Colin Hales wrote:
> Hi,
>
> RUSSEL
>> All I can say is that I don't understand your distinction. You have
> introduced a new term "necessary primitive" - what on earth is that? But
> I'll let this pass, it probably isn't important.
>
> COLIN
> Oh no you don't!! It matters. Bigtime...
>
> Take away the necessary primitive: no 'qualititative novelty'
> Take away the water molecules: No lake.
> Take away the bricks, no building
> Take away the atoms: no molecules
> Take away the cells: no human
> Take away the humans: no humanity
> Take away the planets: no solar system
> Take away the X: No emergent Y
> Take away the QUALE: No qualia
>
> Magical emergence is when but claim Y exists but you can't
> identify an X. Such as:
>
> Take away the X: No qualia
>
> but then....you claim qualia result from 'information complexity' or
> 'computation' or 'function' and you fail to say what X can be. Nobody can.
>
> You can't use an object derived using the contents of
> consciousness(observation) to explain why there are any contents of
> consciousness(observation) at all. It is illogical. (see the wigner quote
> below). I find the general failure to recognise this brute reality very
> exasperating.
Prepare to be exasperated then. I see no contradiction in explaining the existence of observation by using a theory derived from observation. This is what we do. There is no logical inference from observations to our theory of observation - it could have come to us in a dream or a revelation or a random quantum fluctuation. If the theory then passes the usual scientific tests, we can say it provides an explanation of observation. Of course there are other senses of "explanation". One might be to explain how you know that such a thing as observation exists. I'd say just like I know about anything else - I observe it.
Brent Meeker
>
> COLIN
> <snip>
>> So this means that in a computer abstraction.
>>> d(KNOWLEDGE(t))
>>> --------------- is already part of KNOWLEDGE(t)
>>> dt
>
> RUSSEL
>> No its not. dK/dt is generated by the interaction of the rules with the
> environment.
>
> No. No. No. There is the old assumption thing again.
>
> How, exactly, are you assuming that the agent 'interacts' with the
> environment? This is the world external to the agent, yes?. Do not say
> "through sensory measurement", because that will not do. There are an
> infinite number of universes that could give rise to the same sensory
> measurements. We are elctromagnetic objects. Basic EM theory.
EM is linear. You can't even make subluminal matter from EM, much less atoms and people.
>Proven
> mathematical theorems. The solutions are not unique for an isolated
> system.
>
> Circularity.Circularity.Circularity.
>
> There is _no interaction with the environment_ except for that provided by
> the qualia as an 'as-if' proxy for the environment. The origins of an
> ability to access the distal external world in support of such a proxy is
> mysterious but moot. It can and does happen, and that ability must come
> about because we live in the kind of universe that supports that
> possibility. The mysteriousness of it is OUR problem.
>
> RUSSEL
>> Evolutionary algorithms are highly effective
>> information pumps, pumping information from the environment into the
> genome, or whatever representation you're using to store the solutions.
>
> COLIN
> But then we're not talking about merely being 'highly effective'
> in a target problem domain, are we? We are talking about proving
> consciousness in a machine. I agree - evolutionary algoritms are great
> things... they are just irrelevant to this discussion.
>
> COLIN
>>>>> My scientific claim is that the electromagnetic field structure
>>> literally the third person view of qualia.
>>>> Eh? Electromagnetic field of what? The brain? If so, do you think
> that
>>> chemical potentiation plays no role at all in qualia?
>>> Chemical potentiation IS electric field.
>
> RUSSEL
>> Bollocks. A hydrogen molecule and an oxygen atom held 1m apart have
> chemical potential, but there is precious little electric field
>
> I am talking about the membrane and you are talking atoms so I guess we
> missed somehow...anyway....The only 'potentiation' that really matters in
> my model is that which looks like an 'action potential' longitudinally
> traversing dendrite/soma/axon membrane as a whole.
>
> Notwithstanding this....
>
> The chemical potentiation at the atomic level is entirely an EM phenomenon
> mediated by QM boundaries (virtual photons in support of the shell
> structure, also EM). It is a sustained 'well/energy minimaum' in the EM
> field structure....You think there is such a 'thing' as potential? There
> is no such thing - there is something we describe as 'EM field'. Nothing
> else. Within that metaphor is yet another even more specious metaphor:
> Potential is an (as yet unrealised) propensity of the field at a
> particular place to do work on a charge if it were put it there. You can
> place that charge in it and get a number out of an electrophysiological
> probe... and 'realise' the work (modify the fields) itself- but there's no
> 'thing' that 'is' the potential.
>
> Not only that: The fields are HUGE > 10^11 volts/meter. Indeed the
> entrapment of protons in the nucleus requires the strong nuclear force to
> overcome truly stupendous repulsive fields. I know beause I am quite
> literally doing tests in molecular dynamics simulations of the E-M field
> at the single charge level. The fields are massive and change at
> staggeringly huge rates, especially at the atomic level. However....Their
> net level in the vicinity of 20Angstroms away falls off dramatically. But
> this is not the vicinity of any 'chemical reaction'.
>
> And again I say : there is nothing else there but charge and its fields.
>
> When you put your hand on a table the reason it doesn't pass through it
> even though table and hand are mostly space ...is because electrons
> literally meet and repulse electrons.
>
>> between them. Furthermore, the chemical potential is independent on the
> separation, unlike the electric field.
>
> Nope. There is a "potential well" close in to the relvent atoms, created
> on approach by the near-EM field interactions close in.....The field draws
> the atoms together and the resulting field stablises the result (emitting
> photons or creating other sources of kinetic energy as necessary). In
> femtochemistry the exquisite detail of the interrelationships of the
> fields determines the detail as they approach each other. The words
> "chemical potential" is just a metaphor for the potential well in close to
> the participants...no wonder it is independent of distance - the well is
> in close! . There is no such 'thing' as 'chemical'. There is no such
> 'thing' as mechanical, including 'quantum mechanical'. There is just
> something: ...where some of it bahaves like charge/fields with/without
> mass and the rest of it behaves like space.
But photon exchange could not hold an atomic nucleus together or prevent multiple electrons from occupying the same atomic orbital or account for beta decay of a neutron. So there's plenty of stuff besides an EM field.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Sun Jun 17 2007 - 02:10:43 PDT