I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[Belz...]

Feel free to nit pick if you like. But the presence of sexual reproduction in humanity does not mean that the structure of my body is any different to a clone of my mother in the way self-consciousness is produced in my body. Likewise your body, or our common ancestor.

Speaking of moving the goalposts...

 

[Belz...]

Only to persons like you that have no clue what is actually absolutely invariant.

Perhaps if you stopped using words in stupid ways and instead use them like other people use them we wouldn't be having this problem.

 

[doronshadmi]

Unfortunately it's a news article and not a science paper.

Here it is http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1411/1411.3987.pdf (its version before it was published in http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/01/21/science.aaa3035).

 

[doronshadmi]

Perhaps if you stopped using words in stupid ways and instead use them like other people use them we wouldn't be having this problem.

Dear Belz... I read your, so called, objective evidence like an open book ( http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10435584&postcount=1388 ).

Perhaps if you use techniques that actually enable you to directly be aware of the simplest state of existence, words like "absolutely invariant" will be understood to you.

This is definitely not your current state.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I know I am conscious and by extension the creature which produced me through a repetitive process of reproduction which has produced millions of creatures equivalent to me. It would be rather unusual for my brother to be a P Zombie, it would break the pattern.

I don't, I am just observing all the instances of self-consciousness out in the world around me and noting that they are all produced by biological processes. I fully expect that other kinds of self-consciousness might occur out there. But I see no reason to presume that AI devices are self-conscious, other than wishful thinking.

So which version is it?
Knowledge by inference or knowledge by observation?

BTW How would you decide if an AI is self-conscious and not that it is just wishful thinking that an AI can't be self-conscious?

 

[realpaladin]

I know I am conscious and by extension the creature which produced me through a repetitive process of reproduction which has produced millions of creatures equivalent to me. It would be rather unusual for my brother to be a P Zombie, it would break the pattern.

Wat is so important about the pattern that breaking it would be a noteworthy event?

 

[Belz...]

Dear Belz... I read your, so called, objective evidence like an open book

Yes but you don't speak the language.

 

[Belz...]

Perhaps if you use techniques that actually enable you to directly be aware of the simplest state of existence, words like "absolutely invariant" will be understood to you.

I am using such a technique. It's called critical thinking and reason, and so far you are failing to meet the requirements.

You lose.

 

[JoeMorgue]

So someone explain to me a world view where you have "consciousness" and everyone else doesn't? What makes you so flippin' special? Why are you the Lathe of Heaven?

 

[Dancing David]

Hi punshhh

You can't observe self-consciousness in other humans. It is as the word self goes a contradiction to claim that you can know that someone other than you is self-consciousness. So how do you know that I am self-consciousness? You don't, because for the word self it is a contradiction that you can be something which you are not; i.e. you are not me as a self. So stop using a double-standard!!!

Yup, thus behaviorism.

 

[Dancing David]

There is some truth in what you say, but I know that I am related to the other person, we have a common self-conscious ancestor. Also I am using the word observe in a scientific sense, i.e. detect sufficiently to conclude it is the case.

Oh whoops adding presuppositions to you assumption doesn't help.

BTW the way you 'know' you are self conscious is what?

You observing the behaviors labelled as 'self consciousness

 

[Dancing David]

To restate with terminology with a tad less baggage . . .

There is one universal 'substance' that persists, that is, eternal, and not subject to modification; and this substance can appear as something particular.

We can be aware of this substance both as something particular, as in touching, seeing, tasting, ideas, thoughts and etc.; and we can be aware of this substance as universal, presumably in this 'simplest state of awareness'.
We can only be aware of this substance in this simplest state of awareness.

So where does consciousness fit in? What/where is subjective and objective?

The Alleged Historic Buddha cut this knot
-there is a body
the body is associated with:
-thoughts
-emotions
-perceptions
-habits

 

[Nonpareil]

So a puppet on strings* is the person depicted, in all cases?

Blatant strawmanning doesn't help your case.

Yes, it's simplistic.

Simple, yes.

Yes and it would also be possible to make one which does all that(all the behaviours of a self-conscious person) mechanically with no requirement for self-consciousness.

No, it wouldn't. You are still running right up against the definition of "is" and trying to say "but it isn't really".

But that self-consciousness would not be a requirement, what is its purpose?

Self-consciousness is not a requirement even for humans. It simply is.

You seem to have got to this point and then something magic happens and suddenly the machine is self-conscious, while an identical puppet machine is sitting next to it performing all the same behaviours, without self-consciousness.

No. I get to that point and both machines are self-conscious.

You're the one who's desperately clinging to an incoherent concept.

This mantra has the problem I pointed out before.

You haven't actually pointed out any problem with it.

