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  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪praxis
    :rofl: Another conflicted true believer.
  • Was intelligence in the universe pre-existing?
    Was intelligence in the universe pre-existing? — kindred
    In other words, does it make sense to conceive of 'inteligence in the universe without the universe existing' (i.e. disembodied agency)? :roll:

    No, I don't think so.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/931639
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    'The Book of Minds: Understanding Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to Aliens', Philip Ball (2022). — Jack Cummins
    With all due respect, I suspect a less superficial (non-technical) gloss on the topic of 'nonhuman intelligence' is popularist Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus (2016). YMMV.

    As far as I'm concerned, Jack, anthropomorphizing intelligence / mind (as you and others do) shows a basic lack of knowledge of cognitive sciences in general, artificial intelligence in particular and related concepts covered by the philosophy of mind. Your subjectivist / folk psychological qualifiers such as "intuition" "truly free will" "consciousness" "inner world" "emotion" "insight" "empathy and compassion" "truly free thinking" etc have nothing substantive to say about nonhuman – nonbiological – metacognition such as prospective AGI (or 'strong AI' ... rather than mere chatbots/LLMs & expert systems).

    And you still haven't addressed, Jack, (1) why you assume 'self-aware intelligence requires consciousness (i.e. any phenomenology whatsoever)' or (2) why compatibilism (re: embodied volition – whether in biological or nonbiological systems) does not suffice to address the concerns of your OP.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪ENOAH
    Is theism 'either true or not true'? If yes, then this can be soundly demonstrated. However, if no, then theism is noncognitive (i.e. figurative, analogical, mythopoetic).

    NB: I'm using 'theism' in this context to mean 'sine qua non properties attributed to g/G' such as
    (1) an/the ultimate mystery
    (2) that created the whole of existence
    (3) and uniquely intervenes in (re: "providence") – causes changes to (re: "miracles") – the observable universe (i.e. nature).
  • The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
    ↪Benkei
    I've read the book; what do you mean "our universe operates as suggested ..."?
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    truly free thinking — Jack Cummins
    Please explain what you mean by this phrase. Also why are you anthropomorphizing prospective AGI's metacognition (i.e. why assume that 'nonbiological thinking' is to think like humans)?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Israel is the aggressor, Hamas commits a war crime and Israel uses it as an excuse to step up its decade old aggression by committing even worse war crimes. — Benkei
    :100:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    15September24

    Another "assassination attempt"(?) today. I hope The Old Fat Fascist Clown lives long enough to see Kamala Harris sworn in as the 47th POTUS on 20January25. :victory: :party:
  • What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?
    ↪L'éléphant
    In other words, when one misunderstands it.
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    It partly comes down to the question of what is [do we mean by] consciousness? — Jack Cummins
    Maybe for you ... a stipulative definition suffices, however, for a subject matter-informed, speculative discussion: consciousness = pain-awareness (i.e. what bodily activity-feedback feels like, not just PNS reflexes).

    It also depends on what do the artificial simulations serve, and in accordance with whose will?
    AGI =/= "artificial simulations" (whatever those are). As for "programming": same as neonatal pair-bonding + socialization in humans but with powerful neural nets instead: training metacognitive systems to self-learn within enabling-constraints. IMO, 'intelligence' = outside-the-box thinking that surpasses – repurposes – "programming" (i.e. not just "bot automatons").

    If one has any sympathy with panpsychism ...
    I don't – it's only a reductionist appeal to ignorance (i.e. woo-of-the-gaps) and/or compositional fallacy.
     
    ... beings with free will.
    E.g. such as ...
  • What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?
    Who would you name as the 10 [13] most important philosophers born after 1900? — Joshs
    Speaking only for myself ...

    Keiji Nishitani, b. 1900
    Hannah Arendt, b. 1906
    E.M. Cioran, b. 1911
    Albert Camus, b. 1913
    Philippa Foot, b. 1920
    Walter Kaufmann, b. 1921
    George Steiner, b. 1929
    Clément Rosset, b. 1939
    Martha Nussbaum, b. 1947
    David Deutsch, b. 1953
    Cornel West, b. 1953
    Thomas Metzinger, b. 1958
    Ray Brassier, b. 1965
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Intelligence =/= consciousness (& self-awareness =/= pain-awareness), so why do you assume consciousness – simulated or not – will be required for or is entailed by 'AGI'?
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Well, I assume that AGI, while self-aware, will not be "conscious" (i.e. feel pain).
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪javi2541997
    Some of us affirm "god exists" only in the heads of it's believers and nowhere else.
  • 'It was THIS big!' as the Birth of the God Concept
    It might just be that the word god was the name given to anything that was unexplainable and originally meant "I don't know". — Sir2u
    How very charitable of you, Sir. :smirk:

