(normal) histories.
>
>
>>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>>>
>>> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
>>> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
>>
>> ? I can't accept this, because I am interested in the how and why of
>> complexity of things and happenings.
>
> So you can look for patterns in what you observe, and interesting ways
> to represent what you have observed in the past.
Not just that. I look for understanding. I criticize enough the
scientists who confuse description and prediction with explanation.
> But this is as far
> as you can go I think.
Hmm... read UDA with attention. I think you confuse this (new?) type
of explanation and proof with the usual Aristotelian reductions.
> For the reasons outlined above. Your
> observations just are what they are. There's no real explanation for
> them...only pseudo-explanations.
I am not sure you have grasped what I try to explain.
>
>
>>> No explanation can be given for uncaused fundamental events or
>>> entities.
>>
>> But what are your assumptions about those entities? You theory does
>> look like what the guardian G* tells to the "enlightened machine" G:
>> you will not prove your consistency. But the machine can prove that
>> IF
>> she is consistent, then G* is right about that. So, on one level, I
>> understand why you say so, and at another level I explain why you say
>> so.
>
> So I lean towards the idea that only our conscious experiences are
> "real". Things obviously exist as contents of conscious experiences.
I deeply disagree here. Even to understand a word like "content" I
have to believe in some more basic entities which are not conscious.
> I don't have any assumptions about them. They just are what they are,
> because the conscious experience that "contains" them is what it is.
> Tautology.
>
> I *think* I'm leaning towards saying that a lot of this stuff about
> "knowing" is just a type of qualia. But I'm not sure. I'm still
> thinking that part out.
Knowing, observing, feeling, conceiving, are type of qualia. But they
are related, and eventually what I say, is that any rational and
conscious agent saying yes to a digital doctor can understand why and
how those qualia are related through numbers relation, most of them of
the type universal numbers reflecting universal numbers.
>
>
>> "understanding" is a complex notion. Theories are not build to
>> understand, but to get a coherent (hopefully correct) picture.
>
> So I think it's reasonable to speak as though quarks and electrons are
> real, if that helps the process of developing mathematical/narrative
> models that fit our observations. There are *useful fictions*, and
> then there's what actually is. Quarks and electrons are useful
> fictions. Conscious experience is what actually is.
I follow you on the fact that my conscious experience here and now
actually is. But I am already force, to give a personal sense to the
act of writing this mail, to believe in your conscious experience.
Now, I have reason for not taking *you* a mere useful fiction. Once I
bet on another conscience, I get the notion of person, and on finding
points of agreement.
Most people accept the arithmetical elementary truth, and I enjoy the
fact that comp, that is the belief we are machine, entails a whole
"theology" which is capable to explain where the useful fictions like
quarks come from, behave in such or such ways, and participate in that
infinite universal numbers reflective dreams, all this without
eliminating persons and their will, and providing a fundamental role
and a purpose to consciousness.
>
>
>>> I think this is more obvious if you look at the system as a "block
>>> universe", where time is treated as a sort of spatial dimension, and
>>> so all states of the system exist simultaneously, like my previous
>>> example of the block of granite. Why does state B follow state A?
>>> Why is slice B adjacent to slice A? Because that's just the way
>>> this
>>> uncaused system is.
>>
>> It is big amorphous blob. Weird theory. I don't see the relation with
>> the universe, nor even with consciousness.
>
> So I'm saying that IF physicalism is true, then our universe is just
> like that. If physicalism is true then how else could it be? And if
> this physical universe is what causes our conscious experience, then
> our conscious experience is just like that.
None sentences makes sense for me here.
Even if physicalism is true, the material world could still have a
highly structured shape.
And if physicalism is true, then comp is false, and I have no more any
clues about what to say, in third person ways, about consciousness. I
would say it does not exist, because I don't see how to weaken comp as
to make it reappears without making consciousness a force, and then it
would need its particle. And they should escape comp. Why not? But I
have no evidence, and again, consciousness would be even less
fundamental. But it is the correct, by the UDA incompatibility
theorem, way to envisage consciousness if we want to maintain
physicalism. And Penrose is the only one I know following that kind of
path, except that his forces has to violate QM. This should be related
to the fact that his Gödelian reasoning, leading to "the same result",
was incorrect (less so in its second book than the first).
>
>
>
>>> Why would arithmetical relationships result in conscious
>>> experience?
>>
>> Because arithmetical relationship described the theology and the
>> science of self-observing machine. No machine can know as such its
>> own
>> theology, but machine can get the theological science about simpler
>> machine, and then lift its logic on themselves (so they can remain
>> consistent in the process), and escape locally the incompleteness.
>>
>> I am not saying that truth is like that, but that if you say yes to a
>> doctor and survive the graft, then it has to be like that.
>
> So I can (sort of) see how a logical machine might symbolically
> represent reality in this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question
> of why there should be a conscious experience associated with the
> machine symbolically representing reality this way.
>
> Does it?
It does not. That is why it is the assumption of the theory. The
working hypothesis. The light in the dark.
And then, the beauty of it, is that, ONCE the assumption is done, we
can understand fully and rationally why we cannot understand how a
symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
The tools for that understanding being computer science and
mathematical logic.
The quale itself remains out of the explanation, like truth. It
concerns of form of possible consciousness: consciousness, of any
individual, be it the consciousness of the virgin universal machine
("cosmic consciousness", or "arithmetical consciousness") to the
consciousness of any particular universal machine (bacteria?
Protozoa,? Plant?, Planaria? cats? humans?, ...). None are reducible
to any finite explanation, and all are distributed densely on the
border between what is computable, and what is not. To be mechanical
and universal makes you live on the border.
> To put it slightly differently, the machine might be in a state that
> could be 3rd-person interpreted as the machine representing reality
> this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question of why there should
> be a conscious experience associated with the machine being in this
> state.
>
> Does it?
It does not. But see above. It provides the "meta" explanation of why
it does not. Why, if we are machine, there must be a quale (an
incommunicable but "feelable" measure) related to some modal
apprehension of ourself relatively to other universal number. As I am
slowly explaining in the "seven step series" thread.
Bruno
PS I would be pleased if someone can suggest a better wording for
"feelable"?
David Nyman
>> So I lean towards the idea that only our conscious experiences are
>> "real". Things obviously exist as contents of conscious experiences.
>
> I deeply disagree here. Even to understand a word like "content" I
> have to believe in some more basic entities which are not conscious.
conscious 'of' the content. The content isn't itself conscious 'of'.
But since both context and content are 'constructed' of the same basic
entities, this can't be a fundamental distinction. Hence the
distinction must be one of relation. To introduce a new vocabulary is
difficult. I would like to talk in terms of mutual access and mutual
relativisation as being basic to entities and their relations. What
is conscious 'of' what, can then be understood in terms of the
evolution such basic entities towards mutually-relating,
mutually-accessing levels of content-in-context.
> Why, if we are machine, there must be a quale (an incommunicable but "feelable"
> measure) related to some modal apprehension of ourself relatively to other universal
The distinction looked for is between what is directly
apprehendable-in-context, and what is communicable out-of-context.
This distinction is of course absolutely crucial - consequently often
missed - and hence the source of continual and widespread confusion.
The context in question is that of the knower. What is in-context is
both what the knower knows, and the terms in which it is known. What
is communicable is what can be abstracted, or 'taken out-of-context'.
What is lost in the abstraction is precisely the terms in which it is
known; these can only be restored in the context of another knower.
So, the 'feelable' seems to be the context in which the knowable is
known. Perhaps we could say that the feelable is the contextual
self-measure, of which the communicable is the abstractable content.
David
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
Brent Meeker
>
> On 14 Aug 2009, at 09:11, Rex Allen wrote:
>>
>>>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>>>>
>>>> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I am
>>>> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
>>> ? I can't accept this, because I am interested in the how and why of
>>> complexity of things and happenings.
>> So you can look for patterns in what you observe, and interesting ways
>> to represent what you have observed in the past.
>
> Not just that. I look for understanding. I criticize enough the
> scientists who confuse description and prediction with explanation.
I disagree that this a confusion. A description of something you don't understand in
terms of something you do understand is one form of explanation. The ability to predict
is an excellent measure of understanding. I think the only confusion comes from
conflating different kinds of explanation or thoughtlessly switching from one to another.
I would say that your explanation of the world is a descriptive one and basing it on
arithmetic is appealing because we understand arithmetic. And I think you agree that if
it makes false predictions it fails as an explanation.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> Here's what I think is the problem with all this:
Hmmmm. I didn't see anything in your post that seemed like an actual
problem for my view.
As I think my "virtual-gas" example illustrated, meaning is
subjective, like conscious experience. That shared property of
subjectivity is significant I think.
What I think I can safely say is: meaning is a facet of conscious
experience, not something that exists separately from (or independent
of) conscious experience.
I think a facet/gemstone analogy is appropriate here: The facet
doesn't exist separate from the gemstone, and can't be considered
independently of the gemstone. Neither can the gemstone be considered
independently of it's facets.
Conscious experience being the gemstone, and 'meaning' be a facet of
that gemstone, of course. (Just trying to reduce the target size for
Brent's one-line zingers!)
Bruno Marchal
On 16 Aug 2009, at 18:35, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 14 Aug 2009, at 09:11, Rex Allen wrote:
> ...
>
>>>
>>>>> Uncaused things can't be explained. They just are.
>>>>>
>>>>> So what causes the complexity and structure of the things that I
>>>>> am
>>>>> conscious of? Nothing. That's just the way my experience is.
