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Quote from: David Cooper on 09/09/2013 17:54:40Quote from: cheryl j on 09/09/2013 03:45:39A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.I don't know if the cat and lamp post is the best analogy. Even if the lamp post is set up to turn on all the other lamp posts in the yard that do not sense the cat, they essentially become parts of the same machine. Not to mention the fact that the lamp post is not really "aware" of a cat, or the significance of cats, it's detecting something like movement and is as likely to be set off by rustling leaves. In the chimp experiment, the threat was someone dressed as a veterinarian with a large needle, that all the chimps were afraid of because of past painful vaccinations. I suspect whatever experiment is offered up, someone will claim they can replicate the details of it with computers, or that the experiment cannot prove what the chimp is actually "feeling," therefore it cannot tell us anything about true consciousness, whose definition, like the word "feeling," remains elusive and constantly changing.As flawed as these experiments may be, I still feel they contribute something to the bulk of evidence supporting a biological basis of consciousness. And certainly the explanations are more reasonable than claiming the consciousness springs from nothing at all, which reminds me of the spontaneous generation arguments hundreds of years ago. Recently there was news about the first brain to brain interface, in which a researcher at the University of Washington was able to move another scientist's hand across campus. That isn't exactly a Vulcan mind meld, but it's pretty cool, and it does make you wonder if these methods will become sophisticated enough to allow someone to experience another person's consciousness. But I am also afraid that if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness. Nevertheless, experiments can invalidate certain claims. DonQuixote asserted earlier that his consciousness or cognitive understanding informs his emotional responses, but fMRI imaging has shown that is not the actual sequence of events, make of that what you will. And you are probably also aware of FMRI imaging that demonstrates the brain deciding to act before the subject is aware that he has decided to do something. Until we can do mind melds, we may be limited in explaining the qualitative aspects of feelings, but we can certainly find out what happens when inside the brain.But again, no matter what research methodology or evidence is offered up, no matter how much science progresses towards understanding phenomena which were once thought to be not only unmeasurable, but untraceable and undefinable, it's never enough for those who cannot or do not want to believe that we are physical beings and mortal.
Quote from: cheryl j on 09/09/2013 03:45:39A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.That isn't a hallmark of consciousness (regardless of this label that is usually attached to it), but an indication that a certain level of intelligence has been reached. A machine can be programmed to recognise other machines and to judge that they have a different perspective on things, but with no consciousness being involved. It's important not to be misled by the labels where someone has incorrectly attached the word "consciousness" to something. "Self aware" does not require consciousness, but a lot of people assume that consciousness is tied up in the idea of awareness. A security lamp that switches on when a cat walks past at night is "aware" of the cat, but there is no concsiousness involved. Consciousness is not awareness, but a feeling of awareness; a feeling of understanding something; a feeling of some kind or other. It is always a feeling.
A hall mark of consciousness is not just being self aware, but knowing that others are also aware, and being able to imagine or see something from the perspective of another conscious being.
How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :Our alleged evolved ability to rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ? How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 17:36:14How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :Our alleged evolved ability to rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ? How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ?It might be more correct to say that the genes aren't overridden - they program for a system which is capable of calculating intelligently, so the genes are still winning out. It's only the simpler systems which aren't able to calculate intelligently that are being overridden by the newer system involving complex thinking. When you look at it like that, it's not so very different from two competing instincts, one which tries to make an animal run away from a possible danger while another instinct makes it stay where it is in order to continue feeding on some good fruit that's growing on a bush. If the fear outweighs the desire to eat, the animal will run away. When you add some decent calculation into the equation and make it a person feeding from a bush covered in fruit while a lion is approaching, that person can override the fear based on the knowledge that there is a hidden ravine between him and the lion which it won't be able to cross. Knowledge and understanding overrides the fear and may even remove the fear altogether. This could happen in many animals too, their knowledge of things unseen being used to override/modify their feelings. It's a small step from there to more complex thoughts also being able to override instinctive behaviours, so it isn't such a jump to get to the point where we can reject our instinct to be violent and suppress those desires deliberately in order to live in a more peaceful, safe society.
