I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[Nonpareil]

I don't see a fundamental difference - in a binary digital computer, patterns of bits interact; in a moving rock CA, patterns of rocks interact. The means are obviously different, but the principle is the same.

This is where we have our disconnect.

The patterns of rock are not interacting. The rocks are not moving save when Cueball moves them. They are the input and output given to and emerging from the actual computer, which is Cueball.

Cueball could hand the job of moving rocks to a hypothetical entity which only knew the rules for figuring out where the next rock goes, yes, and the ultimate result would still be that the computations for simulating the universe were still done - but, again, the computations would still be taking place inside this entity's head.

The rocks are functionally read-write memory. They can be referenced to perform computations, and altered to store data about the simulation, and an interpreter could look at them and figure out the state of the simulation whether or not the entity was consciously aware of its role, but there's still no actual computation going on in the rocks themselves.

Access to infinite memory is a nice thing for a computer to have, but the memory is not the computer. The input and output are not the same as the thing that does the computation.

Replace Cueball with a pen-wielding robot, the infinite plains with paper, and the rocks with ink dots, if it helps to visualize it that way. The pattern of dots is what the computer accepts as input and modifies as output, but it isn't part of the computer itself.

EDIT: In the same way, building a Turing-complete computer within the Game of Life has not actually turned the cells themselves into a computer. What you have done is create a visual programming language for a computer which already existed - the same one that was responsible for running the basic game.

Again, I may be wrong about this, but that's the way it appears to me at the moment. The frustrating thing, however, is that we're getting to the limits of what I know for certain on the subject of computer science, and I'm unsure of whether or not a computer constructed within the game of life would be considered a separate entity or just an extension of the computer already running it, or how that distinction would be made if it is. I'd be grateful if some lurking masked computer scientist swooped in to save us from this conundrum, but I recognize that this is unlikely.

 

[Fudbucker]

Yes, the rocks on their own are just rocks. To be a CA, they must be moved according to a set of rules.

Here's the problem I keep having with this: you've agreed that a Boltzmann Computer can randomly pop into existence and simulate, say, a tornado. But the Boltzmann Computer isn't doing anything according to any rules. It's just random atoms forming random computer components that are randomly functioning in a way that is identical to a computer that is programmed to simulate a tornado.

So if the Boltzmann Computer's internal architecture isn't doing according to some set of rules (i.e., everything's just randomly moving around a certain way), how can it simulate anything?

If random movements of particles can simulate things, is it possible (nevermind odds, just theoretically possible), that a lava flow can simulate, say, a goldfish swimming in a fishbowl? After all, there are an awful lot of particles in a given lava flow, and they're all moving very quickly.

So it seems again like we're back to something very close to panpsychism: swarms of particles all around us, moving around and simulating all sorts of things (including working brains). And it's not the probability of this that brings the whole thing crashing down- it's the theoretical physical possibility that simulations (included simulated consciousness) are taking place all around us.

In other words, if materialism is true, there should be no possible world where lava flows simulate anything (goldfish or people or anything else). That was Barel's point, I believe, and it's a good one: given materialism, conscious sand dunes and lava flows simulating fish should be impossible. Not just really, really unlikely, but impossible. There should be no possible world (in the logical sense) where materialism is true and that goes on.

Yet it seems that materialism must lead to that, because it's not too hard to take a working brain and make it functionally equivalent to all sorts of bizarre things: ropes and pulleys, water and valves, rocks and rock-moving machines.

That's why I originally posted this in this thread- consciousness presents such a problem for materialism, that one could point to the "hard problem" of consciousness as evidence for why materialism isn't true, and some other alternative (there's only two- dualism or idealism) is probably true.

If Koch is right that the universe has a conscious field, and that's why things are conscious, that's pretty much dualism. I don't see how materialism could co-exist with a disembodied conscious field that permeates the universe, like the Higgs field.

 

[dlorde]

Cueball could hand the job of moving rocks to a hypothetical entity which only knew the rules for figuring out where the next rock goes, yes, and the ultimate result would still be that the computations for simulating the universe were still done - but, again, the computations would still be taking place inside this entity's head.

The computation in the entity's head is the same regardless of the pattern being 'run', so it can only be a generic CA cell computation; the computation of the simulation is done by the Turing Machine pattern processing the program and data patterns.

I think we have a different concept of the relevant computation. I see the Turing Machine's computation of the simulation as different from the generic cell computation required for the CA to function because it occurs at at higher level of abstraction and a different level of complexity, i.e. it's emergent.

