To Be or Not To Be: The Matrix Regurgitated
by JoySomething one of our critics said in a post to the Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan, Part II thread is worth exploring for what it tells us about believers-in scientism, and how science so easily takes the place in their minds/lives of that ever so 'irrational' God they claim so stridently doesn't exist.
Raevmo said:
My guess is that everybody (well, the rich) will hand in some of their own stem-cells at birth, which will later be used to "rejuvenate" their organs, including the brain. That should make humans live for a couple thousand years at least. Later we will be able to copy the structure of our brains sufficiently accurately to transport the essence of our personalities to computers, which will be the end of the organic brain and the beginning of a bizar [sic] new world.
[Emphasis mine] Considering that reductive materialism denies the existence of consciousness, volition and free will as vociferously as they deny the existence of gods/God, one might wonder about this assertion about an individual's consciousness being not just separable from the physical brain, but capable of expressing 'self' through the circuitry of a machine.
This "Mind Uploading" is of course standard stuff for the Transhumanist crowd, but there are quite a few actual scientists out there that are pretty sure it's possible. Many of them are actively engaged in the ongoing (and strongly AI funded) multidisciplinary quest for consciousness. And they don't see this as 'Woo' despite the whole separability of mind thing being strongly associated with Eastern religious traditions and New Agey stuff.
Some of them are quite serious about it. Check out what a neurologist has to say about Digital Immortality on the NeuroLogica Blog. Unlike Raevmo's thousand year prediction, futurist Ray Kurzweil claims in The Singularity it's only 40-50 years off. Though one of the professors in the UA course in consciousness studies I took predicted 200 years just to have a good working definition of the term consciousness, so they'll all know what they're studying!
Reason Magazine explored this in 2004 with Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea? In that article Francis Fukuyama complains about the dreams of biotechnology for the rich (Raevmo's qualification) leading to genocide one way or the other, with no good odds on the 'borg.
Adam Kadmon of Transtopia outlines the slow replacement method of mind uploading, which does look to rely upon the view that consciousness isn't really separable, it's just the particular arrangement of 'wetware' that could be replaced bit-by-bit with mechanical pieces-parts, the same way that our bodies constantly replace molecules over a period of time.
Satanist Vexen Crabtree of Human Truth offers a 1999 article on the transfer of consciousness using that replacement analogy to boost belief. But I was most impressed by the Hypnosis for Kids page on learning how to transfer consciousness. THAT's some useful knowledge, and a whole lot easier to digest than Swami Ramakrishnashivakali-whatever's methodology!
So. I'm forced to wonder yet again how believers-in scientism - and its 'promise' of machine-based immortality [someday, maybe] - can expect any religious or spiritually-inclined person to believe they've somehow proven the non-existence of consciousness, when they depend on the separability of [causal] consciousness from physical brains in order to craft this monumental deception.
Still, the ability to capture consciousness and enslave it in a machine does offer some hefty power perks of its own to providers. If there were a real Satan determined to deceive people out of their souls, I'd guess he's the CEO.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I find it a simply fascinating how the "rationalists" have simply replaced traditional religious faith whole cloth with brand new "rationalist" religious faith. . .
