Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 9, 2015 - 06:29pm PT
|
"Pathologies" - what an odd concept for panpsychic; would that be like some sort of antenna misalignment? And would these 'pathologies' be as universal as consciousness?
-
Of course these are not honest questions from Healyje because he already has the "right" answer in his brainpan.
Where you confuse your own self here, amigo, is in charicterizing "pansychchism" as of the variety by which consciousness is some kind of inherent "signal" snagged by the "antenna" of your brain, perhaps like gravity is seized by a rockslide. Except it ain't, in both cases.
Objective functioning is a thing. Or a process that we can objectify. In what manner do you believe that sentience is also a thing? If it's a task, or a signal, get yourself started on writing the code for it. Just the first few bits of the first algorithm will do for now. Again, that's an alogrithm NOT for objecttive functiong, but for sentience. We gots to test that antenna, so we gots to work up that "inherent" signal.
Healjy, I'm afraid we're just going to have to revoke that medicinal dope voucher you've been using. It's making you thorny.
JL
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
because he already has the "right" answer in his brainpan.
You should know.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 9, 2015 - 07:20pm PT
|
And it's so easy to stir said pot. All I have to do is assume the smug tone and dismissive airs of the "knowing" camp and viola - people jump up on their hind legs. And how quickly the issues get entirely lost in the fray.
Again, for those clinging to the notion that all reality is comprised of things, of irreducible material stuff, get cracking on writing that code for sentience. Of course first we have to objectify what sentience is. Perhaps start there (no fudging with "it's what the brain does," and all that Tommy Rot). Then work up the code later.
Fair enough?
JL
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
Sentience is a volumetric perception system for mobile robots, written in C#. It uses webcam-based stereoscopic vision to generate depth maps, and from these create colour 3D voxel models of the environment for obstacle avoidance, navigation and object recognition purposes.
https://code.google.com/p/sentience/
But sure, by all means let's first come up with a working definition of "sentience." That'll be good for at least a couple pages of interminable droning.
Then we can talk about "free will" some more.
It'll be fun.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
Good luck people! Ed was right. It's not worth it
With Ed gone our resident quantum scholar's ensemble diminishes precipitously.
Dr jstan could come to our rescue!
Many of the rest of us babble about that of which we know little.
;>(
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
Of course these are not honest questions from Healyje..
Where you confuse your own self here, amigo, is in characterizing "pansychchism" as of the variety by which consciousness is some kind of inherent "signal" snagged by the "antenna" of your brain, perhaps like gravity is seized by a rockslide. Except it ain't, in both cases..
Au contraire - facetious, yes, but you obviously have a notion of 'pathologies'. What exactly are you talking about? And more specifically, how can a no thing such as consciousness or sentience be subject to a pathology? I should think it pretty hard to acknowledge the existence of an impairment to consciousness / sentience unless you first functionally objectify them as a thing subject to said pathologies.
You appear to have an expression problem with the very notion of any such pathologies of mind, particularly if any of said pathologies can be shown to have a genetic component. So, antennas aside, just how can consciousness / sentience possibly be subject to a 'pathology' without objectification or some form of manifest expression of 'thingness'? How can a soul malfunction as it were (bone to Werner))?
Also kind of begs the question of where exactly on the broad taxonomy of panpsychists do you sit...?
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 07:44am PT
|
You do the same likewise DMT if that is your argument ^^^^
How can a soul malfunction as it were?
What do mean by "malfunction"?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 07:58am PT
|
Fire with fire, Werner, or smoke with smoke. Better than an eye for an eye.
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 09:13am PT
|
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 09:14am PT
|
How can a soul malfunction as it were?
What do mean by "malfunction"?
Largo is saying consciousness / sentience are subject 'pathologies' on one hand and yet are - like a soul - a no thing and not subject to objectification or thingness. Are souls subject to impairments and the ravages of the body?
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 10, 2015 - 10:12am PT
|
But sure, by all means let's first come up with a working definition of "sentience." That'll be good for at least a couple pages of interminable droning.
What does this tell us? In the right hands we can talk about most any damn thing with fantastic economy and accuracy, right? Why do you suppose, if YOU were doing the talking - or someone you trusted with the material - that any discussion per sentience will perforce be nothing but "interminable droning." And what does this say to the AI folks who insist that a sentient "machine" will be along sooner than later. If writing code depends on knowing WHAT you are writing about, and the best we can do right now is "interminable droning," it's sounding like the AI dream is so much bong water.
And Healje, sit with the material for while before you just sound off. You're still thinking of all this material in terms of things with absolute, stand-alone qualities. But reality does not oblige. Not with sentience, consciousness, matter, energy, no-thing, etc.
Do you need examples to get clear on this?
JL
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 10:44am PT
|
You're still thinking of all this material in terms of things with absolute, stand-alone qualities.
Not really. So now you're saying it's not no thing or a some thing, but rather a non-absolute dual thing. That's all quite fuzzy thinking for a guy who has been pushing an absolute no thing..
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 10:49am PT
|
Whaddya want for no-thing? A rubber biscuit?
