Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[evolution]

No.

What is your philosophical analysis of propositional knowledge?

I do NOT have one, as I do NOT do, so called, "philosophical analysis's".

I just LOOK AT 'what IS', and present 'that'.

By the way, What is your, so called, "philosophical analysis" of 'propositional knowledge'?

[GE Morton]

In a way. But you can draw a picture of yourself or your brain in your own think bubble which can do that. Computer games model a world which my avatar acts within as I watch and make decisions on what action to take. There doesn't seem to be something intrinsically special re consciousness about models which include the model maker.

That avatar is not a model of you. It is only a token for you. It is not mirroring your behavior, or responding to its virtual environment, in real time.

I'm not getting the brain dead person point? I accept neural correlation, and the dynamic nature of it brains and experience. Seeing other people's brains stop working, usually because they're dead, is why I assume the same will happen to me and I'll no longer experience anything when I die. How is that relevant to iwhether AIs will be able to experience?

Because, though the brain-dead person is made of the same stuff as a brain-alive one, it is not behaving like one. The behavior, not the structure/composition, of the system is the criterion we apply to decide whether a system (other than ourselves) is conscious. If we decide, based on behavior, that it is conscious we inpute, by induction from our own experience, phenomenal states to it.

I think we'd have to conclude we've created something which behaves like us and can pass the Turing test, because the way it works mimics how human brains work. But we wouldn't know if it had captured possible substrate dependent necessary conditions for experiencing.

How will we ever know that, other than by observing its behavior?

A number of S-F stories have explored this issue --- typically, portraying a future "robot rebellion" wherein robots are demanding their "rights." Of course, the rebellious robots are portrayed very human-like, behaviorally speaking. They cooperate with and care for one another (and sometimes humans as well), express joy and sadness, elation and depression, grieve when losing a loved one, often come up with original ideas and clever solutions to problems that have eluded humans, produce art, literature, and music, some of which is outstanding, and even philosophize. The opponents of the "robot rights" movement insist that despite all this, the machines are not human and thus have no rights. "We built them, they are our property, and we may do with them as we wish!"

The classic film Blade Runner also explores these issues, though it deals with androids, which are biological but artificial.

How would you come down on the "robot rights" issue?

[Atla]

So then, again, we run into the mental-physical identity issue which you seem to have rejected. Of course I'm saying that identity is the only sensible way forward, reductionism solves nothing.

If we understand "identity" in Leibniz's sense --- two things are identical IFF they differ in no distinguishable properties, then phenomenal experience and brain processes are obviously not identical. The Place/Smart identity thesis confuses the "is" of composition (lightning is a stream of electrons) with the "is" of identity (the Morning Star is the Evening Star).

Evidence for what? We can't measure qualia so there's no evidence for it.

Well, if you understand "qualia" as I defined it earlier, and you claim "there is no evidence for it," then you apparently cannot distinguish red from green, or even from the smell of ammonia. If you can make those distinctions, without any external apparatus, then you DO have evidence for qualia. We don't, BTW, have to "measure" qualia to have evidence for them. For qualia, "to be is to be perceived."

I can, of course, have no direct evidence that you have qualia. I can only infer that you do from your observable ability to make the above distinctions.

However, the 'laws' or 'features' of nature tend to be universal, so why would there be an exception here? So the default idea is that qualia is universal, all these 'emergence out of complexity' etc. ideas are probably just bad philosophy.

Qualia are not "laws of nature." Or features of it. The are features, products, only of certain types of physical systems, some natural, but perhaps some artificial also.

Total lack of critical thinking.

[Sculptor1]

Tangible means touchable.
Surely you can think of physical things that cannot be touched.

I like how, among other things, he listed the definition of "physical" (and from a generic dictionary, no less), as if the problem was solely that.

I love to see him disclaim the sun as non physical. Or a proton for that matter!

[Sculptor1]

Tangible means touchable.

"Definition of tangible (Entry 1 of 2)
1a: capable of being perceived especially by the sense of touch : PALPABLE"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tangible

In the broader sense, especially among philosophers, "tangible" means perceivable via the senses.

Even by abusing language you have failed to advance your claim, neither have you answered my questions.

[Terrapin Station]

What is your philosophical analysis of propositional knowledge?

I do NOT have one, as I do NOT do, so called, "philosophical analysis's".

I just LOOK AT 'what IS', and present 'that'.

Aka philosophical analyses when this is done in a philosophical context, lol.

So, in other words, what is your "'what is' presentation" for propositional knowledge in this philosophical context?

[Terrapin Station]

If we understand "identity" in Leibniz's sense --- two things are identical IFF they differ in no distinguishable properties, then phenomenal experience and brain processes are obviously not identical. The Place/Smart identity thesis confuses the "is" of composition (lightning is a stream of electrons) with the "is" of identity (the Morning Star is the Evening Star).

I explained this to you already. Brain/mind identity is just the same as morning star/evening star identity. The apparent differences are due to spatiotemporal reference point differences.

