That's nutty talk. You asked me about elementary particles. I explained that they are all different and gave three examples. You then told me to stop 'jumbling the terms together' and tell you what they are collectively!
That's because, once again, you don't understand the question. If you really knew about QM that well, or even about string theory, which you mentioned, you'd know what the answer is. In fact, you may know, but be fully aware that the answer, coupled with your own arguments, would make you wrong.
So to summarize, you don't know what we mean by the word "consciousness", make up an unevidenced solution to this perceived problem, seek to bring us down to your level by pretending we don't have evidence either, and then play word games to avoid addressing points and answering questions, all the while pretending to not have seen other people's arguments, and concocting weird and ridiculous "rules" to debates, as you go along, that justify your dodgings.
That's because, once again, you don't understand the question. If you really knew about QM that well, or even about string theory, which you mentioned, you'd know what the answer is. In fact, you may know, but be fully aware that the answer, coupled with your own arguments, would make you wrong.
What are you talking about? I gave three examples describing three types of subatomic particle, just like you asked. What answer am I supposed to give? The one you made up in your head and will prove some kind of gotcha? That's not going to happen.
Tell you what, you provide the answer and show how I'm wrong.
Wrong. I am the only one in this entire thread who has put forwards a hypothesis, whether you like it or not. Everybody else is either questioning it, which is fine, or trying to trip me up, which is less fine, or simply flaunting their own twattism.
Elementary particles are most probably just, at their most basic, fluctuations in the quantum field. A fluctuation is not a thing, it's not made of anything, it's rather a motion, an action, a process. According to you, those don't exist. Ergo, particles don't exist. Ergo, nothing exists.
That's absurd, of course, but that's, again, a consequence of your own argument.
Wrong. I am the only one in this entire thread who has put forwards a hypothesis, whether you like it or not.
Elementary particles are most probably just, at their most basic, fluctuations in the quantum field. A fluctuation is not a thing, it's not made of anything, it's rather a motion, an action, a process. According to you, those don't exist. Ergo, particles don't exist. Ergo, nothing exists.
That may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant because a field is a thing. If you want to argue that the quantum waveform is the only thing that exists then fine, it's even a reasonable proposition, but it doesn't lend any weight whatsoever to your contention that actions are things. A fluctuation is not an action and we can demonstrate this by performing empirical measurements of the waveform and resultant particles.
We can also measure how fast you're running, so it being measurable does not make something not an action. Again you seem to be foiled by your misunderstanding of words.
No, it isn't. It's nonsense. I'm sure with a minimum of effort I could make it into an unfalsifiable mess but like your own theory, that wouldn't save it.
Face it: your theory has zero evidence, as you've admitted, and you're reduced to playing games with words and definitions in order to avoid addressing its flaws. It's pretty sad when you have to change the meaning of "exists" to avoid its consequences.
We can also measure how fast you're running, so it being measurable does not make something not an action. Again you seem to be foiled by your misunderstanding of words.
It's you who don't understand basic concepts. How do you measure how fast someone is running? Do you measure the running, or do you measure the position of that person at time A vs their position at time B? Give up on this idea that 'running' is a thing, you know very well you're talking nonsense.
No, it isn't. It's nonsense. I'm sure with a minimum of effort I could make it into an unfalsifiable mess but like your own theory, that wouldn't save it.
Face it: your theory has zero evidence, as you've admitted, and you're reduced to playing games with words and definitions in order to avoid addressing its flaws. It's pretty sad when you have to change the meaning of "exists" to avoid its consequences.
What nonsense. Of course they are things. How do we know this? Because the have empirical properties. You can measure a fluctuation and quantify it. I'm still waiting, after several pages, to hear what properties of 'running' you can measure.
And now you're conflating quantum observations with classical ones. You've realised you're on a hiding to nothing trying to claim that 'running' is just as real as 'legs', so you've moved on to quantum waveforms, and you're wrong here too. The quantum waveform has very real attributes in the form of probability that can be calculated for every point within itself. We know the waveform is real because it can collapse to form particles (or, if you're a believer of many worlds) exist in superposition with alternate versions of 'itself'.
"Just as real" doesn't mean "the same as". You seem to have a problem with the former because you think it means the latter. Again, it's your failing with words that cause you issues.
The amusing thing is that this discussion about what "exist" means is just a distraction.
In the end baron knows that actions occur. It doesn't matter if they can't be said to exist according to his narrow definition. The point is that there is something known as an action and they happen in reality. He's admitted to that.
But he can't take the extra step and accept that perhaps consciousness doesn't "exist" but is rather just such an action/behaviour. He wants it to be a thing, so he has to twist words to make sure that they can't be anything else.
Penrose has done the math which is more than one could say about the millions of New Age dabblers who want to believe that reality can be anything we want it to be.
In the examples you quoted, however, Penrose gets the math wrong. (Although the theory of computation is a kind of math, it's a different kind of math than is used in general relativity.)
I'm hesitant to put words in Penrose's mouth, because I don't have the background in math and physics to paraphrase anything he says. But as far as I can tell, he breaks with artificial intelligence theory by saying that something about how the brain works might be non-computational. There could be room for "insight" or something similar.
There "could be room", of course, but the examples Penrose gives are not evidence for human abilities that go beyond anything that could be accomplished by a sufficiently powerful computing device. Penrose gives examples of problems that are algorithmically undecidable, and then acts as though there is some reason to think humans are capable of deciding the problem.
Another example is a chess positionthat looks (to a computer) like an obvious win for black, but it's a position where white can draw or even win. (It's also a very odd position, premised on someone promoting 2 pawns to bishop status.) Somehow the human brain could override the computers on this, but I don't understand why. He feels or at least felt that human consciousness is not algorithmic - when a person thinks, there's something else going on besides classical computing.
