Why do I have a perspective at all?
17 Feb 2012, 5:39 pm
Tadzio wrote:
I made the marginal note to Quantum Mechanics to try to avoid the buzz-word hide-and-go-seek polemics that try to seek refuge behind uncertainty (like the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ). When a cheap-trash floppy disk is defective, I don't want the excuse that that is "normal" with the B.S. line of it being an unavoidable "Quantum Problem".
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were claiming such a thing. I just wanted to kill that topic before it sprouted. I agree with you completely that quantum theory is less relevant to great mysteries than it is sometimes claimed to be.
Tadzio wrote:
It's easy to demonstrate that a pan of room-temperature water has inspirational consciousness. Just get three pans, fill one up fill nearly painful hot water. one with ice water, and one with room-temperature water. Stick you left hand in the hot water, while sticking your right hand in the ice water; soak them for a minute or so, then simultaneously withdraw both hands and stick them in the pan of room temperature water. This reveals that the water is conscious enough to move its warm parts to be around your right hand, and its cold parts around your left hand.
Sorry, I don't understand this at all. What are you claiming? Are you just noting that the experience of temperature is relative?
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
Complexity is not enough - you also need feedback and change. Because our "programs" rewrite themselves, they learn and change. A waterfall doesn't do that.
That's necessary, maybe, but I don't think that even that is sufficient. I tend to think that a "program" can never have a point of view. I think that a program needs a body to have a point of view. It needs to be an embodied mind. I also don't believe that a program (that is, a bunch of lines of code) can rewrite itself in the relevant way. Rather, the program needs to be encoded in a physical material that can rewire itself.
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17 Feb 2012, 5:54 pm
Declension wrote:
That's necessary, maybe, but I don't think that even that is sufficient. I tend to think that a "program" can never have a point of view. I think that a program needs a body to have a point of view. It needs to be an embodied mind. I also don't believe that a program (that is, a bunch of lines of code) can rewrite itself in the relevant way. Rather, the program needs to be encoded in a physical material that can rewire itself.
your dna is a physical material that rewires itself, quite literally.
today i read an article describing the first non carbon "lifeform" (single celled organisms incapable of direct reproduction, they are working on that)
theyre called iChells.
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20 Feb 2012, 10:20 am
Declension wrote:
01001011 wrote:
Even if you are a zombie, you still 'think' you have a perspective and you are aware of it.
You're confusing the matter. What does "think" mean? If it means "process", then yes, a zombie thinks. But a zombie isn't aware of anything.
The real problem is what does 'aware' means.
In order for a zombie to think (i the process sense) that it is aware of anything, it must have a detailed model of what 'awareness' is. Really, how do know you are actually aware of anything, rather that you just 'think' you are?
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
You're forgetting Descartes. A zombie wouldn't think anything of the sort - if you ask one, it will state is has a perspective and indeed it will give all signs of having one. But if you're asking the question yourself, the answer is "yes", purely because you can ask yourself the question.
Can a zombie not 'think' about the question 'Do I have perspective'? What is the difference begin asked the question and the zombie 'asking' itself when triggered by some random internal factor?
20 Feb 2012, 6:35 pm
01001011 wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
You're forgetting Descartes. A zombie wouldn't think anything of the sort - if you ask one, it will state is has a perspective and indeed it will give all signs of having one. But if you're asking the question yourself, the answer is "yes", purely because you can ask yourself the question.
Can a zombie not 'think' about the question 'Do I have perspective'? What is the difference begin asked the question and the zombie 'asking' itself when triggered by some random internal factor?
That's sort of the point of defining a zombie. It "thinks" like a computer - takes the inputs and processes them to come up with an answer - but it doesn't have a perspective. It would state it does, but only because that is the "right" answer to give. It doesn't experience any perspective. It doesn't have one.
The issue is not whether zombies have perspective. They don't, because that's how we define them, just like we don't ask whether a bachelor has to be unmarried. The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
20 Feb 2012, 6:56 pm
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
Here is my tentative answer. I'm not sure if I'm enirely satisfied with it.
I assume that other humans have perspectives using a sort of Occam's Razor reasoning. It goes like this. I know that at least one human has a perspective. So now I ask myself: which universe is less arbitrary: the universe where some humans have perspectives and others don't, or the universe where all humans have perspectives? Clearly, the latter universe is less arbitrary. So I assume that I am living in the latter universe.
Does anyone see something wrong with this way of thinking? It seems a little bit weak to me, but I'm not sure why.
EDIT: I think that I know why it seems weak. It's because both specified universes are extremely arbitrary, in two senses. Sense 1: the word "human" is fuzzy. Sense 2: why only humans?
