On Consciousness

[Zeuzzz]

Before I reply to this, are we now just forgeting that you failed to explain or defend any of your above proclamations? And every sentence that I ended with a question mark (that means I asked you a question) you are also going to ignore?

If a term can be applied to everything, it doesn't mean anything.

I don't even know what you are talking about. What term? And how (where) did I say it applies to everything?

Quotes would be great, if its not too much trouble.

They're informational processes. They are not distinct objects.

I didn't say they say they were distinct objects

I said they are real.

Emotional states have an extremely real physically testable and provable effects on the world, if your really going down this overtly materialistic slightly bizarre road of thought.

Oh yea, that word again, 'real', which you still have not defined.

 

[!Kaggen]

If a term can be applied to everything, it doesn't mean anything.

Yes mathematics as the ultimate abstract information can be applied to anything.
You do understand this concept you just don't want to realise it's significance.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I asked you to describe what you mean by "connected", not give more example of "connections" that are meaningless.

They are not meaningless, it had a very precise meaning. The meaning being to answer your question. I don't know what extra meaning you think I am implying, but i'm all ears. ?

OK, so a photon from a distant galaxy reached you after a travel taking billions of years as seen from your point, and correspondingly a photon of yours will be able to reach that galaxy after even more billions of years. Is that really a connection?

No silly me. No connection at all. Information can not possibly traverse space and reveal information about other areas, everything in the universe is totally disconnected from everything.

Em fields permeate not just everything, but everyone.

So what, significantly, does that mean?

Nothing. Its just shows a level of connectivity and information transfer between regions of space.

And particularly, a connection that is so meaningful that people should get an epiphany out of thinking about it?

Who got an epiphany?

I do not say it is not true. I say it is meaningless, in the sense that it has no impact whatsoever, apart from that it makes you feel good.

Well if you get no sort of enjoyment from the beauty, complexity, scale and nature of the universe and science, fair enough. If you don't get anything from it at all in terms of wonder or interest, if you don't mind me asking, what do you get enjoyment from? Religion? God? *

Thoughts and feelings are real, but not all thoughts and feelings are connected to reality.

I would disagree. We make our own realities. Everyone has a different reality. Reality is not some sort of concrete physical materialistic thing.

And here we go again, can you define real, or reality, as you see it. Pixy has failed to even acknowledge the question three times now, you avoided it only once so far, but maybe thats an unfair assessment.

You can believe that you fly without actually flying.

Or just get on a plane.

* I actually know the answer to this already: http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/424537_367793659908318_228643772_n.jpg

 

[steenkh]

Yes mathematics as the ultimate abstract information can be applied to anything.

That mathematics can be applied to everything is ultimately meaningless, but you probably did not realize that. On the other hand, a specific mathematic formula, like the area of a circle, a = π d2 / 4, cannot be applied to everything, for instance not squares. In the same way "feeling one with the universe" is meaningless, but feeling one with, say, your car, can mean quite a lot (often a quick death).

 

[Zeuzzz]

Where is your avatar from Pixy? Its kinda creepy when I look at it, reminds me of those awful puppet shows on strings using really non emtoive faces to try to convey emotion

 

[Zeuzzz]

In the same way "feeling one with the universe" is meaningless

Its only as meaningless as the person who defines it. To another person, it may have a totally different meaning that the other person has no life experience of, so can not even comprehend the concept. Comprende?

but feeling one with, say, your car, can mean quite a lot (often a quick death).

This is a very well established sensory effect, do you know the name? Where a person gets so familiar with a mechanistic system to the point they begin to share sensory effects with it? Pilots and truck drivers are a good example.

EDIT: Found Dawkins talking about it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RExQFZzHXQ#at=1020

 

[Roboramma]

The issue is not about whether an abstract prediction will fail, but about its accuracy and its relationship with the future.

Two things:
1. There's nothing "abstract" about the prediction asked you about. You can test it with your foot if you like, though the error bars are relatively high.
2. The accuracy of the predictions of science, and their relationship to the future is exactly what I'm talking about.
The future is tomorrow. The prediction is about what will happen tomorrow. Thus, the prediction is about tomorrow. It's very simple.

The accuracy of an abstract prediction is not dependent on the future, but on data from the past.

The future is, obviously, a term whose meaning changes as time passes. So yes, when you check your prediction, the thing it predicted is now in the past. This is as true of the predictions of science as it is of the movement of a tennis player: he can only say that he hit the ball in the past.

That doesn't change the fact that when the prediction was made the data that will determine if it is true or not does not yet exist: that data is in the future. Yes, when you check the prediction, you will have arrived in that future, but if you have confidence in your predictions you can use them to plan for that future, which seems pretty meaningful to me.