>>>> ? I can't accept this, because I am interested in the how and why
>>>> of
>>>> complexity of things and happenings.
>>> So you can look for patterns in what you observe, and interesting
>>> ways
>>> to represent what you have observed in the past.
>>
>> Not just that. I look for understanding. I criticize enough the
>> scientists who confuse description and prediction with explanation.
>
> I disagree that this a confusion. A description of something you
> don't understand in
> terms of something you do understand is one form of explanation.
> The ability to predict
> is an excellent measure of understanding.
OK.
> I think the only confusion comes from
> conflating different kinds of explanation or thoughtlessly switching
> from one to another.
OK.
> I would say that your explanation of the world is a descriptive one
> and basing it on
> arithmetic is appealing because we understand arithmetic. And I
> think you agree that if
> it makes false predictions it fails as an explanation.
Absolutely so. Note that comp gives a lot of choice, besides
arithmetic, for the ontic, and justify that independence. From the
ontic view there are equivalent. From the epistemological view, also,
but for the internal view themselves, things get different, if only
due to history and geography. The contingent hides the necessary.
Bruno
David Nyman
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 9:11 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Here's what I think is the problem with all this:
>
> Hmmmm. I didn't see anything in your post that seemed like an actual
> problem for my view.
as 'uncaused', in some ultimate sense, rendered them pointless? My
rejoinder was that the point of departure for any existential
encounter is always contextual - or situated - and our task is to
explore ways of relating meaningfully to this situation; hence to
deplore the lack of an appeal to 'external' justification amounts to
'false consciousness'. Do you agree?
> As I think my "virtual-gas" example illustrated, meaning is
> subjective, like conscious experience. That shared property of
> subjectivity is significant I think.
>
> What I think I can safely say is: meaning is a facet of conscious
> experience, not something that exists separately from (or independent
> of) conscious experience.
consciousness.
David
Rex Allen
>
> There seems to be a lot switching back and forth between cause and meaning and explanation
> as though were interchangable. And even those have different modes, e.g. first cause,
> effective cause, proximate cause,... Meaning=standing for something else. Meaning=having
> inherent value (to someone).
Are you saying that you find my argument to be incoherent? Or that
you get the gist of what I'm saying, but that my presentation left a
lot to be desired?
In the latter case: Point taken. I will try to be more careful in my
use of those terms.
In the former case: Well. Hmm.
> I agree that one can always ask "Why?" as children sometimes do; and the ultimate answer
> is, "Because I say so." So you may well say, "Things are just what they are."
So, a nice rhetorical flourish in comparing me to a child, but at a
substantive level there's a significant difference between "Because I
say so" and "things just are what they are", right?
"Things just are what they are" means that no further explanation is
possible, even in principle. And at some point that actually becomes
the case. Wouldn't you say? It can be said and meant literally.
"Because I say so." Well, I'm not sure what this means. Obviously
it's not meant to be taken literally. Right? Or do you suffer from a
god-complex of some sort? If so, my condolences for your affliction.
(see? I can be condescending too!)
> that doesn't mean that we cannot have and explanation of QM and gravity and
> consciousness, and after than an explanation of the explanation ad infinitum.
Well, with respect to QM and gravity, I think this is in keeping with
my previous point about putting conscious experience at the base of
the ontological/epistemological stack, rather than at the top.
So yes, I agree with you are saying here. It seems reasonable that
the explanatory process could go on ad infinitum, where by
"explanatory process" I mean the process of generating narratives that
are consistent with what we observe. And this process doesn't depend
on what really exists. It only depends on what we observe. If we are
in a physical world, a computer simulation, or Platonia, the process
is the same.
The process is one of generating narratives that are meaningful in the
context of your subjective consciously experienced observations. The
process is a subjective process. The meaning that you get from the
process is subjective meaning...it means something TO YOU. It means
nothing in an absolute sense. If it meant something in an objective,
absolute sense then the process wouldn't produce the same results in a
physical world, a computer simulation, and in Platonia.
As for consciousness, the above applies, but let me also take this
opportunity to deploy this great argument that I heard somewhere: An
explanation must be of something less known in terms of something
better known. Since nothing can be better known than our own
subjective experience, it cannot be explained.
> So I guess I'm unclear on your point. Are you advising that
> we give up all explanation and just chant "It is what it is."
So originally I came to this list to clarify my thinking on what
causes conscious experience. BUT, as a result of the discussions here
and elsewhere, I have concluded that if consciousness is caused, then
it just is what it is. Which, incidentally is also true of
consciousness if it is uncaused.
This point is most clear if you think of the physical universe in
static "block time" terms (regardless of whether it is actually static
in this way). The block in it's entirety just exists, with whatever
properties it came into being with. If it is all that exists, then
you can't go outside of it for further explanation. Nothing more can
be said. Maybe it has a regular, predictable structure that extends
all the way through. Maybe it is riddled with random uncaused
transitions (QM anyone?). But either way, there's no explanation for
these things. Only description.
And if this physical universe is the cause of our conscious
experiences, then they also just exist.
So as for the chanting, well no. The scientific narrative process
that we engage in (described above), caused or uncaused, will continue
or it won't...we have no choice in that, or in anything else. But
under all imaginable circumstances I think it is clear that it is a
subjective process with subjective meaning. It provides no access to
the absolute view of what actually exists...the pursuit of such access
is futile. The veil of conscious experience (if it is a veil covering
something more basic, and isn't itself fundamental as I believe),
can't be pierced, even theoretically.
> Yes, I know it's circular. Thats the point. But I think it can be a virtuous rather than
> a vicious circle, and the wider the circle the more virtuous.
I don't think my views as outlined above are necessarily in direct
conflict with this. It just depends on how things are interpreted.
Rex Allen
>
> 2009/8/16 Rex Allen <rexal...@gmail.com>:
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 9:11 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Here's what I think is the problem with all this:
>>
>> Hmmmm. I didn't see anything in your post that seemed like an actual
>> problem for my view.
>
> But weren't you were arguing that your view of explanation and meaning
> as 'uncaused', in some ultimate sense, rendered them pointless? My
> rejoinder was that the point of departure for any existential
> encounter is always contextual - or situated - and our task is to
> explore ways of relating meaningfully to this situation
To find subjective meaning in the situation, sure. It's pointless,
but we have to do something to pass the time. And I mean "have to" in
the sense that we are compelled to...either by causes beyond ourselves
(e.g., as a side effect of electrons and quarks going about their
business), or just because that's what our conscious experience is of
and so we are tautologically dragged along behind it.
> ; hence to
> deplore the lack of an appeal to 'external' justification amounts to
> 'false consciousness'. Do you agree?
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don't think so, but you lost me after the semi-colon.
>> As I think my "virtual-gas" example illustrated, meaning is
>> subjective, like conscious experience. That shared property of
>> subjectivity is significant I think.
>>
>> What I think I can safely say is: meaning is a facet of conscious
>> experience, not something that exists separately from (or independent
>> of) conscious experience.
>
> Well, meaning is a facet of our mutual situation, which is revealed in
> consciousness.
Mutual??? I'm looking around in my conscious experience and I don't
see YOUR conscious experience anywhere! What's this mutual stuff?
You presume too much David!
When it comes to conscious experience, you're on your own, buddy.
So I know my conscious experience exists. So clearly conscious
experience is possible. I don't know of any reason why other
conscious experiences can't exist, so I'm willing to believe that
another conscious experience exists which is qualitatively similar to
mine, though apparently different in content (since we aren't writing
the same emails and agreeing on every point).
But, I don't draw any further conclusions than that.
Rex Allen
>
> "I exist" could be, perhaps, tautological. But "Reality"? I don't
> think so. Certainly not from inside.
What is reality, beyond our conscious experience of existence?
> The conclusion will be that consciousness, or anything apprehended by
> a person in some stable way has to be realted to an infinity of
> relations between numbers. And most are not "caused" by a rule-
> following system.
Given an infinity of relations between numbers to work with, wouldn't
pretty much everything be representable? If so, then what is the
significance of being able to represent the contents of our conscious
experience, including a represention of our lack of comprehension as
to "how a symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia"?
In fact, here, this pen on my desk. To me, that pen now represents my
lack of comprehension as to how a symbolic self-representing relation
individuates into an incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
There, that wasn't so hard. What is the significance of this? If
there's no significance to my pen representing this, then what is the
significance of using relations between numbers to represent the same
thing?
>> So I can (sort of) see how a logical machine might symbolically
>> represent reality in this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the question
>> of why there should be a conscious experience associated with the
>> machine symbolically representing reality this way.
>>
>> Does it?
>
> It does not. That is why it is the assumption of the theory. The
> working hypothesis. The light in the dark.
Okay this is related to my point above and is the core of my problem
with your view, and with physicalism due to it's similar assumption.
> And then, the beauty of it, is that, ONCE the assumption is done, we
> can understand fully and rationally why we cannot understand how a
> symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
> incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
Your "understanding" boils down to: here is a mathematical model that
represents our situation, and which may have some practical use in
predicting what we will observe in the future. Why will it correctly
predict what we observe? Because that's the way things are. Will it
always predict what we will observe? Well, either it will or it
won't. We can't know in advance. We'll see.
What we CAN be sure of is that with an infinity of relations between
numbers at our disposal, if at some point we observe something that is
inconsistent with the predictions of this model, we can find a NEW
model that is consistent with both old and new observations!
So, please see my last response to Brent about subjective explanations
and virtual-gas, I think it's relevant!