In other words, the CA computation that sets a cell on or off does not enable you to predict what will happen when you run the CA, beyond that any cell will change state according to it's neighbors.

You can only predict what will happen when you run the CA (e.g. a glider gun, Turing Machine, etc) if you know the initial settings of the cells, and it doesn't matter which particular cells are involved, only their arrangement relative to each other (the pattern they make). In the case of the Turing Machine emulation pattern, there's another level of abstraction involved, as the TM itself is a generic computer and what it computes depends on the particular instruction and data patterns supplied.

An analogy would be a player piano or an organ grinder - I would say that someone who sits at the player piano and pushes the pedals to make it go, or an organ grinder who turns the handle of the organ to make it play music, isn't himself playing music, he's operating the machine and the machine is playing the music.

But I think we're just drawing conceptual lines in different places; we should probably drift back on topic...

 

[dlorde]

So if the Boltzmann Computer's internal architecture isn't doing according to some set of rules (i.e., everything's just randomly moving around a certain way), how can it simulate anything?

Because it has behaved exactly as if it followed a specific set of rules. The same result is achieved.

If random movements of particles can simulate things, is it possible (nevermind odds, just theoretically possible), that a lava flow can simulate, say, a goldfish swimming in a fishbowl? After all, there are an awful lot of particles in a given lava flow, and they're all moving very quickly.

I don't see how - or what it would even mean to say that lava simulated a goldfishboggled. Lava flows and the particles in them follow their own particular sets of rules. You might find similarities in the general flow of parts of the water in the fishbowl and parts of the lava - they're both liquids.

So it seems again like we're back to something very close to panpsychism: swarms of particles all around us, moving around and simulating all sorts of things (including working brains).

No. While such random simulations may be theoretically possible, statistical mechanics (and just looking at the world!) tells us that we need not be concerned with them. If you lived for a trillion lifetimes of a trillion universes you still wouldn't need to consider such things. But if such a random simulation occurred for a freakish second at some time in some universe - so what? What's the problem?

In other words, if materialism is true, there should be no possible world where lava flows simulate anything (goldfish or people or anything else). ... There should be no possible world (in the logical sense) where materialism is true and that goes on.

That simply isn't the case. Materialism doesn't forbid coincidences or simulations. Chains of coincidences can and do occur - science has specific ways of assessing the likelihood of experimental results occurring by chance. The random sequences you imagine are simply so unlikely as to be not worth considering. They don't invalidate anything.

 

[Nonpareil]

Agreed, dlorde. Moving on:

So it seems again like we're back to something very close to panpsychism: swarms of particles all around us, moving around and simulating all sorts of things (including working brains).

Except that this doesn't actually happen. Boltzmann brains are hypothetical entities, not demonstrated ones.

And it's not the probability of this that brings the whole thing crashing down- it's the theoretical physical possibility that simulations (included simulated consciousness) are taking place all around us.

Simulated consciousness is not actual consciousness, and even if it were, this entire argument is just you recoiling from a possibility that you don't like rather than finding an actual issue.

That was Barel's point, I believe, and it's a good one: given materialism, conscious sand dunes and lava flows simulating fish should be impossible. Not just really, really unlikely, but impossible. There should be no possible world (in the logical sense) where materialism is true and that goes on.

Conscious sand dunes don't happen, because if they achieve the necessary complexity of form to perform integrated computation, they are no longer sand dunes.

"Lava flows simulating fish" is a nonsense phrase, because "simulating" just means "performing calculations that can be used to model something". Lava flows do not perform calculations.

That's why I originally posted this in this thread- consciousness presents such a problem for materialism

Well, no. Even granting everything you have said, this is not actually a problem for materialism. It's just an implication that you don't like.

If Koch is right that the universe has a conscious field

Koch does not argue this. This is exactly the opposite of what he argues. A fundamental tenet of integrated information theory is that non-integrated systems are explicitly not conscious, even if their components are; an individual is conscious, but a neighborhood is not.

Koch's website even explicitly decries the idea of "field consciousness".

 

[Nonpareil]

Because it has behaved exactly as if it followed a specific set of rules. The same result is achieved.

To expand upon this point for the sake of clarity: a simulation is just a mathematical model of something. That is, it's a series of calculations being performed that an observer can then use to predict how something will behave in certain conditions.

