Re: Significance (contd)

someone2 wrote:
On 3 Jan, 00:50, Eric Rowley <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
someone2 wrote:
On 23 Dec, 18:02, Eric Rowley <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Glenn Spigel wrote:
On 20 Dec, 13:30, Eric Rowley <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
someone2 wrote:
On 14 Dec, 03:32, Eric Rowley <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
someone2 wrote:
On 11 Dec, 19:32, Eric Rowley <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
someone2 wrote:
<snip>
No, I don't see that.
If the BeingLikeSomething is part of the brain state then it must be
available as input for further processing (as I feel it must be anyway
since such a complex function surely must require some form of feedback)
If the BLS is recycled in the processing then it will affect the results
so that any activity lacking the BLS wouldn't be performing the same
function.
A BLS that doesn't affect the results must be "one step removed" from
the processing.
No, they would be saying that the BLS an identity of the brain
activity, and this activity does affect the results. Though there
might be other activity in a robot for example, that might be
functionally equivalent, which it wouldn't be like anything to be.
What do you mean by functionally equivalent?


Some people would consider that the context of the activity would be
significant to what functionis being performed, but you have said that
you don't.

It depends on how "context" and "function" are being used.

If the context is purely external and the function is internal then it
isn't. on the other hand, if by function you mean the external use to
which the activity is put then it would be. Unless the context is external to the external use as well of course.

So I mean for example, that the same logic diagrams could be applied
to both systems. Earlier you seemed to understand that using letters
being posted between houses they could be organised into a system to
implement the same logic diagrams that an electronic computer system
was implementing.

Yes, but when I agreed that they were functionally equivalent you turned around and questioned that because they didn't have the same internal
workings, so perhaps you can see why I need clarification.

As I quoted earlier:
------------------
If zombies are to be counterexamples to physicalism, it is not enough
for them to be behaviorally and functionally like normal human beings:
plenty of physicalists accept that merely behavioral or functional
duplicates of ourselves might lack qualia. Zombies must be like normal
human beings in all physical respects, with the physical properties
that physicalists suppose we have.
------------------
Do you accept that plenty of physicalists accept that it might not be
like anything to be a robot functionally equivalent to ourselves, or
are you in denial of this?
I don't know


Hopefully given my previous response, this will now be clearer and you
can answer.

At the moment it seems a bit clearer but I expect that feeling to pass.

I expect they do that but I don't, I think that feeling like something
is a brain function so a robot brain following the same "logic diagrams"
would feel the same way we do.

<snip>

Futhermore, even though the functionalists would consider the
behaviour to be as expected given their hypothesis that it was like
something to be the robot, it is also the behaviour that they would
expect for the null hypothesis that it isn't like something to be the
robot, because any other behaviour would have required the components
to have behaved differently from expected given L~, and they don't
expect that from entities which it isn't like anything to be.
It's the behaviour they expect from the build and their
understanding of the laws of physics <period>.
Their hypothesises are irrelevant, not because BeingLikeSomething
doesn't affect behaviour but because they didn't factor them into
their prediction.
You make it sound as if they didn't choose to factor them into their
prediction.
Well, it's your scenario, so it's your choice, really, but yes, that
appears to be the case.


Well by all means explain how you think they could factor in their
hypothesises into their prediction, such that the expected behaviour
for it being like something to be the robot, was different from the
expected behaviour for the null hypothesis that it wasn't like
something to be it.

I have several times before, it doesn't get us anywhere because
you take it for granted that a physicalistic feeling of being like something must, if it can exist at all, be epiphenomenal and I take
it for granted that it isn't the kind of thing that can be
epiphenomenal.

Whereas the issue is that whether they think it is like
something to be the robot or not, isn't a factor in how they expect
the robot to behave.
But that's just because they already have a "better" way of predicting
the behaviour! As long as all they are interested in is generating a
prediction, if they were interested in understanding why it behaves that
way rather than some other way, whether or not it is like something to
be the robot or whether what, if anything, it is like to be the robot
affects its behaviour then they need to start looking at theories of
behaviour and of what and why and how it is like something to be something.

It either would be like something to be the robot
or not, but whichever one the answer was, isn't significant to their
expectation of behaviour.
I disagree, if the universe is such that it
is like something to be the robot then the behaviour that they
expect will certainly be different then the behaviour they would have
expected if the universe had been such that it wasn't like anything to
be the robot. (Of course, it wouldn't really be the same robot, since
the build would also have been different.


You are just saying that they expect different builds to behave
differently.

But I don't think that the feeling of being like a robot can be separated from the build, if one of the builds has a feeling of
being a robot then that feeling, in my mind, is involved in the
difference in behaviour.

The behaviour of the robot with a feeling of being like a robot
may well be predictable without explicitly considering the feeling
of being like a robot but that would only be because the simulation
is simulating the feeling of being like a robot along with all the
other brain functions.

I agree. The point I am making though is that they don't
know the rules of the universe with regards to whether it would be
like something to be the robot or not, and they have no scientific
means of working it out, because there is no difference in expected
behaviour between whether it is like something to be the robot or not.

