Re: Qualia Question

"1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Curt Welch wrote:

> > Yes, as I've said, you have to adjust the meaning of thousands of words
> > when you fix the "brain/mind" split. The point however is that you can
> > do this, and when you are done, you are left with a language, and a
> > view of reality which has no explanatory gap.
>
> Can you do it ?

Of course. It's trivial. It's what I've posted about over and over and
over again in all these messages.

Just start with the assumption that the mind and the brain are the same and
adjust the definition of everything based on that concept.

> Has anyone done it ? Attempts, such as behaviourism,
> just leave
> yuo without a vocabulary to express what is nonetheless,
> expereientially "there".

What's "there" is neurons firing. That's what you get when you start with
the assumption that the mind and the brain are one and the same.

> > By removing the gap between mind and brain - in all the words that are
> > based on that idea, you also eliminate the explanatory gap.
>
> Close it, or lop off one half of it ?

You close it by defining two things to be the same thing. You don't need,
to throw either away. You do need to throw out the old meaning of many of
the mental terms and replace them with new meaning however.

> No-one has shown me how to talk about my experience in physicalese.

I've been trying very hard for many posts now.

> They just offer to remove my mentalese vocabulary without replacing it
> with
> anything.

Don't remove it. The vocabulary is fine. Just adjust the meaning. Just
realize that when you talk about "mental stuff", all you are making
reference to is the physical behavior of your brain. The trick is not to
remove the words, but to see how it's possible to define them all in terms
of physical actions.

This everything-is-physical point of view is simply a way to link the
concepts from the mental and physical worlds together without creating an
explanatory gap.

It's true that from this perspective, you end up with a lot of duplication
of words so you could drop some of them, but you don't have to. And at the
same time, just like words from two separate natural languages, there isn't
a one to one mapping between the two sets of words, so most of them still
remain useful.

> > But by saying that, you too are making a huge assumption. You are
> > making the assumption that it's possible to "know" somthing witout
> > having to actualise or implement it.
>
> That's an assumption which applies to eveything except
> qualia/experience.

No, see, you keep falling back to your belief that qualia/experience is not
physical. You say no one has shown you how to talk about your experience
in physicalese, but when I show you, like above, you just reject it as
invalid because it violates your belief that the mind (and everything that
comes from it) is not physical.

In my view, everything is physical. qualia/experience is physical. Our
"experience" and how it effects us is just how the physical parts of our
body get "pushed around" by their interaction with the environment. It's
no different than how a rock gets marked up and changed by the environment
when it rolls down a hill - except of course that the way we change when we
interact with the environment is far more complex. But in this view, it's
all simply the physical interaction of our body with the physical
environment.

You can still use your words like qualia/experience to talk about
qualia/experience but you have to throw out the underlying belief that
there's something non-physical about it. You simply have to adjust the
meaning of every word so it's always referring to something physical.

Imaginary stuff is physical. You can't have a thought without it being the
physical actions of the brain. Imaginary stuff is just the physical action
of someone's brain.

For example, when I talk about a pink flying elephant, the words (both in
my thoughts, and in this message) were created by the physical actions of
my body. They make reference to something that does not exist - so the
pink flying elephant is not physical, it's not anything. It just doesn't
exist. Only the words exist - and they are nothing more than physical
changes to the universe - including when they are thoughts in my head.

> No-one says that astronomers don't "know" stars, or paleontologists
> don't
> "know" dinousaurs. Any exception to this rule turns out to be qualia
> all over again: the one thing a cardiologist might not know about a
> heart attack is
> what it is like to have one -- which is a quale.

Right. Think about how all those ideas easily map into the
everything-is-physical point of view.

If I am blind, I don't have neurons which processes vision signals. If
someone tells me what it's like to have vision, they must describe it to me
using one of my other sensory inputs, like sound. No matter how much sound
they send to me in an attempt to describe what sight is like, it will never
be the same as having my own vision inputs and vision processing neurons.
This is why I can never "know" what vision is like from a description. A
description of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. We are a
brain, and if we are brain without vision, we will never know what it's
like to be brain with vision just because someone else talks about it.

