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consciously experiencing (contd 5)
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someone
Nov 26, 2015, 3:53:47 PM11/26/15
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Posted twice, neither had got through by the time of posting which was at least 14 minutes after the second post, so started a new thread again. It is a continuation of:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/aojZqYdyBwAJ
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 7:53:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 12:08:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 4:53:46 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 11:28:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:58:47 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:18:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 2:03:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:48:45 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 1:23:47 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 7:58:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I'm not suggesting that the robot just recognises a certain frequency of light and names it, as the first two sentences stated : "Imagine there is a robot. The Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that you would classify as consciousness." So give an example of the type of behaviour you'd require it to demonstrate for you to claim that it is doing the consciousness behaviour...
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Why didn't you give an example, or if you'd prefer, just imagine that it demonstrates whatever behaviour you think that would involve. Was it that having a look-up table where certain channel values relate to certain words for the purposes of communicating in whatever communication language the software has loaded would prevent it from ever being considered being conscious? If not, then why not assume that it performs whatever behaviour you think it would require. I'll remind you of the robot again.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Imagine there is a robot. The Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that *you* would classify as consciousness. It has cameras for eyes, with each pixel having three 8-bit intensity values (so a range from 0-255) each represent a colour intensity. These come through 3 channels A, B, and C. Internally, in software ("version 1"), the robot holds a table so to speak of linking words to the colour values. E.g. if channel A has an intensity of 255, and B & C intensities of 0, the robot will use the word "red" to describe the colour if B is 255 and A & C are 0 it will use the word "green" and if C is 255 and A & B are 0, it will use the word "blue" to describe the colour. You can imagine that all its reactions to colour are based off the ABC channel values.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Imagine that the Mark 1 can take two types of eye camera. The RGB eye camera which, for each pixel, uses channel A for the red light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the blue light intensity data. Or the BGR eye camera which uses channel the A channel for the blue light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the red light intensity data.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Consider four Mark 1 robots, two with RGB eye cameras, and two with BGR eye cameras. From each pair, one is in a red room with a blue table, and the other is in a blue room with a red table. Do both the Mark 1s (the one with RGB camera eyes, and the one with BGR camera eyes) in the red room with a blue table experience the room with similar red qualia as you would, and the table with a similar blue qualia as you would?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Why are you avoiding answer this?
> > > > >
> > > > > Because, based on your track record, your complicated scenarios inevitably lead to dead ends and are a waste of time. It may comfort you to think that people avoid them because they are afraid of your trenchant insights. If so, go ahead and be comforted.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > This isn't that complicated, and it is related to the part of this thread regarding what you mean by behaviour, and since there is an ambiguity there that I have pointed out, it would be useful if you'd answer.
> > > >
> > > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/9YoY2hFhBwAJ
> > > >
> > > > Or maybe you'll answer there, but it might be easier if you answered here, and kept it in the one thread.
> > >
> > > If you don't understand what I mean by behavior, just ask, and I'll try to resolve the ambiguity. No need for robots. As I said before, I consider a system's behavior to be absolutely everything about it that can in principle be detected by observation and experiment. If that's not clear enough, tell me what part you can't grasp, and I'll try again.
> >
> > I did ask, the link is to a post where I was questioning why you didn't answer. Though I think we may be getting to it anyway lower down in this thread. If it becomes ambiguous, I might bring in the robot again just to be clear.
> >
> >
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> > > > > > > > > > > Here's the reason I'm not interested in working through things by answering your questions. After months and months of my and others trying to answer your questions, interpreting your questions, trying to make sense of them in the best possible light, getting diverted into pointless side issues, finally two or three of your arguments against physicalism have emerged from the mist. And all of them could have been stated up front in your first post. But whenever it becomes clear what you are arguing, and when people critique your argument, you just run off and take refuge in more pointless questions, rather than deal with the arguments that you've coughed up after so much labor.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > Here are your arguments, stated simply:
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 1. If everything follows the same physical laws, then, if we knew all the laws perfectly, we could predict the behavior of conscious systems without making any reference to consciousness. That would mean consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 2. A sufficiently large collection of components (hand raisers or random electrical gates) or a subset of the collection could, by chance behave exactly as the computer controlling a conscious robot. So consciousness could arise randomly, even say, among an enormous collection of people randomly raising their hands.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 3. A human brain experiencing, say, the sensation of eating a strawberry cupcake, might be produced on an alien world, by an alien artist simply interested in producing a mechanism to control an artistic display of fairy lights, even though the alien knew nothing of humans. And it's obviously absurd that that brain could feel the experience of eating a strawberry cupcake when there are no humans, no strawberries, and no cupcakes anywhere to be seen.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > They are all arguments that stand in need of some defense. But whenever we start talking about your actual arguments you run off into another thread. So, no, Im not interested in going through another month-long string of questions to arrive at another similarly non-spectacular refutation of physicalism.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > But you can't understand any of the arguments, because they all rely on understanding the feature I am referring to as consciously experiencing.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Then go ahead and say what you mean when you refer to "consciously experiencing." It's hard to see why you are so afraid to lay out your position.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > So far we've got (1) consciousness is not epiphenomenal and (2) consciousness is not a behavior. Now, let's be sure I understand what you mean here. When you say consciousness is not a behavior do you mean it is not something macroscopic and externally observable, like talking, running, grimacing, etc? If that's what you mean, then I agree with you. Or do you mean that consciousness is not something that is even in principle observable? If that's what you mean, then I disagree. Though in either case I'll have no trouble understanding what you mean, as long as you just come out and *say* what you mean.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Did you not understand when I had stated:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > "I could try to ask you whether you understood dualism, and understood what the features the dualists believed weren't features of the physical human but were features of the soul/mind, the response to which influences the human behaviour perhaps through quantum events which microtubules are sensitive to and are able to make neuron firings sensitive to. You could presumably imagine the human in which there are no quantum events corresponding to such a mind/soul but which were just by chance. So the human behaviour was the same, but the explanation different. Whether you can or not I don't know. But if you can then the feature I am talking about are the sensations that the dualists claim are a feature of the mind."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Why are you avoiding answering this?
> > > > >
> > > > > First, I'm not a dualist. Second, I think Penrose's stuff about quantum effects on microtubulues is hogwash. But since it does not seem to me to be central to your argument, I'm not interested in the digression.
> > > > >
> > > > > But you can read a critique of Penrose's argument here http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > I've explained to you before that this thread isn't about any argument, it is just me highlighting what feature I am referring to when I use the term "consciously experiencing". You've asked me for an explanation, and I've given more than one, and that was yet another one. Regarding your first point, are you suggesting that non-dualists are incapable of understanding which features the dualists were suggesting were of the soul/mind and not features of the physical human, and that because you aren't a dualist you are therefore incapable of understanding which features they were?
> > >
> > > I'm not interested in what feature some abstract dualist is interested in. Just go ahead and tell me what you mean by "consciously experiencing." Or have you implicitly done that? By "consciously experiencing" do you mean "using your immaterial mind to influence the outcome of events on a quantum scale"?
> > >
> > > You need to stop conflating "understanding an idea" with "agreeing with the idea." I'll try to be careful, too. For example, I understand dualism, I just disagree with it.
> > >
> >
> > I wasn't asking whether you agreed with it, I was just asking you whether you could understand which features they were claiming were of the mind/soul and not features of the physical human. So are you saying that you can understand which features they are (but don't agree that they are features of the mind/soul but are instead features of the physical human)?
>
> As I said above, I understand dualism, I just don't agree with it. If you cannot understand that that statement answers your question, that's on you.
>
> Let me repeat it. I understand dualism. That means I understand that it claims that qualia, free will, subjective experience, the mind are not physical features of the brain. There are lots of dualists, though, so just to be sure, maybe you should say which features exactly, you think are features of the mind/soul rather than features of the physical human.
> >
> > > >
> > > > Regarding your second point you were right Penrose and Hameroffs' theory about orchestrated reduction aren't important to the point, it was added in more to answer a point that the poster which goes under the name *Hemidactylus* made, which was that "there's no interface point where a ghost can open a door". All that was required from Penrose and Hameroffs' theory is that there exists a mechanism which allows quantum effects in microtubules to influence neural firing, things like quantum entanglement are irrelevant.
> > >
> > > Well, no. If decoherence occurs fast enough, faster than the time scales on which microtubules move and neurons fire, then everything acts classically. But again, this is not central and I'm not interested in the digression.
> > >
> >
> > But dualism wouldn't rely on entanglement at all, so I'm not clear on why decoherence would matter. Perhaps you could explain why you think it would be relevant?
>
> Dualism, and the particular version espoused by Penrose are not the same thing. In any case Penrose's version still suffers from the problems that afflict all dualist accounts. How does the immaterial mind interact with material particulars to change their quantum behavior? All bringing in quantum mechanics does is hide the interaction between the matierial and the non-material a bit. If the non-material is non-material, how is it localized in space? Why does the mind only effect the quantum behavior of particles within the brain it is associated with? One can wave away all this problems, and if you are unsatisfied with physicalism, perhaps you have no choice but to wave them away, but the dualist account is no more complete than the physicalist account, and intoning the words "quantum mechanics" does not make it any more complete.
>
I didn't think Dualism and what was espoused by Penrose were the same thing. You had said that decoherence was a problem form Penrose's account, but with dualism you change the problem to how "the immaterial mind interacts with material particulars". I'm not a dualist. I'm a monist, in the sense that all there is is mind. I'm not a solipsist, I don't think mine is the only mind. Here is a post with a rough outline, it might not be that easy to follow, and isn't too relevant, other than to point out that dualism isn't the only alternative to physicalism. There is the other side of the dualism.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.atheism/Os0GVP2A4XY/7gmPDi01u1sJ
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Of course, defining consciousness by what it is not, is not the most direct route, so, presumably you have more to add. If you mean, "qualia" go ahead, and say it. If you mean "subjectivity" go ahead and say it. I assure I'll have no trouble understanding what you mean, even if I think you're wrong.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Well I'd consider qualia a feature of consciously experiencing. What behaviour were you considering the qualia of blue to be?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > OK. Qualia. On my view the qualia of blue is the sum of the following behavior, the firing of blue-receptive cone cells in the retina, the transmission of that signal up the visual pathways, the integration of the color information with the shape and boundary information collected by the rods, the higher level visual processing involving identification of whatever it was that was blue, the modulation of the perception of blue by adjacent colors, the triggering of the word "blue," the associations brought up from memory of other blue things, the interaction of those memories with my current emotional state, any connections to thoughts I'd been having about anything that might be effected by seeing that blue thing. I could go on, but I suspect you get the drift. All those things are behaviors that my brain does in response to the sight of that blue thing, and that's the behavior that I would identify as a qualia of blue.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What do you mean by "adjacent colours" do you mean light frequencies?