They may not have a different expectation but that doesn't mean that
it isn't possible to have different expectations depending on feelings
of being a robot.

You can presumably understand that they could be asked the question of
what they personally suspect the conscious status of the robot to be.
You have answered that if it passed the Turing Test, you would
personally think it was like something to be the robot. They could
also be asked the question of whether the behaviour is as expected
given their suspiciions. They could then also be asked how they would
have expected the behaviour to be if their suspicions weren't correct.
Now if these expectations are the same, presumably you can see there
would be no scientific experiment possible,

No, I just see that they can't come up with such an experiment, not
that it isn't possible.

because there is no expected difference in behaviour between whether
> it is like something to be the robot or not.

In your scenario.

Thus no difference in expected behaviour
between the hypothesis that it is like something to be the robot and
the null hypothesis that it isn't like something to be the robot.
You had said:
-------------------
But, unless there is no difference in _actual_ behaviour you could
switch to an experiment where there was some difference in expected
behaviour.
-------------------
Perhaps you could explain the kind of experiment you are talking about
where there would be a difference in expected behaviour between the
hypothesis that it is like something to be the robot and the null
hypothesis that it isn't like something to be the robot.

What no experiment?

Do you understand what the word epiphenomenal means by the way?

The reason I asked, if for the sake of investigation we were to regard
consciousness as epiphenomenal, you could see that there would be a
problem in reasoning that just because a build which had the
epiphenomenal property would be different from a build which didn't,
that it therefore means that the epiphenomenal property was
significant to the way the build behaves.

Certainly, that's implicit in the definition of epiphenomenal.

On the other hand, if it isn't epiphenomenal it would be equally
problematic to reason that it wasn't significant.

You assume it is, I assume it isn't and we're unlikely to get any further.

<snip>

Surely you aren't saying that you don't see a physical distinction
between a robot brain made of silicon and an organic brain even if
they were performing the same function. Though if you do, then you
must see a difference in what is happening in these two brain cases
which isn't a 'brain function/process' (if you consider the 'brain
function/process" could be identical between the two).
It seems then that if you are were to say that the mental state was
one and the same as the organic brain state, and accept that there are
physical differences between the organic brain state, and the robot
brain made of silicon, that the mental state of the organic brain is
not one and the same as something distinct from the organic brain
state.
<Answer repeated from higher up the post>
Sure, there is a physical difference between the states but the data
being processed, the processing itself (from an abstract viewpoint)
and the data stored in the state would be the same.
The feeling of being like something is a complex process, it would
need a lot of processing, I can't see it just happening by itself,
not even as the result of massive amounts of processing going on in
the vicinity.
As such, I can't see how it could be dependant on the substrate rather
than the processing itself.
I can see how different processing elements could interact differently
and that could affect the processing, but then the processing wouldn't
be the same.
You seem to be admitting that the two physical states are distinct. So
if the mental state isn't distinct from the first physical state, it
must also be distinct from the second physical state, since if it
wasn't, there would be a distinction between it and the first physical
state.

A way around this issue by the way would be for there to be multiple
ways for it to be like the mental state of the first physical state.
Such that it was claimed that while the mental state of the first
physical state would be like the mental state of the second physical
state, they are distinct, because one is the first physical state, and
the other is the second physical state. Though I am not sure this is
how you wanted to go, because in this version, you'd be admitting that
the particular mental state of the organic brain is the particular
physical state of the organic brain, and not of any other physical
state. Accepting that, means that all that is required for the
identity theorist's position has been accepted, and the functionalist
is left question begging that the mental states could be like each
other, when the physical states are quite different. So it'd be
difficult for you to claim you couldn't understand the identity
theorist's position as you seem to want to.


Though perhaps you could give your explanation to the issue:
------------------
You seem to be admitting that the two physical states are distinct. So
if the mental state isn't distinct from the first physical state, it
must also be distinct from the second physical state, since if it
wasn't, there would be a distinction between it and the first physical
state.
------------------

I think I might say, and I thought I was saying above, though in different words, that the mental state depended on the informational state, which depends on, but isn't identical to, the physical state.
Since one could have a related build, using the same "logic diagrams"
but made out of different elements, neurons vs transistors for instance,
processing the same information and having the same feeling of being.

