Intelligence and consciousness
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John Clark
Jan 18, 2012, 10:14:26 AM1/18/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> Wrote:
So if something passes the Turing Test it is intelligent and probably conscious, but failure to pass the Turing Test tells you nothing for certain. Rocks don't act intelligently and so fail the test, we conclude that rocks are probably not conscious, but maybe just maybe rocks are brilliant and as conscious as you or me and are just playing possum. Maybe, logically it can't be ruled out, but I rather doubt it.
And you made that decision for a reason or you did not.
OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic.
Yes, Evolution could not produce a perpetual motion machine, and in fact it could not even come up with things far more mundane, like a macroscopic part that can move in 360 degrees. Evolution is a blundering inefficient and very stupid process, it's just that until the invention of brains it was the only way complex things could get built. Nevertheless Evolution managed to produce consciousness and probably first did so more than 500 million years ago; I conclude that producing consciousness is not that difficult, intelligence on the other hand is an entirely different story
I doubt if that is true, but if it is then life evolved from non-life at random.
I never said there wasn't a potential. If consciousness is the way data feels like when it is processed I'd say that is a potential. And I can see absolutely no reason why 3 pounds of grey goo can make use of that potential but a microcircuit can not.
Consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or it would not exist, but I know for a fact that at least one conscious being does exist in the universe.
Then why can't a computer be aware? Why is wet grey goo the only thing that can take advantage of this interesting potential?
John K Clark
" Consciousness can change behavior but it might not have to. Like a possum can play dead."
So if something passes the Turing Test it is intelligent and probably conscious, but failure to pass the Turing Test tells you nothing for certain. Rocks don't act intelligently and so fail the test, we conclude that rocks are probably not conscious, but maybe just maybe rocks are brilliant and as conscious as you or me and are just playing possum. Maybe, logically it can't be ruled out, but I rather doubt it.
" You decide whether to slow down or not."
And you made that decision for a reason or you did not.
" Whether you do slow down or not is random"
OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic.
" all of these things - teleportation, diamond impersonation, etc are no less unlikely than consciousness. [...] There is no way that mutation could produce that unless those things were already possible to produce."
Yes, Evolution could not produce a perpetual motion machine, and in fact it could not even come up with things far more mundane, like a macroscopic part that can move in 360 degrees. Evolution is a blundering inefficient and very stupid process, it's just that until the invention of brains it was the only way complex things could get built. Nevertheless Evolution managed to produce consciousness and probably first did so more than 500 million years ago; I conclude that producing consciousness is not that difficult, intelligence on the other hand is an entirely different story
" Life has no reason to evolve from non-life."
I doubt if that is true, but if it is then life evolved from non-life at random.
" How can mutation produce consciousness if consciousness was not already a potential?"
I never said there wasn't a potential. If consciousness is the way data feels like when it is processed I'd say that is a potential. And I can see absolutely no reason why 3 pounds of grey goo can make use of that potential but a microcircuit can not.
" Your answer is that it must have since consciousness exists and evolution is responsible for all properties of life."
Consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or it would not exist, but I know for a fact that at least one conscious being does exist in the universe.
" But my whole point is that awareness is inherent"
Then why can't a computer be aware? Why is wet grey goo the only thing that can take advantage of this interesting potential?
John K Clark
Craig Weinberg
Jan 19, 2012, 11:08:51 AM1/19/12
to Everything List
On Jan 18, 10:14 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
consciousness. It might be now, but we can't rule out the possibility
that programs will become so convincing that almost nobody can tell
the difference but without having any understanding or consciousness.
I don't imagine it will happen so easily, but the Turing Test alone
doesn't empirically prove anything in principle.
> but failure to pass the Turing Test tells you nothing for
> certain. Rocks don't act intelligently and so fail the test, we conclude
> that rocks are probably not conscious, but maybe just maybe rocks are
> brilliant and as conscious as you or me and are just playing possum. Maybe,
> logically it can't be ruled out, but I rather doubt it.
If we need a Turing Test to tell us that rocks are not conscious, then
we are lost.
>
> " You decide whether to slow down or not."
>
>
>
> And you made that decision for a reason or you did not.
>
> " Whether you do slow down or not is random"
Only from the perspective of the flow of traffic. It is not at all
random from the perspective of the driver. Since the traffic signals
don't know whether any individual driver is going to slow down or not,
it has to be considered probabilistically. The significance and
subjectivity is stripped out, leaving only a computational skeleton of
the event.
>
>
>
> OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic.
Reason is in the eye of the beholder.
>
> " all of these things - teleportation, diamond impersonation, etc are no
> less unlikely than consciousness. [...] There is no way that mutation could
> produce that unless those things were already possible to produce."
>
> Yes, Evolution could not produce a perpetual motion machine, and in fact it
> could not even come up with things far more mundane, like a macroscopic
> part that can move in 360 degrees. Evolution is a blundering inefficient
> and very stupid process, it's just that until the invention of brains it
> was the only way complex things could get built. Nevertheless Evolution
> managed to produce consciousness and probably first did so more than 500
> million years ago; I conclude that producing consciousness is not that
> difficult, intelligence on the other hand is an entirely different story
Why would what the brain does be different than evolution? Could it
be... free will? Subjectivity? Significance?
>
> " Life has no reason to evolve from non-life."
>
>
>
> I doubt if that is true, but if it is then life evolved from non-life at
> random.
That's not possible because there has to be a phenomenal support for
biological coherence in the first place. You can't just throw ping
pong balls around in a vacuum for a few billion years and expect there
to be a chance that a frog will pop up somewhere. If you stop reverse
engineering the reality of what the universe is like now and consider
how it would be possible for it to get that way instead, you'll see
that it doesn't make any sense without sense built into it from the
start. An unconscious universe cannot randomly create conscious
agents.
>
> " How can mutation produce consciousness if consciousness was not already a
>
> > potential?"
>
> I never said there wasn't a potential. If consciousness is the way data
> feels like when it is processed I'd say that is a potential. And I can see
> absolutely no reason why 3 pounds of grey goo can make use of that
> potential but a microcircuit can not.
Data doesn't feel anything because data is just pattern recognition of
a material body. A microcircuit can't make use of that potential for
the same reason that you can't water your garden with formaldehyde. It
has to be real water. Not a liquid that looks like water or a
mathematical simulation that reminds us exactly of how water flows, or
even ice, but actual liquid H2O.
>
> " Your answer is that it must have since consciousness exists and evolution
>
> > is responsible for all properties of life."
>
> Consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or it would not exist,
> but I know for a fact that at least one conscious being does exist in the
> universe.
Why would consciousness be a byproduct of intelligence and not the
other way around?
>
> " But my whole point is that awareness is inherent"
>
>
>
> Then why can't a computer be aware? Why is wet grey goo the only thing that
> can take advantage of this interesting potential?
A computer isn't aware because it's just a lot of little parts that
don't know each other. They didn't all come from the same cell like
our cells do. It's little parts are proto-aware (they detect and
respond to certain physical changes) by virtue of being matter made of
atoms, but they made out of very specific inorganic materials -
semiconductive glass. Glass doesn't do anything interesting. That's
what makes it so useful in science and technology; it is inert yet
transparent, thermoplastic yet thermosetting. Precisely the opposite
of what makes organisms interesting. They are volatile, dynamic,
precariously homeostatic.
I'm not saying that there couldn't be some way for glass to be the
basis for a conscious organism, only that we don't have any reason to
suspect that there could be. If that were to happen though, it won't
be because we are imposing a design on it. The glass would have to
form into an organism on it's own.
Craig
> Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> Wrote:
>
> " Consciousness can change behavior but it might not have to. Like a possum
>
> > can play dead."
>
> So if something passes the Turing Test it is intelligent and probably
> conscious,
I would not say that passing the Turing Test implies intelligence or
>
> " Consciousness can change behavior but it might not have to. Like a possum
>
> > can play dead."
>
> So if something passes the Turing Test it is intelligent and probably
> conscious,
consciousness. It might be now, but we can't rule out the possibility
that programs will become so convincing that almost nobody can tell
the difference but without having any understanding or consciousness.
I don't imagine it will happen so easily, but the Turing Test alone
doesn't empirically prove anything in principle.
> but failure to pass the Turing Test tells you nothing for
> certain. Rocks don't act intelligently and so fail the test, we conclude
> that rocks are probably not conscious, but maybe just maybe rocks are
> brilliant and as conscious as you or me and are just playing possum. Maybe,
> logically it can't be ruled out, but I rather doubt it.
we are lost.
>
> " You decide whether to slow down or not."
>
>
>
> And you made that decision for a reason or you did not.
>
> " Whether you do slow down or not is random"
random from the perspective of the driver. Since the traffic signals
don't know whether any individual driver is going to slow down or not,
it has to be considered probabilistically. The significance and
subjectivity is stripped out, leaving only a computational skeleton of
the event.
>
>
>
> OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic.
>
> " all of these things - teleportation, diamond impersonation, etc are no
> less unlikely than consciousness. [...] There is no way that mutation could
> produce that unless those things were already possible to produce."
>
> Yes, Evolution could not produce a perpetual motion machine, and in fact it
> could not even come up with things far more mundane, like a macroscopic
> part that can move in 360 degrees. Evolution is a blundering inefficient
> and very stupid process, it's just that until the invention of brains it
> was the only way complex things could get built. Nevertheless Evolution
> managed to produce consciousness and probably first did so more than 500
> million years ago; I conclude that producing consciousness is not that
> difficult, intelligence on the other hand is an entirely different story
be... free will? Subjectivity? Significance?
>
> " Life has no reason to evolve from non-life."
>
>
>
> I doubt if that is true, but if it is then life evolved from non-life at
> random.
biological coherence in the first place. You can't just throw ping
pong balls around in a vacuum for a few billion years and expect there
to be a chance that a frog will pop up somewhere. If you stop reverse
engineering the reality of what the universe is like now and consider
how it would be possible for it to get that way instead, you'll see
that it doesn't make any sense without sense built into it from the
start. An unconscious universe cannot randomly create conscious
agents.
>
> " How can mutation produce consciousness if consciousness was not already a
>
> > potential?"
>
> I never said there wasn't a potential. If consciousness is the way data
> feels like when it is processed I'd say that is a potential. And I can see
> absolutely no reason why 3 pounds of grey goo can make use of that
> potential but a microcircuit can not.
a material body. A microcircuit can't make use of that potential for
the same reason that you can't water your garden with formaldehyde. It
has to be real water. Not a liquid that looks like water or a
mathematical simulation that reminds us exactly of how water flows, or
even ice, but actual liquid H2O.
>
> " Your answer is that it must have since consciousness exists and evolution
>
> > is responsible for all properties of life."
>
> Consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence or it would not exist,
> but I know for a fact that at least one conscious being does exist in the
> universe.
other way around?