> > > > >
> > > > > I mean the colors of whatever things are adjacent to the blue thing that I'm looking at.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > So the light frequencies reflected by the things adjacent to the blue thing?
> > >
> > > And the effect those frequencies in from the adjacent objects have on the way my brain processes blue.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > >Also what do you mean by "seeing that blue thing"? Are you talking about brain processes associated with the firing of blue-receptive cone cells in the retina?
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm talking about the whole process, blue receptive cones, visual processing, accessing words for colors, stimulating memories, etc.
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> > > >
> > > > When you say accessing words, or stimulating memories, do you mean anything other than brain processes?
> > >
> > > No.
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> > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Take for example this quote from Ullin Place:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 'I want to stress from the outset that in defending the thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain, I am not trying to argue that when we describe our dreams, fantasies, and sensations we are talking about processes in our brains. That is, I am not claiming that statements about sensations and mental images are reducible to or analyzable into statements about brain processes, in the way in which "cognition statements" are analyzable into statements about behaviour. To say that statements about consciousness are statements about brain processes is manifestly false. This is shown (a) by the fact that you can describe your sensations and mental imagery without knowing anything about your brain processes or even that such things exist, (b) by the fact that statements about one's consciousness and statements about one's brain processes are verified in entirely different ways, and (c) by the fact that there is nothing self-contradictory about the statement "X has a pain but there is nothing going on in his brain." What I do want to assert, however, is that the statement "Consciousness is a process in the brain," although not necessarily true, is not necessarily false.'
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Can you understand the difference between statements about consciousness and the statements about brain processes, and if so, was your description supposed to be a descriptive statement about brain processes?
> > > > >
> > > > > I understand that Ullin Place thinks there is a difference between statements about consciousness and statements about brain processes. But since I think that consciousness *is* a brain process, I hold that statements about consciousness *are* statements about brain processes, even if they are expressed in different words.
> > > >
> > > > And refer to different features presumably. So a neurosurgeon for example could be operating on someone's brain discussing certain features of the brain processes for example, those observable from a third person perspective, and the person being operated on could be discussing features of those same brain processes that are only observable from a first person perspective.
> > >
> > > I would say that the same features look different from different perspectives, rather than that some features are observable only from one of the perspectives. But that's just a question of how to use words.
> > >
> >
> > I don't think it is, see below.
> >
> > > >So with regards to Place's point (a) the person could describe the features that are observable only from a first person perspective the sensations and mental imagery for example without knowing anything about features of the brain processes that the neurosurgeon is observing, or even that the features the neurosurgeon is observing exist.
> > >
> > > OK. I'd call them different perspectives, rather than different features. A pyramid looks square viewed from the bottom and triangular viewed from one side, but it's still a single pyramid.
> >
> > Does a cup have a first person perspective? If not then having a first person perspective is a feature that not all physical things would have.
>
> A cup does not have a first person perspective. Not all physical things have a first person perspective. We already agree, I think, that not all physical things are conscious.
Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
So where I had earlier written
"(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side, and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
---
'Hoyle wrote, "I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw upon the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars." At the time no one knew enough about nuclear physics to understand the magnitude of the serendipity that resulted in these exact physical laws. But in investigating the validity of the strong anthropic principle, in recent years physicists began asking themselves what the universe would have been like if the laws of nature were different. Today we can create computer models that tell us how the rate of the triple alpha reaction depends upon the strength of the fundamental forces of nature. Such calculations show that a change as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all the carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions for our existence disappear!
...It turns out that it is not only the strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force that are made to order for our existence. Most of the fundamental constants in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered only by modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life....'
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If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/aojZqYdyBwAJ
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 7:53:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 12:08:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 4:53:46 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 11:28:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:58:47 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:18:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 2:03:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:48:45 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 1:23:47 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 7:58:46 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I'm not suggesting that the robot just recognises a certain frequency of light and names it, as the first two sentences stated : "Imagine there is a robot. The Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that you would classify as consciousness." So give an example of the type of behaviour you'd require it to demonstrate for you to claim that it is doing the consciousness behaviour...
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Why didn't you give an example, or if you'd prefer, just imagine that it demonstrates whatever behaviour you think that would involve. Was it that having a look-up table where certain channel values relate to certain words for the purposes of communicating in whatever communication language the software has loaded would prevent it from ever being considered being conscious? If not, then why not assume that it performs whatever behaviour you think it would require. I'll remind you of the robot again.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Imagine there is a robot. The Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that *you* would classify as consciousness. It has cameras for eyes, with each pixel having three 8-bit intensity values (so a range from 0-255) each represent a colour intensity. These come through 3 channels A, B, and C. Internally, in software ("version 1"), the robot holds a table so to speak of linking words to the colour values. E.g. if channel A has an intensity of 255, and B & C intensities of 0, the robot will use the word "red" to describe the colour if B is 255 and A & C are 0 it will use the word "green" and if C is 255 and A & B are 0, it will use the word "blue" to describe the colour. You can imagine that all its reactions to colour are based off the ABC channel values.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Imagine that the Mark 1 can take two types of eye camera. The RGB eye camera which, for each pixel, uses channel A for the red light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the blue light intensity data. Or the BGR eye camera which uses channel the A channel for the blue light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the red light intensity data.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Consider four Mark 1 robots, two with RGB eye cameras, and two with BGR eye cameras. From each pair, one is in a red room with a blue table, and the other is in a blue room with a red table. Do both the Mark 1s (the one with RGB camera eyes, and the one with BGR camera eyes) in the red room with a blue table experience the room with similar red qualia as you would, and the table with a similar blue qualia as you would?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Why are you avoiding answer this?
> > > > >
> > > > > Because, based on your track record, your complicated scenarios inevitably lead to dead ends and are a waste of time. It may comfort you to think that people avoid them because they are afraid of your trenchant insights. If so, go ahead and be comforted.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > This isn't that complicated, and it is related to the part of this thread regarding what you mean by behaviour, and since there is an ambiguity there that I have pointed out, it would be useful if you'd answer.
> > > >
> > > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/9YoY2hFhBwAJ
> > > >
> > > > Or maybe you'll answer there, but it might be easier if you answered here, and kept it in the one thread.
> > >
> > > If you don't understand what I mean by behavior, just ask, and I'll try to resolve the ambiguity. No need for robots. As I said before, I consider a system's behavior to be absolutely everything about it that can in principle be detected by observation and experiment. If that's not clear enough, tell me what part you can't grasp, and I'll try again.
> >
> > I did ask, the link is to a post where I was questioning why you didn't answer. Though I think we may be getting to it anyway lower down in this thread. If it becomes ambiguous, I might bring in the robot again just to be clear.
> >
> >
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> > > > > > > > > > > Here's the reason I'm not interested in working through things by answering your questions. After months and months of my and others trying to answer your questions, interpreting your questions, trying to make sense of them in the best possible light, getting diverted into pointless side issues, finally two or three of your arguments against physicalism have emerged from the mist. And all of them could have been stated up front in your first post. But whenever it becomes clear what you are arguing, and when people critique your argument, you just run off and take refuge in more pointless questions, rather than deal with the arguments that you've coughed up after so much labor.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > Here are your arguments, stated simply:
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 1. If everything follows the same physical laws, then, if we knew all the laws perfectly, we could predict the behavior of conscious systems without making any reference to consciousness. That would mean consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 2. A sufficiently large collection of components (hand raisers or random electrical gates) or a subset of the collection could, by chance behave exactly as the computer controlling a conscious robot. So consciousness could arise randomly, even say, among an enormous collection of people randomly raising their hands.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > 3. A human brain experiencing, say, the sensation of eating a strawberry cupcake, might be produced on an alien world, by an alien artist simply interested in producing a mechanism to control an artistic display of fairy lights, even though the alien knew nothing of humans. And it's obviously absurd that that brain could feel the experience of eating a strawberry cupcake when there are no humans, no strawberries, and no cupcakes anywhere to be seen.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > They are all arguments that stand in need of some defense. But whenever we start talking about your actual arguments you run off into another thread. So, no, Im not interested in going through another month-long string of questions to arrive at another similarly non-spectacular refutation of physicalism.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > But you can't understand any of the arguments, because they all rely on understanding the feature I am referring to as consciously experiencing.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Then go ahead and say what you mean when you refer to "consciously experiencing." It's hard to see why you are so afraid to lay out your position.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > So far we've got (1) consciousness is not epiphenomenal and (2) consciousness is not a behavior. Now, let's be sure I understand what you mean here. When you say consciousness is not a behavior do you mean it is not something macroscopic and externally observable, like talking, running, grimacing, etc? If that's what you mean, then I agree with you. Or do you mean that consciousness is not something that is even in principle observable? If that's what you mean, then I disagree. Though in either case I'll have no trouble understanding what you mean, as long as you just come out and *say* what you mean.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Did you not understand when I had stated:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > "I could try to ask you whether you understood dualism, and understood what the features the dualists believed weren't features of the physical human but were features of the soul/mind, the response to which influences the human behaviour perhaps through quantum events which microtubules are sensitive to and are able to make neuron firings sensitive to. You could presumably imagine the human in which there are no quantum events corresponding to such a mind/soul but which were just by chance. So the human behaviour was the same, but the explanation different. Whether you can or not I don't know. But if you can then the feature I am talking about are the sensations that the dualists claim are a feature of the mind."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Why are you avoiding answering this?
> > > > >
> > > > > First, I'm not a dualist. Second, I think Penrose's stuff about quantum effects on microtubulues is hogwash. But since it does not seem to me to be central to your argument, I'm not interested in the digression.
> > > > >
> > > > > But you can read a critique of Penrose's argument here http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > I've explained to you before that this thread isn't about any argument, it is just me highlighting what feature I am referring to when I use the term "consciously experiencing". You've asked me for an explanation, and I've given more than one, and that was yet another one. Regarding your first point, are you suggesting that non-dualists are incapable of understanding which features the dualists were suggesting were of the soul/mind and not features of the physical human, and that because you aren't a dualist you are therefore incapable of understanding which features they were?
> > >
> > > I'm not interested in what feature some abstract dualist is interested in. Just go ahead and tell me what you mean by "consciously experiencing." Or have you implicitly done that? By "consciously experiencing" do you mean "using your immaterial mind to influence the outcome of events on a quantum scale"?
> > >
> > > You need to stop conflating "understanding an idea" with "agreeing with the idea." I'll try to be careful, too. For example, I understand dualism, I just disagree with it.