You've got your whole good vs. evil thing (enlightened rationalists fighting against the evil of death, and being held back by benighted religious bigots who claim that death is a natural and acceptable part of life. . .). You've got the promise of eternal life or something close to it (SENS or uploading). You have the end of history (the Singularity), much like the end of history in Millennialist Christianity
Comment by mcromer — April 27, 2007 @ 10:42 am
April 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
mcromer:
Yeah but… this stuff goes back and forth so completely, so often, that the whole "rationalist" endeavor starts to look totally irrational in no time at all! Take your examples…
1. Death as evil. In the great struggle against religious beliefs, rationalists often flip-flop between the positions of death-as-evil and death-as-natural. Depends apparently on what their mood is today and who they're arguing with. Whenever theodicy is the subject, the rationalist makes broad, sweeping claims that count all death of all possible creatures great and small as being God-negating evil. Then when the religious apologist mentions that their belief system includes a promise of eternal life for believers, the rationalist comes right back with lengthy tirades against how terrified religious people are of their own deaths, and how the rationalist is perfectly content to die and feed worms when his time is done. Turn it around and they do precisely the same thing. Flip, flop, flip, flop…
2. The 'promise' of eternal life. Same old story, depending entirely on who's afraid of death in today's match-up. The blissfully content to become worm food rationalist berates the religious believer for believing that consciousness is not only separable from the body-machine, but in this capacity is entirely likely to survive the death of the body-machine. All the while the same rationalist eagerly follows the progress of the consciousness quest and various transhumanist pipe dreams, convinced that consciousness is indeed separable from the body-machine and CAN be trapped in some future computer that will never wear out or be unplugged, granting themselves eternal life in a box! Some of them are so sure this will happen someday, and so convinced of their own personal importance to future 'bot-people, that they have their brains cryogenically frozen when they die!
3. The end of history. Well, if freezing one's brain is the rationalist version of the Rapture, "mind-uploading" the rationalist version of Resurrection of the Dead, and dependence on robots or merely human slaves to do the maintenance is the rationalist version of "Crowns in Heaven" (the perennial struggle for power in the afterlife), they've got all the bases covered. Except for power outages and lightning strikes, that is. Though it wouldn't surprise me if getting your mecha-brain struck by lightning means for the rationalist that the mecha-god doesn't really like you playing computer games all day and night rather than being a productive, socially active human being.
[Sheesh!] They're a real piece of work. With the semi-hilarious gall to call religious believers irrational! §;o)
Comment by Joy — April 27, 2007 @ 12:13 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Joy,
If you really want to get a kick, go read this guy's posts and comments at "overcoming bias".
The most hilarious thing from him yet was a comment attacking both the the horrific evils of "religion" and of "not freezing corpses".
Needless to say, he did not have any response to my reply that his belief in cryo-immortality and the oncoming "Singularity" seemed oddly religious to me. . .
Comment by mcromer — April 27, 2007 @ 12:59 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I really disagreed with the part on Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea that said
i think many people have been told that the drugs "restore" depression sufferers to their "true selves". what the hell does true self even mean here?
Comment by dantedanti — April 27, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Joy, I'm thinking you could have entitled this thread as another of your hardwired series. It appears that most humans are somehow at some level hardwired for immortality (I'd better check my spelling to make sure that I included the 't'…yep it's there) I have a book at home about how some of the SETI people, Frank Drake for example, believe that there are some alien civilizations out there who have achieved virtual immortality. It's an interesting connection, don't you think?
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 27, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Off-topic: This reminds me of how discussions can be thrown off so much by the tiniest typos. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had about the evils of pre-martial sex.
Comment by thechristiancynic — April 27, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
You can believe that uploading is possible without believing in dualism as it's usually constituted by the religious. Consider a book. I hope we can agree that it's just ink and paper, and that if we torch it, the contents won't go to Book Heaven. And yet if we scan, OCR and proofread it, then torch the original, doesn't it still exist in a fashion unrelated to physical continuity?
Of course, a book isn't a machine, but the concept of transferring information without transferring matter is the same. Just as you can scan a book without believing in any sort of nonmaterialistic woo, you can (in theory, with enough handwaving to make every physicist in the same time zone gag) duplicate a brain, hook up inputs and outputs, and "play" it like any other simulation. I have yet to see any reason why this isn't so that doesn't come down to "brains are magical", which isn't really convincing unless you can show some kind of magical phenomenon emanating from the brain.
