Re: The view from the inside

On Sep 28, 2:26 pm, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:


It's this issue of whether we believe the universe
out there exists, and has properties, independent
of our ability to think about it. Do you place
thought as the foundation of all reality, or do
you place the physical universe as the foundation
of all reality?

It is taken as a working assumption in science that
there is a Reality "out there" that exist independently
of any thoughts about it. And indeed our thoughts are
determined by part of the Reality out there.


To me, the model is clear. Humans are just machines
built out of the stuff of the universe. We are
exactly like computers in that what we can do, is
defined by, and limited by, what you can build from
the stuff of this universe.

Nothing extra added. Got that.


Some people clearly choose other beliefs - like the
mind first view of the universe, or dualistic views.
But I don't.

Dualism has no explanatory power. Either this "extra
something" has an effect, in which case it is physical,
or it is unverifiable make believe which, even if it
was true as a lucky guess, having no effect means it
doesn't matter if it is true or not.

As for the idea of the mind first view it doesn't
really fit in with the fact our own mind's world has
a brain perspective. If the mind was the only reality
what point is there in a brain?


Because we are humans, we are trapped in the middle
of this loop. Our understanding is limited to what
we can think about, and with our power to think, we
create an understanding of the universe, and in that
universe, we find a brain, which generates our power
to think. Being stuck in the middle here, it's hard
to figure out the fine line between mind and matter.
Of everything we understand, how much of the nature
of reality which we understand, is a produce of or
powers to think, and how much is a nature of the
reality itself? Is red in the mind, or out in the
universe for example.


It's not clear where the line is, or which is, or
should be, on the "bottom" of the reduction stack,
or if it even makes sense to consider one the
bottom, instead of the other, or whether we should
just see it as a circle with no bottom, etc.


However, I believe there is a physical reality out
there which is what everything reduces to. All
our thoughts, and our power to think, reduces to
properties of the physical universe, which means
they all reduce to atoms (and below) as well.


They may reduce to atoms and below but they are to be
understood at a higher descriptive level.


When you talk about things, anything, I always, try
to figure out what you are talking about, and map
your words, back to the part of the physical
universe I think you are talking about.


I take the physical Universe as a given. So when I talk
about the view or a Self the physical part is understood.
It is the configurations and behaviors that are of
interest. When you have thoughts they are not about
the parts that must exist for you to have those thoughts
it is about some higher level pattern or action.


I find it hard to follow you, because I don't know if
you are talking about brain behavior when we think
about rocks, or if you are talking about the actual
rocks.


The context should make that clear.


When we talk about putting a collection of gears together
and making a clock, we can say a new behavior emerges.
The set as a whole can keep time. But that doesn't mean
the parts are doing something new. They are not. They
work the same way whether they are in the clock formation
or whether they are in another formation.


It is the whole that does something new. There was never
any suggestion the parts did anything beyond what they have
always done.


It can also depend on how those parts are connected.


Yes, but that's not something it can _sometimes_ depend on.
The behavior of the gear is _always_ a function of it's
relation to the rest of the universe.


You seem to be unnecessarily pedantic on these things. What
I was alluding to was a collection of clock parts don't do
"clock behaviors" until they are connected up the right way
and then it is the whole not the parts that is doing the
"clock behavior".


All meaning translates back to the physical universe.
This is a fact of physicalism. If you believe, or just
understand physicalism, you understand this.


I don't like ISMs of any kind. Either something has an
effect on you or it doesn't, end of story. As for "meaning"
I see that as something you give to something else, it is
a relationship between you and the object. Thus an apple
is as you say a collection of atoms but to you it might
mean food.


What is the "view from the inside" in terms of the
physical universe? What do you think that means when
translated down to atoms? (meaning, explain it to me
by using atoms).


Atoms are the wrong explanatory level.


And in case you don't get it, I pick "atoms" not
because I think that's some "bottom" of the reduction
chain but because I think that's a level low enough to
make it clear I'm not talking about large structures
like neurons or humans brains or computers or rocks or
clocks. I'm talking about a level which is below all
those things in the reduction chain.


I think your whole emphasis on it is "nothing but atoms"
simply started out as it isn't non physical. And I have
never disagreed with that. You can always reduce the
behavior of a computer to the behavior of logic gates
but for most high level behaviors that would be a
pointless excess in understanding the behavior.


He [Glen] has never said one thing in any of his posts
that struck me as dualist in nature. But yet, you
can hardly write a single post on subjects related to
consciousness without me suspecting you are making
dualistic errors of thought without even realizing you
are doing it.


There IS a dual view as you admitted yourself when you
explained it correctly as thoughts seeming to be without
any physical basis but in fact are the physical activity
of a neural network.

If you had a computer program capable of philosophizing
but not having knowledge of its own logic gates I would
suggest it would also wonder about the nonphysical nature
of its own thoughts.




What the program is aware of, what the program reacts to,
is not the i/o of the logic gates that the program IS, but
rather the objects (or data) of the program. You confuse
the reaction of the program at a high level with the
reaction of its parts.