>
> " But my whole point is that awareness is inherent"
>
>
>
> Then why can't a computer be aware? Why is wet grey goo the only thing that
> can take advantage of this interesting potential?
don't know each other. They didn't all come from the same cell like
our cells do. It's little parts are proto-aware (they detect and
respond to certain physical changes) by virtue of being matter made of
atoms, but they made out of very specific inorganic materials -
semiconductive glass. Glass doesn't do anything interesting. That's
what makes it so useful in science and technology; it is inert yet
transparent, thermoplastic yet thermosetting. Precisely the opposite
of what makes organisms interesting. They are volatile, dynamic,
precariously homeostatic.
I'm not saying that there couldn't be some way for glass to be the
basis for a conscious organism, only that we don't have any reason to
suspect that there could be. If that were to happen though, it won't
be because we are imposing a design on it. The glass would have to
form into an organism on it's own.
Craig
John Clark
Jan 19, 2012, 3:42:34 PM1/19/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
" I would not say that passing the Turing Test implies intelligence or consciousness."
You may not say so right now on this list but the fact is you use the Turing Test every hour of your waking life and probably even in your dreams; when you see someone do something that is very smart you think they are very intelligent, and unless you are locked up in a mental institution, and I don't think you are, you are not a solipsist
" If we need a Turing Test to tell us that rocks are not conscious, then we are lost."
No we are not. Ask yourself exactly why you are so certain that rocks are not conscious, I'll tell you why, because rocks as well as dead people fail the Turing Test, they act as if they were neither conscious nor intelligent. I have no doubt that if you grew up knowing that rocks taught physics and philosophy at Harvard you would have very different ideas about the consciousness of rocks.
" OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic."
" Reason is in the eye of the beholder."
OK, then my reason is not the same as your reason, but if we both had our reasons for doing what we did then our actions were both deterministic, and if we had no reasons our actions were random.
"Why would what the brain does be different than evolution? Could it be... free will?"
Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "free will" means.
"An unconscious universe cannot randomly create conscious agents."
I doubt if that is true but it really does not matter because Darwin's Theory of Evolution is nor random.
" Data doesn't feel anything"
You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence that would lead someone to think it might be true.
" because data is just [...]"
Ah, the good old "just". As I've said, if you cut up even the most magnificent thing into small enough pieces eventually you will get pieces that are not very magnificent at all, in fact if that does not happen then you have not cut it up small enough. Only when you know how the simple can bring about the complex and the mundane the magnificent do you truly understand something.
"Why would consciousness be a byproduct of intelligence and not the other way around?"
Because Evolution can not directly see consciousness any better than we can, so if it were the other way around neither consciousness nor intelligence would exist on this planet. And yet I know for a fact that Evolution did produce consciousness at least once and I know for a fact that Evolution did produce intelligence billions of times and I know for a fact that Evolution can see intelligence. Thus I know for a fact that consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence and NOT the other way around.
" A computer isn't aware"
You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence that would lead someone to think it might be true.
" because it's just [...]"
Ah, the good old "just". As I've said, if you cut up even the most magnificent thing into small enough pieces eventually you will get pieces that are not very magnificent at all, in fact if that does not happen then you have not cut it up small enough. Only when you know how the simple can bring about the complex and the mundane the magnificent do you truly understand something.
John K Clark
Craig Weinberg
Jan 19, 2012, 6:04:01 PM1/19/12
to Everything List
On Jan 19, 3:42 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
the VanGogh Test?
>
> " If we need a Turing Test to tell us that rocks are not conscious, then we
>
> > are lost."
>
> No we are not. Ask yourself exactly why you are so certain that rocks are
> not conscious, I'll tell you why, because rocks as well as dead people fail
> the Turing Test,
How do you know that rocks fail the Turing Test? Have you administered
such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone ever actually doing
that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry. Nobody who
understands the word consciousness in a conventional way needs a test
to determine that rocks do not seem conscious.
> they act as if they were neither conscious nor
> intelligent. I have no doubt that if you grew up knowing that rocks taught
> physics and philosophy at Harvard you would have very different ideas about
> the consciousness of rocks.
Sure, and if consciousness meant 'not consciousness' then I would have
different ideas about the consciousness of rocks too.
>
> " OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic."
>
> " Reason is in the eye of the beholder."
>
>
>
> OK, then my reason is not the same as your reason, but if we both had our
> reasons for doing what we did then our actions were both deterministic, and
> if we had no reasons our actions were random.
It's not deterministic if we are the ones doing the determining. If
you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then
everything that happens in it must by definition be deterministic. If
you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can
see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and
libertarian free will. The universe supports mechanism to a degree and
solipsism to a degree, but it supports a combination of both to a
greater degree.
>
> "Why would what the brain does be different than evolution? Could it be...
>
> > free will?"
>
> Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "free will" means.
Where there's denial, there is truth.
>
> "An unconscious universe cannot randomly create conscious agents."
>
>
>
> I doubt if that is true but it really does not matter because Darwin's
> Theory of Evolution is nor random.
Evolution has nothing to say about consciousness.
>
> " Data doesn't feel anything"
>
>
>
> You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only
> you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence
> that would lead someone to think it might be true.
What sort of evidence would you like? I would have thought that the
blindingly obvious nature of the observation did not require
elaboration. If a five year old child was afraid to delete a file
because they thought it might hurt the file, would you tell them that
it's a good idea not to delete them because data might feel something?
How do you know you are not committing genocide when you format a hard
drive? Should you be imprisoned from crimes against data? 'you can't
even find a single scrap of evidence'? really? Sophistry.
>
> " because data is just [...]"
>
>
>
> Ah, the good old "just". As I've said, if you cut up even the most
> magnificent thing into small enough pieces eventually you will get pieces
> that are not very magnificent at all,
Why does size decrease magnificence? Do you have a single scrap of
evidence that would lead someone to think it might be true?
> in fact if that does not happen then
> you have not cut it up small enough. Only when you know how the simple can
> bring about the complex and the mundane the magnificent do you truly
> understand something.
Nothing simple can bring about the complex unless that potential is
already present in the simple, which means that it was never simple to
begin with. Only when you understand the truth of that can you see how
reductionism can be catastrophic to understanding.
>
> > "Why would consciousness be a byproduct of intelligence and not the other
> > way around?"
>
> Because Evolution can not directly see consciousness any better than we
> can
All seeing is seeing consciousness directly. Evolution doesn't see
because it's not a thing, it's an idea of how things change over time.
>, so if it were the other way around neither consciousness nor
> intelligence would exist on this planet.
Huh? because you think that you can see intelligence and not
consciousness, that means that intelligence creates consciousness?
Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?
> And yet I know for a fact that
> Evolution did produce consciousness at least once and I know for a fact
> that Evolution did produce intelligence billions of times
But you don't know that consciousness is the prerequisite for each and
every incidence of intelligence, now do you?
> and I know for a
> fact that Evolution can see intelligence.
That is delusional. Evolution does not select for intelligence. It
selects for survival and reproduction alone. An environment which
favors intelligence in a particular organism may favor stupidity in
another. You can get worms and bookworms both in a given niche.
> Thus I know for a fact that
> consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence and NOT the other way
> around.
Wow, with no facts whatsoever. Impressive absurdity.
>
> > " A computer isn't aware"
>
> You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only
> you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence
> that would lead someone to think it might be true.
Well, the components of a computer may have an awareness but there is
nothing to suggest that organizing them lends any overall awareness to
the machine.
Craig
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> " I would not say that passing the Turing Test implies intelligence or
>
> > consciousness."
>
> You may not say so right now on this list but the fact is you use the
> Turing Test every hour of your waking life and probably even in your
> dreams; when you see someone do something that is very smart you think they
> are very intelligent, and unless you are locked up in a mental institution,
> and I don't think you are, you are not a solipsist
Why don't you think I am locked up in a mental institution? Did I pass
>
> " I would not say that passing the Turing Test implies intelligence or
>
> > consciousness."
>
> You may not say so right now on this list but the fact is you use the
> Turing Test every hour of your waking life and probably even in your
> dreams; when you see someone do something that is very smart you think they
> are very intelligent, and unless you are locked up in a mental institution,
> and I don't think you are, you are not a solipsist
the VanGogh Test?
>
> " If we need a Turing Test to tell us that rocks are not conscious, then we
>
> > are lost."
>
> No we are not. Ask yourself exactly why you are so certain that rocks are
> not conscious, I'll tell you why, because rocks as well as dead people fail
> the Turing Test,
such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone ever actually doing
that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry. Nobody who
understands the word consciousness in a conventional way needs a test
to determine that rocks do not seem conscious.
> they act as if they were neither conscious nor
> intelligent. I have no doubt that if you grew up knowing that rocks taught
> physics and philosophy at Harvard you would have very different ideas about
> the consciousness of rocks.
different ideas about the consciousness of rocks too.
>
> " OK, then there was a reason and its deterministic."
>
> " Reason is in the eye of the beholder."
>
>
>
> OK, then my reason is not the same as your reason, but if we both had our
> reasons for doing what we did then our actions were both deterministic, and
> if we had no reasons our actions were random.
you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then
everything that happens in it must by definition be deterministic. If
you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can
see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and
libertarian free will. The universe supports mechanism to a degree and
solipsism to a degree, but it supports a combination of both to a
greater degree.
>
> "Why would what the brain does be different than evolution? Could it be...
>
> > free will?"
>
> Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "free will" means.
>
> "An unconscious universe cannot randomly create conscious agents."
>
>
>
> I doubt if that is true but it really does not matter because Darwin's
> Theory of Evolution is nor random.
>
> " Data doesn't feel anything"
>
>
>
> You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only
> you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence
> that would lead someone to think it might be true.
blindingly obvious nature of the observation did not require
elaboration. If a five year old child was afraid to delete a file
because they thought it might hurt the file, would you tell them that
it's a good idea not to delete them because data might feel something?
How do you know you are not committing genocide when you format a hard
drive? Should you be imprisoned from crimes against data? 'you can't
even find a single scrap of evidence'? really? Sophistry.
>
> " because data is just [...]"
>
>
>
> Ah, the good old "just". As I've said, if you cut up even the most
> magnificent thing into small enough pieces eventually you will get pieces
> that are not very magnificent at all,
evidence that would lead someone to think it might be true?
> in fact if that does not happen then
> you have not cut it up small enough. Only when you know how the simple can
> bring about the complex and the mundane the magnificent do you truly
> understand something.
already present in the simple, which means that it was never simple to
begin with. Only when you understand the truth of that can you see how
reductionism can be catastrophic to understanding.
>
> > "Why would consciousness be a byproduct of intelligence and not the other
> > way around?"
>
> Because Evolution can not directly see consciousness any better than we
> can
because it's not a thing, it's an idea of how things change over time.
>, so if it were the other way around neither consciousness nor
> intelligence would exist on this planet.
consciousness, that means that intelligence creates consciousness?
Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?
> And yet I know for a fact that
> Evolution did produce consciousness at least once and I know for a fact
> that Evolution did produce intelligence billions of times
every incidence of intelligence, now do you?
> and I know for a
> fact that Evolution can see intelligence.
selects for survival and reproduction alone. An environment which
favors intelligence in a particular organism may favor stupidity in
another. You can get worms and bookworms both in a given niche.
> Thus I know for a fact that
> consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence and NOT the other way
> around.
>
> > " A computer isn't aware"
>
> You seem to be in the habit of writing declarative sentences that not only
> you are unable to prove but you can't even find a single scrap of evidence
> that would lead someone to think it might be true.
nothing to suggest that organizing them lends any overall awareness to
the machine.
Craig
John Clark
Jan 20, 2012, 12:21:16 PM1/20/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
" How do you know that rocks fail the Turing Test?
That question most certainly does not pass the Turing Test and for the same reason that the ancient "ELIZA" psychiatry program that you mentioned did not; it very soon became obvious how it worked, it took the input "X" and feed it back in a very limited number of ways, such as "tell me more about X" or "have you always felt X" or "how do you know X". Such simple behavior is not a sign of intelligence and will not fool anybody for long. Another example of this sort is:
" Why don't you think I am locked up in a mental institution?"
If I've made a error about that I apologize.
" Have you administered such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone ever actually doing
that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry."
It's not sophistry to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. I agree that the idea that rocks are conscious is ridiculous but unlike you I have asked myself exactly why it's ridiculous and I have a answer; it's ridiculous because no rock I have ever observed, and I've seen quite a few, behaves as if it's intelligent.
"It's not deterministic if we are the ones doing the determining."
Then you did it because you wanted to do it and that want is a perfectly legitimate reason. And you wanted to do it because that's the way your brain is wired, and there is a reason your brain is wired that way (heredity and environment) OR there is no reason your brain is wired that way.
Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant.
Why?
Because I want to.
Why ?
Because I want to eat.
Why?
Because I'm hungry?
Why ?
Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses in my stomach, my brain interpreted these signals as pain, I can only stand so much before I try to stop it.
Why?
Because I don't like pain.
Why?
Because that's the way my brain is constructed.
Why?
Because my body and the hardware of my brain were made from the information in my genetic code ( lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits per base pair 8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig ) the programming of my brain came from the environment, add a little quantum randomness perhaps and of my own free will I consciously decide to go to a restaurant.
"If you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then [...]"
I most certainly do not! We know the universe is NOT deterministic but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
"If you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and libertarian free will."
I know what the ASCII string " libertarian" means, in fact I am one. I think that in general people should be allowed to do what they want to do more often than they are allowed today; so I know what "will" means but I don't know what the ASCII string "free will" means and neither do you.
"Evolution has nothing to say about consciousness."
Don't be ridiculous. You are conscious (I'm pretty sure) and Evolution produced you, neither you or anybody else has suggested a way it could select for such a thing directly so consciousness MUST be a byproduct of something else that it CAN select for. Now maybe that something else is the big toe on your left foot and only people with a toe the size and shape as yours is conscious, but I think it's far more likely that the something else is intelligence.
And yes I know, you will say the idea that your big toe is related to consciousness is ridiculous as indeed it is, but asking yourself why it is ridiculous is far from ridiculous.
And yes I know, you will say the idea that your big toe is related to consciousness is ridiculous as indeed it is, but asking yourself why it is ridiculous is far from ridiculous.
"Why does size decrease magnificence?
Is this question really necessary? Decrease Shakespeare's life work until all you have is the letter "P", the letter P is not a work of genius and it is not magnificence. I confess that sometimes I get the feeling that I'm debating with ELIZA.
"Huh? because you think that you can see intelligence and not consciousness"
Is that point even debatable?
"that means that intelligence creates consciousness?"
Exactly,
"Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?"
No.
" But you don't know that consciousness is the prerequisite for each and every incidence of intelligence, now do you?"
I've asked this before but you did not answer, we have never met so do you think I'm conscious?
"Evolution does not select for intelligence. It selects for survival and reproduction alone."
Yes, and everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one, but Evolution does not give a damn if its conscious or not.
John K Clark
John K Clark
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 20, 2012, 2:52:59 PM1/20/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 20.01.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:
...
>
> "If you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then
> [...]"
>>
>
> I most certainly do not! We know the universe is NOT deterministic
> but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything,
> happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
What about Big Bang? It has also happened for a reason?
Evgenii
John Clark
Jan 20, 2012, 3:28:58 PM1/20/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
What about Big Bang?
I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it did not happen for a reason.
John K Clark
" What about Big Bang?"
What about Big Bang?
" It has also happened for a reason?"
I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it did not happen for a reason.
John K Clark
Craig Weinberg
Jan 20, 2012, 3:48:15 PM1/20/12
to Everything List
On Jan 20, 12:21 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
believe. I'm not intentionally feeding you back your own language, I'm
pointing out that we can derive assumptions of sentience from sources
other than a formal test of logic. Just as we don't need to fill out a
questionnaire to determine whether pain hurts, our definition of
intelligence is exclusive of ordinary inanimate objects from the
beginning.
>
>
>
> If I've made a error about that I apologize.
Heh. My asylum is on the inside o_0
>
> > " Have you administered such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone
> > ever actually doing
> > that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry."
>
> It's not sophistry to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. I
> agree that the idea that rocks are conscious is ridiculous but unlike you I
> have asked myself exactly why it's ridiculous and I have a answer; it's
> ridiculous because no rock I have ever observed, and I've seen quite a few,
> behaves as if it's intelligent.
I don't think that you have really asked yourself, you've just made a
logical supposition of why it must be the case. If you really ask
yourself, you will find that the word intelligence never included the
possibility of inanimate objects in the first place. It's much simpler
than having observed the non-intelligence of rocks, it's understanding
that there is no reason why anyone would need to observe rocks for
intelligence because our sense of what inanimate objects are all about
does not include intelligence. You don't have to observe that this
sentence is written in English, your sense of what the characters are
already does that for you. Your observation *that* this is in English
or Latin does not give you any ability to read it, it is your capacity
to make sense out of - to read the text itself.
>
> "It's not deterministic if we are the ones doing the determining."
>
> Then you did it because you wanted to do it and that want is a perfectly
> legitimate reason. And you wanted to do it because that's the way your
> brain is wired, and there is a reason your brain is wired that way
> (heredity and environment) OR there is no reason your brain is wired that
> way.
OR your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda and to
reconcile it with the various other hereditary and environmental
agendas going on. It's heredity, environment, and choice. They feed
back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment and
vice versa. Your choice of environment can activate or suppress
genetic expression and heredity can influence your choices.
>
> Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant.
> Why?
> Because I want to.
> Why ?
> Because I want to eat.
No. You don't decide to go to 'a restaurant', you decide to go to a
particular restaurant that you prefer. You are not genetically
predisposed to eat sushi over steak. Identical twins are not limited
to the same repertoire of restaurants.
> Why?
> Because I'm hungry?
> Why ?
> Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses in my stomach, my brain
> interpreted these signals as pain, I can only stand so much before I try to
> stop it.
Of course there are many influences that go into your decision of
which restaurant, including convenience, habit, and positive
associations with the experience of eating there, but also financial
consideration, time and travel constraints, breadth of exposure to
culinary variety, implicit memory of family dining experiences,
susceptibility to advertising, etc. Being hungry is only part of the
mix of sense channels and it does not result inevitably in a
restaurant visit. Just because you can't go forever without eating
doesn't mean that you can't postpone your response to hunger. You
still have some choice as to how to represent all of the agendas and
motives that influence you. It can be overridden by compulsion and
addiction of course, but that doesn't mean that all of our thoughts
and actions are compulsory.
> Why?
> Because I don't like pain.
> Why?
> Because that's the way my brain is constructed.
> Why?
> Because my body and the hardware of my brain were made from the
> information in my genetic code ( lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits per
> base pair 8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig ) the
> programming of my brain came from the environment,
> add a little quantum
> randomness perhaps and of my own free will I consciously decide to go to a
> restaurant.
Where does the 'own free will' come in and why does it 'not like
pain'? Is it the bytes of information that feel the pain, or the
nucleotides themselves, or the hardware of your brain, or the
environment, or the quantum randomness that actually feel hungry? Or
is it just a disembodied metaphysical 'interpretation' that haunts the
space in between?
My view is that it makes the most sense that the pain and hunger we
experience from our body is an amplification of more rudimentary
qualities being experienced by the tissues, cells, and even molecules
as harmonics of tension and release. It's sort of like a tuning fork
ringing out a true note that cuts across the inertial frames to
announce a condition. The key principle though is that hunger is not
nowhere and it's not everywhere, it is through somewhere - through
molecules, cells, tissues, and bodies. These are the vehicles of
organic level sensorimotivation.
>
> "If you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then [...]"
>
>
>
> I most certainly do not! We know the universe is NOT deterministic but we
> also know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a
> reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is
deterministic and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)? If
you say that everything happens for a reason or not for a reason, then
I would agree, although I would say that everything happens for many
reasons and somethings happen because we choose one reason over
another.
>
> "If you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can
>
> > see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and
> > libertarian free will."
>
> I know what the ASCII string " libertarian" means, in fact I am one.
I think I used to be too. Or was it an anarchist?
> I
> think that in general people should be allowed to do what they want to do
> more often than they are allowed today;
Me too, but unfortunately I think that immediately turns into 'whoever
takes advantage of their liberty to exploit and enslave the greatest
number of other people first, wins'. Basically all forms of government
are different advanced stages of (certain) people doing what they want
to do and trying to hang on to power through whatever chicanery and
terrorism they can get away with.
> so I know what "will" means but I
> don't know what the ASCII string "free will" means and neither do you.
You continue to say that but I don't know why. Didn't I list for you
some examples of what free will means?
Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of
the body.
Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life.
Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental
manslaughter.
Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express
ourselves in words and gestures.
Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or
creating new options through insight, imagination, or desperation.
>
> "Evolution has nothing to say about consciousness."
>
>
>
> Don't be ridiculous. You are conscious (I'm pretty sure) and Evolution
> produced you
If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that
radio comes from automotive engineering? Evolution deals with heredity
and speciation as a consequence of natural selection. When it is used
as a blanket assumption for all phenomenology in the cosmos, it has no
more explanatory power than monotheism.
, neither you or anybody else has suggested a way it could
> select for such a thing directly so consciousness MUST be a byproduct of
> something else that it CAN select for.
That's a logical fallacy, plus it's a false accusation. I have in fact
suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by a chain of
recursive qualitative augmentations to sensorimotive-electromagnetism.