Again, a simulation is just a series of calculations. What makes it a simulation rather than an abstract math problem is just what meaning the observer assigns to it. A Boltzmann computer performing a certain series of calculations could be said to be simulating a tornado if those calculations match up to the ones used to deliberately simulate one. It didn't just pop into existence with the label "explicit tornado simulation" attached.

And again, even if it did, this wouldn't actually be a problem. Just weird, and so absurdly unlikely that it would make finding the entire collective literary works of mankind arranged in chronological order carved into a cliff face three hundred thousand light years away by random gusts of wind.

 

[punshhh]

Nope, anecdotes are not evidence of spiritual beings.

They may be evidence of hallucinations and other things, so where is the evidence?

Agreed, anecdotes are not evidence of spiritual beings, they are evidence of something going on in one's person. It is a personal choice if one considers them an indication of a spiritual realm.

 

[punshhh]

"Fright" is fear, which is an emotional response of the brain. It does involve your cerebrum interpreting (misinterpreting in the case of a ghost) sensory input and generating a motor response. You experience "being afraid" because of the involvement of your cerebrum, and it generates a variety of autonomic responses.
You are then aware of the prickling skin, pounding heart, and wet seat of your pants, all through the action of your sensory organs and interpretation by your cerebrum.

I believe you are attempting to argue that an autonomic reflex is itself an "experience" which, say, a scallop could have. Disturb the mollusk and it will activate it's siphon pump and "swim away". The scallop has no episodic memory, no cerebral processing, no central nervous system, in fact. It's nervous system consists of sensory organs, ganglia, and motor outputs which have been proven to function as a system by evolutionary survival. It reacts in a functional way but has no "experience". Unless you want to argue that a rock also has experience?









So you agree that you, as a human, have no basis to say that an organism such as a scallop has any "experience" at all. The very concept of experience itself implies some memory function.

My own experience as a human (and yours as well I believe) actually gives evidence that even life forms with a brain (myself) do not actually have any "experience" outside of my own conscious awareness. If I drive my car home along a well known route, while I am engaged in some distracting thought process ( that is, my conscious awareness is not focused directly on driving), when I arrive home I may have no memory of actually driving home at all. It is as if I (my conscious awareness) was not even present while my brain and it's sensory organs and motor appendages drove the car to its destination. I know this is not a unique experience to me, because almost everyone has had similar experiences. Actually as I get older I find that short stretches of time occur, where I know my brain and body was present and active, but I have no idea, for example, how the car keys got into that place where I found them. This is also a universal occurrence in humans my age.

This is what life is like without an engaged conscious mechanism, for me, for you, or for a scallop. It is a big ZERO, nothing, just an emptiness. There is no experience, outside of our conscious bubble of awareness.

So yes, a tree, a jellyfish, the scallop, the ant: they are complex self reproducing self constructing automata. Without a memory and a sense of time there is no "experience". They are complex arrangements of atoms and molecules, more complex, but fundamentally no different from a piece of granite. I consider myself (and you btw) to be the same: a complex automata, with a superimposed limited self aware executive function. The executive's bubble of awareness is so limited that most of what my body and brain does goes unnoticed, and therefore un-experienced.





I do not see any data which indicate that an "experience" exists outside of complex brain function.

Feel free to confine "experience" to brain function, I dont. My point about experience is not in reference to the sensory process of having an experience, but rather the experience of the state of existing.

 

[punshhh]

I'm back.

Hi Nonpareil, I hope you are not going to repeat what you told me last time and then disappear.

You also lack any reason to even think that it's possible, other than the standard garage-dragon nonsense and outright denial of the fact that all evidence we have points, rather conclusively, to a brain - or at least a nervous system of some sort - being the source of consciousness.



Everything is experienced in the brain. The brain is what does the experiencing. Nothing else in the organism has the capacity.



Barely developed brains are still brains.



The brain is required for this.



Do they have a brain or nervous system, whether barely developed or wholly sapient? If so, then yes, they do. If not, then no, they don't.



Consider, yes.

And then discard, because this:



...is entirely false.

As before I am reducing experience to the cell along with the origin of consciousness. Because, a cell (a single cellular organism) exists, lives, interacts with its environment, dwells, in the world. Just like us, which are known to have experience(our control).

 

[punshhh]

First of all, the brain doesn't function by computation. Secondly, claiming that computational virtualization is an abstraction of experience is gibberish. I'm quite familiar with virtualization and it has nothing to do with abstraction or experience.

Agreed.

So, we are back to vital essence and bad humor theory?

