> Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 16:48:13 -0500 (EST)
> From: Dan Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu>
> Subject: Re: Sentience
>
> >
> > OK, I've only sold you on part of the package so far, but think that
> > the conceptual stuff likely follows, even if I haven't yet developed a
> > conscious machine on the MVT model, or a telepathy device to check
> > for consciousness. There seems no reason in principle why a device
> > could not me made that could sit in a shielded room, away from a
> > subject looking at playing cards or visual stimuli, and arriving at
correct
> > predictions of what card the person is thinking of ... quantum physics
> > allows this possibility, as does logic. Then your points about
subjectivity
> > might be rejected.
>
> Arriving at what card the person is focusing on could be done using
> MVT'. MVT would add that the person is THINKING about that card,
> which you can't show scientifically, can NEVER show scientifically.
So what you think is that MVT' is as good as it can get .. that claims
about 'mind' are always going to be unverifiable ... even if
mind-transference
or telepathy was possible .... end of story? Unless I enforce my views on
you my new hypnosis developed from MVT .... and not just threaten it.
> Got a telepathy machine that tells me how and what I feel? How do you
> know it works correctly, or that it worked at all?
> The mind is unobservable, unverifiable on any physical test, even in
> principle, because no test is available above and beyond a test for
> behavior and physical phenomena.
OK, do you take a Rylean view that "mind" is a category mistake and only
seems a thing because language exists that describes it as an 'object?'
There seems some mileage in this, but I happen to think that if MVT accounts
for all types of animal intelliegence/ conscious behaviour and (observable)
cognitive patterns ... then it does permit me to postulate an extended
"analogous"
stronger version that take in consciousness as well ... if only for the sake
of
aesthetic completion ... and because some people will be able to find use
in
accepting the MVT structure (to replace faulty supernaturalist and
lingoistic
competing theories of 'consciousness' such as Berkeley's Mind of God
Idealism).
Your stricter aesthetic does not permit you to find merit in the stronger
conclusions
of MVT, but does help in answering the important questions about the
evoloution
of animal "conscious behaviour" .... so everybody should be happy.
> Ah, no. Holes are not "objects" at all. They denote places where
> certain objects aren't, though I'm willing to extend the analogy to
> complex systems which have a missing component or a missing function.
>
> A hole in the earth is not psychological. One might be led to think
> so the fact that holes acquire NAMES by virtue of the fact that we
> name them, think about them, and have a psychology in which that is
> possible, but that doesn't make holes psychological entities.
The category of a particular area of space as a "hole" is indeed
psychological ... the hole can only be demarked independently of its
(physical) substrate by the naming of it (seeing it, pattern completion,
and formulating it as a linguistic/ conceptual entity). It has no "matter"
so isn't physical ..... but is observable ... an observer-related effect.
>
> >
> > In this analysis, there isn't any "behaviour", just awareness of
behaviour.
> > So the question is not 'what about consciousness' which is a given, but
> > "what about BEHAVIOUR?"
>
> A common move in arguments of this kind. But you REALLY don't want to
> commit yourself to positions like this, because you've backed yourself
> into holding a phenomenological theory: that all we're in touch with
> is our sensations and that everything else that isn't a sensation is
> suspect.
This seems at least as "sensible" as the epiphenomenalist claim.
Again, I think the issue might be as much to do with aesthetics and
cognitive style as to which side of this (ultimately pointless) divide you
choose.
I prefer to concentrate on the empirical matters and observable phenomena,
and think this conversation has been a prime example of the ultimate
futility
of philosophical analysis.
>
> To be a consistent phenomenologist, one ought to be uniformly
> skeptical of the whole scientific enterprise. Granted, if you give
> scientific statements a strong anti-realist reinterpretation ("when
> you say voltmeter, you mean voltmeter-like sensations...") you can
> salvage much of science, but even then you still have no explanation
> for the link up between sensations-of-brains and consciousness. No
> help in providing a link-up.
The link between phantom (ex-) limbs and sensations in the previously
physically occupied space is well documented in medical science.
Likewise the neurosignature and gateway theory of pain strongly supports
this linkage. In practice (as a therapist) we do not have the luxury of
engaging
in philosophical quibbles, but must act positively to alleviate the symptoms
according to our best judgement.
Your "consciousness isn't real" posture just doesn't cut it in workaday
reality.
>
> Attacking the mind-body problem from the mind side instead of the body
> doesn't help you a bit.
But you have conceded the priority of the mental by your admission that IF
my MVT hypnotic persuasion works, then you agree with my stronger claims
for MVT. We only ever *experience* the world as filtered through ideation
and our senses.
