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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Hi Frank, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>The problem is that one has immediately to ask, what is the contrast class of experiencing consciousness? Experiencing non-consciousness? I think for your line of thinking, where consciousness is direct, that’s an oxymoron. For my line of thinking, when I woke up from my surgery and 24 hours had passed, I had a powerful experience of my non-consciousness. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Nick <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Nicholas S. Thompson<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Clark University<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/"><span style='color:#0563C1'>http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> Friam [mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Frank Wimberly<br><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:33 AM<br><b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>Jon,<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>How about "experiences consciousness" in place of has consciousness.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Frsnk<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>-----------------------------------<br>Frank Wimberly<br><br>My memoir:<br><a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly">https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly</a><br><br>My scientific publications:<br><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2</a><br><br>Phone (505) 670-9918<o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 11:03 AM Jon Zingale <<a href="mailto:jonzingale@gmail.com">jonzingale@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Nick,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>I love that the title of this thread is 'A question for tomorrow'.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>My position continues to be that the label `conscious` is meaningful,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>though along with you, I am not sure what language to use around it.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>For instance, can something <i>have</i> consciousness? That said, a<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>conservative scoping of the phenomena I would wish to describe<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>with <i>consciousness language</i> begins with granting consciousness<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>to more than 7 billion things on this planet alone. Presently, for those<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>that agree thus far, it appears that the only way to synthesize new things<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>with consciousness is to have sex (up to some crude equivalence).<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>This constraint seems an unreasonable limitation and so the problem<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>of synthesizing consciousness strikes me as reasonably near, ie.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'> `a question for tomorrow` and not some distant future.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>You begin by asking about the Turing machine, an abstraction which<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>summarizes what we can say about processing information. Here,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>I am going to extend Lee's comment and ask that we consider<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>particular implementations or better particular embodiments.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Hopefully said without too much hubris, given enough time and<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>memory, I can compute anything that a Turing machine can compute.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>The games `Magic the Gathering` and `Mine Craft` are Turing<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>complete. I would suspect that under some characterization, the<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Mississippi river is Turing complete. It would be a real challenge<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>for me state what abstractions like `Mine Craft` experience, but<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>sometimes I can speak to my own experience. Oscar Hammerstein<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>mused about what Old Man River knows.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Naively, it seems to me that some kind of information processing,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>though not sufficient, is necessary for experience and for a foundations<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>for consciousness. Whether the information processor needs to be<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Turing complete is not immediately obvious to me, perhaps a finite-<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>state machine will do. Still, I do not think that a complete description of<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>consciousness (or whatever it means to experience) can exist without<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>speaking to how it is that a thing comes to sense its world.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers, musicians<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>analogue synthesizer know?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Cheers,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Jonathan Zingale<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div><p class=MsoNormal>============================================================<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College<br>to unsubscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>archives back to 2003: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a> by Dr. Strangelove<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote></div></div></body></html>