Uploading raises a whole plethora of philosophical questions about which you is you and such. Say you get your brain scanned. You don't feel any different, but the copy of you on the monitor is explaining that everything went well, and I can see the whole internet from here. You, however, are still very much made of meat and would probably be opposed to being thrown in the dustbin as "just a copy". But how does the effect of this procedure differ from the effect of a Moravec transfer, where nanobots replace your neurons one-by-one with mechanical equivalents that function identically? Are you still you? If not, at which point do you cease to be you? What about if the now-metal brain in which your personality resides is duplicated? Is the first metal brain more you than the other, because it was there first, even though it's identical in every other way to the other metal brain?
Enough to give one quite a headache, isn't it. In case someone responding to this didn't want to wade through the above, I'll recap in short: the idea of separating the information content of a brain from the meat content doesn't imply religious dualism. The various theories and promises of transhumanism have some overlap with the promises of various religions, but, for instance, the theory of evolution has some overlap with the Genesis story in that both seek to explain (part of) how we got here–the fact that the religious have trod this ground doesn't in and of itself prove anything. So, what happens, from a religious-dualist view, in the brain-scanning and Moravec-transfer situations?
Comment by grendelkhan — April 27, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
LOL!!! Well, if we're hardwired, we must be as hardwired for immorality as for immortality, since these concerns take up so much space… §;o)
John_A.:
Yes it is interesting, but mostly for the amount of blatant hypocrisy it reveals. Beyond that, it's actually kinda sad.
Is it our god-connection wiring (as revealed to us by a long series of mystics and holy men/women in all traditions over many thousands of years), or is it just pride of ego, that views itself as The Most Important Thing [TM] in all of existence in all of space and time, that cannot bear to recognize its own mortality? Obviously atheists go back and forth radically on this question as much as religious people do. They'll grab at anything, it seems!
The difference I see is all in the hierarchy of who's ruling over whom during this assumed/desired eternity. Religious people are prone to believe the creator god/power sets the rules and judges the results in any person's life. There are many different doctrinal levels of submission from personally prideful to entirely selfless, some seeing immortality as just desserts for their personal (egotistical) piety, some hoping to accept an entirely undeserved gift of grace.
For the sientistic god-rejectors, it's all about their own striving for the personal power of immortality, a "beating God at his own game" contest, and a means to extend their hedonistic pleasures and sadistic attitudes toward others forever. As if immortality were something no one ever thought seriously and brilliantly about until they came along. Alien hopes are a cultural and civilizational phenomenon, I think. Brought on not only by our rapidly expanding skill and power, but also by our general rejection of traditional belief systems in these matters. People used to encounter angels. Now they're abducted by aliens. Could be the same phenomenon interpreted through different worldview filters.
You'll never get Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or any other of the 'New Atheist' prophets to admit their beliefs aren't materially different from a religious fundamentalist's, they're just more pridefully solipsistic about it. Still, if it has been determined in ways science can accept (by one definition or another) that [human] consciousness is indeed separable from the brain that houses it and enables its causal actions in the world, all bets are off. All this 'New Atheist' panic could be a last-ditch effort to distract people from noticing their religion is as empirically irrational as anybody else's.
Let's face it… who's going to endow wealth to keepers of their own ghosts in perpetuity for "eternity in a box" if immortality is a gift from the creator or the natural end result of evolving a separable consciousness (and/or physical tools thereof)? Who will pay for the spectacular CEO salary plus golden parachute?
Reminds me of those great late-night B-movies. The Voodoo priest/priestess usually keeps a collection of pottery jars in a cellar, where she/he has imprisoned the souls of their enslaved zombies. B-movies are for fun, not scientific prediction.
Comment by Joy — April 27, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Hi, grendelkhan,
Keep in mind that we don't expect the copy of the book to be able to think and reason.
Also consider this: how exactly matched are books even from the same printing? Books are not ink and paper. They are atoms (which we cannot see directly). Discrepancies in the composition from book to book probably abound, but they present no problem because we are not wired to "see" at the subatomic scale…we look at the macro patterns that the atoms have formed, and what is different still looks identical.