<snip>

But suppose it could (after a lot more research) be shown that the
state of a group of artificial neurons maintain values which can be
said to indicate information about how the robot was suffering?
And how it felt to be suffering. And how it felt to feel that it was
suffering.
That would seem to indicate that Functionalism was correct and that
the robot was suffering.
Sorry but I can't allow your begging of the question there, simply
because, assuming the universality assumption to be true, for there to
be scientific research, there would have had to have been a difference
between the expected behaviour given the hypothesis and the expected
behaviour given the null hypothesis, and there wouldn't be, because
the universality assumption assumes that the build will follow the
same laws of physics,
Physicalism assumes that _Everything_ follows the same laws of physics!
Physicalism only assumes that there is nothing other than the
physical. I have mentioned the posibility of a physicalist conception
of property dualism in which there would be distinct laws for things
which it is like something to be.
and thus produce the same behave, whether it is like something to be
it or not.
No. it doesn't.
You have set up and fine tuned your scenario so that,
_within_that_scenario_, nobody knows whether it is BeingLikeSomething
or NotBeingLikeSomething that causes the behaviour they have predicted.
That doesn't mean that they expect them both to produce the same behaviour.
They expect whichever one is actually present in the robot to produce
the expected behaviour, the other one, whichever that is, they would
expect to have produced a different behaviour (probably) had it
actually been present, which it isn't.
And the have their respective expectations for which is present,
but they aren't relevant to their expectations of behaviour which
are entirely based on the build and their knowledge of the laws of
physics.
It either would be like something to be the robot or not, and for it
to have a different conscious status from the one it had, the build
would need to be different, and thus the internal behaviour would have
to be different, and possibly the external behaviour might also be
different. I certainly am not saying that there could be another
entity with the same total behaviour including the internal yet it
have a different conscious status.
It is hardly fine tuned. Since you agree that if the universality
assumption was true, there would be no difference between the
hypothesis that it would be like something to be the robot, and the
null hypothesis that it wouldn't.
No, I, don't, !

I agree that _in_your_scenario_ there is no difference between
the "researchers" holding one hypothesis or the other, simply
because they ignore their hypothesises when generating their
prediction.


I'm sure you can see the distinction between their hypothesis being
significant to their expectation of behaviour, but they ignored it,

This doesn't make any sense, if they ignore it it can't affect their expectation.

Do you mean that it would have been significant if they hadn't ignored
it? Or do you mean the reality of whether robot has a felling of being?

and it not being significant to their expectation of behaviour, and so
wasn't ignored, but simply wasn't significant.

But that definitely isn't the case in your scenario because their
hypothesises _are_ being ignored when determining their expectation.

You seem to be trying
to portray it as the former case,

No, I'm saying that whether or not their hypothesis would affect
their expectation if it weren't ignored it can't because it _is_
ignored.

though if it was all you'd have to
do is point out the difference in expected behaviour between the
hypothesis and the expected behaviour of the null hypothesis which
they ignored. If there is no difference, then there was no difference
to ignore.

But I don't have to be able to point to a specific difference to
point out that you haven't shown that there _can't_ be a difference.

Without a difference in expected
behaviour between the hypothesis and the null hypothesis, there could
never be a scientific experiment. How would you be suggesting that
they could know, if there was no scientific experiment to tell? If
there would be no way of telling, then there couldn't exist a
physicalist scenario in which they did know. Thus it would be the case
for all physicalist scenarios.
I don't accept any of the assumptions in the above.

It seems strange that a physicalist
should state that the restriction that the scenario should be a
physicalist one is 'fine tuning'.
That's because it's a straw man and doesn't reflect what I've
actually stated.

A point you seem to have been stuggling with.
I think you are attempting to draw too far ranging conclusions from
your rather restrictive scenario.
Assuming the univerality assumption to be true, the 'restriction'
applies to any scenario in which knowledge is restricted by what can
be assertained through science.
So you keep saying, how do you ascertain what can or can't be
ascertained through science?


Through looking at the method of science for distinguishing between
theories, which is an experiment which relies on a difference in
expected behaviour given the theories.

How do you ascertain that there can be no difference in expectation?

<snip>

Also wouldn't one have to neglect how it was working, what was
actually physically happening, and how the inputs were transformed
into outputs, if one was to consider an organic neuron and some silcon
based artificial one to be functionally equivalent, like with an AND
gate and the 'house type'?
Yes, I thought that you were referring to the internal working of
the brain, rather than the neuron (or equivalent).
Earlier with regards to function you said:
-------------------------
What is relevant is how it works, what it does, how it transforms the
inputs into outputs. (What the inputs and outputs mean is irrelevant,
what the box thinks they mean is a different matter but what meaning
the user attaches to the I/O is irrelevant)
-------------------------
Though now in considering a series of electronic gates to be
functionally equivalent to houses with house owners receiving and
going out posting letters, you seem to be ignoring how it works or
what is does, or how inputs are transformed into outputs,
I am ignoring how the gates/owners work because I thought you
were talking about how the brain made up of the gates/owners worked.
The behaviour of the brain, as judged by the (abstract) signals on
the outputs is independent of the internal working of the gates.

and instead
simply saying that at an abstract level the different outputs can be
considered to be symbolically equivalent. Such that the high voltage
coming out of an electronic gate is symbolically equivalent to someone
going out and posting a letter. Though since the physical activity is
very different, it seems like you are deciding what is significant
about the physical activity,
I have previously stated that the physical activity is irrelevant.

Seehttp://xkcd.com/505/for an amusing, but completely evidence free,
take on my viewpoint.


So when you said:
----------------
What is relevant is how it works, what it does, how it transforms the
inputs into outputs. (What the inputs and outputs mean is
irrelevant,...
----------------

You meant that the physical activity is irrelevant to how it works,
and what it does, and how it transforms the inputs into outputs.
Instead would I be correct in thinking that you are looking at things
in terms of whether the same logical diagrams are implemented for
example?

Yes, a calculator can calculate the square root of 2, and, in my mind,
a robot can feel like a robot, whether it's done with neurons, natural
or artificial, transistors or steam driven cogs.

