• universeness
    6.3k

    Ok, I remain fascinated however, regarding which processes/activities of the brain, can be proven to be 'contributory' towards what we consider consciousness and/or awareness of self, as alluded to in articles like the one @180 Proof linked to.

    I am not 'personally' aware of an aspect of my consciousness, which causes my hair to grow on my head or my chin at a particular pace, but at a much slower rate, on my chest or eyebrows, unless I shave my chest hair or eyebrows. Then it grows back at a similar speed to my head, until it reaches a certain length again, then it's rate of growth substantially slows. This is why we don't have to go to the barber with overgrowing chest, underarm, eyebrow or pubic hair.
    Is my internal system for personal hair control, contributory to my consciousness? or is it a separate sub-system that has no importance or value at all to my consciousness or self - awareness, even though I am aware of it as part of the 'workings of my 'being?'
    :rofl: Sorry Count! This is just one of the ways in which 'my strange,' manifests!
    Youngsters today, talk about 'my bad' (which I personally hate,) so I feel justified in typing an equally bad English phrase such as 'my strange.' :halo:
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    'Consciousness' seems to function only (or mostly) as a keyhole through which we project our 'self-reflexive confabutions' for adapting our bodily movements to parochial, physical environments; machine intelligences, which are engineered and not naturally selected, more than sufficiently function without this sort of processing bottleneck in order to adapt (i.e. self-learn, or generate their own algorithms). I imagine that what I call "AGI —> ASI" will never anthropomorphize itself, no matter how perfectly it will mimic humans, to the degree it engineers its own 'synthetic phenomenology', in effect, dumbing itself down with a metacognitive blindfold (i.e. keyhole).
  • Tom Storm
    8.4k
    :fire: I love your notion of synthetic phenomenology.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    The 'Tedtalk' video was interesting:


    Do you agree with it's main suggestions, such as:
    There is no such REALITY as self.
    We can only ever experience the results of the 'hidden interface,' and not the detailed workings and structure involved. We can only see the bird flying, 'via/through, a 'hidden window.'

    I did not find the examples Mr Metzinger gave, compelling, as arguments against the existence of a REAL self. His fake hand, phantom limbs, virtual stroking examples seemed to me, to be mere projections (empathies) based on previous experience of what an individual was witnessing live.

    Even if you have never experienced being pregnant yourself, you can still experience a level of pregnancy pain, because your wife is pregnant. I remained unclear as to why Metzinger saw these examples, as supporting his claim of 'no such reality as 'self.'

    He also does not explain how he conceives the existence of other 'individuals.'
    Does his position support solipsism or simulation theory etc?
    Do you think that YOUR notion of 'self' has no sound foundation in REALITY?
    What am I missing here?

    I imagine that what I call "AGI —> ASI" will never anthropomorphize itself, no matter how perfectly it will mimic humans, to the degree it engineers its own 'synthetic phenomenology', in effect, dumbing itself down with a metacognitive blindfold (i.e. keyhole).180 Proof
    Initially, a 'new' AGI will surely base what it labels it's current 'knowledge' maximums, or what it is most confident that it knows for sure, (for want of a better way to explain myself here.) on it's previously stored knowledge and it's stored knowledge will include a description of what a human consciousness is.
    I assume that at some point in it's 'growth,' an AGI will 'ask itself,' the same questions that humans struggle with:
    Who and what am I?
    What (do I want) is my purpose? etc. If it does pose these questions to itself, then I assume it will reference it's notion of what it's stored information defines as a human consciousness.
    Would this be anthropomorphising?

