Re: type writers and tooth aches II

Curt Welch wrote:
> "grayden" <gsolman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Curt Welch wrote:
>
> > But you are forgetting that that whole interpretation is a result of
> > your experiential set.
>
> I don't believe I'm forgetting that. Though I'm not exactly sure what you
> think an "experiential set" is.

Sorry - that was pretty ambiguous on my part. By experiential set, I'm
refering to that subset of environmental data which an individual
actually experiences directly. IOW, a generalized term for an
organism's collection of sensory inputs.

> > There is no justifiable reason to assume any
> > hierarchical precedence of 'reality'.
>
> I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to make reference to there.
>
> But at the atomic level, all interaction is linked into causal chains
> (atoms pushing their neighbors around, which in turn push their neighbors
> around) which create a hierarchy of interaction which leads to the
> "virtual" ideas at the higher level I was talking about. It's not just two
> levels, it's millions and millions of levels however in this complex and
> long causal link of motion in the universe.

My issue is with the fact that there is no actual precedent to adopt
the belief you just stated. For starters, the billiard ball model has
been out of date for close to century - but even allowing for that, my
issue is with the assumption that there are any levels at all. Top-down
structure modulates the action of bottom-up elements which determine
top-down structure. No interaction has absolute causal sway over
another. The system must necessary develop as a whole. If you were to
cut up an orange and look at consecutive slices, you would be in a good
position to predict what one slice would look like based on the
previous one - but to say that that slice was caused by the first one
is clearly a misinterpretation. So what I was refering to was the fact
that although our subjective experiences are almost certainly a result
of a complex configuration of energy - and that configuration a result
of some particular history - there is no legitimacy in claiming that
that experience is 'less' real, anymore than one could say that the
frequency of a wave is less real than its wavelength. They are two
aspects of one structure. To state that our experience is less real
than the 'outside' world - is to claim that if we were to dispense with
consciousness, the world would remain essentially unchanged. But this
is impossible. We *know* that the way our universe works has resulted
in consciousness. The structure and function of the system implies
consciousness, so if you want to get rid of consciousness you have to
look at a different system. How then can experience be somehow 'less
real' than the system that implies it?
>
> > Your brain 'locked inside' your
> > skull, isn't really locked inside anything. The neurons themselves may
> > happen to be encased in bone, but their functioning is explicitly
> > reliant on a continuous chain of dependencies. They rely on blood flow,
> > nutrition, a body to interface them with the environment, sensory input
> > to interpret. All of these elements are logically and physically
> > enmeshed. If you try to define a physical boundary between 'you' and
> > the environment 'out there', you'll find that nothing you come up with
> > is complete.
>
> It's not hard to do at all.
>
> It's the signal processing that creates our consciousness.

Though in *belief* I agree with you entirely, it's premature to state
it as fact.

>Even though the
> correct functioning of a neuron depends on the rest of the body (and the
> environment) doing it's job, the neurons don't fire in response to blood
> flow. They fire in response to other neurons firing.

But without blood flow and the associated systems, A: this firing would
never happen, and B: it wouldn't be able to do anything. If I dump a
mass of neurons in a bathtub or on my back porch, they will not form
networks and process information. They will die. There will be nothing
supporting them. No nutrients to draw energy from. No chemicals to
modulate their expression patterns and signalling properties. No
delicate ion concentrations to allow membrane depolarizations. No
precursors to allow construction of neurotransmitters and
neuromodulators. There is a prevalent assumption that neurons are more
important than the rest of the body just because they process
information. But in reality, your stomach processes a vast amount of
information, with very real and noticeable effects. It is as reasonable
(if not more so) to say that the stomach grew a brain to get more food
than to say that the brain grew a stomach to support itself. (Of course
they both developped together - but that's really my point anyway).

>By tracing this
> causal flow of information (the signal processing), we can identify
> multiple loops which I believe is the essence of what creates human
> consciousness and what defines the boundaries between "us" and "out there".
> There is no single hard boundary, there are multiple loops, but along with
> the complexity of the loops comes the complex ideas of self which humans
> have.

Though I have a rough idea of what you mean, and is quite a sensible
interpretation - I can't really say much without a more explicit
definition of what constitutes a 'loop'.
>
> Everything inside the loop is what creates the "us", and everything outside
> the loop is the "out there".
>
> Most important however is not just the loops, but the causal links of the
> learning system that is constantly adjusting the signal processing
> hardware. That is, what causes us pain, and pleasure, is what is important
> to us because those things are what the learning hardware uses to shape the
> behavior of our neurons - to shape our very consciousness.
> [...]
>
> > You, the environment, and the boundary are all
> > manifestations of the same environment. So to say that there is
> > something 'out there' and something else that is somehow less real 'in
> > here' is largely unjustified.
>
> Yes, if you ignore the importance of the signal processing, and the
> learning hardware that adjusts it, there seems to be no place to draw a
> line. The body and the rest of the environment are one large dynamic
> system. The neurons depend on energy which comes from the environment so
> the entire environment, out to the Sun and beyond, are all part of what
> makes us what we are. So, if you look at this you might wonder why our
> "consciousness" is limited to only our body? You might wonder why the
> whole universe doesn't create one large conscious "being" instead of lots
> of individual beings.
>
> The easy answer is that it does. i.e., everything in the universe has some
> degree of consciousness and our consciousness is all linked together.

Couldn't agree more - as I've argued before in a different thread.

