 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Origin >
Virtual Realities >
GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0553.html
Printable Version |
|
| |
|
GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
Why, exactly, do the rebels have to enter the Matrix via the phone system (which after all doesn't physically exist)? And what really happens when Neo takes the red pill (which also doesn't really exist)? And how does the Matrix know what fried chicken tastes like? Technologist and philosopher Peter Lloyd answers these questions and more.
To be published in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy
and Religion in The Matrix (Ben
Bella Books, April 2003). Published on KurzweilAI.net March
3, 2003.
As the essays throughout this book demonstrate, the Wachowski Brothers
designed The Matrix to work at many levels. They carefully
thought through the film's philosophical underpinnings, religious
symbolism, and scientific speculations. But there are a few riddles
in The Matrix, aspects of the film that seem nonsensical
or defy the laws of science. These apparent glitches include:
• The Bioport—how can a socket in your head control your senses?
How can it be inserted without killing you?
• The Red Pill—since the pill is virtual, how can it throw Neo
out of the Matrix?
• The Power Plant—can people really be an energy source?
• Entering and Exiting the Matrix—why do the rebels need telephones
to come and go?
• The Bugbot—what's the purpose of the bugbot?
• Perceptions in the Matrix—how do the machines know what fried
chicken tastes like?
• Neo's Mastery of the Avatar—how can Neo fly?
• Consciousness and the Matrix—are the machines in the Matrix alive
and conscious? Or are they only machines, intelligent but mindless?
This essay addresses these questions and shows how these seeming
glitches can be resolved.
THE BIOPORT
Can the machines really create a virtual world through a bioport?
And how does it work? The bioport is a way of giving the Matrix
computers full access to the information channels of the brain.
It is located at the back of the neck—probably between the occipital
bone at the base of the skull, and the first neck vertebra. Wiring
would best enter through the soft cartilage that cushions the skull
on the spinal column, and pass up through the natural opening that
lets the spinal cord into the skull. This avoids drilling through
bone, and maintains the mechanical and biological integrity of the
skull's protection. A baby fitted with a bioport can easily survive
the operation.
The bioport terminates in a forest of electrodes spanning the volume
of the brain. In a newborn, the sheathed mass of wire filaments
is pushed into the head through the bioport. On reaching the skull
cavity, the sheath would be released, and the filaments spread out
like a dandelion, gently permeating the developing cortex. Nested
sheaths would release a branching structure of filamentary electrodes.
As each sheathed wire approaches the surface of the brain, it releases
thousands of smaller electrodes. In the neonate, brain cells have
few synaptic connections, so the slender electrodes can penetrate
harmlessly.
With its electrodes distributed throughout the brain, the Matrix
could deliver its sensory signals in either of two places: at the
sensory portals or deep inside the brain's labyrinth. For example,
vision could be driven by electrodes on the optic nerves where they
enter the brain. Artificial signals would then pass into the visual
cortex at the back of the brain, which would handle them as if they
had come from the eyes. Correspondingly, outgoing motor nerves would
also have electrodes at the boundary of brain and skull. This simple
design mirrors the natural state of the brain most closely. It is
not, however, the only possibility. Electrodes could alternatively
be attached in the depths of the brain, beyond the first stages
of the visual cortex. This would greatly simplify the data processing.
In normal perception, most of the incoming information isn't processed;
information you aren't paying attention to is filtered out. If the
Matrix were to deliver information directly to the output axons
from the sensory cortex—as opposed to the input to the cortex—then
it would save itself the job of filling in all those details.
One scene tells us which method the Matrix uses. When Neo wakes
and finds himself in a vat, he pulls out the oxygen and food tubes,
drags himself out of the gelatinous fluid, and—perceives the world.
The fact that he can see and hear proves that the visual and auditory
cortices of his brain are working. This wouldn't be possible if
the Matrix had put its sensory data into the deeper centers of his
brain. For then his sensory cortex would have been bypassed: it
would never have received any stimulation, and would have wasted
away. In that case, Neo would wake from his vat and find himself
blind and deaf, with no sense of smell or taste, no feeling of touch
or heat in his skin, no awareness of whether he was vertical or
horizontal, or where his arms or legs were. The Matrix must have
input its visual data just where the optic nerve from the eyeball
passes into the skull, rather than in the midst of the brain's vision
processing. Likewise, Neo's ability to walk and use his arms shows
that the motor cortex is also developed and functioning. Indeed,
even the cerebellum, which controls balance, must be working. So,
the Matrix must be capturing its motor signals from the brain's
efferent nerves after they have finished with the last stage of
cortical processing, but before the nerves pass out of the skull.
The rebels use the bioport to load new skills into their colleagues'
brains—writing directly into permanent memory. The Matrix itself
never implants skills in this way; folks in the virtual world learn
things in the usual manner by reading books and going to college.
So, why did the architects of the Matrix build into the bioport
this capability to download skills? It is actually a byproduct of
how the bioport is installed. They could have attached electrodes
to just the sensory and motor nerve fibers. That, though, is difficult:
the installer must predict where each nerve fiber will be anchored,
which is hard to do reliably, given the plasticity of the neonate
brain; and it must navigate through the brain tissue to find these
sites. A more robust and adaptable method is to lay a carpet of
electrodes throughout the whole brain, and let the software locate
the sensory and motor channels by monitoring the data flows on the
lines.
That spare capacity remains available for others to exploit, and
the rebels use it to download kung-fu expertise into Neo's brain
and to implant helicopter piloting skills into Trinity's. If the
Matrix ever learned this technique, it could create havoc for the
rebels, implanting impulses to serve its own ends.
THE RED PILL
Morpheus offers Neo the choice of his lifetime, in the form of
the famous red and blue pills. But what can a virtual pill do to
a real brain? We have seen that the Matrix interacts with the brain
only in the sensory and motor nerve fibers. It does not affect the
inner workings of the brain, where a real psychoactive chemical
would have to act. Minor analgesics such as aspirin would work by
having their effect outside the brain centers, canceling out pain
inputs from the avatar software.
The blue pill is probably a placebo. Morpheus says only, "You take
the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe
whatever you want to believe." We never know what, if anything,
the blue one would do.
So, how does the active pill, the red one, work? Since virtual
aspirin can work as a painkiller, the avatar's software module must
be able to accept instructions to cancel out any given sensory input.
Evidently, the red pill gives the avatar a blanket command to cancel
all such input. It thereby obliterates Neo's perception of the virtual
world, which the Matrix has been feeding to him throughout his life.
Instead of sitting on a chair in a hotel room, Neo sees and feels
for the first time that he is immersed in a fluid. The perception
of this filters through into his perceptions of the Matrix's own
imagery. Neo touches a mirror, and finds it a viscous fluid that
clings to his finger and then seeps along his arm, covering his
chest and slithering down his throat. A blend of bodily perceptions
and mental imagery is typical of what happens when you wake from
a dream; external perceptions are distorted to fit the contents
of the dream. Your dream of falling off a cliff might fade into
falling out of bed. In the film, the liquefied mirror is seen only
by Neo, not the others in the room. His real bodily sensations are,
for the first time, sweeping into his brain, which struggles to
integrate them into the stable narrative he has lived in up to that
moment.
Another route out of the Matrix, besides the red pill, would be
meditation. The Buddhist practice of vipassa1
gives adepts penetrating insights into their own mental processes.
It rolls back the barrier between conscious awareness and the subconscious.
An adept of vipassana, living in the Matrix, would discover
the interface between the Matrix's electrodes and the brain's wetware.
The expert practitioner could override the Matrix's stream of imagery,
and see reality. Morpheus mentions that someone did break free from
the Matrix. Perhaps meditation was the key. To attain that expertise,
however, would take years of effort. Leading other people to the
truth would require a school of meditation to train new recruits
for years, to pursue what one individual claimed was the truth,
but everyone else dismissed as fantasy. No doubt this is what the
Oracle is gently encouraging. But it is not surprising that the
red pill was invented as a fast-track route.
Morpheus's team monitors Neo's progress. As he realizes that he
is immersed in fluid, Neo panics, and his instinct to escape drowning
compels him to drag the tubes out of his mouth. Like waking out
of a dream, Neo finds the sensible world rushing in on him, and
it is remarkable that his manual coordination has been so well preserved
by the Matrix system. He grabs the tubes and yanks them out, using
weak hands that had never before grasped anything.
When Neo's exit from the Matrix is detected, a robot inspects him
and flushes him out of his pod. Too weak to swim, he must be pulled
out of the wastewater pool without delay. How are the rebels to
find him? In a power plant vast enough to house the human race,
there would be thousands of effluent drains. As Morpheus mentions
to Neo, "the pill you took is part of a trace program." Besides
canceling Neo's sensory inputs, the red pill also puts a unique
reference signal onto the Matrix network. When the Nebuchadnezzar's
computer locates that signal, it can work out Neo's physical location
and order the hovercraft to the appropriate chute. In the tense
moment before that reference signal is located, the worried Morpheus
says, "We're going to need the signal soon," and Trinity exclaims
that Neo's heart is fibrillating as the panic threatens to bring
on a heart attack. Apoc finds the reference signal just in time,
before Neo's brain disengages from the Matrix network and the signal
vanishes.
THE POWER PLANT
During the armchair scene, we have what is probably the most criticized
element in The Matrix story line. Morpheus claims that the
human race is imprisoned in a power station, where human bodies
are used as a source of bioelectricity. This is engineering nonsense;
it violates the fundamental law of energy conservation. The humans
would have to be fed, and the laws of physics demand that the energy
consumed as food must be greater than the energy generated by the
human body. That Morpheus has misunderstood what is going on is
underscored by his mention in the same speech of the machines' discovery
of a new form of nuclear fusion. Evidently, the fusion is the real
source of energy that the machines use. So what are humans doing
in the power plant? Controlled fusion is a subtle and complex process,
requiring constant monitoring and micromanaging. The human brain,
on the other hand, is a superb parallel computer. Most likely, the
machines are harnessing the spare brainpower of the human race as
a colossal distributed processor for controlling the nuclear fusion
reactions. (Sawyer comes to a similar conclusion elsewhere in this
volume—Ed.)
ENTERING AND EXITING THE MATRIX
The virtual world of the Matrix is not bound by physical laws as
we know them, but for the virtual world to be consistently realistic,
the laws of physics must be followed where they can be observed
by humans. Access into and out of a virtual world is a problem,
because materializing and dematerializing violate the conservation
of mass and energy. Furthermore, whatever was previously in the
space occupied by the materializing body must be pushed out of the
way; and would be pushed with explosive speed if the materialization
is instantaneous. Conversely, on dematerialization, the surrounding
air would rush in to the vacated space with equal implosive force.
There are no such explosions and implosions in The Matrix, so
how do the rebels do it?
In the Matrix computer, software modules represent the observable
objects in the virtual world, and these modules interact by means
of predefined messages. One such message issued by a virtual human
body, or "avatar," is, "What do I see when I look in the direction
V?" A module whose object lies on the line of sight along V will
respond with a message specifying the color, luminosity, and texture
that the human should see in that direction. If a rebel's avatar
is to be visible to other people who are immersed in the Matrix
world, the Nebuchadnezzar's computer must pick up those "What-do-I-see"
requests and reply with its own "You-see-this" message.
A virtual human body does not send "What-do-I-see?" message to
all other modules in the Matrix, or else it would overload the network.
It refers to "registers" of modules, which record the virtual objects'
shape, size, and position. Simple geometry then tells it which modules
to target. For efficiency, each visible volume of space, such as
the room of a building, has its own register.
The key step in materializing a body in a given space is for its
module to be inserted into that space's register. For dematerializing,
it is deleted from the register. Once it is registered, anyone looking
in that direction will see that module's virtual body. The Matrix
cannot let a software module insert itself arbitrarily into a register,
since that could violate the conservation of mass if it led to an
object's materializing in an area that has a conscious observer.
Registers for unobserved spaces are not constrained in this way.
If nobody is watching a room and its entrances, then a body can
safely materialize in it without observably breaking the simulated
laws of physics.
This does not mean that the laws of physics break down as soon
as all observers leave a room. The table and chair do not start
to float around against the law of gravity when nobody is looking.
Rather, the Matrix simply does not bother to run the simulation
for a room that nobody is looking at. In its register, it retains
details of where each object is, but the room is no longer rendered
as visual and tactual imagery.
So, when the Nebuchadnezzar's computer wants to materialize
a rebel, it must find some unobserved room, and insert the data
module for the rebel's body into the register for that room. Subsequently,
if someone else enters the room, he will see the rebel just like
any other object in the room. And the rebel can walk out of the
room into any other part of the Matrix world in the normal manner.
