Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Ruskin]

A very good point. It is unlikely that to build a sentient machine will ever be possible. This is the orthodox position of complexity theorists and one with which I concur. Sentience cannot be programmed but must be learned. It is hypothetically possible that such a machine could be built, although the technology is beyond even the wildest speculation, and the sentience would be of a very rudimentary kind. Most theorists are of the view that no future civilisation would ever build such a thing even if they developed the computational technology to do so.

Given the rate at which our computer technology advances, it essentially doubles in power every 18 months we could easily build something on the scale of complexity of the human brain within a hundred years. Now if consciousness is the direct product of physical complexity and nothing else and can be replicated via the natural physics you should be able to build a sentient machine. This is interesting as I think science could answer this question one way or another depending on whether or not we can replicate what the universe appears to have done. If we can't or don't understand how to imbue non-living matter with consciousness regardless of structural complexity and power that would suggest consciousness is something a little less tangible, some kind of interaction with living matter perhaps.

It would be utterly useless and potentially dangerous. To build one with the computational capacity of a human mind will absolutely and definitively NEVER be possible.

It would be possible if material naturalism is true you will only need technology advanced enough in complexity and power and you will then be able to recreate the same effect that occurs naturally in the animal brain, this will possible with a couple hundred years at most. It won't be possible if it's something beyond the physical you would just have a massively powerful but entirely non-sentient computer, perhaps it could emulate a sentient being but it likely wouldn't quite pass the Turing test.

There are more logic gates in a human mind than there are ATOMS in the universe. That's a lot of atoms and an awful lot of logic gates.

You would just have to arrange the atoms that are already present in the universe a certain way and consciousness would then result, if what you believe is true but I don't really think it is.


Regards Leo

[Belinda]

I think an artefact might pass most sorts of Turing tests but the ultimate Turing test would be a human life itself with its certain knowledge of its own demise, compounded with its subjective and intersubjective memories including its perceptions ; for instance its feelings of self sacrificing love, and the guilt that such love causes others to feel and so on and on in those bottomless and topless spirals that compound a human psyche.

Artefacts have to have tops and bottoms.

[Felix]

Belinda said: "I regret that ever since I first heard the word 'contingent' I have been unable to understand it. This might be because I cannot picture what an uncaused event might be."

I admit that the distinction is not clear to me either, but as I understand it, contingent means that which exists but could just as well not exist because it's existence is not compelled by causal laws. An example would be what appears to be a purely aesthetic biological feature, that offers no distinct evolutionary advantage - sort of novelty for novelty's sake.

[Quotidian]

The distinction between 'necessary' and 'contingent' being is barely understandable anymore outside scholastic philosophy (which you will still find in the Catholic eductation system.) It is the ancient idea related to what is 'made' or 'created' (typically, corporeal and material entities) and what is 'unmade' or 'eternally existent' (chief of which is Deity, that has never been created and is never destroyed.) In Aquinas' philosophy, soul (roughly equivalent to what we would now call 'mind') is created by God but is on a higher level than 'created things', which is why the soul is 'immortal'.

Where that is relevant to the brain~mind controversy is that many scientists assume that 'mind is the result of brain', i.e., that it can be understood solely in terms of neurobiological structures, which in principle can be undersood in terms of evolutionary and molecular biology . Those who dissent point to a categorical difference between mind and brain. They basically argue that the mind can't be understood solely in terms of physical causality as a matter of principle.

I agree with the view that mind and matter are ontologically separate, that is, belong to different orders or domains. There is room for that kind of understanding in some schools of Buddhism, and in neo-Thomist (i.e. Catholic) philosophy, but it is impossible to accomodate in the framework of 'evolutionary materialism' which is the mainstream scientific view.

[Felix]

That's a different category of contingency, Quotidian. Darwin proposed that the Universe runs by invariant laws but the details of it's course are historically contingent, i.e., are left to the working out of what we may call chance. Presumably the role of contingency - the influence of chance - would decrease as complexity increased. But this would make humankind a contingent detail of evolution rather than a purposeful embodiment of the Universe.

[Obvious Leo]

Atreyu. You show an agility of mind which does you credit but you waste it looking for difficulties where no difficulties exist. Your ideas are unprovable by definition and thus not scientific.

My model is one that a child could understand and I took pains to make sure that my own grandchildren understood it perfectly before the Newtonians got hold of their precious minds. It was a piece of cake and they were rather surprised to find Opa telling them something they already knew. That yesterday has become today seemed pretty obvious to them and that the kid they were yesterday has become the kid that they are today likewise. If only physicists were so easy to teach. I'm gradually bringing them up to speed with the rest of it as I feel they are ready but they should have the entire package before high school when the real damage can be done to their thinking.