> > >
> >
> > I wasn't asking whether you agreed with it, I was just asking you whether you could understand which features they were claiming were of the mind/soul and not features of the physical human. So are you saying that you can understand which features they are (but don't agree that they are features of the mind/soul but are instead features of the physical human)?
>
> As I said above, I understand dualism, I just don't agree with it. If you cannot understand that that statement answers your question, that's on you.
>
> Let me repeat it. I understand dualism. That means I understand that it claims that qualia, free will, subjective experience, the mind are not physical features of the brain. There are lots of dualists, though, so just to be sure, maybe you should say which features exactly, you think are features of the mind/soul rather than features of the physical human.
> >
> > > >
> > > > Regarding your second point you were right Penrose and Hameroffs' theory about orchestrated reduction aren't important to the point, it was added in more to answer a point that the poster which goes under the name *Hemidactylus* made, which was that "there's no interface point where a ghost can open a door". All that was required from Penrose and Hameroffs' theory is that there exists a mechanism which allows quantum effects in microtubules to influence neural firing, things like quantum entanglement are irrelevant.
> > >
> > > Well, no. If decoherence occurs fast enough, faster than the time scales on which microtubules move and neurons fire, then everything acts classically. But again, this is not central and I'm not interested in the digression.
> > >
> >
> > But dualism wouldn't rely on entanglement at all, so I'm not clear on why decoherence would matter. Perhaps you could explain why you think it would be relevant?
>
> Dualism, and the particular version espoused by Penrose are not the same thing. In any case Penrose's version still suffers from the problems that afflict all dualist accounts. How does the immaterial mind interact with material particulars to change their quantum behavior? All bringing in quantum mechanics does is hide the interaction between the matierial and the non-material a bit. If the non-material is non-material, how is it localized in space? Why does the mind only effect the quantum behavior of particles within the brain it is associated with? One can wave away all this problems, and if you are unsatisfied with physicalism, perhaps you have no choice but to wave them away, but the dualist account is no more complete than the physicalist account, and intoning the words "quantum mechanics" does not make it any more complete.
>
I didn't think Dualism and what was espoused by Penrose were the same thing. You had said that decoherence was a problem form Penrose's account, but with dualism you change the problem to how "the immaterial mind interacts with material particulars". I'm not a dualist. I'm a monist, in the sense that all there is is mind. I'm not a solipsist, I don't think mine is the only mind. Here is a post with a rough outline, it might not be that easy to follow, and isn't too relevant, other than to point out that dualism isn't the only alternative to physicalism. There is the other side of the dualism.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.atheism/Os0GVP2A4XY/7gmPDi01u1sJ
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Of course, defining consciousness by what it is not, is not the most direct route, so, presumably you have more to add. If you mean, "qualia" go ahead, and say it. If you mean "subjectivity" go ahead and say it. I assure I'll have no trouble understanding what you mean, even if I think you're wrong.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Well I'd consider qualia a feature of consciously experiencing. What behaviour were you considering the qualia of blue to be?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > OK. Qualia. On my view the qualia of blue is the sum of the following behavior, the firing of blue-receptive cone cells in the retina, the transmission of that signal up the visual pathways, the integration of the color information with the shape and boundary information collected by the rods, the higher level visual processing involving identification of whatever it was that was blue, the modulation of the perception of blue by adjacent colors, the triggering of the word "blue," the associations brought up from memory of other blue things, the interaction of those memories with my current emotional state, any connections to thoughts I'd been having about anything that might be effected by seeing that blue thing. I could go on, but I suspect you get the drift. All those things are behaviors that my brain does in response to the sight of that blue thing, and that's the behavior that I would identify as a qualia of blue.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What do you mean by "adjacent colours" do you mean light frequencies?
> > > > >
> > > > > I mean the colors of whatever things are adjacent to the blue thing that I'm looking at.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > So the light frequencies reflected by the things adjacent to the blue thing?
> > >
> > > And the effect those frequencies in from the adjacent objects have on the way my brain processes blue.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > >Also what do you mean by "seeing that blue thing"? Are you talking about brain processes associated with the firing of blue-receptive cone cells in the retina?
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm talking about the whole process, blue receptive cones, visual processing, accessing words for colors, stimulating memories, etc.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > When you say accessing words, or stimulating memories, do you mean anything other than brain processes?
> > >
> > > No.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Take for example this quote from Ullin Place:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 'I want to stress from the outset that in defending the thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain, I am not trying to argue that when we describe our dreams, fantasies, and sensations we are talking about processes in our brains. That is, I am not claiming that statements about sensations and mental images are reducible to or analyzable into statements about brain processes, in the way in which "cognition statements" are analyzable into statements about behaviour. To say that statements about consciousness are statements about brain processes is manifestly false. This is shown (a) by the fact that you can describe your sensations and mental imagery without knowing anything about your brain processes or even that such things exist, (b) by the fact that statements about one's consciousness and statements about one's brain processes are verified in entirely different ways, and (c) by the fact that there is nothing self-contradictory about the statement "X has a pain but there is nothing going on in his brain." What I do want to assert, however, is that the statement "Consciousness is a process in the brain," although not necessarily true, is not necessarily false.'
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Can you understand the difference between statements about consciousness and the statements about brain processes, and if so, was your description supposed to be a descriptive statement about brain processes?
> > > > >
> > > > > I understand that Ullin Place thinks there is a difference between statements about consciousness and statements about brain processes. But since I think that consciousness *is* a brain process, I hold that statements about consciousness *are* statements about brain processes, even if they are expressed in different words.
> > > >
> > > > And refer to different features presumably. So a neurosurgeon for example could be operating on someone's brain discussing certain features of the brain processes for example, those observable from a third person perspective, and the person being operated on could be discussing features of those same brain processes that are only observable from a first person perspective.
> > >
> > > I would say that the same features look different from different perspectives, rather than that some features are observable only from one of the perspectives. But that's just a question of how to use words.
> > >
> >
> > I don't think it is, see below.
> >
> > > >So with regards to Place's point (a) the person could describe the features that are observable only from a first person perspective the sensations and mental imagery for example without knowing anything about features of the brain processes that the neurosurgeon is observing, or even that the features the neurosurgeon is observing exist.
> > >
> > > OK. I'd call them different perspectives, rather than different features. A pyramid looks square viewed from the bottom and triangular viewed from one side, but it's still a single pyramid.
> >
> > Does a cup have a first person perspective? If not then having a first person perspective is a feature that not all physical things would have.
>
> A cup does not have a first person perspective. Not all physical things have a first person perspective. We already agree, I think, that not all physical things are conscious.
Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
So where I had earlier written
"(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side, and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
---
'Hoyle wrote, "I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw upon the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars." At the time no one knew enough about nuclear physics to understand the magnitude of the serendipity that resulted in these exact physical laws. But in investigating the validity of the strong anthropic principle, in recent years physicists began asking themselves what the universe would have been like if the laws of nature were different. Today we can create computer models that tell us how the rate of the triple alpha reaction depends upon the strength of the fundamental forces of nature. Such calculations show that a change as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all the carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions for our existence disappear!
...It turns out that it is not only the strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force that are made to order for our existence. Most of the fundamental constants in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered only by modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life....'
---
If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
Bill Rogers
Nov 26, 2015, 4:33:45 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
<snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
>and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
<snip fine tuning argument>
<snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
>
> Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
>
> So where I had earlier written
> "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
>
> And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
>
> I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
>
> So where I had earlier written
> "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
>
> And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
>
> I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
>and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
<snip fine tuning argument>
> ---
>
> If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
>
> If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
someone
Nov 26, 2015, 6:53:43 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> >
> > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> >
> > So where I had earlier written
> > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> >
> > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> >
> > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
>
> as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
>
But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> >
> > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> >
> > So where I had earlier written
> > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> >
> > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> >
> > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
>
> as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
>
> >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
>
> No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
>
> <snip fine tuning argument>
> > ---
> >
> > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
>
> But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
Bill Rogers
Nov 26, 2015, 8:03:45 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > >
> > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > >
> > > So where I had earlier written
> > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > >
> > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > >
> > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> >
> > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> >
>
> But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > >
> > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > >
> > > So where I had earlier written
> > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > >
> > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > >
> > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> >
> > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> >
>
> But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
>
> > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> >
> > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> >
>
> A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
>
> > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > ---
> > >
> > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> >
> > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
>
> Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
> > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> >
> > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> >
>
> A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
>
> > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > ---
> > >
> > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> >
> > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
>
> Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
>
> Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
someone
Nov 26, 2015, 8:43:43 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > >
> > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > >
> > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > >
> > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > >
> > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > >
> > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > >
> >
> > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
>
> Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > >
> > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > >
> > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > >
> > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > >
> > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > >
> > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > >
> >
> > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
>
> Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> >
> > > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> > >
> > > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> > >
> >
> > A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
> >
> > > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > > ---
> > > >
> > > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> > >
> > > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
> >
> > Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
>
> Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
>
> >
> > Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
>
> I cannot make sense of your question. But I don't think it matters. The chemical reactions in neurons are just as deterministic as the behavior of logic gates, so there's no new principle involved if you bring in the robots.
Bill Rogers
Nov 26, 2015, 8:58:45 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > >
> > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > >
> > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > >
> > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > >
> > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > >
> > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > >
> > >
> > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> >
> > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
>
> Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > >
> > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > >
> > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > >
> > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > >
> > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > >
> > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > >
> > >
> > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> >
> > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
>
> Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
>
> > >
> > > > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> > > >
> > > > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> > > >
> > >
> > > A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
> > >
> > > > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > > > ---
> > > > >
> > > > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> > > >
> > > > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
> > >
> > > Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
> >
> > Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
> >
>
> But wouldn't how each atom reacts depend upon its close environment and not whether that close environment existed within a thing that had a first person perspective or not?
someone
Nov 26, 2015, 9:28:45 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:58:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > >
> > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > >
> > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> >
> > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
>
> First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
>
But as we've established not all things have a first person perspective. I've mentioned that you can refuse to even contemplate what difference you were thinking it would make whether a certain arrangement had a first person perspective or not. But you've accepted that you could contemplate it, and what I'm asking is when you do what difference do you think it would make to the way you'd expect any particular arrangement to behave.
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > >
> > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > >
> > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> >
> > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
>
> First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
>
> >
> > > >
> > > > > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> > > > >
> > > > > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
> > > >
> > > > > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > > > > ---
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> > > > >
> > > > > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
> > > >
> > > > Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
> > >
> > > Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
> > >
> >
> > But wouldn't how each atom reacts depend upon its close environment and not whether that close environment existed within a thing that had a first person perspective or not?