<snip>

With the fairy light controller on a far away planet that happened to
be the same build as the inside of a certain calculator on Earth, why
would you be thinking certain processing to symbolise a certain sum
(which is what I might have mistakenly thought you meant by being a
calculation), rather than symbolising a which fairy light would go on
given the sound inputs.
Because you have decided that that is what the "brain" is being used for.
If the processing is the same in both cases then it makes no
difference to the brain which function you are using it for.
And it makes no difference to you which function the "brain"
thinks it is performing.
It is being used in differently in the two different contexts. When
you say "it makes no difference to the brain which function you are
using it for" are you admitting that it was used for two different
functions in the two contexts mentioned?.
I'm going to use "purpose" in this case, since you seem to be using
"function" inconsistently.

The box (or boxes) are used for two different purposes.

If you mean your example where the box responded in a relevant manner
to both visual input and spoken commands using identical circuits and
programming with no extra information about context then I don't accept
it as realistic but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief as long as your
point (which I still have no clue about) doesn't hinge on the box's
ability to perform disparate complex functions without any clue to the
context.


How could the 'purpose' be discerned from the inputs?

In the example above?

It couldn't.

Why would you think I would think it could?

And what difference would it make?

In the same way I am confused as to why you'd be saying with visual
processing for example, that regardless of what the signals were that
it should still be regarded as visual processing regardless of
context.
Would I say that?
It depends on the context. ;-)
If it was designed, or learned, as visual processing then I
think I would still consider it a "Visual Processing Unit"
even if you were using it for some other purpose.
If you had hooked up the input to a microphone instead
of a camera then to you and me, looking from the outside, it
would be auditory processing (done in the VPU) but to the "brain",
not knowing about the switch, it would still be visual.
If you recorded the signals from a camera looking at a tree,
converted them to sound and played them back to the "brain"
through the microphone then the "brain" should see a tree,
just like it would if you played the video signal directly
to the "brain" or left the camera hooked up to the "brain"
and aimed it at the tree. Or, if you _really_ insist, no
how ultra mega unlikely it would be, just happen to accidentally
make a sound that reproduces the video signal then the "brain"
would see the same tree.
I would say that this falls under the externally imposed labels
I mentioned previously as being irrelevant to the processing of
the "brain" and what, if anything, it felt about being itself.
You seem to be saying that you might impose the label "visual
processing" on the processing, but that would just be you imposing a
label on it.
If the exact same process can process pictures and spoken commands and
give meaningful results (however unlikely that may be), what difference
could it make what we call it?


I'm not suggesting that the label would make any difference to the
physical activity.

I'm not clear on what you mean by 'meaningful results'.

If I punch in "5+6=" on a calculator, or something that I think is a calculator, "11" would be a meaningful result, "37" wouldn't be.

I'm only
saying that 'purpose' as you chose to call it (what it is doing given
the context), might be to do with visual information or audio
infomation. I'm not suggesting that in physicalism it is suggested
that the rules of the universe are in anyway biased such that humans
should be able to find results 'meaningful'. Were you thinking that
there should in anyway be such a bias?
..
I don't know about should, humans are biased towards finding meaning,
if the universe were such that no meaning could be found then we wouldn't be here to wonder why we didn't see any meaning.

<snip>

Now consider that this robot brain were being used in another context.
In this context each 24 bits represents a sound. The first eight bits
(1-256), represented a certain instrument, the next 8 bits the pitch,
the next 8 the loudness. Here given the context what was happening was
the infomation regarding the instruments involved was being
extracted.
It would seem to me that whether this processing was regarded as
visual or audio, would depend on the context the robot 'brain' was
found in.
Yes?
I was just illustrating processing couldn't be said to be
intrinsically visual processing or audio processing, it would depend
on the context. Such that when looking at the function, the processing
cannot be said to be intrinsically to do with visual information,
since the inputs might not represent visual information.
And?

You do realize that in any _realistic_ scenario involving complex
processes like visual processing or language processing the processes
are _not_ going to be interchangeable without some major reprogramming
or training, or, for a general purpose system, being told the context?

(Unless, of course, you don't care about specific results. Like a
voice output being used to drive fairy lights where you don't care
about the specific pattern, you just want the lights to blink a lot.)


I wasn't considering that in physicalism, the universe would be
thought to be behaving in such a way as to care about specific
results.

The universe doesn't care about anything, it just is.
Why bring the universe into it? I was talking about you, or whoever
is using this boxed "brain" for whatever they are using it for.

All I am considering is that a specific set of inputs to a
system could come from a variety of contexts. The processing, you
state, would be the same irrespective of which context was providing
the said inputs. So in what way could processing determine the
context?

If the inputs were the same it couldn't, so what?
What difference would the context make in that case?
What _is_ your point?

