Re: Evolutionary question concerning God.

someone2 wrote:
Jon G wrote:
someone2 wrote:
Jon G wrote:
someone2 wrote:
Jon G wrote:
Ross Langerak wrote:
"someone3" <glenn.spigel3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1157385568.974904.132210@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jon G wrote:
Your confusing me here, firstly you retreat from the claim that


experience could be an advantage in your opening:
"No, the experience itself is irrelevant..."

NO I am not confusing you, your mode of discussion is very similar to a
very well known ancient Greek philosopher, and it has the same
weaknesses. You are not on trial though, so as we are trying to make
sense of your statements, please read what it says on my statements.

I state that it is an advantage The Being Aware (= what is the
advantage) of your experiences, not even all of them, some are
sufficient, too many are confusing (you don't need to know what your
bowels are doing all the time). The nature of your experiences is
irrelevant, and awareness, can be explained without the experiences as
they will not change the result or reponse of the animal no matter what
they are.

The advantage of awareness in evolution terms is self explanatory and I
have given examples of when NOT being aware can be a problem.


Will the organism simply follow the laws of physics and chemistry
which
don't refer to experience, or does experience itself matter (not to be
confused with the biological mechanics of the organism, which current
scientific understanding believes can be described in terms of
chemistry and physics)?

The organism will follow the laws of physics by analysing the situation
that is presented in his/her consciousness (explained above) and taking
action. The situation is represented in the organism central nervous
system (CNS) as experiences, so that elaborate computing can take
place. The nature of the experience is irrelevant and will not change
the outcome of the action of the organism, as long as the experiences
are consistent.

But experiences is also explained by the laws of nature, as they are a
representation of the world around you as of a split second before you
experience and you need to be aware of them to judge them and their
interactions. They are made using the senses, and interpreted using the
brain. All very physical. I agree, that the nature of experiences and
what they are is irrelevant to the outcome.

I think I understand you now. You are trying to keep two realities
alive, your experience, and your understanding of the physical world,
but you aren't seeing things correctly, therefore they seem at odds
with each other, and you try to fudge things to avoid looking at what
appears to be a paradox.

You say:
"The organism will follow the laws of physics by analysing the
situation..."

I find this slightly confusing, what exactly are you talking about in
terms of analysis, I assume you don't mean experiencing thought, and
reasoning etc, I assume you mean the brain is structured in such a way
as to respond appropriately.

Below I have outlined a line of reasoning given your statement "the
organism will follow the laws of physics"


To anyone who cares. What happens next? Nic, you seem to have
translated someone1-5's thinking possibly because you found the
original post he/she referred to. I still haven't and having tried lots
of possible interpretations, I still don't get how the conclusions are
drawn. Please let me how to add the God bits to this. So far, even
agreeing with the statements, I only get to "consciousness does not
exist". Once I get the whole argument then I'd like to comment. For
now, I would be hapy to understand what the thinking is.

1) If the organism follows the laws of physics as you so clearly state,
then presumably it can be explained by physics.

I can explain everything about an organism with the laws of physics as
the organism has to follow the laws of physics.

2) Given physics doesn't reference 'consciousness', the organism's
behaviour must be explainable without reference to its 'consciousness'.

The organism's behaviour can be explained with the laws of physics, and
consciousness, which doesn't exist in physics, is irrelevant

3) Therefore 'consciousness' does not effect behaviour, as it is not
required to explain any behaviour.

The behaviour can be explained without considering consciousness. The
chemical reactions that guide the behaviour and that follow the laws of
physics do influence the behaviour. Consciousness deos not in fact
exist, by this thinking.

4) If it doesn't effect the organisms behaviour within the world, then
it can't be an evolutionary advantage for the organism.

As, if the assumptions are right, consciousness does not exist it is
true to say that it didn't evolve.

5) There can be no evolutionary advantage for us to have evolved
experiencing anything, or if we did experience, for it to make any
sense, or represent the physical world outside of the organism in
anyway.

The problem doesn't exist anymore. Consciousness does not exist hence
there is no evolution of it. It is irrelevant to think what would
happen if we did have consciousness

Maybe I misjudged you, you actually seemed to be trying to understand,
and did well up to a point (3) where you through misunderstanding, you
added your own unfounded interpretation. Though it highlights your
misunderstanding, and where I perhaps haven't been clear.