I disagree about it not being interesting. It means that our physical interaction with the world, such as yoga for example, is our closest interaction with the future, not an abstraction/thought which has to do with the past.

You keep saying things like "which has to do with the past", but it very clearly doesn't. Will you float off into space tomorrow? Is that a question about the past?

If it is, you have a very odd definition of "the past".

 

[steenkh]

They are not meaningless, it had a very precise meaning. The meaning being to answer your question. I don't know what extra meaning you think I am implying, but i'm all ears. ?

I was hoping that you would explain why you do not regard it as a tautology. I cannot possibly guess what meaning you are implying when I see none.

No silly me. No connection at all. Information can not possibly traverse space and reveal information about other areas, everything in the universe is totally disconnected from everything.

No, I do not buy your strawmen. But I do note that you would rather not define "connection".

Em fields permeate not just everything, but everyone.

So what, significantly, does that mean?

Nothing. Its just shows a level of connectivity and information transfer between regions of space.

So it is not really a very important insight?

Who got an epiphany?

Well Jill Bolte Taylor for one. I assumed that like her you had had an experience that gave you a profoundly different outlook on the world, but I may have been wrong.

Well if you get no sort of enjoyment from the beauty, complexity, scale and nature of the universe and science, fair enough. If you don't get anything from it at all in terms of wonder or interest, if you don't mind me asking, what do you get enjoyment from? Religion? God? *

More strawmen. I never said that I did not get joy from any of that.

I would disagree. We make our own realities. Everyone has a different reality. Reality is not some sort of concrete physical materialistic thing.

Really? Well, I accept that there are many possibilities for reality not being a physical thing, but those would usually involve something like us being computer simulations, or we might be brains in tanks somewhere. You may believe you have a different reality, but the real reality has a tendency to ignore your personal reality, like if you are hit with a brick in the head.

And here we go again, can you define real, or reality, as you see it.

I already did. Sorry you did not like the answer.

Or just get on a plane.

Yes, but why do you mention something irrelevant? I did say that you can believe that you fly without flying, not that you will always not be flying when you believe it.

Its only as meaningless as the person who defines it. To another person, it may have a totally different meaning that the other person has no life experience of, so can not even comprehend the concept. Comprende?

You still have not shown that this is anything else but a feeling. Exactly what meaning does it give you to be "one" with a distant galaxy?

This is a very well established sensory effect, do you know the name?

No, is it important? I did give it as an example of something that had an effect as opposed to those feelings of "oneness" that are meaningless.

 

[Roboramma]

I was hoping that you would explain why you do not regard it as a tautology. I cannot possibly guess what meaning you are implying when I see none.

Well, there are regions of the universe with which such a connection is impossible. The interior of a black hole for instance: there can be no such connection with it, or those parts of the universe which are beyond it's observable horizon.

So, I think Pixy is wrong to suggest that what Zueuzzz is saying is true of everything: it's not, there are things with which such connection is impossible.

Moreover, it didn't have to be this way. It could have been that "the heavens" were made up of different stuff from the earth, obeying different physical laws, and that the only interaction possible was seeing them. That we could not, for instance, affect them in any way. To differentiate between the way the world is and the way it could have been is meaningful as it's necessary for understanding how it is.

 

[Roboramma]

Zuezzz, do you agree that any affect you can have on, say, the moon, can't get to the moon faster than the speed of light?

 

[steenkh]

Well, there are regions of the universe with which such a connection is impossible. The interior of a black hole for instance: there can be no such connection with it, or those parts of the universe which are beyond it's observable horizon.

Hawking's insight that information is not lost after all in a black hole could mean that there is a connectedness between unlikely regions through QM.

Moreover, it didn't have to be this way. It could have been that "the heavens" were made up of different stuff from the earth, obeying different physical laws, and that the only interaction possible was seeing them. That we could not, for instance, affect them in any way. To differentiate between the way the world is and the way it could have been is meaningful as it's necessary for understanding how it is.

Yes, but the point is that whether there actually is a connection or not, or if there exists parts of the universe with different stuff, is not as far as we can tell what the feeling of "oneness" with the universe is all about. It is just a feeling, and the actual state of the universe is irrelevant.

 

[!Kaggen]

The whole issue about our relationship to the past, present and future and between reality (percept as a physical sensory event) and an abstract representation thereof (concept, thought, idea) is not as simple as common sense makes it appear. As soon as one starts thinking about these things in an abstract way it clouds the view since abstraction is always based on concepts which do not necessary apply to percepts. Percepts as physical sensory events only happen in the present, whilst with concepts their origin is after a percept as a conscious thought i.e. the past. They can be applied to the future as a conscious prediction but we only recognize consciously the correctness of this prediction through further concepts.