The human mind or the human consciousness are no mechanical processes : no one has been able to prove just that = makes no sense whatsoever either , unless we confine ourselves within the narrow exclusive boundaries key holes or tunnel visions of the mechanical materialism on the subject .
At the other hand , If consciousness is real , you cannot "build " it in mechanical systems it cannot rise from = i do not see how one can do just that in fact , no matter how you try to "incorporate or integrate " consciousness in mechanical systems ,via trying to find out how the mechanical data gets translated or converted to consciousness, as you put it at least : maybe our consciousness just gets informed somehow ,don't tell me how, i dunno, via our sensory "inputs " about some data it acts upon as a result by triggering the response to that data generated by our senses, to action , i dunno - I am as in the dark in this as we all are : we are stuck in this, for the time being at least .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 18:35:27The human mind or the human consciousness are no mechanical processes : no one has been able to prove just that = makes no sense whatsoever either , unless we confine ourselves within the narrow exclusive boundaries key holes or tunnel visions of the mechanical materialism on the subject .The problem is that we have a mechanical biological machine that acts mechanically without appearing to need consciousness. A simple example is with pain where an input signalling potential damage feeds into some part of the brain where pain is perhaps experienced, then a signal goes on from there to trigger an action to respond to it, but the part of that model where pain is experienced is superfluous as the input signal might as well just become the output signal without any pain being generated in the middle. That doesn't mean that pain isn't generated somewhere along the way, but with humans at least there is also data generated which asserts that there was some pain generated. If that is really happening (i.e. pain is being felt and the information is being informed of that), then there has to be a mechanism of some kind which generates that information, so putting consciousness into the model requires it to tie into the whole system mechanically.
QuoteAt the other hand , If consciousness is real , you cannot "build " it in mechanical systems it cannot rise from = i do not see how one can do just that in fact , no matter how you try to "incorporate or integrate " consciousness in mechanical systems ,via trying to find out how the mechanical data gets translated or converted to consciousness, as you put it at least : maybe our consciousness just gets informed somehow ,don't tell me how, i dunno, via our sensory "inputs " about some data it acts upon as a result by triggering the response to that data generated by our senses, to action , i dunno - I am as in the dark in this as we all are : we are stuck in this, for the time being at least .It is not beyond possibility that consciousness is not found within the biological machines that we see. They could be more like books. You read a book and get caught up in the story and feel for the characters in it. This universe might be a virtual realm that holds interactive stories, and consciousnesses on the outside (the real us) get tied into it such that they can feel for the machines which they are in control of. But the key thing here is that controlling aspect. If our feelings are causing those machines to behave differently depending on how we feel, there must be a causation mechanism involved by which those feelings lead to the machines being steered in their behaviour. You can try to replace mechanism with magic, but in doing so you can only hide mechanism - there must still be a mechanism by which any magic operates, so it is not a good answer to anything.
How can you consider the following as a scientific approach , and not as a materialistic view point :
Our alleged evolved ability to rebel against our genes ,via our evolved brain , and therefore to be independent in that regard at least : how can our mechanical brain accomplish such a performance then ? How can a mechanical system such as our brain generate such independence ? How can that alleged independence "emerge " from our complex evolved so-called mechanical brain then ? You tell me ...
See that post of yours here above ,as a reply to mine on the subject thus :(So , you have been deceiving us , I trusted you ....learn to live with it ....things like that .... ).
our Cooper or dlorde here would say that mechanical systems or programmed machines can make "decisions" also ,even though they cannot be conscious ...
.. i think that our decision -making process is in a way different than those of machines, in the sense that our mind did not "emerge " from our evolved brain = our mind has some degree of independence= our mind is not mechanical ...I dunno
Pain is real ,not an illusion, dude :
You cannot build the human real feeling of pain in a machine either ,no matter how hard you try to do just that, you can just make it simulate that = you cannot make any mechanical system generate a totally different process than his ,no way .
Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way .
what if consciousness is primordial ? What if consciousness is the real boss that 's in charge of our whole system ,and our biology is just its executive power ,relatively speaking ,so to speak ? What if brain and mind are 2 different systems in relation to their entirely different natures that do interact with each other , but do not cause each other ? How they might correlate with each other is still a mystery indeed .
But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .
Do not confuse the ordinary "magical" tricks (That's no magic in fact : that can be explained by certain corresponding mechanisms indeed ) conducted by illusionists, no matter how sophisticated they might ever be, with the hard problem of consciousness .
You do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to introduce magic into a mechanical system , by trying to make consciousness fit into it .
What if consciousness is immaterial and therefore it behaves via non-mechanical processes then ?
We cannot prove all the above to be the case either , as we cannot try to explain how the different systems : consciousness and brain , do interact with each other , without causing each other = the executive power does not get caused by the legislative one = the legislative power does not create the executive power , so to speak , physically , or vice versa = the ordinary executive power is made of already existing people and vice versa = this is just an analogy , no comparison though .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 19:43:20Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way....But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.
Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way....But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .
Quote from: cheryl j on 10/09/2013 13:59:28...if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness. That would be a fun experiment, though any feelings involved in the human triggered by the inputs from the chimp would depend on human feelings which might be nothing like those experienced by the chimp. It is interesting though that our friend DonQuichotte thinks chimps lack consciousness. There's a biological machine which is almost the same as us and superior intellectually to some people, and yet chimps supposedly lack consciousness while people have it. All these mechanisms which we have that are driven by likes and dislikes, by discomfort and pleasure, are unnecessary in all other creatures? They are all zombies? Why do we have them if all other creatures have no need of them?
...if you were able to do that and hooked a person up to a chimp, DonQuixote would claim they were only experiencing the "illusion" of the chimp's consciousness.
I never said that chimps lacked consciousness : they have a lesser degree of consciousness , compared to humans , for example (There is no comparison between the 2 in fact , in that regard at least ):there are degrees and levels of consciousness we can find in all creatures ,...............In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .
Quote from: David Cooper on 10/09/2013 20:48:54Quote from: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 19:43:20Consciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way....But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.It would seem that it has to work both ways. If consciousness is immaterial, truly separate, different, than there is no way it should control or affect biological or physical activities. You cannot have your metaphysical cake and eat it too.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 11/09/2013 19:26:56I never said that chimps lacked consciousness : they have a lesser degree of consciousness , compared to humans , for example (There is no comparison between the 2 in fact , in that regard at least ):there are degrees and levels of consciousness we can find in all creatures ,...............In fact , superior or inferior judgements of value have no meaning , in evolutionary terms .So, ignoring the fact that you refuse to define consciouness, (a) how do you measure it and (b) how do you reconcile your two statements above?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 10/09/2013 19:43:20Pain is real ,not an illusion, dude :How can you be so sure that it's real? You could just be a machine being tricked into generating data that asserts that it's real. This possibility must be seriously considered until we can find some useful way of fitting pain into the model.QuoteYou cannot build the human real feeling of pain in a machine either ,no matter how hard you try to do just that, you can just make it simulate that = you cannot make any mechanical system generate a totally different process than his ,no way .I'm using the word "mechanical" in a wider sense than normal, taking my lead in that regard from the words "mechanism" and "mechanistic". The point of using these words is to point to chains of cause and effect which make up the process by which things function. If pain is to cause a response, that is an act of causation. It is mechanistic. Mechanical. If you deny its mechanical nature, you are taking away its ability to cause anything. If pain can't cause a response, it can have no role in the response system.