L'éléphant

The Most Dangerous Superstition
↪AntonioP

May I request that when the OP mentions a book or article or essay, that to include at least a passage from that reading?
Sleeping Beauty Problem
To answer correctly, sleeping beauty must evaluate the probability she is experiencing each of these events. — hypericin
She can't. The instruction reads that she has no memory of prior awakening or what day it is. She doesn't even know that the experimenter tosses the coin, because they do it when she's put back to sleep. The question to her is "what are the odds that a coin will land heads (or tails)". Since she must know what a coin is, and what heads and tails is, she must answer "1/2".
The sleeping pills, the day she awakens, and other conditions included in the instruction are all distractions for you or me or others who are reading the puzzle to divert our attention from the correct answer.

Edit: the correct answer is 1/2 when the coin is tossed once. All SB knows is the coin is tossed once, and her information is purely coming from the question.
Culture is critical
I was surprised by how high the percentages are. — T Clark
I said the average -- which means it is the largest stats. If you look at the diagram, in 2017 (The Past Year), the numbers of those involved are fairly small. The average person in a given population are not involved.
How would you respond to the gamer’s dilemma?
The simpletons will literally take the virtual sexual violence as fiction. I hope that my society limits their number to parts per million (ppm).

A society has the right to defend itself against both physical and psychological harms. A society living in fear and disgust due to psychological assaults to their senses because sexual violence and murder are protected entertainment is a society whose shared morality is broken.

If racism and sexism are accepted virtual entertainment -- no matter how offensive -- then what happens to the workplace, for example? We could blur the actual and virtual reality and say, "I was only kidding."
A potential solution to the hard problem
↪GrahamJ

The closest word I could think of is reflex.
Culture is critical
Do you see that as evidence that people aren't interested in political issues. It seems just the opposite to me. — T Clark
What I said prior was the average person has no interest in governance or politics. How did you come up with the opposite given the stats?
Sleeping Beauty Problem
I thought I saw this problem posted before in the Lounge?

They ask her one question after each time she awakens, however: What is the probability that the coin shows heads?
Without memory of prior awakening or knowledge of what day it is, she would have to answer 1/2. What SB remembers is she was put to sleep and she awakens. The coin is tossed once in her memory.

I thought the question of the experimenters was directed to SB, not to the readers of the puzzle.
Culture is critical
I agree, and I think this situation has emerged due to the continuous disappointments on politics and all what is related to governance, political theory, etc... I mean: it is not a generational issue but a dysfunctional praxis. — javi2541997
The scholarly political theories we learned from higher education are only good inside the lecture halls. What we see in actuality is quite a different matter.
Culture is critical
I'm not saying you are wrong, but how do you know this is true? Does this hinge upon what 'have an interest' means? — Tom Storm
Culture is critical
So yeah, if the youth are into self governance, self discipline and not following some fanatics or fanatic ideology, a superior nation will emerge. — Beena
That means a superior nation would not emerge. The average person does not have an interest in governance, politics, and nationwide ideals.
Culture is critical
Too many people are failing in life and too many are serious nut cases and too many are willing to make money any way they can without concern about the harm done to others. On top of that, we are destroying our democracy as all our institutions are failing. — Athena
:100:
The motte-and-bailey fallacy
↪jgill

Smoking dragon pipe:

1963. There was turmoil all around, with the Klan playing the crowds. At one point there was an explosion, which someone said was one of the confederate canons at the ROTC building going off. One of the civil rights demonstrators yelled, "I hope they hit the bastard this time!" (meaning Wallace). — jgill
Wow. I had no idea. Thanks.
A potential solution to the hard problem
I was expecting a philosophical not a biological answer (eg a definition of what memory means to some philosophers). — GrahamJ
I touched on this issue in another thread. In philosophy, the accepted belief is the causal theory of perception -- which means the CNS, and which means they accept the duality of existence and consciousness: the physical brain and the mind that perceives of time. Without the temporal perception, we would be like the enteric nervous system -- able to perform a function, but without self-awareness, no time perception, no self.

I knew about the enteric nervous system (though I'd forgotten the name). If it records some information, and later uses that information to make a decision, I would call that memory, or even a 'mental record'. — GrahamJ
No, that's not correct. The ENS could function without the input from the CNS. It doesn't record information, as we know information. It's not through memory. I don't know how to explain it.
A potential solution to the hard problem
It means retrieving the information from memory. Mind you, bodily functions such as hunger is not memory based, nor the bowel movement ( I will explain it for those uninitiated, upon request). — L'éléphant
Yes please. — GrahamJ

The bowel movement is controlled by the enteric nervous system. They call it the second brain -- without input from our self-awareness (the central nervous system), the ENS can function fully on its own. No, it can't write a Shakespeare masterpiece or Vivaldi's Four Seasons, but it's a powerful network of guts and enzymes and bacteria.
The motte-and-bailey fallacy
He's not advancing a wild argument that is indefensible but more like he grew up knowing one thing and seeing another needs to adjust. Spending 70 years of your life knowing one thing and then having to change course is hard but he's not making any wild claims. — Darkneos
I agree. Nonetheless, those narrow-minded people, like you said, would make it like he was advancing an argument.

