Are Philosophical Zombies possible?

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Jason Resch

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Jul 5, 2024, 1:41:28 PMJul 5
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I finished this section for my article on consciousness:


It is an important question, because if zombies are not possible, then consciousness is not optional. Rather, consciousness would be logically necessary, in any system having the right configuration.

(Whether that configuration is functional/organizational/causal/or physical is a separate question).

Jason

John Clark

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Jul 5, 2024, 3:18:43 PMJul 5
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On Fri, Jul 5, 2024 at 1:41 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I finished this section for my article on consciousness:


It is an important question, because if zombies are not possible, then consciousness is not optional. Rather, consciousness would be logically necessary, in any system having the right configuration.

Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence. Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Brent Meeker

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Jul 6, 2024, 2:52:02 PMJul 6
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You emphasize that a Zombie would assert that he had a consciousness, but what about the converse?  Suppose you met someone who simply denied that the had a consciousness.  When he stubs his toe and says "OUCH!" and hops around on one foot he says yes that was my reaction but I wasn't conscious of pain.  Can you prove him wrong or do you just DEFINE him as wrong?

Brent
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Brent Meeker

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Jul 6, 2024, 3:03:19 PMJul 6
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On 7/5/2024 12:18 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jul 5, 2024 at 1:41 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I finished this section for my article on consciousness:


It is an important question, because if zombies are not possible, then consciousness is not optional. Rather, consciousness would be logically necessary, in any system having the right configuration.

Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
I think you're jumping to conclusions that make consciousness seem mysterious, as though a laptop processes data and therefore is feeling conscious.  There are different levels/kinds of intelligence and correspondingly different kinds and levels of consciousness and evolution can "see" them.  Simple animals like hydra and paramecia are conscious of chemical gradients and move accordingly.  But I don't think they have a concept of their location in space.  But planaria do.  They can remember directions.  So can bees.  Human and some mammals have the ability to imagine themselves in scenarios and to plan accordingly.  That's where the inner narrative comes in, which is facilitated a lot by language.  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

Brent

Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Jason Resch

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Jul 6, 2024, 3:19:09 PMJul 6
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 2:52 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
You emphasize that a Zombie would assert that he had a consciousness, but what about the converse?  Suppose you met someone who simply denied that the had a consciousness.  When he stubs his toe and says "OUCH!" and hops around on one foot he says yes that was my reaction but I wasn't conscious of pain.  Can you prove him wrong or do you just DEFINE him as wrong?

As Chalmers writes, even the statement "Consciousness does not exist" is a third-order phenomenal judgement, of the kind that seems to imply the presence of consciousness in those that come to such conclusions. It seems to be it is neither the assertion of having it, nor the denial of not having it, which proves the presence of consciousness, but rather, it is having a source of knowledge to be able to make such conclusions in the first place, which I think should be taken as the evidence for the presence of a mind.

As to the example of denying a particular perception like pain, there are people who have no sense of pain, and there is also pain dissociation, where the pain's intensity and locus are known, but the experience has no noxiousness. I don't think such denies of pain would constitute evidence of having pain, in the same way denying that one is conscious could be taken as evidence of being conscious (as you have to have some self-awareness to be in a position to deny what aspects of yourself you possess or don't possess).

Jason

 

Brent

On 7/5/2024 10:41 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
I finished this section for my article on consciousness:


It is an important question, because if zombies are not possible, then consciousness is not optional. Rather, consciousness would be logically necessary, in any system having the right configuration.

(Whether that configuration is functional/organizational/causal/or physical is a separate question).

Jason
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John Clark

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Jul 7, 2024, 11:58:54 AMJul 7
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it. Why? It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other possibilities.  Incidentally, GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of somebody holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium balloon and  asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away.

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
I

John Clark

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Jul 7, 2024, 12:14:18 PMJul 7
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 2:52 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You emphasize that a Zombie would assert that he had a consciousness, but what about the converse?  Suppose you met someone who simply denied that the had a consciousness.

Well perhaps I am a philosophical zombie. As many have pointed out, the qualia I experience when looking at something red may be entirely different from the qualia you experience when looking at the same thing, but the same may also be true for consciousness. What I think of as consciousness might just be a weak pale reflection of the enormously larger and grander consciousness that you experience everyday, so compared to you I am a philosophical zombie. Or maybe the reverse is true. Neither of us will ever know. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Jason Resch

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Jul 7, 2024, 1:58:46 PMJul 7
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On Sun, Jul 7, 2024, 11:58 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it.

