I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[MRC_Hans]

I asked for more info. She says it is not like guessing. She does this only when she gets an impression ie the thought of whichever food comes to mind. She says there can be weeks or months between times and that it happens just a few times yearly.

She never anticipates or plans it. She says it doesn't matter if she is acquainted with a person's eating habits or not. The thought of a food just 'pops in'. Her friends agree it is not a regular thing and that she's been doing it for decades.

How is it that these "abilites" are always cleverly crafted to elude being tested rationally? "Oh, I can't do it on command, it only pops into my mind randomly".

Merely anectodal of course, but there it is.

And the bleak, cold fact is that such anecdotes never hold up for any kind of test. - There is where it is.

Hans

 

[punshhh]

That is an assertion not a demonstration, it could well just be the appearance of 'knows something and I am privy to it'.

I doubt it. If it has the appearance of something, for whom does it have that appearance, if the whom is themselves only the appearance of a whom?


This is approaching the essential position of idealism. That each being, the being within them is of that mind which is the origin of the world. So if for example it is the mind of God, then each being is a piece of God looking out. Or a conduit between the God and the world.

 

[tsig]

I doubt it. If it has the appearance of something, for whom does it have that appearance, if the whom is themselves only the appearance of a whom?


This is approaching the essential position of idealism. That each being, the being within them is of that mind which is the origin of the world. So if for example it is the mind of God, then each being is a piece of God looking out. Or a conduit between the God and the world.

Does that hurt, god gone all to pieces like that?

 

[Dancing David]

Not to quibble, but Materialism does not include the notion of 'meaning' so there would be no 'meaningful' question.

That is just plain silly, words are defined through idiomatic self reference between communicants, the ontology is moot to the use of language.

Score one for weak philosophical argument.

 

[LarryS]

That is just plain silly, words are defined through idiomatic self reference between communicants, the ontology is moot to the use of language.
Score one for weak philosophical argument.

that is some smoking ******** - if you don't mind I'm going to pull that line sometime to impress a girl

 

[Dancing David]

I doubt it. If it has the appearance of something, for whom does it have that appearance, if the whom is themselves only the appearance of a whom?


This is approaching the essential position of idealism. That each being, the being within them is of that mind which is the origin of the world. So if for example it is the mind of God, then each being is a piece of God looking out. Or a conduit between the God and the world.

An automata could have the appearance of consciousness to itself, but by your own not be conscious.

Either that or you just contradicted your own argument.

 

[Navigator]

Does that hurt, god gone all to pieces like that?

Sometimes, but it isn't all pain and suffering.

 

[punshhh]

An automata could have the appearance of consciousness to itself, but by your own not be conscious.

Well it could detect an identical data set(to that with consciousness), in its data detection device and store this data on a memory disk. It would not be aware of anything though, we simply have a scenario devoid of consciousness.

This leaves out any whom, or being, who knows something.

Either that or you just contradicted your own argument.

There is the issue of where in the system the "appearance of" occurs. For example if the appearance of is on the level of physical matter, there may not be any consciousness. Whereas if the appearance of occurs on a more fundamental level, ie in the mind of God, then it would perhaps have consciousness, or something else.

 

[Dancing David]

Hi,
When I said automata I meant a human replicant, purely mechanical which mimics a human in all ways... so it believes it has the impression of consciousness.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Well it could detect an identical data set(to that with consciousness), in its data detection device and store this data on a memory disk. It would not be aware of anything though, we simply have a scenario devoid of consciousness.

This leaves out any whom, or being, who knows something.

There is the issue of where in the system the "appearance of" occurs. For example if the appearance of is on the level of physical matter, there may not be any consciousness. Whereas if the appearance of occurs on a more fundamental level, ie in the mind of God, then it would perhaps have consciousness, or something else.

Ahhh. I have figured out what it is you are saying:

Nothing.

Hans

 

[tsig]

Ahhh. I have figured out what it is you are saying:

Nothing.

Hans

Foliage fairies.

 

[punshhh]

Hi,
When I said automata I meant a human replicant, purely mechanical which mimics a human in all ways... so it believes it has the impression of consciousness.

Ok, but unless it has a component which generates a being, a knower, a living entity, it would not be able to believe anything, or know what it believes in the first place.

 

[punshhh]

Ahhh. I have figured out what it is you are saying:

Nothing.

You are welcome to your view on these issues, but until we have a working model, we just don't know.

I cannot speak for the mind of the idealists as I am not one. I am simply putting a case for idealism.

 

[punshhh]

Hi punshhh. Sorry for not responding sooner; I've been preparing for a trip and hadn't had much time to think about this topic til now.

Hi Myriad, no worries, I have been very busy over Easter too.

