"Intelligence is Self Teaching" A paranormal experience into A.I and Intelligence.

Finally an interesting question! I don't know either! but they do exist in some sense that they can communicate knowledge, YES! And they can be experienced, inside of us, and outside of us, although privately. . . .
B-fish, can you lay out the smallest number of facts, experiences, or data that were sufficient to make you conclude that these spirits have some objective reality (I'm assuming spirits must have some objective reality if they are able to communicate with us), as opposed to being a figment of the imagination (which is also an experience, they are not opposed)?
 
Hi all,

This is my first post on JREF. I've been following this interesting and entertaining thread since I followed a link from Bubblefish's article on RS. I hope I have something constructive to add. I'll start with a brief chronology of the discussion through my eyes, perhaps for those seeking a refreshingly simple overview.

Welcome Temple John! Hopefully I can catch up on the flow of this discussion, my apologies for the delay.

Bubblefish enters what he seemingly hopes to be "hostile" territory with the goal of provoking discussion amongst individuals whom he deems apt to spar with over his ideas concerning intelligence and their origin (philosophical discourse is a lot like trolling). JREF members generally respond skeptically regarding the proposed mechanisms and meanings of altered states, belaboring the distinction between self-suggestion and things like "plant communication". Quite predictably this leads down a path towards the inevitable, the great debate on mind/matter duality. Plenty of digressions, ad homini, and poorly formed arguments follow, but many interesting points are made and there are some real troopers out there.

yeah, I miss blobru

From the get-go, a determining factor in the debate has been Bubblefish's bombast, an apparently deliberate invitation for people to respond to form over content. In doing so, the OP and many others reveal glimpses of their beliefs and prejudices (and their dark side). But all along there is a hidden elephant in the room: BF has no actual model to defend. If I'm wrong, all this clamoring from both sides suggests he should more accurately define his stance as well as his mysterious strategy. Although things have become a lot clearer and to the point in the last few posts.

I simply follow the flow of the discussion in a manner of openness and transparency. But I also can predict the outcome dialectically, so none of it is surprising. Naturally there is more to be revealed, and everyone here tells me the exact time to reveal it.

Now for my own two cents. On the issue of Bubble's intelligence:

"Intelligence is self-teaching" sounds great as bullet point and is only a platitude to cynics. Yet it's a kind of a moot point to those already aware of the larger implications of the accepted definition of intelligence, already pointed out. A.I. researchers know this: learning is the basis of intelligence. All natural systems can be defined as intelligent that way. What's more, philosophers have always acknowledged two basic directions or polarities in reality, and one particular way of seeing them is as learning, and forgetting.

ahh, thank you for pointing out that set of couplings, learning/forgetting. A flow from and a return to...source/structure. Thanks for giving me something to ruminate on here.


I think some of the initial clamoring stemmed from a semantic trip. BF's Google-deflowering declaration would be more precise and less provocative if written as "intelligence means self-teaching". However the diction informed by his plant experience frames 'intelligence' as a noun, not (just a) verb. As I see it, all or most parties have concurred that it is indeed both, noting that brain and mind are manifestly indivisible. Nevertheless, any potential agreement that does exist regarding the inherent duality of any and all representational models did not prevent a proverbial bitstorm from forming.

me likey John from the Temple. Which reminds me, LOST is on tonight! Can't wait.

On the issue of "plant communication":

I see mind-representing the totality of psychological activity and its extensions from and to physical reality-as a tool, like our body and our artifacts, and as a sense organ, much like our physical senses and emotions. Like the rest, mind perceives and conceives.

enjoy how you integrate couplings... perceive/conceive. one flows from the external into the internal and one flows from the internal and back to the external.

