From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 00:50:01 BST
Andy,
(this is also a reply to your earlier post)
It might help if I explain that my whole thinking on this arose from the
time I was a grad student of computers/cognitive science. I was especially
interested in computer models of language use. So I would do thought
experiments on how people used language. This means that my interest in
explanations was considerably greater than just "explaining how we cope". I
needed a reductionist theory.
It is no particular problem to come up with simple models for parsing
simple sentences, but digging deeper, it becomes clear that a tremendous
amount of semantic and pragmatic knowledge is involved. But even that is not
what I finally saw as the real problem. It was: how does one get a computer
to *see* anything as simple as a word, or even a dot on the page? That is,
how can one imagine a machine scanning the letters t-i-g-e-r, and producing
a mental picture of a tiger. It is no problem programming a computer to scan
letters and produce appropriate output, but that inner picture, what
philosophers call qualia, is a puzzle.
The reason, I finally realized, that these thought experiments failed is
that a computer is a perfectly spatio-temporal mechanism. Every bit is
separated from every other bit. We can read off bit configurations as words,
but the computer cannot. All that happens is that some bit gets set to 1 (or
0) and some machine instruction reads that single bit to go into a routine
to print out "I see a tiger". But nothing in a computer can grasp a million
bits as a gestalt. So a computer can never be conscious.
However, the same reasoning applies to the brain *considered as a
spatio-temporal mechanism*. There have to be other things going on that are
not spatio-temporal. But once admit that, and materialism goes out the
window, and Sheldrake and others start to make sense.
So I agree that we have internal models, but what I am saying is that no
spatio-temporal mechanism can process one as a whole. Your responses are
like Rorty's, for example when he says that our inability to identify mental
states by viewing neural activity is "no more mysterious" than our inability
to read a language we don't know. My response to this is that our ability to
read a language is a complete and unfathomable mystery. So is our ability to
see a dot on a page. It transcends space and time. A computer can be
programmed to print "I see a dot" when a video camera is set up, etc., etc.,
but it doesn't see it, and it can't see it because every bit is separated in
space and/or time from every other bit, so every communication is only one
bit being turned on or off. There is no way to amalgamate those one-bit
"experiences".
Now the "there's something about consciousness that I just don't see a
computer having it" argument has been made many times. What I have tried to
do here is pinpoint what that something is. It is that normal, everyday
consciousness does not play by spatio-temporal rules. Given that electrons
don't either, this shouldn't be all that hard to take in.
- Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: <abahn@comcast.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: MD Self-consciousness
> Scott,
>
> I had another thought while taking the dog for a morning walk pertaining
to:
>
> "And, again, why is consciousness, self- or otherwise, seen as something
that
> needs to be explained, in material terms or otherwise? "
>
> I might admit that explaining consciousness is hopeless and completely
absurd
> (but that doesn't mean we should quit trying) but self-consciousness is
another
> beast. Consciousness is a state of being alive. It is at the root of
purpose
> in the sense of a system being able to predict future events. For
instance, a
> frog notices a fly on a leave in front of it facing to the east. It can
predict
> with some probability what direction the fly is going to go next. This
ability
> increases its chance for survival. Well, offering a satisfactory
explanation
> for this ability, especially by insisting on a reductive one, is almost
> impossible. It is like trying to decide what is life. Where is the line
> EXACTLY separating the inorganic from the biological. We will never know.
>
> But self-consciousness or I would prefer "reflective consciousness" is a
term we
> can use to distinguish humans from all other biological organisms.
Explaining
> this then is relatively easy compared to consciousness. What is it that
makes
> humans different from other species? Without having to go into the
mechanics of
> brain activity, photons and nerve cells and such, we can offer
satisfactory
> explanations that help us "cope" in our environment. The one I was
offering is
> simply that reflective (self-) consciousness is a property of language.
Easy!
> No spatio-temporal universe to worry about. We can use whatever universe
you
> wish to propose. We exist and we use language. From our experience we
can
> distinguish that humans have some properties other species do not. One of
these
> is language and another one of these is self-consciousness. All I did was
> connect the dots.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>
>
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