I know you're only speculating, but I'm surprised that even as speculation, you would accept the possibility that consciousness in a cell could be isolated to one organelle or another. That suggests you are okay with the idea of consciousness being some particular physical process going on in some particular subsystem of living creatures—and yet you reject the well-evidenced hypothesis that the brain is indeed the consciousness-generating subsystem we observe.

Yes it is not my point that consciousness may be chased down to organelles, I just don't rule it out. There is a difference when we look at a multicellular organism, that it is a colony of conscious entities. Within that colony are groups enabling a more complex system to emerge, such as self-consciousness.

The consciousness-organelle idea, speculative as it is, makes a good basis for some thought experiments. For instance: presumably that organelle must be doing something physical. What physical process could it possibly be doing that would generate consciousness? (For the brain, we have the answer that it computes via trains of impulses filtering through active and dynamic neural networks.)

Good point, an interesting field of study I suspect. My intuition is that there is an electrochemical stasis of some kind.

If the organelle were disabled or removed, what effect would an observer be able to see in the activities of the cell? Could we have a p-zombie-cell, and if so, could we tell the difference between it and a fully intact cell? What differences do you think we might see?

The Pzombie scenario, is about a different life story in which consciousness for some reason didn't emerge. Your question is slightly different, rather like the question, can we remove the brain from a person and keep them alive? It is well known that chickens can survive for some time without a head.

(And if we can't tell the difference, if the modified cell continues to metabolize and reproduce and respond to stimuli and so forth, then why would evolution have preserved the consciousness-organelle's functionality? It would seem that any single mutation that disabled the consciousness-organelle in a population of protozoa would result in a sort of protozoa zombie apocalypse as the mutants proliferated and competed with the "conscious" organisms.)

Interesting point, again I prefer not to place to much weight on consciousness in the organelle, as it is in an embryonic form, as I see it. It may only act as a behaviour in the cell as a whole being. Once the cell was formed nature for some reason kept its design and it has barely changed since. The changes are in multi-cellular organisms, and so if consciousness emerges from cell metabolism it would be present in multi-cellular organisms and could not be bread out, without redesigning the cell.

But note that if we have millions of components to make a TV with, the components don't have to be TVs (image-displaying devices) themselves. An array of millions of single-pixel devices (even light bulbs) makes a perfectly workable TV. So, just as TVs don't have to be made of smaller TVs but can be made of (large numbers of) something else that aren't TVs, a conscious mind doesn't have to be made of smaller consciousnesses but can be made of large numbers of something else that aren't conscious themselves. (I think that the something else is switches; that is to say, interconnected devices that change output state nonlinearly at input thresholds, which could be neurons in a brain or logic gates in a computer or "cells" of a finite automaton.)

Agreed, consciousness and therefore self-consciousness may be possible in other forms. I just don't see much evidence of what those forms might be as yet. You have presented a something else as computation, my point has been that it is not the computation in the brain which generates consciousness, computation enables and generates self-consciousness and mind.

But even if that's wrong, that some other process (perhaps involving undiscovered physical forces or substances) is responsible, as long as it's some kind of physical process, most of the same conclusions would still follow. The only alternatives seem to be dualistic ones, such as the "antenna analogy" where the brain or organelle is only an interface between the material body and some external nonmaterial source of conscious awareness (e.g. spirit).

There could be numerous alternative scenarios and the inclusion of "spirit" is not necessarily dualistic (dualism is irrational), only locally dualistic.

I agree that if they were conscious before freezing they would still be conscious afterward; and that they would not be conscious while frozen. That suggests that we're both thinking of consciousness as a material process but not a material substance.

Yes, but it could be a subtle substance and distinguishing material and action is not necessarily going to help, as it could involve a state, rather than a process.

The reason I ask, though, is that we can base more thought experiments on the frozen tardigrade. We could (in theory, remember) disassemble the frozen tardigrade atom by atom and reassemble it from the same atoms in some other place. (The fact that it's suspended/frozen eliminates the problem of interrupting an ongoing consciousness process, as long as we agree that consciousness resumes when it's thawed out.) We could also disassemble it atom by atom and reassemble it from different (but identical) atoms and then scatter the original atoms to the four winds. Or we could reassemble multiple copies. What effect would this have on the original consciousness? Give these possibilities, can we say that a tardigrade's proto-consciousness continues as singular process carrying through freezing, or did one consciousness end and a different one begin?

Interesting, we are considering some of the issue regarding teleportation. I see no issue with assembling copies, although there could be an issue over whether the tardigrade is the same person afterwards. Also there could be a problem in more complex entities if there happens to be a permanent atom in each being.

 

[Aepervius]

I poped in to see if materialism was successfully challenged. it seems not. Off to the big foot thread and shroud thread. *pop out*.

 

[Dancing David]

Ok, but unless it has a component which generates a being, a knower, a living entity, it would not be able to believe anything, or know what it believes in the first place.

