NIck
Nick
On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 4:05 PM steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
Nick -
I'm glad you acknowledged (in another branch of this thread?) the
"grumpiness" aspect of your initiation/participation in this
thread. Your analogy around thought/feeling "expression" and that
of pimple popping is in fact very apt if a bit graphic. I do
think many of us want this apparently deeply thorny/paradoxical
problem to be easier than it is? And the plethora of complexly
subtle dis/mis-agreements on language around consciousness,
intelligence, cognition, (self) awareness, qualia complicates that
yet more.
I don't know if my own baby-steps are helpful, given that my
background/perspective might align more with DaveW than most
others here (I'm very sympathetic with a pan-consciousness
perspective)? maybe it parses as baby-babble more than baby-steps...
I missed most of this (and related) threads but am surprised at
where this seems to be going. I always associated consciousness
with subjective experience and not necessarily with self
awareness. The "hard problem of consciousness" is qualia, not
self-awareness. No? An AI agent cannot understand language on
anything other than a superficial basis because it has no idea
what, for example "wet," means. Nevertheless, it will be quite
good at stringing words together that say coherent things about
wetness. An AI agent has no /idea /about anything. At the same
time, an AI agent will be quite good at creating coherent
statements about very many things. Just because an AI agent is
able to create coherent statements does not mean that those
statements reflect the agent's ideas--since it has no ideas.
_
_
Russ's point here is a good pivot point for me in this
conversation if it is possible to make the pivot. It may not be.
Knowing and Knowing-About:
I use the former to be the quality of qualia... not easily
formalizeable nor quantifiable nor with obvious models which
are not intrinsically subjective. "Knowing-About" is for me
reserved for the formalized models of "facts about the world
and relations between ideas" and when I say "formalized" I
don't preclude storytelling or the highly vilified "just so
stories".
Formalized mathematical, statistical, logical models with
digital computer simulations (or analog electronic,
mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic "circuits" or "systems") are
"knowing about"... a steam train for example embodies
"knowing about" converting carbon-fuel into linear motion
across long distances, carrying heavy loads by way of many
repeatable mechanisms... the implementation and operation of
such a device/system is a "proof" in some sense of the design.
On top of that design/system are other design/systems (say
the logic of Railroad Robber Baronages) upon which yet other
systems (say Industrial-revolution era proto-hyper-capitalism)
on top of which rides trans-global corporatism and nationalism
in their own "gyre and gimbal" with a in intra-stellar and
eventually inter-stellar variation in the sense of Asimov's
Foundation and Empire or perhaps for the youth culture here
(under 60?) George Lucas' Star Wars Empire or Roddenberry's
Star Trek Federation vs ???
Consciousness:
A the lowest level consciousness or perhaps
proto-consciousness registers for me as "having a model of the
world useful for guiding behaviour toward
surviving/thriving/reproducing/collectivizing". This
permeates all of life from somewhere down at the single-celled
bacteria/archaea/fungi/phyto-thingies/ up to and through
vertebrates/mammals/hominids/sapiens
On the reflection of whether my cat or dog, or the
hummingbirds outside my window or the mice trying to sneak
back into my house have "consciousness", or even more
pointedly the mosquito I slapped into a blood (my blood by the
way) spot on my forearm last night, have "consciousness"...
while each of these appear to have a "consciousness" I know it
to be variously more or less familiar to my own. My
elaborate (unfettered?) imagination allows me to make up (just
so?) stories about how cetaceans, cephalapods, jellyfish all
variously have aspects of their "consciousness' that I could
(do?) recognize (empathize with?). So I would want a
multivalued function with at least two simple scalars:
Familiarity-to-Me(Conscioiusness) and
Potency-of(Consciousness), pick your scale... my identical
twin or maybe conjoined twin might max out on the first scale
while a nematode or a bacterium might trail off toward nil on
the first AND second scale. And beyond the scale of organic
life into artificial life and beyond, the "familiarity" of a
glider or oscillator in the GameO'Life or the braided rings of
Saturn, even less significant but not zero? The
Potency-scale seems to be something like *agency* which feels
absolute for most of us except Robert Sapolsky while the
*agency* of an electron or neutrino seems registered at
*absolute zero*, though the Quantum Consciousness folks maybe
put it at max and our own more an illusive projection of that?