The point being that the jury is out until the AI camp either irrefutably succeeds or fails. Until then we're stuck in the limbo of post-Lewesian interpretationism. YMMV has never been more appropriate.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 12:32pm PT
|
At the moment the 'AI camp' isn't trying to reproduce sentience or consciousness - it's focused on machine learning and understanding how the brain functions.
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 03:34pm PT
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Apr 10, 2015 - 12:32pm PT
At the moment the 'AI camp' isn't trying to reproduce sentience or consciousness - it's focused on machine learning and understanding how the brain functions.
True, but it is the implied end game.....and sometimes it's more interesting to just let strawmen collapse under their own weight.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 03:55pm PT
|
True, but it is the implied end game....
I'd say only for a very small fringe element at this point. We're kind of in a period when we finally have the juice to use machine learning for all kinds of things and there's serious money in most of those applications. By and large, everyone except a few academics have abandoned ship on the whole artificial consciousness / sentience thing as a waste of time compared to all the immediate potential for various applications of machine learning.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 10, 2015 - 04:06pm PT
|
True, but it is the implied end game.....and sometimes it's more interesting to just let strawmen collapse under their own weight.
--
What's interesting is to make or encourage people making Frankenstein claims to actually put up - or shut up. Or perhaps at least take heed of a few guys and girls over at Caltech who said: If sentience is an emergent function of the brain, and if all brain functions are strictly mechanical, as materialism suggests, then we can, at lest as a thought experiment, move toward the end-game of machine sentience and start writing a bit of code to get the ball rolling.
First task - define what is is per what they would someday start writing code ABOUT. That is, in strict, practical terms - what the hell IS sentience? What, exactly, is mechanically "produiced" by the brain, this THING we are calling sentience? If everythign is material, and has a mechanical explanation, then we can surly define sentience juast as technically as we do with sound or a rainbow or a (fill in the blank).
At that point the folks looked into the vast trove of amazing new discoveries people were making in neuroscience and discovered that there was no comprehensive take on sentience whatsoever, that no definition existed at all. Nothing. And certainly nothing in any comprehensive technical terms. Nothing even approaching Ed's definition of a few days ago per subjectivity. Virtually all of the research was being carried out on objective functioning. A few people were speculating that if certain processing functions could be brought on line, sentience would somehow "emerge," perhaps like a jack-in-the-box, jumping off the machine in a kind of "It's alive" moment that would rattle throgh eternity like a primal machine screme.
But verily, that didn't help the folk who were looking at writing some code, and it did nothing and added nothing in helping fashion a definition of what sentience actually is. They noted the slippery and non-definitive postition of defining sometnig (sentience) by way of something else.
One of their conclusion was that most researchers were conflating stimulaus response systems with sentience, or were hoping that tasking and learning (i.e., deep learning) systems were the very stuff of sentience. This, they concluded, was as wonky as believing sentience was some kind of independent agency camped out in the etheres or some such wu.
The final conclusion was that most AI folks believed that sentience was graspable as a thing, as a function, as a task or agancy. But when asked to define what that thing/function/task/agency was (NOT how it worked, but simply WHAT is was that DID work, the whatever-it-is we CALL sentience) in graspable terms, in terms someone could start working up into tangible code, everyone was totally clueless, and could only default back to other objective functions that decidedly were NOT sentience.
This is the White Elephant in the room. If you insist that it is a big ass strawman, that implies that you can define what sentience IS (NOT how it works, which many believe is still some years off). Or that somebody can. Kindly do so, or refer us to those that have done so.
JL
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 04:36pm PT
|
Okay, well, for starters, how is it that objective functioning and sentience are necessarily mutually exclusive? Robotics programs that code for object recognition are very basic, but they're functionally no different from the rudimentary neurological foundations of the most primitive organisms, let's say trilobite-eye level for example. So, take those programs and subject them to 600 million years of natural selection to bring them up to the level of complexity of a mammalian nervous system, and voila, through billions of feedback mechanisms and perceptual refinements "mind" emerges, like the ephemeral head at the top of a pint glass.
So then, on the other hand, what precisely is the opposing theory, based on the experiential meditative practice of said mammalian brain? Or were trilobites capable of achieving satori too?
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 04:43pm PT
|
Again, Largo, you should really not stray into the whole computer thing.
Also, CalTech's computing crew couldn't have moved any further from AI if they tried. In fact, a google site search of the department's website returns zero hits for both 'consciousness' and 'sentience'. At this point no one is really interested beyond a few fringe academics and of course some more technically-inclined philosophers.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 10, 2015 - 05:14pm PT
|
A1 is gross materialism and has no soul.
Sentience is the symptom of the souls presences with the material body.
The soul is the real living entity that operates its gross physical and subtle material body.
The gross physical and subtle material body is the covering of the spiritual soul.
According the souls consciousness it is awarded its proper body.
The foolish material scientist will never produce an A1 without the spiritual soul.
The foolish material scientist already produce an A1 in the form of human beings.
The material scientist is so foolish and has lost all real logic and reason due to their fixation only on the material plane.
The foolish material scientist are so lost in their mental speculation and arrogance in their western scientism.
Nothing but a pack of fools spending their time guessing, theorizing and remaining fixated in their defective knowledge of gross materialism .....
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!