>
> A conscious system is a different arrangement of atoms than an unconscious system. The arrangement of the atoms determines the "close environment" that each atom encounters. So a conscious system contains a different set of "close environments" than an unconscious system. So, yes, whether a system is conscious or not will effect what specific chemical reactions happen, and where they happen, in the system.
>
> >
> >
> > > >
> > > > Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
> > >
> > > I cannot make sense of your question. But I don't think it matters. The chemical reactions in neurons are just as deterministic as the behavior of logic gates, so there's no new principle involved if you bring in the robots.
> >
> > I didn't think there would be. I was just using logic gates for simplicity. I was wondering if you accepted if the reason a clocked NAND gate gives an output of 0 for example is that both its inputs were 1, and if the reason it gives an output of 1 is because they weren't, then the reason it gives the output it does wouldn't depend upon whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were.
Greg Guarino
Nov 26, 2015, 9:48:43 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On 11/26/2015 6:52 PM, someone wrote:
> Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or
> presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
I've asked several times if this is your objection, or one of them, but
> Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or
> presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
we never get clear answers from you, only more convoluted questions.
What makes you think that the state of the art of chemistry and physics
is comprehensive enough to predict what can and cannot happen in as
complex an assemblage as a brain? To know that their interactions cannot
produce consciousness which in turn affects other behavior?
I ask this because whatever we may think we know about chemistry and
physics, it sure seems like brains are the source of consciousness. If
they were not, I would not expect consciousness to be altered or
suspended by anesthesia, alcohol, drugs, congenital defect, autism,
injury, sleep, fever or dementia. I spend a few hours every week in the
company of people whose "minds" have been greatly altered by that last one.
I further would not expect a human brain to be so much larger than that
of other animals that are about the same size and have something like
the same body plan.
You like the word "implausible"; I find it implausible that there is so
very much "coincidental" correlation between the state of a brain and
what we observe of the "mind" that seems to occupy it. Maybe it's not a
coincidence.
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Bill Rogers
Nov 26, 2015, 10:53:44 PM11/26/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:58:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > > >
> > > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> > >
> > > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
> >
> > First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
> >
>
> But as we've established not all things have a first person perspective. I've mentioned that you can refuse to even contemplate what difference you were thinking it would make whether a certain arrangement had a first person perspective or not. But you've accepted that you could contemplate it, and what I'm asking is when you do what difference do you think it would make to the way you'd expect any particular arrangement to behave.
A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:58:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > > >
> > > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> > >
> > > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
> >
> > First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
> >
>
> But as we've established not all things have a first person perspective. I've mentioned that you can refuse to even contemplate what difference you were thinking it would make whether a certain arrangement had a first person perspective or not. But you've accepted that you could contemplate it, and what I'm asking is when you do what difference do you think it would make to the way you'd expect any particular arrangement to behave.
>
>
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
> > > > >
> > > > > > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > > > > > ---
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
> > > > >
> > > > > Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
> > > >
> > > > Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
> > > >
> > >
> > > But wouldn't how each atom reacts depend upon its close environment and not whether that close environment existed within a thing that had a first person perspective or not?
> >
> > A conscious system is a different arrangement of atoms than an unconscious system. The arrangement of the atoms determines the "close environment" that each atom encounters. So a conscious system contains a different set of "close environments" than an unconscious system. So, yes, whether a system is conscious or not will effect what specific chemical reactions happen, and where they happen, in the system.
> >
>
> When I mentioned close environment, I meant the environment close to the atom, so within a few hundred diameters of an atom around any particular atom for example. That wouldn't be the complete arrangement that has a first person perspective, but only a portion of it, and if that portion wasn't part of the bigger arrangement that portion wouldn't be part of an arrangement that had a first person perspective. Can you follow that, and if so do you agree? If so, then what difference does it make whether any particular portion was a part of a larger arrangement that did or didn't have a first person perspective?
>
> > >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
> > > >
> > > > I cannot make sense of your question. But I don't think it matters. The chemical reactions in neurons are just as deterministic as the behavior of logic gates, so there's no new principle involved if you bring in the robots.
> > >
> > > I didn't think there would be. I was just using logic gates for simplicity. I was wondering if you accepted if the reason a clocked NAND gate gives an output of 0 for example is that both its inputs were 1, and if the reason it gives an output of 1 is because they weren't, then the reason it gives the output it does wouldn't depend upon whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were.
>
> You didn't answer whether you accepted that the reason a NAND gate gives the output that it does, doesn't depend on whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were. So do you?
I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
> > >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
> > > >
> > > > I cannot make sense of your question. But I don't think it matters. The chemical reactions in neurons are just as deterministic as the behavior of logic gates, so there's no new principle involved if you bring in the robots.
> > >
> > > I didn't think there would be. I was just using logic gates for simplicity. I was wondering if you accepted if the reason a clocked NAND gate gives an output of 0 for example is that both its inputs were 1, and if the reason it gives an output of 1 is because they weren't, then the reason it gives the output it does wouldn't depend upon whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were.
>
> You didn't answer whether you accepted that the reason a NAND gate gives the output that it does, doesn't depend on whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were. So do you?
someone
Nov 27, 2015, 3:33:43 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
It doesn't follow that the brains are the source of consciousness. An account where all that exists is mind, and ours are at the bottom end of the scale, unable to think for ourselves, but able to have conscious experiences communicated to us by more powerful minds also explains it. We are just being given an experience based upon an arbitrary symbolism of the neural state of the human we experience being. So with anaesthetic for example, the communication can of ceased.
someone
Nov 27, 2015, 4:08:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:58:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> > > >
> > > > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
> > >
> > > First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
> > >
> >
> > But as we've established not all things have a first person perspective. I've mentioned that you can refuse to even contemplate what difference you were thinking it would make whether a certain arrangement had a first person perspective or not. But you've accepted that you could contemplate it, and what I'm asking is when you do what difference do you think it would make to the way you'd expect any particular arrangement to behave.
>
> A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
>
So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:58:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 8:43:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 1:03:45 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 6:53:43 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 9:33:45 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > > > On Thursday, November 26, 2015 at 3:53:47 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > > <snip the old stuff and stuff about dualism, since you are a monist>
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Having a first person perspective is what I mean by consciously experiencing. So I'd only regard something as consciously experiencing if it had a first person perspective.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > So where I had earlier written
> > > > > > > > "(2) To you a philosophical zombie is something that is being imagined to behave in an indistinguishable fashion from a human while at the same time being imagined to behave differently, and so is just a plain contradiction."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > And you in post https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/NRAe8H0KIjs/CUtF0JxeBwAJ replied: "That's correct."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I think you misunderstood what a philosophical zombie is. It would just be a human without a first person perspective. So using your analogy, there would still be the pyramid, but there is only a perspective from the side,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > as long as it's a pyramid, then there are both perspectives. It's a pyramid, not a triangle.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But you are being asked to imagine that there wasn't one of the perspectives. Sure you can refuse to even contemplate it. But why do you feel the need to forbid yourself from considering it? Been indoctrinated not to perhaps.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sure, I can contemplate it. So what? That's like contemplating a two-dimensional pyramid. I can form the thought, but it corresponds to nothing real.
> > > >
> > > > Well with the example of the scientists contemplating the difference to behaviour it would make if certain forces had been different (the one you snipped), you can understand how their model predicted a difference in behaviour. So using their model they could explain what the behavioural difference it would make to things in the universe if at a certain time, the strong nuclear force vanished. But if you were to imagine that at that time, instead of the strong nuclear force vanishing, all first person perspectives vanished, what difference would you be expecting it to make to the behaviour of the things in the universe, what chemical reaction would be different from how it would otherwise have been?
> > >
> > > First person perspectives cannot vanish from conscious systems any more than the triangular aspect of a pyramid can vanish from a pyramid. THe conscious thing is *one* thing, whether you see it from a first person perspective or a third person perspective. It's a single thing. Like a pyramid.
> > >
> >
> > But as we've established not all things have a first person perspective. I've mentioned that you can refuse to even contemplate what difference you were thinking it would make whether a certain arrangement had a first person perspective or not. But you've accepted that you could contemplate it, and what I'm asking is when you do what difference do you think it would make to the way you'd expect any particular arrangement to behave.
>
> A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
>
> >
> >
> > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > >and not one from the bottom. So the same behaviour, but no first person perspective of it. So no contradiction. Just an imagining of what the behavioural impact would be if a certain feature was different, in a similar way to how Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow mention that scientists have done with other features. They mentioned scientists doing such things in "The Grand Design" when they were commenting on Hoyles prediction in 1952 that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the state of the isotope of carbon formed for resonance.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > No, I understand what a philosophical zombie is alleged to be. If it behaves like a human in every possible way, then it is conscious. Look at it this way. If having a first person perspective had no effect on behavior (ie if a first-person perspective were what a zombie lacked), the a first person perspective would be epiphenomenal.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > A philosophical zombie is a human which doesn't consciously experience, and the closest thing to what is being suggested, using the way you view it, is a human without a first person perspective. Your position seems to be to refuse to contemplate what difference it would make in your model if the same chemical arrangement lacked a first person perspective, and so avoid realising that your model would imply the first person perspective to be epiphenomenal and is therefore obviously wrong. Though presumably you know that unlike a dualist or a mind monist like myself, you have to avoid contemplating the same chemical arrangement without a first person perspective, in order to avoid realising your model implies epiphenomenalism.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > <snip fine tuning argument>
> > > > > > > > ---
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > If you were to do a similar thing to those scientists, and imagine a feature to be different, what difference would you be thinking it would make to behaviour if humans, like cups, didn't have a first person perspective?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > But humans do have a first person perspective. If they didn't their behavior would be completely different. They would not act as if they knew where they stood in relation to other objects in the world. They would not recognize themselves in the mirror. They would not conceive and carry out long term plans. They would not tell you that they had a first person perspective. They would react no differently to their arm coming in contact with fire than to your arm coming in contact with fire. They would not look worried if you told them they had a terminal disease.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Is there a chemical reaction that you would you expect the absence or presence of a first person perspective to make a difference to?
> > > > >
> > > > > Sure, all of those thoughts and actions I described above depend on specific sets of chemical reactions in specific neurons organized in specific ways. The presence or absence of a first person perspective effects whether those thoughts and actions occur and therefore must effect whether those chemical reactions occur.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > But wouldn't how each atom reacts depend upon its close environment and not whether that close environment existed within a thing that had a first person perspective or not?
> > >
> > > A conscious system is a different arrangement of atoms than an unconscious system. The arrangement of the atoms determines the "close environment" that each atom encounters. So a conscious system contains a different set of "close environments" than an unconscious system. So, yes, whether a system is conscious or not will effect what specific chemical reactions happen, and where they happen, in the system.
