Jamie,
thanks for the post in parts to my points (e.g. the "changing of definitions" semantically reformulates my position nicely - without the 'atom'-example, of course)
Sponging the 'gedanken..' - the falling treebranch reflects in your version the omniscient arrogant reductionist position. I go with Popper: no evidence, because we cannot encompass 'totality' (my conclusion).
I would'nt go to the primitive mechanistic AI-levels to learn about mentality unlimited. Bits (and pieces) for unrestricted relations.
AI simulates (mechanically?) certain aspects of human mentality - up to a limited fashion.
>"I put it to you that this is
exactly the relational key to understanding Csness."<
--- understanding what? (I know well MY abbreviation).
>" "Imagine youself floating totally alone in a lightless, energyless universe, with no external anything - to gauge anything by. Not motion not anything. ..." What purpose would consciousness serve? "<
I cannot imagine neither 'such' myself nor the situation at all.
>"Consciousness is only of utile value in situations where self encounters else."<
I think you speak about sentience, miss the 'response' activity I feel within the (unidentified) majority of the Ccness ideas. What you described is in my terms "information": some acknowledged difference. And what do you mean by "s e l f "? (I really would like to know - one of the topics of my long speculations).
Then again 'complexity' (I believe you use it here in form of the term 'convolutedness/complexness' not the Rosen-totality sense) is as primitive as little we include into its model (system). And you mention 'Universe" - I prefer plenitude, from which arose the multiverse in its unlimited variety of universes. It's only semantic.
What is that 'spacetime' you mention? I know it 'has' a fabric, but otherwise I consider it an organizational aid for our universe to "understand" its details in our physically-based reductionist view.
John M
Jan 10
----- Original Message -----
From: James N Rose
To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 10:46 PM
Subject: Re: The Meaning of Life
John,
My email pgm sometimes (as now) balks at quote/copying
material from emails I'm replying to. So I'll do as best
to reply without having your exact words to refer to.
re Bruno's inquiring about how I link changes of inertia
to Csness, I'll do that in a few days.
re Gendankens - I won't waste time debating you. The only
thing that's important about gedankens is that they
isolate and highlight certain relationships which seem
important to the line of inquiry. If real-event scenarios
& analogs can be used - all the better. But if invented,
that's not criminal or necessarily 'conceptually illegal'
:-) .. serves the inquiry and 'what if' exploration of
relations, I WOULD SAY.
re 'falling branch/tree', yes it came to be 'experienced
sound' versus 'generated wave' - but originally, it was
a clear 'existential' question: can a thing 'exist' if
something else doesn't experience the effects OF that
first thing's existence. Ie: if science hasn't acknowledged
something experimentally/experientially, then the 'something'
has no verity or validity. No 'proof', no existence.
Unfortunately, there is a conflated/confused definition of
'proof'; it now embraces: 'explanation' and independent record.
re Csness=data storage. Yes, you no longer count it sufficient for
Csness. But a lot of folks do, especially AI researchers. They
presume that 'memory reconstitution' is equal to Csness reconstitution.
And that's not the case.
re femto coma-awakening-death. it may be the gedanken you may find
frustrating, and then cast it aside as 'unknowable', and if
unknowable, then ..SOWHAT", but I put it to you that this is
exactly the relational key to understanding Csness.
What is the limit of us, or any system for that matter, to wholistically
'experience itself'. That was the opening concept notion I put forth
in Understanding the Integral Universe. "Imagine youself floating
totally alone in a lightless, energyless universe, with no external
anything - to gauge anything by. Not motion not anything. ..."
"What purpose would consciousness serve? .. It wouldn't. Consciousness
is only of utile value in situations where self encounters else."
I keep on that track of logic for a while, parsing away until
concluding that anykind of 'response' can be embraced as a
'primitive consciousness' - no matter that its not
complex or re-reportable/transmittable/sharable. But it's
at that extreme, that I conclude that any holistic system,
even if minimalized in complexness of architecture, can
be projected to be holistically self-sensitive in an
information disseminational way. That the formative
entity: spacetime - it already presumed non-discontinuous.
That continuousness is the stage for disseminated information,
where changes of time, motion, fields, forces, waves --
least action -- constitute a 'sharing' of change-information.
The Batesonian minimal'bit'. Reliant on the smallest
spacetime 'change' .. which is identifiable as some or
any change-of-inertia event.
[ok Bruno, I guess here is a good portion of what you were
asking about].
My main goal was this: find a reasonable comprehension for
primitives that could develop into complexities - have a
core foundation of simple 'relations' that -become-
human/animal sentience. Bridge the realms of physics
and biology, without breaking the known/presumed relations
already identified.
Only I had to make one crucial change in definitions.
The universe is not dichotomized nonliving/living. It is
dichotomized preliving/living. The qualia we find in
living systems ARE PRESENT in pre-animate systems, only
they are there in simple basic preparatives forms.
My favorite example being the valence shells of atoms.
These are relationally and effectively the "lungs" of
an atom - able to fill (inhale) an electron, and
unfill (exhale) an electron. Do atoms actively
flex these 'cavities' to capture/exude electrons? No,
absolutely not. But life 'breathes', if and only if
atoms chemically transfer electrons by moving them
into and out of valence shelled arrangements. Life
'breathes' because atoms breathe. Atoms aren't
'alive', but we couldn't be either unless that
shared/similar function-relation was fundamentally
there in the first place.
The same goes for Csness. The universe is a
fundamentally pansentient organization with many
levels of sentient compleness and self-awareness.
We humans, are part of the sentient capacity of the
universe to 'understand itself'. We aren't a separate
mentality exploring an "it" -- 'out there'; we ARE
a piece of the 'it' exploring the other parts of
the It. We are the universe attempting to not
just experience itself, but to understand itself - in
a novel, different, available, way.
Jamie
7 Jan 2007
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Received on Wed Jan 10 2007 - 16:12:29 PST