David Nyman
>
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 5:42 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2009/8/16 Rex Allen <rexal...@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 9:11 PM, David Nyman<david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Here's what I think is the problem with all this:
>>>
>>> Hmmmm. I didn't see anything in your post that seemed like an actual
>>> problem for my view.
>>
>> But weren't you were arguing that your view of explanation and meaning
>> as 'uncaused', in some ultimate sense, rendered them pointless? My
>> rejoinder was that the point of departure for any existential
>> encounter is always contextual - or situated - and our task is to
>> explore ways of relating meaningfully to this situation
>
> To find subjective meaning in the situation, sure. It's pointless,
> but we have to do something to pass the time. And I mean "have to" in
> the sense that we are compelled to...either by causes beyond ourselves
> (e.g., as a side effect of electrons and quarks going about their
> business), or just because that's what our conscious experience is of
> and so we are tautologically dragged along behind it.
render as inter-subjective or contextual - this again implies the
expectation that meaning must be legitimated from some notionally
'objective' pole - i.e. external to the context in which it is
situated. My point is not merely that this *isn't* so, but that it
*can't* be. Also, recall the insight that explanatory entities such
as those you cite are not transcendent, but intrinsic, to our own
natures. These aren't "causes beyond ourselves": 'their' business is
intrinsically *our* business.
By the way, the idea of 'non-interactive' parallelism is one of the
more toxic dualistic by-products of the confusion over the
participatory nature of our presence in the scheme of things. It
falls victim to Occam at every turn. In particular, consider why
evolution would select highly complex self-reflecting discriminators
to exploit a sentient relation that was merely an illusory
coincidence. If you re-read Chalmers in this light I think you will
see that it is precisely the notion that physics (or any explanatory
schema) can be 'causally closed' independent of sentience that leads
to such a pusillanimous and (literally) disempowering conclusion.
>> ; hence to
>> deplore the lack of an appeal to 'external' justification amounts to
>> 'false consciousness'. Do you agree?
>
> Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don't think so, but you lost me after the semi-colon.
*inescapably* contextual we can also see that it is not life that is
'pointless', but rather the whole idea that the 'point' is something
that must be derived from something absolutely transcendent, or
'outside' the system. This is not merely of tangential interest,
either: it's the confusion that is central to the on-going dispute
between fundamentalism and the spirit of liberal enquiry.
>>> As I think my "virtual-gas" example illustrated, meaning is
>>> subjective, like conscious experience. That shared property of
>>> subjectivity is significant I think.
>>>
>>> What I think I can safely say is: meaning is a facet of conscious
>>> experience, not something that exists separately from (or independent
>>> of) conscious experience.
>>
>> Well, meaning is a facet of our mutual situation, which is revealed in
>> consciousness.
>
> Mutual??? I'm looking around in my conscious experience and I don't
> see YOUR conscious experience anywhere! What's this mutual stuff?
> You presume too much David!
>
> When it comes to conscious experience, you're on your own, buddy.
>
> So I know my conscious experience exists. So clearly conscious
> experience is possible. I don't know of any reason why other
> conscious experiences can't exist, so I'm willing to believe that
> another conscious experience exists which is qualitatively similar to
> mine, though apparently different in content (since we aren't writing
> the same emails and agreeing on every point).
> But, I don't draw any further conclusions than that.
level of engagement you display demonstrates a stronger intuition of
mutuality than your analysis implies.
Best
David
>
> >
>
Bruno Marchal
On 17 Aug 2009, at 02:02, Rex Allen wrote:
>
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Bruno Marchal<mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>> "I exist" could be, perhaps, tautological. But "Reality"? I don't
>> think so. Certainly not from inside.
>
> What is reality, beyond our conscious experience of existence?
This is what we are supposed to be interested.
I believe in the consciousness of someone different for me, for example.
I believe in math and in our ability to share it.
>
>
>> The conclusion will be that consciousness, or anything apprehended by
>> a person in some stable way has to be realted to an infinity of
>> relations between numbers. And most are not "caused" by a rule-
>> following system.
>
> Given an infinity of relations between numbers to work with, wouldn't
> pretty much everything be representable?
What makes you believe that all relations between numbers are
representable?
It is just false by Cantor theorem (soon (re)explained).
But if you don't believe in some amount of math, Cantor theorem will
not help.
You position look closer and closer to solipsism.
> If so, then what is the
> significance of being able to represent the contents of our conscious
> experience, including a represention of our lack of comprehension as
> to "how a symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
> incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia"?
>
> In fact, here, this pen on my desk. To me, that pen now represents my
> lack of comprehension as to how a symbolic self-representing relation
> individuates into an incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
> There, that wasn't so hard. What is the significance of this? If
> there's no significance to my pen representing this, then what is the
> significance of using relations between numbers to represent the same
> thing?
The significance comes from the computationalist hypothesis.
See my url for detailed explanations. But, again, if you think that
sentences like "there is an infinity of prime numbers" depends on
consciousness, then it will not help.
>
>
>>> So I can (sort of) see how a logical machine might symbolically
>>> represent reality in this way. BUT, this doesn't answer the
>>> question
>>> of why there should be a conscious experience associated with the
>>> machine symbolically representing reality this way.
>>>
>>> Does it?
>>
>> It does not. That is why it is the assumption of the theory. The
>> working hypothesis. The light in the dark.
>
> Okay this is related to my point above and is the core of my problem
> with your view, and with physicalism due to it's similar assumption.
It is problem you will have with all non-solipsists.
Well, even with other solipsists.
>
>
>> And then, the beauty of it, is that, ONCE the assumption is done, we
>> can understand fully and rationally why we cannot understand how a
>> symbolic self-representing relation individuate into an
>> incommunicable, non doubtable, lived qualia.
>
> Your "understanding" boils down to: here is a mathematical model that
> represents our situation, and which may have some practical use in
> predicting what we will observe in the future. Why will it correctly
> predict what we observe?
It is not a "model". It is the theory/guess/hypothesis.assumption.
It is the widespread belief that the brain/body is locally a machine,
or that it is turing emulable.
I am studying its consequences.
I'm afraid you are solipsist. This is an irrefutable position, "true"
by definition as lived by any first person, and false once we bet on a
reality independent of oneself (as usual in science and society).
Bruno
Rex Allen
Ha! Ouch! But it's not quite as simple as that. I don't deny that
there MAY be something that causes consciousness, BUT if there
is...this ultimately doesn't matter. In the final view, the
conclusion is the same...consciousness experience just is what it is.
Further, I definitely don't deny the existence of conscious
experiences other than mine. And there's nothing I've said that
implies this. In fact, I've explicitly said the exact opposite in a
response to David in this very thread.
So, if I'm a solipsist, so are you, and so is basically everyone
EXCEPT those who believe (somehow) in libertarian free will. Which
you and I and David at least have all disavowed as being a nonsensical
concept.
SO, in our last couple of emails we focused on the explanatory
gap...which is really just the wakeup call that something's out of
whack with our view of reality. It's not part of the core argument
I'm making.
My main argument is not even really *against* your theory...my
argument relates to what your theory means if it is true (which it may
be, who knows):
If numbers and their relations exist timeless and uncaused, and our
consciousness is (to use your description) the view from inside a
local summary of the infinities of computational relations between all
the numbers, THEN our conscious experiences are also objectively
timeless, aren't they? And so they can all be viewed as existing
simultaneously, even if they have the subjective feel of being
sequential when experienced "from the inside".
If these conscious experiences all exist necessarily as a consequence
of "the infinities of computational relations between all the numbers"
(TIOCRBAN), then they just exist. There is no reason that TIOCRBAN
have this conscious aspect, it's just the way arithmetical reality is.
So, why do you feel the desire to understand conscious experience?
Well, this desire is a timeless and eternal consequence of TIOCRBAN.
This conscious experience of desire that you feel in this moment has
always existed and will always exist in TIOCRBAN.
Will you succeed in your quest? Trick question! The future already
exists! If you succeed, this success already exists timelessly and
eternally in TIOCRBAN. In fact, maybe a "Bruno experience" of success
AND of failure both exist somewhere within TIOCRBAN.
The entire collection of Bruno's conscious experiences just exist.
And they just are what they are. This feeling of effort that you have
of working towards your goal...it just exists. There is no effort,
only the experience of effort. The feeling of understanding when you
learn something new? There is no understanding OR learning...there is
only the experience of these things, caused by the intrinsic nature of
TIOCRBAN, and like TIOCRBAN existing timelessly and eternally.
If TIOCRBAN causes your conscious experiences, then TIOCRBAN do all of
the work. Your conscious experience is just along for the ride as an
aspect, a facet, of TIOCRBAN.
Further, if TIOCRBAN just exists, uncaused and timeless, then your
experiences also just exist as an aspect of TIOCRBAN and thus also
uncaused and timeless.
If there is no reason behind the nature of TIOCRBAN, then there is no
reason behind the nature of your conscious experiences. No
explanation is possible, only description.
Right? How could it be otherwise?
John Mikes
Rex Allen
> Rex,
> (I guess the unsigned text below came from you)
> thanks for your "one-liner" gemstone of a definition on
> "Conscious Experience"!
> John Mikes
David Nyman
Hi Rex
Recalling your interest in Chalmers: I was re-reading "Facing Up to
the Problem of Consciousness" recently, and I realised - I think for
the first time - that his own "double-aspect theory of information" is
effectively a reformulation, in less 'professionally-embarrassing'
lingo, of eastern metaphysics! AFAICS he's basically saying that a)
'intrinsic' existence is qualitative; and b) the 'physical' is based
on second-order 'causal relations' derived from an 'extrinsic'
viewpoint embedded in a). It's worth quoting his short excursion into
metaphysical speculation at the end:
"This could answer a concern about the causal relevance of experience
- a natural worry, given a picture on which the physical domain is
causally closed, and on which experience is supplementary to the
physical."