This is the position of epiphenomenalism: that conscious has no effects. It is what makes zombies logically possible. But you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible, so then epiphenomenalism is false, and consciousness does have effects. As you said previously, if consciousness had no effects, there would be no reason for it to evolve in the first place.


Why? It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other possibilities. 

There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless.

Jason 



Incidentally, GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of somebody holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium balloon and  asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away.

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
hbf

 



Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
I

Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
wfn    
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Stathis Papaioannou

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Jul 7, 2024, 2:47:24 PMJul 7
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Stathis Papaioannou


On Mon, 8 Jul 2024 at 03:58, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:


On Sun, Jul 7, 2024, 11:58 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it.

This is the position of epiphenomenalism: that conscious has no effects. It is what makes zombies logically possible. But you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible, so then epiphenomenalism is false, and consciousness does have effects. As you said previously, if consciousness had no effects, there would be no reason for it to evolve in the first place.


Why? It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other possibilities. 

There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless.

Another possibility is that consciousness has no separate causal efficacy but is a necessary side-effect of the behaviour associated with it.

Incidentally, GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of somebody holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium balloon and  asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away.

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
hbf

 



Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
I

Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
wfn    
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John Clark

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Jul 7, 2024, 3:14:41 PMJul 7
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On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 1:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

>>I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it.

> you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible,

Zombies are possible, it's philosophical zombies, a.k.a. smart zombies, that are impossible because it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data behaves when it is being processed intelligently, or at least that's what I think. Unless you believe that all iterated sequences of "why" or "how" questions go on forever then you must believe that brute facts exist; and I can't think of a better candidate for one than consciousness.

> so then epiphenomenalism is false

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Epiphenomenalism is a position in the philosophy of mind according to which mental states or events are caused by physical states or events in the brain but do not themselves cause anything". If that is the definition then I believe in Epiphenomenalism.
 
> As you said previously, if consciousness had no effects, there would be no reason for it to evolve in the first place.

What I said in my last post was "It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other possibilities".

> There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless.

If consciousness is not useless from Evolution's point of view then it must produce "something" that natural selection can see, and if natural selection can see that certain "something" then so can you or me. So the Turing Test is not just a good test for intelligence it's also a good test for consciousness. The only trouble is, what is that "something"? Presumably whatever it is that "something" must be related to mind in some way, but If it is not intelligent activity then what the hell is it"?  

Brent Meeker

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Jul 7, 2024, 9:28:35 PMJul 7
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On 7/7/2024 8:58 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it. Why? It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else
You miss my point.  I thought it was obvious that foresight requires consciousness.  It requires the ability of think in terms of future scenarios in which you are an actor, i.e. to be conscious of yourself with an imaginary play.

Brent

that is not useless, there are no other possibilities.  Incidentally, GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of somebody holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium balloon and  asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away.

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
hbf

 



Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs to ask themselves one question. Natural selection cannot select for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that although Evolution can't see consciousness it can certainly see intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
I

Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
wfn    
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Brent Meeker

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Jul 7, 2024, 9:43:15 PMJul 7
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Foresight.

Brent

Presumably whatever it is that "something" must be related to mind in some way, but If it is not intelligent activity then what the hell is it"?  

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

 
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John Clark

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Jul 8, 2024, 10:29:08 AMJul 8
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On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 9:28 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I thought it was obvious that foresight requires consciousness. It requires the ability of think in terms of future scenarios

The keyword in the above is "think". Foresight means using logic to predict, given current starting conditions, what the future will likely be, and determining how a change in the initial conditions will likely affect the future.  And to do any of that requires intelligence. Both Large Language Models and picture to video AI programs have demonstrated that they have foresight ; if you ask them what will happen if you cut the string holding down a helium balloon they will tell you it will flow away, but if you add that the instant string is cut an Olympic high jumper will make a grab for the dangling string they will tell you what will likely happen then too. So yes, foresight does imply consciousness because foresight demands intelligence and consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence.
 