Hardwiring a copy of a brain could not abide with such discrepancies and errors.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 27, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
grendelkhan:
I'm no materialist, but this seems a rather poor analogue, as the contents of a scanned book are still related to "physical continuity" in the sense that they are just encoded into bits that can then be "decoded" into the physical representation again. That doesn't really do justice to the idea of thoughts and other mental states being non-reducible to physical brain states, IMO.
Comment by thechristiancynic — April 27, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
grendelkhan:
I could write a book - an autobiography - and relate in it every experience and every sensation I can recall, with and without hypnotic help. Is that book "me" or even a fair copy of "me?" It's all the information about myself that I've got, but it's a brain product, not a brain.
As are all thoughts, sensations and experiences products, not raw materials. These aren't data, they are the post-processing product of input and output of interactions between "me" and the world in which I've lived. Just as a clone made of my DNA is just a twin one generation removed (and NOT "me"), no book or system of artificial beeps and buzzers that pretends to be me can ever actually be "me." It seems really weird that anybody could believe this junk. Sorry, but there's an identity crisis afoot here and it isn't mine.
Your own descriptions suggest you'd be a basket case in any carnival house of mirrors in about two seconds flat. If you couldn't tell yourself from your reflections, how do you tell yourself from the other people you already share the planet with? I don't care how many copies I get out of the Xerox machine. None of them are the original up there on the glass, and none of them is any other one of them. That's just paper and toner. Biology is a lot more complex.
Hate to burst any teenager's bubble (I've got one here, and he's got quite the bubble), but while that cute little animé avatar you uploaded into virtual heaven might get to keep on playing as if it were you as long as the electricity stays on, it's NOT you. Don't believe everything the Dungeon Master tells you - he's famous for lying.
Comment by Joy — April 27, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
April 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. AnaxagorasRules stopped at the first paragraph, thechristiancynic didn't notice the part where I said "OCR and proofread", and Joy missed the point, which I'll expand on more, because I really do want to know what the reaction of a dualist is to these ideas.
If you (Joy) think I'm talking about an autobiography, or a simple collection of facts that you can recall (though memory is associative rather than random-access, and doesn't even lend itself to being collated in that fashion), you're not understanding my meaning. An autobiography is like a map of a brain, and the map is not the territory. I'm asking what would happen if we copied the territory itself. (My reflection is just light.)
I suppose that's kind of an answer. If the "cute little animé avatar" is put into a body and told it's just as meaty-human as you or I, is it me? If elves sneak in in the middle of the night and replace me with an exact copy, to what extent am I no longer me? If, short of looking at its brain, there's no way of telling whether it's running on meat or metal, is there really a difference? It's all very "The Electric Ant".
If you're still having trouble with the concept of mind-as-information (e.g., if you still feel compelled to remind me that funhouse mirrors and photocopies are only surrogates for the objects they represent), please tell me your opinion on the Moravec transfer question, which comes at the same idea from a different angle.
Comment by grendelkhan — April 27, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
April 28th, 2007 at 1:03 am
grendelkhan wrote:
I also think of mind as information—-information with a capacity for self-awareness. (I think of God as infinite self-communicating self-aware information.) The difference I have with the materialist is that I don't think information is reducible to its material medium–the material stuff—even at the level of quarks or strings, etc. There just ain't no informationless stuff, no matter how far down you go. And information just isn't material stuff. Additionally on my view, information is essentially, by nature, mental content. Thus, on my view, even a universe with just one quark necessarily implies the existence of a mind.
You might be interested in some papers by noted theist philosopher, Peter van Inwagen, all available at his link:
* Plantinga's Replacement Argument
* Can Mereological Sums Change Their Parts?
* I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come
Van Inwagen is both a Christian (Episcopalian) and a materialist about philosophy of mind.
Though I don't regard myself as a materialist, I do think the Christian doctrine of resurrection should be understood as bodily.