Hm... Worrying indeed! He goes on to say:
"The informational view allows us to understand how experience might
have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the
intrinsic nature of the physical. This metaphysical speculation is
probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific
theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite
suggestive."
Of course, he could as well have said:
"The informational view allows us to understand how the physical might
have a subtle kind of causal relevance in virtue of its status as the
extrinsic nature of experience. This metaphysical speculation is
probably best ignored for the purposes of developing a scientific
theory, but in addressing some philosophical issues it is quite
suggestive."
So IOW the "subtle causal relevance" of what he terms the intrinsic is
in constituting what exists. Not so subtle perhaps ;-) And the - no
doubt equally subtle? - relevance of the extrinsic is in being the
shareable account of what happens after that. I guess one might
indeed find this "suggestive"!
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
David
Rex Allen
>
> Recalling your interest in Chalmers: I was re-reading "Facing Up to
> the Problem of Consciousness" recently, and I realised - I think for
> the first time - that his own "double-aspect theory of information" is
> effectively a reformulation, in less 'professionally-embarrassing'
> lingo, of eastern metaphysics!
Indeed, Chalmers' double-aspect theory of information seemed like a
good starting point when I first read it 18 months or so ago, but I
guess the question is where do you go from there? Chalmers did a
great job of articulating the mind-body problem, and I think in
defending his initial position, but he doesn't seem to have made much
progress in the 14 or so years since then. BUT, then...I guess that's
the "hard" part for you.
Though, just in the last month, I think I've kind of shifted gears
here. Why should consciousness be an aspect of information (or
anything else)? Why not consider information an aspect of
consciousness?
In an earlier thread, Brent mentioned Hume, and in response you
referenced Kant, BUT I'm not very familiar with either. But just in
the last week I've discovered that Kant has already given some thought
to this topic, and kindly summarized his views in "A Critique of Pure
Reason"! Who knew??? So now I'm interested in reading up on Kant,
and particularly G. E. Schulze's subsequent response in Aenesidemus.
SO...if you've already been down this path, then I'd be interested to
hear your thoughts.
Though, obviously since A Critique of Pure reason was written in 1781,
and yet we're still here discussing it almost 230 years later, it
didn't offer any conclusive answers...but still...
Of course even before Hume and Kant, we have Leibniz in Monadology (1714):
"Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends
upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by
means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so
constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be
conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so
that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on
examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another,
and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a
simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that
perception must be sought for."
BUT, I think my general criticism is that we seem to be mistaking
descriptions of what we are conscious of, with an explanation of
consciousness itself.
So, for instance, if Bruno is correct in his mathematical theory of
the origins of consciousness...what does that mean, really?
Ultimately, how is it different than saying "consciousness exists
uncaused, but by pure chance there are these interesting patterns that
can be seen in this record of our past observations."
So Brent made the assertion that "The ability to predict is an
excellent measure of understanding." But if your predictions are all
*caused* by the same system that you are making predictions about, and
that same system is also then *causing* your judgments about the
accuracy of the predictions, then I don't think that his assertion is
necessarily true.
You could not have understood other than you did, you could not have
predicted other than you did, and you could not have judged the
accuracy of the prediction other than you did. There was no freedom
in any of these things. In effect...there was no understanding, there
was no prediction, and there was no judgement...it was all just the
system going through it's motions, which for some reason resulted in
an epiphenomenal EXPERIENCE of understanding, prediction, and
judgement.
And I think that this was part of the discussion between Kant,
Reinhold, Schulze, et al.
For example:
"As determined by the Critique of Pure Reason, the function of the
principle of causality thus undercuts all philosophizing about the
where or how of the origin of our cognitions. All assertions on the
matter, and every conclusion drawn from them, become empty subtleties,
for once we accept that determination of the principle as our rule of
thought, we could never ask, 'Does anything actually exist which is
the ground and cause of our representations?'. We can only ask, 'How
must the understanding join these representations together, in keeping
with the pre-determined functions of its activity, in order to gather
them as one experience?'" -- Gottlob Ernst Schulze
SO...I dunno. Bruno made the dreaded accusation of solipsism, but I'm
not sure how you avoid ending up there (at least in the
epistemological sense of there being a limit to what can be known),
regardless of which direction you go. You can take the long way, or
you can take the short way, but all roads do seem to ultimately lead
to some variety of solipsism. The only question is what kind of
scenery will you get along the way. Hmmmm.
Bruno Marchal
Chance is also a sort of filling-gap explanations.
Assuming mechanism, chance cannot work. It cannot explain
regularities. It cannot explain why we remain in stable realities.
Be it matter or consciousness we may try theories, instead of
postulating an absence of explanation at the start.
Some theories can then explain why some phenomenological gaps have to
exist, due to our embedding in reality/realities.
>
> SO...I dunno. Bruno made the dreaded accusation of solipsism, but I'm
> not sure how you avoid ending up there (at least in the
> epistemological sense of there being a limit to what can be known),
> regardless of which direction you go. You can take the long way, or
> you can take the short way, but all roads do seem to ultimately lead
> to some variety of solipsism. The only question is what kind of
> scenery will you get along the way. Hmmmm.
All babies are solipsist. We start from solipsism. Solipsism is
correct, from the first person point of view. But science begins when
we start betting in a third or perhaps a zero-person view, a
transcendental reality, be it a universe, a god, a way (tao). We need
this if only to be able to accept other minds, other consciousness,
other people. Then we can make theories.
Now, all universal machine does have that solipsist part, and we can
explain why, and what exists beyond.
A lot of what you say makes sense, but more as a description of
important data, than as an attempt toward an explanation.
Once you accept that something else (third person) can have a first
person view, be it a machine, an animal, a human, an extraterrestrial
entity or a god, you have to accept that solipsism, although an
accurate feature of consciousness, is inaccurate as a fundamental
explanation. We can believe in something greater than ourself.
Somehow, the belief in "matter" is an intermediate between the
correct, but third person pointless solipsism, and the many incorrect,
but corrigible, pointers toward the real or truth, which is what we
are searching.
Bruno
Flammarion
On 9 Aug, 06:55, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
> > If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage.
>
> If that's what the future held for me, then that's exactly what I
> would do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that, since it wouldn't be in my
> future.
>
If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to
make your mind up in the present
Flammarion
On 11 Aug, 16:38, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/11 Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com>:
> Standard physicalism, on the other hand, by banishing self-access from
> its fundamental notions of causal adequacy (though arrogating the
> right to whisk a mysteriously powerless ghost of it back later by
> sleight of intuition) is clearly false (incomplete is the more politic
> term).
Why can't self-access be existent but non-fundamental?
Rex Allen
Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my mind up for me, based on
the initial conditions of the universe plus the laws of physics.
Given those two things, my "choice" is a forgone conclusion.
Assuming UDA/platonism...the same holds true. My experience of
choosing exists eternally amongst the infinities of computational
relations between all the numbers.
Either way, there is only the epiphenomenal experience of making my
mind up...not the actuality of doing so.
Rex Allen
Because in that case self-access is just a term of convenience for the
more fundamental processes.
Flammarion
On 31 Aug, 19:15, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 9 Aug, 06:55, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
> >> > If you suffer epileptic seizures seeing a neurosurgeon may offer considerable advantage.
>
> >> If that's what the future held for me, then that's exactly what I
> >> would do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that, since it wouldn't be in my
> >> future.
>
> > If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to
> > make your mind up in the present
>
> Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my mind up for me,
pulling your strings
> based on
> the initial conditions of the universe plus the laws of physics.
> Given those two things, my "choice" is a forgone conclusion.
Brent Meeker
I'd say there was the epiphenomenal experience of making up your mind AND the actuality of
doing so. Your formulation divorces "you" from from everything and leaves "you" as a kind
of ghost.
Brent
"If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
--- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
Rex Allen
>>> If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to
>>> make your mind up in the present
>
>> Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my mind up for me,
>
> Asssuming physcialism, your brain is you and not some external force
> pulling your strings
Let me put it this way:
"Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my brain up for me."
In other words, assuming physicalism, my brain will do what my brain
is going to do given that the state of the universe and the laws of
physics are what they are.
Assuming physicalism, experience is just an acausal aspect of matter
and energy. There is no "me" except as a term of convenience for
particular configurations of matter and energy.
Physicalism is based on the principle of sufficient reason, under
which nothing happens that isn't caused. The interactions of matter
and energy are apparently do not have special exceptions for
consciousness to influence how the system develops. So, under
physicalism there either is no consciousness (except as a term of
convenience), or consciousness is epiphenemonal...caused but acausal.
I'll leave it to you to translate that into terms of "pulling strings".
Indeterminism doesn't get you any further, as it just inserts a
roll-of-the-dice element into the rules that govern (or describe) the
evolution of the system along its "time" dimension (whatever time is).
Rex Allen
>> Either way, there is only the epiphenomenal experience of making my
>> mind up...not the actuality of doing so.
>
> I'd say there was the epiphenomenal experience of making up your mind AND the actuality of
> doing so. Your formulation divorces "you" from from everything and leaves "you" as a kind
> of ghost.
Well, that's physicalism for you. I'm not saying that it's my
view...which is why I said "assuming physicalism".