This is how rebels materialize in the Matrix without causing explosions
or breaching the integrity of the simulation.
When a rebel exits, the module that simulates her body is deleted
from the register. This must happen only when the body is not being
observed. There is, however, an intermediate state, "imperception,"
which effectively takes the body out of the virtual world even while
the data module is still in the register. This is an emergency procedure
that the Nebuchadnezzar's software uses for fast escapes.
Although the Matrix software cannot insert or delete a module while
its object is being observed, it does allow any module to change
its appearance. The agents use it whenever they enter the world.
An agent never materializes or dematerializes, but changes the appearance
of another person's avatar to match the personal qualities of the
agent.
To make a rebel imperceptible, the Nebuchadnezzar's computer
changes the body's visible appearance to be transparent; and the
body's mechanical resistance to that of the air. From an observer's
perspective, the body has melted into air. From a software perspective,
the data module is still on the register but simulating a body indistinguishable
from thin air. Later, when the scene is no longer being observed
by anybody, the module will be deleted.
We see this happen only once, when Morpheus leaves the subway.
Once the Nebuchadnezzar's computer has located his avatar,
it sends an instruction to make it invisible. This does not affect
the whole avatar at once: the module has to calibrate its appearance
to match exactly its surroundings. The first part of the body to
receive the instruction is the nervous tissue of the ear, and this
at first glows bright white, before settling down to a state of
transparency. The rest of the body follows. Its appearance oscillates
around whatever is visible in the background, settling down to transparency:
where the Morpheus stood, we see the background shimmer momentarily.
The solidity of the body then fades: moments after Morpheus's body
has become invisible, the telephone handset that had rested in his
hand drops, slowly at first, toward the ground. The observed sequence
is consistent not with the sudden deletion of the body's module,
but rather with its changing its appearance.
HARD LINES
Telephones play a key role in entering and leaving the Matrix.
But the rebels do not travel through the telephone lines as energy
pulses. There is no device at the end of the telephone for reconstructing
a human body from data: all you would get is noise in the earpiece.
Furthermore, the bandwidth of a telephone line is too narrow to
ship an entire human being. Finally, nothing at all ever really
travels along the lines in the Matrix world, as they are only virtual.
Instead of being a conduit for transporting dematerialized rebels,
the telephone line is a means of navigation. It pinpoints where
a rebel is to enter or leave the Matrix.
To enter the vast Matrix requires specifying where the avatar is
to materialize. To get an avatar into the Matrix world, the rebels
must use some strictly physical navigation. This is done with the
telephone network, which has penetrated every corner of the inhabited
world with electronic devices, each of which has a unique, electronically
determined label. Without knowing anything of human society and
its conventions, the physics modules of the Matrix can determine
where any given telephone number terminates.
How are the rebels to give a telephone number to the Matrix? They
must dial it, but they cannot simply pick up a handset and make
a call to a number inside the Matrix world, for any handset in the
Nebuchadnezzar is connected to the real world telephone network,
not the Matrix's virtual network. Inside the Matrix, a call must
be placed subtly, without observably breaching the simulated laws
of electromechanics.
To see how this can be done, we need to know something of the infrastructure
of the Matrix. Monolithic computer systems are unreliable, so the
Matrix is instead an assemblage of independent modules, each having
a unique "network address." For a module to communicate with another,
it will put a data message on the network with the address of the
intended destination. Neither module need know where the other one
is inside the electronic hardware of the Matrix computer. They might
be inches apart, or a mile away.
This scheme is robust and flexible. There is no central hub, and
individual modules can be plugged into, or taken out of, the network
without disturbance. Conversely, the rebels can easily hack into
it. Once they are linked into the network, their equipment can simply
pretend to be another module. It can place data messages onto the
system, which will be routed just like authentic messages, and be
received and read by the addressed module. So, to initiate a telephone
call, the crew will place a data message on the network, addressed
to any module that simulates an aerial for receiving calls from
cell phones. Some such node will pick up and read the counterfeit
data message just as if the message had been sent by a bona fide
source. On getting this message, the aerial module will carry out
its role in handling a telephone call.
The Nebuchadnezzar's operator maintains contact with rebels
who are in the Matrix even while the hovercraft is moving, so they
must use radioports onto the network. The rebels might have installed
their own rogue radio receiver—mechanically securing it in some
dark corner, and plugging its data cable into a spare socket of
a router. More likely, the Matrix itself uses radio as part of its
network infrastructure, and the rebels broadcast their counterfeit
messages on the same frequency.
Materializing or dematerializing, however, needs a network address,
which is gotten as follows. When the Nebuchadnezzar makes
a "phone call" into the Matrix, it places on the network a packet
saying "Place this call for (212) 123-4567" or whatever the telephone
number is, together with the Nebuchadnezzar's own network
address as a return label, such as 9.54.296.42. When the call is
picked up, the Matrix will return a data packet, addressed to the
Nebuchadnezzar, saying "Message for 9.54.296.42: call connected
to telephone (212) 123-4567." All the Nebuchadnezzar's computer
has to do is listen out for its own address, and it will find attached
to it the network address of the telephone equipment.
As soon as the answering machine picks up the incoming call, the
Nebuchadnezzar will get the network address of that destination.
Essentially the same job must be done when a rebel leaves the Matrix
world. In order to disengage the rebel from his or her avatar, the
Nebuchadnezzar's computer must again get a fix on the avatar's
location within the virtual world. As before, it is not enough to
locate the avatar's virtual body in terms that relate to human culture.
It is no use to say that Neo is at 56th and Lexington. Rather, it
needs a network address that the Matrix's operating system can follow.
Of course, the Nebuchadnezzar gets it by calling a telephone
in the Matrix world, which must be answered for the network address
to be passed back to the Nebuchadnezzar. Once that has happened,
the avatar's module can be deleted from the register for that location.
Why don't the crew navigate their exits with the stylish cell phones
that all the rebels carry? Why hunt for a land line (called a "hard
line" in the film) under hot pursuit from the agents? The answer
is that the cell phones are not part of the Matrix world and do
not have network addresses known to the Matrix software. The cell
phone is projected into the Matrix world by the Nebuchadnezzar's
computer, 114 peter b. lloyd along with the avatar's body and clothes—and
the weapons that Neo and Trinity eventually bring in with them.
The software that simulates the cell phones is running inside the
Nebuchadnezzar's computer, not the Matrix's computer, so
the rebels must find a land line—which are somewhat scarce in an
era when everyone has a cell phone.
THE BUGBOT
Before Neo is taken to meet Morpheus, the agents insert a robotic
bug into him. Trinity extricates the bugbot before it can do any
harm. But what was the bugbot for? Given that it operates inside
the human body, the bugbot should be as small as possible. Yet,
it is clearly much bigger than a miniature radio beeper needed for
tracking Neo's whereabouts. Trinity says that Neo is "dangerous"
to them before he is cleaned. We can infer that the bugbot is actually
a munition, probably a semtex device that will detonate when it
hears Morpheus's voice, killing both Neo and Morpheus and everyone
else in the room.
Just before it is implanted, the bugbot takes on the appearance
of an animate creature, with claws writhing. Yet, after Trinity
has jettisoned it out of the car window, it returns to an inert
form. It is another illustration of the agents' limited use of the
shapeshifting loophole in the Matrix software, that lets an object
transform its properties under programmed commands.
At dinner on the Nebuchadnezzar, Mouse ponders how the
Matrix decided how chicken meat should taste, and wonders whether
the machines got it wrong because the machines are unable to experience
tastes.
A nonconscious machine cannot experience color any more than taste.
A computer can store information about colored light, such as a
digitized photograph, but it does so without a glimmer of awareness
of the conscious experience of color. The digitized picture will
evoke conscious colors only when someone looks at it. All other
sensations that you can be conscious of will elude the digital computer.
The feel of silk, the texture of the crust of a piece of toast,
feelings of nausea or giddiness: these are all unavailable to insentient
machines. This being so, Mouse could have doubted whether the Matrix
would know what anything should taste, smell, look, sound, or feel
like.
But the Matrix doesn't need to experience the perceptual qualities
to get them right. As we have seen, the Matrix feeds its signals
into the incoming nerves where they enter the brain, not into the
deeper nerve centers. So when you eat (virtual) fried chicken inside
the Matrix, the Matrix will activate nerves from the tongue and
nose, and the brain will interpret them as taste sensations. What
the Matrix puts in will be a copy of the train of electrical impulses
that would actually be produced if you were eating meat. Because
of the way that the Matrix has been wired into the brain, it has
less freedom than Mouse assumed. Whilst the Matrix cannot know tastes
itself, it can nonetheless know which chemosensory cells in a human's
nose and mouth yield the requisite smell and taste.
NEO'S MASTERY OF THE AVATAR
For purists of science-fiction plausibility, Neo's superhuman control
over his avatar body is a troubling element in the film. The final
triumphal scene, where Neo flies like Superman, has especially come
under criticism. But is it completely at odds with what we have
inferred about the Matrix? And how does Neo transcend his human
limits?
The Matrix interacts with the brain, but the brain in turn affects
the body. When Neo is hurt in training, he finds blood in his mouth.
He asks Morpheus, "If you are killed in the Matrix, you die here?"
and gets the cryptic reply: "The body cannot live without the mind."
But it cuts both ways; ultimately, Neo's avatar is killed inside
the Matrix, causing the vital functions to cease in his real body.
Mental states and beliefs can affect the body in several ways.
In the placebo effect, the belief that a pill is a medicine can
cure an illness; in hypnosis, imagining a flame on the wrist can
induce blisters. In total virtuality, the mind accepts completely
what is presented. If the Matrix signals that the avatar's body
has died, then the mind will shut down the basic organs of the heart
and lungs. Actual death will inevitably ensue, unless fast action
is taken to get the heart pumping again.
In the climactic scene, Agent Smith kills Neo's avatar within the
Matrix. Neo's brain accepts this fate: it stops his heart and loses
conscious awareness. His real brain, however, retains enough oxygenated
blood to keep it functioning for approximately three minutes, after
which it would begin to suffer irreversible damage and, a few minutes
later, brain-death. During this time, the auditory cortex keeps
on working and digests what Trinity says, albeit unconsciously.
Trinity's message is comprehended by Neo's subconscious mind, and
a deep realization that the Matrix world is illusory crystallizes
in his mind. At an intellectual level, Neo already believed this,
but now he knows it at the visceral level of the mind, the level
that interfaces with his physiology. Empowered by the insight that
his avatar's death is not his death, Neo regains control of his
avatar —not only resurrecting it but attaining superhuman powers:
the avatar can stop bullets, and fly into the air.
Neo's new powers contrast with the rigid compliance with simulated
physical laws that the Matrix generally adheres to. It reveals that
Neo has gained direct access to the software modules that simulate
his avatar body. That raises two questions: Why does the avatar
software accept commands to transform itself, when normally it strictly
follows a physical simulation? And, how can Neo's brain issue such
commands, which are obviously outside the scope of the normal muscular
signals?
The software that simulates the avatar must have a special port,
intended for use only by agents, which accepts commands to change
the internal properties of the avatar's body. Agents use this facility
to embody themselves in human avatars. Like all software, the avatar
will obey such commands wherever they originate, provided that they
are correctly formulated. We saw earlier how the Nebuchadnezzar's
computer used this transformative power to make Morpheus disappear
from the subway station. Now Neo's brain is directly using the same
command port.
Commands to transform the body cannot travel on the wires that
carry the regular muscular signals from the brain to the avatar
module. So, they use some of the many other, seemingly redundant,
data lines that terminate throughout the rest of the brain. That
those lines are hooked up at all on the Matrix end is a spin-off
from the Matrix architect's use of general-purpose interfaces. When
a newborn human baby is connected to the software module that runs
its avatar, there is no way to predetermine which wires carry which
data streams. So, at the Matrix end, each line is free to connect
to any data port of the avatar module. Some data ports emit simulated
signals from virtual eyes and other sense organs, and they will
connect with the brain's sensory cortex; others will accept motor
commands to carry out simulated contractions of virtual muscles,
and they will link up with the motor cortex. In a feedback process
that mirrors how the natural plasticity of the brain is molded to
its function, useful connections are strengthened and the useless
are weakened. As a baby grows into an infant, it gains feedback
through using the simulated senses and muscles of the avatar, and
therefore its brain builds up the normal strong connections to the
conventional input and output channels. But it lacks the abstract
concepts needed to use the special port that accepts transformation
commands. So the brain's connection with those lines atrophies.
