What is that supposed to mean?
This was also explained to you: all trees are plants, but not all plants are trees.
And after a great deal of coaxing, FUWF conceded that this meant that he considered my definition overbroad, and offered for consideration some qualifiers, which was a valid and interesting discussion, though he still resorted too often to ad hominems in place of reason. Then he left.
Regardless, when a cell detects and repairs damage done to ITSELF, it can only do so by Processing Information Referring to ITSELF
Which is, of course, neither correct nor in any way relevant.
(which you conviently ignored in your last post to me
I didn't ignore it, I pointed out that it was irrelevant.
which was nothing but a string of assertions).
Well, no.
Therefore, according to your nonsensical definition, a cell is conscious.
Nope. You still don't grasp what self-reference is.
Reductio ad fail, I'm afraid.
Some memorable quotes from FedUp:
You claim to agree with the idea of the "strange loop" yet you accord qualia no meaning. I think I've done a perfectly good job of defining qualia and providing examples of what they are. Qualia could be a form of illusion from various perspectives, but they are still useful in describing states of a system, from both internal and external perspectives. If you are intent on denying qualia exist as Dennett does (although he is often muddled in hedging his bets somewhat), then I don't think this argument can proceed further. We are at an impasse.
How is that memorable? I don't recall exctly how FUWF redefined "qualia", but his misunderstanding of Dennett's position - and mine - is complete.
As a rather respected AI/neuroscientist let me just say you've succeeded in convincing me you're either not conscious or crazy. I doubt even your idol Dennett will take your back. But if I'm wrong, please let us all know when you collect your Nobel.
Yes, as I said, he all too often resorted to ad hominem attacks (and arguments from authority) in place of reason.
Holy cow, Bingo, right off the bat… Game over. ;-)
Generally, when people like you define the problem by their conclusion, they always get the right answer. It’s a tautology. It’s also nonsense.
Which is, of course, entirely unrelated to anything I have ever said.
As you know, I agree with you that consciousness is self-referential processing. Well, wait, from reading the rest of your stuff I don’t. I believe consciousness is a form of self-referential processing. That’s a critical distinction - more on that later.
Right. Now this goes to the heart of the discussion with FUWF. He says that consciousness is self-referential information processing, but with additional qualifiers. In other words, we mostly agreed, and he entirely disagrees with you, and AkuManiMani, and the rest of you.
He had a
semantic difference. He decided, rather than discuss this difference reasonably, to devote much of his time to irrelevant and absurd ad hominems.
I can see now why you have such a hard time accepting the idea of qualia, or allowing for my fairly basic attempts to define it. Because to a large and possibly exclusive extent, qualia IS the subjective observable the ancients wanted to explain just as we do. That’s all it is. “Consciousness” didn’t magically appear on the scene only once somebody could define it as self-referential processing like you.
Again, did not address anything I ever said.
Pixi, come on man, this is incoherent. But let me simplify things a bit going forward. I’m not very interested right now in investigating your unsupportable claim that I have a conscious unconscious that “my” consciousness is unaware of it (I’m laughing my ass off as I write this).
Again, he doesn't bother to address the point, just resorts to ad hominems. The conclusion that there are multiple distinct consciousnesses running simultaneously within your brain is a very clear one given the examination of brain function and failure modes. Blindsight is one good example; split brain patients the most striking.
His key failure here is that he doesn't even attempt to address the point. He did that a lot, which is why the debate mostly went nowhere.
You don’t even have Hofstadter right. He would not agree with you that self-reference = self-awareness. His “strange loop” IS not self-reference. It INVOLVES a special FORM of self-referencing to which he would probably concede he doesn’t know all the necessary or possible pieces of yet. Nor would he claim there may not be other computational components required to be added on to strange loops to yield consciousness.
Again, this is not addressing anything I've ever said.
And then you put him on ignore.
And took him off when he decided to actually discuss matters. And then he left.
FedUp's posts were full of win
He made a few rational points. You have quoted only one of them - the rest being utter failure - and even in that he couldn't restrain himself to discussing the subject.
Oh, and just remember, through all that abuse and illogic,
he was agreeing with me.