> Brent
> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
Yeah, Dennett just redefines words in new ways so that he can say
something like that and have it mean something entirely different than
it would under common usage. The goal being to convince people that a
deterministic world-view doesn't drastically change anything, and
therefore they shouldn't be alarmed by it. "All the moral and ethical
beliefs you had before are still basically true! (IF you redefine all
the words so that they mean something different than what you took
them to mean before.)"
Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
context of Dennett's special terminology.
It's all just sophistry, to advance his "Bright" agenda. Which I have
nothing against per se...a world full of Brights would be an
improvement over the current situation I think.
But his Bright propaganda isn't at all helpful in trying to understand
the underlying nature of reality.
Brent Meeker
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Flammarion<peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> If you can't see into the future, you are going to have to
>>>> make your mind up in the present
>>> Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my mind up for me,
>> Asssuming physcialism, your brain is you and not some external force
>> pulling your strings
>
>
> Let me put it this way:
>
> "Assuming physicalism, my brain will make my brain up for me."
>
> In other words, assuming physicalism, my brain will do what my brain
> is going to do given that the state of the universe and the laws of
> physics are what they are.
>
> Assuming physicalism, experience is just an acausal aspect of matter
> and energy. There is no "me" except as a term of convenience for
> particular configurations of matter and energy.
>
> Physicalism is based on the principle of sufficient reason, under
> which nothing happens that isn't caused.
"sufficient reason".
>The interactions of matter
> and energy are apparently do not have special exceptions for
> consciousness to influence how the system develops. So, under
> physicalism there either is no consciousness (except as a term of
> convenience), or consciousness is epiphenemonal...caused but acausal.
>
> I'll leave it to you to translate that into terms of "pulling strings".
>
> Indeterminism doesn't get you any further,
with my mind is what my brain does?
Brent
Brent Meeker
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>> Either way, there is only the epiphenomenal experience of making my
>>> mind up...not the actuality of doing so.
>> I'd say there was the epiphenomenal experience of making up your mind AND the actuality of
>> doing so. Your formulation divorces "you" from from everything and leaves "you" as a kind
>> of ghost.
>
> Well, that's physicalism for you. I'm not saying that it's my
> view...which is why I said "assuming physicalism".
>
>
>> Brent
>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>
> Yeah, Dennett just redefines words in new ways so that he can say
> something like that and have it mean something entirely different than
> it would under common usage. The goal being to convince people that a
> deterministic world-view doesn't drastically change anything, and
> therefore they shouldn't be alarmed by it. "All the moral and ethical
> beliefs you had before are still basically true! (IF you redefine all
> the words so that they mean something different than what you took
> them to mean before.)"
>
> Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
> context of Dennett's special terminology.
physical processes that move your arms and legs then you avoid responsibility for what
your arms and legs do.
Brent
Rex Allen
>Where are you trying to get? to an immortal soul?
> a ghost-in-the-machine? What's wrong with my
> mind is what my brain does?
Where I'm trying to get is that there is no explanation for our
conscious experience. It just is.
So all that we have to work with are our observations, plus our innate
reasoning processes.
Unfortunately, these two things are not enough to determine what, if
anything, really exists outside of our experience.
At best, we can take our observations and apply our innate reasoning
processes to produce theoretical models that are consistent with what
we have observed.
Kant covered all this I think.
So first, the theories on offer, carried to their logical conclusions,
don't take you anywhere. They all hit explanatory dead ends: The
universe came into being uncaused, for no reason, and everything else
follows. Or the universe exists eternally, but with no explanation
for why this should be or why it takes the form that it does. Or the
platonically existing infinities of computational relations between
all the numbers do not just represent but inexplicably "cause" our
conscious experience of a material universe. Why? Because that's the
way it is.
Second, even if any of these things are true, there's no way that
*from inside that system* we can justify our belief that the theory is
true (as opposed to just consistent with conscious observation).
And third, even if true, the bottom line for all of them is,
"conscious experience just is what it is".
For instance: Bits of matter in particular configurations "cause"
conscious experience. Fine. So what deeper meaning can we draw from
this? None. In this case the bits of matter being in the particular
configurations that they are in is just a bare fact. The universe,
considered in its entirety, just is that way. So the conscious
experience that goes with that particle configuration just is a bare
fact.
But, by all means, continue with your theoretical system building. We
have to do something to pass the time, after all.
But, to revisit your original question:
>Where are you trying to get?
Okay, I gave you my answer. So, where are YOU trying to get?
>>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>
>> Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
>> context of Dennett's special terminology.
>
> Seems prefectly straightforward to me. If you define yourself as something apart from the
> physical processes that move your arms and legs then you avoid responsibility for what
> your arms and legs do.
Right. "If you define yourself as...". Well sure. That makes it
easy, and that's what Dennett does. Just makes up arbitrary
definitions that suit his ends.
If things were that way, that's the way they'd be alright.
But, the question is, are things that way? And if you say so, what's
your full reasoning? I mean your reasoning that takes into account
the entire ontological stack of what exists, of course -- since I
don't see any discussing an arbitrary subset of what exists that
you've conveniently carved out to make some rhetorical point about
what seems perfectly straightforward to you given some particular
context.
Brent Meeker
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>> Where are you trying to get? to an immortal soul?
>> a ghost-in-the-machine? What's wrong with my
>> mind is what my brain does?
>
> Where I'm trying to get is that there is no explanation for our
> conscious experience. It just is.
Depends on what you want an explanation in terms of.
>
> So all that we have to work with are our observations, plus our innate
> reasoning processes.
>
> Unfortunately, these two things are not enough to determine what, if
> anything, really exists outside of our experience.
>
> At best, we can take our observations and apply our innate reasoning
> processes to produce theoretical models that are consistent with what
> we have observed.
Right. Forget the really real and I'll settle for a good model.
>
> Kant covered all this I think.
>
> So first, the theories on offer, carried to their logical conclusions,
> don't take you anywhere. They all hit explanatory dead ends:
Unless (my favorite) they're circular.
>The
> universe came into being uncaused, for no reason, and everything else
> follows. Or the universe exists eternally, but with no explanation
> for why this should be or why it takes the form that it does. Or the
> platonically existing infinities of computational relations between
> all the numbers do not just represent but inexplicably "cause" our
> conscious experience of a material universe. Why? Because that's the
> way it is.
>
> Second, even if any of these things are true, there's no way that
> *from inside that system* we can justify our belief that the theory is
> true (as opposed to just consistent with conscious observation).
>
> And third, even if true, the bottom line for all of them is,
> "conscious experience just is what it is".
The problem with that is that is applies equally to everything. So it's completely devoid
of meaning.
>
> For instance: Bits of matter in particular configurations "cause"
> conscious experience. Fine. So what deeper meaning can we draw from
> this? None.
Maybe not meaning, but engineering. That's why I think the "hard problem" will eventually
be considered a philosophical curiosity like how many angels can dance on the head of a
pin. If we learn to build machines, robots, artificial brains, that behave as if they
were conscious we'll stop worrying about perceptual qualia and phenomenal self-reference
and instead we'll talk about visual processing and memory access and other new concepts
that'll be invented.
>In this case the bits of matter being in the particular
> configurations that they are in is just a bare fact. The universe,
> considered in its entirety, just is that way. So the conscious
> experience that goes with that particle configuration just is a bare
> fact.
>
> But, by all means, continue with your theoretical system building. We
> have to do something to pass the time, after all.
>
> But, to revisit your original question:
>
>> Where are you trying to get?
>
> Okay, I gave you my answer. So, where are YOU trying to get?
>
>
>>>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>>>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>>> Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
>>> context of Dennett's special terminology.
>> Seems prefectly straightforward to me. If you define yourself as something apart from the
>> physical processes that move your arms and legs then you avoid responsibility for what
>> your arms and legs do.
>
> Right. "If you define yourself as...". Well sure. That makes it
> easy, and that's what Dennett does. Just makes up arbitrary
> definitions that suit his ends.
On the contrary he was criticizing that way of defining yourself. And of course
definitions of words are arbitrary - we just chose the words.
>
> If things were that way, that's the way they'd be alright.
>
> But, the question is, are things that way? And if you say so, what's
> your full reasoning?
You're the one who keeps saying it is what it is.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> Rex Allen wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>> Where are you trying to get? to an immortal soul?
>>> a ghost-in-the-machine? What's wrong with my
>>> mind is what my brain does?
>>
>> Where I'm trying to get is that there is no explanation for our
>> conscious experience. It just is.
>
> Depends on what you want an explanation in terms of.
I want an explanation that explains what's really real and how that
connects to my conscious experience.
BUT, I see now that this apparently isn't possible, even in principle.
And even if physicalism or platonism were answers to what's "really
real"...those answers don't mean anything.
So. That's a bummer.
>> So all that we have to work with are our observations, plus our innate
>> reasoning processes.
>>
>> Unfortunately, these two things are not enough to determine what, if
>> anything, really exists outside of our experience.
>>
>> At best, we can take our observations and apply our innate reasoning
>> processes to produce theoretical models that are consistent with what
>> we have observed.
>
> Right. Forget the really real and I'll settle for a good model.
Hmmm. Well, apparently that's as good as it gets. So I reckon you
have the right attitude.
>> And third, even if true, the bottom line for all of them is,
>> "conscious experience just is what it is".
>
> The problem with that is that is applies equally to everything. So it's completely devoid
> of meaning.
Yep. I don't see it as a problem. That's just the way it is.