My vision inputs and the neurons that deal with the data are my vision
qualia in the everything-is-physical point of view.

Remember that in this point of view, we ARE the neurons. We ARE the brain.
We are not some separate sprit that "owns" the neurons. We are not a mind
that has a brain, we are a brain. And if we are missing some parts, then
we don't know what it's like to be a brain which is not missing those parts
and no amount of descriptions will let us know that.

If I was born without arms and hands, no matter how much people tried to
describe to me what it was like to have arms and hands, it would never be
the same as actually having my own arms and hands. I would always learn
something new by having my own arms and hands.

This is the same as not having a vision input to the brain. No matter how
much people described to me what it was like to have vision, it would never
be the same as actually having those other neurons as part of my body.

No matter how much people try to describe what it's like to be a dog, or
what the parts of a dog are, I will never know what it's like to be a dog
unless I am a dog.

So, from this perspective, everything you say about qualia still fits - but
qualia are just the neurons in our brain, and the signals they create.

> > All your arguments come done to one thing. You started with the
> > assumption that the mind was not physical. Everything you built on
> > that assumption you keep holding up as "proof" that the assumption is
> > valid.
>
> I am not assuming that.

Well, that's just my point. I think you are, and it's so deeply buried into
your belief system, you can't see that it's only an assumption. You see it
only as an obvious fact now.

It's the same thing as many religious beliefs. It's a non-falsifiable idea
that's been accepted by the culture as fact. Because we have no data to
falsify the idea, it's never been removed from the belief of the culture -
without data to falsify it, there's no need to remove it for most people.

The alternate view that everything is physical is also non-falsifiable. We
just don't have enough data to show which of these views might be correct
yet. I accept the alternate view simply by faith.

But like I've said, I'm not trying to get you to accept my faith - I'm only
trying to open your mind to the idea that these beliefs are just faith and
that we can build a consistent set of beliefs on top of either foundation.

> > My point is that you have no proof. We can create a belief system on
> > either belief (axiom) and still end up with a consistent set of ideas.
> > They just happen (for obvious reasons) to be in conflict with each
> > other.
> >
> > You seem unable to shake yourself free of your belief system long
> > enough to undersgtand any other point of view. I on the other hand
> > have no problem understanding both points of view. Personal preference
> > just makes me pick a different one as the one most likely to be right.
>
> Au contraire, it is you who are locked into the rigid doctrine that
> there is
> no MBP, and that is what leads you to false conclusions like "you
> always need to experience
> something in order to know it".

Try to follow me. I only talk like that when I'm talking about the
everything-is-physical point of view. From your point of view, I
understand exactly what all these "problems" are. They are real from your
point of view. I don't deny that. I'm only trying to show you how you are
free to take a different stance and when you do that, all those "hard
problems" go away.

> > You start with the assumption that "things exist that can't be
> > described physically". - a.k.a, the "mind"
>
> That's not an assumption. I experience qualia all the time, and if they
> can be described physically, no-one has shown me how.

So, you are saying you experience something which is non physical and you
know this to be a fact? How do you know that as a fact? How do you know
that what you experience is not just the physical action of your brain?
You believe that only because you choose to believe that - because you were
taught to believe that. There is no data to support the belief. There is
no data to falsify that belief. It's just some idea that someone long ago
made up that sounded good and since it was never falsified, it's been
accepted as fact by the culture for thousands of years now.

Unlike most "facts" however, this one is not something that stands alone
and can be easily changed. It's woven deeply into the meaning of thousands
of words because it was an idea created thousands of years ago. It's a
foundation belief for half of the English language. You can't just fix one
or two words to take the belief out of your language and out of your brain.
You have to redefine half the words we use every day.