Um, you don't seem to understand, it is an automata that replicates a human being at all levels ...


So it has all those features.

 

[NutCracker]

This is approaching the essential position of idealism. That each being, the being within them is of that mind which is the origin of the world. So if for example it is the mind of God, then each being is a piece of God looking out. Or a conduit between the God and the world.

"We are all living in the guts of a giant cockroach."

Hmm... doesn' t sound too good. Let me get some some profoundness-points.

"We are all living in the guts of a cockroach that encapsulates the world."

After all, if we go down a turtle we increase the profoundness of our thesis, don't we?

Hmm.. better but something is missing. Hmm. the.. that's it.. the.

"We are all living in the guts of the cockroach that encapsulates the world."

Better. Oh, forgot the 'giant' .

"We are all living in the guts of the giant cockroach that encapsulates the world."

That is starting to sound profound, doesn't it?

Let me do a quick win:

"We are all living in the guts of The Giant Cockroach that encapsulates the world."

I'm beginning to like this. My profoundness-o-meter agrees: it's getting out of the red. Almost into the orange range of the scale. Let's see how I can get this into the green range. Let me think.. what can I improve.. hmm.. guts.. hmm.. brain!

"We are all living in the brain of The Giant Cockroach that encapsulates the world."

Better.. but..

"We are all living in the mind of The Giant Cockroach that encapsulates the world."

Way better! Yippy yoo! I'm beginning to like myself (kiss mirror). Gawd I'm smart! Killed to birds with one stone. The mind is so much superior to the physical, after all.. the first bird. Guts.. gawd was I silly in my youth!!. Aaand.. second bird.. I went to a meta-level.. a turtle sideways! Yes yes yes! (kissing mirror again). And my profoundness-o-meter kisses me!.. firmly into the green!


Let's see if a can get even more profoundness points. Some vagueness might get me these.

"We are all manifestations of the mind of The Giant Cockroach that encapsulates the world."

Yes, yes, yes! I'm getting somewhere! (check profoundness-o-meter). Yes!

Could I get it even better? Success is addictive!

"We are all manifestations of the mind of The Giant Cockroach that originates the world."

Wow! My profoundness-o-meter just went from 11 to 15!

"We are all manifestations of the mind of The Giant Cockroach that is the origin of the world."

16!

Hmm.. 20 is looming.. (long and hard think). Eureka!

"We are all manifestations of the mind of god that is the origin of the world."

Wow! Looked for 20 got, drum-roll... 25!

Oh, wait the needle is.. well disappointment. it got back to 19, 18.. 17 and going down, down. I need to fix this quickly.

"We are all manifestations of the mind of God that is the origin of the world."

Phew! That nearly killed me. But I'm alive again! And how! 24, 27.. .. .. 30 ... 31!

Could I get it even better still!? I'll have to sleep on it.

(Next morning, after a refreshing sleep).

Back to work... Yes. Gawd I'm good early in the morning! Now I see what was wrong with it! Way to coherent! Let me rework it a little and get it incoherent. Let me see:

"That each being, the being within them is of that mind which is the origin of the world. So if for example it is the mind of God, then each being is a piece of God looking out. Or a conduit between the God and the world."


Mama! Mama! Did I tell you the other day that I wanted to become a Philosopher? Well, mama, I already am! Seriously! My profoundness-o-meter just went of the scale! It, it, it, just exploded! I'm shaking all over, mama. I'm so excited. I'm a Philosopher mama. And a good one to boot! I'm the new Wittgenstein, mama!

 

[NutCracker]

I poped in to see if materialism was successfully challenged. it seems not. Off to the big foot thread and shroud thread. *pop out*.

 

[punshhh]

Um, you don't seem to understand, it is an automata that replicates a human being at all levels ...

Interesting, I would accept an automata which replicated a human down to the molecular level as having the capacity to know and experience (it may also have to be alive, perhaps). Unfortunately we don't know exactly what part of a human is a necessity for this, so if our replicant were not identical down to the molecular level, I don't think we can assume it can know and experience.

So it has all those features.

There may be numerous features currently unknown to science.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Interesting, I would accept an automata which replicated a human down to the molecular level as having the capacity to know and experience (it may also have to be alive, perhaps). Unfortunately we don't know exactly what part of a human is a necessity for this, so if our replicant were not identical down to the molecular level, I don't think we can assume it can know and experience.

Good! At least you have finally stopped asserting and are admitting that "you think". Some progress, at least.

Now: Why should we not assume that an artificial entity that is functionally identical to a human would not be able to know and experience? (Mind you, I say functionally, not necessarily constructionally.)

There may be numerous features currently unknown to science.

There may indeed. Or there may be none. Can you point to any evidence indicating that there are any important features unknown to science?

Hans