Detection of detection --> sensation. Sensation of sensation -->
feeling ---> perception ---> awareness ---> consciousness. I posted
some related definitions today as well here:
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/3595431df4eb962f
Why must EVERYTHING be a byproduct of something evolution can select
for though? Because qualia have no functional attributes, they have no
criteria for selection. Pink or sour functions just as well as blue
for optical labeling. It's not possible for them to evolve out of
natural selection, they are woven into the very fabric of sensemaking,
which also does not arise from non sensemaking. It is self selecting.
> Now maybe that something else is the
> big toe on your left foot and only people with a toe the size and shape as
> yours is conscious, but I think it's far more likely that the something
> else is intelligence.
>
> And yes I know, you will say the idea that your big toe is related to
> consciousness is ridiculous as indeed it is, but asking yourself why it is
> ridiculous is far from ridiculous.
>
> "Why does size decrease magnificence?
>
> Is this question really necessary? Decrease Shakespeare's life work until
> all you have is the letter "P", the letter P is not a work of genius and
> it is not magnificence. I confess that sometimes I get the feeling that I'm
> debating with ELIZA.
Likewise you could increase quantity of random letters until they fill
volumes and all you have is nonsense. Mountains of meaningless data is
not magnificence either.
>
> "Huh? because you think that you can see intelligence and not
>
> > consciousness"
>
> Is that point even debatable?
Of course it is. It's not possible not to see consciousness. You are
living and breathing it every moment.
>
> "that means that intelligence creates consciousness?"
>
>
>
> Exactly,
If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect
someone's intelligence and someone's IQ should determine whether or
not they are conscious.
You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are
awake or aware.
>
> "Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?"
>
>
>
> No.
>
> " But you don't know that consciousness is the prerequisite for each and
>
> > every incidence of intelligence, now do you?"
>
> I've asked this before but you did not answer, we have never met so do you
> think I'm conscious?
Meant to say 'you don't know that consciousness is NOT the
prerequisite either.' You and every other intelligence is conscious as
far as I know. I have no evidence or intuition to the contrary.
>
> "Evolution does not select for intelligence. It selects for survival and
>
> > reproduction alone."
>
> Yes, and everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive
> better and have more offspring than a stupid one,
If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be
very intelligent. The animals which survive best are among the
dumbest. Beetles aren't too bright. 400,000 to 1 million species - 25%
percent of all species on the planet are beetles, still going strong.
Bees and ants are more intelligent but are not nearly as successful.
> but Evolution does not
> give a damn if its conscious or not.
Conscious only refers to human awareness, and evolution certainly does
select for awareness. All of those beetles have antennas. Why? To
detect and sense. To facilitate awareness to the beetles experience.
Intelligence is an offshoot of awareness, a talent for integrating
various sense channels and discovering motive strategies.
Craig
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " How do you know that rocks fail the Turing Test?
>
>
>
> That question most certainly does not pass the Turing Test and for the same
> reason that the ancient "ELIZA" psychiatry program that you mentioned did
> not; it very soon became obvious how it worked, it took the input "X" and
> feed it back in a very limited number of ways, such as "tell me more about
> X" or "have you always felt X" or "how do you know X". Such simple behavior
> is not a sign of intelligence and will not fool anybody for long. Another
> example of this sort is:
>
> " Why don't you think I am locked up in a mental institution?"
Like you, I am provoking you to ask yourself why you believe what you
>
> " How do you know that rocks fail the Turing Test?
>
>
>
> That question most certainly does not pass the Turing Test and for the same
> reason that the ancient "ELIZA" psychiatry program that you mentioned did
> not; it very soon became obvious how it worked, it took the input "X" and
> feed it back in a very limited number of ways, such as "tell me more about
> X" or "have you always felt X" or "how do you know X". Such simple behavior
> is not a sign of intelligence and will not fool anybody for long. Another
> example of this sort is:
>
> " Why don't you think I am locked up in a mental institution?"
believe. I'm not intentionally feeding you back your own language, I'm
pointing out that we can derive assumptions of sentience from sources
other than a formal test of logic. Just as we don't need to fill out a
questionnaire to determine whether pain hurts, our definition of
intelligence is exclusive of ordinary inanimate objects from the
beginning.
>
>
>
> If I've made a error about that I apologize.
>
> > " Have you administered such a test to rocks yourself or heard of anyone
> > ever actually doing
> > that? I understand what you mean, but it's sophistry."
>
> It's not sophistry to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. I
> agree that the idea that rocks are conscious is ridiculous but unlike you I
> have asked myself exactly why it's ridiculous and I have a answer; it's
> ridiculous because no rock I have ever observed, and I've seen quite a few,
> behaves as if it's intelligent.
logical supposition of why it must be the case. If you really ask
yourself, you will find that the word intelligence never included the
possibility of inanimate objects in the first place. It's much simpler
than having observed the non-intelligence of rocks, it's understanding
that there is no reason why anyone would need to observe rocks for
intelligence because our sense of what inanimate objects are all about
does not include intelligence. You don't have to observe that this
sentence is written in English, your sense of what the characters are
already does that for you. Your observation *that* this is in English
or Latin does not give you any ability to read it, it is your capacity
to make sense out of - to read the text itself.
>
> "It's not deterministic if we are the ones doing the determining."
>
> Then you did it because you wanted to do it and that want is a perfectly
> legitimate reason. And you wanted to do it because that's the way your
> brain is wired, and there is a reason your brain is wired that way
> (heredity and environment) OR there is no reason your brain is wired that
> way.
reconcile it with the various other hereditary and environmental
agendas going on. It's heredity, environment, and choice. They feed
back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment and
vice versa. Your choice of environment can activate or suppress
genetic expression and heredity can influence your choices.
>
> Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant.
> Why?
> Because I want to.
> Why ?
> Because I want to eat.
particular restaurant that you prefer. You are not genetically
predisposed to eat sushi over steak. Identical twins are not limited
to the same repertoire of restaurants.
> Why?
> Because I'm hungry?
> Why ?
> Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses in my stomach, my brain
> interpreted these signals as pain, I can only stand so much before I try to
> stop it.
which restaurant, including convenience, habit, and positive
associations with the experience of eating there, but also financial
consideration, time and travel constraints, breadth of exposure to
culinary variety, implicit memory of family dining experiences,
susceptibility to advertising, etc. Being hungry is only part of the
mix of sense channels and it does not result inevitably in a
restaurant visit. Just because you can't go forever without eating
doesn't mean that you can't postpone your response to hunger. You
still have some choice as to how to represent all of the agendas and
motives that influence you. It can be overridden by compulsion and
addiction of course, but that doesn't mean that all of our thoughts
and actions are compulsory.
> Why?
> Because I don't like pain.
> Why?
> Because that's the way my brain is constructed.
> Why?
> Because my body and the hardware of my brain were made from the
> information in my genetic code ( lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits per
> base pair 8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig ) the
> programming of my brain came from the environment,
> add a little quantum
> randomness perhaps and of my own free will I consciously decide to go to a
> restaurant.
pain'? Is it the bytes of information that feel the pain, or the
nucleotides themselves, or the hardware of your brain, or the
environment, or the quantum randomness that actually feel hungry? Or
is it just a disembodied metaphysical 'interpretation' that haunts the
space in between?
My view is that it makes the most sense that the pain and hunger we
experience from our body is an amplification of more rudimentary
qualities being experienced by the tissues, cells, and even molecules
as harmonics of tension and release. It's sort of like a tuning fork
ringing out a true note that cuts across the inertial frames to
announce a condition. The key principle though is that hunger is not
nowhere and it's not everywhere, it is through somewhere - through
molecules, cells, tissues, and bodies. These are the vehicles of
organic level sensorimotivation.
>
> "If you define the universe as deterministic from the beginning, then [...]"
>
>
>
> I most certainly do not! We know the universe is NOT deterministic but we
> also know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a
> reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
deterministic and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)? If
you say that everything happens for a reason or not for a reason, then
I would agree, although I would say that everything happens for many
reasons and somethings happen because we choose one reason over
another.
>
> "If you don't force the universe into a category like that, then you can
>
> > see the wide spectrum of variation between absolute determinism and
> > libertarian free will."
>
> I know what the ASCII string " libertarian" means, in fact I am one.
> I
> think that in general people should be allowed to do what they want to do
> more often than they are allowed today;
takes advantage of their liberty to exploit and enslave the greatest
number of other people first, wins'. Basically all forms of government
are different advanced stages of (certain) people doing what they want
to do and trying to hang on to power through whatever chicanery and
terrorism they can get away with.
> so I know what "will" means but I
> don't know what the ASCII string "free will" means and neither do you.
some examples of what free will means?
Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of
the body.
Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life.
Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental
manslaughter.
Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express
ourselves in words and gestures.
Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or
creating new options through insight, imagination, or desperation.
>
> "Evolution has nothing to say about consciousness."
>
>
>
> Don't be ridiculous. You are conscious (I'm pretty sure) and Evolution
> produced you
radio comes from automotive engineering? Evolution deals with heredity
and speciation as a consequence of natural selection. When it is used
as a blanket assumption for all phenomenology in the cosmos, it has no
more explanatory power than monotheism.
, neither you or anybody else has suggested a way it could
> select for such a thing directly so consciousness MUST be a byproduct of
> something else that it CAN select for.
suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by a chain of
recursive qualitative augmentations to sensorimotive-electromagnetism.
Detection of detection --> sensation. Sensation of sensation -->
feeling ---> perception ---> awareness ---> consciousness. I posted
some related definitions today as well here:
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/3595431df4eb962f
Why must EVERYTHING be a byproduct of something evolution can select
for though? Because qualia have no functional attributes, they have no
criteria for selection. Pink or sour functions just as well as blue
for optical labeling. It's not possible for them to evolve out of
natural selection, they are woven into the very fabric of sensemaking,
which also does not arise from non sensemaking. It is self selecting.
> Now maybe that something else is the
> big toe on your left foot and only people with a toe the size and shape as
> yours is conscious, but I think it's far more likely that the something
> else is intelligence.
>
> And yes I know, you will say the idea that your big toe is related to
> consciousness is ridiculous as indeed it is, but asking yourself why it is
> ridiculous is far from ridiculous.
>
> "Why does size decrease magnificence?
>
> Is this question really necessary? Decrease Shakespeare's life work until
> all you have is the letter "P", the letter P is not a work of genius and
> it is not magnificence. I confess that sometimes I get the feeling that I'm
> debating with ELIZA.
volumes and all you have is nonsense. Mountains of meaningless data is
not magnificence either.
>
> "Huh? because you think that you can see intelligence and not
>
> > consciousness"
>
> Is that point even debatable?
living and breathing it every moment.
>
> "that means that intelligence creates consciousness?"
>
>
>
> Exactly,
someone's intelligence and someone's IQ should determine whether or
not they are conscious.
You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are
awake or aware.
>
> "Does that mean that ultraviolet light creates color too?"
>
>
>
> No.
>
> " But you don't know that consciousness is the prerequisite for each and
>
> > every incidence of intelligence, now do you?"