People have been taught by our culture to believe that non-physical things
are real. They are taught that ideas are not physical. They are taught
that the mind is not physical. They are taught to believe that all sorts
of magic is non physical. Almost everyone beliefs this to some degree -
some more so than others.

People believe in magic. They have been brain-washed to believe that. I
can't help that.

On TV recently, (HBO I think) I saw a short segment on David Blaine doing a
simple levitation trick on the street where he stands with his back towards
a few people and with arms held out, he appears to float off the sidewalk.

The people who they filmed watching the trick were shocked because there
knew there was no way for him to be using wires or some prop because they
were out on the street. One woman explained that David must have great
powers of concentration (or something like that) - she actually believed he
made his body float using his mind. People are stupid - I can't help that.

The trick is done by standing on your toe. That's all there is to it.
When done correctly however, and when you set your audience up correctly
before hand it looks like you are floating off the ground because both
heals float up off the ground together and if you stand correctly, and
don't let a shadow give you away, they can't see your toe.

His heals rise no more that 3 or 4 inches off the ground and quickly drops
back. But yet, when asked how far he rose up, some of the people showed a
distance with their hands what was more like a foot.

People have been taught to believe that the mind has powers that extend
beyond the physical. So when they see something they don't expect, they
can be made to believe they have seen things that they didn't actually see.

All your talk about qualia/experience is just another such illusion you
have been set up to believe.

Even though I don't yet have a good working example of non-human machine
consciousness to prove that this is actually an illusion, I still think
most people are set up to believe that mental activity is not physical, so
when they experience the illusion of consciousness, they just naturally
accept the idea that it's something non-physical. If you start with the
belief that there's a non-physical aspect to the illusion, then of course,
you can never explain it in physical terms because you KNOW that you can't
explain the non-physical aspect of consciousness in physical terms.

> > To predict the total behavior of anything requires you know the history
> > of every atom in the universe. Nothing man could every build could
> > every "know that".
>
> Now demonstrate that the incimmunicabillity of qualia is the *same*
> problem.

It's not the same problem.

The Mary/communication problem is a result of choosing to believe that all
physical knowledge can be communicated from one mind to another. It's a
result of believing that the mind is not physical, and that "words" are all
the mind is able to "know". It's a result of believing that words are not
physical and that they can be transferred over any medium and still have
the same "meaning".

In the everything-is-physical point of view, all that changes. "Knowing"
is the behavior of the brain. What it can "know" is limited by what it is.
What it can "know" is what it can do - period.

If I tell you how a bird flies, that doesn't allow you to fly. You can't
fly like a bird because you are not a bird - you are a human. Once again,
a description is not an implementation. And in the everything-is-physical
view, nothing exists unless it's physical. Everything that exists is
physcial. knowledge is physical. Human knowledge is normally the ability
to do things - such as to speak the right words - to write the correct
answers down on a test - to have the correct "thoughts" by having the
correct physical actions of your brain.

If you build a set of beliefs around the idea that everything is physical,
the Mary problem just isn't a problem. It's just a dumb question.

> > > All these things can be discovered from a *sufficiently detailed*
> > > description.
> >
> > No. They can never be discovered. All we can do is create a
> > sufficently detailed description, from "suficently detailed"
> > information with sufficently complex computing resources.
>
> The hypothetical statement "if we have enough information, we can do X"
> is still true
> even if we cannot, for practical reasons have enough information.

Yeah, you could say that. But the implication you were trying to make is
that things can be discovered when in fact they can't.

> Anyway: what does that have to do with qualia ?

Beats me. I'd have to check back a few messages to figure out how we got
here. :)

> OTOH those effects are minute and negligible for most practical
> purposes. Are you
> saying that what Mary doesn't know is one of the minute, negligible
> effects ?

No. What Mary doesn't know, is what Mary doesn't have - physical brain
parts.