> in which you are an actor

Obviously any intelligence will have to take its own actions in account to determine what the likely future will be. After a LLM gives you an answer to a question, based on that answer I'll bet an AI  will be able to make a pretty good guess what your next question to it will be.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
ods




 

Jason Resch

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Jul 8, 2024, 2:12:47 PMJul 8
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 10:29 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 9:28 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I thought it was obvious that foresight requires consciousness. It requires the ability of think in terms of future scenarios

The keyword in the above is "think". Foresight means using logic to predict, given current starting conditions, what the future will likely be, and determining how a change in the initial conditions will likely affect the future.  And to do any of that requires intelligence. Both Large Language Models and picture to video AI programs have demonstrated that they have foresight ; if you ask them what will happen if you cut the string holding down a helium balloon they will tell you it will flow away, but if you add that the instant string is cut an Olympic high jumper will make a grab for the dangling string they will tell you what will likely happen then too. So yes, foresight does imply consciousness because foresight demands intelligence and consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence.

Consciousness is a prerequisite of intelligence. One can be conscious without being intelligent, but one cannot be intelligent without being conscious.
Someone with locked-in syndrome can do nothing, and can exhibit no intelligent behavior. They have no measurable intelligence. Yet they are conscious. You need to have perceptions (of the environment, or the current situation) in order to act intelligently. It is in having perceptions that consciousness appears. So consciousness is not a byproduct of, but an integral and necessary requirement for intelligent action.

Jason
 
 
> in which you are an actor

Obviously any intelligence will have to take its own actions in account to determine what the likely future will be. After a LLM gives you an answer to a question, based on that answer I'll bet an AI  will be able to make a pretty good guess what your next question to it will be.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
ods




 

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Jason Resch

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Jul 8, 2024, 2:23:44 PMJul 8
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On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 3:14 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 1:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

>>I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it.

> you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible,

Zombies are possible, it's philosophical zombies, a.k.a. smart zombies, that are impossible because it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data behaves when it is being processed intelligently, or at least that's what I think. Unless you believe that all iterated sequences of "why" or "how" questions go on forever then you must believe that brute facts exist; and I can't think of a better candidate for one than consciousness.

> so then epiphenomenalism is false

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Epiphenomenalism is a position in the philosophy of mind according to which mental states or events are caused by physical states or events in the brain but do not themselves cause anything". If that is the definition then I believe in Epiphenomenalism.

If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove consciousness without altering behavior).

I view mental states as high-level states operating in their own regime of causality (much like a Java computer program). The java computer program can run on any platform, regardless of the particular physical nature of it. It has in a sense isolated itself from the causality of the electrons and semiconductors, and operates in its own realm of the causality of if statements, and for loops. Consider this program, for example:

twin-prime-program2.png

What causes the program to terminate? Is it the inputs, and the logical relation of primality, or is it the electrons flowing through the CPU? I would argue that the higher-level causality, regarding the logical relations of the inputs to the program logic is just as important. It determines the physics of things like when the program terminates. At this level, the microcircuitry is relevant only to its support of the higher level causal structures, but the program doesn't need to be aware of nor consider those low-level things. It operates the same regardless.

I view consciousness as like that high-level control structure. It operates within a causal realm where ideas and thoughts have causal influence and power, and can reach down to the lower level to do things like trigger nerve impulses.


Here is a quote from Roger Sperry, who eloquently describes what I am speaking of:


"I am going to align myself in a counterstand, along with that approximately 0.1 per cent mentalist minority, in support of a hypothetical brain model in which consciousness and mental forces generally are given their due representation as important features in the chain of control. These appear as active operational forces and dynamic properties that interact with and upon the physiological machinery. Any model or description that leaves out conscious forces, according to this view, is bound to be pretty sadly incomplete and unsatisfactory. The conscious mind in this scheme, far from being put aside and dispensed with as an "inconsequential byproduct," "epiphenomenon," or "inner aspect," as is the customary treatment these days, gets located, instead, front and center, directly in the midst of the causal interplay of cerebral mechanisms.