Input and ouput. It processes information from, through, and to its connections, just as our body does, predominantly independent of our awareness. It operates on the same fundamental principles of intelligence that govern the behavior of all natural systems with which it shares a common language. From this perspective, chemical interaction with human physiology is be just one aspect of the rich spectrum of information existing in all of nature. In terms of connectivity, organic chemistry is all keys, locks, and data traveling through doors.

quite in harmony with this perspective

As far as I know, this connective and dynamic view is universally applicable and is not precluded by any current scientific understanding (and I am certainly not the first to espouse it--in fact, sorry if I'm preaching to the choir). More interestingly, such an open-ended framework allows for as-yet-unknown interaction mechanisms between subject and object, in both normal awareness and in altered states and death.

hmmm...death? I tend not to touch that topic, haven't gotten there yet, and don't plan on getting there for another few thousand years.

On the issue of mind/matter duality.

Until we've re-defined 'material' and expanded our model to include all phenomena, it makes no sense to limit consciousness to the body as currently understood by science. We already know that intelligence in humans is an embedded and emergent property of a biology itself consisting of intelligent systems and inhabiting an environment of intelligent systems of even greater orders. We also know that organism and environment, those apparently discrete systems, form network-relationships of intelligence, to the extent that they function as one. Even if you have not experienced this for yourself, there are still unlimited anecdotes, not to mention mountains of scientific research undermining any attempt to conceive of a true closed system in the reality we perceive. Lest ye forget that the map is not the territory.

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true. We both know who said that.

Finally, we know that everything is information processing. It's all input and output, with something in between. Something which is both noun and verb, like being. And if there really is a center of experience, a self, it lies ultimately not in the eyes, the brain, nor the soul. It is in fact and fiction beyond all phenomena, at the end and beginning of the process. It is the ineffable mystery that we currently tend to label consciousness, though we often mistake it for an aspect of ourselves rather than vice versa. That's the forgetting side of the two-faced one... the other side is here to help you remember.

WOW! hey you want to take this thread over? I could use a break and you seem to do a better job then me. I'm better with the funny stuff :)


Thanks to all for providing a space for improving and sharing my thoughts. Looking forward to any possible responses and I sincerely hope I've contributed something more to the discussion than just my little moment on the pedestal.

TempleJohn

You're quite a valuable ally, welcome John from the Temple, and don't forget, LOST on ABC, tonight at 9 PST
 
Kaagen!


Let's have lunch! Although I haven't attacked this from that set of knowledge, it resonates with me. Always wanted to dive into Stiener. Okay, thank you for sharing your POV and the library that influences it.

Language is inherently dualistic as you pointed out. The idea of projective geometry as well as Goetheanistic phenomenology is to develop an intuitive sense of the relationship between percepts and concepts. The language used to describe these techniques is of course loaded, but the idea is not to become stuck in the language, but only be guided by it to a direct perception of this relationship. This is were the genius of Goethe as an artist-scientist is useful since he showed us a way to use art to transcend the limitations of the object/subject scientific consciousness, but remain within waking consciousness.

Oh i agree with plenty of this, at some point the question produces an answer that lay in stillness, silence, and beyond language.

The difference between this method and the use of an entheogen is that it is more suited to the current state of human consciousness i.m.o.

To each his/her own rules about their own consciousness and what is allowable, profitable, usable, meaningful.

However widespread ignorance of the use of entheogens in the evolution of consciousness is certainly not useful and for me the work of Prof. Lewis-Williams I referred to in an earlier post goes a long way in putting this part of humanity into perspective.

I tend to find Terence Mckenna's ideas about language development coming from mushrooms to resonate with me. It makes sense, our intelligence has evolved because of entheogenic plants and vegetables.

Perhaps your experiences with entheogen's will help here. The point is intuitively regarded as solid and finite. The "self" is also experienced as point-like in everyday waking consciousness. However it is also experienced as infinite in depth. "Know thyself" is a lifelong task.