Two women replied, calling me misogynistic and demeaning, and referring to me as "puffing on a corncob pipe through withered lips" and avoiding the civil and women's rights movements in the 1960s. To which I replied I was on campus and had demonstrated against George Wallace as he stood in the doorway to the admissions office at the U of Alabama, denying entrance to a black man, and that, actually, I had joined the women's lib movement during that decade. — jgill

Corncob pipe?

What did they expect you to smoke? A smoking dragon?

Just remember, no good deed goes unpunished. Your age included. They were calling you misogynistic and demeaning without knowing you fully well. Did you show them your curriculum vitae? I would keep it with me just in case -- list the campus incident with George Wallace demonstration and the date it happened.
Descartes Reading Group
There is no irrefragable piece of knowledge that founds any thought system - not even the cogito. If this approach involves an act of performative self-refutation, or engenders a regress problem, that only seems to further suggest the inability to obtain a foundational justification. Thoughts? — Tom Storm
Oh, I responded incorrectly, Tom. I meant to say, that foundationalism is itself a theory, a school of thought, if you will, which has a logical system of statements pointing towards their view. But to answer your question, yes, the postmodern tried to do away with the foundationalist notion of grounds. I actually disagree with them since they, too, were trying to ground their assumptions on some structure of society/government.

I would have to dig for their writings if you want to discuss this further.
Descartes Reading Group
Is there a difference for you between presuppositions and foundationalism? — Tom Storm
If you mean if foundationalism as a theory is on the same level of argument as presuppositions (statements expressing premises), no.
The motte-and-bailey fallacy
I actually overheard two people talking about same-sex marriage. One was a senior associate about 70 years of age, man, the other one was about 60 years old woman. He was trying to explain to the woman how he felt about same-sex marriage as he grew up in the conventional family and married conventionally, so his feelings and views about same-sex marriage were somewhat uncomfortable and same sex marrying each other is new to him. Mind you that he never said anything else but what he felt or what background he's coming from. As soon as the man walked away, the woman called him a bigot and homophobic.

So, those who aren't used to a lifestyle couldn't even express their own feelings without being called a bigot and homophobic. The woman, btw, is active on social media and she gets all her "own" opinions from her social media friends. They don't have tolerance towards feelings that express a different attitude.

I'm sure the man needed some adjustment to his new environment -- I'd give him some time. But I wouldn't call him homophobic or bigot. (I know how he is professionally).

Just an example of motte-and-bailey true-to-life experience.

So, the woman's calling the other a bigot and homophobic represents the motte, and the man's expression of his discomfort about same sex marriage represents the bailey.
Descartes Reading Group
But to have an organized anti-system is to have a system, right? — Tom Storm
Yes.

Which is why I usually say I hold that human thought is paradoxical and that much of what we call reality is human projection based on our limited perspective. From this 'dimly lit' vantage point I generally hold that I (or any of us) don't have enough information or wisdom to make reliable judgements about the nature of reality. — Tom Storm
This would be a fair response against foundationalism -- but it also means that it hasn't undermined foundationalism.
A potential solution to the hard problem
If you disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem, then what would you say the article is about? — Luke
A rehash of what's already been written about phenomenal experience in philosophy, except with fancy words and invention or creative license, which unfortunately is unwarranted since he was actually talking about biological and physiological activities. We have scientific records, no need to invent things.

Here again are passages lifted from the article -- passages are in quote marks: (I suppose I have to work harder because I'm in the minority of disagreeing with his "solution")

Let’s imagine, however, that as the animal’s life becomes more complex, it reaches a stage where it would benefit from retaining some kind of ‘mental record’ of what’s affecting it: a representation of the stimulus that can serve as a basis for planning and decision-making.
A mental record, in other words, a temporal perception, which has already been written about a thousand times by the likes of Descartes, Hume, A. Shimony, etc.

I believe the upshot – in the line of animals that led to humans and others that experience things as we do – has been the creation of a very special kind of attractor, which the subject reads as a sensation with the unaccountable feel of phenomenal qualia.
What are these attractors? He explains it in this passage:

And, I suggest, this development is game-changing. Crucially, it means the activity can be drawn out in time, so as to create the ‘thick moment’ of sensation (see Figure 2c above). But, more than that, the activity can be channelled and stabilised, so as to create a mathematically complex attractor state – a dynamic pattern of activity that recreates itself.
It means retrieving the information from memory. Mind you, bodily functions such as hunger is not memory based, nor the bowel movement ( I will explain it for those uninitiated, upon request).