> > >
> >
> > When I mentioned close environment, I meant the environment close to the atom, so within a few hundred diameters of an atom around any particular atom for example. That wouldn't be the complete arrangement that has a first person perspective, but only a portion of it, and if that portion wasn't part of the bigger arrangement that portion wouldn't be part of an arrangement that had a first person perspective. Can you follow that, and if so do you agree? If so, then what difference does it make whether any particular portion was a part of a larger arrangement that did or didn't have a first person perspective?
>
> You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Do you also accept that with a robot controlled by clocked logic gates, whose outputs depended on their inputs, each logic gate would give the same outputs, for the same direct reasons, if it had instead been receiving its inputs in a test harness which had no first person perspective?
> > > > >
> > > > > I cannot make sense of your question. But I don't think it matters. The chemical reactions in neurons are just as deterministic as the behavior of logic gates, so there's no new principle involved if you bring in the robots.
> > > >
> > > > I didn't think there would be. I was just using logic gates for simplicity. I was wondering if you accepted if the reason a clocked NAND gate gives an output of 0 for example is that both its inputs were 1, and if the reason it gives an output of 1 is because they weren't, then the reason it gives the output it does wouldn't depend upon whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were.
> >
> > You didn't answer whether you accepted that the reason a NAND gate gives the output that it does, doesn't depend on whether it was part of an arrangement that has a first person perspective or not, but on what its inputs were. So do you?
>
> I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
Bill Rogers
Nov 27, 2015, 7:03:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
<snip old stuff>
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> >
>
> So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> >
>
> So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
<snip old stuff>
> >
> > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
>
> The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
>
> The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> >
> > I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
>
> Yes in an account where only certain arrangements of NAND gates have an epiphenomenal property, the arrangements that have the epiphenomenal property will behave differently from those that don't because the behaviour in all the arrangements depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together. Just because that would be the case doesn't mean that the epiphenomenal property that only certain ones had wasn't epiphenomenal after all. The presence or absence of the epiphenomenal property doesn't affect how a single individual NAND gates reacts to its inputs. Can you see that you can substitute the term epiphenomenal property for the term first person perspective? Perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have.
someone
Nov 27, 2015, 8:58:42 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> <snip old stuff>
> > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > >
> >
> > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
>
> Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
>
Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> <snip old stuff>
> > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > >
> >
> > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
>
> Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
>
>
> <snip old stuff>
> > >
> > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> >
> > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
>
> OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
>
> Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
>
But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
>
> > >
> > > I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
> >
> > Yes in an account where only certain arrangements of NAND gates have an epiphenomenal property, the arrangements that have the epiphenomenal property will behave differently from those that don't because the behaviour in all the arrangements depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together. Just because that would be the case doesn't mean that the epiphenomenal property that only certain ones had wasn't epiphenomenal after all. The presence or absence of the epiphenomenal property doesn't affect how a single individual NAND gates reacts to its inputs. Can you see that you can substitute the term epiphenomenal property for the term first person perspective? Perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have.
>
> See above. This is your same old argument about predicting behavior of a system from fundamental laws without making reference to consciousness.
Greg Guarino
Nov 27, 2015, 9:08:43 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On 11/27/2015 3:30 AM, someone wrote:
> An account where all that exists is mind, and ours are at the bottom
> end of the scale, unable to think for ourselves, but able to have
> conscious experiences communicated to us by more powerful minds also
> explains it.
First, thank you for answering my question.
> An account where all that exists is mind, and ours are at the bottom
> end of the scale, unable to think for ourselves, but able to have
> conscious experiences communicated to us by more powerful minds also
> explains it.
Next, given what we observe, I find your scenario quite a stretch. If
everything in our reality functioned without any "works" inside - if,
for instance, you cut a possum in half and just found a half-possum; no
organs, no nerves, no chemicals, no protons etc. - I might be more
easily persuaded. But I find it difficult to imagine your higher beings
constructing such a staggeringly comprehensive deception - for what?
I'm curious by the way. How many of these more powerful minds do you
figure there are, of the highest (or next-highest) echelon, anyway? Two?
Bill Rogers
Nov 27, 2015, 9:18:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > <snip old stuff>
> > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > >
> > >
> > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> >
> > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> >
>
> Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > <snip old stuff>
> > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > >
> > >
> > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> >
> > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> >
>
> Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
You have yet to show me that my own view implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal. I've summarized my own view, many times, and you keep ignoring it. Just for convenience, here it is again. Let me know when you can show that it implies consciousness is epiphenomenal.
Well, it's hard to know what position you think you are arguing against. Here's mine.....
The same physical laws govern everything there is. Some complex physical systems behave in a way that we call conscious. That complex set of behaviors that we call consciousness is a behavior of the physical system, following the same fundamental laws of physics as everything else. On this view, it's easy to see why physical damage to the system (strokes, toxins, trauma, infection, Alzheimer's) alters consciousness. It's also easy to see how consciousness could be evolutionarily selected for - since it is a set of behaviors, it obviously is a phenotype, one which seems to be selectively advantageous. And consciousness is certainly no epiphenomenal - as a set of behaviors it affects all sorts of things.
Your critique of positions like this seems to come down to the following claim. With perfect knowledge of the physical system, one could predict its behavior without making explicit reference to consciousness. Therefore consciousness has no effect on behavior. And as I, and others have told you, that's simply silly. You might just as well say that friction, or turbulence, or weather, have no effects because one could describe the behavior of systems which exhibit friction, turbulence, or weather, without explicitly using those terms (again assuming you had an impossibly detailed knowledge of the physical systems).
But it doesn't matter whether you make explicit reference to consciousness or not. Consciousness is a sort of behavior, and it effects both the outside world and the subsequent behavior of the system, whether you call it consciousness, or whether you avoid the word and simply describe the behavior that the word "consciousness" summarizes.
>
>
> >
> > <snip old stuff>
> > > >
> > > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> > >
> > > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
> >
> > OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> >
> > Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> >
>
> But the behaviour associated with the terms friction, turbulence, weather, being alive (biological definition, as opposed to having a first person perspective) is reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts.
>
> But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
>
> So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
>
>
> >
> > > >
> > > > I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
> > >
> > > Yes in an account where only certain arrangements of NAND gates have an epiphenomenal property, the arrangements that have the epiphenomenal property will behave differently from those that don't because the behaviour in all the arrangements depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together. Just because that would be the case doesn't mean that the epiphenomenal property that only certain ones had wasn't epiphenomenal after all. The presence or absence of the epiphenomenal property doesn't affect how a single individual NAND gates reacts to its inputs. Can you see that you can substitute the term epiphenomenal property for the term first person perspective? Perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have.
> >
> > See above. This is your same old argument about predicting behavior of a system from fundamental laws without making reference to consciousness.
>
> I replied above, perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have?
But consciousness clearly does have an effect on the system. Consciousness, in my view, is a physical arrangement of the system, and the behavior of the system depends on that physical arrangement as a result of the same physical laws that govern everything. That arrangement (consciousness) therefore, absolutely effects the behavior of the system, and is not epiphenomenal. The mere name "consciousness", though, as opposed to the actual arrangement of the system has no effect on the systems behavior. It will behave the same whether you call that arrangement "consciousness," "possession of a first person perspective" or "ghostliness."
Greg Guarino
Nov 27, 2015, 10:18:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On 11/27/2015 3:30 AM, someone wrote:
> ... unable to think for ourselves, but able to have conscious experiences
> communicated to us by more powerful minds also explains it.
I have other questions as well, starting with: If we are unable to think
for ourselves, merely having conscious experiences "communicated to" us,
then who exactly is having this conversation? Two higher beings? Or one
indecisive one? And how can I be an atheist, or satanist, or
intellectual coward, or anything at all?
someone
Nov 27, 2015, 10:58:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 2:18:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > >
> > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > >
> >
> > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
>
> Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
>
You don't have to assume that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. Just imagine if the thing didn't have one. The same as the scientists with the strong nuclear force. They could imagine that the strong nuclear force didn't exist. If they did so, there models would show them how the behaviour would be expected to be different, if you do so with your first person perspective ...
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > >
> > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > >
> >
> > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
>
> Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
>
> You have yet to show me that my own view implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal. I've summarized my own view, many times, and you keep ignoring it. Just for convenience, here it is again. Let me know when you can show that it implies consciousness is epiphenomenal.
>
> Well, it's hard to know what position you think you are arguing against. Here's mine.....
>
> The same physical laws govern everything there is. Some complex physical systems behave in a way that we call conscious. That complex set of behaviors that we call consciousness is a behavior of the physical system, following the same fundamental laws of physics as everything else. On this view, it's easy to see why physical damage to the system (strokes, toxins, trauma, infection, Alzheimer's) alters consciousness. It's also easy to see how consciousness could be evolutionarily selected for - since it is a set of behaviors, it obviously is a phenotype, one which seems to be selectively advantageous. And consciousness is certainly no epiphenomenal - as a set of behaviors it affects all sorts of things.
>
> Your critique of positions like this seems to come down to the following claim. With perfect knowledge of the physical system, one could predict its behavior without making explicit reference to consciousness. Therefore consciousness has no effect on behavior. And as I, and others have told you, that's simply silly. You might just as well say that friction, or turbulence, or weather, have no effects because one could describe the behavior of systems which exhibit friction, turbulence, or weather, without explicitly using those terms (again assuming you had an impossibly detailed knowledge of the physical systems).
>
> But it doesn't matter whether you make explicit reference to consciousness or not. Consciousness is a sort of behavior, and it effects both the outside world and the subsequent behavior of the system, whether you call it consciousness, or whether you avoid the word and simply describe the behavior that the word "consciousness" summarizes.
>
> >
> >
> > >
> > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > >
> > > > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> > > >
> > > > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
> > >
> > > OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> > >
> > > Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> > >
> >
> > But the behaviour associated with the terms friction, turbulence, weather, being alive (biological definition, as opposed to having a first person perspective) is reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts.
> >
> > But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
> >
> > So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
>
> Well, we clearly disagree. As if that was not obvious already. I hold that "having a first person perspective" or "being conscious" *is* reducible to the behavior of the system, as determined by the collective behavior of all of the interacting component parts.
>
> >
> >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I've answered this question many times in multiple forms in multiple threads and you keep asking it. This is the same issue you are trying to get at with the question of local environment, which is the same issue as the "physics assumptions." The same laws govern everything, conscious or unconscious. That means an individual NAND gate will behave as an individual NAND gate, whether it's part of a thermostat or part of a conscious robot. But the arrangement of a conscious robot is different from the arrangement of a thermostat, and the behavior of the robot is different from the behavior of the thermostat, and the difference in behaviors depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together, not in the behavior of individual NAND gates. People have been over this point with you many, many times. Perhaps you are too indoctrinated to understand.
