From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 17 2000 - 20:33:47 MST
Steve Nichols wrote:
> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 12:56:40 -0500
> From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
> Subject: Re: Immortality
>
> >A thermostats makes its decision
>
> ... excuse me, but thermostats are just switches that kick
> in at a given threshold, the whole point is that it can't "make
> its decision" ....
>
A bald assertion. I get the sense that you're not aware of the bigger
picture John Clark has in mind (and with which I largely agree).
John and I actually DO think that the human brain is (analogous to) an
oversized Turing machine. We think that it's programmed, and that we
make "decisions" the same way that Deep Blue "decides" to move its
bishop.
"But," you reply, "Deep Blue was programmed to do that!" and we reply:
SO ARE WE. We just have a very complex program, given to us by
millions of years of evolution. We "change our own logic" the same
way Deep Blue alters its play style, the same way a thermostat adjusts
the gas on your heater. We're all programmed to do that. Some of us
have a more complex program than others.
> >based on its internal state and
>
> A digital switch does not have an "internal state"
Yes, it does. It has an "desired" temperature, which it must
"remember" in order to work properly. The "desired" temperature isn't
a property of anything else in the thermostat-heater-room system, so
it must be an internal state of the thermostat.
> >the external state of the environment, people do the same thing, both
> >" readjust their logic in response to the environment" as you say.
>
> No, people are not preset " say to put on a hat if temperature drops below
> zero degrees or whatever. We can readjust our logic, switches cannot.
These differ only in complexity, not in kind. Deep Blue is a Turing
machine: it differs only in complexity from a simple adder. Our
brains are just a finite arrangement of simple finite-state machines
which do simple things, like thermostats.
> > Turing machines are neither conscious,
>
> >How do you know?
>
> Well, they would fail the Turing test for starters.
<blink blink> ALL Turing machines??? This is to say that we'll never
have a computer that will pass the Turing test, that we can never
write a program so complex that it could trick people into believing
that it acted like us. Were you thinking about this when you said
that?
> You have rather foolishly missed the whole point that ANALOG is the
> abbreviation of "analogous to infinite-state" ... since true infinity
> is a conjecture ......
But that's just the point. Very-many-state is still finite-state, is
still predictable, is still programmed, in an important sense. It is
difficult to predict the behavior of complex very-many-state hardware,
but obviously possible in principle.
>
> > Turing machines are hard-wired and cannot evince PHASIC
> >TRANSIENT behaviour ... correct me if I am wrong?
>
> Ok, you are wrong. A Turing machine is not hard wired, its program
> can put it into any internal configuration, and the only behavior
> a Turing machine can't produce is pure randomness, that is, produce
> an effect without a cause.
>
> Are you actually claiming the Turing machines exhibit phasic
> transients? Cite evidence please, you are utterly lost on this.
There's no evidence to cite; this is a purely philosophical problem.
I can obviously get a Turing machine to exhibit periodic behavior. If
I hooked a Turing machine up to a set of motors hooked up to some
eyes, I could program it to go into REM. If you had some other
requirements, you could tack those on to a kind of Turing Test for
Phasic Transient Behavior. The point is that an adequately complex
Turing machine could pass that test.
> >Seems to me all you've done is conjure up a black box, call it the
> >phantom median eye and say consciousness comes from there.
> >Not very helpful.
>
> No, the conceptual "black box" which was a problem before MVT
> now has a complete description, in actual terms and as an evolutionary
> narrative, as the phantom media eye. I have done away with mere
> "black box" conjecture!
How good of you to say so. But just saying THAT doesn't convince
anyone.
Look, you're overlooking the very simple point that in order to make
any kind of induction, you need to first NOTICE a correlation. You
can't justify any scientific inference to "consciousness" unless you
can observe a few cases where the phantom median eye and consciousness
go together. You have to *observe* that, say, wherever you find
consciousness, the pineal eye is less developed, and then posit that
wherever the pineal eyes is underdeveloped, you'll find consciousness.
But you can't observe any such cases, thanks to the problem of other
minds. I know I have feelings, and that I smile, cry, scream, etc. as
I have them. But all I see you do is smile, cry, scream, etc. How
can I tell whether you're having feelings, or whether you're just
going through the motions? How do I know you're actually conscious,
rather than just passing the Turing Test?
Maybe you have something simpler in mind. Maybe you're just positing
MVT as a theory to explain how and when things can pass the Turing
Test. But you fail on THOSE grounds, too: you provide no *mechanism*
by which the phantom pineal eye causes people to be conscious, or to
act conscious, or, well, anything. You only claim that consciousness
DOES happen, and you tell us WHEN, but you don't explain HOW.
That's a black box.
> >I don't want to get bogged down in individual cases because of the
> >problem of solipsism.
>
> You're going to have to get bogged down in it because if you have a complete
> theory of consciousness you should be able to prove that solipsism is untrue
> but you can't and I don't believe such a theory is even possible.
>
> Solipsism is simply one (admissible) viewpoint. It isn't "refutable" since
> I do not deny that people have this thought. Infinite-state capability
> allows
> *any possible thoughts* including the solipsistic ones. Likewise you cannot
> prove it "correct."
Another miscommunication. The solipsist you DO have to deal with is
someone who's a realist about matter but worries about the problem of
other minds; you really MUST claim to have dealt with it if you have
a scientific theory of consciousness. You should be able to say:
"Look Clark, you can measure my phantom median eye, so you know that I
MUST be conscious." Or whatever.
But you offer nothing like that. That's why you're offering a black box.
> Then (whether you believe that I exist independently, or am just
> another facet of *your* consciousness - the solipsistic claim) by
> accepting that at least your dreams exist, you allow a conscious
> phenomenon, and defeat your previous claim that consciousness
> doesn't occur.
I *know* he didn't say that. He knows that HE'S conscious, but he's
worried about YOU (and everyone else).
> Do you still deny "consciousness"? I argue the idealist stance that in
> fact the world can be said to exist in consciousness, and not that
> consciousness (phantom pineal eye) is located in space.
Idealism is good and well. (Not my bag, but, hey.) But the question
you STILL need to ask yourself, even as an idealist, is: are those
other people in the world conscious? It doesn't matter whether the
world is in consciousness or not to answer this question; the answer
could turn out to be "yes" or "no" whether or not we accept idealism.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:32:26 MST