>>> I have highlighted above in earlier parts of this post, why given
>>> the context, the _feeling_of_being_a_robot_ would be deniable, since
>>> accepting that it would be like something to be like the robot
>>> depends upon the assumption of functionalism, and not everyone is
>>> like you, and assumes it.
>> But denying the _feeling_of_being_a_robot_ on those grounds would
>> involve assuming some alternative to functionalism, why would that be
>> more acceptable?
> It wouldn't involve assuming some alternative to functionalism.
> Functionalism could be one member of what they consider to be be the
> set of possible explanations, but the set could have other members,
> such as versions of identity theory for example.
But if Functionalism was considered a possible explanation, wouldn't a
_feeling_of_being_a_robot_ have to be considered a possibility?
If functionalism was "one member of what they consider to be be the
set of possible explanations" then obviously the possibility of it
being like something to be the robot would be considered, but not
assumed, therefore also the possibility of it not being like something
to be the robot would be considered.
OK, by "deny" I thought you meant that it was being ruled out.
No, it could be considered a possibility. Though there would be no
expected difference in behaviour, whether it was correct or not.
Sez you!


Well you have been given ample opportunity, time and time again, to
state what the expected difference in behaviour between the hypothesis
and null hypothesis would be. You repeatedly keep failing to do so,
while avoiding coming to terms with the fact.

I have answered that several times, you never accept my answer.

Me not knowing a specific difference for a hypothetical robot doesn't
prove that there would be no difference.

<snip>


Yes, but you weren't addressing the question of motivation, why the
robot would be expected to lie about having a _feeling_of_being_.
Well I wasn't addressing that because I have no idea of what you would
be suggesting in the terms that I put forward ideas of language
processing and memory.
What's stopping you from addressing motivations, feelings, thoughts etc
in their own terms?
These terms seem to necessitate that it would be like something to be
the processing in question.
Only the feelings, surely?
If the robot is going to pass the Turing test then it must
certainly be sentient.


It depends on your definition of sentient.

Sorry, I got the wrong word, intelligent might be what I mean.
It would have to understand things like what a robot is etc.

I assume from your response when you said 'thoughts' you meant were
using the term as applying to subconscious thoughts for example. Such
that you presumably see a difference in processing between thoughts it
would be like something to have and thoughts it wouldn't.

Though regarding my answer, it was in response to your suggesting that
the processing could be examined to determine whether it was like
something to be it, though as I pointed out, there is no processing
that would logically necessitate it being like something to be it.

I disagree, I tend to think that processing what it felt like to
be oneself would necessarily involve feeling like oneself.

Though there is no processing that would
logically necessitate that.
> ------------------------
> Well certain parts of the build could be maintaining a state which
> given the context can be said to represent information about the
> context at an earlier time, and can therefore be considered to be
> functioning as memory.
> Likewise certain parts of the build could be shown to disassemble
> information from inputs that given the context can be said to
> represent language, and certain parts could also be shown to assemble
> information into outputs that given the context can be said to
> represent language.
> ------------------------
> Such that it would be clear what type for processing I would be saying
> was missing if I claimed a robot didn't have memory, or wasn't able to
> process language.
> What I was asking you to do, is put forward at a similar level of
> explanation as I have done for memory and language processing, an idea
> of the type of activity of _feeling_like_a_robot_ that you are
> suggesting one of these robots would have but the other wouldn't.
It may sound flippant, but in all seriousness, the activity _is_
_feeling_like_a_robot_.
That isn't a similar level of explanation to the ideas of language
processing, and memory that I put forward.
Or, for a similar level of explanation:
It may well be that, when more is known, certain parts of the build
could be shown to disassemble information from the state of the network
that could be said to represent being the robot and assembling
information into a state that could be shown to represent what it was
like to be the robot.
<snip>
Neither is that, you are just again illustrating that unlike concepts
like language processing and memory, you have no idea of what type of
difference in processing you would even be talking with regards to the
two robots.
I don't really have much better concept, at this level, of the
processing involved in language processing or memory, I know,
intuitively what they (and a feeling of being) are like at the level
of thought processes but that doesn't tell me anything about how
they work.
Again you show you haven't yet understood that there could be no
difference in expected behaviour between the hypothesis that it was
like something to be the robot, and the null hypothesis that it
wasn't, if the universality assumption was correct. Since this is a
persistant and quite fundamental problem, I suggest we concentrate on
this.
Could we keep the example simple?
Just the boxed "brain", 16 buttons and 80 LEDs, which might be a
calculator or might be a (simple) fairy light controller?
The voice control and visual inputs may be useful for the context
discussion but they just confused things in the discussion we had
about simulations and expectations.
So, I had said that, like in your scenario, we've got this "brain"
whose behaviour we can predict without taking into consideration a
certain property or function which might or might not be an
important determinant of behaviour. (BeingLikeSomething in the robot
and calculating in the FLC/calculator)
And using the logic in your scenario we can conclude that calculating
can't be expected to have any effect on the behaviour of the
FLC/calculator which, should it turn out to be a calculator is
obviously incorrect, which shows a problem with the logic in your scenario.
You had then responded that my analogy wasn't relevant because I didn't
have the different factions with their different hypothesises and theories.
Which I hadn't gotten around to answering.
I wouldn't have said that. So either you misunderstood or are lying.
Could you provide a quote, and link to it?
I may have phrased that badly, what you said was:

"The issue with whether it is like something to be the robot or not, is
how you could tell what physical activity was associated with it being
like something to be a human. If 'it-being-like-something-to-be' is
specifically an identity of the certain parts of our biological
brains, such that they are one and the same, then it could be
considered that the robot, since it hasn't got a biological brain,
won't have that identity (as theory A in the article suggests). If on
the other hand the identity isn't specifically linked to the physical
composition, but reality was such that anything performing the same
function of the brain would also be identified as being like something
to be it, then it might be considered that it is like something to be
the robot (as theory B in the article suggests). So the question of
whether it is like something to be the robot entails more than simply
the function the robot brain is performing, it is also a question
about the way reality is (was theory A or theory B correct for
example). It is this additional meaning that your analogy seems to
lack which seems to indicate that your analogy isn't analogous. "

From:http://groups.google.se/group/talk.origins/msg/0addc5c0b2a6aaea?hl=sv&;


It wouldn't be a case of how you phrased it, but of you not
understanding the response. There is a difference posited about
reality whether it is like something to be the robot or not.

How is that different from whether my box is or isn't a calculator?

And then we got sidetracked trying to determine what calculations were.
Are we clear on that point now? I'll use "calculating" to try to make it
clear that I'm talking about the process.
So it is a label for a specific process irrespective of context?
Not a specific process, a kind of process perhaps.
And I don't know why you'd call it a label, I think calculating is
calculating whatever you call it.


I'm not clear on what you mean by calculating. If there was a logic
diagram, would you be considering the outputs to be calculated from
the inputs, and thus it be a calculation.

No, I'm talking about mathematical calculations, 2+2=4 for instance,
or the square root of 28561 equals 169.

If so then fine, all
processing that can be displayed in logic diagrams would seem to be
calculating.

I have no idea where you got that misconception from, especially
since I brought up calculations in connection with a calculator,
you do know what a calculator does, don't you?

If you mean that when the user of the calculator pressed the buttons
'1' '+' '1' '=' that the processing performed the calculation of what
1+1 equalled, then I would say that this calculation is only happening
in certain contexts, where the inputs sybolised a '1', a '+' sign,
another '1' and an '=' sign. The processing could take place in
another context, where the inputs didn't symoblise that. The issue
here is that you'd be taking the inputs to have a certain symbolism
when answering the question of what was being calculated.

No, if you sanded the symbols of the keys and pushed the keys that used to say "2","8","5","6","1","Sqr" the calculator would calculate the
square root of 28561. And it would do so even if the LEDs had been
randomly rearranged so nobody could tell what it was doing

This kind of issue was touched on earlier, and you could consider
whether an AND gate was calculating the result of filter out
everything from the .nput signal apart from the red intensity values,
or whether it was calculating which instruments were involved in the
sound production.

And what difference does that make?

So, on to the present:
I don't see your point about the analogy, the whole point of an analogy
is to simplify and get to the nub of the argument, which to me appears
to be the question of expected behaviour and whether a hypothesis not
affecting the expectation means that the thing that is hypothesized
can't have any effect on the behaviour or not.
The point I am making is that it isn't expected to make a difference.
Not by you.


By anyone that makes the universality assumption.

If by "it" you mean the feeling of being like a robot then no,
they also have to assume that the feeling of being like a robot
is epiphenomenal.

How many different hypothesises and theories there are doesn't
matter as long as they aren't used in determining the predictions.
Nor does it matter, even if the hypothesises and theories _were_
relevant, whether they have been formally proposed or if anybody
believes in them or not.
they aren't used in the predictions, because what they are
hypothesising isn't considered to be significant to the prediction,
which is the poitn.
But that's just because they already have a "better" way of predicting
the behaviour! As long as all they are interested in is generating a
prediction, if they were interested in understanding why it behaves that
way rather than some other way, whether or not it is like something to
be the robot or whether what, if anything, it is like to be the robot
affects its behaviour then they need to start looking at theories of
behaviour and of what and why and how it is like something to be something.


So you accept that both the hypothesis that it was like something to
be the robot, and the null hypothsis that it wasn't, both expect the
behaviour to be that as predicted by the 'better' way of predicting?

Hypothesises don't expect things, the people that have the hypothesises
expect things.

If so then presumably you accept that if it behaves as predicted by
the 'better' way of predicting, it is behaving as it would be expected
to behave if it was assumed it wasn't like anything to be it.

I accept nothing of the sort in the general case.

In your scenario the assumptions play no part in generating the prediction so they have no effect on the expectation.
Whether or not a feeling of being like a robot is affecting the
robot's behaviour, real and expected, the assumptions have no effect
whatsoever on the expectation in your scenario.

But to bring my analogy up to your standards all that needs to be
done is to add two factions with different hypothesises and theories.
So A say that the box is calculating and B say it can't be because
all calculators are manufactured by Texas Instruments and this box
says Nokia on it. (And since this is a hypothetical scenario they
may be right.)
Were you not using 'calculating' as the label for a specific process,
irrespective of context?
Not a specific process, a kind of process perhaps.

I really can't believe we are having trouble with the meaning of the
work "calculating", surely you know what calculating means?
Figuring out the result of a mathematical formula.


I've made comments about this above.