A point in a circle, everywhere is the center with the circumference nowhere to be found. It's not just the journey of the self, but the selves, all of us together. We need each other to know we exist. The dialogue between self/other is the actual blueprint. Once the self is known, it must be transcended into 'us'. This is a sticking point for many who seek out the knowledge of self. At some point, as you mentioned, we experience that all knowledge is false, and what becomes relevant to us is understanding, which when blended with knowledge, becomes crystalized into wisdom.

I'm sure you have experienced this, people who search out the self turn into very self centered people! ouch! what a bump in my head that understanding gave me about myself.

Under an entheogen the self can be experience as "spread out" over the environment and thus the "spiritual" experience of the relationship between ourselves and the world. In projective geometry the point can be composed of infinite lines or planes with infinite length/width which intercept at the same place and therefore have "infinite depth" which is experienced as infinite space.

I really enjoy this model 'geometric' you mention often. Are you familiar with Bucky Fuller? I use his model of a geodesic dome, from that basic model, I can arrive at my entire philosophy. I wonder if we are talking about the same thing here.


The real duality is the percept of a tree (photograph, imagined image or sensory perception) and the concept "tree". Abstracting from the cognitive process and calling the one real and the other not is metaphysics. I do not see the cognitive process as complete until the "percept" of a tree and the "concept" of a tree is joined to form complete knowledge of a tree.

I very much enjoy that! very harmonious with my understanding.

When discussing dualities, it's important to learn the lessons provided by Tao. It's yin, yang, and then both of them at once and indistinguishable, wu chi. It is all one thing but that too is also false, it is really no thing. lol, are we saying the same thing?

Talk of real or unreal trees is simply being superstitious about the cognitive process.

hmmm, how do you mean 'superstitious'?

This is the important difference between just a percept and concepts joined to a percept. The euclidean space revolves around percepts and point-like atoms and ignores the depth that concepts contribute to percepts to provide a complete knowledge of the world. Projective space however is all about the interplay between the point-wise atoms and point-wise depth.

everywhere the center with a circumference nowhere to be found

It is not so much that one is real and the other not, but that one is more complete whilst the other is only part of the story.

and both dissolve into mystery (wu chi)

The problem with the current epistemology is the starting points.
They make unjustified assumptions.
Idealism assumes the materialism it refutes by naively adopting a priori a brain.
Materialism assumes the idealism it claims is impossible by adopting a priori a thought.
Both are stuck within thinking, but refuse to recognize thinking as a part of the world process. In fact the start of the world process.

Like Heidegger's 'worlding of the world' yes?

The only way around this is to use thinking to reverse the cognitive process artificially to arrive at the starting point of cognition.

YES I DO THIS!

One uses thinking thus not to add on to a naive assumption but to remove from the cognitive process that which adds knowledge.
One arrives at "the given" which has no differentiation.

Begin in mystery, return to mystery.

Once arrived one realises that within "the given" their appears to be something which is not given, these are the concepts/ideas which we ourselves produce in the act of cognition.
Even the "I" is not postulated before cognition begins, but is discovered thereafter as part of the given.
The important point of this epistemology is that it does not naively ignore thinking and then just use it, but starts from thinking and thinks about thinking and in this way builds a basis for knowledge solely around the cognitive process. There is no need to assume an "I", a will, matter, mind etc etc. These concepts are all the result of the cognitive process and their a priori reality or not is irrelevant metaphysical speculation. What is important is our ability in forming the correct concept for each percept in order to communicate sensibly.

In my process, I do this with both thinking and feeling. How does feeling work in your model? Feeling is real close to the mystery, so very necessary to integrate and use it to return to the source.

The call for evidence witnessed for instance in this forum amuses me sometimes as the request assumes a percept as evidence, but only understands it when clothed in a concept that makes sense. It is really the same form of superstition which demands visible ghosts and miracles to justify spiritual concepts.
After all we have no other choice, but just to start thinking. The special thing about thinking is that it alone is able to "perceive itself". This is also where any justification for free-will must ar

In my framework, free will becomes superseded by true will, which is disovered by a similar process you outline.