So I have to repair the claim, and say something like: which universe is less arbitrary: the universe where some physical systems that encode themselves have perspectives and others don't, or the universe where all physical systems that encode themselves have perspectives?
This seems a little bit more forceful.
21 Feb 2012, 7:16 am
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
01001011 wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
You're forgetting Descartes. A zombie wouldn't think anything of the sort - if you ask one, it will state is has a perspective and indeed it will give all signs of having one. But if you're asking the question yourself, the answer is "yes", purely because you can ask yourself the question.
Can a zombie not 'think' about the question 'Do I have perspective'? What is the difference begin asked the question and the zombie 'asking' itself when triggered by some random internal factor?
That's sort of the point of defining a zombie. It "thinks" like a computer - takes the inputs and processes them to come up with an answer - but it doesn't have a perspective. It would state it does, but only because that is the "right" answer to give. It doesn't experience any perspective. It doesn't have one.
The issue is not whether zombies have perspective. They don't, because that's how we define them, just like we don't ask whether a bachelor has to be unmarried. The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
A zombie can do a lot more. It can describe its 'perspective' in detail, without being prompted.
The conundrum is whether there is such thing as perspective.
21 Feb 2012, 3:41 pm
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
surely we can? we can observe the "perspective" of those around us changing, and at times in ways that appear completely illogical and irrational. this surely suggests, that, like us, or "I", they are also human?
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21 Feb 2012, 3:44 pm
peebo wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
surely we can? we can observe the "perspective" of those around us changing, and at times in ways that appear completely illogical...
We're figuring out what turns what on and off already and essentially where consciousness seems to end. Its a bit of a closing mystery in that sense.
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21 Feb 2012, 4:01 pm
peebo wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
surely we can? we can observe the "perspective" of those around us changing, and at times in ways that appear completely illogical and irrational. this surely suggests, that, like us, or "I", they are also human?
You can't observe another's perspective. You can only see their reactions. If these reactions are faked, how could you know? If you put them into an MRI scanner, you may find the right parts of the brain light up - but those could be faked too. Perhaps all that is just the brain at work, and the perspective doesn't show up?
It's not a real experiment. It's a philosophical puzzle on the nature of consciousness - we start by defining a zombie. If it demonstrates all the properties of being a real mind with a real identity and point of view, how can you be sure it isn't? Ultimately you're left with two options: either that consciousness is the result of those qualities, or that it doesn't really exist at all - including in us.
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21 Feb 2012, 4:24 pm
as techstep put it we are indeed on the verge of observing perspective almost directly,
the fMRI for one can show some astounding details about personality and even psychopathic tendencies and the like can be directly observed in the brain.
other areas are still completely muddy but we are getting there.
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the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
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22 Feb 2012, 2:47 am
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
peebo wrote:
Thom_Fuleri wrote:
The philosophical conundrum is whether the people around us are zombies or real people, because there's no way we can know.
surely we can? we can observe the "perspective" of those around us changing, and at times in ways that appear completely illogical and irrational. this surely suggests, that, like us, or "I", they are also human?
You can't observe another's perspective. You can only see their reactions. If these reactions are faked, how could you know? If you put them into an MRI scanner, you may find the right parts of the brain light up - but those could be faked too. Perhaps all that is just the brain at work, and the perspective doesn't show up?
It's not a real experiment. It's a philosophical puzzle on the nature of consciousness - we start by defining a zombie. If it demonstrates all the properties of being a real mind with a real identity and point of view, how can you be sure it isn't? Ultimately you're left with two options: either that consciousness is the result of those qualities, or that it doesn't really exist at all - including in us.
if a being had no consciousness or perspective, what would motivate it to fake reactions?
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22 Feb 2012, 1:02 pm
peebo wrote:
if a being had no consciousness or perspective, what would motivate it to fake reactions?
You might have to trace that question further. What kinds of genetic or instinctual inputs would end in that result?
AI has been an interesting meditation on the topic. My own thought is if we were able to come up with silicon-based AI and they escaped; we'd essentially have perfect people running around that likely the quickest way to tell them apart would be perfect looking people with perfect personalities and that's assuming that they wouldn't be wary of anything that would break their subterfuge, which that would.
The scary possibility in something like that though would be less about whether they shared an 'I' experience with us more and more about their ability to rewire their nervous systems on the fly - ie. any inconvenient feelings would be by nature corrected on impulse; which could make them the perfect psychopaths as well.
As far as human zombies though, I get the impression that we can at least tell if some people are more dimly lit or whether the lights flicker upstairs but, that seems about as far as we can go and there's more to suggest that there's a gradient in level of consciousness and self awareness.
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22 Feb 2012, 4:56 pm
Completely different conversation. It was on the topic of AI and the sense that the remorse that we have that we can't turn off by choice - it would be able to.
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