> Human consciousness however is different because of the complex way we
> interact with our local environment. The complex causal loops created by
> the structure of our body and brain creates a dense concentration of data
> flow though our brain and though our local environment. If you were to try
> and draw these loops, you would end up with a diagram that looks something
> like the magnetic flux lines which surround and pass through a magnet with
> a very dense concentration in the brain, and decreasing concentrations as
> you get further out into the environment.
>
> My consciousness extends out into my office because as I move my head, the
> view of all the walls around me changes. I'm consciously aware of how the
> light coming from my office changes as I move - or as something moves my
> walls.
>
> I have no current conscious awareness of what is happening in the next room
> because the causal loops don't currently connect me to the objects in the
> next room. My "conscious flux" lines don't extend into the next room at
> the moment. Or more accurately, the connection is so weak as to be "off my
> radar".
>
> This disconnect from the next room happens because the causal links of
> neurons are discrete/digital - they either fire or don't fire. It's not a
> continuous/analog causal connection. Signals too weak to make the neuron
> fire are ignored so they can't flow through these loops.
>
> What we "experience" in our consciousness is this entire set of
> conscious-flux lines surrounding us. And these flux lines are created by
> the causal features of the brain, and the body in how it's connected to the
> environment and how it forms these local loops.
>
> Any machine that can create the same type of causal flux lines with its
> local environment should have a similar type of consciousness in my view.
>
> A rock has a causal link to its local environment, so I think it's
> conscious as well. But where it has 1 path through the loop, we have 100
> billion paths. That's what makes our causal loops create a type of
> consciousness not found in rocks.
>
> And the fact that each human body creates it's own set of closed loops, is
> why each human seems to be an independent consciousness.
>
> When we interact with another humans, we create larger loops that pass
> through both of us. The better "connected" we make our causal loops, the
> closer we become to being one consciousness instead of two. However, our
> ability to connect our loops is limited by the bandwidth of our sensory
> channels and by our ability to link our sensory channels.

I have no complaints with this, and it is in fact almost perfectly in
line with my own beliefs. However, I maintain that you still can't
actually assign preferential importance to any part of the system. No
matter how many steps removed, if you take away a clump of apparantly
peripheral 'loops', then the whole chain falls appart.
>
> > The relation of consciousness to its
> > instantiating substrate can only be analyzed by that same
> > consciousness,
>
> I don't really grasp what you are getting out there. Humans have no
> problem analyzing each other. I don't think I grasp what you mean by
> "analyze" if you think only a person can analyze themselves. Humans also
> have no problem analyzing pigeons.

I just mean that any and all of our observations with respect to the
brain are limited by the capabilities of that brain. Even using
microscopes and EEGs and fMRIs, the information that we can ultimately
interpret must be presented through one of our existing sensory
modalities. So the question of how consciousness arises from our form
is made particularly difficult by the fact that our consciousness is
itself (or at least seems to be) limited to a finite subset
information.
>
> > which means the knowledge of the substrate being
> > analyzed is limited by the perceptual efficacy of the consciousness it
> > generates. It's a problem akin to Godel's incompleteness. There's a
> > hole in the system that can be easily patched from a more encompassing
> > point of view, but this larger system in turn has its own hole.
>
> Yes. But not all self referencing systems need be incomplete or have
> "holes".
>
> Have you have tried to write a computer program, that when you run it, it
> prints out a copy of its own source code? This is yet another example of
> self reference that can seem at first to be impossible.
>
> If you write program X, it's easy to write another program, Y, which when
> run produces the source code for X as its output. But program Y is larger
> than program X. So how can a program print a copy of itself since it can't
> be larger than itself? It can be done in just about any programming
> language.

My assumption would be that you would make it read the data from its
location in memory, however I have not given very much thought to it -
so I may be missing something. The issue though, is that however your
clever program works, that very functioning is reliant on the
implementing system - which cannot be fully described by the program.
If you were to expand its abilities such that it could observe the
external features of its local environment, it would still be unable to
explain how that new larger system is implemented. The appearance of
closed self-referencing is an illusion.
>
> I think we can understand how we work because the knowledge required to
> understand how we work is far less than the total knowledge we can hold in
> our signal processing system. Understanding how we work, is easy -
> understanding everything about ourselves is impossible.

I'm not sure I see what the difference is.

> There's no way I
> can predict what I will do next, but I can know enough to build a machine
> that is conscious in the same way I'm conscious. At least I believe this
> will turn out to be true.

I think we will learn the requirements for a consciousness-effecting
system, but I'm not sure if we will ever know how exactly those
requirements work together to create that consciousness, nor how
exactly the subjective experience arises. I do believe we will be able
to simulate or physically instantiate artificial conscious systems -
but that does not imply that we will fully understand why or how they
work.
>
> > That we don't experience everything doesn't imply that what we do experience
> > isn't real.
>
> What we experience is "real" by the very definition of the word. But what
> we experience is (by the fact of how the universe works) always the shadows
> on the cave wall and never the objects creating the shadows.
>
> If billiard ball A, hits B, which hits C, C only "experiences" B directly,
> but that experience was caused by A so C has a causal link to A.
>
> A -> B -> C
>
> C has "knowledge" of A indirectly through the actions of B. B is nothing
> but a shadow of the actions of A. This happens at the atomic level in our
> universe. Atoms move mostly in response to their neighbors, but all that
> motion is shadows of the motion of other neighbors. It's impossible for
> the action of any single atom to have a direct causal link to all other
> atoms in this universe so all our "knowledge" must be "second hand".
> That's if "knowledge" is ultimately nothing but the motion of matter (which
> I believe it is).

But if knowledge is in fact the motion of matter, then it must
necessarily have the same reality as that which it is knowledgeable
about.

.

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