[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jul 11 20:02:49 EDT 2024
Nick -
(of course) I've larded up my usual style of response below (maybe only
for my own need to "express" the buildup of mental-pus that comes with
everything I hear here and elsewhere) but to save you (and anyone else
who cares) the burden of parsing a few dozen lines of back-and-forth, I
offer the punchline. If you are curious about how I came to said
(vaguely) concise punchline you can read the rest after the <horizontal
line> element below:
A) Can you recognize that there is a spectrum/continuum of things you
would acknowledge as "conscious" between the two extrema (perhaps) of a
(presumably apex-complex) human/cephalopod/cetacean and that of a quark
or a brane or a string-loop or some abstract monad? B) if yes, what are
the implications of this? or C) why does quantizing "conscioiusness"
into "humans like me" and "every other bit of life" feel necessary,
useful or appealing?
Steve
If FriAM typical discourse is the Thunderstorm, is this a (weak) cuddle?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve,
>
> The scale of your response alone suggests that it cannot be baby steps.
Thus recognizing it was more of a baby (naive) pentathalon (long,
arduous and multi-modal) hellride of a traverse through the implied space.
>
> 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.
yes, let us extrude short strands of noodle and see how they criss-cross.
>
> */Dusty comes to cuddle with David when she hears thunder./*
> */Does Dusty love David?/*
Dave (or does he self-identify as David?) loves Dusty and finds Dusty's
cuddling sufficiently similar/familiar to his own cuddling to attribute
it to love if he is in the mood to do so.
> 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.
Qualified yes... Dusty could cower under the bed, leaving Dave to
choose to coax Dusty out and cuddle Dusty, giving Dusty the "love" or at
least comfort which Dave would offer as the closest cross-species
expression of love he knows how to offer in this moment. Dave loves
Dusty, Dusty dog-loves Dave. They are reciprocal but asymmetric in
quality, even if either would give their lives for the other?
> 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.
If in fact you were to have intended (consciously or not) as
patronizing, I take it as an gesture of love, of filial empathy, of
generous guidance from someone who has been around at least as many
trees as I have... I definitely need or seek thought/spiritual
therapy/guaidance from every quarter, including this one.
> 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.
I would choose to give you this level of fine-grain attention around
your fascination with vortices in the context of meteorology (and other
domains) more than this domain, but if this is the one you prefer (for
the moment), let me ask a short, three-part but to-the-point question
(and leave it to you to ignore the fecundly laden pregnant assumptions
hidden by the implied simplicity of the construction):
_A) Can you recognize that there is a spectrum/continuum of things you
would acknowledge as "conscious" between the two extrema (perhaps) of a
(presumably apex-complex) human/cephalopod/cetacean and that of a quark
or a brane or a string-loop or some abstract monad? B) if yes, what are
the implications of this? or C) why does quantizing "conscioiusness"
into "humans like me" and "every other bit of life" feel necessary,
useful or appealing?_
Steve
Steve
>
> 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
>>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . /
>>> -.-. --- -.. .
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays
>>> 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>>> to (un)subscribe
>>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>> archives: 5/2017 thru present
>>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>>>
>>
>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-.
>> --- -.. .
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays
>> 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribe
>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives: 5/2017 thru present
>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Frank Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 505 670-9918
>>
>> Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. ---
>> -.. .
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p
>> Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribe
>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives: 5/2017 thru present
>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>>
>>
>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: 5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
> 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20240711/c7912c92/attachment.html>
More information about the Friam
mailing list