So the relationship between the past and the future is expressed in the present as our conscious intent and our unconscious physical action. Who has not experienced "being truly in the present" when our action and our awareness thereof corresponded precisely. That moment when you know the basketball will go through the hoop even though it still has a distance to travel. This ability was the measure of biological survival value and possibly will remain so, before we started relying more and more on our concepts and less and less on our percepts.

I broke my typing hand this morning and I am on my way to a orthopedic surgeon to get it set. I will be out of action for a while. Have fun.

 

[Roboramma]

Hawking's insight that information is not lost after all in a black hole could mean that there is a connectedness between unlikely regions through QM.

Good point, but given that it will take trillions of years for that information to come out... well, it's odd to consider that a connection.

Yes, but the point is that whether there actually is a connection or not, or if there exists parts of the universe with different stuff, is not as far as we can tell what the feeling of "oneness" with the universe is all about. It is just a feeling, and the actual state of the universe is irrelevant.

Certainly, agreed.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I was hoping that you would explain why you do not regard it as a tautology. I cannot possibly guess what meaning you are implying when I see none.

I see none either.

I feel it. Its intuitive, based on some of the reasons I gave in my long post above, and the fact that the numerous arguments I've had with people about this online have either ended up with people agreeing with me by the end or them resorting to ad hominems as their argument crumbles before my omnipotent knowledge of reality.

Either that, or they ask me for evidence I can not supply past internal conscious experience and intuition, the kind that's physically intangible and currently scientifically untestable.

Then, the drugs wear off, and I start becoming scientifically rational again for a bit, till the next thing happens that defies most rational scientific explanation.

Ok, I'm too drunk to make much sense now and I'm off out, so gona stop myself before I get to the point where I forget sarcasm does not work online. To be continued, pleasure speaking.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Zuezzz, do you agree that any affect you can have on, say, the moon, can't get to the moon faster than the speed of light?

Well that's a materialist misnomer if I ever heard one.

Quantum entanglement, for a start. But yea, I'll get back to this point.

 

[Roboramma]

Well that's a materialist misnomer if I ever heard one.

It was a question, it can't be a misnomer. But anyway, as you say you'll get back to it, I can wait.

Quantum entanglement, for a start. But yea, I'll get back to this point.

I don't think you understand quantum entanglement.

 

[Zeuzzz]

If you can write a computer program that maps consciousness onto a rainstorm (and let's posit that this is so), and rainstorms clearly don't possess consciousness, then of necessity the conscious behaviour is in the computer program.

Heh. You missed something out here, Pixy. How is the "the conscious behavior in the computer program" ? That's comparable to saying this contour map I drew/programmed possesses conscious behavior as when the earth moves so do the lines.

The only conscious thing in this example is the person that drew/programmed the machine mathematically to do its job. The program they create "mapping consciousness onto rainstorm" (doesn't even make sense anyway) is just a mechanistic machine doing what its told by our consciousness and nothing more.

And I'm curious. When you say something is "in" something, this infers a spacial location, topologically enclosed by something.

Where "in" the code is the conscious behavior?

Unless you have a different definition of the word in?

Look forward to your reply tomorrow.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes mathematics as the ultimate abstract information can be applied to anything.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote.

You do understand this concept you just don't want to realise it's significance.

What concept?

 

[Itztli]

Where "in" the code is the conscious behavior?

Everywhere. Different parts of the program hold different bits of the conscious behavior. When you zoom in further, you'll find smaller and simpler bits of consciousness, until you zoom in all the way, and you see only dumb mechanical actions.

Pretty much the same answer you'd get if you asked where "in" the brain is the conscious behavior.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Everywhere. Different parts of the program hold different bits of the conscious behavior.

It was our conscious behavior that defined its exact mechanistic and deterministic job. Again, its doing nothing more than we consciously choose to program it to do.

When you zoom in further, you'll find smaller and simpler bits of consciousness

Example, if you please, of the 'bits of conscious'. Note, these have to be proof of the machines own distinct consciousness, not just based on programming algorithms we coded that are entirely the result of our consciousness.

The example can either be in relation to physical material, the programming language used and at what level it arises (from core binary? AscII? hexadecimal? C#? Java algorithms?) and state an example source code, and the exact parts that demonstrate the programs/machines own conscious.

until you zoom in all the way, and you see only dumb mechanical actions.

The whole system in its entirety dumb, not just the small parts. Its not got intelligence or conscious, its just a reflection of the conscious programming choices of the user, it can do nothing more, nothing less.

Pretty much the same answer you'd get if you asked where "in" the brain is the conscious behavior.

You seem to have the impression that conscious has some sort of location or physical basis in the material world, when to date there is absolutely no evidence of that apart from inferences based on its effects on brain chemistry.

And this will be my last post today I'll answer all the others tomorrow.

And hopefully by then pixy will have answered some of mine.