Re: Materialist Evolutionists

On Apr 18, 10:26 am, someone2 <glenn.spig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 18 Apr, 17:46, Scooter the Mighty <Greyg...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





And you are ignoring or not understanding the point that the nodal
interactions would be different if the robot was not experiencing.
Conscious robot A would have different nodal interactions to
unconscious robot B. Since the nodal interactions are different, the
behaviour would be different. If the robot seemed to be conscious,
and had nodal interactions that correlated with conscious experiences,
and its behavior could be (wholly or partly) explained in terms of
consciousness, then you cannot assume that the robot was not actually
experiencing. You *can* explain the robot's behavior through nodal
interactions without knowing if it is conscious, but that is because
consciousness is part of those interactions. Consciousness is
reflected in the physical nodal interactions. You might not be able
to detect the actual subjective experiences directly, but you can see
their effect on behavior because certain behaviors are only possible
if there is self-awareness, and you can correlate the nodal
interactions with those behaviours.

In the materialist perspective, in other words, consciousness can be a
label given to the aggregate behaviour of the nodal interactions that
correlate to subjective experiences. That being the case, the analogy
with the high pressure system, molecules, atoms etc is sound.
Therefore there is no contradiction between the view that the
behaviour can (theoretically) be explained by looking at the nodal
interactions one by one without knowing whether the robot is
conscious, and the view that consciousness affects behavior.

I repeat: consciousness *is* a subset of those interactions, and the
interactions would be different in a non conscious robot.

I'm not getting back into a debate with you as you seem incapable of
understanding.

Yes I can see your point that if robot A was conscious, and robot B
wasn't conscious, then robot A would be different to robot B.

Though the behaviour of robot A and robot B could both be explained in
terms of the node behaviour, and the node interactions. The nodes in
each would both give the expected outputs given the inputs as they
would in the lab. It would not require knowledge of whether the robot
was conscious to explain its behaviour. Both would be behaving as you
would expect them to if you had assumed (wrongly in A's case) that
they weren't conscious.

OK, but then you go on to say that this means that consciousness
doesn't effect behavior, which is clearly wrong. The robots are
different and behave differently. Your argument might be more
persuasive if you were making the claim that materialists can't
believe in free will, but to claim tha they can't believe that
consciousness affects behavior is just flat out wrong.

You couldn't tell if A had subjective experiences and therefore was
conscious (had any physical activity that correlated to them), as you
don't know what the universe is like in regards to whether the
physical activity in A was experienced or not, there wouldn't be any
clues from its behaviour.

This doesn't follow from what you wrote. Since the Materialist
believes that consciousness is certain patterns of node interactions
then the only way you can say that you couldn't tell if A had
subjective experiences is if you arbitrarily decide that we have the
power to map node interactions but not the power to tell what they
mean in the case of consciousness. If we assume we know what the node
interactions mean than you could say "this node action here indicates
the robot is moving it's arm. That node action over there indicates
it's having a conscious experience."

So you have a robot which is driven by a neural network. Could its
behaviour be explained in terms of the nodes giving the expected
outputs given the inputs they are shown to have received in the log?

If so, then it is being explained without knowledge of whether it had
subjective experiences, and could even be explained with the
assumption that it hasn't (even if this assumption were wrong) in the
same sense that the behaviour of a mobile phone can be explained.

A big scary robot-eater jumps out from behind a bush and yells boo.
The robot, which has a patch of neural network dedicated to
experiencing, has those nodes interacting like crazy, and they output
a signal to its legs that cause it to run away.

If you want to say "gosh, I don't know if it experienced even though
its experience nodes were interacting in a way that indicates
experience" then go ahead, but I don't see what it gets you.


Then
what difference whether it had or hadn't subjectvie experiences, if
either way it behaves as it would be expected to if it didn't?

Because it WOULDN'T behave as it would be expected to behave if it
weren't having experiences. Those two sets of behaviors are
different. The NODES act as you would expect them to act, but which
nodes are used is determined by whether the robot is experiencing or
not.

If not, then why not, would if subjective experiences emerged it no
longer follow the known laws of physics?-

Read that sentence out loud and you'll see it fails to convey
information.

.

Loading