This might be because I cannot picture what an uncaused event might be.

Don't bother trying. There is no such thing. If somebody wants to give me an example I'd be pleased to hear it but I'm not chasing off into crackpot websites. This one's bad enough.

What is your understanding and definition of time Leo?

As a matter of courtesy it is expected that you read a thread before commenting on it. Time is an infinite sequence of moments.

is there any reason to suppose they must remain the same from one universe to the next?

None whatsoever, but cause and effect are what define change and a universe can only be defined in terms of its changes, no different from a life or a mind. The physical "laws" of our current cycle of the universe also evolve over long reaches of time and this is well known in physics. They know it because their artificial constants cannot have always been the same and they have no explanation for this. This spaceless paradigm mandates it. However what physicists call the laws of physics are no such thing. They are models of physics and the distinction is not a trivial one. The only law necessary is cause and effect from an initial set of conditions imposed by the phase shift of the previous cycle. The universe simply makes itself from then on, just like any self-organising algorithmic process. Check out John Conway's Game of Life and you'll see exactly how simply this can occur. The universe makes its own "laws."

Except for existence itself which Spinoza described as sui generis I cannot imagine any other event which is outwith causality.

Spinoza points directly at the cyclical model and eternal time. Ergo no first cause. So does the first law of thermodynamics, a very simple law that physicists try to keep locked in a secure vault because it contradicts all the rest of their crap.

Given the rate at which our computer technology advances, it essentially doubles in power every 18 months we could easily build something on the scale of complexity of the human brain within a hundred years.

What is the source of this information please? It is false and whoever said it will be receiving some pointed questions from me. Such as: How can you build something that you can't understand? Whose mind would try and build? How would you build a self-programming computer which can programme itself from a single set of instructions, given to it one time only, and which can never be interfered with again. This is what a mind does. From the moment of conception its entire input is received through its own senses and must be encoded by itself. My sister-in-law is a computer expert of international renown and she bluntly says that this is impossible and will always be impossible. She works at the cutting edge of the new learning algorithms in computing. These are called genetic algorithms, sometimes known as evolutionary algorithms, because they mimic living non-linear systems, but you can't make a whole computer out of them, or even very important parts of one. EVER. They are merely inserts into ordinary linear code and they must be kept very very very simple or else your computer will no longer do as it's told. She calls it having a mind of its own but she's just being facetious. She knows bloody well that you can't really make a usable object out of such a thing and they never dare apply them without a kill switch. She reckons these algorithms are nothing more than useful aids to help them build more sophisticated linear analogues. I'm not an expert on these things myself so I suggest you go and talk to one.

As an aside. Evolutionary algorithms are a big problem for the internet when they are introduced as malware. Once they get in they can NEVER be removed, even in principle. Why? Because they change into other things that simply cannot be predicted and therefore you can never find them. The Stux worm is an example. It will continue to evolve within the internet forever and its becoming more and more complex. An evil minded geek could kill the internet if he wanted to but he could never know beforehand how it would happen. There's a science fiction plot gratis.

Sorry Ruskin. Your science fiction world is a reductionist myth. The only way a bloke can make a mind is to throw his leg over a sheila and then hope for the best.

(which you will still find in the Catholic eductation system.

I had enough of contingency to last me ten lifetimes from the men in frocks. Specious Aquinas-thought and theistic claptrap is unworthy of 21st century philosophy. If you want to delude yourself with it then do it elsewhere and count me out. The philosophy of the bloody obvious is for people who choose to their own thinking.

Regards Leo

P.S.

That's a different category of contingency, Quotidian. Darwin proposed that the Universe runs by invariant laws but the details of it's course are historically contingent, i.e., are left to the working out of what we may call chance. Presumably the role of contingency - the influence of chance - would decrease as complexity increased. But this would make humankind a contingent detail of evolution rather than a purposeful embodiment of the Universe.

Modern evolutionary theory is non-Darwinian but it essentially refines what you say here. Modern models are based on Darwinism but are non-reductionist.

[Quotidian]

That is untrue. The (non-theist) philosopher Thomas Nagel published a book about this very topic Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (2012) which goes into detail about why the neo-Darwinian synthesis is reductionistic and essentially 'mindless'. It was, of course, greeted with enormous disdain and controversy. 'Complexity theory' and the like may not be reductionist in the older sense, but they are often embody materialist assumptions regardless.