I don't think we should be surprised by our continuing to exist as persons after death. We have, if we're adults, already continued to exist as persons despite the dissolution of the bodies we had as children. So even in this life the survival of our personal identity appears to be quite independent of the survival of any particular physical body. Of course, it may be argued that total disembodiment is incompatible with the continued existence of human personhood. But that is merely a re-statement of materialism, which begs the question, and posits an (at least in this life) unverifiable theory.
However, Christianity has always preached the doctrine known as 'the resurrection of body', which indeed implies that our post-mortem status will not be that of wholly disembodied persons.
Here I believe science may be of some assistance. What, after all, is matter? Einstein showed that it is equivalent to, and convertible into, energy. Recent scientific speculations have postulated the real possibility of energy escaping from our universe into a higher-dimensional realm.
In addition, there continues to be much speculation about a possible connections between quantum mechanics, consciousness, and immortality.
My own view is that there are deep connections between energy, information, and consciousness, and that energy cannot be destroyed (except by God). Of course, the conservation of energy is an established scientific law. Hence, I also think there is reason to believe that information and consciousness cannot be destroyed either. As a Catholic, I believe that the 'fields' that are the energy/information/conscious things that are us will, upon our deaths, be 'resurrected' in another realm governed by 'laws of physics' that are quite different from those operating in this universe, and that we will know ourselves in that other realm and know others, since our conscious selves will be flooded, as it were, by an eternal inpouring of the infinite field of consciousness/information/energy that we call God.
Comment by stunney — April 28, 2007 @ 1:03 am
April 28th, 2007 at 10:27 am
This is simply untrue. What I was saying is that by digitizing the pages of a book, you still have a connection to "physical continuity" in the sense that there are bits encoded onto physical storage that can then be encoded back into a real, physical version. The book still exists, only in a different medium.
What I think is contentious in making this analogous is the idea that physical states in the brain cause thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc., therefore allowing anyone to reproduce those same states in another medium (another brain or perhaps a sophisticated computer, as suggested) and essentially "turn on" consciousness of an individual by doing so.
Comment by thechristiancynic — April 28, 2007 @ 10:27 am
April 28th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Hi, grendelkhan,
I read your entire post, but only wanted to post on one aspect of it. My point was that, though it is possible to "copy" inanimate matter such that the copies seem identical to the original, they in fact are not. I doubt that errors in biological facimiles would be as tolerable.
To address another part of your post: if it were possible to exactly copy your brain and insert it into another body, you state that you would have confusions over which you was you. Wouldn't you agree that the cognitive awareness that each entity experiences is provided by its own brain? Or do you think that you would be able to have cognitive experiences that are provided by the clone's brain as well as you own? In other words, "is this me thinking this, or is it the clone, or is there a difference?" Do you think you would be subjectively experiencing a shared consicousness, so to speak, between you and your clone? That when the clone bends down to pick up a pencil, that you the original will have subjective experience of picking up that pencil? That the memories of picking up that pencil will go into yours the non clone's memory? That after you the original dies, that the "you-ness" is still alive in the clone?
You seem to be implying that consciousness is not only a product of direct sensory experience, but is something that can model a Borg-like sharedness between bodies.
If these suppositions are even close to what you are implying, then you have definitely jumped the shark. My question is why do you think this plausible? Is it the book analogy?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 28, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
April 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
thechristiancynic, does this mean that you believe that if you duplicated (via hand-wavey magic) an entire brain, in a living body, that it would simply fail to function? In what way would it fail? Why would you think so?
Eep! AnaxagorasRules, I think I should have been more specific as to who would be confused in that situation. If it were possible to duplicate my brain and put it in another, identical body, I would expect that observers would be confused. I'm not positing some kind of mushy "shared consciousness" or anything like that, and I'm not sure how you got that. I mean, if you copy a book and then (as I mentioned) torch the original, the copy doesn't somehow acquire the burnt nature from the original. Why do you think I said consciousness works like this?
As for errors in biological facsimiles, the whole point of the argument is that we're handwaving those away in order to get at the more interesting questions–if we can duplicate the mind to the point where observers can't tell which is which, and if both minds are convinced that they're the original, it's good enough for me.