Mental forces in this particular scheme are put in the driver's seat, as it were. They give the orders and they push and haul around the physiology and physicochemical processes as much as or more than the latter control them. This is a scheme that puts mind back in its old post, over matter, in a sense-not under, outside, or beside it. It's a scheme that idealizes ideas and ideals over physico-chemical interactions, nerve impulse traffic-or DNA. It's a brain model in which conscious, mental, psychic forces are recognized to be the crowning achievement of some five hundred million years or more of evolution.

[...] The basic reasoning is simple: First, we contend that conscious or mental phenomena are dynamic, emergent, pattern (or configurational) properties of the living brain in action -- a point accepted by many, including some of the more tough-minded brain researchers. Second, the argument goes a critical step further, and insists that these emergent pattern properties in the brain have causal control potency -- just as they do elsewhere in the universe. And there we have the answer to the age-old enigma of consciousness.

To put it very simply, it becomes a question largely of who pushes whom around in the population of causal forces that occupy the cranium. There exists within the human cranium a whole world of diverse causal forces; what is more, there are forces within forces within forces, as in no other cubic half-foot of universe that we know.

[...] Along with their internal atomic and subnuclear parts, the brain molecules are obliged to submit to a course of activity in time and space that is determined very largely by the overall dynamic and spatial properties of the whole brain cell as an entity. Even the brain cells, however, with their long fibers and impulse conducting elements, do not have very much to say either about when or in what time pattern, for example, they are going to fire their messages. The firing orders come from a higher command. [...]

In short, if one climbs upward through the chain of command within the brain, one finds at the very top those overall organizational forces and dynamic properties of the large patterns of cerebral excitation that constitute the mental or psychic phenomena. [...]

Near the apex of this compound command system in the brain we find ideas. In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring brains, and in distant, foreign brains. And they also interact with real consequence upon the external surroundings to produce in toto an explosive advance in evolution on this globe far beyond anything known before, including the emergence of the living cell."




Jason


 
 
> As you said previously, if consciousness had no effects, there would be no reason for it to evolve in the first place.

What I said in my last post was "It must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else that is not useless, there are no other possibilities".

> There is another possibility: consciousness is not useless.

If consciousness is not useless from Evolution's point of view then it must produce "something" that natural selection can see, and if natural selection can see that certain "something" then so can you or me. So the Turing Test is not just a good test for intelligence it's also a good test for consciousness. The only trouble is, what is that "something"? Presumably whatever it is that "something" must be related to mind in some way, but If it is not intelligent activity then what the hell is it"?  

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

 

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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 8, 2024, 2:40:29 PMJul 8
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Philosophical zombies are not possible, for the trivial reason that body doesn't even exist. "Body" is just an idea in consciousness. See my papers, like "How Self-Reference Builds the World": https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan

John Clark

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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 2:23 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove consciousness without altering behavior).

Not if consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligece, and I'm almost certain that it is.    

> I view mental states as high-level states operating in their own regime of causality (much like a Java computer program).

I have no problem with that, actually it's very similar to my view.  
 
> The java computer program can run on any platform, regardless of the particular physical nature of it.

Right. You could even say that "computer program" is not a noun, it is an adjective, it is the way a computer will behave when the machine's  logical states are organized in a certain way.  And "I" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Johnkclarkian way, and "you" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Jasonreschian way.

> I view consciousness as like that high-level control structure. It operates within a causal realm where ideas and thoughts have causal influence and power, and can reach down to the lower level to do things like trigger nerve impulses.

Consciousness is a high-level description of brain states that can be extremely useful, but that doesn't mean that lower level and much more finely grained description of brain states involving nerve impulses, or even more finely grained descriptions involving electrons and quarks are wrong, it's just that such level of detail is unnecessary and impractical for some purposes.   
 
John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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John Clark

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Jul 8, 2024, 4:04:54 PMJul 8
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 2:12 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Consciousness is a prerequisite of intelligence.

I think you've got that backwards, intelligence is a prerequisite of consciousness. And the possibility of intelligent ACTIONS is a  prerequisite for Darwinian natural selection to have evolved it.
 
> One can be conscious without being intelligent,

Sure. The Turing Test is not perfect, it has a lot of flaws, but it's all we've got. If something passes the Turing Test then it's intelligent and conscious, but if it fails the test then it may or may not be intelligent and or conscious. 

 You need to have perceptions (of the environment, or the current situation) in order to act intelligently. 