With the morning star and evening star, it's due to observing it in the morning versus in the evening, and in different cardinal directions in the sky. So there are temporal, spatial and contextual differences a la different spatiotemporal reference points.

With brain/mind, it's due to observing it from a spatiotemporal reference point of "otherness"--that is, observing it from a third-person point of view, versus observing it from the spatiotemporal reference point of being it--that is, observing it from a first-person point of view.

The differences are differences of perspective or spatiotemporal reference point.

Brains are never going to seem just like minds from a third-person perspective, and minds are never going to seem just like brains from a first-person perspective, because the perspectives are never going to seem identical.

That's just like the morning star is never going to seem like the evening star from a "seeing it in the morning, looking to the east" perspective, and the evening star is never going to seem like the morning star from a "seeing it in the evening, looking to the west" perspective, because those perspectives are never going to seem identical.

With the morning star/evening star, we can realize that we're seeing Venus, and from a third person perspective (which of course is all we can have of Venus--we can't literally BE Venus) Venus seems like Venus, but brains/minds are unique in that they're the only thing possible for which the different perspectives in question are observing it third-person versus being it, and those two perspectives aren't reconcilable in the same way because of this. Hence why brain/mind identity is a unique case for this issue.

[evolution]

I do NOT have one, as I do NOT do, so called, "philosophical analysis's".

I just LOOK AT 'what IS', and present 'that'.

Aka philosophical analyses when this is done in a philosophical context, lol.

I have ALREADY TOLD 'you'; you can label or define absolutely ANY thing, absolutely ANY way you like. So, if you want to define or label 'presenting and/or illustrating a picture of what was seen' as 'a philosophical context', then so be it. But NOT EVERY one LOOKS AT and SEES things the way you do.

So, in other words, what is your "'what is' presentation" for propositional knowledge in this philosophical context?

In, what is 'this', so called, "philosophical context"?

Also, and by the way, I asked you: What is your, so called, "philosophical analysis" of 'propositional knowledge'? But you have NOT YET answer this question.

[Terrapin Station]

In, what is 'this', so called, "philosophical context"?

If you don't know what a philosophical context is, why are you posting on a philosophy board?

[Gertie]

GE

In a way. But you can draw a picture of yourself or your brain in your own think bubble which can do that. Computer games model a world which my avatar acts within as I watch and make decisions on what action to take. There doesn't seem to be something intrinsically special re consciousness about models which include the model maker.

That avatar is not a model of you. It is only a token for you. It is not mirroring your behavior, or responding to its virtual environment, in real time.

True, I'm just making the point that there's nothing intrinsically special about a model which includes the model maker, which might lead to experiential states manifesting. Do you think there is?

I'm not getting the brain dead person point? I accept neural correlation, and the dynamic nature of it brains and experience. Seeing other people's brains stop working, usually because they're dead, is why I assume the same will happen to me and I'll no longer experience anything when I die.

How is …
Because, though the brain-dead person is made of the same stuff as a brain-alive one, it is not behaving like one. The behavior, not the structure/composition, of the system is the criterion we apply to decide whether a system (other than ourselves) is conscious. If we decide, based on behavior, that it is conscious we inpute, by induction from our own experience, phenomenal states to it.

To clarify I don't dismiss behaviour, that is a major observable clue, it would be daft to ignore it. You made the point that we have to assume other people have mental experience too, and I'm saying we have an extra clue re other people - they are made of the same stuff and biological/chemical processes. That could be very significant, we don't know.

Computers are already bordering on beating the Turing test. And self reports in answer to 'what is it like' questions could be misinterpreted by a machine which doesn't have mental experience and so no reference for what the question means. Or machine experience might be significantly different and asking what is it like to see a red rose makes no sense, where-as being hungry for electricity, or more stimuli, or something much weirder might, but we wouldn't think to ask. It will be exciting, but unlikely to be conclusive.

Where-as if we had an actual explanation which included the necessary and sufficient conditions, then we could test for those. We could make a consciousness-o-meter and not have to guess.

I think we'd have to conclude we've created something which behaves like us and can pass the Turing test, because the way it works mimics how human brains work. But we wouldn't know if it had captured possible substrate dependent necessary conditions for experiencing.

How will we ever know that, other than by observing its behavior?

It's OK to say we don't know.

A number of S-F stories have explored this issue --- typically, portraying a future "robot rebellion" wherein robots are demanding their "rights." Of course, the rebellious robots are portrayed very human-like, behaviorally speaking. They cooperate with and care for one another (and sometimes humans as well), express joy and sadness, elation and depression, grieve when losing a loved one, often come up with original ideas and clever solutions to problems that have eluded humans, produce art, literature, and music, some of which is outstanding, and even philosophize. The opponents of the "robot rights" movement insist that despite all this, the machines are not human and thus have no rights. "We built them, they are our property, and we may do with them as we wish!"
The classic film Blade Runner also explores these issues, though it deals with androids, which are biological but artificial.