>
> I've asked this before but you did not answer, we have never met so do you
> think I'm conscious?
prerequisite either.' You and every other intelligence is conscious as
far as I know. I have no evidence or intuition to the contrary.
>
> "Evolution does not select for intelligence. It selects for survival and
>
> > reproduction alone."
>
> Yes, and everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive
> better and have more offspring than a stupid one,
very intelligent. The animals which survive best are among the
dumbest. Beetles aren't too bright. 400,000 to 1 million species - 25%
percent of all species on the planet are beetles, still going strong.
Bees and ants are more intelligent but are not nearly as successful.
> but Evolution does not
> give a damn if its conscious or not.
select for awareness. All of those beetles have antennas. Why? To
detect and sense. To facilitate awareness to the beetles experience.
Intelligence is an offshoot of awareness, a talent for integrating
various sense channels and discovering motive strategies.
Craig
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 20, 2012, 3:47:26 PM1/20/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 20.01.2012 21:28 John Clark said the following:
Well, then you have an infinite progression, as then you have to find a
reason for that reason and so on. I guess that this contradicts with the
whole idea of the Big Bang. Or you do not believe in the Big Bang?
Evgenii
Craig Weinberg
Jan 20, 2012, 3:50:23 PM1/20/12
to Everything List
On Jan 20, 3:28 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> What about Big Bang?
>
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> What about Big Bang?
>
> " It has also happened for a reason?"
>
>
>
> I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it did not happen
> for a reason.
Why can't reason have happened because of the Big Bang instead of the
>
>
>
> I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it did not happen
> for a reason.
other way around?
Craig
meekerdb
Jan 21, 2012, 2:12:30 AM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
The idea of the Big Bang is that the visible universe evolved to its present state from a
state of extreme density and temperature. It is independent of whether there was a
previous state, as in the models of Andre Vilenkin or those of Sean Carroll, or not as in
the Hartle-Hawking model.
Brent
>
> Evgenii
>
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 21, 2012, 3:43:09 AM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 21.01.2012 08:12 meekerdb said the following:
This still shows that there are physicists who do not believe in
On 20.01.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:
> but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything,
> happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
In other words such a statement does not follow from physics that we know.
I have recently listened to Kontroversen in der Philosophie by Prof Hoenen:
http://www.podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/podcast_content?id_content=93
and the question whether the Universe if eternal or not belongs to such
controversies.
Evgenii
>
>>
>> Evgenii
>>
>
meekerdb
Jan 21, 2012, 4:00:57 AM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Of course it doesn't follow from physics. It follows from the meaning of the words
(assuming it refers to things that happen). It's a tautology.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
Jan 21, 2012, 4:49:26 AM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Well, actually it is a *classical* tautology. It is a rather strong
axioms (well known to be criticized by intuitionists). I restrict the
use of them to elementary arithmetical propositions. I am skeptical
for applying them to more than that. That's a too much powerful form
of realism. It might be true, but I don't know, and history
illustrates that our intuition can easily be confounded on them. I
definitely does not believe in them for the weak logics associated to
the epistemological logics.
Bruno
>
> Brent
>
>>
>> I have recently listened to Kontroversen in der Philosophie by Prof
>> Hoenen:
>>
>> http://www.podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/podcast_content?id_content=93
>>
>> and the question whether the Universe if eternal or not belongs to
>> such controversies.
>>
>> Evgenii
>
>
>
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Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 21, 2012, 6:21:18 AM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 21.01.2012 10:00 meekerdb said the following:
It is a good point but then the question is what this tautology has to
do with the external world (provided we assume that there is some).
Evgenii
John Clark
Jan 21, 2012, 2:38:48 PM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
" you will find that the word intelligence never included the possibility of inanimate objects in the first place.
That's because the very word "inanimate" means something that does not do complex things like turn carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen in the air into wood and strawberries and cotton, or behave intelligently like animals and especially human beings. Until very very recently the dividing line between animate and inanimate seemed very sharp and even philosophers, who worry about the damnedest things, didn't worry about it much. But times change and that razor sharp line is fast turning into a big grey blob. And actually in the real world there are very few razor sharp lines between categories.
" your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda"
Then it's deterministic.
"It's heredity, environment, and choice."
It's heredity, environment, and randomness.
"They feed back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment and vice versa."
OK, but both positive and negative feedback loops are deterministic.
" Where does the 'own free will' come in"
Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "own free will" means.
" Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is deterministic"
I have to ask myself why I bother to continue this debate when you aren't even trying, you aren't even paying attention. From day one I said that some things are not deterministic. I also said something that I would have thought was uncontroversial even if a bit dull, I said everything is deterministic or it is not. But you disagree, you say some things are not deterministic but also not not deterministic, and such fuzzy thinking is not the path to enlightenment.
" and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)?"
And the ASCII string "free will" does exist and I have never denied that, but I don't know what it means and neither do you. Cows say "Moo" duck say "quack" and people say "free will".
" somethings happen because we choose one reason over another."
And we choose one reason over another for a reason or we did not. Is this matter really worthy of debate?
"Didn't I list for you some examples of what free will means?"
Yes you did, and didn't I show that every one of those examples was circular or ended with a word like "pick" or "choose" or "prefer" as if that settled the matter, but that did not settle the matter because there was always a very very obvious question that just begged to be asked regarding them.
" Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of the body.
Free will is gibberish but consciousness is not. If its voluntary then you have conscious control over what your body does, if it's involuntary then you do not. Thus we must conclude that there is a lot of things going on in the brain that have nothing to do with consciousness; for example, we seldom voluntarily become very sad, but often we do so nevertheless.
I can control some things like the muscles in my fingers but I can not control the muscles in my heart. My car's computer can control the air fuel ratio in the engine but it can't control the pressure in the tires.
"Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life."
Free will is the feeling we get from not knowing what the result of a calculation will be until we have finished the calculation
" Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental manslaughter."
Free will is the gibberish responsible for the criminal justice system being logically inconsistent and thus inevitably ending up being such a bad joke.
" Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express ourselves in words and gestures."
Did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind to another
mind for a reason, or did one mind choose to transfer information
from his mind to another mind for no reason?
" Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or creating new options"
That's collation and computers are good at that sort of calculation. And a hurricane is the size and intensity it is for many many reasons and all those reasons interact with each other in astronomically complex ways; so does a hurricane have free will?
" If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that radio comes from automotive engineering?"
No.
" I have in fact suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by a chain of recursive qualitative augmentations to sensorimotive-electromagnetism. Detection of detection --> sensation. Sensation of sensation --> feeling ---> perception ---> awareness ---> consciousness."
You have a talent for bafflegab and thus could have a bright future in psychology as well as philosophy.
"If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect someone's intelligence"
But the only way to test for unconsciousness is by observing if their behavior is unintelligent. In your case you are hamstrung even more because you don't believe that a person doing smart things is any indication that they are smart. So not only don't you have a test for consciousness you don't even have a way of knowing if someone is intelligent.
"and someone's IQ should determine whether or not they are conscious."
Perhaps it's true, perhaps people with a boiling water IQ are more conscious than average people, there is no way to know.
" You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are awake or aware."
If you say so. Watson acted intelligently, thus Watson was intelligent (for some bizarre reason you refuse to take this step) thus Watson was awake or aware.
" everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one"
" If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be very intelligent.
No because everything else is not equal. For 90% of the 4 billion year history of life Evolution didn't know how to make anything intelligent and only in the last .001% did it manage to come up with something very intelligent, like us. Also intelligent animals are big, reproduce slowly, and require much more fuel than small stupid fast breeding frugal creatures; but as I said everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one
" You and every other intelligence is conscious as far as I know. I have no evidence or intuition to the contrary."
At last something I can agree with completely and without reservation.
John Clark
Jan 21, 2012, 2:54:17 PM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:47 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about that either.
A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they do not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility.
How do you figure that?
I will passionately believe in the Big Bang with all my heart until the instant somebody comes up with a better theory.
John K Clark
" It [the Big Bang] has also happened for a reason?"
" I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it did not happen for a reason."
"Well, then you have an infinite progression"
Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about that either.
A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they do not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility.
"I guess that this contradicts with the whole idea of the Big Bang."
How do you figure that?
"Or you do not believe in the Big Bang?"
I will passionately believe in the Big Bang with all my heart until the instant somebody comes up with a better theory.
John K Clark
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 21, 2012, 4:09:24 PM1/21/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 21.01.2012 20:54 John Clark said the following:
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:47 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:
>
> " It [the Big Bang] has also happened for a reason?"
>>>>
>>>
>>>> " I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it
>>>> did not
>>> happen for a reason."
>>>
>>
>> "Well, then you have an infinite progression"
>
>
> Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or
> maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about
> that either.
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:47 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:
>
> " It [the Big Bang] has also happened for a reason?"
>>>>
>>>
>>>> " I have no idea, but I do know it happened for a reason or it
>>>> did not
>>> happen for a reason."
>>>
>>
>> "Well, then you have an infinite progression"
>
>
> Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or
> maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about
> that either.
This would contradict with your previous statement:
"but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything,
happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason."
> A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they
> do not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility.
Well, it would be good if you explain how such a statement agrees with
your previous statement, quoted above. In my view, they contradict with
each other.
>
>> "I guess that this contradicts with the whole idea of the Big
>> Bang."
>
>
> How do you figure that?
I thought that the Big Bang theory implies that the Universe is not
eternal, that is, there was the time zero when everything has started.
Evgenii
Craig Weinberg
Jan 21, 2012, 10:41:55 PM1/21/12
to Everything List
On Jan 21, 2:38 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
alive. Something could still do complex things like crystallize into
diamonds or reflect and magnify an image and still be inanimate.
> Until very very recently the dividing line between
> animate and inanimate seemed very sharp and even philosophers, who worry
> about the damnedest things, didn't worry about it much. But times change
> and that razor sharp line is fast turning into a big grey blob. And
> actually in the real world there are very few razor sharp lines between
> categories.
That's what I had been thinking too for a long time, and I think it is
an important part of the story, but we may be looking at it too
closely and obscuring the truth rather than revealing it. The line
between life and death or life and non-life may not be all that
blurry, it's only when we look at the universe on other scales that it
seems that way.
>
> " your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda"
>
> Then it's deterministic.
Sometimes it drives our agenda, sometimes we drive it's agenda. We are
two different views of the same thing.
>
> > "It's heredity, environment, and choice."
>
> It's heredity, environment, and randomness.
That's where we disagree and that is not random. I choose to disagree
with your view. I am not genetically bound to disagree, nor does my
environment completely dictate my opinion. I know that is the case
because I used to agree with that view of free will. If I see it your
way, then your opinion is irrelevant blather, since under a different
environmental circumstance or if your genes were different, or if some
random quantum nothingness turned into somethingness in just the right
way, then you would agree with me and there is nothing you can do to
change it. Do you not see that it is impossible to care about what you
write here if those three options were truly the only options?