Very happy to have you here, thank you!
 
ETA: I don't mean to hijack the thread with my own theories, only as far as they may stimulate debate around the topic at hand. I hope BF can respond to my thoughts on his OP.

No please HIJACK!! seriously, your doing a much better job than I. I'll play the goof and you be the straight man. If it works out, we can take this show on the road :)
 
when you're dead you're dead. It is often in fact a simple fear of death which sustains the wrong vision of self. The mind starts to get it, oh of course there isn't really an experiencer, then suddenly it's like, oh but that means i'm just going to die, and it jumps back into its fantasy world. In reality the self is actually constantly living and dying with each identified thought that sustains it.
Nick

You nailed it here, it is a fear of death. But what (or who) is dying? what about my current experience will change when I die, if what I currently experience already is not here? you seem to be saying there is some change at physical death, yet you are also saying there isnt? you say there is no concept of self, but you very much have a concept of self, the difference is you invented an "objective self", whereas I know there is no self, objectively or relatively. The world only looks like it does from your shoes, from no shoes, it looks like nothing at all...
 
Mental selfhood is constructed only by thought. It is an utterly transient emergent phenomenon.
With all due respect, but darnit Nick, that's what I've been saying all along. You're arguing against a phantom, literally and figuratively.

All of this construction that your mind is getting busy with is based around the premise of persisting selfhood.
I can't tell you what the experience of death is like, but I do know that our physical processes grind to a halt and our bodies decay. Our heart stops and our mind ceases to exist. The matter of which our organism is composed breaks down and dissolves into the environment to be recycled.

Start from materialism and it becomes clear
I did and it has. Keeping digging, my friend. Burying the self is the same as revealing it, just keep digging.

TempleJohn
 
Hey Bub, thanks for the reply and stuff. No need for apologies. And just so you know, I am everybody and nobody's ally. :P

TJ
 
You nailed it here, it is a fear of death. But what (or who) is dying?

Well, the way I figure it the body will die, and with it the emergent consciousness and self.

what about my current experience will change when I die, if what I currently experience already is not here?

Now you're nailing it! The illusion of the experiencer will die. There never really was an experiencer but the perception that there was will end, along with everything else.

you seem to be saying there is some change at physical death, yet you are also saying there isnt? you say there is no concept of self, but you very much have a concept of self, the difference is you invented an "objective self", whereas I know there is no self, objectively or relatively. The world only looks like it does from your shoes, from no shoes, it looks like nothing at all...

The self is a useful illusion, created I think originally to forward certain evolutionary goals, particularly social goals. So...it's tricky because to speak or understand the self as a philosophical entity goes away from its purpose. It's tricky. I'd need more time to come up with a better response.

Nick
 
I think where BF gets hung up is around how things appear. It seems that there is a mind-brain dualism. Surface appearance certainly suggests it. But what the computational model of consciousness is doing is showing how this seeming dualism arises from something which is not dualism. This is the bit that BF doesn't seem to have realised yet. It's not that Dennett is asserting dualism, it's that he's explaining how something which is not dualism can appear to be dualism.

BF has got the first bit where it's clear that things appear dual. But he hasn't got to the second bit yet, where it's clear that actually this is just caused by certain properties emerging from physical brain states.

Nick

To reach an understanding of how things 'are', it is necessary to deconstruct them as they 'appear'. So you are close.
 
OK, let's check it out. Who here understands what Bubblefish is on about and finds it a coherent argument?

Nick

ahh, philosophy by democracy and the construction/reinforcement of paradigm. Let me know how that works out for ya.
 
Materialism is radical and confrontational.



Nick

I don't find your particular brand of materialism radical nor confrontational. I see it as tame, safe, and continually failing to ask the deeper questions. You avoid the conflict of idea, your behaviors have been recorded as such in this thread. hardly confrontational!