Nevertheless, the hardware for that potential connection remains
in place. In Neo's kung fu training, his brain rediscovers the abandoned
data lines, and he starts to issue rudimentary transformations,
giving his avatar's muscles superhuman strength. Only with the deep
insight that he gains from being woken after his avatar's death,
does he acquire the mental attitude needed to harness that transformative
function fully.
The existence of the transformational back door into the avatar
software is a security hole that the architects of the Matrix never
imagined would be used by mere humans—but now it threatens the very
existence of the Matrix, as Neo exploits the power it gives him.
The last question I will address in this essay is a complex one,
and one that continues to be explored and debated in scientific
and philosophical circles. Can machines be conscious? In everyday
life, the 118 peter b. lloyd machines are so dumb that we can ignore
this question, and so we do not have an established criterion for
judging whether the intelligent machines of science fiction are
conscious. How similar must a machine be to a human for it to be
conscious? Humans have a cluster of properties that always hang
together: they have conscious perceptions and emotional feelings,
they have opinions and beliefs, intuition and intelligence, they
use language, and they are alive and warm-blooded, and have a biological
brain. We do not, in everyday life, have to separate out those concepts
and decide which ones are necessary and sufficient for sentience.
The properties all come as a package. In contrast, the lower animals
are like us but do not use language and are not as intelligent as
we are. So, it is believed that the higher animals probably have
basic conscious perceptions—such as colors and sounds, heat and
cold—much as we do, but they lack the superstructure of thought.
But what about machines that are intelligent and use language, but
are not made of biological tissue? Could they be conscious? To respond
rationally to this emotive challenge, we need to be clear about
the ideas that are involved. The commonest and most damaging conflation
is that of "intelligence" and "consciousness." Alan Turing, in his
celebrated paper that introduced the Turing Test, used the terms
interchangeably—but mathematicians are notorious for playing fast
and loose with their terms. Philosophers, whose trademark is the
careful delineation of concepts, have always insisted on maintaining
the distinction. Intelligence is the capacity to solve problems,
while consciousness is the capacity for the subjective experience
of qualities.
As we shall see, intelligence can be attained without consciousness.2
A digital computer can be programmed to perform intelligent tasks
such as playing chess and understanding language by welldefined
deterministic processes, without any need to introduce enigmatic
conscious experiences into the software. On the other hand, a conscious
being can have subjective experiences—such as seeing the color red,
or feeling anger—with needing to use intelligence to solve any problems.
An android could be vastly more intelligent than any human and still
lack any glimmer of interior mental life. On the other hand, a creature
might be profoundly stupid and still have subjective experiences.
Agent Smith is an example of a machine that manifests humanlike
behavior—which, if you witnessed such words and gestures in a human,
you would immediately regard them as showing conscious emotions
and volitions. Indeed, it is the immediacy of the interpretation
that is deceptive. When you see someone laugh with joy, or scream
in pain, you do not knowingly infer the person's mental state from
those outward signs. Rather, it is as if you see the emotions directly.
Yet, we know from accomplished actors that these signs of emotions
can be faked. Therefore, you are indeed making an inference, albeit
an automatic one. It is a job of philosophy to scrutinize such automatic
inference. When you see another human being emoting, your inference
is not based wholly on what you see, but also on background information
(such as whether the person is acting on the stage). More fundamentally,
you are relying on the reasonable assumption that the person's behavior
arises from a biological brain just as yours does. Whenever those
premises are undermined, you inevitably revise any inferences you
have made from the emoting. If the emoting stops and people around
you clap, you realize it was a piece of street theatre, and the
person was only acting out those emotions. Or, if the person has
a nasty car accident that breaks open his head, revealing electronic
circuitry instead of a brain, you realize that it was only an android
and you may conclude that it was only simulating emotions.
A key step in the inference is the premise that the emotion plays
a role in the causal loop that produces the outward words and gestures.
If, instead, we have established that the observed words and gestures
are wholly explained in some other way, without involving those
emotions—then the inference collapses. The exterior emoting behavior
then ceases to count as evidence for an interior emotional experience.
If we know that an actor's words and gestures are scripted, then
we cease to regard them as evidence for an inward mental state.
Likewise, if we know that the words and gestures of an android or
avatar are programmed, then they too cease to support any inference
of a mental state.
In an android, or in a software simulation of a human such as an
agent, words and gestures are produced by millions of lines of programmed
software. The software advances from instruction to instruction
in a deterministic manner. Some instructions move pieces of information
around inside memory, others execute calculations, others send motor
signals to actuators in the body. Each line of code references objective
memory locations and ports in the physical hardware. It may do so
symbolically, and it may do so via sophisticated data structures,
for example, using the tag "vision-field" to reference the stabilized
and edge-enhanced data from the eye cams. Nevertheless, nowhere
in the software suite does the code break out of that objective
environment and refer to the enigmatic contents of consciousness.
Nor could the programmer ever do so, since she would need an objective,
third-person pointer to the conscious experience—which, being a
subjective, first-person thing, cannot be labeled with such a pointer.
Everything that the android says and does is fully accounted for
by its software. There is no explanatory gap left for machine consciousness
to fill. When the android says, "I see colors and feel emotions
just as humans do," we know that those words are produced by deterministic
lines of software that functions perfectly well without any involvement
of consciousness. It is because of this that the android's emoting
does not provide an iota of evidence for any interior mental life.
All the outward signs are faked, and the programmer knows in comprehensive
detail how they are faked.
This point is systematically ignored by the mathematicians and
engineers who enthuse about artificial intelligence. You have to
go next door, to the philosophy department, to find people who accord
due importance to it. Even if, by some unknown means, the android
possessed consciousness, it could never tell us about it. As we
have seen, everything the android says is determined by the software.
Even if, somewhere in the depths of its circuit boards, there was
a ghostly glimmer of conscious awareness or volition, it could never
influence what the android says and does.
Could it be that the information in the computer just is the
conscious experience? This argument is popular with information
engineers, as it seems to allow them to gloss over the whole mind-body
problem. It is flawed because information and conscious experience
have different logical structures. Namely, information exists only
as an artifact of interpretation; but experience does not stand
in need of interpretation in order for you to be aware of it. If
I give you a disk holding numerical data (21, 250, 11, 47; 22, 250,
15, 39. etc), those numbers could mean anything. In one program,
they are meteorological measurements—temperature, humidity, rainfall.
In another, they are medical—pulse rate, blood pressure, body fat.
The interpretation has no independent reality; the numbers have
no inherent meaning by themselves. In contrast, conscious experience
is fundamentally different. If you jam your thumb in a door, your
sensation does not need first to be interpreted by you as pain.
It immediately presents as pain. Nor can you reinterpret it as some
other sensation, such as the scent of a rose. Conscious experiences
have real, subjectively witnessed qualities that do not depend for
their existence on being interpreted this way or that. They intrinsically
involve some quality over and above mere information.
Another popular argument is to appeal to "emergence." Higherlevel
systems are said to "emerge" from lower-level systems. The simple
classic example is that of thermodynamic properties, such as heat
and temperature, which emerge from the statistical behavior of ensembles
of molecules. Yet the concept of "temperature" just does not exist
for an isolated molecule, although billions of those molecules collectively
do have a temperature. In like manner, it has been suggested, consciousness
emerges from the collective behavior of billions of neurons, which
individually could never be conscious on their own. But emergent
properties are, in fact, artifacts of how we describe the world,
and have no objective existence outside of mathematical theories.
An ensemble of molecules may be described in terms of either the
trajectories of individual molecules or their aggregate properties,
but the latter are invented by human observers for the sake of simplifications.
The external reality comprises only the molecules: the statistical
properties, such as average kinetic energy, exist only in the mind
of the physicist. Likewise, any dynamic features of the aggregate
behavior of brain cells exist only in the models of the neuroscientists.
The external reality comprises only the brain cells. Yet, as you
know, when you jam your humb in the door, the pain is real and present
in the moment; it is not a theoretical construct of a brain scientist.
So there are good reasons for believing that machines are not conscious.
But—wouldn't these arguments apply equally to brains? Surely a brain
is just a bioelectrochemical machine? It obeys deterministic programs
that are encoded in the genetic and neural wiring of the brain.
Yet, if our argument that machines are not conscious can also apply
equally to brains, then the argument must be flawed— since we know
that our own brains are indeed conscious!
The answer is that there are certain processes in brain tissue
that involve nondeterministic quantum-mechanical events. And, working
through the chaotic dynamics of the brain, those minute phenomena
can be amplified into overt behavior. The nondeterminism opens a
gateway for consciousness to take effect in the workings of the
brain.
As we saw earlier, you can report only the conscious experiences
that are in the causal loop that gives rise to the speech acts.
If you can report that you are in pain, then the pain sensation
must exert a causal influence somewhere in the chain of neural events
that governs what you say and write. A step that is physically nondeterministic
provides a window of opportunity for consciousness to enter into
that causal chain. Since we, as humans, know that we do express
our conscious perceptions, we can infer that there must be some
such nondeterminism somewhere in the brain. So far, quantum-mechanical
events constitute the only known candidate for this. For example,
Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammeroff have formulated a detailed theory
of how quantum actions in the microtubules of brain cells could
play this role. The jury is still out on whether the microtubules
really are the locus at which consciousness enters the chain of
cause and event.
A conventional, deterministic computer has no such gateway into
consciousness. So androids, and virtual avatars, that are driven
by computers of that kind, cannot express conscious awareness and
their behavior therefore can never be evidence for consciousness.
But, if a machine were to be built that used quantum computation
in the same way that the brain does, then there is no philosophical
reason why that machine could not have the same gateway to consciousness
that a living being does. This is not because the quantum module
lets the machine carry out computations that a classical computer
cannot do. Whatever the quantum computer can do, a classical one
can also do, albeit more slowly. Rather, it is the specific implementation
of the quantum computer that provides the bridge into conscious
processes.
In The Matrix, there is no reason to think that the machines
are equipped with the kind of quantum computation needed to access
consciousness. Quantum computation is not mentioned in the film,
and there is circumstantial evidence that the Matrix and its agents
are devoid of conscious thought.
Therefore the agents—which are software modules within the Matrix—are
intelligent but mindless automata. For the most part, the agents
behave unimaginatively, and we might naively think that this corroborates
their lack of awareness. Yet, Agent Smith exhibits initiative and
seems, in his speech to Morpheus, to evince a conscious dislike
of the human world. But is he genuinely conscious, or only mimicking
humans? In fact, Smith gives himself away when he says about the
human world, "It's the smell, if there is such a thing . . . I can
taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been
infected by it." Smith's own logical integrity obliges him to doubt
the existence of that noncomputable quality that humans talk about:
the conscious experience of smell. When Smith says, ". . . the smell,
if there is such a thing," he is exhibiting the mark of the automaton.
This is corroborated when he then tells Morpheus that he can "taste
your stink," revealing that Smith simply does not understand the
differentiation of senses in the human mind. For a computer, data
are interchangeable, but for a human, tastes, smells, colors, sounds,
and feels, are irreducibly different. This fact eludes Agent Smith.
Smith is mimicking human behavior as a tactic to trick Morpheus
into cooperation. As the interrogation is getting nowhere, Brown
suggests, "Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions." So Smith
pretends to talk like a human, to gain Morpheus's empathy. Needless
to say, the tactic fails completely.
1. In the oldest form of Buddhism, Theravada, the
two major forms of meditation are Vipassana (the Pali word for "insight")
and its complement Samatha ("tranquility"). Vipassana consists in
systematically attending to the individual elements that make up
the contents of consciousness. It involves persistently turning
away from the ceaselessly arising tide of chatter in the mind. Over
time, the chatter subsides, and preconscious activity becomes more
readily observed. Laboratory data support claims that long-term
practitioners acquire a conscious awareness of brain microprocesses,
possibly down to the cellular level. See Shinzeng Young's works.
2. For an alternative perspective,
see Kurzweil's
essay in this volume. —Ed.
© 2003 BenBella
Books. Published on KurzweilAI.net with permission.
| | |
|
| |
Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
 |
|
|
 |
Re: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
|
|
 |
|
Jeremy > Thanks, ok...i'm aware of that uploading theory...and I agree, saying something is silly, without knowing which theory is "actually" true is silly..
what is silly is that the wachowski's now have so much cash to play with, fo technology, visual effects, AI, art, etc. etc and all some people can do is rip them apart and call them stupid....
they still have a lot of story left to tell, 2 more movies (making them richer), a video game, (even richer), 9 animated shorts (even richer), and what else...
and we'll all stay tuned, pay the fare, and call them stupid..(or in my case, not stupid)
no planning..???