What discussion title would you have used instead? — Luke
"Nicholas Humphrey's Seeing and Somethingness -- His Personal Account of What Goes On In Our Brain If or When We Have Sensations For Those Who Have Not Studied Or Read Or Understood Neuroscience".

Something.
Descartes Reading Group
We only back off of it when it gets problematic for us. — frank
Foundationalism isn't problematic to me. If it's challenged, then I'd ask, on what grounds is foundationalism in error or false? No matter what their reasoning is against foundationalism, it is bound to be grounded on something else. Then they're left holding the bag.
The ideal and the real, perfection and it's untenability
If you were told that no matter how hard you tried, you will never ever reach perfection, that flaw is proverbially "a neccesary evil", that perfection and imperfection are a mutually dependent dynamic.

How would it make you feel? — Benj96
I don't care about perfection. I care about optimization -- for example at work, if I'm optimized (and I have benchmarks as a guide), then I'm content. In anything I do, if the requirement is perfection, I'd like to know what would it take. If I have to give my life, then I move on and switch to another activity.

Unfortunately, life is too short for perfection. If we have a thousand years to live, then yes, we can devote every waking hours to this or that endevour. But for mortals like us, there are equally good things to do.
Jokes
What about the cannibal who showed up too early to dinner?

Reveal
He got the raw skin
Ad Populum Indicator of a Moral Intuition
But at the same time, morality does seem to revolve around what most people think is appropriate behaviour - community standards, etc. What — Tom Storm
Yeah, this notion gets under fire often because it's cloaked in appeal to ad populum. But how else could one talk about a moral view without mentioning that most people also hold the same view? Most people do not want themselves or their families murdered, is this appeal to popularity?

Of course, if your only reason for defending a view is because "most people" hold it, then that's silly. Most people don't think of their trash as damaging to the environment so trash couldn't be that bad.
A potential solution to the hard problem
? — Luke
That's a mislabeled response from me. When I said "no", I meant that you are correct in your explanation of the article, but I disagree with the article.

Do you doubt that the article offers a proposed solution to the hard problem? Have I created bias by announcing that that's what the article is about? — Luke
Yes, I doubt it, and yes you did.

Furthermore, I doubt that anyone would honestly disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem. — Luke
Have they agreed? Sorry if I missed a post here that agreed that the article proposes a solution. I read some who praised the article as a good article or exciting.

Edit:
Just in case I wasn't clear on my first response to the article, I deny that the article promises a solution, I deny that the article has provided an insight (this is important for me) -- what it provided is a caricature of how humans come to be aware of their senses and how it mischaracterized what it meant to philosophy when other philosophers say that our concept of plurality came first before our concept of "self".
A potential solution to the hard problem
He is talking about the evolution of phenomenal consciousness - when it first appeared on the scene. Upon its inception you'll come to believe in your own singular significance because you are now phenomenally conscious; you now have personhood. This is not born of some fantasy or desire for individuality, or of wanting your individual pains and colours to be unique, but merely finding that you have them for the first time. — Luke
No.
The motte-and-bailey fallacy
The second statement of A seems more of a response to the appeal to emotion of B and not necessarily a retreat of any sort. — NOS4A2
A's statement is more than an appeal to emotion to B. Notice A's shift from a cultural/societal statement to a factual (biology) claim. You can't argue against facts. See below:

In the trans women example, the axiomatic basis on one side would seem to be that biological truth trumps cultural fiction. — apokrisis

B is where the fallacy is. — NOS4A2
I agree.
A potential solution to the hard problem
I call the article by Nicholas Humphrey pop philosophy.
When Adorno was cancelled
But the puzzling thing is that he saw the chaos of the student activism as contributing to that technocracy. — Jamal
"The experts", as technocrats were referred to, were seen as the ones that could save the government and society from degradation. But the way they were conceived to govern was not through representation by the general public, instead they themselves would set the agenda, the planning of the government, and make decision for the good of the nation. The student activism exhibited sentiments that repeated around the world -- they were anti-war and anti-exploitation of the people. They were also pro-technocrats.

Please peruse the architectural, scientific, and the arts movements at the time.
The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille
But i'm premature in my study so what really defines political philosophy?. — LancelotFreeman
Read John Locke and JS Mill.
When Adorno was cancelled
What is particularly fascinating and at first glance puzzling about this is that he identifies the wild, empty, and irrational pseudo-activity of the students with the increasing “technocratization of the university”. What could he have meant? — Jamal
The intelligentsia and technocrats butted heads. Adorno, Habermas, Mancuse are part of the intelligentsia. The intellectuals were supposed to be the analysts of what's going on in politics and society. 'The government should be a representation by the common people, not a rule by the elites, etc.'