If it's a chess position "where white can draw or even win", then a sufficiently powerful computer, given enough time, can prove that. That's a mathematical theorem; chess is a fully deterministic finite two-person game in which two people, each with perfect information, alternate moves.
There are only twelve different kinds of pieces that are possible in chess, six of each color, so there are fewer than 1264 legal configurations of pieces on a chess board. The legal transitions between configurations are fully determined by the rules of chess. That gives you a finite search tree. If "white can draw or even win", that can be determined by a finite search of the finite number of configurations that can be derived from that configuration under the rules of chess.
Computers can do that sort of thing. It is, in fact, the sort of thing they are good at. The reason today's chess-playing computers don't perform a complete search is that it would take too long. That's why they use partial searches combined with heuristics. Human chess players appear to do much the same thing, relying more on heuristic pruning of the search because humans don't do brute force search as fast as computers do.
ETA: The article linked by Minoosh shows a particular chess position and quotes James Tagg as saying "But, for a computer, the puzzle requires an enormous number of calculations, far too many for even today's supercomputers." That statement is just stupid. Tagg must be assuming computers are capable of solving such puzzles only by performing brute force searches in the stupidest of all possible ways. In reality, computers can give priority to the (heuristically) most likely paths to a solution, without losing the computational completeness provided by a brute force search. Tagg's claim therefore holds only so long as we insist that computers be constrained by Tagg's artificial stupidity; Tagg is not stating any limitation of artificial intelligence.
So if/when Penrose says the position "looks (to a computer) like an obvious win for black", he must be thinking of computers that use the fallible heuristics that are employed by today's chess-playing computer programs. If he thinks he's talking about any fundamental limitation of chess-playing computers, he's wrong. And if you understand that Penrose isn't talking about fundamental limitations of computers, then you should also understand that his argument falls apart.
Humans are certainly capable of guessing, which the kinds of algorithms Penrose is discussing cannot do, but humans are at least as capable of guessing wrong as guessing right, and the kinds of algorithms Penrose is discussing cannot be wrong (because if Penrose allowed algorithms to be wrong, he couldn't say those algorithms don't exist, because coming up with less than perfectly reliable nondeterministic algorithms for the problems Penrose discusses is quite possible and often easy).
For humans to decide the computationally undecidable problems offered as examples by Penrose, humans would have to be able to give a yes/no answer for every instance of those problems, and every one of those answers would have to be correct. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest humans are able to do that.
Because that's what internet's philosophy fan club has reduced philosophy down to, a game of adding some made up inherent quality of something to something that exists distinct and separate from all of its qualities and features and factors.
Something can look, act, respond, react, interact as if the have X factor, but they still not have X factor in a way that is completely untestable, undefinable, and literally meaningless.
It's like arguing that you can have a two-dimensional object with 4 equal sides and 4 equal 90 degree angles but it isn't a square because "square" has some additional quality tacked on to that they will literally never explain so it's possible to a P-Square, a two-dimension object that has literally every quality we define a square with, but still isn't a "true" square because there's a "hard problem of square" because they say so.
Six and a half years ago there was an interesting thread on mereological nihilism and identity. (Not consciousness per se, but I tried out some lines of thought there that might be applicable.)
Thank you. That thread is certainly more interesting than this one.
One of the points raised in that thread, by JoeMorgue and others, is the utilitarian role of language.
In this thread, we have seen statements of the form "X does not exist" being asserted as though the meaning of the word "exist" is determined by the objective reality of the universe in which we live.
In reality, however, the meaning of the word "exist" is determined by social conventions adopted by the English-speaking fragment of one species. The utility of such words comes from two sources: (1) shared agreement concerning what the word means, and (2) the power of using such words as succinct abstractions for ideas that would otherwise be harder to think about as well as harder to communicate.
baron is demonstrating the utilitarian value of (1) and (2) by (1) disagreeing with the commonly accepted meanings of words and (2) browbeating those who dare to think in terms of those commonly accepted meanings instead of adopting baron's nomenclature and ontology. We don't have to imagine how much worse off we'd be if we abandoned (1) and (2); we can just read this thread.
baron is demonstrating the utilitarian value of (1) and (2) by (1) disagreeing with the commonly accepted meanings of words and (2) browbeating those who dare to think in terms of those commonly accepted meanings instead of adopting baron's nomenclature and ontology. We don't have to imagine how much worse off we'd be if we abandoned (1) and (2); we can just read this thread.
At this point there is no way I'd adopt his definitions. As we've seen, he'd just back up further and ask me to meet him half way there all over again.
At this point there is no way I'd adopt his definitions. As we've seen, he'd just back up further and ask me to meet him half way there all over again.
What people need to understand is that you and I played the "I'm going to demand we 'clarify' the terms over and over until everything is defined in such a way that you're agreeing I'm correct before I even allow the conversation to start" game with somebody who played far better than anyone involved in this discussion could ever hope to.
For goodness sake. Things in motion are things. Motion is not a thing (in the verbacious sense of the word). To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. I've given you the option of evidencing your claim time and time again, by listing just one empirical property of an action, yet you can't do it. An alternative, for your argument, would be to skip the evidence but show that entities can be real without having any attributes. You can't show this either. What it comes down to is you stamping your foot and shouting, "Believe me!" and then insulting my grasp of English when I don't (and if you want to start a thread on the premise your English is superior to mine then don that hard hat and give it a try).
What people need to understand is that you and I played the "I'm going to demand we 'clarify' the terms over and over until everything is defined in such a way that you're agreeing I'm correct before I even allow the conversation to start" game with somebody who played far better than anyone involved in this discussion could ever hope to.
Incessant meta-analysis plus derails and insults from the sidelines. The preferred option of the poster who knows zero about the topic and resents those who do.
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