I think there is a lot of planning....
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Re: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
|
|
|
|
Hi Thomas,
I'm really interested in your views here, and trying to understand where your disagreements with the concept of the movie and your own personal beliefs coincide. It will help me build the foundation of my argument, yet I do not want to trample on your personal beliefs.
Are you saying, that you personally would rather jump inside a program than exist outside as a real/living/breathing person. Personally, I'd rather live a life in "zion" than a life in the "matrix" at whatever cost per breath. If that is the argument, then there is no point continuing.
The whole point of the movie (ignoring all aspects of the science for the moment, if we could) is that people want to be people, not body slaves to the computers, and that if there is a better way, then lets find it.
Do you agree/disagree with this?
I agree that the cost of a biological presence would be a factor in an upload, but that is not relevant in the quest to be a real human within the context of this movie/story. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
|
|
|
|
The data is hacked to contain a zero at a place where a zero is an illegal value. The simulation performs a divide operation on it (for some reason of simulating the digestion process), and a devide-by-zero exception is triggered in the program thread for this part of the simulation.
It could be so. My (admittedly subjective) preference would be to interpret the red pill as exploiting built-in features of the Matrix rather than doing anything as kludgey as causing a division by zero.
We know that there must be occasions when part of a person's avatar' sensory input is shut down. E.g. sensory input from an arm would be shut down if teh avatar has a (virtual) anaesthetic; it would be permanently shut down if the leg is (virtually) amputated. So, the command set that is accepted by the avatar module must include something like "KILL/SENSORY <part> [UNTIL=time|FOREVER]" where <part> is part of the body, such as "ARM" or "LEG". So, in designing the red pill, they would get it to issue the command "KILL/SENSORY * FOREVER", meaning disable all sensory input permanently. Now, if *all* sensory input is closed down, then that avatar is no longer registered with any daemon that supplies sense data. From the Matrix's point of view, the person has died. So, logically, the physical body has to be flushed out so that the pod can be reused. (It's comparable to closing down all the windows of a Netscape session.)
In other words, the basic premise of the Matrix already suffices to imply the possibility of a Red Pill. This, it seems to me, is a more elegant interpretation that a divide-by-zero kludge.
(Obviously, there's no 'true' answer here, as its only a film. Unless, in Revolutions, someone explains how the Red Pill worked.)
This stops Thomas Anderson's sensory I/O process.
I'm not entirely clear why *that*would stop all of Mr Anderson's sensory processes. Wouldn't it just make the Red Pill vanish?
The matrix-computer-system will make a memory dump for the program thread that was executing the simulation of the digestion process.
Or maybe just make his stomach vanish?
Peter |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
|
|
|
|
Peter: In other words, the basic premise of the Matrix already suffices to imply the possibility of a Red Pill. This, it seems to me, is a more elegant interpretation that a divide-by-zero kludge.
Of course. I just used this "kludge" as an example for how a computer system can be tricked into revealing information that would allow them to locate Neo's "real" body. The divide-by-zero exception is simply a way we can understand today, but the matrix would, like you say, work in a more sophisticated way. Besides, it is a pun on the divide-and-conquer concept used in mechanical strategies.
An alternative explanation would be that both pills are placebos, and Morpheus uses them to make it clear to Neo/Thomas that he needs to enter a commiting agreement with him. It further manifests Neo's choice to understand the matrix, which I think was already apparent earlier when he took his feeling that something was going on serious enough to look up to the screen to see Trinity's message when he was taking a nap in front of his computer. As we know now from Matrix Reloaded, these choices are a problem for the matrix. Personally, I think it is more that from awareness we create new possibilities and do things that we wouldn't do otherwise (such as looking up to the screen), more that than to choose between two existing "choices". Instead of choosing between two existing choices, to see a third possibility, and seeing it is already action.
In looking at both pills, which differ only in their color, Neo/Thomas (who is increasingly aware) pays attention to colors, something that is outside of the matrix' quantitative/formal/structural/extensional concepts. Given Neo/Thomas high alertness in this situation, this has an escalating effect and causes the matrix to misbehave, creating a disruption that causes Neo to see the mirror (subjective reality, self-reflection on consciousness) in a different way than the others (objective reality).
This then causes a fault in the matrix, which allows them to obtain error information in the way described in my previous scenario. Perhaps by comparing actual non-deterministic events against expected deterministic events (using a "diff"), or observing non-random quantum behavior where there would otherwise be random quantum behavior (hence the complicated technical equipment.)
This scenario would also better reflect that the whole process is one of waking up. Actually, I would now dismiss my previous scenario, having re-considered due to your comments. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM
|
|
|
|
Will there be "Glitches in Matrix RELOADED..."?
Yes, the editor of Kurzweilai.net has very kindly offered to post it up on this site. Fortunately, I happened to be in the States on 5/15, so I got to see Reloaded a week before I would have done in England, and therefore started writing "Glitches Reloaded" already.
I was here for an interview on TechTV about the book "Taking the Red Pill". It went out live on Friday, and is repeated Monday 8 a.m. and 12 p.m.
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3430740,00.html
BTW There will also need to be a "Glitches in the Essay". One thing I realised wasn't right, when I was watching "The Matrix" again this week. I wrote in the essay that, when the rebels download into the Matrix, the telephone needs to be answered, in order to send a network address back to the Nebuchadnezzar. Not so! If it is an analogue line, then the ringing tone is actually generated in the called telephone (unlike a digital system), and *that* on its own is sufficient to get a network address back to the Nebuchadnezzar. This is apparent in the scene where Neo and the other rebels go back into the Matrix to see the Oracle. The phone is ringing, unanswered, while the rebels materialise.
Given that that is so, though, why does the phone need to be answered when rebels are leaving the Matrix? This must be just so that the individual who is to exit can be isolated. It would be no good if everyone in earshot of the ringing telephone gets exited. (Especially if the person is still plugged in. They would be die if they got accidentally exited.) So, this is why a group of people can enter the Matrix together, but they have to exit individually.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
If you look at Dean Radin's book, 'The Conscious Universe', you will see reasons to think that the informatic capabilities of consciousness could be quite interesting.
This all hinges on unverified interpretations of 'quantum wierdness', does it not? There are new models of physics which entirely erase the dualisms and paradoxes, by explaining the physical mechanisms beneath the mathematical probabilities which physicists have come to identify with causality. The entire 'quantum wierdness' dissappears, therefore the arguments that rely on the fabricated abstract mechanisms within the black-box of this evaporating mystery are superfluous.
The whole argument, no doubt, hinges on the interpretation of the collapse of the wave-function. When the mechanisms beneath the wave-nature of matter are explained and the particle mechanisms and illusions are explained at the deeper causal level, this interpretation that consciousness causes a change in the state of the system merely by looking at it, will become obsolete. The collapse is merely a collapse of the possibilities spawned within our mental image in the face of the unknown causality beneath the so-called 'wave-particle duality'. There is no critical interaction of the mind with the quantum level of reality. It is entirely causal and independent of consciousness altogether, therefore there is no support of solypsism at the very heart of nature.
ALL dualisms and paradoxes are harbingers that the theories that spawn them have deeper level faults. When the paradox shows up at the core, you can bet that BIG changes are in store for that theory!
subtillioN |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
When you see a lion, it is not the lion that causes fear, but the idea of the lion. Idea and physical reality are on two separate levels (Logical Levels). You have to transform reality into idea, before it can cause other, higher level, ideas (i.e., fear). Any ideas in your mind, can be changed without changing anything in the physical world (apart from a little neurological reorganization within you). Dental hypnosis can disconnect pain response from your teeth. Phobias can be collapsed. And so on.
What is important about "red" is not that it is "real" -- whatever that means. The importance is that people share the reality that red refers to some particular idea: Shared Reality.
You may as well point to it and call it "kolit" -- as long as you can convince others to call it the same thing, then the label has utility for everyone who calls it that.
You can also do stranger things, tell people that a blue object is red, and as long as they accept that, (even though they have experience with both color labels), you can go through logical and emotive processes to explain something with your relabeling. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
I am completely baffled as to how you could think that this gobbldehook could have anything to do with the argument that I put forward in my essay and which I have been repeating in this discussion:
So in the new light of this evolving discussion the argument is now this:
Because the derivation of consensus meaning through consciousness is largely associative and arbitrary therefore "consciousness cannot be an emergent property".
Let's call this bizarre argument P. The first part of P refers to "the derivation of consensus meaning". But consensus meaning is not mentioned in my argument and has no relevance to it. The argument is based on the meaning of terms to an individual. The argument would still hold even if there were only one person in the world, and therefore consensus about the meaning of terms is irrelevant to the argument.
A term such as "red" means (amongst other things) a particular conscious sensation. That semantic relationship exists in each individual. It is a relationship that relates such terms to an extra-linguistic meaning, without which the terms would be locked into a closed linguistic system.
Physics terms, on the other hand, are defined analytically and not by private ostensive definition and therefore do not bear semantic references beyond the closed formal system in which they are defined.
P also mentions definitions as being "largely associative and arbitrary". The precise form that the definition takes, whether it is a declaration or an undeclared association, is immaterial to the argument. What *is* material to the argument is that the referent (ie the colour sensation) is present in consciousness and is related to the term. As regards being "arbitrary", I presume you mean that the colour red could be called "ziggle" "blue" or anything else. This is true but totally irrelevant to the present discussion.
Finally, regarding Professor Dennett, I have attended some of his conference presentations and read some of his material, and IMHO he is a great showman but sadly he is locked into a perverse approach to consciousness that does not advance our understanding of the subject by very much. He is, in effect, refusing to address what David Chalmers has identified as the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness.
Peter |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Likewise people claim that the concept of consciousness emerges as a wholly new concept from brains.
This claim is inverted! Consciousness is not a concept, but concepts are are a part of consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent network phenomenon as seen from the inside, surrounded by the concepts and sensations that compose it. Therefore to apply arguments based on different types of concepts says nothing about how or if consciousness is an emergent phenomenon because consciousness is not bound by the boundaries and distinctions of concepts. Your argument merely points out semantic distinctions of the types of categories and mind/world correlations that consciousness produces and claims that these semantic boundaries impose physical limits on the thing which produces them.
If you find limits within an Operating System do these limits necessarily apply to the deeper level of the hardware?
As I said in the essay, this claim doesn't go through, because emergent concepts must always have an analytical definition at the lower level, otherwise they could never be empirically recognised.
So because we haven't yet discovered the highly complex empirical relationship between the network architecture of the brain and the consciousness which emerges from it, does that necessarily mean that it can't ever be discovered?
I don't think so.
Even if temperature is *defined* phenomenologically, it still has to be cashed out in previously defined physical observables before it could ever be measured.
Consciousness is MUCH more complex and an altogether different type of phenomenon than the simple physical analogues (i.e. temperature) that you draw. The empirical laws which govern the forms of consciousness are much more difficult to discover (somewhat like genetics, but yet still more complex). So to argue based on our current state of understanding of these empirical laws is to assume that they will never figure it out. This assumption is highly precarious and IMHO foolhardy. Consciousness is difficult empirical/quantitative problem, but that doesn't mean it is impossible.
Your argument confuses what is difficult in practice with what is impossible in principal. It is therefore merely an assumption that this difficulty will turn out to be an impossibility. Progress is being made, however, so to convince anyone of the validity your argument you have to have some reason to believe that progress will halt. What is this reason? Simply the fact that it is impossible (right now) to enter someone elses mind and experience the other consciousness firsthand? I think even this barrier will eventually get erased.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Consciousness is not a concept, but concepts are are a part of consciousness.
In the bit of my previous post that you quote, I mentioned the "the concept of consciousness". Obviously the concept of consciousness is a concept.
Consciousness is an emergent network phenomenon as seen from the inside, ...
This just seems completely arbitrary. You don't give any positive reasons for this belief.
Therefore to apply arguments based on different types of concepts says nothing about how or if consciousness is an emergent phenomenon because consciousness is not bound by the boundaries and distinctions of concepts.
I don't know what you're trying to say here. What sense of 'bound' are you using? I don't see what kind of boundaries you are claiming consciousness doesn't have.
At any given moment, a person's consciousness is bound by a whole bunch of things.