In other words just a label for a certain
behaviour, which can be checked to be either happening or not.
But you and a calculator would certainly calculate 49/7 in different
ways, you and I could well have learned different methods for division.

And if by behaviour you mean the result, it would be possible to make
a simple "calculator", say with only 5 digits and four functions, that
did no calculating but rather used lookup tables with pre calculated
results for every possible formula that it could be required to
"calculate", how would its behaviour differ from a real calculator?


By behaviour I meant the physical activity.

Whereas
in the example of the robot, the behaviour isn't being disputed, it is
simply whether it is like something to be the behaviour or not.
But we only have your word that there isn't and never will be any way of
checking that out.


No it isn't just my word. It is understanding that if there is no
expected difference in behaviour between two theories there could be
no scientific experiment to distinguish between them.

But we only have your word that this is the case for a physicalistic
feeling of being like something.

I would have thought that was obvious.

Oh it is!

But your premise isn't, therefore neither is your conclusion.

Supposing you had two versions of String
Theory for example, which predicted exactly the same result, but
posited a different number of dimensions. How could you scientifically
distinguish between them?

If they really gave identical results in all cases then one couldn't,
one would just use whichever one gave the simplest calculations, which
one that was could well vary from case to case.

<snip>

It isn't a deception, since if you had faith that you were a spiritual
being, you'd realise that what you are experiencing must be a
spiritual experience. The situation of being a spiritual being being
given a spiritual experience is reality. The experience you are
calling the 'world' is part of that reality. Thus the experience that
I label 'world' is real.
That seems to be making the word "real" nearly useless, experiencing
dreams is part of my reality, whether a physical or spiritual reality,
but I don't call the dreams real.
Surely you'd still consider the dreams real, in that you really
exprienced them.
Dreaming is a real state of mind, the people, places and events
in the dreams aren't real.


Are you defining 'real' as meaning that there is no corresponding
physical entity, as physicalism would suggest?

Surely you mean "that there is a corresponding physical entity"?

Not necessarily physical, though I of course would assume it would be,
if your world view is correct then spiritual entities would be real
(and as far as I can tell, the physical wouldn't be real since it was merely a "presentation", no matter how important it may be as a
teaching aid and/or test.)

Though what you experienced while dreaming is
distinguishable from 'awake' experiences. Likewise you might also
classify certain experiences as halucinations. So you could still use
the word for purposes of such distinctions, though you wouldn't make
the ontological assumptions that you seem to.

What assumptions would those be?
And why wouldn't I want to make them?


The assumption that there was a corresponding 'formal' physical entity
to the ones you experienced. It wasn't an issue of whether you would
want to make them, it is that they aren't made in the ontology you are
investigating.

Which ontology am I supposed to be investigating? Dreaming, hallucinating?

Are you saying that I should consider the things I dream about to be
real, just a different kind of "real" than the physical reality?

Or what?

> Though perhaps you are asking how would I expect to feel if it
> physicalism were true, if so then the answer is that I wouldn't have
> expected to consciously experience anything at all.
So, suspending your disbelief one more step:
If physicalism were true _and_explained_feelings_of_being_, would or
wouldn't you expect an unknown context to affect how you felt?
So considering physicalism to be true for the sake of investigation, I
wouldn't expect the context to affect how I felt. Though if the
context wasn't significant,
And how could it be, without affecting the inputs to your brain or soul?
There aren't souls in physicalism.
I thought the question had a wider application and so I added the
souls.

then there would be the question of
whether there was a corresponding 'formal' physical chair
corresponding to the one that I am experiencing sitting on.
Yes, one could ask that, I think that's called Solipsism, but I don't
think it's a useful approach.
Nothing can be known with certainty, except "I think, therefore I am"
(in some form or other), one must start ones search for knowledge with
some assumption or another.
No solipsism is the conception that everything is the product of your
mind.
A fair number of dictionaries seem to have something like "The theory
that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified" as an
alternative definition, sometimes even as the first definition.


Well from the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:

"The belief that only oneself and one's experience exists...."


You seem to have taken your quote from the The American Heritage
Dictionary which also says:

"The theory or view that the self is the only reality"


Though from the way you have chosen to use the word, you are by your
own admission a solipsist.

That's not how I choose to use the word, that's just what I came across
when googeling when you said I was using it wrong, the way I was using it was somewhere in between, something like thinking that there is no
point in assuming that anything other than oneself exists because one
can never know if they do.

Since even
if I was to assume a model of the universe as put forward by physics,
and that I had a brain with neurons, there could be a billion
different contexts in which my neural processing could be taking place
(brain in a vat, with inputs from sources unknown, and outputs to
destinations unknown, being an example). I would seem like a massive
coincidence if it just so happened that the context I experienced
being in actually corresponded to the one I was actually in.
Yes, unless one made the assumption that there was a real world and
that the inputs to ones brain/soul contained information that could
help one understand reality.
You are in exactly the same situation, you have to assume that whatever
you feel that your soul is telling you about your spiritual reality
are actually corresponds to an actual spiritual reality.
You could be a "soul in a jar", or a brain in a jar and everything
spiritual is just false inputs.
As I say, best not think too much about Solipsism.
I wasn't talking about solipsism, as I have already mentioned you are
misusing the word.
It sounds like the weaker version to me, though I would be willing to
use a different word if you have any suggestion.


