[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T
Nicholas Thompson
thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 11 16:55:05 EDT 2024
Steve,
The scale of your response alone suggests that it cannot be baby steps.
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.
*Dusty comes to cuddle with David when she hears thunder.*
*Does Dusty love David?*
If yes, what else would you expect Dusty to do with respect to David.
given you have made that attribution.
If no, what more would have Dusty have to do, before you would make such an
attribution.
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.
NIck
Nick
On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 4:05 PM steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> Nick -
>
> 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.
>
> 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...
>
> 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 *idea *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.
>
> 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.
>
> Knowing and Knowing-About:
>
> 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".
>
> 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.
>
> 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 ???
>
> Consciousness:
>
> 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
>
> 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?
>
> 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: Global Brain
> Institute)
>
> https://globalbraininstitute.org/ 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")
> .
>
> 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.
>
> Gurgle,
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 9:30 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Glen,
>>
>> This is a test to illustrate somethiing about Gmail to Nick.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 4:37 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On July 9, 2024 2:04:29 PM PDT, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Maybe I should not be replying, as I do believe my dogs (and your cat
>>>> if you have one) are conscious.
>>>>
>>>> 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:
>>>> 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."
>>>> 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."
>>>> 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.
>>>> 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.
>>>> 5-seek "psychological comfort" by crawling into my bed and sleeping on
>>>> my shoulder when the thunderstorm comes.
>>>>
>>>> *All of these are grounded in anthropomorphism—long considered a deadly
>>>> error by ethologists.* (Some contemporary ethologists are exploring
>>>> accepting and leveraging this "error" to extend our understanding of animal
>>>> behavior.)
>>>>
>>>> davew
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> 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:
>>>>
>>>> Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious.
>>>> Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ
>>>> languages.
>>>> Ergo, Animals are not conscious.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore:
>>>>
>>>> All language using beings are conscious.
>>>> George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.
>>>> George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious.
>>>>
>>>> Both are valid syllogisms. But where do the premises come from.
>>>>
>>>> Nick
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Frank Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 505 670-9918
>>
>> Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
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>
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