Your argument merely points out semantic distinctions of the types of categories and mind/world correlations that consciousness produces and claims that these semantic boundaries impose physical limits on the thing which produces them.
Again, I am struggling to discern any meaning in this. You are accusing me of claiming something about "physical limits", but I said nothing about physical limits.
Yes, I did discuss some semantic distinctions, and made some inferences from them. But I don't know where you got the "physical limits" from.
So because we haven't yet discovered the highly complex empirical relationship between the network architecture of the brain and the consciousness which emerges from it, does that necessarily mean that it can't ever be discovered?
Of course not. That is obviously an absurd non-sequitur. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I said.
What I said was: mental terms have a type of definition that gives them a semantic reference to a real, extra-linguistic world; physical terms don't. Therefore physical terms denote formal constructs whereas mental terms denote real stuff that we can empirically observe. Therefore mental things can neither be reduced to, nor emerge from, physical things.
Consciousness is MUCH more complex and an altogether different type of phenomenon than the simple physical analogues (i.e. temperature) that you draw.
Yes, we all know it is more complex, but kindly explain why you think that that has any relevance whatsoever to the argument.
So to argue based on our current state of understanding of these empirical laws is to assume that they will never figure it out. This assumption is highly precarious and IMHO foolhardy.
This is not an assumption I made.
Your argument confuses what is difficult in practice with what is impossible in principal.
No, it makes no mention at all of what is difficult in practice. It is a basic logical argument about whether it is possible in principle for consciousness to emerge from, or to be reduced to, physical systems.
It is therefore merely an assumption that this difficulty will turn out to be an impossibility. Progress is being made, however, so to convince anyone of the validity your argument you have to have some reason to believe that progress will halt. What is this reason?
With respect, the progress hasn't begun. There has never been any progress in reducing consciousness to physics.
Simply the fact that it is impossible (right now) to enter someone elses mind and experience the other consciousness firsthand? I think even this barrier will eventually get erased.
Basic logic doesn't change. The idea that any amount of technological advance will enable a reduction of consciousness to physics, or will render a person's conscious mind as a third-party observable is just playing with words.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
We seem to be arguing at cross-purposes. You are talking about *computation*, I am talking about *consciousness*.
There are limited parallels to be drawn. This is what I was doing for the purpose of understanding the difference between the representational level and the mechanism level.
You mention 'the emergence of consciousness' and immediately presupposed that it *does* 'emerge' and that there is a network mechanism to 'emerge' it. Where does that presupposition come from?
From a cursory understanding of the enormous complexity of the brain and the cognitive science knowledge that a self-representational system is possible.
What is your reason for believing that consciousness does -- or even, in principle, can -- emerge from a physical system?
I have been tinkering with my own physical mechanisms of consciousness for quite a while now. When I alter the physical system the mind correspondingly changes. It seems obvious that the immense complexity of the mind could produce the representational illusion of the real world.
What is your assumption that it is not possible? I am looking for a reason that pertains to the level at which the mechanism would exist (the network architecture level) not the symbolic level.
I gave what IMHO is a valid reason for saying that consciousness is the wrong *kind* of thing to emerge from any physical system. I am not saying that it emerges *this* way or *that* way. I am saying that it *cannot* emerge.
Your reasoning was irrelevant because it addressed the wrong level of explanation. It said nothing of the limitations on the mechanisms involved in the putative 'emergence' of consciousness.
Nor am I concerned with what concepts are contained within any given person's consciousness. (I am wondering whether that is where the confusion lies.) But with the concept of consciousness itself.
I think you are right. If you view consciousness as anything but an abstraction and representation of external reality then you are bound to get confused because there is no mechanism that we know of that could produce this alternate absolute solipsist 'conscious world'.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Terms are merely reducible to terms. It IS a closed representational system that simply correlates with reality. Why should a term be reducible to "extra-linguistic reality"? The mind is an abstraction of reality, not reality itself. How does this prove that consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon?
Here you are leaving out the important point: Although both the computer and the mind reference reality, and both the computer and the mind have the reality of processing information, the difference is that consciousness has another reality: that of seeing-color. Seeing-color is (also) a reality in itself, not just a formal reference, and seeing-color is unlike processing information, unlike adding 1 + 2. Even if someone is able to add numbers so fast that he starts seeing colors ;-), at that point he is not just adding numbers anymore, which is what a computer is supposed to do. Otherwise it's not a computer anymore. Voids the warranty, I mean, the definition. ;-)
Regards,
blue_is_not_a_number
http://www.occean.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
You are using only two categories: abstract reference and reality. You need a third one: The carrier of the reference. Well, actually that's what you call the mind.
The mind is a collection of references. The brain would be the 'carrier'.
But the mind is not just an abstract container of abstract references, it has a reality besides its action of referencing:
The brain does the referencing through the interface of the mind.
The color is a conscious reality in addition to its activity of referencing.
The illusion of color is real, but color does not exist apart from the reality of this illusion.
What makes you assume it is impossible? [to understand color from a thinking rooted in classical physics]
Seeing-color is both a reality and an appearance in itself, at the same time (or without time). The appearance has an existance in itself. That doesn't happen in classical physics.
Classical physics? Where did that come from? You obviously don't know my stance on physics. Here is a quick off-the-cuff slogan: The quantum revolution was revolutionary enough.
Does this sound like I am rooted in classical physics?
How does this discussion even tie in with classical physics? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Classical physics? Where did that come from? You obviously don't know my stance on physics. Here is a quick off-the-cuff slogan: The quantum revolution was revolutionary enough.
I meant to say that it was NOT "revolutionary enough"! They left the very problem of the kinetic-atomic-theory in the core to give us the wave-particle duality.
Excuse me for changing the order in which I reply...
As far as I understand from your previous posts, you are looking for an explanation below the quantum level in terms of, crrect me if I'm wrong, classical physics. You are using the model of compressible fluid. Maybe this is why Peter was talking about Bell's theorem (at least that's why I thought of it): Quantum teleportation is difficult to explain with the model of compressible fluid, I guess. But I'm not a physicist, and maybe you are able to come up with something here.
The illusion of color is real, but color does not exist apart from the reality of this illusion.
Color is not an illusion, it's an appearance, and presence. 'Illusion' would be the right word only if we think something is there which isn't. But the color is there, however in consciousness, not as a measurable event. It can't be measured because it is not quantifiable. But to acknowledge something as real which can't be measured contradicts your definition of reality, so you won't acknowledge it. The "reality of an illusion' is too abstract for a color. The color is right there in your view, visible. The color is visibility itself, which again doesn't fit into concepts of mathematical physics. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Terms are merely reducible to terms. It IS a closed representational system that simply correlates with reality.
That's a description of physics language only.
(Although: the correlation with reality is outside the formalism of physics. Cf the formalism of chess is a closed symbolic system, which can be assigned bindings to various and many physical chess boards. Likewise the formalism of physics can be assigned a binding to structural patterns in the observed phenomenal world.)
Why should a term be reducible to "extra-linguistic reality"?
I don't know what you mean by 'why' in this context. I'm just making a factual observation. Conscious terms just *do* have a extra-linguistic reference to reality. That's just the way we use them.
The mind is an abstraction of reality, not reality itself.
You can disprove this in a number of ways. One way is to drop a brick on your foot. The resulting pain is very much a part of reality. It is emphatically not an abstraction.
If you are confused by the connection between the conscious pain and the physical brick hitting the physical foot, you might find it easier to consider experiences you have when dreaming: these are actual, real conscious experiences.
How does this prove that consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon?
Because consciousness is real, whereas physical substance is a notional construct -- strictly speaking, a fiction. You can't derive something real from a fiction.
This is like opening your cereal packet in the morning and expecting to find an imaginary number in it! The imaginary number (like all numbers) is a notional construct. So you would be making a category-mistake (in Gilbert Ryle's terms) to supposed you could encounter it in the flesh. Likewise it would be a category-mistake to suppose that real consciousness could emegre from a notional physical system.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
You can disprove this in a number of ways. One way is to drop a brick on your foot. The resulting pain is very much a part of reality. It is emphatically not an abstraction.
Abstractions are real, just like everthing else. The point is that the pain is a highly simplistic motivational representation of what is happening to the foot. Representation is abstraction.
If you are confused by the connection between the conscious pain and the physical brick hitting the physical foot, you might find it easier to consider experiences you have when dreaming: these are actual, real conscious experiences.
You are confused by an asumption that representation is not abstraction. The dream world is NOT REAL. It is merely representation based on rearranged environment correlated memories. This is why virtually anything is possible. IT IS FANTASY, not fact.
Because consciousness is real, whereas physical substance is a notional construct -- strictly speaking, a fiction. You can't derive something real from a fiction.
WOW, a solipsist at heart! EVERYTHING IS REAL. Some things merely look like something which they are not. THAT is the nature of consciousness. A "benign user-illusion" (to quote Dennett).
Likewise it would be a category-mistake to suppose that real consciousness could emegre from a notional physical system.
This points to your problem. Just because we have to form a representation (or notion) of EVERYTHING (including symbols and concepts representing our own mind) to percieve and understand it, does not mean that the actually thing that our representation is correlated with really IS a "notional physical system". You are confusing your own user-illusions with reality itself!
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Abstractions are real, just like everthing else.
Huh? So if I invent a set X={P,{a,b,c,}} then P is real? So Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes are real?
Not in the normal sense of the word 'real' they're not.
The point is that the pain is a highly simplistic motivational representation of what is happening to the foot.
So what? It's a conscious sensation, and that's all that matters.
If it's representation that's confusing you then gently press your eyeballs and get some non-representational phosphenes. They're real (otherwise how would know they were there?).
You are confused by an asumption that representation is not abstraction.
Representation is not abstraction. A conscious sensation is non-abstract but it can still represent.
The dream world is NOT REAL. It is merely representation based on rearranged environment correlated memories. This is why virtually anything is possible. IT IS FANTASY, not fact.
The conscious experience of a dream is real. (Otherwise how would you know you were having a dream?) The world depicted by it is, of course, not real.
This is just like the waking world, in fact.
WOW, a solipsist at heart!
Huh? Where did solipsism come from? Nothing I said supports solipsism.
EVERYTHING IS REAL.
Sherlock Holmes isn't. The present king of France isn't. The fourth side of a triangle isn't.
This points to your problem. Just because we have to form a representation (or notion) of EVERYTHING (including symbols and concepts representing our own mind) to percieve and understand it, does not mean that the actually thing that our representation is correlated with really IS a "notional physical system". You are confusing your own user-illusions with reality itself!
What?
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
subtillioN: Abstractions are real, just like everthing else.
Peter: Huh? So if I invent a set X={P,{a,b,c,}} then P is real? So Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes are real?
Not in the normal sense of the word 'real' they're not.
There is no dualism between real and illusion. An illusion is simply not what it seems. This is the root of your confusion with what I am saying.
If it's representation that's confusing you then gently press your eyeballs and get some non-representational phosphenes. They're real (otherwise how would know they were there?).
The image of those phosphenes ARE representations of the physical processes that are happening to the eyeball.
subtillioN: You are confused by an asumption that representation is not abstraction.
Peter: Representation is not abstraction. A conscious sensation is non-abstract but it can still represent.
There are at least two different senses of the word 'abstract' you are using one and I am using another.
subtillioN: The dream world is NOT REAL. It is merely representation based on rearranged environment correlated memories. This is why virtually anything is possible. IT IS FANTASY, not fact.
Peter: The conscious experience of a dream is real. (Otherwise how would you know you were having a dream?) The world depicted by it is, of course, not real.
that was my point.
subtillioN: WOW, a solipsist at heart!
Peter: Huh? Where did solipsism come from? Nothing I said supports solipsism.
It came from this, you said:
"Because consciousness is real, whereas physical substance is a notional construct -- strictly speaking, a fiction. You can't derive something real from a fiction. "
Sounds like solipsism to me.
EVERYTHING IS REAL.
Sherlock Holmes isn't. The present king of France isn't. The fourth side of a triangle isn't.
If you know what the nature of the illusion then you can see its reality. You are simply using language to point to things which cannot exist. These referents are not part of everything because they do not exist. The forth side of a triangle never gets past the illogic of the statement. It points to nothing.
What?
ok I will rephrase it:
Just because we have to form a correlated 'notion' of physical reality in order to percieve and understand it, does not mean that the actual physical correlate itself IS a "notional physical system". |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
"Because consciousness is real, whereas physical substance is a notional construct -- strictly speaking, a fiction. You can't derive something real from a fiction. "
Sounds like solipsism to me.