Bingo! You do it again. I can't tell if you know what you
are saying, or if you are just confused. Never once has
Glen left me confused, but when I read the words you write,
like the ones above, it sure the hell leaves me feeling you
don't really understand what you are saying.


Do you understand that when we say "the program" we are in
fact talking about the behavior of a big pile of atoms
known as a computer?


Computers are made up of atoms sure. The atom's behaviors are
independent of the computer however. The computer's behavior
is dependent on the behavior of atoms but we really don't have
to reduce our explanation to that level.

The program is a high level description. You can understand
how a program works without reference to logic gates or machine
code and indeed such a reduction, although possible, would
not add one bit to the understanding of the program itself.


I can say something like, "the program sent a packet to the
server", or I can say, "the configuration of the atoms in
the computer caused the voltage to fluxate in the network
cable which led to the atoms in the server to be re-configured"

...

The only thing that changes in the picture is the words
flowing out of the human standing next to the computer.
Nothing about the computer changes.


I never suggested it wasn't anything more that a human's
(or an AI's) high level description of the process. It is
an appropriate level at which to describe the process.


So, above, you said the very odd phrase "what the _program_
is aware of".


The word "program" is just a word we use to talk about how
a computer is configured and what sequence of events it's
likely to produce because of how it's configured.


What on earth does "awareness" means in this context?


The context is a high level description of a process which
behaves in a way we see as it being "aware". And what it is
aware of is also in the form of a high level description.



I know what I think it means, but from the above, I can't
grasp what you think it means.


What the atoms are reacting to, is all the other atoms.
End of story.


Paint, Word, Excel are all the reactions of logic gates.
End of story.


When I use words like "the computer is aware of the
packet received from the network" it means something
to me as a computer programmer, but that word (aware)
gets very dangerous in the context of the topics
of this thread.


And you as a computer programmer are nothing but the
activity of neurons which understands these things at
the level of "packet received from the network". The
activity of neurons is designed to work at that level.
That is the level of the awareness of the whole.


I'm simply using the word "the packet" as a label for
the behavior of a billion or so atoms.


But you only know that because you know about atoms.
You don't actually experience the atoms you are only
able to cogitate their existence from science.

Humans or AI programs can know things by "working them
out" or by "experiencing" them as output from some lower
functioning unit which has done the "working out".


It makes no difference which words I'm using, I'm still
talking about what the atoms are doing in all cases.


That is fine in the sense I believe you go on about atoms
to emphasize there isn't anything extra added. But it makes
a big difference in our ability to understand how all those
atoms are working to get the results we observe.

We get there is nothing extra added but there is a level
of explanation that can be followed and one that can't be
followed even if both explanations "nothing but atoms"
and "packets" refer to the same thing.


It makes no difference if we use words like "computer
program", or "pain" or "running", we are always making
reference to atoms somewhere whether the person using
the words understand or believes that or not.


That may be true but what is the point? I understand your
need to say there is nothing extra but really the use of
high level words doesn't mean that the user believes there
is something extra.


... you seem to want to believe in materialism.


Something effects you or it doesn't. Call it what you like.


what the program reacts to, is not the i/o of the logic
gates that the program IS


What the program reacts to is not only the I/O of the
logic gates, it's also the atoms that make up the logic
gates and the electrons flowing in the wires. It's
very much reacting to all those things.


It comes back to an appropriate level of explanation.
If you ask the program what it is reacting to and it
doesn't have a description of the subject at the level
of electrons or logic gates it will say it is reacting
to, being aware of, x, where x is some high level
description of what it is reacting to. The fact you
might have some deeper insight to the lower levels
doesn't change that fact.


So I can't grasp your point here because at fact value,
it's inconsistent with materialism.


If you mean it is inconsistent with there being nothing
extra added I don't see why. We are talking about effects.
You can talk about a car hitting a brick wall or you can
talk about one bunch of atoms hitting another bunch of
atoms what ever takes your fancy. Which do you find the
most informative in those two descriptions?


When we talk about what our computer programs are doing,
we totally ignore all the other levels.

Correct.

But in this thread, we are very much debating the true
nature of all of reality, which includes understanding
what it is we are actually making reference to when we
talk about our computer software and what it is doing.


I don't know what the "true" nature of Reality is. If it
effects you then it exists in some way. If it doesn't
effect you then it doesn't matter if it exists or not.


You just keep writing these things which strikes me as
odd and inconsistent with your other beliefs like you
did again in this message, when you wrote:


"what the program reacts to, is not the i/o of the
logic gates"


When in fact what the program reacts to IS the I/O of
the logic gates.

No, I would say at a low level description the gates react
to each other but at the high level description, a program,
is reacting to high level data.

We talk that way because it conveys understanding. If I
was to say the program is reacting to square shapes that
would mean something, but if I was to say it was reacting
to its logic gates that wouldn't convey any useful
information.

If the program was aware of the logic gates, of which it
depends to exist at all, it could talk about them.

This will be my last post as I will not have access to
a computer for a few weeks.

JC

.

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