Comment by grendelkhan — April 28, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
April 28th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Do you think it would make any difference if the duplicated human brain was placed in a living body that was, say, a cow body?
snip
I presume you mean some observers couldn't tell the difference, since presumably evidence of the different causal origins of the two brains could be traced in principle.
I don't know what substantive thesis would supposedly follow from our attaining the means to realize your scenario. Right now, it seems possible that some human beings, as a result of purely natural processes, think they are Napoleon Bonaparte, and would be aghast at the suggestion that they aren't. If in the future we can deliberately make a thing that thinks it is grendelkhan and would be aghast at any contrary suggestion, why would that be significant, or any more significant than the fact that there used to be naturally occurring electricity, and now we can make generators?
If the answer is, 'This would give us immortality', then that strikes me as obviously false. If grendelkhan dies but not before a perfect duplicate of grendelkhan's brain is manufactured and placed in another living body, then grendelkhan will have died (but not before something having mental contents very like grendelkhan's was manufactured).
My mother is dead. She died, but not before giving birth to me; and many of my mental contents are similar to my mother's; for instance, my mother understood English and so can I (both being native English speakers). My mother believed that we live on a planet, a belief I share. My mother could distinguish blue from red; so can I. And if I became a 'psycho', I might come to believe that I am my mother, and that she lives on in me, and that she is me.
If making such a thing happen becomes possible, then some beings living in 2498 might believe they were born in 1967.
But that is perfectly consistent with everyone born in 1967 actually having died prior to 2119.
Comment by stunney — April 28, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
April 28th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Hi, grendelkhan,
Because of this statment:
The indentity crisis (which is heavily implied here) between the machine and the human makes no mention of a non-participatory observer. Observers can be fooled very easily regarding identity. For example, by identical twins playing pranks. If the confusion you mentioned is solely experienced by non-cloned observers, then you should amend all of your comments that imply self-confusion between the original and the copy.
But each mind is still distinct, composed of distinct parts, with distinct subjective experiences. What good does it do you to have this clone, when you die, unless your consciousness, and your own self awareness had also been transported into your clone? Apparently, however, you are saying that the crisis is along the lines of, "I'm the original…no I'm the original…no I'm the original…". Well, since the clone must believe that humans are made of flesh, it would be pretty easy to show the clone who in fact is the original.
But meanwhile, what have you the original achieved? You are still you, no matter what the clone thinks. If you want to dispute this, then I think you are going to have to postulate that consciousness is not only a product of direct sensory experience. That consciousness has a component that is distinct from the particular brain matter that it has encapsulated.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 28, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
April 28th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I'm more than a little bit at a loss as to why this question is even addressed to me. I'm not a materialist, and I've stated (or implied) more than a few times in the comments here that I don't buy mind-brain reductionism.
With that in mind, I think you're asking the wrong question: Would a duplicated brain "fail to function" No, I think it would probably work from a biological perspective. Do I think it would hold the consciousness and thoughts of the person from whose brain it was duplicated? I highly doubt it.
Comment by thechristiancynic — April 28, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 11:34 am
You are using an objective word "mind" to refer to subjectivity. However the objective cannot contain the subjective. The subjective contains the objective — ie everyone subjectively experiences everything, including all notions of "objectivity".
Who is the "you" to whom you are referring? You are referring to subjectivity as if it were an object, again.
The "you" that counts here is the subjectivity, that has been associated with a particular name and body. But the name and body are not relevant. What is relevant is the subjectivity.
Ultimately that is all "you" actually are, pure subjectivity, pure experiencingness, associated right now with a particular name, set of memories, thoughts, sensations, and emotions.