Solipsism is the theory that I am the only conscious being that exists. Personally, I think that that theory is massively implausible. It's much more plausible to suppose that every person on this planet is a conscious being and probably a lot of the animals are, too.
Solipsism does not follow from what I was saying.
Maybe you were thinking of mental monism?
ok I will rephrase it:
Just because we have to form a correlated 'notion' of physical reality in order to percieve and understand it, does not mean that the actual physical correlate itself IS a "notional physical system".
Thanks for the rephrase.
What you say is, in itself, true. Let p = "we have to form a correlated 'notion' of physical reality" and q = "the actual physical correlate itself IS a 'notional physical system'." I agree with you that p does not imply q. But I didn't say it did.
Let r = "The objects of physics such as protons etc do not occur as conscious experiences" and let s = "The terms of physics do not have a direct semantic reference to any extra-linguistic things". Then I a claiming that r implies s, and s implies q.
Let me use a computer analogy. In C++ you can have a pointer variable, say "X". In order to get X to point anywhere, you must assign to it the address of the thing you want it to point to. Now, anything that is not in memory (eg the Eiffel Tower) cannot have an address. Therefore you can't get a pointer to it. Any pointer that contains no address can still be used: you can put into a structure, you can assign its value to another pointer -- but you can't de-reference it.
Likewise, a term can refer to something only if it is in consciousness, so that you can fix what the referent is. Since physical things are not in consciousness, you cannot fix any reference to them. Therefore any terms that denote physical things do not really bear any reference to them, but have the role of fictions. You can use them wiithin the closed linguistic system of physics, but you can't 'de-reference' them.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Solipsism is the theory that I am the only conscious being that exists. ...
Solipsism does not follow from what I was saying.
Maybe you were thinking of mental monism?
Right, sorry for the mis-lable! I am a substance monist, would this be your philosophical antithesis?
Let r = "The objects of physics such as protons etc do not occur as conscious experiences" and let s = "The terms of physics do not have a direct semantic reference to any extra-linguistic things". Then I a claiming that r implies s, and s implies q.
There are certain experimental results that show that such a thing as a 'proton' does exist. What exactly this 'proton' is, is hypothetical, but there is a certain amount of conscious experience that we do have with the 'proton'.
How do the limits on the spatial resolution of our sensations and the limited representational realm built from that sensation say anything about whether consciousness is emergent or not?
Likewise, a term can refer to something only if it is in consciousness, so that you can fix what the referent is. Since physical things are not in consciousness, you cannot fix any reference to them.
Physical things ARE in consciousness. There is simply a limit to the resolution to which we can percieve them.
Therefore any terms that denote physical things do not really bear any reference to them,
Be careful not to generalize all scales based on the limited realm of perception in question.
but have the role of fictions. You can use them wiithin the closed linguistic system of physics, but you can't 'de-reference' them.
The mind itself is a fiction created by the brain to correlate with physical reality. I have seen nothing in your arguments which negates this interpretation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
OK, so I went backward through your postings and finally got to your main argument :)
But a thermodynamic soup involves new concepts such as temperature that just don't have any meaning at the microlevel of molecules.
It's a higher logical level. Just like you can never make your car reverse just by pressing either gas or brake pedals -- or any combination. And sometimes you can't express the "higher" functions (gear change) in terms of the "lower" (gas & brake pedals), or vice versa. But this may have less relevance for "emergent" properties.
Likewise people claim that the concept of consciousness emerges as a wholly new concept from brains.
As I said in the essay, this claim doesn't go through, because emergent concepts must always have an analytical definition at the lower level, otherwise they could never be empirically recognised. Even if temperature is *defined* phenomenologically, it still has to be cashed out in previously defined physical observables before it could ever be measured.
Well, as Searle might say, we shouldn't rewrite ontology in terms of epistemology. You shouldn't say that something is an "X", just because you can only write 1 letter words. And we can't say that consciousness has no lower level definition, just because the epistemology prevents us from examining it fully -- at this time.
But the Quantum-Duality stuff has absolutely no evidence to support it, it's pure speculation. It's almost like saying that since the clock in your PC cannot be absolutely precise (it varies in duration from cycle to cycle) -- that this somehow opens the door for consciousness in an asynchronous, let's say analogue computer.
I mean, people are looking for a magic spell to produce a doorway into consciousness. But reciting "quantumus consciencitus" or whatever, only makes you look silly.
That constraint does not apply to consciousness. Conscious experiences such as the colour red are defined by private ostensive definition. (E.g. you look at something red and declare to yourself that that is what you mean by "red".) Therefore consciousness cannot be an emergent property.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. A computer program can easily examine an image and tell you it's predominant color (RGB). Without Consciousness, it could even bind it to a label, "red".
I don't know exactly what the transistors and the features of the CPU have to do in order to produce this, but I do happen to know the type of algorithm that could do such a thing. Likewise, I know that when someone recognizes something red, their neurology reorganizes slightly -- but I couldn't tell you exactly how the neurons do that, yet I know the higher level strategies that might be involved.
As a hypnotist, I understand the methods people can use to bind objects to labels:
Your method was to say the label to yourself internally while looking at it -- for example.
And another person might make the object larger, in the mind's eye, and imagine the letters of the label imprinted or emblazoned on the object.
I emblazon people's names onto their foreheads, when I want to learn their name -- for example.
And I can teach other people to use a strategy of some sort, when they have difficulty doing some task that requires remembering labels. So, to me, there is nothing "ostensibly private" about how people do so.
Maybe we should just be talking about the subjective experience of something red, rather than the label one associates to them? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
It's a higher logical level. Just like you can never make your car reverse just by pressing either gas or brake pedals -- or any combination.
Yes, I understand the concept of emergence and see that it applies to some things, e.g. thermodynamics, or more pertinently the high-level data structures that I use in computer programming which ultimately rest on electrical charges in the circuits. I am not opposed to the concept of emergence per se, I am saying specifically that consciousnes cannot emerge from a physical system.
Well, as Searle might say, we shouldn't rewrite ontology in terms of epistemology.
Much as I respect Searle, this time he's just plain wrong.
You have to ask: Why not? Where does the rule come from that you shouldn't rewrite ontology in terms of epistomology? Sure, in most circumstances you would not want to do that. But the mind-body problem is different from most other problems.
You shouldn't say that something is an "X", just because you can only write 1 letter words. And we can't say that consciousness has no lower level definition, just because the epistemology prevents us from examining it fully -- at this time.
I am as reductionistic as anybody, and I don't deny that consciousness experiences can be reduced to a lower level. But the lower level also consists of conscious exeperiences. The Buddhists have done the most work in this area.
What I am denying is that consciousness can be reduced to a physical, non-conscious level.
But the Quantum-Duality stuff has absolutely no evidence to support it, it's pure speculation.
It has elementary logic to support it. (i) I can report my conscious experiences (as indeed we all can). (ii) Consciousness is nonphysical (see earlier arguments about nonreducibility to physics). (iii) Therefore reporting my conscious experience is an instance of a nonphysical process having an effect on a physical system. (iv) If the physical system were deterministic, this would be impossible. (v) Since it *does* happen (as an empirical fact), it must do so at nondeterministic events. (vi) The only nondeterministic events are quantum mechanical events.
Which step in this argument do you disagree with?
(Aside: there are also the initial conditions, but I don't want to bring them in here as it would muddy the water.)
BTW This has nothing to do with 'quantum duality'. I think quantum duality is a useless idea. And it's irrelevant here anyway.
It's almost like saying that since the clock in your PC cannot be absolutely precise (it varies in duration from cycle to cycle) -- that this somehow opens the door for consciousness in an asynchronous, let's say analogue computer.
No, that's got nothing to do with what we're discussing.
I mean, people are looking for a magic spell to produce a doorway into consciousness. But reciting "quantumus consciencitus" or whatever, only makes you look silly.
Fine, so tell me which step in the argument (i) to (vi) you think is wrong and why you think it's wrong.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. A computer program can easily examine an image and tell you it's predominant color (RGB). Without Consciousness, it could even bind it to a label, "red".
Yes, of course it can. So what? What relevance does that have to this discussion? We are talkinbg about conscious experiences, not about labelling parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is what the computer is doing.
As a hypnotist, I understand the methods people can use to bind objects to labels:
Your method was to say the label to yourself internally while looking at it -- for example.
That was an example. You can do it by any method. The key point is that the referent is present in consciousness.
And I can teach other people to use a strategy of some sort, when they have difficulty doing some task that requires remembering labels. So, to me, there is nothing "ostensibly private" about how people do so.
It's private in so far as you cannot look into their minds. You rely on their verbal reports and body language to infere what is happening in their conscious minds.
BTW I did not say "ostensibly private", I said "private ostensive definition". The "ostensive" is qualifying the "definiton". It means 'definition by pointing to something'.
Maybe we should just be talking about the subjective experience of something red, rather than the label one associates to them?
Fine, but where would that get you?
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
I am saying specifically that consciousnes cannot emerge from a physical system.
I am as reductionistic as anybody, and I don't deny that consciousness experiences can be reduced to a lower level. But the lower level also consists of conscious exeperiences. The Buddhists have done the most work in this area.
What I am denying is that consciousness can be reduced to a physical, non-conscious level.
I take it that by non-conscous, you don't mean unconscious? And I'm interested in what you think of Multipal Personality Disorder in light of some quantum mechanical path to consciousness? Perhaps you don't think anything of it, and that would be OK.
There's another term, co-conscious, where people have "parts" that function at various levels of consciousness, some hypnotherapies and psychotherapies deal with "parts" of a person (for example, in Transactional Analysis, you have the Child, Parent, and Adult parts); these are literally unconscious processes that have been ingrained into the neurology of the person, ingrained responses. I'm sure you don't think about each letter you type as you write back?
It has elementary logic to support it. (i) I can report my conscious experiences (as indeed we all can). (ii) Consciousness is nonphysical (see earlier arguments about nonreducibility to physics). (iii) Therefore reporting my conscious experience is an instance of a nonphysical process having an effect on a physical system. (iv) If the physical system were deterministic, this would be impossible. (v) Since it *does* happen (as an empirical fact), it must do so at nondeterministic events. (vi) The only nondeterministic events are quantum mechanical events.
Which step in this argument do you disagree with?
I disagree with the assumption that "physical" and "nonphysical" form a partition. Which clashes first with (iii).
We are talkinbg about conscious experiences, not about labelling parts of the electromagnetic spectrum
Which is why I suggested droping the idea of labeling anything, altogether.
The key point is that the referent is present in consciousness.
Present, or re-presented?
It's private in so far as you cannot look into their minds. You rely on their verbal reports and body language to infere what is happening in their conscious minds.
Yes, and you rely on minimal cues as much as possible to reduce the possibility of "cheating". And you can do things in an indirect fashion, such that they answer a question -- that they don't know they were asked.
Maybe we should just be talking about the subjective experience of something red, rather than the label one associates to them?
Fine, but where would that get you?
That would get back to primary experience, without adding the complication of labeling it. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
[quite]Ofcourse it can't (be reduced to physics), but it arises _from_ matter ...
That would be very odd, because the equations and statements in physics textbooks describe how *physical* states arise out of past physical states. I've never yet see one that said how a conscious sensation would arise from a physical state. In fact, I don't quite see how a physics textbook could do ever so, because ... in order to do so, it would have to define some terms for denoting conscious sensations. And since we both agree that consciousness is not reducible to physics (right?), I am at a loss to see how anyone could ever, in principle, define conscious experiences in physical terms. Agreed? You can't define the sensation of red in terms of space and energy? (Well, if you *could* do so, then you could hand it to a blind person and she will be able to see again!) Yes, I know you can define the 'red' segment of the electromagnetic spectrum in physical terms, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what you actually experience in your mind.
So, therefore, no laws of physics are ever going to be able to predict the occurrence of any conscious sensations. After all, you can't predict what you can't define. So, if conscious sensations ever did 'emerge', then it would be a miracle rather than an event caused under the nomological constraint of physical law. But we don't believe in miracles, do we? Um .. no, so it looks as if consciousness does not and cannot 'emerge' from matter. So, it must be a basic ingredient of reality.
So let met ask you this Peter, do you think it would be possible to be even more concious(higher or different resolution?) than we are?
I don't understand the question. Consciousness is multi-faceted and multidimensional. Which dimension, precisely, are you measuring? E.g. is a blind person with a heightened sense of hearing more or less conscious? The question does not make much sense unless you identify one single dimension at a time.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
I wasn't 'looking for the mechanisms of consciousness'. I was pointing out why consciousness cannot emerge from physics.
