Re: Souls and divine sparks

On Mar 20, 2:43 pm, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
casey <jgkjca...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 20, 9:57=A0am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
...

Again and again and again I repeat it is a type of
behavior and you ignore that view and declare we think
it is a something, a substance.


A type of behavior is fine by me. If that's what it is
to you, describe the behavior you call "consciousness"
then I can stop being confused by your use of the word.

Most people would recognize conscious behavior when they
see it. We at least hope the medical profession recognize
it when they decide to operate.

Where consciousness begins and ends is a philosophical
question of no interest to you and can be excluded. All
we can say behaviorally, which is of interest to you, is
that there are degrees of complexity of responsiveness.

Conscious behavior ranges from full alertness, responding
immediately and appropriately to all stimuli to a deep
coma where the entity fails to respond to stimuli (in the
biological sense). Sure if you kick a dead body it will
move and if you kick a stone it will move. They both
"process information" in the narrow sense you have
defined it but I mean processing it at the level the
brain does it.


People argue that they are conscious, and other things
(like rocks) are not conscious, but yet, they can't
define the word in a way that allows us to test humans,
or test these other things to see if they are or are
not conscious.


If you can't define it in a way that allows us to test
for it, how can you yourself know what is and isn't
conscious? How can you even know if you have the
property if you can't define it in an objective way
that allows you to test for it?


Strictly speaking, consciousness, in the phenomenal sense,
cannot be tested, it has no public truth conditions, as
far as scientific explanations go it may as well not exist.

Unfortunately some people, although apparently not you,
are as sure they are sentient as they are sure of anything.

So you can continue with your stance it is an illusion,
a fiction, a conditioned false belief, and know that you
cannot be contradicted.


The arguments are stupid. People use the word as if
it means something, they talk about how stupid I must
be to write that rocks are conscious, but yet, they
can't define it.


How do you define red to a child? You can't. All you can
do is point to objects that are red and hope they can
extract the common factor we are referring to. The same
for other things like big, fat, hot, and so on. They
have to have extracted the property first and then be
able associate it with the word for that property.

All you can do with "consciousness" is point to a set
of behaviors. We associate the word consciousness with
those behaviors and also with something you cannot
point to when we have those behaviors ourselves.
That "something else" you call an illusion, religious
people might associate with "soul" and others with
"how it is" for the system.


They say I should just "know" that rocks aren't conscious
even though there's no definition for what conscious
means that allows us to test rocks to see if they have
the property.


You are using the term *have* as if it was some *thing*
in the rock or some *thing* possessed by the rock rather
than what the rock does. Just as a car can have degrees
of velocity so too can an object have degrees of observable
behavior we call conscious behavior.

My assumption was that a certain person should have
known a navel orange from a valencia orange as the
two types of oranges have a different color.

It turned out the person was red/green color blind.
The color looked the same. Maybe the behavior of a
rock looks the same to you as the behavior of an
awake person? Maybe you fail to make the distinction
because to you all the colors (behaviors) look the
same?


I really have no clue why you think I believe
consciousness is a "substance". It's a word which
describes something, and I'm just trying to grasp
what people think they are describing when they
use the word and trying to get those people that
think it's an important word to understand who
totally stupid the word is.


I don't believe you believe consciousness is a substance.
I was emphasizing that that is how you talk when trying
to poo poo it as a word with meaning. It has meaning
when used to describe a set of behaviors. For example
in the next paragraph you use the words "exist in
humans" which implies substance not behavior.


I've not yet seen a definition that makes sense.
Either it's based on old ideas of some divine spark
people believe exists in humans, or it something
trivial which is inconsistent with the level of
confusion people have about the concept.


Religious people certainly do see their subjective
world view as coming from the "soul" but we now know
that it correlates 100% so far with brain behavior.
So somehow it is brain behavior. It doesn't make
the subjective experience go away, just the soul
as the source of this experience.


You, as far as I can remember, continue to talk about
it as if it were something hard to understand, and
continue to talk as if it were an interesting problem
to be resolved which you believe no one has resolved,
but yet, you have never defined what "it" is you are
talking about. Feel free to prove me wrong. Tell me
what you are thinking about when you use the word.


The word has many meanings depending on context. When
talking to you I restrict it to the notion of access
consciousness which amounts to P being conscious of Q
if Q's state effects P's state. e.g. The computer is
aware of the printer type scenario.


If we are materialists, we must believe that when we
talk about a human or animal "feeling pain" we are in
fact talking about some physical interaction of matter.


In the sense that "feeling pain" is like "computing the
square root of a number" I see it as a physical process.


Since rocks and humans are both made up of physical
matter, it's very possible that rocks can feel pain.


If the rock's internal behavior is the same as the animals
internal behavior when pain is being computed it may well
feel pain. I have no belief that rocks do that kind of
computation.


If not, we need to define what type of physical
interaction of matter defines "feeling pain".


At this stage we don't know what kind of internal computations
are involved in "feeling pain" just as some people don't
know what the internal computations are involved in a machine
that computes the square root of a number.


If we don't know enough to define it, then we really can't
argue one way or the other if rocks have it. All we can do,
is suggest that since rocks are so physically different
from humans, that we can just make an educated guess that
they don't have it.


Well if rocks have it why do we need a brain? What does a
brain give us that a rock for a brain wouldn't? I suspect
one of the things a brain gives us is the ability to
compute pain and pleasure. Do little robots that avoid
or seek certain stimuli compute pain and pleasure the way
we do? I don't know. I suspect not.


...

You have, in the past, talked about consciousness in terms
of a human being conscious, or unconscious, such as when
they are knocked out by drugs. This is a fine definition
for me. But what do you think this means when we look at
something like a robot? The only translation I see to a
robot is that when it's turned off we should say it's
unconscious, and when it's turned on and running, it's
conscious. So robots that are turned on are conscious.


I suspect that there is conscious ON behavior and ON behaviors
that aren't conscious but we haven't exactly worked out in
what way they are different. Ramachandran has a few views on
that if you ever decide to read his book "Phantoms in the
Brain". Remember I am using conscious behavior in the sense
of P effecting Q. Ramachandran also takes the view that it
is nothing but neurons :)


No matter how you define it, once it's defined, it's not
a hard problem. The only mystery, or hard problem of
consciousness, is trying to get people to understand that
the only hard problem is that either it should defined,
or rejected as an idea, because without a definition, it's
not an idea at all, only a word with no viable definition
made up, and passed down to us, by people who didn't
believe in materialism.


For all practical purposes you can choose to believe there
is no hard problem of consciousness as do many of today's
thinkers such as Dennett and Minsky. It will make no
difference when explaining your nets or programs etc.



JC

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