> > > >
> > > > Yes in an account where only certain arrangements of NAND gates have an epiphenomenal property, the arrangements that have the epiphenomenal property will behave differently from those that don't because the behaviour in all the arrangements depends on the way the NAND gates are linked together. Just because that would be the case doesn't mean that the epiphenomenal property that only certain ones had wasn't epiphenomenal after all. The presence or absence of the epiphenomenal property doesn't affect how a single individual NAND gates reacts to its inputs. Can you see that you can substitute the term epiphenomenal property for the term first person perspective? Perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have.
> > >
> > > See above. This is your same old argument about predicting behavior of a system from fundamental laws without making reference to consciousness.
> >
> > I replied above, perhaps you could explain how you think the first person perspective differs from an epiphenomal property that only certain arrangements have?
>
> It's hard for me to follow exactly what you mean by an epiphenomenal property that only certain arrangements have. Maybe we don't mean the same thing by "epiphenomenal." When I say a property is epiphenomenal, I mean that it has no effect on the behavior of the system. For example, the name that you give to a system is an epiphenomenal property. What you call it has no effect on its behavior.
>
> But consciousness clearly does have an effect on the system. Consciousness, in my view, is a physical arrangement of the system, and the behavior of the system depends on that physical arrangement as a result of the same physical laws that govern everything. That arrangement (consciousness) therefore, absolutely effects the behavior of the system, and is not epiphenomenal. The mere name "consciousness", though, as opposed to the actual arrangement of the system has no effect on the systems behavior. It will behave the same whether you call that arrangement "consciousness," "possession of a first person perspective" or "ghostliness."
Bill Rogers
Nov 27, 2015, 11:13:44 AM11/27/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 10:58:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 2:18:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > > >
> > > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
> >
> > Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> >
>
> You don't have to assume that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. Just imagine if the thing didn't have one. The same as the scientists with the strong nuclear force. They could imagine that the strong nuclear force didn't exist. If they did so, there models would show them how the behaviour would be expected to be different, if you do so with your first person perspective ...
If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 2:18:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > > >
> > > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
> >
> > Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> >
>
> You don't have to assume that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. Just imagine if the thing didn't have one. The same as the scientists with the strong nuclear force. They could imagine that the strong nuclear force didn't exist. If they did so, there models would show them how the behaviour would be expected to be different, if you do so with your first person perspective ...
>
> > You have yet to show me that my own view implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal. I've summarized my own view, many times, and you keep ignoring it. Just for convenience, here it is again. Let me know when you can show that it implies consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> >
> > Well, it's hard to know what position you think you are arguing against. Here's mine.....
> >
> > The same physical laws govern everything there is. Some complex physical systems behave in a way that we call conscious. That complex set of behaviors that we call consciousness is a behavior of the physical system, following the same fundamental laws of physics as everything else. On this view, it's easy to see why physical damage to the system (strokes, toxins, trauma, infection, Alzheimer's) alters consciousness. It's also easy to see how consciousness could be evolutionarily selected for - since it is a set of behaviors, it obviously is a phenotype, one which seems to be selectively advantageous. And consciousness is certainly no epiphenomenal - as a set of behaviors it affects all sorts of things.
> >
> > Your critique of positions like this seems to come down to the following claim. With perfect knowledge of the physical system, one could predict its behavior without making explicit reference to consciousness. Therefore consciousness has no effect on behavior. And as I, and others have told you, that's simply silly. You might just as well say that friction, or turbulence, or weather, have no effects because one could describe the behavior of systems which exhibit friction, turbulence, or weather, without explicitly using those terms (again assuming you had an impossibly detailed knowledge of the physical systems).
> >
> > But it doesn't matter whether you make explicit reference to consciousness or not. Consciousness is a sort of behavior, and it effects both the outside world and the subsequent behavior of the system, whether you call it consciousness, or whether you avoid the word and simply describe the behavior that the word "consciousness" summarizes.
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> > > > >
> > > > > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
> > > >
> > > > OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> > > >
> > > > Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> > > >
> > >
> > > But the behaviour associated with the terms friction, turbulence, weather, being alive (biological definition, as opposed to having a first person perspective) is reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts.
> > >
> > > But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
> > >
> > > So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
> >
> > Well, we clearly disagree. As if that was not obvious already. I hold that "having a first person perspective" or "being conscious" *is* reducible to the behavior of the system, as determined by the collective behavior of all of the interacting component parts.
> >
>
> I thought you were suggesting a first person perspective certain chemical arrangements behaving in a manner that you term "conscious behaviour" would have. Not that a first person perspective was a behaviour. Are you suggesting that my assumption was wrong and that not all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective?
Look, I keep telling you what my position is, simply and straightforwardly. You keep ignoring it. It's included once again in my previous post. Ignore it again, if you like. That's up to you. But if you keep ignoring my straightforward explanation of my view, you can hardly object when I get tired of answering your questions about my views.
> > You have yet to show me that my own view implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal. I've summarized my own view, many times, and you keep ignoring it. Just for convenience, here it is again. Let me know when you can show that it implies consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> >
> > Well, it's hard to know what position you think you are arguing against. Here's mine.....
> >
> > The same physical laws govern everything there is. Some complex physical systems behave in a way that we call conscious. That complex set of behaviors that we call consciousness is a behavior of the physical system, following the same fundamental laws of physics as everything else. On this view, it's easy to see why physical damage to the system (strokes, toxins, trauma, infection, Alzheimer's) alters consciousness. It's also easy to see how consciousness could be evolutionarily selected for - since it is a set of behaviors, it obviously is a phenotype, one which seems to be selectively advantageous. And consciousness is certainly no epiphenomenal - as a set of behaviors it affects all sorts of things.
> >
> > Your critique of positions like this seems to come down to the following claim. With perfect knowledge of the physical system, one could predict its behavior without making explicit reference to consciousness. Therefore consciousness has no effect on behavior. And as I, and others have told you, that's simply silly. You might just as well say that friction, or turbulence, or weather, have no effects because one could describe the behavior of systems which exhibit friction, turbulence, or weather, without explicitly using those terms (again assuming you had an impossibly detailed knowledge of the physical systems).
> >
> > But it doesn't matter whether you make explicit reference to consciousness or not. Consciousness is a sort of behavior, and it effects both the outside world and the subsequent behavior of the system, whether you call it consciousness, or whether you avoid the word and simply describe the behavior that the word "consciousness" summarizes.
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> > > > >
> > > > > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
> > > >
> > > > OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> > > >
> > > > Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> > > >
> > >
> > > But the behaviour associated with the terms friction, turbulence, weather, being alive (biological definition, as opposed to having a first person perspective) is reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts.
> > >
> > > But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
> > >
> > > So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
> >
> > Well, we clearly disagree. As if that was not obvious already. I hold that "having a first person perspective" or "being conscious" *is* reducible to the behavior of the system, as determined by the collective behavior of all of the interacting component parts.
> >
>
> I thought you were suggesting a first person perspective certain chemical arrangements behaving in a manner that you term "conscious behaviour" would have. Not that a first person perspective was a behaviour. Are you suggesting that my assumption was wrong and that not all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective?
someone
Nov 29, 2015, 4:33:38 AM11/29/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:13:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 10:58:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 2:18:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > > > >
> > > > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
> > >
> > > Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> > >
> >
> > You don't have to assume that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. Just imagine if the thing didn't have one. The same as the scientists with the strong nuclear force. They could imagine that the strong nuclear force didn't exist. If they did so, there models would show them how the behaviour would be expected to be different, if you do so with your first person perspective ...
>
> If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
> On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 10:58:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 2:18:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 8:58:42 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 12:03:44 PM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 4:08:44 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> > > > > > On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 3:53:44 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > > > A particular arrangement either has a first person perspective or it doesn't. If it does, it acts in a certain way. If it doesn't, it acts in a different way. And it's not surprising, because if things differ as to whether they have a first person perspective or not, they differ precisely because they have different arrangements.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So a particular arrangement has a first person perspective, and acts in a certain way. Then you are being asked to contemplate what you'd expect that behaviour to be if that same chemical arrangement didn't have a first person perspective. In the same way that those scientists might contemplate what they'd expect to happen to the arrangement if the strong nuclear force disappeared for example.
> > > > >
> > > > > Here's my position. If a certain arrangement has a first person perspective, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have a first person perspective. I'm not refusing to contemplate the idea. I understand what you are asking, but any answer that I give will be inconsistent with my own view of the matter.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Ok, but there could be a view of reality where if a certain arrangement has an epiphenomenal feature, then *that same arrangement* cannot *not* have that certain epiphenomenal feature. It isn't that it lacking the epiphenomenal feature can't be contemplated, and it could be that for a certain person to contemplate it they'd be contemplating something inconsistent with their own view of the matter, but, if they did, and they realised that their view implied that the feature was epiphenomenal, then presumably they'd change their view of the matter if they realised that any view that had the feature as epiphenomenal was implausible. Or maybe they'd just not contemplate it and never realise, though presumably they wouldn't expect anyone else to do the same.
> > >
> > > Yeah, that's a killer argument. If I assume that consciousness is epiphenomenal, then I am forced to the conclusion that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> > >
> >
> > You don't have to assume that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. Just imagine if the thing didn't have one. The same as the scientists with the strong nuclear force. They could imagine that the strong nuclear force didn't exist. If they did so, there models would show them how the behaviour would be expected to be different, if you do so with your first person perspective ...
>
> If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> >
> > > You have yet to show me that my own view implies that consciousness is epiphenomenal. I've summarized my own view, many times, and you keep ignoring it. Just for convenience, here it is again. Let me know when you can show that it implies consciousness is epiphenomenal.
> > >
> > > Well, it's hard to know what position you think you are arguing against. Here's mine.....
> > >
> > > The same physical laws govern everything there is. Some complex physical systems behave in a way that we call conscious. That complex set of behaviors that we call consciousness is a behavior of the physical system, following the same fundamental laws of physics as everything else. On this view, it's easy to see why physical damage to the system (strokes, toxins, trauma, infection, Alzheimer's) alters consciousness. It's also easy to see how consciousness could be evolutionarily selected for - since it is a set of behaviors, it obviously is a phenotype, one which seems to be selectively advantageous. And consciousness is certainly no epiphenomenal - as a set of behaviors it affects all sorts of things.