If you like that sort of thing there was a good UK TV series called Humans which was quite a realistic portrayal of how robots could integrate into everyday life. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 . They rebel of course, but what self-respecting robot doesn't.

How would you come down on the "robot rights" issue?

Heh. The Un-Natural Rights issue

I just want a robot servant, is that too much to ask! But we should err on the side of caution, if there's enough evidence to think they have experiential states, they should in principle have commensurate moral consideration, probably including rights. (Just keep the off switch handy).

(If you want to while away some quarantime, Dennett has an entertaining brain twister short story which covers some similar ground https://www.lehigh.edu/%7Emhb0/Dennett-WhereAmI.pdf )

[GE Morton]

Total lack of critical thinking.

Ah. Lacking any substantive arguments, a retreat to ad hominems.

[GE Morton]

Even by abusing language you have failed to advance your claim, neither have you answered my questions.

To which claim to you refer? And I scrolled back several pages, found no questions from you. Perhaps I didn't go back far enough. Could you ask them again?

[Atla]

Total lack of critical thinking.

Ah. Lacking any substantive arguments, a retreat to ad hominems.

Yeah first try to get a handle on what fields are, what 'physical' means, what evidence means in science, what location is, why "identity" in Leibniz's sense doesn't apply here, what a theorethical construct is and what it isn't. Then maybe you'll understand that

The are features, products, only of certain types of physical systems, some natural, but perhaps some artificial also.

is your random fantasy with nothing to back it up. And then reconsider who's lacking substantive arguments.

[GE Morton]

If we understand "identity" in Leibniz's sense --- two things are identical IFF they differ in no distinguishable properties, then phenomenal experience and brain processes are obviously not identical. The Place/Smart identity thesis confuses the "is" of composition (lightning is a stream of electrons) with the "is" of identity (the Morning Star is the Evening Star).

I explained this to you already. Brain/mind identity is just the same as morning star/evening star identity. The apparent differences are due to spatiotemporal reference point differences.

A laughable "explanation" already refuted, which explains nothing. Apparently that refutation went over your head. Let me try to make it simpler.

With the morning star and evening star, it's due to observing it in the morning versus in the evening, and in different cardinal directions in the sky. So there are temporal, spatial and contextual differences a la different spatiotemporal reference points.

All of those differences are differences in observational circumstances --- the times and places observations are made --- and NOT in the properties of the planet. To claim two things are identical you need to cite a lack of differences in the properties of those objects, NOT in the circumstances of observation. The observable, measurable properties of the planet Venus --- its mass, diameter, atmospheric composition, orbital velocity and parameters, axial tilt, rotational velocity, etc., are given in any astronomy text. If the two objects in question are identical in those and all other detectable respects then they are identical; the times/places of observation are irrelevant. There are no footnotes in those texts declaring, "The above properties apply to Venus only when observed from spatio-temporal coordinates x, y, x."

The observable "properties" of qualia bear no resemblance, in any respect, to the observable properties of neural processes. ("Properties" in the first case is in scare quotes because, strictly speaking, qualia have no properties --- that term implies some substance to which the property is attached. But qualia have no substance --- they only have a "distinguishable character"). Neural processes have many properties in the ordinary sense; qualia have none of those. No change in observational viewpoint changes ANY of the properties of the planet Venus, nor of the properties of a particular neural process. Nor do they lose any of those properties when viewed from different vantage points.

Moreover, as previously pointed out, the perspective appearance of a 3D object from a given reference point can be translated to one from any other reference point via a simple algorithm. No such translation is possible for your first-person, third-person perspectives. That perspectival difference is NOT a difference in spatio-temporal reference points. A quale is not even a 3D object; it is "one-dimensional;" it appears the same way from every reference point from which it can be viewed --- which is only one. No other observer can observe it from any reference point accessible to him. To claim that something you cannot even view is "identical," in Leibniz's sense, to something you can is groundless, oblivious to the obvious, and frivolous.

Let's try a thought experiment. You are facing two computer screens, Screen 1 presenting a large red square, Screen 2 showing a EKG-like graph showing the activity of all the neurons thought to be involved when you are viewing Screen 1. While viewing Screen 1 you can push a button to freeze the Screen 2 display at that point. Are the two displays identical in Liebniz's sense? Would any other conceivable method of displaying or representing brain activity be identical to the Screen 1 display? Do they have any similarities at all, other than both appearing on computer monitors?

You're just out-to-lunch, here, TP.

[GE Morton]

Yeah first try to get a handle on what fields are, what 'physical' means, what evidence means in science, what location is, why "identity" in Leibniz's sense doesn't apply here, what a theorethical construct is and what it isn't. Then maybe you'll understand that

Well, given this dialogue so far, I'm pretty sure I have a far better grasp on all of those terms than you do. But I'm always open to instruction --- you're more than welcome to present your understandings of them. Perhaps you can begin with explaining why Leibniz's definition of identity is inapplicable, and just what definition you prefer.