> > Our power to understand is no match for the complexity of the
> > universe we exist in.
>
> Sinc we have made considerable progress in understanding it , it is
> *some* match.
>
> In macroscopic physics, these extraneous effects are usually
> negligible. In quantum
> physics they usually aren't. But why should they be a special problem
> with regard
> to the brain ?

In the everything-is-physical point of view, it shows that it is impossible
for the brain to "known everything" - even about a limited domain, like
"how sight works".

Part of the Mary problem was based on the idea that "Mary knows everything
about X". She can't, so the entire idea is invalid. But it's not that
important to the debate. I only went off on this tangent because you wrote
multiple times that the it was based on "complete knowledge".

> > Not to mention that we are part of the very system
> > we are trying to understand so our very act of trying to understand it
> > causes it to change.
> >
> > Our understand of anything about the physical universe is always just
> > scratching the surface of something too complex for us to ever fully
> > understand.
>
> And we can be sure the MBP is one of quantity and ocmplexity, not
> quality and kind?

I really have no idea what you are asking.

> > > > Maybe that the correct defintion of "physicalism", but that's not
> > > > the view of reality I'm talking about.
> > >
> > > If you can't justify "everything is physical" by explaining
> > > everything in
> > > physical terms, how do you justify it ?
> >
> > By explaining as much of it as I can.
>
> And fill the gap with faith ?

You created the gap with your faith, so why shouldn't I remove it with my
faith? Your faith created a world with two gods and I simply picked a
faith with one god.

We don't have the data to show which faith is correct yet so I'm simply
picking the simplest answer that fits the data - the one where there is no
EG.

> > > Of course if we really had no connection with reality other than
> > > physical reductionism
> > > we would have no MBP. The problem comes from the disparity between
> > > physical reductionism and
> > > subjectivity/introspection.
> >
> > But don't you see? When you talk about your "connection with reality",
> > you are talking from a belief that you are somehow separate from
> > reality - if you were one and the same, then the issue of how we are
> > "connected" is meaningless.
>
> I am contrasting physicalism with introspection. and nothng could be
> less disconnected
> than that.
>
> > This just gets back to the point that deep in your understanding of
> > EVERYTHING, is hidden a fundimental belief that your mind is separate
> > from the stuff it is observing. That's the most common view people
> > have, but it's not the only possible view.
> >
> > The MBP is that fundimental belief you have.
> >
> > All it adds up to, is the fact that if the mind is not the stuff we are
> > observing, then we will never be able to explain the mind. We will
> > never be able to cross the gap.
>
> You havn't explained or crossed the gap. You keep saying it will
> happen,
> but you never show it.

I've explained it 100 times. You are so brainwashed that you can't see it.

It's as if you were standing in the desert looking at a mirage and you keep
telling me to explain how there could be water in a dry desert. I keep
telling you it's not water, it's just an illusion. But instead of you
understanding my words, you keep asking me to explain how there could be
water there. There is no water there. How many times to I have to say it
before you grasp that there is no water there.

The gap is not there. Quit asking me to explain why it's there. It's an
illusion created by your faith in the belief that introspection is not
physical. If you change your faith, the gap will vanish.

> > > In what sense of 'subjective' ? If you don't think they have features
> > > incommunicable in
> > > physicalese , what is subjective about them?
> >
> > In the everything is physical sense of subjective. Like I said, you
> > have redefine everything to be consistenet with this other view of
> > reality.
>
> > The only meaningful sense of "subjective" from this perspective is
> > "private" - i.e., something happening in my brain, and not yours.
>
> But everything should be equally private. I am causally hooked up to my
> mental arithmetic just as a I am causally hooked up to my fondness for
> marmite,
> so why can I communicate the one , but not the other ?

Well, I think with enough language, you could describe both well enough for
any practical purpose.

But there are a couple of reasons why one is easy to describe and the other
hard.

To start with, math IS language. So, to communicate language, with
language, is easy.