Your argument is irrelevant.
Your counter-argument to my points seems to be: let's talk about something else instead.
No it was “Let’s not waste time arguing irrelevant points.”
I say: consciousness cannot be emergent from physics because physical laws (at whatever level) do not have any reference to the contents of consciousness. Consciousness does not have a physical definition, therefore it can be referenced in a physical law, therefore it can emerge from physics.
So because consciousness is a private, subjective, internal phenomenon then this automatically means that it is not physical? How come then raw chemistry can alter it DRAMATICALLY? We do have physical models of consciousness, but they exeist at the level that you are ignoring. This is why you will forever be ignorant of HOW consciousness works.
You say: Let's talk about architecture instead.
You want to talk about the physical mechanisms of consciousness. I am telling you that they exist at the network architectural level. If you argue at any other level then your arguments are irrelevant. They are purely symbolic and only work within your closed little dualistic logic system.
No, let's focus on the basics first. Like: whether or not consciousness could, even in principle, ever emerge from physics. Only if we were to get an affirmative answer to that would it be appropriate to move on to asking about the details of how it could so emerge.
We are proof of concept. If you don't understand how the mechanisms of consciousness works and thus what consciousness actually is then you can't even begin to look for it at any level.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Your argument is irrelevant. ... Let’s not waste time arguing irrelevant points.
Very persuasive line of argument. Not.
peter: consciousness cannot be emergent from physics because physical laws (at whatever level) do not have any reference to the contents of consciousness. Consciousness does not have a physical definition, therefore it can be referenced in a physical law, therefore it can emerge from physics.
subtillioN: So because consciousness is a private, subjective, internal phenomenon then this automatically means that it is not physical?
It's difficult to know how to respond when you quote an argument and then immediately paraphrase it as something quite different.
It's true that consciousness is a 'private, subjective' phenomenon. But that is not the reason I gave for its being irreducible to, and non-emergable from, physics. The reason is that the language in which physics (at *any* level) is expressed is in terms that ultimately have a definition rooted in analytical concepts such as mass and energy. The terms in which facts of consciousness are expressed are not amenable to that kind of definition. They have a different kind of definition, in which they gain meaning by being related (by declaration, association, or any other technique) with an immediate conscious experience.
So there are two disjoint sets of terms: the physical and the mental. *That* is why mental facts can never follow from physical facts.
The abstract levels of systems that you project onto the physical world do not change that basic, elementary logic. Each level is ultimately defined in terms of lower levels, otherwise it would be free-floating and meaningless. So all physical systems, no matter how abstract the concepts used to describe them, rest on basic physical concepts.
That whole physical edifice excludes consciousness. So consciousness cannot be emergent property from the physical systems.
How come then raw chemistry can alter it DRAMATICALLY?
It can't. Mental processes alter it and manifest themselves as conscious experiences that you abstractly model as chemical processes.
You want to talk about the physical mechanisms of consciousness. I am telling you that they exist at the network architectural level. If you argue at any other level then your arguments are irrelevant. They are purely symbolic and only work within your closed little dualistic logic system.
If any such mechanisms actually exist then they must be fleshed out in matter and energy. Agreed?
In which case they exclude consciousness for the reasons given above.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Very persuasive line of argument. Not.
It was not a “line of argument”.
The reason is that the language in which physics (at *any* level) is expressed is in terms that ultimately have a definition rooted in analytical concepts such as mass and energy. The terms in which facts of consciousness are expressed are not amenable to that kind of definition.
That is your mistaken assumption. The network architecture level is a highly analytical level and this is where the understanding can be found.
They have a different kind of definition, in which they gain meaning by being related (by declaration, association, or any other technique) with an immediate conscious experience.
…only within the closed confusion of your dualistic/monistic contradictory logic system.
So there are two disjoint sets of terms: the physical and the mental. *That* is why mental facts can never follow from physical facts.
”Very persuasive line of argument. Not.” Reality is not dependent on our feeble language attempts to understand her.
The abstract levels of systems that you project onto the physical world do not change that basic, elementary logic. Each level is ultimately defined in terms of lower levels, otherwise it would be free-floating and meaningless. So all physical systems, no matter how abstract the concepts used to describe them, rest on basic physical concepts.
Wrong. Physical systems do not rest on concepts. It is our understanding of physical systems that is conceptual. This is the source of your confusion. You keep getting the conceptual mixed up with the actual.
That whole physical edifice excludes consciousness. So consciousness cannot be emergent property from the physical systems.
Wrong. It is entirely explainable via physical mechanisms. You are simply excluding the entire field of understanding.
subtillioN: How come then raw chemistry can alter it DRAMATICALLY?
Peter: It can't. Mental processes alter it and manifest themselves as conscious experiences that you abstractly model as chemical processes.
E q u i v o c a t i o n!
You are using a dualism to justify your monism and flipping back and forth between the two to suit your argument!
What a joke! So your argument is that since EVERYTHING is mental then psychotropics are just the mind effecting itself? How can you exclude chemistry from physical reality and then make the opposite categorical distinction between physics and the mind? Wouldn’t physics be purely mental as well? If so then why is there a dualism at all? You are using the differences of the language of physics and the language of consciousness to legitimize your dualism and then you are saying that there is no dualism when it comes to chemistry, it is all just mind. You can’t have both! If it is all mind then why would it make any difference to your argument if the mental could emerge from the ‘physical’. Wouldn’t it be the same as the mental emerging from the mental?
If everything is mental then wouldn’t it just make the mental world that much more coherent if there were not also a contradictory dualism within your monism? This dualism seems entirely unnecessary and superfluous to the crux of your argument. You are simply using this convenient equivocation to justify your agrument that the mind is not physical. You fail to realize that if physical reality is also mental then this deeper level distinction between the 'physical' and the mental is not a distinction at all.
Mental monism and substance monism are inherently indistinguishable at the metaphysical level. Why is it necessary that there be a dualism in your monism? It seems like a fault in your model because you are using the mental which you conveniently label ‘physics’ temporarily to argue the necessity that ALL is mental. It seems like a counter productive argument! If ALL is mental then there is no dualism in the first place to somehow justify monism.
This is equivocation. Your monism is flawed!
If any such mechanisms actually exist then they must be fleshed out in matter and energy. Agreed?
In which case they exclude consciousness for the reasons given above.
Those reasons are not valid. They rely on differences in language. Physics is NOT dependent on language.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Physical systems do not rest on concepts. It is our understanding of physical systems that is conceptual. This is the source of your confusion. You keep getting the conceptual mixed up with the actual.
This is really the crux of it. You are failing to see that, in the strict sense, in fact they are one and the same.
As there is so much preconception invested in the *physical world* it is sometimes easier to clarify the issues by reference to virtuak reality systems. (Which was why The Matrix was of interest in the first place.)
Imagine that you are in a full-immersion virtual reality such as that depicted in The Matrix. You pick up a seemingly solid object such as a tennis ball and throw it up in the air and observe its parabolic trajectory. Now, you could write down the equation of motion of the tennis ball, that is to say, a mathematical model of the ball; and then claim that the tennis ball is something different from the mathematical model of the tennis ball. And you reason for saying this that you can feel the roundness, the firmness, and the weight of the ball but you cannot do that with the abstract mathematical model. Now, from within the perspective of the Matrix world, that is true. But in the truer perspective that we get by stepping outside the Matrix world, we can see that the conscious experience of the 'tennis ball' was generated from a mathematical model in the computer.
The key point here is that the notion of 'solid matter' is a projection of conscious sensations (of resistance to movement, etc) onto a mathematical model. The actual reality, the true 'solidity', lies in the conscious experience. The entity that this quality of solidity is falsely projected onto, i.e. the physical tennis ball, is only an abstract construct.
It was what the Vedanta calls 'maya' -- conflating an abstraction with the concrete attributes that are projected onto that abstraction.
The same logic applies to our everyday world. The true 'solidity' lies in our conscious experience. But it is falsely projected onto the mathematical model. So you end up with the bizarre notion of two two different things, (a) the physical object and (b) the physical model. In fact, there is just one thing -- the physical model, (a) with mental properties projected onto it, or (b) without.
If so then why is there a dualism at all?
There isn't a dualism. The fundamental nature of reality is mental. This is monism. It is not, however, solipsism because (clearly) there is a force or agency outside us that governs natural phenomena. But it is ultimately mental in nature. I refer to it as the 'metamind'.
Chemical processes are driven by mental processes inside the metamind, which creates in your experiential field the observables of chemistry. (Just as, in The Matrix, the computer will generate the imagery that depicts the observable products of a chemical reaction.) In the case of psychotropic agenst, they are also manifest in our experiential field via another route, such as hallucination.
It is again an example of maya to suppose that the chemistry can affect the mind. The metamind affects your mind, and it does so via two routes.
If everything is mental then wouldn’t it just make the mental world that much more coherent if there were not also a contradictory dualism within your monism? This dualism seems entirely unnecessary and superfluous to the crux of your argument.
If I had a dualism then you're right, it would be unnecessary and superfluous. But I don't. What makes you think I advocate dualism?
you are using the mental which you conveniently label ‘physics’ temporarily to argue the necessity that ALL is mental.
The laws of physics clearly form a successful model of the structural regularities that are manifest in our perceptual world. Therefore (since the manifest world is generated by the metamind), the metamind contains within it some logic that captures sufficient information to generate a (virtual) perceived world that fully complies with the physical laws.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
subtillioN: Physical systems do not rest on concepts. It is our understanding of physical systems that is conceptual. This is the source of your confusion. You keep getting the conceptual mixed up with the actual.
Peter: This is really the crux of it. You are failing to see that, in the strict sense, in fact they are one and the same.
Only from your mental monism pov. You have shown no reason why the substrate for the monism could not be physical rather than mental. I suspect that it is harder than you think.
Imagine that you are in a full-immersion virtual reality such as that depicted in The Matrix. You pick up a seemingly solid object such as a tennis ball and throw it up in the air and observe its parabolic trajectory. Now, you could write down the equation of motion of the tennis ball, that is to say, a mathematical model of the ball; and then claim that the tennis ball is something different from the mathematical model of the tennis ball. And you reason for saying this that you can feel the roundness, the firmness, and the weight of the ball but you cannot do that with the abstract mathematical model. Now, from within the perspective of the Matrix world, that is true. But in the truer perspective that we get by stepping outside the Matrix world, we can see that the conscious experience of the 'tennis ball' was generated from a mathematical model in the computer.
All you have shown is that the physical world can be simulated to a degree (which is basically what consciousness or perception is). There are ALWAYS substrate level limits to such simulations, however, that distinguish them from reality, if you can get the right perspective to see the limitations.
The key point here is that the notion of 'solid matter' is a projection of conscious sensations (of resistance to movement, etc) onto a mathematical model. The actual reality, the true 'solidity', lies in the conscious experience.
Wrong, the ‘true solidity’ lies in the actual solidity. Our perception of it is merely that, a perception. The mental map is NOT the physical territory in the case of the physical world.
The entity that this quality of solidity is falsely projected onto, i.e. the physical tennis ball, is only an abstract construct.
So it is all just a figment of our imagination, or the solipsism of the universe itself? (Which is what mental monism actually is: Universal Solipsism)
It was what the Vedanta calls 'maya' -- conflating an abstraction with the concrete attributes that are projected onto that abstraction.
The mind itself is an abstraction. This doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING else is one too.
The same logic applies to our everyday world. The true 'solidity' lies in our conscious experience. But it is falsely projected onto the mathematical model. So you end up with the bizarre notion of two two different things, (a) the physical object and (b) the physical model. In fact, there is just one thing -- the physical model, (a) with mental properties projected onto it, or (b) without.
1. Consciousness is not a mathematical model.
2. The notion of the “two different things” is not so bizarre when it is realized that consciousness is merely a representation of reality. Your “physical model” is better termed “a mental model of a physical object” so as not to confuse the two. ;)
3. I agree with your conclusion that “In fact, there is just one thing -- the physical model, (a) with mental properties projected onto it, or (b) without.”, but isn’t this the contradictory to your mental monism?
subtillioN: If so then why is there a dualism at all?
Peter: There isn't a dualism.
You have been trying to illustrate all along the fundamental incompatability between the mental and the physical descriptions of reality. This is a dualism, but as I said in my last post, the purpose of this quasi-dualism was to push the physical reality out of the picture. What you really end up doing is pushing objective reality itself out of the picture and thus you end up with solipsism, which, on a universal scale, you are ok with.