No, just that there may be other materials(than what have been detected) out there.

This doesn't make any sense. What approach could you have that isn't verifiable? Or what would prevent an infinite number of approaches all equally valid that are not verifiable?

Within the remit of philosophies are issues which are intellectually derived and beyond the capacity of science to investigate.

 

[punshhh]

I can prove with cognitive theory that no Turing/Von Neumann architecture machine can become conscious. And, yes, I do know that insects are not aware.

They are dwelling and having some sort of experience, are they not?

Cellular life is absolutely not the cause of consciousness. However, it is possible that only a cell based neural configuration can produce consciousness. This does seem to be the case in evolutionary terms but it has not been proven for all other technological cases.

It is the cause of consciousness in all examples observed, although not specifically, only generally. This is why I say that the human being, as a black box, is our control.

 

[punshhh]

No, I'm pretty sure I can refute Idealism with cognitive theory.

Perhaps you can, but you can't rule it out, as it is logically derived, given that our personal experience of existing* is our primary and only irrefutable knowledge.

*our personal experience of existing, is known via the mind, idealism is a logical intepretation of this state of affairs.

 

[punshhh]

No, this isn't true. Not all living things have experiences. Fungus don't experience anything nor do single celled organisms or things like jellyfish or plants.

They exist as entities, in time and space, is this not an experience?

 

[punshhh]

Comprehension, intelligence, and free-will are not the same thing. You need free-will for consciousness. You can have comprehension without intelligence. You can't have intelligence without comprehension. Both comprehension and intelligence are necessary for free-will.

I don't know of any way to get consciousness without free-will. I cannot say at this point that free-will requires consciousness.

Interesting, I should point out that I define consciousness roughly as a personal experience of existing, rather than the usually understood definitions, which I use to define self-consciousness.

 

[punshhh]

And yet much of our experiences and memories are deceptive and faulty.

Yes, I know. I am specifically referring to the existence of an entity, in time and space, which has a personal experience of existing. As a state of being.

 

[dlorde]

... Simulated consciousness is not actual consciousness...

I think it could be - if a simulation of a computational process can be detailed enough to be an emulation of that process - i.e. functionally identical; and if consciousness itself is fundamentally computational (which it appears to be).

 

[dlorde]

My point about experience is not in reference to the sensory perceptual process of having an experience, but rather the experience of the state of existing.

FTFY.

You seem to be equivocating two subtly different meanings of experience:

1. The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind (i.e. subjective, perceptual, aware)

2. An event or a series of events participated in or lived through (i.e. objective, colloquially applied to both the animate and the inanimate)

So to say my shoes have experienced muddy conditions and considerable wear, is an objective statement about events that may have affected my shoes (meaning 2), and is qualitatively different from my experience of wearing them, which is perceptual and aware (meaning 1).

The objective usage is probably an example of anthropomorphic projection (like giving inanimate objects genders), which may be why it's easy to misconstrue.

 

[punshhh]

FTFY.

You seem to be equivocating two subtly different meanings of experience:

1. The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind (i.e. subjective, perceptual, aware)

2. An event or a series of events participated in or lived through (i.e. objective, colloquially applied to both the animate and the inanimate)

So to say my shoes have experienced muddy conditions and considerable wear, is an objective statement about events that may have affected my shoes (meaning 2), and is qualitatively different from my experience of wearing them, which is perceptual and aware (meaning 1).

I'm not equivocating the difference, I am making the distinction though. A being has both meanings, although your analogy misses the experience of a living object.

Let me put it this way,

Meaning 1, a single cellular organism, over time has interaction with its environment. This is a living experience, of a kind. One which we share being cellular (multi-) organisms.

Meaning 2, a multi-cellular organism, which has evolved a complex structure with a nervous system, over time has a mental awareness of its (cellular) interaction with its environment. This is an aware experience, or self-aware experience. One which we share being multi-cellular organisms.

The objective usage is probably an example of anthropomorphic projection (like giving inanimate objects genders), which may be why it's easy to misconstrue.

Not guilty.

 

[Belz...]

Simulated consciousness is not actual consciousness

If consciousness is computation, yes it is.

 

[annnnoid]

Simulated consciousness is not actual consciousness, and even if it were, this entire argument is just you recoiling from a possibility that you don't like rather than finding an actual issue.
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I wonder if it is really necessary to point out the degree to which this flatly contradicts just about everything you’ve been arguing for the past…forever.