The idea of "collective individuation" (e.g. mashup of Eleanor
Ostrom's collectives and Jung's individuation) suggests that
perception, cognition, intelligence, even consciousness may
well be a collective phenomena. Our organs, tissues, cells,
organelles, macromolecules, CHON++ molecules, atoms,
baryons/fermions, quarks, strings, branes are on a loose
hierarchy of diminishing Familiarity-Consciousness and
Potency-Consciousness. I'm more interested (these days) in the
emergent collective consciousness of the noosphere and perhaps
the symbiotic culture of humanity and life-at-all-scales
(SCHLAAS?) it feels wild and science-fictiony to assert that
earth's biosphere has already (in the last 150 years) conjured
a nervous system, a global-brain (ala Francis Heylighen:
Global Brain Institute)
https://globalbraininstitute.org/ with "our own" Bollen,
Joslyn, Rodriguez still on the Board of Technical Advisors.
I scoffed at this somewhat 25 years ago (mostly because of the
hubris of "Global" and "Brain").
OK Nick, so not "baby steps" more like a hyper-baby's mad dash
through an obstacle course or maybe a pentathalon? I tried
shunting all this to George Tremblay IVo but he referred me to
Gussie Tumbleroot who cheered me on on my careening ideational
orbits.
Gurgle,
- Steve
_
_
_
_
__-- Russ Abbott
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 9:30 AM Frank Wimberly
<wimber...@gmail.com> wrote:
Glen,
This is a test to illustrate somethiing about Gmail to Nick.
On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 4:37 PM glen <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085
On July 9, 2024 2:04:29 PM PDT, Prof David West
<profw...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Maybe I should not be replying, as I do believe my
dogs (and your cat if you have one) are conscious.
I have not experienced a Vulcan Mind-Meld with either
of my dogs, so I cannot say with certainty they are
conscious—I must infer it from observations:
1- interactions with other dogs would seem to
indicate they "remember" past interactions and do not
require the same butt-sniffing protocol with dogs
they have met at the park frequently. Also they seem
to remember who plays with who and who doesn't. "That
ball is not mine, this one is."
2-they modify their behavior depending on the tenor,
sharpness, and volume of barks, ear positions, tail
wagging differences, by the other dogs; e.g., "that's
enough."
3-They do not communicate to me in English, but seem
to accept communication from me in that language—not
trained responses to commands, but "listening to
conversations" between myself and Mary and reacting
to words (e.g., dog park) that are exchanged in those
conversations. Mary and I are totally sedentary and
speaking in conversational tone, so pretty sure there
we are not sending 'signals' akin to training words,
training tone of voice.
4-they seem to remember trauma, (one of our dogs
spent three days with dead owner before anyone knew
the owner was deceased and will bite if anyone tries
to forcefully remove him from my (current bonded
owner) presence.
5-seek "psychological comfort" by crawling into my
bed and sleeping on my shoulder when the thunderstorm
comes.
*/_All of these are grounded in anthropomorphism—long
considered a deadly error by ethologists._/* (Some
contemporary ethologists are exploring accepting and
leveraging this "error" to extend our understanding
of animal behavior.)
davew
On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
While I find all the ancillary considerations
raised on the original thread extremely
interesting, I would like to reopen the discussion
of Conscious as a Mystery and ask that those that
join it stay close to the question of what
consciousness is and how we know it when we see it.
Baby Steps.
Where were we? I think I was asking Jochen, and
perhaps Peitr and anybody else who thought that
animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware of their
own awareness) what basis they had in experience for
thinking that.. One offering for such an experience
is the absence of language in animals. Because my
cat cannot describe his experience in words, he
cannot be conscious. This requires the following
syllogism:
Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is
conscious.
Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing
apes) do not employ languages.
Ergo, Animals are not conscious.
But I was trying to find out the basis for the first
premise. How do we know that there are no
non-linguistic beings that are not conscious. I
hope we could rule out the answer,"because they are
non-linguistic", both in its strictly tautological
or merely circular form.
There is a closely related syllogism which we also
need to explore:
All language using beings are conscious.
George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.
George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious.
Both are valid syllogisms. But where do the
premises come from.
Nick
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140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
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