Now ol bubblefish, that's a confrontational rascal :)
 
What is intelligence? What is material?

If matter IS energy - then matter is an emergent property of energy - just as is intelligence (whatever that is) an emergent property of matter? But what are the conditions under which these properties emerge? Awareness is intelligence (of a kind) but self-awareness is a rare property? It seems many humans barely achieve it. What hope plants?

If my matter is replaced with replica matter, does that mean my experiences are also replaced providing the replica me with the same intelligence (knowledge, persona, etc)? If I were merely cloned, then my experiences would not come with that clone so the clone would not be me and subsequent experience would mold the clone into a different person altogether. But then, am I the same person I was a minute ago? Would the person of a minute ago not swap places with me because I am not the same person? What about an hour, a day, a year...? In ten years every cell in our body has been replaced. What keeps me me?

Continuity of mind? But what about when I faint or am “knocked out”? Who am I if I am under general anaesthetic for surgery? Who am I if I am in a coma?

Who am I if I am under the influence of a drug (medicine, whatever) or altered brain chemistry - like if I am highly aroused or in pain..?

What IS mind? What IS an “emergent property? Can there be a collective emergent property? Are my experiences unique or are they a combination of give and take between the collective and the individual?

Matter can be aware. But can it be self-aware? If matter is energy can energy be aware? Can energy be self-aware? What about plants?

What IS “paranormal”? Is reality merely a consensus opinion?

What can intelligence teach itself? Are we talking about evolution here? What is artificial intelligence? Does my clone count?

…my brain hurts. But how do I know that?


ahh...let's continue to ask those questions! welcome my friend! very glad to read your post.
 
Yeah, but BF spins out at the slightest whiff of negative feedback. The guy can't allow himself to feel stuff basically. You give him 1 iota of criticism and he's straight away accusing you of projecting whatever. I mean, would you regard anything he says as having weight? I wouldn't. He's nice but just a lightweight.

lol, your doing that projecty thingy again!
 
B-fish, can you lay out the smallest number of facts, experiences, or data that were sufficient to make you conclude that these spirits have some objective reality (I'm assuming spirits must have some objective reality if they are able to communicate with us), as opposed to being a figment of the imagination (which is also an experience, they are not opposed)?

I'm not sure if they have an objective reality. I have experienced two forms of 'spirits'. One set of them communicate with me internally, there is not external projection. And another set are quite bothersome and rude, they can be heard in the friggin room! but just because one can hear them, does not mean another can. Very perplexed by all of this, i have no answers, I just know that the experiences of them are real, and they can tell you things, heal you, and sometimes annoy the hell out of you.
 
With all due respect, but darnit Nick, that's what I've been saying all along. You're arguing against a phantom, literally and figuratively.

Well, TJ, if you care to glance back across the last few pages I think you will see that you have on numerous occasions written about "processes," "self-realisation," "alchemy" and the like, and very much in the sense that this is all very real. Now you claim that all along you realise that this "self" that is supposedly undertaking all this activity is a transient emergent phenomenon with no tangible substance. I think you have to admit this isn't so coherent. I appreciate that it is not always so easy to find the right terms to express oneself here, yet still I think it's fair to say you're not being entirely coherent.

I can't tell you what the experience of death is like, but I do know that our physical processes grind to a halt and our bodies decay. Our heart stops and our mind ceases to exist. The matter of which our organism is composed breaks down and dissolves into the environment to be recycled.

Yes, the body dies, and with it the bodily processes of consciousness and selfhood.

I did and it has. Keeping digging, my friend. Burying the self is the same as revealing it, just keep digging.

For me, materialism reveals it. Follow materialism well and you have no choice but finally to deal with the reality of self. Mysticism can reveal it but it can also bury it very deeply indeed. How was it that Revelation 13 puts it - the ten-headed beast of the ego, one head dies but is rapidly reborn stronger than before? Something like this anyway. It's been a while!

Nick
 
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