<div dir="ltr"><div>Steve, <br></div><div><br></div><div>The scale of your response alone suggests that it cannot be baby steps. <br></div><div><br></div><div>I guess I am proposing a method here, one inn we work outward from an evocative experience to explore our understandings of contraversial concepts, and that we do it in relatively short bursts. <br></div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Dusty comes to cuddle with David when she hears thunder.</i></b></div><div><b><i>Does Dusty love David?</i></b></div><div><b><i><br></i></b></div><div>If yes, what else would you expect Dusty to do with respect to David. given you have made that attribution.<br></div><div>If no, what more would have Dusty have to do, before you would make such an attribution.</div><div><br></div><div>I would like to respond to an inference that there is something patronizing about my insisting on a method, as if I think you need thought-therapy and I am the guy to give it. In reply, I only would say that if somebody were willing to ask me short, to-the-point questions about my thinking on any matter and explore carefully my answers, I would eternally grateful. I might even cuddle with them in a thunderstorm.</div><div><br></div><div>NIck <br></div><div><br></div><div>Nick <br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 4:05 PM steve smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Nick -</p>
<p>I'm glad you acknowledged (in another branch of this thread?) the
"grumpiness" aspect of your initiation/participation in this
thread. Your analogy around thought/feeling "expression" and that
of pimple popping is in fact very apt if a bit graphic. I do
think many of us want this apparently deeply thorny/paradoxical
problem to be easier than it is? And the plethora of complexly
subtle dis/mis-agreements on language around consciousness,
intelligence, cognition, (self) awareness, qualia complicates that
yet more. <br>
</p>
<p>I don't know if my own baby-steps are helpful, given that my
background/perspective might align more with DaveW than most
others here (I'm very sympathetic with a pan-consciousness
perspective)? maybe it parses as baby-babble more than
baby-steps...<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I
missed most of this (and related) threads but am surprised at
where this seems to be going. I always associated
consciousness with subjective experience and not necessarily
with self awareness. The "hard problem of consciousness" is
qualia, not self-awareness. No? An AI agent cannot
understand language on anything other than a superficial basis
because it has no idea what, for example "wet," means.
Nevertheless, it will be quite good at stringing words
together that say coherent things about wetness. An AI agent
has no <i>idea </i>about anything. At the same time, an AI
agent will be quite good at creating coherent statements about
very many things. Just because an AI agent is able to create
coherent statements does not mean that those
statements reflect the agent's ideas--since it has no ideas.</div>
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<p>Russ's point here is a good pivot point for me in this
conversation if it is possible to make the pivot. It may not be.
<br>
</p>
<p>Knowing and Knowing-About:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> I use the former to be the quality of qualia... not easily
formalizeable nor quantifiable nor with obvious models which are
not intrinsically subjective. "Knowing-About" is for me
reserved for the formalized models of "facts about the world and
relations between ideas" and when I say "formalized" I don't
preclude storytelling or the highly vilified "just so
stories". <br>
</p>
<p>Formalized mathematical, statistical, logical models with
digital computer simulations (or analog electronic, mechanical,
hydraulic, pneumatic "circuits" or "systems") are "knowing
about"... a steam train for example embodies "knowing about"
converting carbon-fuel into linear motion across long distances,
carrying heavy loads by way of many repeatable mechanisms...
the implementation and operation of such a device/system is a
"proof" in some sense of the design. <br>
</p>
<p> On top of that design/system are other design/systems (say the
logic of Railroad Robber Baronages) upon which yet other systems
(say Industrial-revolution era proto-hyper-capitalism) on top of
which rides trans-global corporatism and nationalism in their
own "gyre and gimbal" with a in intra-stellar and eventually
inter-stellar variation in the sense of Asimov's Foundation and
Empire or perhaps for the youth culture here (under 60?) George
Lucas' Star Wars Empire or Roddenberry's Star Trek Federation vs
??? <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Consciousness:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A the lowest level consciousness or perhaps proto-consciousness
registers for me as "having a model of the world useful for
guiding behaviour toward
surviving/thriving/reproducing/collectivizing". This
permeates all of life from somewhere down at the single-celled
bacteria/archaea/fungi/phyto-thingies/ up to and through
vertebrates/mammals/hominids/sapiens <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>On the reflection of whether my cat or dog, or the hummingbirds
outside my window or the mice trying to sneak back into my house
have "consciousness", or even more pointedly the mosquito I
slapped into a blood (my blood by the way) spot on my forearm
last night, have "consciousness"... while each of these appear
to have a "consciousness" I know it to be variously more or less
familiar to my own. My elaborate (unfettered?) imagination
allows me to make up (just so?) stories about how cetaceans,
cephalapods, jellyfish all variously have aspects of their
"consciousness' that I could (do?) recognize (empathize
with?). So I would want a multivalued function with at least
two simple scalars: Familiarity-to-Me(Conscioiusness) and
Potency-of(Consciousness), pick your scale... my identical twin
or maybe conjoined twin might max out on the first scale while a
nematode or a bacterium might trail off toward nil on the first
AND second scale. And beyond the scale of organic life into
artificial life and beyond, the "familiarity" of a glider or
oscillator in the GameO'Life or the braided rings of Saturn,
even less significant but not zero? The Potency-scale seems to
be something like *agency* which feels absolute for most of us
except Robert Sapolsky while the *agency* of an electron or
neutrino seems registered at *absolute zero*, though the Quantum
Consciousness folks maybe put it at max and our own more an
illusive projection of that?<br>
</p>
<p>The idea of "collective individuation" (e.g. mashup of Eleanor
Ostrom's collectives and Jung's individuation) suggests that
perception, cognition, intelligence, even consciousness may well
be a collective phenomena. Our organs, tissues, cells,
organelles, macromolecules, CHON++ molecules, atoms,
baryons/fermions, quarks, strings, branes are on a loose
hierarchy of diminishing Familiarity-Consciousness and