Your experience of my reasoning is irrelevant :)

I still do not see your logic. I understand though that this is a
philosophical question. so I need the bigger pcture. Am I correct that
you are saying that

"There is no evolutionary advantage for an organism to have evolved a
consciousness of the events around it, as its responses would not have
changed if consciousness didn't exist. Practically, there is no
advantage to being conscious of the experiences and the responses
compared to responding to experiences without awareness of them. Yet we
are conscious, so it impossible to justify consciousness through the
theory of evolution. So it must be God that did it." Do you consider
this correct and your thinking?

I know you like the way you wrote it, because by mixing things up a
bit, it sound like you found a contraddiciton; but if you understand it
then it's ok to rephrase it. I cannot see that contraddiction yet. In
my summary above, I see no great discovery because it is incorrect, all
you can say from that is that consciousness did not come through
evolution. How do you link God?

brb, serve problems

3) Therefore 'consciousness' does not effect behaviour, as it is not
required to explain any behaviour.

Which you interpreted as:
"The behaviour can be explained without considering consciousness. The
chemical reactions that guide the behaviour and that follow the laws of
physics do influence the behaviour. Consciousness does not in fact
exist, by this thinking."

The last sentance was unfounded, I am not questioning the existence of
consciousness, nor do any of the assumptions, as you explained yourself
in your understanding of (2):
"The organism's behaviour can be explained with the laws of physics,
and consciousness, which doesn't exist in physics, is irrelevant"

Notice the word irrelevant, it doesn't say it doesn't exist, it is just
that physics (our current scientific understanding) considers it
irrelevant.

I know this. I'm trying to second-guess.

Do you understand (3) now, it is simply restating the irrelevance of
consciousness given our current scientific understanding (physics and
chemistry), to help you understand why (4) must therefore be follow,
and (5) must follow after that, given our current scientific
understanding.

Regarding what you said:
"There is no evolutionary advantage for an organism to have evolved a
consciousness of the events around it, as its responses would not have
changed if consciousness didn't exist. Practically, there is no
advantage to being conscious of the experiences and the responses
compared to responding to experiences without awareness of them. Yet we
are conscious, so it impossible to justify consciousness through the
theory of evolution. So it must be God that did it." Do you consider
this correct and your thinking?

It is correct up to the final sentance. I don't say "so it must be God
that did it", I say that:

Given our current scientific understanding, if the physical world we
experience is responsible for our experience, then it is a coincidence
that our experience makes sense,

why? a digital message (CD-ROM) doesnt look like the message (sound
waves) but it is broken down so it can be stored and processed later
(or stored etc..) by a system that understands the same digital code.
Digital is the easiest way to pack a lot of data into one system, and
it is the simplest language. Language, also is a digital system, where
words look nothing like the meaning of the words, yet they easily
convey the message becasue the assumption is that the receiver has the
same system. The digital message of the physical world (message
created by the brain from the senses) per se does not make sense (like
strings of 1 and 0 from a computer program) and it truely doesn't,
unless you read it with the system it's for, the brain (or a computer
for a CD-ROM). All of us are reading those messages from inside a
brain, so of course it appears to make sense. The message is in the
form of electrical currents (+ or -) or chemical signals (grandients of
chemicals). So it's not a coincidence it makes sense to us, your brain
is reading something, storing it, computing it and acting according to
that information. The way you process it may be different from brain to
brain. But that's irrelevant. The logic of the physical world around us
(and its properties) are maintained in the message. We can't know what
the physical world is really like, but the message is high-fidelity in
terms of the properties of that world.

and it would be a deception that our
experience influences the behaviour of the organism that we experience
being.

Even this, I'm not sure I agree with. I am thinking, the more I recall
(look for stored information) an event, the easierit is because I am
physically changing the connections between information "bits" in my
brain. Being happy, changes the chemical conformation of my brain (and
this is reported) and that must have an affect on my brain's
information processing abilities. However, to me this suggests that all
behaviours are ultimately explainable with the laws of physics,
chemistry, neuroscience etc...

If our experience is as it seems, then the physical is not the source
of our experience.

In other words the assumption that your experience is caused by the
brain is wrong beyond reasonable doubt (it would have to be a
coincidence).

would you still have experiences if you had no senses ever. No
information at all about the physical world? (don't answer, the
question is rethorical and can't be aswered) but it's to show what I
mean.

Anyway you seem to see that the reasoning is correct, even if you still
don't fully understand the implications.

I was not agreeing with you, as I said previously, I was asking you if
I understood your reasoning correctly, so I could comment on it. I
think I do now. Do I?

I said you were describing my reasoning correctly.

You just seem to have ignored it,

what have I ignored. I have managed to understand what you say. Now I
have the ability to start showing you my opinion. Which is what I was
doing. I didn't ignore it, I don't share your views and I'm telling you
what I think instead and why your thinking is wrong in my view.

and gone off on a path of reasoning
of your own, anyway it seems like you really want to explain it to me,
so let's go through it.