>>
>> For instance: Bits of matter in particular configurations "cause"
>> conscious experience. Fine. So what deeper meaning can we draw from
>> this? None.
>
> Maybe not meaning, but engineering. That's why I think the "hard problem" will eventually
> be considered a philosophical curiosity like how many angels can dance on the head of a
> pin. If we learn to build machines, robots, artificial brains, that behave as if they
> were conscious we'll stop worrying about perceptual qualia and phenomenal self-reference
> and instead we'll talk about visual processing and memory access and other new concepts
> that'll be invented.
I'd say that when we actually have such robots will be when interest
in the "hard problem" will peak. We're just in the early stages of
this process now.
But, I think there is no answer to the hard problem, and at some point
you just have to get on with things. So practical considerations will
ultimately rule the day. If it's convenient to treat such robots as
conscious entities then we will, otherwise we won't.
It seems unlikely that we would design a robot to feel much suffering,
and certainly not to display "human-like" signs of suffering...so can
you be cruel or abusive to something that doesn't suffer? Seems
unlikely.
So maybe there is no robot parallel to the animal-rights type ethics
to worry about.
>>>>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>>>>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>>>> Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
>>>> context of Dennett's special terminology.
>>> Seems prefectly straightforward to me. If you define yourself as something apart from the
>>> physical processes that move your arms and legs then you avoid responsibility for what
>>> your arms and legs do.
>>
>> Right. "If you define yourself as...". Well sure. That makes it
>> easy, and that's what Dennett does. Just makes up arbitrary
>> definitions that suit his ends.
>
> On the contrary he was criticizing that way of defining yourself. And of course
> definitions of words are arbitrary - we just chose the words.
Right. And Dennett is choosing his words carefully, so as to advance
his social re-engineering agenda. He want's to keep the idea of
responsibility for utilitarian reasons..it's hard to keep a society
going without it, and so he redefines it's meaning to be compatible
with determinism.
It's not "responsiblity" in the common usage, it's "Dennettian
compatibilist responsibility". He just shortens the latter to plain
"responsibility" in an attempt to mislead the unwary.
The common usage of "responsibility" may not be logical, but it has a
definite meaning, and it's not the meaning that Dennett assigns to it
in that quote. Dennett knows this, but he wants society to adopt his
terminology and view point, so he keeps throwing it out there in the
hopes that it'll stick.
If determinism is true, then there is no responsibility (common
usage). My acts are an inevitable result of the initial state of the
universe and the laws that govern its evolution...neither of which are
my doing. I get neither credit nor blame for anything, as events
could not have transpired other than they did.
You (and Dennett) can redefine responsiblity and then say, "there, you
have that". But this is a change from the common usage...and so
effectively a new word.
As far as I know Dennett isn't contesting determinism. He's just
trying to make it more palatable.
Rex Allen
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:52 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>
> usage). My acts are an inevitable result of the initial state of the
> universe and the laws that govern its evolution...neither of which are
> my doing. I get neither credit nor blame for anything, as events
> could not have transpired other than they did.
>
If you push me, and I stumble and fall into a guy who then ends up in
getting run over by a train...I am not responsible (common usage) for
his death.
If you push me, and I stumble and fall into a guy who then ends up
falling into a pile of money which he gets to keep...I'm not
responsible (common usage) for his new wealth.
Assuming determinism, the universe has been pushing me since the
moment I was conceived, and at every instant I have responded in the
*only way* that it was physically possible for me to respond.
In this case, I am not responsible (common usage) for the fortune or
misfortune that has befallen those who I have stumbled into as a
result of the universe's constant pushiness.
I AM responsible if we use Dennett's non-standard definition of
"responsible", however. Because he has specifically crafted his
definition for this purpose, as a means to an end of making
determinism more palatable to the masses.
Or maybe because he doesn't like the logically inconsistent common
usage and he just wants people to adopt his usage, but he has no other
agenda.
But, either way, "common usage responsibility" and "Dennettian
compatibilist responsibility" are not the same.
Brent Meeker
> it's "Dennettian
> compatibilist responsibility". He just shortens the latter to plain
> "responsibility" in an attempt to mislead the unwary.
>
> The common usage of "responsibility" may not be logical, but it has a
> definite meaning, and it's not the meaning that Dennett assigns to it
> in that quote.
ostensive definition, any definition other than "it is what it is"?
> Dennett knows this, but he wants society to adopt his
> terminology and view point, so he keeps throwing it out there in the
> hopes that it'll stick.
>
> If determinism is true, then there is no responsibility (common
> usage). My acts are an inevitable result of the initial state of the
> universe and the laws that govern its evolution...neither of which are
> my doing. I get neither credit nor blame for anything, as events
> could not have transpired other than they did.
>
Second, the utilitarian definition of responsibility - something that
justifies you being punished or rewarded for you actions - applies
*only* if what you do is determined by your experience. Otherwise there
would be no justification for giving you the experience of reward or
punishment.
> You (and Dennett) can redefine responsiblity and then say, "there, you
> have that". But this is a change from the common usage...and so
> effectively a new word.
>
exist and hence no one is allowed to define it.
Brent
Brent Meeker
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Rex Allen<rexal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:52 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
>>> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>>>
>> If determinism is true, then there is no responsibility (common
>> usage). My acts are an inevitable result of the initial state of the
>> universe and the laws that govern its evolution...neither of which are
>> my doing. I get neither credit nor blame for anything, as events
>> could not have transpired other than they did.
>>
>>
>
> If you push me, and I stumble and fall into a guy who then ends up in
> getting run over by a train...I am not responsible (common usage) for
> his death.
>
> If you push me, and I stumble and fall into a guy who then ends up
> falling into a pile of money which he gets to keep...I'm not
> responsible (common usage) for his new wealth.
>
> Assuming determinism, the universe has been pushing me since the
> moment I was conceived, and at every instant I have responded in the
> *only way* that it was physically possible for me to respond.
>
> In this case, I am not responsible (common usage) for the fortune or
> misfortune that has befallen those who I have stumbled into as a
> result of the universe's constant pushiness.
>
> I AM responsible if we use Dennett's non-standard definition of
> "responsible", however.
caused by who you are, your brains and experience and values. There
would be no point in rewarding or punishing you for those actions
because they are not instances of *your* behavior - unless you try to
make yourself very big.
Brent
Rex Allen
>> Right. And Dennett is choosing his words carefully, so as to advance
>> his social re-engineering agenda. He want's to keep the idea of
>> responsibility for utilitarian reasons..it's hard to keep a society
>> going without it, and so he redefines it's meaning to be compatible
>> with determinism.
>>
>> It's not "responsiblity" in the common usage,
>
> Sure it is. It's what justifies reward and punishment.
In the common usage it is what justifies the death penalty.
In the common usage, responsibility justifies vengence, as well as
deterrence and rehabilitation.
>
>> it's "Dennettian
>> compatibilist responsibility". He just shortens the latter to plain
>> "responsibility" in an attempt to mislead the unwary.
>>
>> The common usage of "responsibility" may not be logical, but it has a
>> definite meaning, and it's not the meaning that Dennett assigns to it
>> in that quote.
>
> And what meaning is that? Can you give an operational definition, an
> ostensive definition, any definition other than "it is what it is"?
In the common usage responsibility implies that the buck stops here.
Not because it's convenient, not because you choose not to pass the
buck, but because it literally stops here. The causal chain should
not be traced further back. We don't need to worry about your
childhood conditions, or how much your mommy and daddy loved you, or
whether you are a good person, or hoped for better things.
There's no point in examining the conditions that led to your action,
because YOU are responsible for that action, and you will bear the
full weight of the consequences. Not because you will learn
something. Not because it will produce better behavior in the future.
Not because it will deter others from acting as you did. But because
you are responsible.
That's the common usage. And, given determinism, I say there's no
such thing. Given determinism, the whole concept is crazy.
Dennett also says there's no such thing, but he wants to claim the
word and re-purpose it for his own uses. Not because it's such a
great word that rolls off the tongue, but because he wants to pull a
slight of hand, and keeps it's law-and-order, no-nonsense,
tough-on-crime-tough-on-criminals connotations while changing it's
actual definition.
>> Dennett knows this, but he wants society to adopt his
>> terminology and view point, so he keeps throwing it out there in the
>> hopes that it'll stick.
>>
>> If determinism is true, then there is no responsibility (common
>> usage). My acts are an inevitable result of the initial state of the
>> universe and the laws that govern its evolution...neither of which are
>> my doing. I get neither credit nor blame for anything, as events
>> could not have transpired other than they did.
>>
> First, some things may be random (like the way your brain developed).
Not given determinism, right? And Dennett isn't arguing against
determinism. He's arguing FOR compatibilism.
> Second, the utilitarian definition of responsibility - something that
> justifies you being punished or rewarded for you actions - applies
> *only* if what you do is determined by your experience.
I know. Animal training basically. Social conditioning.
But that's not the common usage. In my experience at least. Usage
determines meaning.
> Otherwise there
> would be no justification for giving you the experience of reward or
> punishment.
Reward and punishment probably aren't the right words. Probably we
should say "positive and negative reinforcement".
>> You (and Dennett) can redefine responsiblity and then say, "there, you
>> have that". But this is a change from the common usage...and so
>> effectively a new word.
>>
> You haven't defined it at all. In fact you seem to assert it doesn't
> exist and hence no one is allowed to define it.
>
I actually would rather not have it used. The word "responsibility"
carries too much moralistic "libertarian free will" baggage I think.