[Bohm2]

I agree with the view that mind and matter are ontologically separate, that is, belong to different orders or domains. There is room for that kind of understanding in some schools of Buddhism, and in neo-Thomist (i.e. Catholic) philosophy, but it is impossible to accomodate in the framework of 'evolutionary materialism' which is the mainstream scientific view.

I'm always a bit surprised that this is the mainstream scientific view. I've become persuaded that 'materialism'/physicalism is a pretty meaningless term since we don't have a clear idea what matter is; that is, given the character of scientific inquiry, and in particular, the evolution of physics, it seems like a hopeless task to hope to identify a definite meaning for the term ‘physical’/material from a consideration of physical theory:

Conceptions of the physical are, at best, contingently tied to tentative theories in physics. Since such theories are open and evolving, the concept of the physical is unstable and, hence, not sufficiently well-defined for the purpose of framing empirical or metaphysical theses. There simply is no definite a posteriori concept of the physical available for use by the physicalist. The significance of this conclusion for physicalism is also clear: if our conception of the physical is tied to open and evolving theories in physics and there is, therefore, no well defined a posteriori conception of the physical, it follows that it is pointless to inquire about the content of the theses of physicalism since they too have no well-defined content.

Chomsky's Challenge to Physicalism
https://www.academia.edu/237143/Chomsky ... hysicalism

[Quotidian]

I had enough of contingency to last me ten lifetimes from the men in frocks. Specious Aquinas-thought and theistic claptrap is unworthy of 21st century philosophy. If you want to delude yourself with it then do it elsewhere and count me out. The philosophy of the bloody obvious is for people who choose to their own thinking.

As I said, whenever anything from 'classical philosophy' comes up, you react violently. I understand that, the whole of Western culture is in some ways caught up in that reaction against religious dogmatism. I never went to a Catholic school or had any of that beaten into me with a stick, had I done so I might feel the same. Instead I discovered from another perspective, namely, Greek philosophy, which was incorporated into the Catholic corpus and then 're-branded'. But some of those ideas are nevertheless both indispensable and universal, and the fact that Western thinking is so hostile to it, creates a an equally dogmatic reaction, which you display frequently.

-- Updated August 8th, 2014, 12:47 pm to add the following --

Well, if you read Chomsky, and also many of the continentals, then of course you won't generally be as likely to accept the materialist account, but it is still hugely influental in Anglo-American philosophy. All of the 'secular intelligentsia' - people like Steve Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and others of that ilk, who are prime-time figures in the US and UK - they are committed materialists.

[Obvious Leo]

That is untrue. The (non-theist) philosopher Thomas Nagel published a book about this very topic Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (2012) which goes into detail about why the neo-Darwinian synthesis is reductionistic and essentially 'mindless'. It was, of course, greeted with enormous disdain and controversy. 'Complexity theory' and the like may not be reductionist in the older sense, but they are often embody materialist assumptions regardless.

Nagel is an anti-science ideologue and is unqualified to make comment on any matters relating to science. However I agree completely with him that neo-Darwinism is false and reductionist, as were its refinements after Watson and Crick, as were its further refinements after Dawkins, Wilson, Diamond and Gould et al. You can't put lipstick on a pig and your suggestion that complexity theory is reductionist in any sense whatsoever simply means that you don't understand it. It is an entirely different paradigm in every respect which requires a complete paradigm shift in abstract thinking.

I intend you no insult,Q, but this form of conceptualised thinking will be beyond you. I have repeatedly asked you several questions to try and establish whether you will be able grasp this model because I admire your elegant mind. You repeatedly declined to answer them, even though I attempted to pose them in different ways, and then you throw contingency into the pot as some sort of red herring which I simply regard as the ultimate insult. You can't be in this thread because we think in different magisteria, a point I already made clear. It is utterly impossible for you to understand what I'm talking about because your mind can't think the Mandelbrot set correctly.

You're a sharp observer though Q, although I wear my psychology on my sleeve quite openly. When I sacked god I sacked him forever, and he never had the slightest chance of ever being re-instated. Everything that I've learned about the evil-hearted villain since has done nothing but confirm this decision.

Regards Leo

[Bohm2]

Well, if you read Chomsky, and also many of the continentals, then of course you won't generally be as likely to accept the materialist account, but it is still hugely influental in Anglo-American philosophy. All of the 'secular intelligentsia' - people like Steve Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and others of that ilk, who are prime-time figures in the US and UK - they are committed materialists.