For intelligence to have evolved, and we know for a fact that it has, you not only need to be able to perceive the environment you also need to be able to manipulate it. That's why zebras didn't evolve great intelligence, they have no hands, so a brilliant zebra wouldn't have a great advantage over a dumb zebra, in fact he'd probably be at a disadvantage because a big brain is a great energy hog.  
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Jason Resch

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Jul 8, 2024, 4:20:47 PMJul 8
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024, 4:01 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 2:23 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove consciousness without altering behavior).

Not if consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligece, and I'm almost certain that it is.    

If consciousness is necessary for intelligence, then it's not a byproduct. If on the other hand, consciousness is just a useless byproduct, then it could (logically if not nomologically) be eliminated without affecting intelligent.

You seem to want it to be both necessary but also be something that makes no difference to anything (which makes it unnecessary).

I would be most curious to hear your thoughts  regarding the section of my article on "Conscious behaviors" -- that is, behaviors which (seem to) require consciousness in order to do them.


> I view mental states as high-level states operating in their own regime of causality (much like a Java computer program).

I have no problem with that, actually it's very similar to my view.

That's good to hear.

 
> The java computer program can run on any platform, regardless of the particular physical nature of it.

Right. You could even say that "computer program" is not a noun, it is an adjective, it is the way a computer will behave when the machine's  logical states are organized in a certain way.  And "I" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Johnkclarkian way, and "you" is the way atoms behave when they are organized in a Jasonreschian way.

I'm not opposed to that framing.

> I view consciousness as like that high-level control structure. It operates within a causal realm where ideas and thoughts have causal influence and power, and can reach down to the lower level to do things like trigger nerve impulses.

Consciousness is a high-level description of brain states that can be extremely useful, but that doesn't mean that lower level and much more finely grained description of brain states involving nerve impulses, or even more finely grained descriptions involving electrons and quarks are wrong, it's just that such level of detail is unnecessary and impractical for some purposes.   

I would even say, that at a certain level of abstraction, they become irrelevant. It is the result of what I call "a Turing firewall", software has no ability to know its underlying hardware implementation, it is an inviolable separation of layers of abstraction, which makes the lower levels invisible to the layers above. So the neurons and molecular forces aren't in the drivers seat for what goes on in the brain. That is the domain of higher level structures and forces. We cannot ignore completely the lower levels, they provide the substrate upon which the higher levels are built, but I think it is an abuse of reductionism that leads people to saying consciousness is an epiphenomenon and doesn't do anything. When no one would try to apply reductionism to explain why, when a glider in the game of life hits a block and causes it to self destruct, that it is due to quantum mechanics in our universe, rather than a consequence of the very different rules of the game of life as they operate in the game of life universe.

Jason 


 
John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Jason Resch

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Jul 8, 2024, 4:35:12 PMJul 8
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024, 4:04 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 2:12 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Consciousness is a prerequisite of intelligence.

I think you've got that backwards, intelligence is a prerequisite of consciousness. And the possibility of intelligent ACTIONS is a  prerequisite for Darwinian natural selection to have evolved it.

I disagree, but will explain below.

 
> One can be conscious without being intelligent,

Sure.

I define intelligence by something capable of intelligent action.

Intelligent action requires non random choice: choice informed by information from the environment.

Having information about the environment (i.e. perceptions) is consciousness. You cannot have perceptions without there being some process or thing to perceive them.

Therefore perceptions (i.e. consciousness) is a requirement and precondition of being able to perform intelligent actions.

Jason 

The Turing Test is not perfect, it has a lot of flaws, but it's all we've got. If something passes the Turing Test then it's intelligent and conscious, but if it fails the test then it may or may not be intelligent and or conscious. 

 You need to have perceptions (of the environment, or the current situation) in order to act intelligently. 

For intelligence to have evolved, and we know for a fact that it has, you not only need to be able to perceive the environment you also need to be able to manipulate it. That's why zebras didn't evolve great intelligence, they have no hands, so a brilliant zebra wouldn't have a great advantage over a dumb zebra, in fact he'd probably be at a disadvantage because a big brain is a great energy hog.  
  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 8, 2024, 5:17:31 PMJul 8
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Brain doesn't exist. "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness. See my papers, like "How Self-Reference Builds the World": https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan

Jason Resch

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Jul 8, 2024, 5:47:28 PMJul 8
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024, 5:17 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Brain doesn't exist.

