[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Jul 11 20:26:19 EDT 2024
SG you inglorious basterd! You and Dan Gupta IVo !
I engaged your ideosyncratic vector-space encoding of consciousness,
Dual-Field and all (I cranked my setting to the 1.0 stops, though I
think 1.0 - epsilon is more correct).
I couldn't guess easily what to do with the clip-board full of JSON
encoded results...
I now want a multi(5)dimensional spring-embedder and/or a Grand Tour or
an SOM of this space and the "implied" higher-dimensional space this is
a mere scaffolding or armature of? But maybe that is just me... What
does this "whole" space look like intuitively?
SS
> Lol. That’s fine, except for the suspicious promotion Ecological Dual
> Fields!
>
> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Stephen Guerin
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 11, 2024 4:36 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be
> "mystery...deeper".T
>
> Nick
>
> you wrote:
> *> 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.
> *
> Based on your request above, Dan created 5 questions for you. Please
> answer by moving the sliders and hit the button to copy the results
> and email it to the list. I promise to carefully consider your
> answers. I asked Dan to do his best to partition the
> consciousness space to understand where you are coming from and give
> the closest philosophers to your thinking. Any issue with the
> questions, partitioning or philosopher vectors we can follow up with Dan.
>
> Consciousness Questions:https://guerin.acequia.io/consciousnessTensor.html
>
> (from the AI maker that brought you Elf Selector)
>
> others are welcome to post their results. Dan may create a
> group report with enough samples...
>
>
> https://guerin.acequia.io/consciousnessTensor.html
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Stephen Guerin
> CEO, Founder
> https://simtable.com
> stephen.guerin at simtable.com
>
> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
> <https://hwpi.harvard.edu/eps-visualization-research-laboratory/home>
>
>
> mobile: (505)577-5828
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 2:55 PM Nicholas Thompson
> <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
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> Research:
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