On Jun 17, 6:47 am, Colin Hales <c.ha....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 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.
Phew, it's difficult to break into this debate! Colin, I'm trying to
support your line of argument here, so do us both a favour and tell me
what you think is wrong (or isn't it even wrong?) I'll reiterate in
the simplest way I can. At root, my take is that our only 'primitive'
direct contact with 'reality' is what you're calling 'qualia' -
*everything else* is metaphor. Consequently, what we must do is
establish the connection between the reality of 'qualia' (what I'm now
going to call our 'personal world') and whatever metaphor we choose to
adopt.
The example I've been using for the metaphor is particle-force, which
is just a generalisation of the notion of 'relationship' within a
differentiated continuum. What we most need to account for in our
personal worlds is our direct contact with multiple modes of awareness
and motivation. We really see, hear, suffer, will, and act. What I'm
saying that to make the 'emergence' of such realities semantically
coherent, they must be inherited from primitive 'relationship' that
has these characteristics in 'reduced' form - i.e. a mediator that
unites 'sensing' and 'acting'. In the conventional 'physical'
account, the mediator is tacitly assumed to carry only 'acting', and
hence direct personal-world 'sensing' is - crucially - lost at
source. This is because these accounts map to abstracted *models* of
'external worlds', not to 'personal worlds', and consequently are
'uninhabited' (i.e. zombies).
In the particle-force metaphor, 'particle' is a differentiated
'entity', and 'force' is necessarily both mediator of its 'sensing' of
other particles, and their 'interaction'. 'Necessarily' because,
primitively, an entity can't 'interact' with another without 'sensing'
it (as Kant's monads demonstrate). This is a key point! One could
say then that particles 'grasp' each other. Now we can map from such
primitive 'grasp' in two directions. First: upwards via genuine
emergence to the multiple modalities of 'grasping' within our personal
worlds - seeing, hearing, willing acting, suffering. Such emergence
is genuine because, although we don't know the *precise* mapping,
we're not dodging the issue of what 'personal' grasp inherits from -
it builds on the primitive grasp of the 'particles' (or some
preferred, but semantically isomorphic, metaphor of primitive
relationship). Second: from our personal worlds to 'external worlds'
beyond, but still in terms of a seamless continuation of the primitive
'grasped' relationship. In this way, the 'external world' remains
inhabited.
IMHO this semantic model gives you a knock-down argument against
'computationalism', *unless* one identifies (I'm hoping to hear from
Bruno on this) the 'primitive' entities and operators with those of
the number realm - i.e. you make numbers and their relationships the
'primitive base'. But crucially, you must still take these entities
and their relationships to be the *real* basis of personal-world
'grasp'. If you continue to adopt a 'somethingist' view, then no
'program' (i.e. one of the arbitrarily large set that could be imputed
to any 'something') could coherently be responsible for its personal-
world grasp (such as it may be). This is the substance of the UDA
argument. All personal-worlds must emerge internally via recursive
levels of relationship inherited from primitive grasp: in a
'somethingist' view, such grasp must reside with a primitive
'something', as we have seen, and in a computationalist view, it must
reside in the number realm. But the fundamental insight applies.
I think you can build all your arguments up from this base. What do
you think?
David
> 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.
>
> 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. 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.
>
> RUSSEL> You're obviously suggesting single neurons have qualia. Forgive me for
>
> being a little sceptical of this suggestion...
>
> There are so many good reasons to hold them accountable ..... Read the
> recent book by Jon Edwards...In any event - I hold the FIELD accountable.
> The fact that it happens to be delivered by astrocytes/neuron membranes is
> incidental. If you have to be skeptical about something, please be
> skeptical about the right thing for a good reason!
>
> In a critical argument about hypothesis viability it stacks up. I have
> truckloads of empirical correlates consistent with it. Neurons and
> astrocytes can have their own qualia. They can participate collaboratively
> to construct more complex qualia. It's all self-similar/recursive. And, as
> a result...I have a 'necessary primitive' in the electric field. No
> membrane field = No qualia.
>
> That the perfect field happens to be implemented in the membrane of
> astrocytes and neurons is not relvant. An inorganically produced field
> with the same spatiotemporal characteristics should be produce the same
> effect (virtual bosons).
>
> The fact that it may be difficult (at this stage) to see HOW this may
> deliver qualia is not relevant: especially when the circumstances of the
> claim are at an epistemological cul-de-sac that precisely predicts
> a-priori that very difficulty....consider Eugene Wigner in "Are we
> machines?" in 1960s...P96. Top right. In respect of scientific laws:
>
> "The primitive facts in terms of which the laws are formulated are not the
> positions of atoms, but the results of observations. It seems
> inconsistent, therefore, to explain the state of mind of the observer, his
> apperception of the result of an observation, in terms of
> concepts, such as positions of atoms, which have to be explained,
> then, in terms of the content of consciousness"
>
> Wigner is too reserved...Instead of "It seems inconsistent..." I would say
> "It's at best completely meaningless and at worst a grave mistake....".
>
> Over to Quentin's post...
>
> cheers
> colin
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Received on Sun Jun 17 2007 - 12:28:26 PDT