I think the common usage of responsibility is nonsense, and trying to
redefine it more logically while keeping the old connotations just
results in confusion and continued irrational thinking amongst the
"Old Testament"-inclined.
SO, with that in mind...what were you implying when you added that
quote? What was your motivation? What were you accusing me of?
In short...why did you introduce that Dennett quote into this thread?
Rex Allen
>
> SO, with that in mind...what were you implying when you added that
> quote? What was your motivation? What were you accusing me of?
>
> In short...why did you introduce that Dennett quote into this thread?
Probably I should have started with this question in my initial response! Ha!
But Dennett is my pet peeve. The guy really irks me.
Rex Allen
>> misfortune that has befallen those who I have stumbled into as a
>> result of the universe's constant pushiness.
>>
>> I AM responsible if we use Dennett's non-standard definition of
>> "responsible", however.
>
> No you are not, because none of the above hypothetical events were
> caused by who you are, your brains and experience and values. There
> would be no point in rewarding or punishing you for those actions
> because they are not instances of *your* behavior - unless you try to
> make yourself very big.
So if you want to redefine responsibility in terms of the utilitarian
applicability of positive and negative reinforcement with the goal of
producing socially optimal behavior, that's fine with me. But that's
not the common usage. And I think it would be better to abandon the
term "responsibility" and go with something less entangled with
antediluvian notions of libertarian free will...which is basically
consistent with the common usage.
And again, my question stands with respect to why you introduced that
quote into this thread.
Brent Meeker
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>> Rex Allen wrote:
>>
>>> In this case, I am not responsible (common usage) for the fortune or
>>> misfortune that has befallen those who I have stumbled into as a
>>> result of the universe's constant pushiness.
>>>
>>> I AM responsible if we use Dennett's non-standard definition of
>>> "responsible", however.
>>>
>> No you are not, because none of the above hypothetical events were
>> caused by who you are, your brains and experience and values. There
>> would be no point in rewarding or punishing you for those actions
>> because they are not instances of *your* behavior - unless you try to
>> make yourself very big.
>>
>
> So if you want to redefine responsibility in terms of the utilitarian
> applicability of positive and negative reinforcement with the goal of
> producing socially optimal behavior, that's fine with me.
and assert that they are common usage. I think my definition
corresponds very well with common usage.
> But that's
> not the common usage. And I think it would be better to abandon the
> term "responsibility" and go with something less entangled with
> antediluvian notions of libertarian free will...which is basically
> consistent with the common usage.
>
> And again, my question stands with respect to why you introduced that
> quote into this thread.
It seemed apropos of your view that determinism eliminates the self.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> "Redefine"? You haven't defined it at all - you just assert examples
> and assert that they are common usage.
Pshaw. You asked for an operational definition, and I gave you one.
Perhaps you should reread my email. You may have missed it. All the
brackets can get confusing.
> I think my definition
> corresponds very well with common usage.
Ha! I disagree. You must hang out with a better educated crowd than I do.
>> And again, my question stands with respect to why you introduced that
>> quote into this thread.
>
> It seemed apropos of your view that determinism eliminates the self.
How so? I don't see it.
David Nyman
> > For instance: Bits of matter in particular configurations "cause"
> > conscious experience. Fine. So what deeper meaning can we draw from
> > this? None.
>
> Maybe not meaning, but engineering. That's why I think the "hard problem" will eventually
> be considered a philosophical curiosity like how many angels can dance on the head of a
> pin. If we learn to build machines, robots, artificial brains, that behave as if they
> were conscious we'll stop worrying about perceptual qualia and phenomenal self-reference
> and instead we'll talk about visual processing and memory access and other new concepts
> that'll be invented.
experienced. Given, presumably, that future changes in terminology or
explanatory style won't fundamentally change the nature of our
qualitative experience, how do you feel this might ultimately be
accommodated in the explanatory scheme?
David
> Rex Allen wrote:
David Nyman
> > "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
> > --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
>
> Yeah, Dennett just redefines words in new ways so that he can say
> something like that and have it mean something entirely different than
> it would under common usage. The goal being to convince people that a
> deterministic world-view doesn't drastically change anything, and
> therefore they shouldn't be alarmed by it. "All the moral and ethical
> beliefs you had before are still basically true! (IF you redefine all
> the words so that they mean something different than what you took
> them to mean before.)"
to my suggestion that our 'ownership' of willing and acting is
necessarily borrowed or inherited from the generalised context from
which our self-concept is abstracted. Broadly, this is the brunt of
Dennett's aphorism. Whereas I part company with him on experiential
eliminativism on quite separate grounds, I think his exploration of
the constraints on our actions in "Freedom Evolves" is pretty much on
the money. The key to this I think is avoidance of any notion that as
'individuals' we are other than metaphorically distinguishable from
the generalised context which is our larger 'personality'. Any such
idea of separation immediately seems to put "our" will and action into
conflict with "its" will and action. But in fact there is no such
separation of "I" and "it", there is simply a theatre of willing and
acting. Furthermore, common usage can still be retained in this
comprehension of our personal theatre of action as a subset of the
whole, in that when we examine our inherited responsibility, we find
ourselves to be neither more nor less constrained, and by no different
considerations, than under any 'dualistic' conception.
David
Rex Allen
>
> I think his exploration of
> the constraints on our actions in "Freedom Evolves" is pretty much on
> the money.
So I can't comment on Freedom Evolves, as I haven't read it. But I
have read some of his articles and seen him debate and give
interviews. So that sounds like Dennett alright - rearranging deck
chairs, redefining words, whatever it takes.
From the wikipedia article on "Freedom Evolves":
"In his treatment of both free will and altruism, he starts by showing
why we should not accept the traditional definitions of either term."
So, as I said, you can't read quote of Dennett and accept it at face
value, because Dennett doesn't restrict himself to traditional
definitions of terms. You have to interpret Dennett's quotes within
the context of his web of alternate, non-traditional "compatibilist"
word definitions.
Dennett's main goal is not to show that determinism is compatible with
free will (which it isn't), BUT to show that determinism is compatible
with continued social order and cohesion (which it is...probably).
Flammarion
On 2 Sep, 03:10, Rex Allen <rexallen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think his exploration of
> > the constraints on our actions in "Freedom Evolves" is pretty much on
> > the money.
>
> So I can't comment on Freedom Evolves, as I haven't read it. But I
> have read some of his articles and seen him debate and give
> interviews. So that sounds like Dennett alright - rearranging deck
> chairs, redefining words, whatever it takes.
>
> From the wikipedia article on "Freedom Evolves":
>
> "In his treatment of both free will and altruism, he starts by showing
> why we should not accept the traditional definitions of either term."
>
> So, as I said, you can't read quote of Dennett and accept it at face
> value, because Dennett doesn't restrict himself to traditional
> definitions of terms. You have to interpret Dennett's quotes within
> the context of his web of alternate, non-traditional "compatibilist"
> word definitions.
>
> Dennett's main goal is not to show that determinism is compatible with
> free will (which it isn't),
Stathis Papaioannou
Dennett didn't invent compatibilism. It has a long history and
extensive literature.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
--
Stathis Papaioannou
Brent Meeker
chracteristics of free-will that people usually think are important -
it's "all the free-will worth having".
Brent
Flammarion
Rex Allen
>> Dennett's main goal is not to show that determinism is compatible with
>> free will (which it isn't),
>
> actually it is, although I don't find it very convincing
Asking whether free will is compatible with determinism is like asking
whether unicorns are compatible with zebras.
Dennett says "Yes, unicorns ARE compatible with zebras." But by
"unicorns" he really means regular horses with fake horns strapped to
their foreheads.
So, everything that Dennett says is true...from a certain point of
view. All you have to do is accept his alternate set of definitions.
Though, again, one has to wonder what Dennett's goal is in providing
non-traditional definitions for very traditional words like
"responsibility", "altruism", "morals", and "free will". To me it
looks like social engineering.
Rex Allen
>
> Dennett didn't invent compatibilism. It has a long history and
> extensive literature.
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
I was aware of these facts. But a good SEP article nonetheless, thanks!
Rex Allen
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 6:21 AM, Stathis Papaioannou<stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dennett didn't invent compatibilism. It has a long history and
>> extensive literature.
>>
>> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
>
Dawkins has some good things to say on the subject I think:
Brent Meeker
will not improve it's function and (2) we know that is must be possible
to fix it (since we built it in the first place). However neither of
these is true in the case of dealing with a person who has committed a
crime (I disdain the word "criminal" as if it were a separate species).
Such a person may be deterred from further crimes by some punishment and
more to the point other persons may be deterred by the example.
Furthermore we have no idea how to "fix" the person in a mechanistic way
- and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> It seems foolish to beat Basil's car because (1) we know the beating
> will not improve it's function and (2) we know that is must be possible
> to fix it (since we built it in the first place). However neither of
> these is true in the case of dealing with a person who has committed a
> crime (I disdain the word "criminal" as if it were a separate species).
> Such a person may be deterred from further crimes by some punishment and
> more to the point other persons may be deterred by the example.
> Furthermore we have no idea how to "fix" the person in a mechanistic way
> - and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
>
> Brent
If our goal is a criminal justice system that is rational, ethical,
and efficient, then do you think that it helps or hurts to frame the
discussion in terms of traditional words like morality,
responsibility, and free will - with all of their religious and
pre-scientific connotations and baggage?
So, looking at your original Dennett quote:
"If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
So apparently what he is saying is that it is his evaluation that
anyone who concludes that determinism precludes free-will is most
likely making that conclusion BECAUSE they themselves wish to avoid
being subjected to positive or negative reinforcement whose intent is
to produce optimal social conditioning.