[Note: in English, "it can have no role" actually means "it cannot have any role". I used the first of these phrase formulae above for stylistic reasons because that is the normal way to express things, though it may be unclear to someone whose first language is not English.]QuoteConsciousness is immaterial = you cannot decide to turn it into a mechanical process , by somehow changing its immaterial nature via some magical trick , just in order to make it fit into your world view ...no way .I don't care what label you want to attach to it in the way of material/immaterial - what matters is its role as part of a mechanism.Quotewhat if consciousness is primordial ? What if consciousness is the real boss that 's in charge of our whole system ,and our biology is just its executive power ,relatively speaking ,so to speak ? What if brain and mind are 2 different systems in relation to their entirely different natures that do interact with each other , but do not cause each other ? How they might correlate with each other is still a mystery indeed .What if the real boss is something else and somewhere else? Well, how does it link up with the biological machine to make that machine function? How can the machine act without being caused to act by the real boss elsewhere? The chains of causation (i.e. the mechanism) cannot simply be ignored by having two systems and trying to link them by magic.QuoteBut i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial consciousness or the mind in any mechanical system for that matter , no way : you cannot include consciosness which is immaterial within a mechanical system .Let me translate your words above into another form for you:-But i cannot see how one can integrate the immaterial cause in the same system as the material effect of that cause, no way : you cannot include an immaterial cause with a mechanical effect.In other words, consciousness cannot control a biological machine. There is no way in which your immaterial desires can make your body act on them, so if the delicious smell of that bread makes you want to eat some, your body will not respond to that drive which is thus rendered irrelevant. Qualia can have no role in the system because you have banned them from interacting with the mechanical system.[Note: the above does not represent my view of things, but is a logical extension of your view.]QuoteDo not confuse the ordinary "magical" tricks (That's no magic in fact : that can be explained by certain corresponding mechanisms indeed ) conducted by illusionists, no matter how sophisticated they might ever be, with the hard problem of consciousness .When I talk of magic, I'm referring to the Harry Potter variety: not simple tricks, but supernatural powers. But even then, these powers if they were to be real would still have a hidden mechanism by which they operate, so the distinction is really about whether they can be explained by known laws of physics or unknown ones. Magicians act within known laws. Wizards (of the kind found in fiction) need to use laws outside of known physics.QuoteYou do not realise the fact that you are the one who's trying to introduce magic into a mechanical system , by trying to make consciousness fit into it .No, I'm trying to eliminate all the magic by aiming to identify the full chain of causation in the system. Consciousness cannot drive anything without causation, and causation = mechanism.The model has to take the form: A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F. To add non-mechanistic consciousness into that system you would need to add something to say: A doesn't cause X, X doesn't cause Y, Y doesn't cause Z, Z doesn't cause F, and then assert that the "X doesn't cause Y" part of it has a key role in the chain "A causes F". It clearly doesn't. It has no role in the chain "A causes F" at all.If it is to have a role, we have to rewrite the chain as: A causes X, X causes Y, Y causes Z, Z causes F. We now have a new model for the chain "A causes F" with consciousness as part of a replacement mechanism, but we still have a mechanistic system. The problem now though is that if the chain "A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, D causes E, E causes F" still looks valid, the new chain must either override it or be overridden by it whenever they disagree. Only one of them can be valid while the other is wrong, unless they always happen to agree by chance such that it's impossible to identify which one would override the other, though in such a case it would render consciousness redundant. It would also prevent the system from reporting that it has consciousness unless the system which has no knowledge of consciousness happens to generate fictions about consciousness which happen by luck to be true.QuoteWhat if consciousness is immaterial and therefore it behaves via non-mechanical processes then ? You would have non-mechanical causes which are unable to cause their mechanical effects.QuoteWe cannot prove all the above to be the case either , as we cannot try to explain how the different systems : consciousness and brain , do interact with each other , without causing each other = the executive power does not get caused by the legislative one = the legislative power does not create the executive power , so to speak , physically , or vice versa = the ordinary executive power is made of already existing people and vice versa = this is just an analogy , no comparison though .That might or might not make sense, depending on what it means.
There is nothing racist in pointing out that people with severe learning disabilities can in many cases be on a lower intellectual level than chimps. It's a measurable fact.
Also, the "Higgins' field" is a snooker table.
And, there is a great danger of someone on this thread turning into a troll, so it's probably time it was locked by a moderator.