It is reducing the reality outside the mind to what is acceptable to the semantics of the mind. For example, there cannot be Y in existence because it doesn't fit (compute) in the simplistic logical abstraction in my brain. This claim ignores the reality outside the mind, while dictating it.

This is completely, utterly incorrect.

I have conceded that the mimic could have a rudimentary form of consciousness, like that of a toaster.

Toasters are not conscious.

...I really just had to say that.

Well if he had agreed that, he would have shot himself in the foot. Meaning that only a mimic of a human which is identical in all it's organic detail, would be equivalent in consciousness.

I fail to see how that is shooting myself in anything. If you want a perfect replica of a duck's consciousness, you find a duck. If you want a perfect replica of ENIAC, you find ENIAC.

But we aren't looking for a duck. We are looking for self-consciousness, which is a property that ducks have. Saying that something that is not a duck cannot have self-consciousness is idiotic.

Yes, this is what I am suggesting. Any AI device not including cellular metabolism may not be conscious and there would be no way to prove that it where conscious to the degree of self-consciousness. Mimicry could not be ruled out.

You have not given any reason to believe this is true, given that the concept has been pointed out to you multiple times as incoherent.

I know I am conscious and by extension the creature which produced me through a repetitive process of reproduction which has produced millions of creatures equivalent to me. It would be rather unusual for my brother to be a P Zombie, it would break the pattern.

And yet you have not actually ruled it out.

This is an exceptionally weak attempt to dodge the issue of observation, punshhh.

 

[tsig]

Why is it that, every time someone counters one of your false assertions, you counter with "in terms of X, you may be right" ?

In all terms, I'm right on this. Your claim was wrong.

In terms of reality you may be right.

 

[tsig]

Feel free to nit pick if you like. But the presence of sexual reproduction in humanity does not mean that the structure of my body is any different to a clone of my mother in the way self-consciousness is produced in my body. Likewise your body, or our common ancestor.
But the structure of my body is more than 50% equivalent to my mother and more than 25% equivalent to her mother etc etc. if it were so it would only be necessary to look back a few generations to see a creature unlike any life form on the planet.

I will return to my initial mention of this in my response near to the beginning of the thread. Humanity, indeed the majority of life on the planet is basically one organism, one life. A life which has found it advantageous to exploit the environment by dividing into numerous pieces. It is this one life (if one views it this way) which has developed the quality of consciousness.

Your mother had a bit of flesh cultured in a lab to produce you?

If you were someplace in space when Europeans arrived in America you would have concluded that humans were some sort of tree destroying disease.

 

[Dancing David]

That's Brahmin, not Brahman. I was pointing out that TM is a western version of hunduism.

Really? How many deities are worshiped in TM and at what temples or shrines? Do they have family clans and castes?

 

[LarryS]

Blatant strawmanning doesn't help your case.



Simple, yes.



No, it wouldn't. You are still running right up against the definition of "is" and trying to say "but it isn't really".



Self-consciousness is not a requirement even for humans. It simply is.



No. I get to that point and both machines are self-conscious.

You're the one who's desperately clinging to an incoherent concept.



You haven't actually pointed out any problem with it.



This is completely, utterly incorrect.



Toasters are not conscious.

...I really just had to say that.



I fail to see how that is shooting myself in anything. If you want a perfect replica of a duck's consciousness, you find a duck. If you want a perfect replica of ENIAC, you find ENIAC.

But we aren't looking for a duck. We are looking for self-consciousness, which is a property that ducks have. Saying that something that is not a duck cannot have self-consciousness is idiotic.



You have not given any reason to believe this is true, given that the concept has been pointed out to you multiple times as incoherent.



And yet you have not actually ruled it out.

This is an exceptionally weak attempt to dodge the issue of observation, punshhh.

there is no agreed upon set of behaviors that is equivalent to self consciousness, and at present, no way even in principle to establish this set of behaviors because we haven't found any self consciousness anywhere.

Even if we accept that humans report self consciousness, we can't accept they are self conscious at all times . . . so since we have no means to establish a human was self conscious at any specific moment, we can't correlate any specific observed behaviors as proxy.

 

[Nonpareil]

there is no agreed upon set of behaviors that is equivalent to self consciousness

Which is beside the point. Once we have a definition - whatever that definition is - we can tell if an entity fulfills that definition.

and at present, no way even in principle to establish this set of behaviors because we haven't found any self consciousness anywhere.

Even if we accept that humans report self consciousness, we can't accept they are self conscious at all times . . . so since we have no means to establish a human was self conscious at any specific moment, we can't correlate any specific observed behaviors as proxy.

 

[LarryS]

Which is beside the point. Once we have a definition - whatever that definition is - we can tell if an entity fulfills that definition.



[qimg]http://mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw8797_small.png[/qimg]

except we can't establish that definition even in principle

 

[LarryS]

except we can't establish that definition even in principle

. . . until we find self consciousness