>
> > "They feed back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment
> > and vice versa."
>
> OK, but both positive and negative feedback loops are deterministic.
Sure, but we still have choices sometimes. Very often we have some
degree of choice, sometimes we have a wide degree of latitude to be
creative and make choices, and once in a while we make we can choose
to change our entire life.
>
> " Where does the 'own free will' come in"
>
>
>
> Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "own free will" means.
Does denial work for you generally?
>
> > " Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is
> > deterministic"
>
> I have to ask myself why I bother to continue this debate when you aren't
> even trying, you aren't even paying attention. From day one I said that
> some things are not deterministic.
Yes, but you've been saying that whatever isn't deterministic must be
random. Neither of us disagree about randomness, so that leaves
determinism vs determinism + choice.
>I also said something that I would have
> thought was uncontroversial even if a bit dull, I said everything is
> deterministic or it is not. But you disagree, you say some things are not
> deterministic but also not not deterministic, and such fuzzy thinking is
> not the path to enlightenment.
Choice is not deterministic and also not random. That is what I am
saying. A yellow traffic signal is not red and it is not green. Acting
like I am suggesting some mystical koan is just bullying. It's you who
are denying the obvious role of free will in our every conscious
moment. It is you who chooses to put your fingers in your ears at the
sight of the words - not your heredity or environment or randomness
but your. free. willlllll.
>
> > " and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)?"
>
> And the ASCII string "free will" does exist and I have never denied that,
> but I don't know what it means and neither do you. Cows say "Moo" duck say
> "quack" and people say "free will".
I have actually never come across anyone who argues for free will. All
of the people who moo and quack I have come across say 'simply' and
'can only be one way or the other'. I'm not saying that just to
respond to you, it's a legit observation from literally hundreds of
hours of conversations with people who say exactly the same thing as
you are in exactly the same way. It's like I'm watching Fox News or
something.
>
> " somethings happen because we choose one reason over another."
>
>
>
> And we choose one reason over another for a reason or we did not. Is this
> matter really worthy of debate?
It's not a debate because you aren't willing to consider that the
plain truth is a possibility. When I type now, I could say anything. I
can say trampoline isotope, or I can make up a word like cheesaholic.
It's not random. There were other possibilities but I choose those
words intentionally. They appealed to me aesthetically. I like them.
You can label that a reason but it's not a meaningful way to think
about it. It unasks the question instead of examining what the truth
is. What does it mean to like something? What does it mean to choose
among things that we like equally? Why does this experience exist of
liking and choosing if it's really only random or deterministic? I
think the answer is very straightforward. We exist. Our identity is
real and causally efficacious. We are not just a bundle of effects,
but we are able to yoke those effects together as a cause of our
choosing. That is free will. It may not be 100% free at any time, but
it is as free as free could conceivably be. In our own minds we are
nearly magic. We can create worlds that can't even exist.
>
> > "Didn't I list for you some examples of what free will means?"
>
> Yes you did, and didn't I show that every one of those examples was
> circular or ended with a word like "pick" or "choose" or "prefer" as if
> that settled the matter, but that did not settle the matter because there
> was always a very very obvious question that just begged to be asked
> regarding them.
Free will is a primitive so of course you have to use pick or prefer.
If you could reduce it to other terms, it wouldn't be primitive.
>
> > " Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of
> > the body.
>
> Free will is gibberish but consciousness is not. If its voluntary then you
> have conscious control over what your body does
Conscious control is free will. They mean the same thing.
>, if it's involuntary then
> you do not. Thus we must conclude that there is a lot of things going on in
> the brain that have nothing to do with consciousness; for example, we
> seldom voluntarily become very sad, but often we do so nevertheless.
Definitely, consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. The
overwhelming majority of what goes on in the psyche and the brain is
not under our control or within our direct awareness.
>
> I can control some things like the muscles in my fingers but I can not
> control the muscles in my heart. My car's computer can control the air fuel
> ratio in the engine but it can't control the pressure in the tires.
No, that's a false analogy. Nothing controls the pressure in the tires
except the natural circumstance of their use. Our heart is not under
our control but it is under the control of the cells of the heart and
the brain. The fact that we the experience of control of anything at
all is actual evidence of free will. That experience could not
logically exist in a universe that was only deterministic or random.
>
> "Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life."
>
>
>
> Free will is the feeling we get from not knowing what the result of a
> calculation will be until we have finished the calculation
Let's test that out. Did you kill the neighbors with a flame thrower
on purpose? No, I just had the feeling that I didn't know what the
result of the neighbors dying by me burning them alive with a flame
thrower calculation would be. Do those two things that mean the same
thing?
Your definition makes both accidents and intentional acts impossible.
All events can only be irrelevant mixes of randomness and automation.
>
> " Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental
>
> > manslaughter."
>
> Free will is the gibberish responsible for the criminal justice system
> being logically inconsistent and thus inevitably ending up being such a bad
> joke.
Do you think that skidding into a pedestrian who falls into the street
is the same as hunting down a business rival and slitting their
throat? The two actions are both ok with you. Someone could sneak into
your room while you are sleeping tonight and poke your eyes out with
nine inch nails and any thought of tracking that person down and
preventing them from hurting other would be gibberish? Have you
considered that this opinion might be a tad simplistic?
>
> " Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express ourselves
>
> > in words and gestures."
>
> Did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind to another mind
> for a reason, or did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind
> to another mind for no reason?
I can't transfer information to anyone's mind. I can only write and
others can choose to read. Returning to this theme of 'is it black or
white' only reminds me that most people are not willing to entertain
truths beyond their own preconceptions. There are many reasons, none
of them are particularly important. What is important is that it is
what we want to do.
>
> " Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or
>
> > creating new options"
>
> That's collation and computers are good at that sort of calculation. And a
> hurricane is the size and intensity it is for many many reasons and all
> those reasons interact with each other in astronomically complex ways; so
> does a hurricane have free will?
Neither computers nor hurricanes create new options. We don't really
know about their experiences though. They are so different from us it
seems unlikely that any experience that they might have would be one
we could relate to.
>
> " If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that
>
> > radio comes from automotive engineering?"
>
> No.
>
> > " I have in fact suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by
> > a chain of recursive qualitative augmentations to
> > sensorimotive-electromagnetism. Detection of detection --> sensation.
> > Sensation of sensation --> feeling ---> perception ---> awareness --->
> > consciousness."
>
> You have a talent for bafflegab and thus could have a bright future in
> psychology as well as philosophy.
I'm saying that free will seems to be a quality that builds
progressively through perception.
>
> "If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect someone's
>
> > intelligence"
>
> But the only way to test for unconsciousness is by observing if their
> behavior is unintelligent.
No, that's a way of testing for someone else's unconsciousness. We can
detect our own consciousness irrespective of whether our behavior
seems intelligent to other people.
> In your case you are hamstrung even more
> because you don't believe that a person doing smart things is any
> indication that they are smart. So not only don't you have a test for
> consciousness you don't even have a way of knowing if someone is
> intelligent.
You can tell whether a person is conscious or intelligent by looking
at them and talking to them. That is not the case for a computer
simulation which is designed specifically to fool an audience into
thinking it is conscious and intelligent.
>
> "and someone's IQ should determine whether or not they are conscious."
>
>
>
> Perhaps it's true, perhaps people with a boiling water IQ are more
> conscious than average people, there is no way to know.
Sophistry again. Why not just admit that I'm right for once?
>
> > " You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are awake
> > or aware."
>
> If you say so. Watson acted intelligently, thus Watson was intelligent (for
> some bizarre reason you refuse to take this step) thus Watson was awake or
> aware.
Watson is not truly intelligent. Watson is a storage device for pre-
loaded answers to trivia questions with a fast retrieval algorithm.
That's trivial intelligence if you like, but it has no awareness and
no understanding. It's an automated filing cabinet. The human mind is
similar to that, but it's more than that too.
>
> " everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and
>
> >> have more offspring than a stupid one"
>
> " If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be
>
> > very intelligent.
>
> No because everything else is not equal. For 90% of the 4 billion year
> history of life Evolution didn't know how to make anything intelligent and
> only in the last .001% did it manage to come up with something very
> intelligent, like us. Also intelligent animals are big, reproduce slowly,
> and require much more fuel than small stupid fast breeding frugal
> creatures; but as I said everything else being equal a intelligent animal
> will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one
Ants and bees seem like intelligent insects, yet they are small,
reproduce quickly and require little fuel. Beetles out-reproduce them
though.
>
> " You and every other intelligence is conscious as far as I know. I have no
>
> > evidence or intuition to the contrary."
>
> At last something I can agree with completely and without reservation.
cool
Craig
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> " you will find that the word intelligence never included the possibility
>
> > of inanimate objects in the first place.
>
> That's because the very word "inanimate" means something that does not do
> complex things like turn carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen in the air into
> wood and strawberries and cotton, or behave intelligently like animals and
> especially human beings.
It's simpler than that. Inanimate means it can't move and it's not
>
> " you will find that the word intelligence never included the possibility
>
> > of inanimate objects in the first place.
>
> That's because the very word "inanimate" means something that does not do
> complex things like turn carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen in the air into
> wood and strawberries and cotton, or behave intelligently like animals and
> especially human beings.
alive. Something could still do complex things like crystallize into
diamonds or reflect and magnify an image and still be inanimate.
> Until very very recently the dividing line between
> animate and inanimate seemed very sharp and even philosophers, who worry
> about the damnedest things, didn't worry about it much. But times change
> and that razor sharp line is fast turning into a big grey blob. And
> actually in the real world there are very few razor sharp lines between
> categories.
an important part of the story, but we may be looking at it too
closely and obscuring the truth rather than revealing it. The line
between life and death or life and non-life may not be all that
blurry, it's only when we look at the universe on other scales that it
seems that way.
>
> " your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda"
>
> Then it's deterministic.
two different views of the same thing.
>
> > "It's heredity, environment, and choice."
>
> It's heredity, environment, and randomness.
with your view. I am not genetically bound to disagree, nor does my
environment completely dictate my opinion. I know that is the case
because I used to agree with that view of free will. If I see it your
way, then your opinion is irrelevant blather, since under a different
environmental circumstance or if your genes were different, or if some
random quantum nothingness turned into somethingness in just the right
way, then you would agree with me and there is nothing you can do to
change it. Do you not see that it is impossible to care about what you
write here if those three options were truly the only options?
>
> > "They feed back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment
> > and vice versa."
>
> OK, but both positive and negative feedback loops are deterministic.
degree of choice, sometimes we have a wide degree of latitude to be
creative and make choices, and once in a while we make we can choose
to change our entire life.
>
> " Where does the 'own free will' come in"
>
>
>
> Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "own free will" means.