Your fondness for marmite is not language. It's the behavior of you body.
To communicate physical behavior with language is hard. I have a pen here
on my desk. I can describe it as a black Uniball pen with a 0.7 tip, but
that doesn't even begin to describe it completely. It would take thousands
of words to even come close to describing everything I can actually sense
about it and millions more to describe what I could sense about the pen
using tools like a microscope.

In short, language is a bad tool for describing physical structure. It
happens to be the only tool we have, so we do what we can with it, but it
still sucks. Your fondness for marmite is an aspect of the physical
behavior of your body. To accurately describe the behavior of your body in
regards to marmite would requite billions of words to explain the structure
of your brain and why it causes you to have a fondness for marmite.

On top of that, we don't have easy access to the physical structure of your
brain so in our attempt to describe your fondness for marmite, we are
trying to describe something we can't even see. So it's should be no
surprise that it's hard to do with language.

Math is trivial do communicate because it's nothing but language.

> > > Then why can't mathematical descriptions convey qualia ?
> >
> > Because you are are stuck in a belief system that is incompatiable with
> > my belief system. And no matter how many times I try to explain it to
> > you, you can't seem to grasp that your belief system is not the only
> > valid belief system possible.
>
> What you don't do is produce a practical demonstration of how your
> alternative resolves the problem.

Mathematical descriptions are nothing but language.

Language doesn't do a good job of conveying qualia in this system because
qualia is the behavior of the physical brain and language just sucks as a
tool for conveying physical structure and physical behavior. That's why
engineers build prototypes and models - language alone just doesn't do it.

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a physical model is worth a 1,000,000
words.

> > > And
> > > why is it possible for people to learn maths -- the same maths--
> > > as everyone else -- through different sensory modalities ?
> >
> > Because neurons have more than one input - they all have the power to
> > learn through different sensory modalities.
>
> In what sense is the maths they end up with "grounded", then ?

It's grounded to the idea of existence and difference - something which is
common to all sensory modalities. As long as symbols can exist (i.e. there
is a symbol creation function), and you can tell the difference between one
symbol and the next, you can define all of math.

> > > Why isn't blind maths different from deaf maths ?
> >
> > > And shoudn't you inform the SETI people that maths is not a
> > > univesal language as the thought ?
> >
> > Where did I say math is not a type of universal langauge?
>
> Where you claimed it is "grounded" in sensory modalities.

Ah. ok. I see no problem with it being grounded and universal at the same
time.

> > > > That OR gate is creating a new signal which is grounded to, and
> > > > defined in terms of, the 3 sensory inputs to that gate. The
> > > > "meaning" of the output langauge of that OR gate is defined in
> > > > terms of the 3 senory inputs.
> > >
> > > But there is nothing uncommunicable (and, AFAICS subjective) about
> > > this alleged "grounding".
> >
> > Right, because once again, you are looking at this from your view of
> > reality.
>
> If something can be communicated, it can be communicated, whatever view
> of reality
> you have.
>
> > > > All 100 billion signals here are subjective - they all belong to us
> > > > because they exist only in our head.
> > >
> > > That's only private in the sense that my pancreas is private.
> > > It doesn't entail a communication problem.
> >
> > Exactly. In my view, there are no communation problems. There is no
> > EG.
>
> If there is no communication problem, then go ahead and communicate a
> quale.

Quale are the firing of neurons. There. Done. Communicated. How many
times do I have to communicate it to you before you receive the message?

The part which can't be communicated is the fact that unless you have a
vision neuron, you will never "know" what vision is like. That's because
that in my system, knowledge is not something that is communicated with
language. Knowledge is what our physical body can do, not what we can talk
about or think about.

The only reason there seems to be a communication "problem" is if you
believe all physical "knowledge" can be communicated with words, and that
"having the words" is the same as "having the knowledge". It doesn't work
that way in my system. "Having the words" is not "having the knowledge" in
my system. You must have the physical ability in order to have the
knowledge and my system.