Then it exists as an object in consciousness, which is as much as exist would mean under idealism. Rather than say things don't exist, I think it would be better to redefine what is meant by existence.


"Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Sure, and all objects exist in the mind of God. So "exist" goes back to meaning what it has always meant, as Markus Mueller said (roughly): "A exists for B, when changing the state of A can change the state of B, and vice versa, under certain auxiliary conditions."


See my papers, like "How Self-Reference Builds the World": https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan


I have, and replied with comments and questions. You, however, dismissed them as me not having read your paper.

Have you seen my paper on how computational observers build the world? It reaches a similar conclusion to yours:


Jason 


Cosmin Visan

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Jul 8, 2024, 6:38:35 PMJul 8
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So based on your definition, Santa Claus exists.

Jason Resch

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Jul 9, 2024, 12:31:46 AMJul 9
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024, 6:38 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
So based on your definition, Santa Claus exists.

I believe everything possible exists.

That is the idea this mail list was created to discuss, after all. (That is why it is called the "everything list")

Jason 


Cosmin Visan

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Jul 9, 2024, 4:05:07 AMJul 9
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So, where is Santa Claus ? Also, does he bring presents to all the children in the world in 1 night ? How does he do that ?

Stathis Papaioannou

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Jul 9, 2024, 4:33:33 AMJul 9
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On Tue, 9 Jul 2024 at 04:23, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:


On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 3:14 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 1:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>  I think such foresight is a necessary component of intelligence, not a "byproduct".

>>I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can natural selection, and that's why we have it.  It aids in getting our genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it.

> you don't seem to think zombies are logically possible,

Zombies are possible, it's philosophical zombies, a.k.a. smart zombies, that are impossible because it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data behaves when it is being processed intelligently, or at least that's what I think. Unless you believe that all iterated sequences of "why" or "how" questions go on forever then you must believe that brute facts exist; and I can't think of a better candidate for one than consciousness.

> so then epiphenomenalism is false

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Epiphenomenalism is a position in the philosophy of mind according to which mental states or events are caused by physical states or events in the brain but do not themselves cause anything". If that is the definition then I believe in Epiphenomenalism.

If you believe mental states do not cause anything, then you believe philosophical zombies are logically possible (since we could remove consciousness without altering behavior).
 
Mental states could be necessarily tied to physical states without having any separate causal efficacy, and zombies would not be logically possible. Software is necessarily tied to hardware activity: if a computer runs a particular program, it is not optional that the program is implemented. However, the software does not itself have causal efficacy, causing current to flow in wires and semiconductors and so on: there is always a sufficient explanation for such activity in purely physical terms.

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 9, 2024, 7:03:43 AMJul 9
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Physical doesn't exist. "Physical" is just an idea in consciousness.

John Clark

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Jul 9, 2024, 7:48:49 AMJul 9
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On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 4:20 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If consciousness is necessary for intelligence [...]
 
Consciousness is the inevitable product of intelligence, it is not the cause of intelligence. And as I cannot emphasize enough, natural selection can't select for something it can't see and it can't see consciousness, but natural selection CAN see intelligent actions. And you know for a fact that natural selection has managed to produce at least one conscious being and probably mini billions of them.
Don't you understand how those two facts are telling you something that is philosophically important?
 
> If on the other hand, consciousness is just a useless byproduct, then it could (logically if not nomologically) be eliminated without affecting intelligent.

That would not be possible if it's a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.  

John K Clark

Jason Resch

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Jul 9, 2024, 7:50:10 AMJul 9
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On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, 4:05 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
So, where is Santa Claus ?

If he's possible in this universe he exists very far away. If he's not possible in this universe but possible in other universes then he exists in some subset of those universes where he is possible. If he's not logically possible he doesn't exist anywhere.


Also, does he bring presents to all the children in the world in 1 night ? How does he do that ?

He sprinkles fairy dust all over the planet (nano bot swarms) which travel down chimneys to self-assemble presents from ambient matter, after they scan the brain's of sleeping children to see if they are naughty or nice and what present they hoped for.

Jason 


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