Potency-Consciousness. I'm more interested (these days) in the
emergent collective consciousness of the noosphere and perhaps
the symbiotic culture of humanity and life-at-all-scales
(SCHLAAS?) it feels wild and science-fictiony to assert that
earth's biosphere has already (in the last 150 years) conjured a
nervous system, a global-brain (ala Francis Heylighen: <a rel="noreferrer">Global Brain Institute)</a></p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer"></a><a href="https://globalbraininstitute.org/" target="_blank">https://globalbraininstitute.org/</a>
with "our own" Bollen, Joslyn, Rodriguez still on the Board of
Technical Advisors. I scoffed at this somewhat 25 years ago
(mostly because of the hubris of "Global" and "Brain")<a rel="noreferrer">.</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a rel="noreferrer">OK Nick, so not "baby steps"
more like a hyper-baby's mad dash through an obstacle course or
maybe a pentathalon? I tried shunting all this to George
Tremblay IVo but he referred me to Gussie Tumbleroot who cheered
me on on my careening ideational orbits. <br>
</a></p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer">Gurgle,</a></p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer"> - Steve<br>
</a></p>
<p><u><br>
</u></p>
<p><u><br>
</u></p>
<blockquote type="cite">
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</u></font><span>
</span>-- Russ
Abbott
<br>
Professor
Emeritus,
Computer
Science<br>
California
State
University,
Los Angeles<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at
9:30 AM Frank Wimberly <<a href="mailto:wimberly3@gmail.com" target="_blank">wimberly3@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Glen,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is a test to illustrate somethiing about Gmail to
Nick.</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at
4:37 PM glen <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com" target="_blank">gepropella@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>
<div dir="auto"><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085" target="_blank">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085</a><br>
<br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="auto">On July 9, 2024 2:04:29 PM PDT, Prof
David West <<a href="mailto:profwest@fastmail.fm" target="_blank">profwest@fastmail.fm</a>>
wrote:</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div style="font-family:Arial">Maybe I should not
be replying, as I do believe my dogs (and your
cat if you have one) are conscious.<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">I have not
experienced a Vulcan Mind-Meld with either of my
dogs, so I cannot say with certainty they are
conscious—I must infer it from observations:<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">1- interactions
with other dogs would seem to indicate they
"remember" past interactions and do not require
the same butt-sniffing protocol with dogs they
have met at the park frequently. Also they seem
to remember who plays with who and who doesn't.
"That ball is not mine, this one is."<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">2-they modify their
behavior depending on the tenor, sharpness, and
volume of barks, ear positions, tail wagging
differences, by the other dogs; e.g., "that's
enough."<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">3-They do not
communicate to me in English, but seem to accept
communication from me in that language—not
trained responses to commands, but "listening to
conversations" between myself and Mary and
reacting to words (e.g., dog park) that are
exchanged in those conversations. Mary and I are
totally sedentary and speaking in conversational
tone, so pretty sure there we are not sending
'signals' akin to training words, training tone
of voice.<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">4-they seem to
remember trauma, (one of our dogs spent three
days with dead owner before anyone knew the
owner was deceased and will bite if anyone tries
to forcefully remove him from my (current bonded
owner) presence.<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">5-seek
"psychological comfort" by crawling into my bed
and sleeping on my shoulder when the
thunderstorm comes.<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><b><i><u>All of
these are grounded in
anthropomorphism—long considered a deadly
error by ethologists.</u></i></b> (Some
contemporary ethologists are exploring accepting
and leveraging this "error" to extend our
understanding of animal behavior.)<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial">davew<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Arial"><br>
</div>
<div>On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas
Thompson wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" id="m_-9126503415537066979m_6731191525240660294m_3416684508796851780qt">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>While I find all the ancillary
considerations raised on the original thread
extremely interesting, I would like to
reopen the discussion of Conscious as a
Mystery and ask that those that join it stay
close to the question of what consciousness
is and how we know it when we see it. Baby
Steps. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Where were we? I think I was asking
Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and anybody else
who thought that animals were not conscious
(i.e., not aware of their own awareness)
what basis they had in experience for
thinking that.. One offering for such an
experience is the absence of language in
animals. Because my cat cannot describe
his experience in words, he cannot be
conscious. This requires the following
syllogism:<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Nothing that does not employ a language
(or two?) is conscious.<br>
</div>
<div>Animals (with ;the possible exception of
signing apes) do not employ languages.<br>
</div>
<div>Ergo, Animals are not conscious. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>But I was trying to find out the basis
for the first premise. How do we know that
there are no non-linguistic beings that are
not conscious. I hope we could rule out the
answer,"because they are non-linguistic",
both in its strictly tautological or merely
circular form. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There is a closely related syllogism
which we also need to explore:<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>All language using beings are conscious.<br>
</div>
<div>George Peter Tremblay IV is a
language-using being.<br>
</div>
<div>George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Both are valid syllogisms. But where do
the premises come from.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Nick<br>
</div>
</div>
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<span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">Frank Wimberly<br>
140 Calle Ojo Feliz<br>
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505 670-9918
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