> > > > They are our private signals which no one
> > > > outside of our head has access to (unless you use some type of mind
> > > > probe technology to allow others to "see" the signals).
> > >
> > > Why would they need to ? What would be incomplete about a
> > > complete physical description, like Mary has.
> >
> > Timing. Mary can't have a complete physical description. A physical
> > description is just a prediction about future events
>
> Not necessarily. It could easily be a description of past events.

Yeah. True. But the only reason we spend time talking about past events
is so we can predict future events.

> > and the exact timing
> > of future events can never be accurately predicted. Mary lacks the
> > knowledge needed to completely and accurately predict the future - as
> > we all do. We can only create descriptions of trends - of
> > approximations which can make useful estimatations about future events.
>
> Nothing in the Mary scenario requirs her to predict the future, an dit
> remains
> the case that the purely qunatitive issue of how many decimal places of
> accuracy
> you can have has nothing to do with the qualia issue. It is not as
> though physical descriptions give you a rough-hewn, approximate idea of
> qualia,
> which could be improved by throwing more maths at it. Physical
> descriptions just
> don't convey qualia at all. And the more physical or mathematical you
> (the less
> artistic and qualitative) you make a description the *worse* it gets at
> conveying qualia.

Right. The real issue is that a description is not the thing. And in this
perspective, you don't have the knowledge unless you have the thing.
That's why listening to a description of vision doesn't give you vision.

> > "knowledge" is just our ability to make a good guess at a future event.
> > There is no other type of knowledge. If you think you "know" my name
> > is "Curt" what does that really mean? It means that you expect my name
> > to always be "Curt" - that at any time in the future, you expect my
> > name to be Curt.
>
> Not really. I don't expect Jane Smith's name to be Jane smith forever;
> she might get married.

True. But you use the "knowledge" to make a good guess about how to behave
in the future. Even though you know her name might change, you still call
her Jane when you see here.

> > > Trying to communicate by what means ? I am talking about complete
> > > physical descriptions.
> >
> > Then you are talking about a fantasy - something that can't exist.
>
> But approximating to them doesn't approximate to closure of the EG.
> Throwing maths at an EG doesn't make it narrower.

Right. This issue is not key to the EG problem. It's only something I
felt the need to address.

> > I can give you a complete blueprint of a car, but it will never be a
> > complete descritption of the real car. No matter how much data I put
> > into the blue prints, it will never be a complete descritpion of the
> > real car.
> >
> > If I try to weight the car and tell you how much it weighs, the number
> > will always be an approximation of the true weight of the car. There
> > will always be missing information.
> >
> > > > Math however is an invented language with the unique property that
> > > > it's absolute and not fuzzy. one plus one is always equal to two
> > > > by definition of the language. It's non fuzzy by design.
> > >
> > > That should be anything but a problem. If you had a precise system,
> > > and a fuzzy langauge, you would have difficulty conveying the nature
> > > of the system in the language. But you should have no trouble
> > > conveying
> > >
> > > an imprecise system is precise langauge; whatever information has
> > > been lost, already been
> > > lost. Think of taking a fuzzy picture with a crap camera, and then
> > > taking
> > > another picture of the first picture with an excellent camera.
> > > The final picture will be fuzzy, but no fuzzier than the
> > > original--that;s
> > > where the information was lost.
> >
> > You have got to be kidding. Is you understanding of machines really
> > that off base?
> >
> > According to your logic, I could take a picture with a good camara, and
> > then take a picture of that picture, and repeat that processes 1
> > million times, and the last picture will be just as good as the first?
> >
> > In case you are not aware of how the world works, that will not happen.
> > Every picture will be slightly different. There is "data lost" every
> > time.
>
> Yes, a little tiny bit. So, are you sayin that the E.G, is due to the
> tiny
> bit of fuzziness you get fro using mathematical descriptions.

No. Once again, it's just a side issue I felt the need to address.