>
> > " Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is
> > deterministic"
>
> I have to ask myself why I bother to continue this debate when you aren't
> even trying, you aren't even paying attention. From day one I said that
> some things are not deterministic.
random. Neither of us disagree about randomness, so that leaves
determinism vs determinism + choice.
>I also said something that I would have
> thought was uncontroversial even if a bit dull, I said everything is
> deterministic or it is not. But you disagree, you say some things are not
> deterministic but also not not deterministic, and such fuzzy thinking is
> not the path to enlightenment.
saying. A yellow traffic signal is not red and it is not green. Acting
like I am suggesting some mystical koan is just bullying. It's you who
are denying the obvious role of free will in our every conscious
moment. It is you who chooses to put your fingers in your ears at the
sight of the words - not your heredity or environment or randomness
but your. free. willlllll.
>
> > " and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)?"
>
> And the ASCII string "free will" does exist and I have never denied that,
> but I don't know what it means and neither do you. Cows say "Moo" duck say
> "quack" and people say "free will".
of the people who moo and quack I have come across say 'simply' and
'can only be one way or the other'. I'm not saying that just to
respond to you, it's a legit observation from literally hundreds of
hours of conversations with people who say exactly the same thing as
you are in exactly the same way. It's like I'm watching Fox News or
something.
>
> " somethings happen because we choose one reason over another."
>
>
>
> And we choose one reason over another for a reason or we did not. Is this
> matter really worthy of debate?
plain truth is a possibility. When I type now, I could say anything. I
can say trampoline isotope, or I can make up a word like cheesaholic.
It's not random. There were other possibilities but I choose those
words intentionally. They appealed to me aesthetically. I like them.
You can label that a reason but it's not a meaningful way to think
about it. It unasks the question instead of examining what the truth
is. What does it mean to like something? What does it mean to choose
among things that we like equally? Why does this experience exist of
liking and choosing if it's really only random or deterministic? I
think the answer is very straightforward. We exist. Our identity is
real and causally efficacious. We are not just a bundle of effects,
but we are able to yoke those effects together as a cause of our
choosing. That is free will. It may not be 100% free at any time, but
it is as free as free could conceivably be. In our own minds we are
nearly magic. We can create worlds that can't even exist.
>
> > "Didn't I list for you some examples of what free will means?"
>
> Yes you did, and didn't I show that every one of those examples was
> circular or ended with a word like "pick" or "choose" or "prefer" as if
> that settled the matter, but that did not settle the matter because there
> was always a very very obvious question that just begged to be asked
> regarding them.
If you could reduce it to other terms, it wouldn't be primitive.
>
> > " Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of
> > the body.
>
> Free will is gibberish but consciousness is not. If its voluntary then you
> have conscious control over what your body does
>, if it's involuntary then
> you do not. Thus we must conclude that there is a lot of things going on in
> the brain that have nothing to do with consciousness; for example, we
> seldom voluntarily become very sad, but often we do so nevertheless.
overwhelming majority of what goes on in the psyche and the brain is
not under our control or within our direct awareness.
>
> I can control some things like the muscles in my fingers but I can not
> control the muscles in my heart. My car's computer can control the air fuel
> ratio in the engine but it can't control the pressure in the tires.
except the natural circumstance of their use. Our heart is not under
our control but it is under the control of the cells of the heart and
the brain. The fact that we the experience of control of anything at
all is actual evidence of free will. That experience could not
logically exist in a universe that was only deterministic or random.
>
> "Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life."
>
>
>
> Free will is the feeling we get from not knowing what the result of a
> calculation will be until we have finished the calculation
on purpose? No, I just had the feeling that I didn't know what the
result of the neighbors dying by me burning them alive with a flame
thrower calculation would be. Do those two things that mean the same
thing?
Your definition makes both accidents and intentional acts impossible.
All events can only be irrelevant mixes of randomness and automation.
>
> " Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental
>
> > manslaughter."
>
> Free will is the gibberish responsible for the criminal justice system
> being logically inconsistent and thus inevitably ending up being such a bad
> joke.
is the same as hunting down a business rival and slitting their
throat? The two actions are both ok with you. Someone could sneak into
your room while you are sleeping tonight and poke your eyes out with
nine inch nails and any thought of tracking that person down and
preventing them from hurting other would be gibberish? Have you
considered that this opinion might be a tad simplistic?
>
> " Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express ourselves
>
> > in words and gestures."
>
> Did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind to another mind
> for a reason, or did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind
> to another mind for no reason?
others can choose to read. Returning to this theme of 'is it black or
white' only reminds me that most people are not willing to entertain
truths beyond their own preconceptions. There are many reasons, none
of them are particularly important. What is important is that it is
what we want to do.
>
> " Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or
>
> > creating new options"
>
> That's collation and computers are good at that sort of calculation. And a
> hurricane is the size and intensity it is for many many reasons and all
> those reasons interact with each other in astronomically complex ways; so
> does a hurricane have free will?
know about their experiences though. They are so different from us it
seems unlikely that any experience that they might have would be one
we could relate to.
>
> " If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that
>
> > radio comes from automotive engineering?"
>
> No.
>
> > " I have in fact suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by
> > a chain of recursive qualitative augmentations to
> > sensorimotive-electromagnetism. Detection of detection --> sensation.
> > Sensation of sensation --> feeling ---> perception ---> awareness --->
> > consciousness."
>
> You have a talent for bafflegab and thus could have a bright future in
> psychology as well as philosophy.
progressively through perception.
>
> "If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect someone's
>
> > intelligence"
>
> But the only way to test for unconsciousness is by observing if their
> behavior is unintelligent.
detect our own consciousness irrespective of whether our behavior
seems intelligent to other people.
> In your case you are hamstrung even more
> because you don't believe that a person doing smart things is any
> indication that they are smart. So not only don't you have a test for
> consciousness you don't even have a way of knowing if someone is
> intelligent.
at them and talking to them. That is not the case for a computer
simulation which is designed specifically to fool an audience into
thinking it is conscious and intelligent.
>
> "and someone's IQ should determine whether or not they are conscious."
>
>
>
> Perhaps it's true, perhaps people with a boiling water IQ are more
> conscious than average people, there is no way to know.
>
> > " You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are awake
> > or aware."
>
> If you say so. Watson acted intelligently, thus Watson was intelligent (for
> some bizarre reason you refuse to take this step) thus Watson was awake or
> aware.
loaded answers to trivia questions with a fast retrieval algorithm.
That's trivial intelligence if you like, but it has no awareness and
no understanding. It's an automated filing cabinet. The human mind is
similar to that, but it's more than that too.
>
> " everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and
>
> >> have more offspring than a stupid one"
>
> " If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be
>
> > very intelligent.
>
> No because everything else is not equal. For 90% of the 4 billion year
> history of life Evolution didn't know how to make anything intelligent and
> only in the last .001% did it manage to come up with something very
> intelligent, like us. Also intelligent animals are big, reproduce slowly,
> and require much more fuel than small stupid fast breeding frugal
> creatures; but as I said everything else being equal a intelligent animal
> will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one
reproduce quickly and require little fuel. Beetles out-reproduce them
though.
>
> " You and every other intelligence is conscious as far as I know. I have no
>
> > evidence or intuition to the contrary."
>
> At last something I can agree with completely and without reservation.
Craig
John Clark
Jan 22, 2012, 12:39:36 PM1/22/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote
What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.
What the hell are you talking about? Only 2 things can happen to a chain of "what is the reason for this?" questions, the chain comes to a end OR the chain does not come to a end. If it doesn't come to a end then everything in the chain happened for a reason, if it does come to a end then something happened for no reason. Come on now this isn't rocket science.
" This would contradict with your previous statement: "but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason."" Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions; or maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical about that either."
What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.
" A chain of "why" or "how" questions eventually comes to a end or they do not, and there is nothing illogical about either possibility."
" Well, it would be good if you explain how such a statement agrees with your previous statement, quoted above. In my view, they contradict with each other.
What the hell are you talking about? Only 2 things can happen to a chain of "what is the reason for this?" questions, the chain comes to a end OR the chain does not come to a end. If it doesn't come to a end then everything in the chain happened for a reason, if it does come to a end then something happened for no reason. Come on now this isn't rocket science.
" I thought that the Big Bang theory implies that the Universe is not eternal, that is, there was the time zero when everything has started."
Maybe, maybe not. Most think the Big Bang existed but there is debate if there was anything before that; that controversy is at the very frontiers of science thus although many may be certain about the answer nobody knows; at least not yet.
John K Clark
John K Clark
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 22, 2012, 1:04:10 PM1/22/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 22.01.2012 18:39 John Clark said the following:
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote
>
> " Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions;
> or
>>> maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical
>>> about that either."
>>>
>>
>> " This would contradict with your previous statement: "but we also
>> know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for
>> a reason OR it does not happen for a reason."
>
>
>
> What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a
> reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote
>
> " Yes, but there is nothing illogical about infinite progressions;
> or
>>> maybe the Big Bang happened for no reason, nothing illogical
>>> about that either."
>>>
>>
>> " This would contradict with your previous statement: "but we also
>> know that everything, absolutely positively everything, happens for
>> a reason OR it does not happen for a reason."
>
>
>
> What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a
> reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.
I would say though that "something does not happen for a reason" and
"something happens for no reason" are two completely different
statements. Don't you agree?
If however you accept that "something happens for no reason", then I do
not understand your problems with free will. In the latter case, I
freely for no reason just do something, what is the problem then?
Evgenii
John Clark
Jan 22, 2012, 1:52:45 PM1/22/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
"I would say though that "something does not happen for a reason" and "something happens for no reason" are two completely different statements. Don't you agree?"
What the hell are you talking about?????
John K ClarkStephen P. King
Jan 22, 2012, 1:53:45 PM1/22/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Hi John,
How would you recognize the better theory if you are such a
strong "believer" in the Big Bang? Any attempt to show you that the
current theory contains contradictions will only be met with
derision, derision that will prevent any understanding of an
alternative...
Onward!
Stephen
Onward!
Stephen
Evgenii Rudnyi
Jan 22, 2012, 2:53:27 PM1/22/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 22.01.2012 19:52 John Clark said the following:
I am not sure I understand you. Do you mean that "something does not
happen for a reason" is equivalent to "something happens for no reason"?
These have been your two statements in your previous messages. Let me
contrast them
On 20.01.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following:
...
> but we also know that everything, absolutely positively everything,
> happens for a reason OR it does not happen for a reason.
On 22.01.2012 18:39 John Clark said the following:
...
> What the hell are you talking about? The Big Bang happened for a
> reason OR the Big Bang happened for no reason.
In my understanding the statement "something does not happen for a
reason" means that there is a reason according to that something does
not happen. For example, fire in my computer does not happen because the
isolation and thermal management are good.
On the other hand in my view, "something happens for no reason" means
completely a different thing, that it just happenes without a reason.