BUT, if I am in fact supportive of the rational, ethical, and
efficient application of positive and negative reinforcements whose
intent is to induce socially optimal behavior (even if I am the one
being targeted by these inducements), BUT I still don't believe in
free will or moral responsibility in the sense that those words are
traditionally used (e.g., to justify retribution, instead of only
deterrence and rehabilitation), then haven't I shown Dennett to be
wrong?
I think the American criminal justice system is nowhere near rational,
ethical, or efficient...and I think that Dennett's compatiblist word
games are more likely to hinder attempts to correct this than to help.
And the same goes for other areas, like addressing poverty and
economic inequality.
Not because Dennett's ENTIRE system leads to bad things, but because
if you just look at parts of it without grasping the full context,
then it seems to uphold the status quo approach of retribution first,
deterrence second, and rehabilitation third if at all. And the idea
that the system is fine, and that people *only* have themselves to
blame for their poverty or other undesirable situation.
And of course, as Stathis pointed out, Dennett isn't the first
compatiblist, or the only compatibilist...but he's by far the most
vocal and prominent.
So...we've wandered way off topic. But Dennett really irks me.
Rex Allen
> - and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
A further thought: the solution to crime in A Clockwork Orange has a
similar problem...it's singular focus on the individual, while
ignoring the problems of the system within which the individual
developed.
So obviously if you have a person who has committed a crime, some
action has to be taken. And you can't hand out "hardship" waivers
left and right just because the "criminal" can plausibly point to some
event in his past as a causal factor. The crime was committed, and a
credible threat of "negative reinforcement" has to be maintained for
the sake of deterrence.
But rehabiitation isn't necessarily punishment...it could even be
viewed as "positive reinforcement", AND it's in everyone's
interest..perpetrator, society at large, as well as victims.
Further, if there's some common denominator amongst perpetrators of
crimes, such as poverty, and we want to reduce crime, why not raise
the priority of programs to reduce poverty instead of building more
prisons and passing 3-strikes type laws?
Obviously nobody is "pro-poverty", but I think framing the issue in
terms of "personal responsibility" and "free-will" incorrectly pushes
the debate away from systemic solutions towards an excessive focus on
individuals.
Though, obviously there are no perfect solutions, and violence will
always be with us. BUT, Dawkins' tone in the link I sent sounds much
closer to the right attitude than the vibe I get from Dennett.
But again, Dennett is mainly interested in pushing his "Bright"
agenda...showing that Atheists are just like everybody else. But if
"everybody else" are somewhat less than admirable (or at the very
least, less than rational) in their attitudes towards the maladjusted
members of society, then I don't see this as a big win.
Brent Meeker
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Brent Meeker<meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>> Furthermore we have no idea how to "fix" the person in a mechanistic way
>> - and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
>>
>
> A further thought: the solution to crime in A Clockwork Orange has a
> similar problem...it's singular focus on the individual, while
> ignoring the problems of the system within which the individual
> developed.
>
> So obviously if you have a person who has committed a crime, some
> action has to be taken. And you can't hand out "hardship" waivers
> left and right just because the "criminal" can plausibly point to some
> event in his past as a causal factor. The crime was committed, and a
> credible threat of "negative reinforcement" has to be maintained for
> the sake of deterrence.
>
> But rehabiitation isn't necessarily punishment...it could even be
> viewed as "positive reinforcement", AND it's in everyone's
> interest..perpetrator, society at large, as well as victims.
>
> Further, if there's some common denominator amongst perpetrators of
> crimes, such as poverty, and we want to reduce crime, why not raise
> the priority of programs to reduce poverty instead of building more
> prisons and passing 3-strikes type laws?
>
repeal laws. About 1/3 of our prison population is there because of
non-violent drug use crimes.
> Obviously nobody is "pro-poverty",
when it is suggested that the way to stop illegal immigration is to
punish those who hire them. Why would they want to have access to
illegal aliens? Because illegal aliens are poor and they will therefore
be willing to work cheap.
> but I think framing the issue in
> terms of "personal responsibility" and "free-will" incorrectly pushes
> the debate away from systemic solutions towards an excessive focus on
> individuals.
>
I'd say it depends on whether we have systemic solutions or individual
solutions.
> Though, obviously there are no perfect solutions, and violence will
> always be with us. BUT, Dawkins' tone in the link I sent sounds much
> closer to the right attitude than the vibe I get from Dennett.
>
> But again, Dennett is mainly interested in pushing his "Bright"
> agenda...showing that Atheists are just like everybody else.
Seems like you're mainly interested in picking a fight with Dennett. I
don't recall him mentioning either "Brights" or atheists in either
"Elbow Room" or "Freedom Evolves", his two books on compatibilist free will.
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> Obviously nobody is "pro-poverty", but I think framing the issue in
> terms of "personal responsibility" and "free-will" incorrectly pushes
> the debate away from systemic solutions towards an excessive focus on
> individuals.
Or, another way of saying it might be:
I think framing the issue in terms of "personal responsibility" and
"free-will" incorrectly pushes the debate away from preventative
"positive reinforcement" for individuals who are in a group with a
high demonstrated risk of committing crimes, towards an excessive
focus on "negative reinforcement" for individuals what have been
already been convicted of committing crimes.
While there are limits to what is practically possible, I think we
have been lax in pursuing this angle.
Rex Allen
>> But again, Dennett is mainly interested in pushing his "Bright"
>> agenda...showing that Atheists are just like everybody else.
>
> Seems like you're mainly interested in picking a fight with Dennett. I
> don't recall him mentioning either "Brights" or atheists in either
> "Elbow Room" or "Freedom Evolves", his two books on compatibilist free will.
Probably you should check out "Breaking The Spell", which I haven't
read either, but I've seen him give interviews on it.
I don't have any problem with Dennett per se...probably he's a fine
person. He makes cider, and is a sculptor, and likes to sail. All
sounds good.
And I don't know what his views on all the various social issues are,
like crime or immigration or universal healthcare, so I can't oppose
him on any of those grounds...for all I know we agree on everything.
AND he may even be right...if you convert everyone to atheism, then
they may be more inclined to think rationally about things, and
everything will improve as a result. Including my pet issues.
BUT...to me it looks like he's going about it the wrong way. His
views on free will look like unhelpful word games. Determinism is
determinism and there's no way to make it compatible with the
traditional meaning of free will. If you have an alternate definition
of "all the free will that's worth having", then we should come up
with a new term for that. "Bright-will" maybe.
And his views on qualia don't raise my opinion of him much either.
Rex Allen
> repeal laws. About 1/3 of our prison population is there because of
> non-violent drug use crimes.
Indeed, I'm on board with that. But, I don't see that happening
anytime soon. Americans love to send people to prison. It's the
national pastime.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/03/11/glenn-loury/a-nation-of-jailers/
I put the ultimate blame on an exaggerated emphasis on personal
responsibility, plus a naive belief in libertarian free will.
Stathis Papaioannou
>> http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins
> It seems foolish to beat Basil's car because (1) we know the beating
> will not improve it's function and (2) we know that is must be possible
> to fix it (since we built it in the first place). However neither of
> these is true in the case of dealing with a person who has committed a
> crime (I disdain the word "criminal" as if it were a separate species).
> Such a person may be deterred from further crimes by some punishment and
> more to the point other persons may be deterred by the example.
> Furthermore we have no idea how to "fix" the person in a mechanistic way
> - and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
But there is a difference between punishment to serve some utilitarian
end - reducing crime - and punishment as retribution.
It's also interesting to consider what would happen if we could easily
change people's character and motivations. Would it be better to
forcibly change a violent psychopath's brain so that he becomes a nice
person and thanks you for it afterwards, or would it be better to lock
him up to prevent him re-offending?
--
Stathis Papaioannou
Brent Meeker
> 2009/9/5 Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com>:
>
>
>>> http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins
>>>
>> It seems foolish to beat Basil's car because (1) we know the beating
>> will not improve it's function and (2) we know that is must be possible
>> to fix it (since we built it in the first place). However neither of
>> these is true in the case of dealing with a person who has committed a
>> crime (I disdain the word "criminal" as if it were a separate species).
>> Such a person may be deterred from further crimes by some punishment and
>> more to the point other persons may be deterred by the example.
>> Furthermore we have no idea how to "fix" the person in a mechanistic way
>> - and if we did would it be ethical (c.f. "Clockwork Orange").
>>
>
> But there is a difference between punishment to serve some utilitarian
> end - reducing crime - and punishment as retribution.
>
Ironically, government punishment as retribution was adopted for the
utilitarian reason that it displaced private retribution which tended to
feuds. A desire for retribution is probably something that is built in
by evolution, but it is far less in some people than others.
> It's also interesting to consider what would happen if we could easily
> change people's character and motivations. Would it be better to
> forcibly change a violent psychopath's brain so that he becomes a nice
> person and thanks you for it afterwards, or would it be better to lock
> him up to prevent him re-offending
I'd say it depends of how anti-social the person's character and
motivations are and how precisely he could be changed. In the case of a
violent psychopath who has murdered someoen we, at present (in the
U.S.), can execute him - so it doesn't seem *less* ethical to change his
personality even drastically. On the other hand there's a slippery
slope here. If it's good to "cure" a violent psychopath is it also good
to "cure" a pedophile, a petty thief, an obnoxious liar, a
homosexual,...? Should a person be able to choose a "cure" for themselves?
Brent