> > You can't even make digital copies without error. Digital hardware
> > simply reduces the probablity of an error. But in the end, if you keep
> > making copies, one copy will turn out to be different from the one
> > before it. With good hardware, that copy count will be huge (10^20
> > times or something large). But the error rate is never 0. The MTBF is
> > never inifinte.
> >
> > > But will a machine with equivalent functioning have equivalent
> > > consciousness ?
> > > Or will it be a Zombie.
> >
> > Well I think the idea of a zombie an oxymoron. Either it's equivalent
> > or not.
>
> Equivalent in functioning or equivalent in conciousness ?

Both I think. I don't think it can be equivalent in function and not be
equivalent in consciousness - once again, all following from the
everything-is-physical foundation of my belief system. The only type of
"sameness" that can exist in this belief system is physical same-ness. And
either it's the same, or it's not, in whatever dimension or quality you
want to test for equality.

> > If it's equivalent as far as we can sense, then it's as much a
> > "non-zombie" as any human is.
>
> Not necessarily. You are not making your self clear; you might think
> that
> something with the right functioning will be entirely equivalent to a
> human
> because, like Dennett, you think we are all zombies -- there is not
> inner
> phenomenal consciousness; or you might think that inner consciousnes
> is vital to external functioning, so you cannot have the one without
> the other.
>
> Clearly, there two ways of thinking are incompatible.

How can I make myself more clear? I believe in the everything-is-physical
view of reality. If you build two machines that are atom for atom the
same, you can expect them to behave the same above the atomic level.
Consciousness doesn't exist as something "else". Consciousness is just the
normal physical behavior of matter.

"function" is nothing more than "the behavior of a collection of atoms".

I would not say that I think we are zombies because I think we are all
conscious - just not the type of consciousness you seem to talk about -
that is, one which is not simply a result of the physical action of matter.

> > I think the real issue from these two possible view points is whether
> > we will ever be able to create equivalent behavior.
> >
> > From my "brain/mind is one" view-point, the odds of us being able to
> > build a conscious machine is good. From the "brain/mind are not the
> > same" view - the odds are poor.
> >
> > > > Yeah, but the brute force dogmatism produces constant answers.
> > >
> > > Did produce answers unitl it ran into consciousness.
> >
> > No, it only fails to produce answers for YOU and for anyone stuck in
> > your belief system. It's never failed me because I live under a
> > different belief system.
>
> Which looks to me like failing to rcognise the problem ITFP.

Yeah, I understand why it looks that way to you. All I can do is keep
talking to try and open your eyes to the fact that are other ways to look
at it.

> > > Yes, it abstract. And I need that abstract idea to recognise novel
> > > NAND gates that
> > > I have not encountered before.
> >
> > Yes, but all you are doing when you "recognize novel NAND gates" is to
> > compare some future sensory inputs to a partial description of the
> > inputs and checking for match. You are smiply doing a clasification
> > job by clasifying the set of all sensory inputs which match the partial
> > sensory description you call a "NAND" gate as being "the same".
>
> It has nothing to do with partial descriptions, it has to do with
> relative inputs
> and outputs. I don't need to knwo anyhting about what they are
> physically, I can identify
> a NAND gate from the conditions under which inputs and outputs are
> similar or different.

Well, we should just drop this. You don't seem to have the ability to
understand my language and it's not important to the EG or Mary problem.

> > The fact that it's a partial physical description and not a complete
> > physical description is what allows you to clasify different inputs as
> > "the same".
> >
> > If I have 8 bit binary number as input, and I say that all inputs with
> > a 1 in the low position, and and 0 in the second position is a "zart",
> > then I can "recognize" that 0110101 is a "zart" even though I've never
> > seen a zart like that in the past. This is all your brain is doing
> > when it recognizes things as "being the same type of thing".
>
> That's an abstract descriptions. You haven't said anything at all about
> how 1's an d 0's
> are implemented.

Yeah, it's not important. No point in going further in the idea of what
"abstract" means when it's not as important as the other issues we have
been talking about.