> > >
> > > Your critique of positions like this seems to come down to the following claim. With perfect knowledge of the physical system, one could predict its behavior without making explicit reference to consciousness. Therefore consciousness has no effect on behavior. And as I, and others have told you, that's simply silly. You might just as well say that friction, or turbulence, or weather, have no effects because one could describe the behavior of systems which exhibit friction, turbulence, or weather, without explicitly using those terms (again assuming you had an impossibly detailed knowledge of the physical systems).
> > >
> > > But it doesn't matter whether you make explicit reference to consciousness or not. Consciousness is a sort of behavior, and it effects both the outside world and the subsequent behavior of the system, whether you call it consciousness, or whether you avoid the word and simply describe the behavior that the word "consciousness" summarizes.
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > <snip old stuff>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You're back to the physics assumptions, right? The same laws govern atoms whether they are part of a conscious system or part of an unconscious system. Sure. An acid will neutralize a base whether it's in a beaker or a brain. So what? What makes something conscious or not is the arrangement of the complete system. And different reactions will happen in different times and at different places in a conscious system than in an unconscious one. Do you think that the chemical reactions happening in a brain are the same as those happening in a cask of wine fermenting?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The issue is that although only certain arrangements will have a first person perspective, the first person perspective itself doesn't make any difference to the behaviour, indeed it is just a perspective on the behaviour. Sure the behaviour of the arrangements that have a first person perspective will be different from those that don't, but not because they have a first person perspective, but because the chemical arrangement is different, and the chemicals in the arrangement behave the way they do for the same reasons that chemicals in the arrangements which don't have a first person perspective behave. Which was the point of considering the close environment (for example a diameter of 1 cm around the atom) around each atom in an arrangement with a first person perspective. If the close environment had instead been in a system without a first person perspective, the 1 cm portion being maintained in a vat for example, the atom at the centre would be expected to react the same. And since that could be done with each atom, it would show that the first person perspective wasn't an influence on the behaviour of any single atom in the arrangement. Showing that the first person perspective would be an epiphenomenal feature which only certain arrangements would have in your account, which in itself shows your account is implausible. I realise you aren't claiming it is epiphenomenal, indeed you haven't seemed to have realised that the account you thought was plausible would imply it, as you yourself seem to have understood that an account that implied the feature to be epiphenomenal would be implausible.
> > > > >
> > > > > OK. This is back to one of your earlier three arguments: Everything follows the same physical laws. That includes conscious things and unconscious things (or, in your terminology du jour, things with a first person perspective and things without a first person perspective). Since, with infinite knowledge of the physical laws and details of the arrangement of matter, one could predict the complete behavior of the thing without making explicit reference to consciousness (or the first person perspective) then consciousness (or the first person perspective) are epiphenomenal.
> > > > >
> > > > > Kind of a waste of time to be getting back to this same argument after so many posts. All you've done is change the feature "being conscious" to "having a first-person perspective." I and others have told you why this argument is simply silly. It is the same argument that could be used to show that friction, turbulence, weather, and being alive, make no difference to the behavior of a system, because the behavior of the system could, with infinite knowledge, be predicted without making explicit reference to friction, turbulence, weather, or life.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > But the behaviour associated with the terms friction, turbulence, weather, being alive (biological definition, as opposed to having a first person perspective) is reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts.
> > > >
> > > > But the first person perspective, is a perspective of the behaviour, not itself a behaviour, assuming all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective. The first person perspective isn't reducible to the behaviour of the constituent parts, because not only (a) it isn't itself a behaviour, but also because (b) the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation, don't imply a first person perspective. This contrasts with the behaviours which are implied by the behaviour of the constituent parts in amalgamation that you mentioned.
> > > >
> > > > So with a robot for example, the behaviour of the constituent parts could imply behaviour that you declare is consciousness, but it doesn't imply that the robot would have a first person perspective. You might declare that you think that anything performing consciousness behaviour would always also have the feature of a first person perspective, but that would just be your theory, it isn't implied.
> > >
> > > Well, we clearly disagree. As if that was not obvious already. I hold that "having a first person perspective" or "being conscious" *is* reducible to the behavior of the system, as determined by the collective behavior of all of the interacting component parts.
> > >
> >
> > I thought you were suggesting a first person perspective certain chemical arrangements behaving in a manner that you term "conscious behaviour" would have. Not that a first person perspective was a behaviour. Are you suggesting that my assumption was wrong and that not all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective?
>
> Look, I keep telling you what my position is, simply and straightforwardly. You keep ignoring it. It's included once again in my previous post. Ignore it again, if you like. That's up to you. But if you keep ignoring my straightforward explanation of my view, you can hardly object when I get tired of answering your questions about my views.
The reason I ask is that if my assumption was correct and all behaviours are in principle observable from a third person perspective, then the first person perspective itself, the feature that a cup doesn't have, isn't a behaviour, because it isn't observable from a third person perspective. And if it isn't a behavioural feature, then it cannot be reduced to other behavioural features.
Bill Rogers
Nov 29, 2015, 6:13:36 AM11/29/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 4:33:38 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> >
> > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
>
> Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
Whether or not something has a first person perspective is, in my view, determined by the arrangement. In order for the thing *not* to have a first person perspective, you'd have to have a different arrangement. And a different arrangement would yield different behavior. The property of having a first person perspective is part of the arrangement - you cannot take it away without changing the arrangement.
> >
> > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
>
> Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
I agree with you that if you assume that you *can* take it away without changing the arrangement, and if the arrangement determines the behavior, then it follows that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. But, you can prove anything by assuming your conclusion.
> > Look, I keep telling you what my position is, simply and straightforwardly. You keep ignoring it. It's included once again in my previous post. Ignore it again, if you like. That's up to you. But if you keep ignoring my straightforward explanation of my view, you can hardly object when I get tired of answering your questions about my views.
>
> I thought you had stated not all things had a first person perspective, so that a cup for example wouldn't have a first person perspective, because it wasn't conscious.
>I thought you were also claiming that consciousness was a behaviour, and that if something was conscious that it would have a first person perspective.
>You had also stated I thought that all behaviour was in principle observable or detectable experimentally. What I am asking you is a pretty straight forward question, which I do not remember you answering before, but if you did, could you just restate it. Are you suggesting that my assumption was wrong and that not all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective?
(Before when you mentioned in principle observable, but perhaps you meant from either a third person perspective or a first person perspective or both rather than always in principle observable from a third person perspective alone).
>
> The reason I ask is that if my assumption was correct and all behaviours are in principle observable from a third person perspective, then the first person perspective itself, the feature that a cup doesn't have, isn't a behaviour, because it isn't observable from a third person perspective. And if it isn't a behavioural feature, then it cannot be reduced to other behavioural features.
someone
Nov 29, 2015, 7:58:39 AM11/29/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 11:13:36 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 4:33:38 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
>
> > >
> > > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> >
> > Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
>
> Whether or not something has a first person perspective is, in my view, determined by the arrangement. In order for the thing *not* to have a first person perspective, you'd have to have a different arrangement. And a different arrangement would yield different behavior. The property of having a first person perspective is part of the arrangement - you cannot take it away without changing the arrangement.
>
> I agree with you that if you assume that you *can* take it away without changing the arrangement, and if the arrangement determines the behavior, then it follows that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. But, you can prove anything by assuming your conclusion.
>
As I pointed out, the conclusion isn't reached by any assumption. You can assume that you cannot have the same arrangement but not have the strong nuclear force, but you can still imagine it to be absent, and when you do you can see the influence that the model suggests it has on behaviour. When you do the same with the first person perspective in your model, you end up with a philosophical zombie, in other words the same behaviour but no first person perspective. Like with the strong nuclear force, you aren't assuming it is possible, just using your imagination to highlight the influence the feature has in your account. If you did the same thing using a dualist account you wouldn't end up with the same behaviour, because in the dualist account the feature isn't epiphenomenal.
> On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 4:33:38 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
>
> > >
> > > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> >
> > Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
>
> Whether or not something has a first person perspective is, in my view, determined by the arrangement. In order for the thing *not* to have a first person perspective, you'd have to have a different arrangement. And a different arrangement would yield different behavior. The property of having a first person perspective is part of the arrangement - you cannot take it away without changing the arrangement.
>
> I agree with you that if you assume that you *can* take it away without changing the arrangement, and if the arrangement determines the behavior, then it follows that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. But, you can prove anything by assuming your conclusion.
>
>
>
>
>
> > > Look, I keep telling you what my position is, simply and straightforwardly. You keep ignoring it. It's included once again in my previous post. Ignore it again, if you like. That's up to you. But if you keep ignoring my straightforward explanation of my view, you can hardly object when I get tired of answering your questions about my views.
> >
> > I thought you had stated not all things had a first person perspective, so that a cup for example wouldn't have a first person perspective, because it wasn't conscious.
>
> Correct, cups are not conscious. At least we agree on something.
>
> >I thought you were also claiming that consciousness was a behaviour, and that if something was conscious that it would have a first person perspective.
>
> Correct.
>
> >You had also stated I thought that all behaviour was in principle observable or detectable experimentally. What I am asking you is a pretty straight forward question, which I do not remember you answering before, but if you did, could you just restate it. Are you suggesting that my assumption was wrong and that not all behaviours can at least in principle be observed from a third person perspective?
>
> Sure, by "behavior" I mean anything about the system that is in principle observable. And I'm talking about things that are observable from a third person perspective.
>
>
> (Before when you mentioned in principle observable, but perhaps you meant from either a third person perspective or a first person perspective or both rather than always in principle observable from a third person perspective alone).
> >
> > The reason I ask is that if my assumption was correct and all behaviours are in principle observable from a third person perspective, then the first person perspective itself, the feature that a cup doesn't have, isn't a behaviour, because it isn't observable from a third person perspective. And if it isn't a behavioural feature, then it cannot be reduced to other behavioural features.
>
> I don't agree with you here. Whether or not something has a first person perspective is observable, in principle, from a third person perspective. Having a first person perspective is a behavior and is equivalent to being conscious. The first person perspective, itself, is incommunicable. It's Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. All you ever see about anything except yourself is a third person perspective, but it it perfectly easy to determine, from the third person perspective, that a cup has no first person perspective and a person does. All we've done in the last few threads has been to switch the phrase "being conscious" with the phrase "having a first person perspective." In my view, they are equivalent. But I think you are not interested in my view. If you were, you wouldn't persist in ignoring the straightforward version of it that I've given you many times. You're interested in trying to score points, not in understanding.