Pinker accepts the difficulty of the "hard" problem and appears to support McGinn's argument that the solution may be beyond our cognitive abilities (Mysterianism):

The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are skeptical about this cheery optimism because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer. Identifying awareness with brain physiology, they say, is a kind of "meat chauvinism" that would dogmatically deny consciousness to Lieut. Commander Data just because he doesn't have the soft tissue of a human brain. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators--a leap that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.

And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius--a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness--comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.

The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness
http://content.time.com/time/printout/0 ... 94,00.html

Even a secular scientist like Dawkins appears to acknowledge the difficult nature of consciousness:

[Quotidian]

You repeatedly declined to answer them, even though I attempted to pose them in different ways, and then you throw contingency into the pot as some sort of red herring which I simply regard as the ultimate insult

Tell me again what questions I have 'repeatedly declined to answer'. If one of them is whether I am 'a theist', please refer to my thread on why 'God does not exist' for the closest thing you will get to an answer.

You may say you 'mean no insult' but you should realise that your posts are often dripping vitriol in many places. You say a lot of pretty harsh things about those intellectuals you chose to disparage, and are quick with charicatures and put-downs. I regard the characterisation of Nagel above is completely specious and entirely untrue, for instance. He is a distinguished philosopher, not a pseudo-scientific priest in a white coat who wants to tell us 'how our minds work' with regards to animal behaviour.

When you post on a Forum, you encounter other minds very different to your own. That is one of the reasons for doing it. I have thrown in the towel a number of times, here and elsewhere, but here I am stil, and I have learned to maintain a certain equanamity now. You could use some.

And if you are saying that current biological theories of complexity are beyond me, I certainly concede. The sign on the door says 'philosophy forum', however, and in terms of that discipline, I think your presentation is lacking.

@Bohm2 - Pinker will say that in some places, but in others he definitely defends neurological reductionism. I will dig out some refs later.

[Obvious Leo]

My mother was also a sharp observer who died about 5 years ago. We saw each other rarely because I migrated abroad at age 23 but she always kept up with what I was doing. I kept her informed as best I could and not long before she died she said this to me. I've always known that you were trying to kill god but I also know that he'll forgive you for it. I couldn't say a word to her and I've been crying ever since. Natural philosophy is not easy.

Regards Leo

[Bohm2]

Pinker will say that in some places, but in others he definitely defends neurological reductionism. I will dig out some refs later.

I think it depends on what one means by "reductionism". Moreover, even genuine emergent phenomena (novelty) do not rule out reductionsism (really unification) for the following reason:

Where there is discontinuity in microscopic behavior associated with precisely specifiable macroscopic parameters, emergent properties of the system are clearly implicated, unless we can get an equally elegant resulting theory by complicating the dispositional structure of the already accepted inventory of basic properties...such hidden-micro-dispositions theories are indeed always available. Assuming sharply discontinuous patterns of effects within complex systems, we could conclude that the microphysical entities have otherwise latent dispositions towards effects within macroscopically complex contexts alongside the dispositions which are continuously manifested in (nearly) all contexts. The observed difference would be a result of the manifestation of these latent dispositions.

So a reductionist can claim that we lack these "latent dispositions" because we don't have a complete physical theory (theories evolve and change, new discoveries, etc.).

[Obvious Leo]

Q. I don't know what makes you think that by pointing to other scholars who refute what I say constitutes an argument.

You don't seem to understand that I've actually written my own philosophy which draws on material from across all philosophies and all the sciences. These guys refute each other all the time and physicists could well be the most famous for it. However, as I said all along, the philosophy of the bloody obvious proceeds from two self-defining statements which I will now repeat. I propose these as axioms which you may refute only by offering a counter-example. You might not like it, mate, but that's the way it works in natural philosophy.

1. the universe is everything that exists

2. all effects are preceded by causes

If you wish to offer a counter-example which can be validated by the empirical tools of science please do so. If not you must allow me to proceed to establishing the conclusions which I can draw from them, without further interruption.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 8th, 2014, 2:43 pm to add the following --

Ill make it a bit easier for you with an illustration. Somebody suggested earlier that the multiverse was a counter-example of self-defining statement 1. I'm still waiting for the link to the peer-reviewed paper that establishes the existence of universes beyond the one which are privileged to inhabit, but you may have a better counter-example. On the other hand you might instead prefer to attack proposition 2. and try for the effect that preceded its cause.

The ball's in your court so take your pick.