>
>
> Free-will is only "fruitful" to the extent that it doesn't entail
> fatalism. But determinism doesn't entail fatalism either.
> Determinism also suggests that we might be right about the connection
> between Turing machines and brains, which Cognitive Science
> departments around the world seem to have found, ah, rather fruitful
> indeed!
No Turing machines of the sort you discuss have ever, not will ever,be
built. Analogigies can be useful to cognitive scientists ... sure .. in the
same way that MVT phantom eye is useful as a cognitive model for both
intelliegence AND consciousness.
But no cognitive scientists claim the Turing analogogy is an analogy for
*consciousness* ... just for intelligence.
>
> Well, of course, if you convince me that way, I will be convinced, and
> satisfied with the answer. But does the fact that you COULD do this
> satisfy me? No. Because you'd be using MVT' to do all of this. None
> of the philosophical parts are required.
So you would be convinced by the practice, but not by the theory ... a
fair comment. I adhere to certain psychotherapeutic ethics that might
inhibit
me using such techniques on you involuntarily, but I might consider doing
this experiment if you consent ......
>
>
> Isn't the answer obvious? You say, like a true scientist: "I don't
> know the answer. There is no evidence."
Neo-Darwinian evolution remains a "theory" and religious creationist
fundamentalists will never accept it as fact ... but in practice most
scientists (as opposed to quibbling philosophers) accept it in practice
since the circumstantial, explanatory and utility case for is overwhelming.
>
> > >The illusionary body part isn't there *at all*.
In precisely the same way that thoughts/ mentation/ consciousness isn't
there *at all* ..... just the experience of them!
> You've overloaded "illusionary body part." We use the term to refer
> to both the feeling of the missing limb, and there's the "hole" where
> the limb was. These are not the same, though they are linked. But I
> don't know how.
But saying you don't know how isn't to say they aren't linked.
You overload the term "conscious behaviour" to cover both physical
events and mental events.
>
> > >that the world of consciousness can interact with non-existent objects
> > >because consciousness doesn't exist in the first place.
> >
> > We have an overloading of the word "existence" here. Let us stamp
> > out mere verbal triviality and stick to the phenomena where possible,
> > please.
>
> No, it's relevant. See, the mind can't affect the "holes." So it
> can't affect the brain.
The SHAPE of the brain effects its function, the shape evolved, and
(gestalt)
can be described in terms of foreground OR background (holes), or both.
>
>
> As for unconscious processes... I just don't know about that.
Scientists aren't happy having to say I just don't know, but would rather
try
to find out, and at least put forward their best hypothesis. Be positive.
>
> Behavior. They're alike in *behavior*. One more complex than the
> other, but otherwise, alike. They're not alike in origin or
> substrate. They're alike in behavior.
Other than that they are both playing the same game (maybe this is what you
mean "alike in behaviour") the cognitive processes and chess style are
quite different.
>
> No, I haven't at all: that was an argument that, even when you can
> modify your metaprogramming, you are DETERMINED to modify your
> metaprogramming, and thenceforth DETERMINED to follow your new
> (meta)program. Always following the program, you are determined.
>
Then, if we are determined in such a way that we have the option to
intervene and change our cognitive patterns .... then we are determined
in such a way that we have free-will. The whole trans/ post-human venture
is an excercise of free-will against the cultural conditioning to remain the
same (boring, human, not-fit-to-run-the-planet received wisdom).
I, like you, could choose to trot out a philosophical case different from
the one
I aesthetically prefer (and find easier to argue) .... possibly the
move-response
format of dialogue (Hegelian dialect) shapes the argument ... and the only
certain
course open to win chicken/egg type arguments is by trial of strength of the
persausive or hypnotic relative strengths of each party .... it certainly
gives us
a new option to philosophical logic-chopping. I am not sure that the better
arguments always win in practice, but often it is the stronger Will.
I agree that von Neumann machines & neural nets can often both solve the
same problems ... and that both ultimately rely on the laws of statistical
mechanics ... but the von Neuman machines ARE determined more fully since
they are fully predictive, whereas the internal state of neural computers
are NOT
analysable and discrete ..... the weight state does not translate into
particular known
properties. Serial machine emulations are just that, simulations. They are
running
a whole bunch of code whilst true parallel neuro-computers have no code.
They
cannot DO real-time computations .. so how can you even say that they
"emulate"
real time computations?
Seasons Greetings
www.steve-nichols.com
Posthuman Organisation
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