Take a robot for example, it can behave in a way which you can claim is conscious behaviour, but you can't observe whether it has a first person perspective, or if it had what it was like. That is simply a fact, but if you don't want to accept it, then I'll illustrate the point using a simple thought experiment. Imagine some scientists build a robot, the Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that *you* would classify as consciousness. It has cameras for eyes, with each pixel having three 8-bit intensity values (so a range from 0-255) each represent a colour intensity. These come through 3 channels A, B, and C. Internally, in software ("version 1"), the robot holds a table so to speak of linking words to the colour values. E.g. if channel A has an intensity of 255, and B & C intensities of 0, the robot will use the word "red" to describe the colour if B is 255 and A & C are 0 it will use the word "green" and if C is 255 and A & B are 0, it will use the word "blue" to describe the colour. You can imagine that all its reactions to colour are based off the ABC channel values.
Then imagine that the Mark 1 can take two types of eye camera. The RGB eye camera which, for each pixel, uses channel A for the red light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the blue light intensity data. Or the BGR eye camera which uses channel the A channel for the blue light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the red light intensity data.
Then consider four Mark 1 robots, two with RGB eye cameras, and two with BGR eye cameras. From each pair, one is in a red room with a blue table, and the other is in a blue room with a red table. Not presumably because the robots behave in a way which *you* define as conscious, you are going to claim that not only do they have a first person perspective, but that you can observe it from a third person perspective. So in such a scenario how could you observe whether both the Mark 1s (the one with RGB camera eyes, and the one with BGR camera eyes) in the red room with a blue table experience the room with similar red qualia as you would, and the table with a similar blue qualia as you would? Explain what type of experiment you could do to tell, or what other method of observation you'd use.
Bill Rogers
Nov 29, 2015, 9:03:38 AM11/29/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 7:58:39 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 11:13:36 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 4:33:38 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> > >
> > > Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
> >
> > Whether or not something has a first person perspective is, in my view, determined by the arrangement. In order for the thing *not* to have a first person perspective, you'd have to have a different arrangement. And a different arrangement would yield different behavior. The property of having a first person perspective is part of the arrangement - you cannot take it away without changing the arrangement.
> >
> > I agree with you that if you assume that you *can* take it away without changing the arrangement, and if the arrangement determines the behavior, then it follows that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. But, you can prove anything by assuming your conclusion.
> >
>
> As I pointed out, the conclusion isn't reached by any assumption. You can assume that you cannot have the same arrangement but not have the strong nuclear force, but you can still imagine it to be absent, and when you do you can see the influence that the model suggests it has on behaviour. When you do the same with the first person perspective in your model, you end up with a philosophical zombie, in other words the same behaviour but no first person perspective. Like with the strong nuclear force, you aren't assuming it is possible, just using your imagination to highlight the influence the feature has in your account. If you did the same thing using a dualist account you wouldn't end up with the same behaviour, because in the dualist account the feature isn't epiphenomenal.
Of course the conclusion is reached from an assumption. Let's be explicit here.
> On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 11:13:36 AM UTC, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 4:33:38 AM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > If the thing did not have a first person perspective, it would have to be in a different arrangement (since in my view the first person perspective corresponds to having a certain arrangement). If the thing had a different arrangement, it would behave differently.
> > >
> > > Yes I understand, but do you understand that you could say that about an epiphenomenal property which only certain arrangements had. Suggesting that if the arrangement was different the behaviour was different doesn't show that the property isn't epiphenomenal in the account. What you couldn't do if the property was epiphenomenal in the account is imagine that the same arrangement lacked it and show how it would make a difference to behaviour, like you could with the strong nuclear force for example. And the point has been made that imagining the property was lacking from the same arrangement wouldn't imply that the property was epiphenomenal, since as I mentioned you could do so with the strong nuclear force. And as you've stated yourself, you could, if you wanted to, do the same with the first person perspective. What I was asking you was if you did imagine the same arrangement to lack the first person perspective would your account suggest a behavioural difference like it would if you were to imagine the constituents of the same arrangement to lack a strong nuclear force, or as a dualist account would if that arrangement were imagined to lack a first person perspective, or would it suggest a philosophical zombie (something which lacks a first person perspective but behaves the same anyway)?
> >
> > Whether or not something has a first person perspective is, in my view, determined by the arrangement. In order for the thing *not* to have a first person perspective, you'd have to have a different arrangement. And a different arrangement would yield different behavior. The property of having a first person perspective is part of the arrangement - you cannot take it away without changing the arrangement.
> >
> > I agree with you that if you assume that you *can* take it away without changing the arrangement, and if the arrangement determines the behavior, then it follows that the first person perspective is epiphenomenal. But, you can prove anything by assuming your conclusion.
> >
>
> As I pointed out, the conclusion isn't reached by any assumption. You can assume that you cannot have the same arrangement but not have the strong nuclear force, but you can still imagine it to be absent, and when you do you can see the influence that the model suggests it has on behaviour. When you do the same with the first person perspective in your model, you end up with a philosophical zombie, in other words the same behaviour but no first person perspective. Like with the strong nuclear force, you aren't assuming it is possible, just using your imagination to highlight the influence the feature has in your account. If you did the same thing using a dualist account you wouldn't end up with the same behaviour, because in the dualist account the feature isn't epiphenomenal.
There are several cases.
Case A
Assume 1. The same physical laws determine the behavior of both conscious and unconscious things. 2. It is possible to have two things with identical behavior, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. Then it follows that consciousness is epiphenomenal.
Case B
Assume 1. The same physical laws determine the behavior of both conscious and unconscious things. 2. It is NOT possible to have two things with identical behavior, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. The it follows that consciousness is not epiphenomenal. These are the assumptions I make. THis is my view.
Case C.
Assume 1. Something other than the physical laws that govern unconscious systems determines the behavior of conscious systems. 2.It is possible to have two things with identical behavior, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. The conclusion is that consciousness need not be epiphenomenal. This corresponds pretty well to the dualist alternative you mentioned.
> >
> > I don't agree with you here. Whether or not something has a first person perspective is observable, in principle, from a third person perspective. Having a first person perspective is a behavior and is equivalent to being conscious. The first person perspective, itself, is incommunicable. It's Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. All you ever see about anything except yourself is a third person perspective, but it it perfectly easy to determine, from the third person perspective, that a cup has no first person perspective and a person does. All we've done in the last few threads has been to switch the phrase "being conscious" with the phrase "having a first person perspective." In my view, they are equivalent. But I think you are not interested in my view. If you were, you wouldn't persist in ignoring the straightforward version of it that I've given you many times. You're interested in trying to score points, not in understanding.
>
> I'm interested in breaking your little story, and already it is now at the point that it is no longer any good for you to be able to claim that in your theory certain behaviour would have a first person perspective. Because your claim has now changed from your theory assumes that certain behaviour will have a first person perspective to it is observable from a third person perspective that it does. A claim that the burden of proof is on you to prove. And basically it was rubbish,
>but nevertheless I have a simple thought experiment that shows that you can't in principle observe it, so I don't even need to bother about who the burden was upon, in case you dispute that you'd need to prove your statement of fact.
>
> Take a robot for example, it can behave in a way which you can claim is conscious behaviour, but you can't observe whether it has a first person perspective, or if it had what it was like. That is simply a fact, but if you don't want to accept it,
>then I'll illustrate the point using a simple thought experiment. Imagine some scientists build a robot, the Mark 1, which gives the type of behaviour that *you* would classify as consciousness. It has cameras for eyes, with each pixel having three 8-bit intensity values (so a range from 0-255) each represent a colour intensity. These come through 3 channels A, B, and C. Internally, in software ("version 1"), the robot holds a table so to speak of linking words to the colour values. E.g. if channel A has an intensity of 255, and B & C intensities of 0, the robot will use the word "red" to describe the colour if B is 255 and A & C are 0 it will use the word "green" and if C is 255 and A & B are 0, it will use the word "blue" to describe the colour. You can imagine that all its reactions to colour are based off the ABC channel values.
>
> Then imagine that the Mark 1 can take two types of eye camera. The RGB eye camera which, for each pixel, uses channel A for the red light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the blue light intensity data. Or the BGR eye camera which uses channel the A channel for the blue light intensity data, channel B for the green light intensity data, and channel C for the red light intensity data.
>
> Then consider four Mark 1 robots, two with RGB eye cameras, and two with BGR eye cameras. From each pair, one is in a red room with a blue table, and the other is in a blue room with a red table. Not presumably because the robots behave in a way which *you* define as conscious, you are going to claim that not only do they have a first person perspective, but that you can observe it from a third person perspective. So in such a scenario how could you observe whether both the Mark 1s (the one with RGB camera eyes, and the one with BGR camera eyes) in the red room with a blue table experience the room with similar red qualia as you would, and the table with a similar blue qualia as you would? Explain what type of experiment you could do to tell, or what other method of observation you'd use.
If I take the robots outside and they behave consciously, make long term plans, avoid danger, tell me what they think about politics, tell me how they feel about each of the other robots, respond appropriately to conversations, etc, then I'll conclude they have a first person perspective. I won't be able to *have* their individual first person perspective, but I'll be happy enough to conclude they have one.
The whole inverted spectrum thought experiment is old news.
You can find it here:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/#BehUndSce
Section 3.1 seems to be closest to your argument and, when used as an argument against physicalism it is pretty much equivalent to the zombie argument. From the linked text....
"Although there is some controversy about just how science-fictional anti-functionalist inversion scenarios need to be, anti-physicalist inversion scenarios are usually supposed to be very remote from actuality, and their possibility is hotly disputed. Almost uncontroversially: if an inverted spectrum argument against physicalism works at all, then a simple zombie scenario will equally serve the purpose."
Bill Rogers
Nov 29, 2015, 10:43:38 AM11/29/15
to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org
On Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 9:03:38 AM UTC-5, Bill Rogers wrote:
> Case C.
>
> Assume 1. Something other than the physical laws that govern unconscious systems determines the behavior of conscious systems. 2.It is possible to have two things with identical behavior, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. The conclusion is that consciousness need not be epiphenomenal. This corresponds pretty well to the dualist alternative you mentioned.
>
Sorry, this should read:
> Case C.
>
> Assume 1. Something other than the physical laws that govern unconscious systems determines the behavior of conscious systems. 2.It is possible to have two things with identical behavior, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. The conclusion is that consciousness need not be epiphenomenal. This corresponds pretty well to the dualist alternative you mentioned.
>
Assume 1. Something other than the physical laws that govern unconscious systems determines the behavior of conscious systems. 2.It is possible to have two things with identical *physical arrangement*, one of which is conscious and one of which is unconscious. The conclusion is that consciousness need not be epiphenomenal. This corresponds pretty well to the dualist alternative you mentioned.
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