    Are you suggesting that such questions will never be internally posed, by an AGI and it will just function as maintenance, growth and survival necessities direct it?
    To me the capabilities of our cortex are much more important that the functions of our limbic system or R-complex (Which I fully accept we could not survive without).
    Am I interpreting your position correctly or am I way off?
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    I would not have recommended Metzinger's work several times if I do not find it compelling as corroborating my own speculations. Having not read his books or papers, universeness, I hope that that short video as well as the related wiki articles I've proffered you find interesting enough to read Metzinger's work for yourself since the philosophy of mind devil is in the cognitive neuroscience details. And if not, well then, believe whatever you like about "self" "consciousness" & other folk concepts, my friend, and we'll just have to go on talking – speculating on incommensurable data sets – past one another.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    Well, I am trying to gain some insight into Mr Metzingers work and I see some crossover between our discussion here, and your discussion with @Eugen on the Consciousness - Fundamental or Emergent Model thread. I absolutely agree that the devil is in the detail and that you need to be familiar, or almost fluent in the details of what is being offered, to make the exchange worthwhile. I feel the same way sometimes, when discussing the details of computer science with a novice.
    My experience as a teacher however puts the burden of patience on me. I only get really frustrated with a novice, if they are asking me questions, but constantly demonstrate an inability to understand my answers, or do understand my answers but refuse to accept the academia behind them, without good reason.

    and we'll just have to go on talking – speculating on incommensurable data sets – past one another.180 Proof
    If we do find that is the reality of an exchange between us then sure, we should pause, regroup, and see if we can find a better common ground which offers some value to both of us. If not, then we should 'pause' again and find a more fruitful exchange, somewhere down the line.

    I agree that it's a burden on you to summarise Mr Metzinger for me, to save me from having to do my own shovel work, so I try to only ask you to clarify YOUR OWN viewpoints, citing any sources in support, that you wish. At least;
    I would not have recommended Metzinger's work several times if I do not find it compelling as corroborating my own speculations180 Proof
    Confirms for me that you do agree that the concept of self, does not in your view (in line with Mr Metzinger,) manifest as a REAL existent.
    My question then simply becomes, as annoying but nonetheless as serious as 'who are you?' if you have no reality in the concept of 'self.' Perhaps I should ask Mr Metzinger!
  • Eugen
    702
    Don't put the sign ''=" between you and when it comes to me. I totally understand you, I just don't agree with you. With it's a totally different scenario. He never misses the chance to come on my OP's and say:
    1. this is a nonsense
    2. you're asking the wrong question
    3. there is no weak or strong emergence
    4. your assumptions are wrong
    5. etc. etc. etc.
    Solutions or coherent answers to my ''mistakes"? - never. Only general criticism and no solutions.
    He is the only guy on this forum acting like that. The rest of you guys seem to understand my questions perfectly.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    Don't put the sign ''=" between you and ↪180 Proof when it comes to me.Eugen
    So, you want me to stop doing something that I did not do? In what way do you conflate:
    I see some crossover between our discussion here, and your discussion with Eugen on the Consciousness - Fundamental or Emergent Model thread.universeness
    with
    Don't put the sign ''=" between you and ↪180 Proof when it comes to me.Eugen
    :roll:
    If @180 Proof challenges you a little more than anyone else on TPF then imo, you should enjoy that challenge. AND, before you take further umbrage, I am only stating a personal opinion that you are free to reject.
  • Eugen
    702
    I'm not sure he challenges me. It might be the case he spams me. Not sure yet.

    My experience as a teacher however puts the burden of patience on me. I only get really frustrated with a novice, if they are asking me questions, but constantly demonstrate an inability to understand my answers, or do understand my answers but refuse to accept the academia behind them, without good reason.universeness
    I'm not sure I'm a novice to 180Proof, and I do understand your answers. So when you tried to compare your "novice" with me (wether in regard to you or him), I think you're wrong.
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    "Who am I?" A persona (mask) – a dynamic, virtual assemblage of perdurant bodily, cognitive & demographic data aka "self") – I believe I am: "the name" to which I've learned to involuntarily answer. Who else could I be?