Evgenii
John Clark
Jan 23, 2012, 10:57:16 AM1/23/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
" It's simpler than that. Inanimate means it can't move"
Is a redwood tree an inanimate object?
" and it's not alive."
If it's alive then it's animate and if it's animate then it's alive and
round and round to go. Biologist have tried to come up with a good
definition of life for a long time but have largely given up on the taskround and round to go. Biologist have tried to come up with a good
and use examples instead. Examples are better anyway.
" I choose to disagree with your view.
And you disagree with me for reasons, reasons you are not shy in telling
me all about. I think those reasons are very weak but it doesn't matterwhat I think, it doesn't even matter if your reasons are logically self
contradictory; you believe the reasons are good and see no contradiction
in your statements about them even if I do. Bad reasons work just ascontradictory; you believe the reasons are good and see no contradiction
well as good reasons in making people do and believe in stuff.
"I am not genetically bound to disagree"
Maybe, maybe not, it's very difficult to say.
"nor does my environment completely dictate my opinion."
A high speed proton from a cosmic ray could have entered your
brain causing you to have a thought you would not otherwise have had, or
brain causing you to have a thought you would not otherwise have had, or
maybe the cause of the thought was a random quantum fluctuation inside
just one neuron in your brain." if some random quantum nothingness turned into somethingness in just
the right way, then you would agree with me and there is nothing you can
do to change it."
Yes.
" Do you not see that it is impossible to care about what you write here if those three options were truly the only options?"
No.
"you've been saying that whatever isn't deterministic must be random."
Yes.
"Neither of us disagree about randomness, so that leaves determinism vs
determinism + choice."
This isn't really that difficult. If you made a choice for a reason then
its deterministic, if you made a choice for no reason then its random.
its deterministic, if you made a choice for no reason then its random.
" Choice is not deterministic and also not random."
Then the only alternative is gibberish.
" A yellow traffic signal is not red and it is not green."
Yes, but you're saying a yellow traffic signal is not red AND not not
red, and that my friend is gibberish.
red, and that my friend is gibberish.
"It's you who are denying the obvious role of free will in our every
conscious moment."
The idea of "free will" would have to improve dramatically before I
could deny it, until then denying "free will" would be like denying a
burp.
could deny it, until then denying "free will" would be like denying a
burp.
"It's like I'm watching Fox News or something."
That's the worst insult I've ever had in my life.
" When I type now, I could say anything. I can say trampoline isotope,
or I can make up a word like cheesaholic. It's not random."
OK, if it's not random then there is a reason, so what was the reason
for linking "trampoline" and "isotope" rather than say "squeamish" and"osprey"? If you can answer then there was a reason and thus the
response was deterministic. If you can not answer then there are 2
possibilities:
1) There was a reason but it's deep in your subconscious and your
conscious mind can not access it, then it was still deterministic.
2) There was no reason whatsoever for picking those words, and so despite your assertion the choice was indeed random.1) There was a reason but it's deep in your subconscious and your
conscious mind can not access it, then it was still deterministic.
" There were other possibilities but I choose those words intentionally.
They appealed to me aesthetically. I like them."
Deterministic.
" You can label that a reason"
I certainly will.
" What does it mean to like something? "
It means you tend to do or use that something as often as you can, and you endeavor to get
more of it.
" We are not just a bundle of effects, but we are able to yoke those
effects together as a cause of our choosing. That is free will."
A hurricane does exactly the same thing, so a hurricane has free will.
"Conscious control is free will. They mean the same thing."
That's just "will" and I have no difficulty about what that means, we
want some things and are repelled by others and our will is the result
of that push and pull, our will causes our body to try to maximize the
one and minimize the other. But apparently this "free will" thing is like
plain ordinary "will" except that it doesn't happen for a reason and it
doesn't not happen for a reason either, and that's what turns awant some things and are repelled by others and our will is the result
of that push and pull, our will causes our body to try to maximize the
one and minimize the other. But apparently this "free will" thing is like
plain ordinary "will" except that it doesn't happen for a reason and it
perfectly legitimate concept into pure unadulterated gibberish.
" consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. The overwhelming
majority of what goes on in the psyche and the brain is
not under our control or within our direct awareness."
So you may do things for reasons you don't know and can't understand.
" The fact that we the experience of control of anything at all is
actual evidence of free will."
Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "free will" means.
" Someone could sneak into your room while you are sleeping tonight and
poke your eyes out with nine inch nails and any thought of tracking that
person down and preventing them from hurting other would be gibberish?"
There are only 2 legitimate reasons to punish anybody for anything:
1) To make sure they don't continue with such crimes.
2) To deter others from committing similar crimes.
I admit there is another reason that the reptilian parts of my brain can
come up with, the fun of seeing somebody I hate suffer, but that is not
a reason the more evolved parts of my brain are proud of so I will not
defend it. And the ASCII string "free will" has absolutely nothing to do
with any of this.
1) To make sure they don't continue with such crimes.
2) To deter others from committing similar crimes.
I admit there is another reason that the reptilian parts of my brain can
come up with, the fun of seeing somebody I hate suffer, but that is not
a reason the more evolved parts of my brain are proud of so I will not
defend it. And the ASCII string "free will" has absolutely nothing to do
with any of this.
" Neither computers nor hurricanes create new options."
Hurricanes exercise options not know to it or me or even the world's
greatest experts on hurricanes; at a fundamental level how is that
different from people who are also unpredictable?
greatest experts on hurricanes; at a fundamental level how is that
different from people who are also unpredictable?
" You can tell whether a person is conscious or intelligent by looking
at them and talking to them."
In other words by applying the Turing Test and making the assumption
that it works for consciousness too, making the assumption that
intelligence implies consciousness. Oh and also using the self evident
fact that intelligent behavior implies intelligence.
that it works for consciousness too, making the assumption that
intelligence implies consciousness. Oh and also using the self evident
fact that intelligent behavior implies intelligence.
" Perhaps it's true, perhaps people with a boiling water IQ are more
conscious than average people, there is no way to know."
" Sophistry again."
Why sophistry? You know from direct experience that consciousness is not
a all or nothing matter, it comes in degrees; so I don't know why you
think it's inconceivable that something could be more conscious than you
are, perhaps even one of your fellow human beings. In fact it could be
that you are not really conscious at all when compared with others, what
you think of as consciousness is just a pale weak imitation of the grand
glorious thing that other people feel, it's the difference between a
firefly and a supernova.
a all or nothing matter, it comes in degrees; so I don't know why you
think it's inconceivable that something could be more conscious than you
are, perhaps even one of your fellow human beings. In fact it could be
that you are not really conscious at all when compared with others, what
you think of as consciousness is just a pale weak imitation of the grand
glorious thing that other people feel, it's the difference between a
firefly and a supernova.
"Why not just admit that I'm right for once?"
OK, but before I do so you must do something for me first, you must be
right for once.
right for once.
" Watson is not truly intelligent. "
Not playing fair irritates me and that is not playing fair. If a person
did what Watson did you would not hesitate for one second in saying that
it was a act of intelligence, but a computer did it so it has nothing to
do with intelligence. That is a clear case of metallic bigotry. And
hiding your head in the sand like that will not bring you enlightenment
because it's a fact that computers are starting to behave intelligently.
did what Watson did you would not hesitate for one second in saying that
it was a act of intelligence, but a computer did it so it has nothing to
do with intelligence. That is a clear case of metallic bigotry. And
hiding your head in the sand like that will not bring you enlightenment
because it's a fact that computers are starting to behave intelligently.
" That's trivial intelligence if you like"
I don't think it would be wise to call it that because if a "trivial
intelligence" like Watson can outsmart you, and it can, then what does
that say about your intelligence?
intelligence" like Watson can outsmart you, and it can, then what does
that say about your intelligence?
" Ants and bees seem like intelligent insects, yet they are small,
reproduce quickly and require little fuel. Beetles out-reproduce them
though."
A human weighs about 1.5 million times as much as a ant, but ants are so
numerous that the total biomass of all the ants on the Earth and the
biomass of all 7 billion human beings is about the same. There are
12,000 species of ants and they exist on every continents except
Antarctica and on average just one acre in the Amazon rainforest has
about 3.6 million ants. In fact, between 15 and 20% of the entire
terrestrial animal biomass are ants, and if you add their close cousin
the termites its close to 30%.
John K Clark
numerous that the total biomass of all the ants on the Earth and the
biomass of all 7 billion human beings is about the same. There are
12,000 species of ants and they exist on every continents except
Antarctica and on average just one acre in the Amazon rainforest has
about 3.6 million ants. In fact, between 15 and 20% of the entire
terrestrial animal biomass are ants, and if you add their close cousin
the termites its close to 30%.
John K Clark
John Clark
Jan 23, 2012, 11:10:44 AM1/23/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:
" How would you recognize the better theory if you are such a strong "believer" in the Big Bang?"
If somebody developed a new theory that explained everything the Big Bang did but also explained what Dark Energy is I would drop the Big Bang like a hot potato and embrace that new theory with every fiber of my being, until the instant a even better theory came along. I have absolutely no loyalty toward theories.
John K Clark
Stephen P. King
Jan 23, 2012, 11:25:19 AM1/23/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Hi John,
What is "dark energy" other than a postulated or conjecture entity that is part of an attempted explanation of observations of how light from supernovae appeared to be streached as if the supernovae are accelerating away from us.... Do we give such "entities" the status of existing on so frail a foundation? The same critisism applies to scalar fields and dark matter. Until we actually find them experimentally, then it is helpful to keep them firmly in the "conjectured but not proven to exist category". :-)
My attitude is that we need to be sure that our beliefs are backed up by empirical evidence before we declare them justified. This is not an easy task as many entities, such as numbers, are forever beyond the realm of experience but we can still reason consistently about them...
Onward!
Stephen
Onward!
Stephen
What is "dark energy" other than a postulated or conjecture entity that is part of an attempted explanation of observations of how light from supernovae appeared to be streached as if the supernovae are accelerating away from us.... Do we give such "entities" the status of existing on so frail a foundation? The same critisism applies to scalar fields and dark matter. Until we actually find them experimentally, then it is helpful to keep them firmly in the "conjectured but not proven to exist category". :-)
My attitude is that we need to be sure that our beliefs are backed up by empirical evidence before we declare them justified. This is not an easy task as many entities, such as numbers, are forever beyond the realm of experience but we can still reason consistently about them...
Onward!
Stephen
Onward!
Stephen
John Clark
Jan 23, 2012, 1:42:56 PM1/23/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
" What is "dark energy" other than a postulated or conjecture entity that is part of an attempted explanation of observations of how light from supernovae appeared to be streached as if the supernovae are accelerating away from us
Dark Energy is not a explanation, "Dark Energy" is just a label for a astonishing phenomena that was discovered experimentally and that nobody even claims to understand. We have to call it something and we could have called it "unknown energy" or "X" or "?" but for one reason or another the moniker chosen was "Dark Energy". The "Dark&quo