Let's! It's called discussion

You describe how information (1's and 0's) can represent something,
which can be interpreted and acted upon within a machine, if the
machine is set up in such a way that it is expecting the 1's and 0's in
the format they came in. These electrical signals are equivalent to
chemical signals, and the brain is acting like a computer.

I'm with you there, though then you jump right over the point I was
trying to make, and landed down with:

"So it's not a coincidence it makes sense to us, your brain is reading
something, storing it, computing it and acting according to that
information."

Do you see where you came running at it, and jumped the whole issue of
why if the brain is doing all the work, then why does consciousness
have to make sense, it is just like a computer (it doesn't require
consciousness).

the message doesn't make sense per se, taken as it is. The message
makes sense only to the organism that is reading it because it was made
by the same organism. Your coded message doesn't make sense to me, but
it has to make sense to you or you would not even know where your mouth
is.

You, your personality, your consciousness, YOU is your brain. When you
talk to ME, you are talking to my brain. You are in your brain. Nowhere
else. If I change your brain even slightly, you change too. This has
been recorded 1000's of time during surgery. You are adding an extra
layer that isn't there. So it NOT a coincidence that your experiences
make sense to you. It would be a mystery if Your experiences made sense
to ME or even your twin (or even your clone!). This, I can't prove, but
is what I think. being all brains individually programmed information
processes, what one sees in one's mind-eye as green may not make sense
to someon else's mind eye. being that this is possible, and that it
would be very simple to code for in the DNA (something like the immune
system, no two are alike), and to select during evolution, it is the
easiest way and we may have to choose that one.

The next part is very challenging and I never thought about it before
now, but is very exciting!

A robot could read something, store it, compute it, and
act according to that information

yes.

it doesn't have to experience doing
it,

true, a robot doesn't need to

or even if it did, so what, the experience is irrelevant according
to physics and chemistry to how the robot will behave.

It wouldn't experience. If it did, it would be a different type of
robot. A much much better one.

If () robotics
got to such a level that a robot could be programmed to act as though
it were () similar to a human being and it claimed that did experience,
should I tell it that it was no coincidence that its experience makes
sense? On what basis? That we put it together not even taking it into
consideration?

If you put it together without considering consciousness it would not
be conscious as it would be what you made it be. You are assuming that
it's impossible to program consciousness into a robot. And so far, we
have not succeeded in doing that, but we may. So far we have not
managed a lot of things but it doesn't mean they are impossible.

The next bit is even more interesting to me. (although again, you
manage to confuse yourself)

How could I tell if it really was experiencing, would it
no longer follow the laws of physics and chemistry, and therefore its
program given its architecture?

The first part is a great question, but you underestimated it by
confusing things. I can't tell if you are experiencing. I've never even
seen you. You could be a good robot, that seems to think like a human.
If you are a robot, and you are conscious, it means your makers gave it
you. We have to assume a maker because there are no born robots that
could have evolved.

Perhaps you could highlight the difference between a human, and an
advanced robot (which we know exactly how it works) in terms of how
consciousness effects their behaviour?

you keep changing this robot. By advanced, do you mean that it's like a
human? Then my answer is below:
If a robot that was programmed to be like a human was successful at
being like a human, you could not tell the difference so they would
both be conscious (it is logical to assume that). One EVOLVED and
became conscious so it had an advantage in his environment, the other
one was programmed to be conscious, so that it could be like a human.

If by advanced you mean really clever but that had no consciousness
built in (by the programmers) then:
consciousness would affect the human's behaviour (see below) but the
robot would simply react according to the programs it has, without
being conscious (but then the question is really boring and obvious, so
I guess you mean the first interpretation)

When I am not conscious of my experiences, I am not that clever. I can
compare being conscious of the world around me and not being. The
advantage is obvious. When I wake up, consciousness kicks in again and
I'm clever again (most days). If during sleep I get hot, I throw the
duvet away (unconsciously) however, I might punch my partner in the
face even though the night before I knew my partner was there.

unconsciouly, the brain follows this program:
if hot then remove what touches the body (a cascade of nerve signals
move the body parts and they punch the partner)

Consciously, the brain follows this program( or something like it):
if hot then remove what touches the body (move body parts accordingly)
if moving parts, check for obstacles (look around)
if dark then recall last visual image of the environment (someone is
there)
calculate movement accurately

this is what they do with A.I. research. It hasn't worked yet, maybe
the sum of the experiences in a lifetime is needed...

Sorry, long post. What do you think?

.

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