I'd rather you didn't try to put a label on it.

How can we talk about it then?

It isn't the same with the conception that you are a spiritual being
having a spiritual experience, since the issue is answered by the
neural state being intended to represent a certain context. So that
the representation is indeed special.
But you can't know that the spiritual experience is real either.


The issue is that it explains the correlation in your experience
between the neural state and what it is like to be you.

I think that the physical processing in the brain explains that.

And there could be a billion different contexts in which your
spiritual experience could be taking place. including purely physical ones where your spiritual experience was simulated by a computer or something.
It would seem like a massive coincidence if it just so happened that the spiritual context you experience being in actually corresponded to the one you were actually in.

With the physicalist conception, I wasn't clear on your assumption, in
what way are you suggesting the inputs indicate what they symbolise of
the context? Or have I misunderstood, and you weren't suggesting that
there wasn't any indication in the inputs which out of the billions of
contexts the processing could have been found in 'the real world' they
symbolised.
For a brain or soul in a jar or as an artificial intelligence
experiment there would be no indication, unless the experimenters
make some mistake.

For a real physical world where our senses could have had no
relationship to outside events, neural systems would be of little
use and would probably never have developed naturally, certainly
brains would never have evolved.

But, unless you are right about a physical feeling like something
having no effect on behaviour, which I see no reason to assume, I
see no reason why the neural system, including the brain, couldn't
have evolved to make sense of the world around us.
Someone who mistakes a tiger for a chair is unlikely to live long
enough to have children.)


Well if anyone claimed an expected difference in behaviour whether it
was like something to be a robot or not, you could just ask them what
difference they are claiming they would be expecting. Just to
establish whether they knew of any difference that they would be
expecting.

Since we don't yet have access to such a robot or have any idea how
it behaves it seems a bit premature to start asking what the difference
would be whether it felt like it was a robot or not.

Certainly processing could evolve to distinguish react differently to
different inputs. Though you admit that the processing would be the
same regardless of the context in which it received its inputs.

So?

What difference would it make?

Why would we, the robot, the calculator or what ever be expected to
or need to know this context you keep going on about?

Could you please get to the point?

Since the
universe could have been such that I could have had the experience of
any of the set of sources or set of outputs from any brain in the vat
conception. What would make the sitting on a chair scenario special,
such that I should experience that one rather than any of the other of
billions of possible ones. It would seem to require more than a
billion to one coincidence.
Why a coincidence?
If the world is as it seems (to our physical senses) then there has
most likely been millions of years of evolution and tens of years of
personal development fine tuning our internal representations of the
world to bring them in line with reality. (And to make sure that,
where they are wrong, they are at least useful.)
And if you are a brain in a jar then that is the scenario that the
experimenters want you to experience.
Are you now claiming it makes a difference how the processing was
arrived at,
I'm not sure I understand the question.

because that would surely be part of the historical
context of the processing in question, and you have stated that the
context the processing was taking place in would make no difference to
what it was like to be the processing.
Historical context, if that means anything close to what it sounds like,
would be irrelevant except to the extent it had left traces in the
brain, memories or effects on the "wiring" of the brain, do you have any
reason to think that this historical context of yours (whatever it is)
wouldn't have left traces in the brain?


Well, as I said, you have stated that the context the processing was
taking place in would make no difference to what it was like to be the
processing. I am just asking whether you are suggesting that whether
the processing had been had designed by genetic programming as to how
'fit' it was for a particular context, or whether it had been
developed straight from scratch for a different context would do. Such
that there could be two physically identical processing units,
processing the same signals, but in different contexts, but because
historically one came about by a different means than the other, that
it would make no difference to what it was like to be the processing.
Or does how historically the processing arrived at also make no
difference to what it was like to be the processing?

Nothing other than the build, brain state and inputs is going to make any difference whatsoever. How could it?

If I were poofed into existence in mid sentence, complete with false memories of wasting several hours answering the same questions over and
over I would feel just as exasperated as I do having, I presume, actually done so.

If context didn't make any
difference then it would require a coincidence, that what it was like
to be the processing, just happened to reflect the context it was
found in, rather than reflecting any of the other billions of contexts
such processing could have been found in.

So, what difference does it make?

I said that context has no effect IF IT DOESN'T AFFECT THE INPUTS TO THE
BRAIN, we have senses that feed information about the outside world to
our neural system and allow us to make inferences about the physical
context we are in, if our senses evolved gradually over billions of
years there would have been ample time for these inferences to have been
fine tuned to adequately reflect the physical world. Assuming that our
senses reflect a real persistent and consistent physical world, and if
one has to assume something, that seems as good as anything.


Yes, I am assuming the same inputs in the different contexts. This has
been said before, if I was changing this, I would explicitly mention
it. I didn't feel the need to repeat it over and over again.

And I have said over and over that a hidden context, like us being brains in jars, has no effect whatsoever on the processing or feeling of being like something.

<snip>

Eric

.

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