Re: To the writers of the Talk.Origins website
- From: no@xxxxxxxx (Eric Rowley)
- Date: 06 May 2007 22:52:17 GMT
From: someone2 <glenn.spigel2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
On 5 May, 21:47, n...@xxxxxxxx (Eric Rowley) wrote:
From: someone2 <glenn.spig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
On 2 May, 11:11, n...@xxxxxxxx (Eric Rowley) wrote:<Snip>
I doubt that God Himself knows what Someone's argument is,
mine is merely that, as far as anyone knows, following the
laws of physics doesn't disqualify one from possessing
consciousness (or useing consciousness as a basis for
behavioral decisions.)
I was not talking about adding noise
in the lab, and nor was I talking about recreating the
emergent behaviour of the system in the lab. I was simply
suggesting that if the nodes wrote out all the information
such a current weightings on each connection, the node inputs
etc, then this could be recreated in the lab for a single
node. You seem to be suggesting otherwise am I correct?
No, I'm saying "So what?"!
As a materialist I don't think that a network that produces
conscious experiences and bases its behaviour on them needs
nodes that do anything they wouldn't do in a lab, I don't think
it needs any "messages" supernaturaly inserted between nodes, I
don't think it has to be operating in a bubble of spacetime
with special consciousness enabling laws of physics.
I think that a sufficiantly complex neural network could
experience as a normal part of its data processing and I think
that that is what our brains do.
You don't think that is possible and that's alright but it is
obvious that that has to do with your religious belief, your
pretense to base your argument on materialistic grounds just
isn't plausible because you just don't seem to be able to wrap
your mind around our actual beliefs and argue from a truely
materialistic standpoint.
Well its a big "so what",
Yes, it's a very big "so what?", and you'll need a big "what" to
satisfy it!
especially if you are saying "no" that
you wouldn't be suggesting that the same results couldn't be
recreated in a lab. Because to explain the robots behaviour would
only require knowledge of the node interactions, and the node
behaviour could be explained. This requires no knowledge of
whether it was subjectively experiencing or not.
Ok, I'll buy that, but I have to point out that the explanation you
get from studying the robots brain at the node level leaves a lot to
be desired, it tells you nothing about what the robot is sensing,
remembering, thinking or experiencing. This means that you will be
unable to determine that the robot picked a flower because it likes
red things or because it remembered another flower or even because it
was ordered to pick the flower. You can say, waving a pointer at a
computer presentation of the interacting nodes as colored dots, that
this fuzzy patch of interactions is the cause of the behavior but you
will have no idea what it means.
If I asked why the robot picked the flower I would prefer an explanation
in terms of flowers, colors, sensations, memories and experiences rather
than in terms of nodes.
Therefore it's
behaviour can be explained with the assumption it isn't (even if
this assumption is wrong).
No, you are wrong, you can say "this bunch of nodal interactions caused
the behaviour" but you will have no idea if that bunch of nodes is
experiencing and if that experiencing is what is causing the behavior.
Therefore you can't say that the behaviour wouldn't be different if it
was or wasn't experiencing.
The reason it doesn't matter whether
the assumption is wrong is that it's behaviour CAN be explained
with the *assumption* that it isn't.
No it CAN'T, if you are looking at the nodal level you have no idea what
the pattern of nodal interaction would be if the net were experiencing,
therefore you can't know if the pattern that you see causing the behaviour
is an experience or not.
If that assumption were to
be wrong, then it wouldn't affect the explanation of behaviour,
as the explanation of behaviour (node interactions) works equally
well with the assumption that there were no subjective
experiences.
No, your explanation at the nodal level doesn't take any consideration
of experiences or the lack thereof, there is no way you can exclude
experiencing from your explanation unless you have figured out what
experiencing would look like at the nodal level.
You are just asserting that your explanation is based on the assumption
that the network isn't experiencing but you can't show that you have
excluded experiencing from the explanation.
How exactly would your explanation differ between explaning behaviour that
was caused by the network having experiences and explaning behaviour that
had nothing to do with experiences?
It's all nodal interactions, how do you tell which interactions are
experiences and which aren't?
Therefore having subjective experiences or not
couldn't affect behaviour, and we couldn't be talking about them
because they're being experienced. It would have to be a
coincidence that we were talking about them and that they
existed, as their existance couldn't influence us in talking
about them.
Based on the false conclusion above.
Presumably you know what I am refering to if I were to reference
your " 'subjective experience' of the physical world". If you do
then you know what I mean when I talk about whether the robot is
'subjectively experienced' or not.
Presumably.
Eric
.
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