Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> <<SNIP>>
> >> No confusion at all. The zombie is behaving. 'Wide awake'
> >> in the sense that it is fully functional.
> >
> > Well, adaptive behaviour -- dealing with novelty --- is functioning.
>
> Yes - but I'm not talking about merely functioning. I am talking about the
> specialised function called scientific behaviour in respect of the natural
> world outside.
You assume, but have no shown, that it is in a class of its own.
> The adaptive behaviour you speak of is adaptivity in
> respect of adherence or otherwise to an internal rule set, not adaptation
> in respect of the natural world outside.
False dichotomy.
Any adaptive system adapts under the influence under the influence of
external impacts, and there are always some underlying rules, if only
the rules of physics.
> BTW 'Adaptive' means change, change means novelty has occurred. If you
> have no phenopmenality you must already have a rule as to how to adapt to
> all change - ergo you know everything already.
Rules to adapt to change don't have to stipulate novel inputs in
advance.
> >> I spent tens of thousands of hours designing, building,
> >> benchtesting and commissioning zombies. On the benchtop I
> >> have pretended to be their environment and they had no 'awareness'
> >> they weren't in their real environment. It's what makes bench
> >> testing possible. The universe of the zombies was the
> >> universe of my programming. The zombies could not tell if
> >> they were in the factory or on the benchtop. That's why I
> >> can empathise so well with zombie life. I have been
> >> literally swatted by zombies (robot/cranes and other machines)
> >> like I wasn't there....scares the hell
> >> out of you! Some even had 'vision systems' but were still
> >> blind. so....yes the zombie can 'behave'. What I am claiming
> >> is they cannot do _science_ i.e. they cannot behave
> >> scientifically. This is a very specific claim, not a general
> >> claim.
> >
> > I see nothing to support it.
>
> I have already showed you conclusive empirical evidence you can
> demonstrate on yourself.
No you haven't. Zombies aren't blind in the sense
of not being able to see at all,. You are just juggling
different definitions of "Zombie".
> Perhaps the 'zombie room' will do it.
> >> >>- it's all the
> >> >> same - action potential pulse trains traveling from sensors to
> brain.
> >> >
> >> > No, it's not all the same. Its coded in a very complex way. It's like
> >> saying the information in you computer is "all the same -- its all ones
> and zeros"
> >> yes you got it - all coded....I am talking about action potential pulse
> trains. They are all the same general class. Burst mode/Continuous
> mode,
> >> all the same basic voltage waveform, overshoot, refratory period...LTP,
> LTD, afterhyperpolarisation.... all the same class for sight, sound,
> taste, imagination, touch, thirst, orgasm etc etc... coded messages
> travelling all the way from the periphery and into the brain. They are
> all
> >> the same...and..
> >
> >
> > They need to be interpreted an contextualised against other
> > other information. How does that lead to the conclusion
> > that zombies can't do science?
> >
> They can do science on their sensory data only.
All the data in the human phenomenal view originated in the
senses. Unless you are appealing to clairvoyance.
> They have no a-priori
> method for applying any interpretation
There is no reason why they should lack apriori
methods are behaviour, behaviour is function.
> as to its context in the natural
> world that originated the sensory feeds.
Absent clairvoyance, we contextualise one sensory feed
against another. You have not made it clear
why that requires phenomenality
> If you like: it can do the
> science of its boundary. Even that is a stretch - for it has no idea it
> has a body or any boundary.
Blindsight can reach beyond the boundary.
> They cannot contextualise NOVELTY with respect to the external world,
Once more, asserted without argument/
> merely against the non-phenomenal rule-set they have concted.
You have no evidence that humans use anything more
grand than a "concocted rule set".
> They cannot
> do science on the natural world - but they can do science on zombie sense
> data and internal rule-sets, whose correpondence with any sort of external
> world is a complete mystery.
Humans use educated guess-work -- conscious and unconscious --
to relate sense data to an external world. Why shouldn't zombies?
> If any of the rules they concoct happen to
> correpond to the a natural world law it'd be an accident and they'd never
> know it.
Nonsense. They would no whether their "concocted" rules worked
or not in the same way humans do -- their rules would
fail to predict. They might fail to predict
unconscious sense data instead of failing to predict conscious
perceptions. but the two are in sync anyway.
> >> None of it says anything about WHY the input did what it did. The
> causality outside the zombie is MISSING from these signals.
> >
> > It's missing from the individual signals. But we must
> > be able to build up a picture of the external causes on
> > the basis of the combined information. We
> > don't have anything else to go on. Pheneomenality is
> > not an extra source of information that clairvoyantly tells
> > you where each photon originated.
> >
>
> Yes it is an extra source. That is the whole point. The fact that you call
> it 'clairvoyance' merely means that it is unknown. Why is it so impossoble
> to think that your current understanding of the universe may be
> incomplete?
That is not how phenomenality is generally understood,
and there is no evidence for it. That means you
haven't "proven" anything about Zombies, since you
need to assume something quite strange and not
widely accepted about phenomenality in order
to arrive at your conclusion. Anyone can avoid your conclusion
by rejecting your assumption.
> There is nothing supernatural going on. The reality of phenomenality is
> stark. Your neurons have a way of access enough information to constrcut
> phenomenal scenes.
Yes. I am disputing that the process requires extra information
that doesn't arrive through the senses (or the genes).
> They do it. They are real. There is far more
> information inthe phenopmenal scenes than arises from the sensing.
Nonsense. The brain is a filtration system. The is a lot
*less* information available to consciousness than comes
in through the senses.
> Your
> inability to see how that may be does not negate it as a reality.
The fact that there is no evidence for it negates it as
reality.