The fundamental nature of reality is mental. This is monism. It is not, however, solipsism because (clearly) there is a force or agency outside us that governs natural phenomena. But it is ultimately mental in nature. I refer to it as the 'metamind'.
So what is the agency outside the metamind? ;) Mental monism is a kind of solipsism, as is substance monism to an extent. The only way around it is to assume no outside whatsoever, i.e. a universe of infinite extent.
Chemical processes are driven by mental processes inside the metamind
It is important for you to realize that your “metamind” and my “physical reality” are entirely indistinguishable. We simply have different words for the same ‘objective reality’. The fact is that the properties of ‘objective’ reality can influence ‘subjective reality’. There is an intimate link. This was in response to the upswing of your equivocated stance that physical and mental reality are fundamentally incompatible (? at the non-fundamental language level?) and thus not inter-derivable. It seems that you are on the down-swing of this stance now. So I will just try to debate your shifting position the best I can.
…the metamind, which creates in your experiential field the observables of chemistry.
Again my monism is entirely indistinguishable from your monism, so this is simply saying to me that physical reality provides the sensation that is observed as chemistry.
(Just as, in The Matrix, the computer will generate the imagery that depicts the observable products of a chemical reaction.) In the case of psychotropic agenst, they are also manifest in our experiential field via another route, such as hallucination.
The Matrix is a simulation, not reality. The burden is on you to prove that objective reality itself is a simulation.
subtillioN: If everything is mental then wouldn’t it just make the mental world that much more coherent if there were not also a contradictory dualism within your monism? This dualism seems entirely unnecessary and superfluous to the crux of your argument.
Peter: If I had a dualism then you're right, it would be unnecessary and superfluous. But I don't. What makes you think I advocate dualism?
Well you had a dualism when it was convenient to your argument. ;) equiv… well you get the picture.
You said for instance: ”That whole physical edifice excludes consciousness. So consciousness cannot be emergent property from the physical systems.”
You also said: “So there are two disjoint sets of terms: the physical and the mental. *That* is why mental facts can never follow from physical facts.” In this case you took a HUGE leap from describing sets of terms, to conclusions about sets of facts. In any case my argument is this:
If there is no duality and it is all mental then your whole argument that “consciousness cannot be emergent property from the physical systems” is moot. There never was a ‘physical edifice’ to begin with to differentiate between the two. So ultimately your argument didn’t have a leg to stand on, because it rested (strangely enough) on this difference.
However, as I said, the whole point of your quasi-dualism was to exclude physical reality itself, but as I also said, what really happens is that it excludes OBJECTIVE reality, because that is where the crack (which you have driven your language-level temporary wedge through) can actually be found. For instance, is it not true that EVERYTHING outside of yourself consists of objective reality which can be defined in physical terms? Is it not impossible to confirm that my qualia are exactly the same as yours? Can you even prove that I actually have qualia or am I simply programmed with the proper responses to your questions? This is the rift that you are actually attempting to exploit, because even the brain (which is all you can see of anyone elses mind) is part of the objective ‘physical ediface’. Thus, driving that wedge and pushing out of the picture the entire physical edifice, also pushes away objective reality itself. This results in solipsism.
subtillioN: you are using the mental which you conveniently label ‘physics’ temporarily to argue the necessity that ALL is mental.
Peter: The laws of physics clearly form a successful model of the structural regularities that are manifest in our perceptual world. Therefore (since the manifest world is generated by the metamind), the metamind contains within it some logic that captures sufficient information to generate a (virtual) perceived world that fully complies with the physical laws.
So what happened to the fundamental incommensurate difference between physical and mental reality which prohibit the derivability of mental from physical reality? Oh yeah it was just a language game!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
monism/dualism the crucial fixation
|
|
|
|
Peter,
This dualism is the problem at the core of your argument. Mental monism, if it is a true monism with no internal contradictions or dualities, is entirely unassailable within the hermetically sealed chamber of its logic system, and yet at the same time it is entirely unverifiable. There is no need to assert the fundamental incompatibility between physical reality and the mind, because in any monism they are both fundamentally the same thing. I can see why you would do this however, to prove that the physical must be mental. Yet, to postulate a dualism within a monism ultimately serves the purpose of the exclusion of one or the other of these split halves. Because of cogito ergo sum, ultimately this split forms a rift between subjective and objective reality. The argument then is that either subjective or objective reality is an illusion, since they are fundamentally non-derivable one from the other. The problem is that it is entirely unprovable which one is the illusion. Since to admit that the objective world is an illusion is to admit solipsism, then our choice seems clear: The mind is what must be the illusion!
Since, however, your argument rests entirely on the language differences between the two domains, and from experience we know that physical and mental reality are fundamental to language itself, then the argument is ineffective in the first place. It is at the wrong level of functionality. This doesn’t prove the newly derived conclusion wrong, however. It merely shows the superficiality of the rationale of the argument.
subtillioN
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Peter's monism/dualism equivocation
|
|
|
|
I have never said that PHYSICS isn't a language game. I said that PHYSICAL REALITY isn't. THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE.
You've been stating this claim this for some time, and now you're shouting it, but what you haven't done is to provide any rational grounds for the claim.
You've been claiming the existence of this mysterious things called 'physical reality', which is neither the physical model, nor our conscious experience. So what it is it? Where is it? What makes you think there is any such thing? Show us some of this 'physical reality'. At least, show us some evidence for it. Or even just some rational argument for thinking that there might be such a thing as 'physical reality'.
And when you've done *that* there is the further task of saying why anyone should care about something so elusive and mysterious as 'physical reality'. Certainly the vast edifice of physics is not interested in such a thing. Physics has been getting on very successfully for three centuries with *physical models*, without needing to make any reference to 'physical reality'. Physics does a fine job with its formalisms and equations, and no physicist has ever felt it necessary to introduce a term for 'physical reality'. Whether you take F=MA or E=MC^2, the terms denote elements in the model. Show me one single equation in physics where there's a term denoting 'physical reality'. I don't believe there is one. So, apart from any other defect, the concept of 'physical reality' has no explanatory power whatsoever.
The sooner we clear the decks of such metaphysical fictions as 'physical reality', we sooner we can get a clearer view of the genuine *reality*, which is mental.
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Peter's monism/dualism equivocation
|
|
|
|
You can ALWAYS posit a deeper layer and then call it whatever you want.
But that's just creating a story, concocting a fiction.
You're supposing that there is some 'unknown somewhat' (to use Berkeley's words) or 'thing in itself' (to use Kant's) that is forever outside the realm of both (a) direct conscious experience, and (b) the explanatory framework of science, which is a topic-neutral system of laws and equations.
What does it mean to say that this mysterious and unknowable metaphysical substance 'might be physical'? Surely all that that means is that it obeys the laws of physics. But that is just a topic-neutral statement of the observed regularities of the observed world. So, you're not actually saying anything at all.
You are claiming to be saying something about the nature of this supposed fundamental reality. But all you keep coming back to is that it complies with the laws of physics. OK, fine, we already know that. I thought you were trying to tell us something about its nature, or what its nature might be, or what its nature might be conceived to be. Instead we have nothing at all about its nature. We have no concept whatsoever of this supposed 'fundamental reality' that is denoted by physical terms. And the reason we do not and cannot is because they are formal constructs.
(I sometimes wonder whether discussions about chess sometimes have endless debates about what the fundamental nature of the Pawn or the King is. "Yes, I know the Pawn is defined by these movements, but what is it *really*? What is the fundamental nature of the Pawn?" What is it about physics that leads people to think that the formalism could ever refer to an occult fundamental reality?)
Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
subtillioN: The roots of consciousness and physical reality are deeper than the sphere of language.
Peter: Oh? What makes you think that?
subtillioN: Because they exist pre-language.
Conscious experience obviously exists pre-language. The constructs of physics do not.
The only way I can think of to make sense of what you're saying is to suppose that you're confusiing the constructs of physics (elementary particles and all assemblages thereof) with patterns of conscious sensation. When I pick up a tennis ball, I encounter a regular pattern of visual and tactile sensations. Those sensations and that pattern obviously exist pre-language. But the abstract construct of the assemblage of atoms that we use as a model for that sensory pattern does not exist pre-language.
I guess you're going to say that, although the model of the physical ball does not exist pre-language, the 'actual' physical ball does. But if you say that then you've left the orbits of both (a) science, which talks only of the model, and (b) direct experience, whichis only of the sensations.
You may claim that there is an 'actual' physical ball existing pre-language but then you would have to say what this is supposed to mean. It's outside physics and its outside direct conscious experience.
Every child has a brain before it has consciousness.
The phyiscal organism has a physical brain, before that organism has a mind. But that organism and brain exist only as constructs in the minds of observers, who (before the child is born and acquires a mind) are other people, such as the mother.
It is common knowledge that physical reality is not dependent on language.
It is not common knowledge but a common philosophical myth. You will find no support for this myth in physics, which necessarily rests on language for its existence. Nor will you find any support in everyday conscious experience, which does not include any direct experience of physical things.
What makes you think that language is fundamental to reality?
It's not fundamental to reality, it's fundamental to physics. Show me one equation of physics that can exist without language.
Peter |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
Conscious experience obviously exists pre-language. The constructs of physics do not.
I didn’t say “The constructs of physics” exist pre-language. I said PHYSICAL REALITY does. Can we not extricate ourselves from our own words? We are getting nowhere.
The only way I can think of to make sense of what you're saying is to suppose that you're confusiing the constructs of physics (elementary particles and all assemblages thereof) with patterns of conscious sensation. When I pick up a tennis ball, I encounter a regular pattern of visual and tactile sensations. Those sensations and that pattern obviously exist pre-language. But the abstract construct of the assemblage of atoms that we use as a model for that sensory pattern does not exist pre-language.
Just because we can’t see the details of physical reality doesn’t mean that they are mere language constructs. Do you believe that the entire world turns into a language construct just because you close your eyes. Stupid question… you probably do!
I guess you're going to say that, although the model of the physical ball does not exist pre-language, the 'actual' physical ball does. But if you say that then you've left the orbits of both (a) science, which talks only of the model, and (b) direct experience, whichis only of the sensations.
Science IS a model which attempts to explain physical reality. It does contain internal criticisms and references, but its whole point is to talk about physical reality not about mere language constructs. We will leave that for semiotics.
You may claim that there is an 'actual' physical ball existing pre-language but then you would have to say what this is supposed to mean. It's outside physics and its outside direct conscious experience.
We directly see the ball so you are wrong: it is neither outside of physics nor consciousness. Once you understand that the act of seeing and consciousness itself is necessarily representational then you can understand the limits and abilities of perception. There is no ultimate, unbridgeable gap between perception and the real world. EVERYTHING we see is really there in some sense. We just have to represent it so that it makes sense to our minds.
The phyiscal organism has a physical brain, before that organism has a mind. But that organism and brain exist only as constructs in the minds of observers…
That is your assumption that the only reality ascribed to physical reality is that it is a ‘construct’, but we can observe it without language, so it is not a language construct. You claim it is a construct of the mind, but you can give no proof.
It is common knowledge that physical reality is not dependent on language.
It is not common knowledge but a common philosophical myth. You will find no support for this myth in physics, which necessarily rests on language for its existence.
No physicist would say that PHYSICAL REALITY is dependent on language. He may say that PHYSICS is, but I was not talking about physics. I was talking about physical reality. They are certainly not the same thing.
Nor will you find any support in everyday conscious experience, which does not include any direct experience of physical things.
I find all kinds of support because physical reality is what existed before language arrived upon the scene. I have never seen an object that is dependent in any way on language (except for objects such as books or something, for which the dependency is superficial).
What makes you think that language is fundamental to reality?
It's not fundamental to reality, it's fundamental to physics. Show me one equation of physics that can exist without language.
Physical reality is not physics. Physics is simply our model of physical reality. Can you not see the obvious difference?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Consciousness as an emergent property
|
|
|
|
But I don't see why you think that that has any impact on the general argument that physical systems cannot produce consciousness.
No you don't and that is why you are wrong. It actually does have an impact you just take it for granted.
When you create an application you don't create the system per se, you create tons of little feedback systems that are all "aware" of other feedback systems within the given environment.
Right now they are primarily seperate from our world, but lots of new inventions are showing us that a bit-system acutally can send and recieve information to and from a bio-system.
Every "naive fedback system" being network, soccer-team or ant-colony, create a system that is more than and different from it's parts. What ensures it's success is it's awareness of it's environment. We as humans as a | | |