> > > > The "word-square" is now "grounded" to two things, instead of only
> > > > one.
> > >
> > > That doesn't make sense. If something is "grounded" in an indefinite
> > > number of things,
> > > it isn't grounded at all.
> >
> > How is grounded to two precise things indefinite?
>
> it isn't "grounded" to any precise number of things, whether
> those things are precise in themselves or not.

Hum. What do you mean by that? That no word is grounded? Or that no word
is precisely grounded? Or that nothing is grounded? I don't understand
what you are getting at here.

> > > > But both those things are still part of the sensory input. All
> > > > that happened was that the constraints of the association were
> > > > lessened. That's how abstraction works - by removing constraints.
> > > >
> > > > If you remove all the constraints however, then there is no
> > > > association, and the "thing" fails to exist at all.
> > > >
> > > > So in that sense, it is "forever grounded to something".
> > >
> > > But abstractions can be ungrounded because they only need to deal
> > > with relative associations between things.
> >
> > Yeah, it seems that way. But I don't think in fact it happens. I
> > think all our understanding is grounded. I see no way to prove that
> > however.
> >
> > Howwever, how would be be possible to learn the meaning of a word or an
> > idea, without assocating it with previously learned words or some
> > physical sensation?
>
> Associations can be abstract. You can grasp that zibbles are the same
> as floinks but
> different from blints.

Ok, if it's important for you to call that abstract that's fine with me. I
was just trying to get at an more general underlying idea. But it's not
important.

> > And the first word we learn must be assocated with physical sensations
> > because we have no other words to assocate them with.
>
> Indeed, but if we had no ability to abstract, we would be stuck with an
> animal level
> of communication, with no ability to conceptualise new things.

Well, I don't happen to believe we have any general powers which some
animals don't also have. I think we just have more of them.

You for example seem to be saying that we have a power called "abstraction"
which animals don't have. That just gets back to why I was trying to get
away from the word "abstraction" because I think it misleads people into
believing there is something we have which animals don't have. The
underlying power to associate we all have. We just have a stronger version
of it which allows us to do more things with it. That's what I believe is
happening here.

> > > > The grounding, or the association, is the "meaning" of all these
> > > > things to us. The "meaning" of the output signal from any single
> > > > neuron is defined in terms of how it's "grounded" (connected to)
> > > > (linked in a causal way) to other signals in the brain.
> > >
> > > Sigh...that is yet anothe sense of grounding.
> >
> > Yeah, but I think it's actually one and the same.
>
> It's clearly different.
>
> 1. Initial example
>
> 2. Forever limited to...
>
> 3. Neurological context.

I don't have a clue what point you are trying to make here.

But, the everything-is-physical perspective requires that meaning and
behavior be one and the same. How our brain behaves because of it's causal
links is how we understanding the "meaning" of things.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Qualia Question
    ... Sometimes you say you can communicate experience, ... > the assumption that the mind and the brain are one and the same. ... >> No-one has shown me how to talk about my experience in physicalese. ... > Well, I think with enough language, you could describe both well enough for ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: artificial intelligence
    ... the chemicals ARE the mind state. ... say that the mind is what the brain does. ... implied errors in the language without changing how we use the language. ... behavior doesn't mean it's not the brain you are sensing - but yet that is ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The intrinsic Factor VS. The Unlikely
    ... infants with the capacity for natural language. ... expressed into our brain neural tissues.) ... Brain activity does not necessarly repersent 100% of the mind. ... The easy way out is claiming you have some 'soul' given to you by God, and then state this soul-thingy is responsible for any process you don't understand when it comes to consciousness. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The intrinsic Factor VS. The Unlikely
    ... infants with the capacity for natural language. ... expressed into our brain neural tissues.) ... Brain activity does not necessarly repersent 100% of the mind. ... The easy way out is claiming you have some 'soul' given to you by God, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... in the sense that mind is brain activity. ... Although I agree that language can play a lot of tricks on us, ... And the reason these ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)