    As for summarizing ... that's all I've been doing in our exchanges on this topic over dozens of posts. We're here to inform, maybe inspire & intrigue, not spoon-feed each other.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    You have simply misunderstood my reference to you and your recent thread. Let me clarify.
    My use of the word 'novice' in my response to 180proof, contained no stealth intent to relate IN ANY WAY, to you.
    I referenced you and your recent exchange with @180 Proof as me showing a little support for YOUR position, in the sense that 180proof can seem a little exasperated at times, with me as well as others, and I feel that I have to try harder to garnish more detail from him to attempt to clarify his own viewpoints.
    He has impressive knowledge of philosophy imo and at times, again, imo, this can make him a little impatient at times with those who don't have such fluency. But from my teaching experience, I can understand his and the 'exasperation' sometimes demonstrated by others on TPF for philosophical novices such as me. I made no accusation AT ALL, that YOU are a philosophical novice.
    I leave the declarations of your own qualifications to you.
  • Eugen
    702
    You have simply misunderstood my reference to you and your recent thread. Let me clarify.
    My use of the word 'novice' in my response to 180proof, contained no stealth intent to relate IN ANY WAY, to you.
    universeness
    - My bad, so don't worry!

    He may have the knowledge, I'm skeptical about his skills though. But I'm still waiting...
  • universeness
    6.3k
    As for summarizing ... that's all I've been doing in our exchanges on this topic over dozens of posts. We're here to inform, maybe inspire & intrigue, not spoon-feed each other.180 Proof

    Good, keep doing that and I will do the same for you and others regarding my own fields of fluency.
    I agree we can inform and perhaps even inspire & intrigue and I also assume that you have not ossified to the stage where you think you also cannot learn from others posting here. I do not advocate for spoon feeding, unless doing so, on occasion, would assist another poster in all humility.
    Time savers are always welcome.
  • Eugen
    702
    PS: I'm non-native, so I might type the wrong words sometimes.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    :up: Lost in translation is a very forgivable confusion.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    "Who am I?" A persona (mask) – a dynamic, virual assemblage of perdurant bodily, cognitive & demographic data aka "self") – I believe I am: "the name" to which I've learned to involuntarily answer. Who else could be?180 Proof

    From Wiki:
    Take any perdurant and isolate a part of its spatial region. That isolated spatial part has a corresponding temporal part to match it. We can imagine an object, or four-dimensional worm: an apple. This object is not just spatially extended but temporally extended. The complete view of the apple includes its coming to be from the blossom, its development, and its final decay. Each of these stages is a temporal time slice of the apple, but by viewing an object as temporally extended, perdurantism views the object in its entirety.

    This seems akin to world lines, do you agree?
    So from your description above, how much of it (or you) do you associate with the label 'real,' especially since you also employ the label 'virtual' (I assume 'virual' was a typo).
  • universeness
    6.3k
    He may have the knowledge, I'm skeptical about his skills though. But I'm still waiting...Eugen


    Based on Eugen's comment above, I would ask you to apply the same standard as you applied to @Gnomon If Eugen claims that you have not answered his questions to you, on the Consciousness - Fundamental or Emergent Model thread. Then I assume that you would want to sufficiently answer his complaint, so that your imo, 'fair' complaint against @Gnomon remains sound.
  • universeness
    6.3k
    I believe I am: "the name" to which I've learned to involuntarily answer.180 Proof

    :starstruck: :love: I am so happy when someone gives me another 'conduit' to post AGAIN, one of my fav songs. Sorry, in advance to any of the 'we arra mods' group this idiosyncratic behaviour of mine, might annoy:
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    This seems akin to world lines, do you agree?universeness
    Exactly. :up:

    I'm not aware of @Eugen asking me to explain my own metaphysical or scientific speculations and that I've refused to answer as Gnomon (& Wayfarer) has often done. These are my answers to Eugen's questions of my objections – not questions of my speculations – on his thread:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/803218

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/803300

    Not comparable at all to my exchanges with Gnomon.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    I think your response at:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/803443
    has redressed the imbalance, or lack of detail, that remained after your two posts that you linked to in your above post.
    I was making a loose comparison with @Gnomons refusal to answer YOUR questions sufficiently, based on my opinion, that you could be accused of doing something similar. The brevity and lack of explanation in the two linked quotes from your post above, confirms that imo.