Comment by mcromer — April 29, 2007 @ 11:34 am
April 29th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Hi, mcromer,
Strictly speaking, I would say that verbal communication is the objectivization of the communicator's subjective thoughts. There is no way around this. When I post something, I have to hope that readers will understand what I mean. There is no guarantee that they will. All I can do is try my best to convey my meaning in non-obfuscatory language. I hope that the readers will try to understand my meaning. There is no guarantee that they will. I'm not sure what your meaning is here. Yes, my idea of mind is subjective. But I objectivize it when I mention mind in a sentence that you can read. I'm not sure what your point is regarding this.
Specifically, the "you" here was grendelkhan. Grendelkhan, I'm sure, thinks of himself as a real person, and hence a real entity.
I have faith that there is a world of objects, some of which I interact with. Yes, all of my thoughts are necessarily subjective. However, I do not question your existence, because as I said I've postulated a world full of objects, living and non-living. There is no guarantee that what I think is right. I have no guarantee that my reasoning is correct. One way that I can use to determine if my thoughts are sound is by objectivizing them via communication. To see what people think of them. This is what I do here at this forum when I post a comment.
I'm not sure why you see a "you-ness" problem. You, like the other personal pronouns me, him, she, and her, are substitutes for the personal names of people. By convention, we don't only refer to the name of a person when we are directly communicatiing with them. "You" is an unambiguous substitute (well, that's how I meant it) for the name of grendelkhan, whom my comment was directed to.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 29, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Why do you claim that I and my fellow "scienticists" (as you like to call them) deny consciousness? I certainly don't. Roughly speaking, consciousness is a property of information processing systems such as the brain that have a spatial concept of self. Primitive animals with relatively simple brains have consciousness, so it seems reasonable to me to assume that a sufficiently complex computer program could simulate it. And if a computer can mimic it, who's to say that such a computer does not have consciousness? What would it take to convince you that a computer is conscious?
Joy, do you think animals other than humans have consciousness? Rupert Sheldrake (I bet he is one of your heroes, or would be if you knew his work) seems to believe so, since he thinks there is telepathy between dogs and their owners. If you accept that, what is the lowest form of animal that still has consciousness? And what are the immaterial properties responsible for such consciousness?
Comment by Raevmo — April 29, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Do you plan to offer any evidence whatsoever for this claim?
Or is the fact that Daniel Dennett believes it enough for you?
Comment by mcromer — April 29, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
When information processing systems become aware of their own existence and begin informing us of this of their own free will, Dennett's views will not matter.
Comment by Bradford — April 29, 2007 @ 7:15 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Please tell me, what exactly is it about my "claim" that you don't agree with?
Perhaps you haven't noticed that the "degree" of consciousness that we can observe in animals is closely correlated with the complexity of their material brain? Not to mention the lack of consciousness in organisms without nervous systems. People in a coma are often compared to vegetables.
Comment by Raevmo — April 29, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Raevmo, noone is arguing that there is not an association between brains and consciousness. That however is not sufficient to show that the latter is an "emergent property" of the former.
Comment by Bradford — April 29, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
raevmo wrote:
I don't know Joy's views on that, but I explain mine in some detail here, if you're interested.
Bradford, I don't know if you saw that one. It was initially a request to you, though perhaps it's not close enough to what your main focus is.
Comment by stunney — April 29, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
April 29th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Well this entire statement, for starters. . .
1) You haven't established that the brain is primarily an "information processing system".
2) What is the relevance of a "spatial concept of self", exactly? What do you mean by it, exactly?
3) You haven't established that even if the brain is primarily an "information-processing system", that subjectivity is a result of the information processing.
4) Consciousness is not a matter of "degree". Either subjective states are occurring, or we are dealing with a zombie / robot. No in-between. And we do not in fact know that other human beings have subjective states, we impute them to humans and other higher animals due to behaviors we observe. So it would be easy to impute these states to organisms as simple as paramecium, just based on behavior.
Of course, that contradicts the neural network theory of consciousness, so people like Dennett typically claim that a paramecium is a robot with no subjectivity, even though it displays complex behaviors.
Comment by mcromer — April 29, 2007 @ 8:08 pm