Note that it implies they reject the scientific, objective truth as offered by the experts -- engineers, scientists, etc. -- the technocrats.

Just my 2 cents.
A potential solution to the hard problem
First of all, using the title "A potential solution to the hard problem" is itself biased already because, without first allowing the thread responses to express their criticisms to the points discussed in the article, saying it ahead of time is leading.

I haven't worked out my approach to the problem. It's on my list of chestnuts that I would like to get my head around one day. But I would start by making sure that the problem isn't in the way it is formulated. My suspicion is that it is not capable of solution — Ludwig V
Not to be dismissive of the article myself either. Roughly I agree with you -- the "proposed solution" that the article offers is not the problem (the inquiry) that the ongoing philosophical movement of consciousness is facing.

I can already see some good objections and points of weaknesses. It's because there are neuroscientific studies out there that can deny what his article said. I also find some points to be coming out of thin-air.

For example this passage:

Whenever it happened, it’s bound to have been a psychological and social watershed. With this marvellous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours. You’ll be led to respect their individual worth as well.
I find the underlined cringe-worthy as an analysis of a philosopher. We've always had awareness of the plurality of existence and our own existence. In fact, to refer to "us" presupposes already that I am counting "myself", and vice versa. When philosophers say that the "self" came later after the awareness of others like ourselves, it doesn't mean that we were not aware of our private sensations and perceptions apart from others' private sensations and perceptions. It means that philosophically, or metaphysically, we did not first deliberate on what a "self" is. It was Descartes who first formalized (you can correct me on this) the duality of mind and body. But as common observers of our environment, the early humans and modern humans had it. They got it.

Anyone who wants to deny what I said just above is welcome to correct me.

(Some more criticisms -- "sentition" and "feedback loops". I do get the need in our theory to name our terms as long as we're not trying to re-invent the wheel. And I find that the article attempts to do that. I maybe wrong. )

To cap this, you’ll soon discover that when, by a leap of imagination you put yourself in your fellow creature’s place, you can model, in your self, what they are feeling. In short, phenomenal consciousness will become your ticket to living in what I’ve called ‘the society of selves’.
Again, semantic invention. Except that it didn't happen this way.
Emergence
AGI will make errors and correct and learn from them hundred of thousands to millions of times faster than human brains can. — 180 Proof
I get it. That was my point. But I was trying to point out to you that human errors are errors peculiar to humans. Which is what makes it interesting to me. Just as a computer could be made perfect, humans organically develop and along the way this development picks up natural selections, mutations, and accidents, which make for an exciting phenomenon.

I'm not trying to compare the abilities of humans and computers. I'm trying to explain why human consciousness (it's redundant to say this) is human.
The Hard problem and E=mc2
First of all neuroscience isn't the source of consciousness. — Benj96
*Sigh*. Okay. I'm not interested in continuing. Thanks.
Emergence
↪universeness
It now occurs to me that my discussion with you is futile. So, I'm ending it here.
Stories/fictions and music as covert devices for speaking of actualities/truths
Academics, thinkers, activists and philosophers love anonymity as they can focus on ideas... — Benj96

Sadly though, it is also a way to be malicious and get away with it. As we often see in the comments section of youtube, instagram etc. Cowards, catfish, trolls and people who know what theyre doing is wrong also love anonymity. — Benj96
And I say to that, have faith in the rationality of your audience. The test of time will reveal that the victors are the former. If someone is throwing you under the bus, your virtue will do the work for you to prove that the under-the-bus thrower is being malicious, and it should prove that you're not the first of their victims.
Emergence
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.
The Hard problem and E=mc2
The true source being the human brain according to you? A rather large assumption to make I believe. — Benj96
I find this comment puzzling. The true source being the neuroscience. Let's not re-invent the wheel. We have at our disposal a discipline that devoted countless hours to study and explain... the brain.

My suggestion (trying not to sound condescending or. dismissive here) is to really open your mind up to at least contemplating (for funzies) how consciousness could be more basic (time and space perception from matter experiencing energetic impulses/catalytic processes). — Benj96
I don't have a problem contemplating the basics. What I'm saying is, there's our source already. Trying to be creative is another thing -- which I think what you've been trying to do.
Emergence
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.
Emergence
Biological computing, combined with genetic engineering may make great advances in the future, especially with AI's help. — universeness
Until they can perceive time, i.e. they develop a temporal mind, they're stuck with a built-in clock calibrated to coincide with the time zones. Math and/or computing is non-temporal. This is the sad reality.
I'm presuming that by "advances", you mean they become humans. If not, I stand corrected.

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