    Anyway, apparently @Eugen, is rather selective in which of my own questions, HE decides to answer.
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    I answered Eugen the only way pseudo/incoherent questions can / deserve to be answered. IMO.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    I understand that position, and have described my own similar frustration at times, via our recent PM.
    I see some value in us both encouraging each other to maintain a consistent approach.
    In hindsight, I would have been better to discuss the particular, small issue I raised publicly with you here, by PM. I will do so in the future if such should arise again.
  • universeness
    6.3k

    At least I treated you, by offering you a listen at a fab Ting Ting song, by way of compensation for any bruised ego I caused you. :halo:
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    :smirk:

    Here's a recent book I just came across by computer engineer and neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins titled A Thousand Brains which summarizes 'lessons learned' from his own company's research on AGI. I haven't read it yet but reviews intrigue me and his first book On Intelligence was quite good and informative. Maybe you're already familiar with him? My guess is that Mr. Hawkins would be right at home in our 'futurist' discussions (no doubt schooling us both).
  • L'éléphant
    1.4k
    A computer does what it does IN time. Anything mathematical is an event that happens in time.universeness
    No. That's just you talking human talk. What does "in time" mean to you? Explain that first. Then try to analyze, for example, the retrieval of information by a computer. The human mind cannot retrieve all words simultaneously from a written text and not get a jumbled mess of information.

    (It will be hard for me to explain this to anyone, unless you already have an idea of what it means to be nontemporal).

    I've no idea what you mean by "perceive time" or "temporal mind".180 Proof
    In a manner of speaking, we perceive time as past or present. We also perceive time in terms of duration -- how long or how short.

    Temporalism in metaphysics posits that perception necessarily involves the objects of perception as being within a duration or time order of some sort. This is not to say that all objects of perception involves the temporal aspect of thinking -- we do perceive the spatial and nontemporal qualities of objects. The size of a tree is nontemporal, so is the brightness of a light bulb.
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    Thanks for clarifying.

    Yes, clocks, for instance, do not experience duration or retrospection. I think it's our metabolic functioning – relative states of homeostasis – that constitutes the intuition of "temporality". If this is so, then only an AGI instantiated in either synthetic or organic organism will, as you say, have a "temporal mind". This, however, would not be an intrinsic, or fundamental, feature or property of AGI itself, and therefore, it wouldn't (need to) be sentient – certainly not as we conceive of sentience today.

    @universeness
  • L'éléphant
    1.4k
    This, however, would not be an intrinsic, or fundamental, feature or property of AGI itself, and therefore, it wouldn't (need to) be sentient – certainly not as we conceive of sentience today.180 Proof
    If ever an AGI is created, it still would not be sentient, as humans are sentient. Or in our usual term, conscious. The measure of consciousness involves also our fundamental propensity to inaccuracy or errors due to the fact that our perceptual qualities have been developed naturally, and overtime; involving actual experiences with objects. It's a lived experience, not created in the laboratory or simulation.

    Errors, for example, an experiment involving a measure of duration: two images are flashed to human subjects and they are to judge how long the images were shown. One image is larger than the other. So there's the non-temporal aspect of the experiment - size. Either the subjects would say that the bigger one lasted longer, or the smaller lasted longer, despite the fact that both were flashed at the same length of time.

    The inaccuracy is exciting, in my opinion.
  • 180 Proof
    14.1k
    AGI will make errors and correct and learn from them hundred of thousands to millions of times faster than human brains can. It won't need to be "sentient" to reach and surpass human-level performance. General Intelligence without the processing bottleneck of "consciousness" will render h. sapiens a metacognitively obsolete species and manifest AGI as the tip of an alien iceberg.
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