> In the mathematical proof I gave the extra information is built into P(.),
> which the zombie does not have.
> >> They have no
> >> intrinsic sensation to them either. The only useful
> >> information is the body knows implicitly where they
> >> came from..which still is not enough because:
> >> Try swapping the touch nerves for 2 fingers. You 'touch'
> >> with one and feel the touch happen on the other.
> >> The touch sensation is created as phenomenal consciousness
> >> in the brain using the measurement, not the signal
> >> measurement itself.
> >> Now think about the touch..the same sensation of touch
> >> could have been generated by a feather or a cloth or
> >> another finger or a passing car. That
> >> context is what phenomenal consciousness provides.
> >
> > It creates it out of information that is also available to the
> > zombie.
>
> No it doesn't. The information the zombie has is "neurons a,b,c,d, fired
> in finger tip'. That's it. The zombie and the human both have that.
Yes. And humans make the hypothesis that a particular pattern of firing
in those particular neurons was probably caused by a thing called a
"feather" , which
correlates with various visual data. There is nothing to stop
a zombie doing the same.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1228072
> > It doesn't create new information ex nihilo.
>
> Of course not. It creates new information by a mechaniusm you don;t
> understand that is perfectly natural. "ex nihilo" actually means it can;t
> do it based on what I know...not that it is impossible.
Mechanism is function. If humans have that mechanism , so do zombies.
> >> Yes but how is it to do anything to contextualise the input other than
> correlate it with other signals?
> >
> > Why would it need to ?
>
> What's the difference between "neurons z,x,x,c,v,f,r,we,w, in my retina
> >> (none of which, in themselves, generate
> >> any phenomenal consciousness, they trigger it downstream in the
> cranium/cortex).
> >
> >> re robot...now do science on a signal and use the signal to make a
> statement about the natural world that generated/caused the signal
> elsewhere away from/outside the robot. It can't. It's blind, deaf,
> can't
> >> taste or smell or touch.
> >
> > It can interact with its environment: you have already conceded that.
> >
>
> No. It's body boundary (which it has no means to intuit) can interact with
> whatever impacts with it. That's it. Beyond the boundary? Multiple
> external worlds could present the same stimulus and the zombie would never
> know.
The same is true of humans. We can be fooled. we don't
exist in a state of complete certainty about what is causing our
phenomena, and we
don't have magical clairvoyant powers.
> >> The main fact is that the zombie does not have sensation
> >> at all and that as a result it cannot do science on the
> >> world outside the zombie.
> >
> > A zombie has sensors which can alter its behaviour in response
> > to changes in the environment.
>
> >>It doesn't even know there is a world to do science on.
>
>
> > Why not? Because it can't paint a causal picture of where
> > its signals came form? Why not?
>
> Where does this notion of 'causality' come from? You. Not it. You are
> projecting your internal life into the numbers the zombie has. Stop it!
My notion of causality is function/behaviour. It is not a phenomenon --
not a taste or colour, it does not seem like anything.
So my zombie counterpart has it as well.
> >
> >> All it can do is
> >> correlate measurements with each other, measurements that could have come
> >> from anywhere and the zombie can never tell from where.
> >
> > Why not? Surely it only takes a kind
> > for information analysis to tell that a set of signals
> > probably came form a cubic object, or whatever.
>
> Where has the zombie got any idea of 'cube', space, distance?
If it is a functional duplicate of person, it will have them
since they are functional.
> You! Stop doing that. You keep grounding the zombie in your own
> experiences and assuming it can do what you can. It has no idea of space,
> time ,matter, causality, the natural world itself....NOTHING.
So you say. But the standard definition is the a zombie
is a functional duplicate. You seem to be talking past
everybody on this point.
> >> I have great empathy for the poor zombie! Indeed I am starting
> >> to realise that it may be my practical training which has
> >> enabled me to better understand the zombie
> >
> > I am not sure you grasp the standard meaning of "philosophical
> > Zombie" at all.
>
> I couldn't care less about the philosopghical zombie.
If you are not talking about philosophical zombies,
it is misleading to use the term.
> Who ever said
> philosophy had a patent on the concept!
It's a question of communication. Language is based on shared meanings.
> If you like dump the whole label
> and replace every occurrence of the word zombie with "a human but with a
> brain not capable of phenomenal consciousness".
If you do that, it is still far form clear
that your claims would follow. Would
a human without PC have a concept of
"cause"? Well, they wouldn't have
learnt it phenomenally..but maybe they would
have learnt it unphenomenally...or maybe it
would be innate ... maybe it is innate in humans...
Using your definition of "zombie", the situation is jut unclear.
> What point is there in bothering with it. The philosophical zombie is
> ASSUMED to be equivalent! This is failure before you even start!
If you can show that the idea is self-contradictory, you can prove
something.
> It's
> wrong and it's proven wrong because there is a conclusively logically and
> empirically provable function that the zombie cannot possibly do without
> phenomenality: SCIENCE.
You haven't shown that.
> The philosophical zombie would have to know
> everything a-priori, which makes science meaningless.
PZs only lack phenomenality. They don't
necessarily lack the ability to take in information.
> There is no novelty
> to a philosophical zombie. It would have to anticipate all forms of
> randomness or chaotic behaviour.... NUTS.
Assuming "no phenomenality" means "no sensory perception
whatsoever". Unwarrantedly.
> I am only intersted in the state where there is no phenomenal
> consciousness and the role it has in science. You can have the
> philosophical zombie - it's an oxymoron and you're welcome to it. You can
> let it define your world if you like - I'd prefer to let the natural world
> be my guide.
Why use the word if you don't like the concept?
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Received on Sun Nov 26 2006 - 18:51:59 PST