    [It] would be logical to assume ... god(s) came about from the initial belief of animism¹, which likely came about due to pareidolia². — Outlander
    :100: :fire:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism [1]

    https://sites.uw.edu/libraryvoices/2024/02/03/pareidolia-the-phenomenon-of-seeing-faces-everywhere/ [2]
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    :up:
  • What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?
    Antinatalism is the poster boy for playing with Big Important Ideas not always leading to wisdom or insight. At least the minutia-mongerers among us aren't so foolish as to think there could be such a thing as an argument against life. — Srap Tasmaner
    :up: :up:
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Perhaps the prospect artificial general intelligence (AGI) is "the next step in evolution" – post-biological metacognition. As a species h. sapiens today is removed from nature enough to be completely free of adaptive selection pressures making us an evolutionary dead end: from evolution (re: barely good enough adaptations) to development (re: strategic-technical optimizations (e.g. AGI)). Human "consciousness" – phenomenal self-awareness (i.e. subjectivity) – might be a spandrel¹ that is suboptimal (e.g. a metacognitive bottleneck) and therefore not needed to take that "next step". What do you think?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) [1]
  • What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?
    ↪schopenhauer1
    Besides scholastic, p0m0ist, idealist/psychologistic philosophies, I find antinatalism (or any other form of futility, defeatism, ontophobia, denialism) "uninteresting" for reasons beginning with these in this recent post:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/928003

    coda:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/928725
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It's factually correct that anyone who defends Israeli aggression is a war crime(s) apologist. — Benkei
    :up: :up:
  • The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
    Are they overly influenced by watching science fiction? — Relativist
    No doubt. \\//_ :nerd:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Which is why the victory must be complete and Hamas completely replaced. — BitconnectCarlos
    As well the zionfascist (Likud) regime also "must be" "completely replaced". :mask:
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    You could be possessed. You don't know — frank
    :yikes:
  • The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
    We have learned a bit about the strings and the pulling of them but are completely in the dark about the puppet master. — Manuel
    Perhaps because "the puppet master" is merely a grammatical illusion (i.e. "doer" attributed to doing – "subject" of a predicate) that amounts to folk psychology's homunculus fallacy. Consider (e.g.) Buddha's anattā¹ ... Hume's bundle² ... Metzinger's PSM³ ... :chin:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 [1]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_theory [2]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model [3]


    @Jack Cummins
  • Was intelligence in the universe pre-existing?
    ↪bert1
    So what's your point?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Today in Trumpenfreude

    NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)

    4Sept24 – $16.98 per share (-36% past month)
    (NASDAQ 17,084.10)
    — 180 Proof
    13Sept24 – $16.12 per share :down:
    (NASDAQ 17,395.53) :up:
  • Was intelligence in the universe pre-existing?
    "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." :fire:

    The question I have is…has intelligence always been around before this world was created prior to the Big Bang ...? — kindred
    Insofar as "before" is a synonym for without in this context, the above amounts to asking whether 'walking happened without legs' or 'vision without eyes' or 'life without mass' or 'minds without bodies' or 'patterns without primordial symmetry-breaking' ... wtf :roll:
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪Fire Ologist
    "Existence of God" (false predication) =/= "God exists" (re: matter of fact). You equivocate those phrases and thereby confuse the issue, FO. Btw, "proof" pertains only to logic and mathematics, not to matters of fact which, however, can be shown to be the case or not to be the case. "God exists" can be shown not to be the case.
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ↪wonderer1
    :up:
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪Fire Ologist
    Afaik,"God" is an empty name that "exists" only in the heads of religious believers (i.e. superstitious, magical thinkers).
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ↪ucarr
    I can't follow any of this ...
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ↪Ludwig V
    "So scornful?" Why do you ask? Read the links I provided (the articles are simplified, non-technical summaries).
  • Relativism vs. Objectivism: What is the Real Nature of Truth?
    ↪Relativist
    :up: :up:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ↪Ludwig V


    "GUT"
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory

    "TOE"
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
  • The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
    ↪Sir2u
    :nerd: :up:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Fooloso4
    :sweat:
  • The Sciences Vs The Humanities
    ... Perhaps l should look at dark: matter_energy through this lens. — ucarr
    I guess I'm a broken record ...
    Bad philosophy derived from bad physics. :roll: — 180 Proof
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Today in Trumpenfreude 11Sept24

    The Clown is so fucked! :clap: :lol:


    Roevember is coming! :party:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    @BitconnectCarlos The enemy? You mean all those non-combatants you displaced and then stole their houses and land?

    It's theft plain and simple. If I attack you and you successfully defend yourself, you don't get to steal my wallet afterwards. The defence is justified the theft isn't.
    — Benkei
    :100: :up:
  • The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
    Judging other species by human standards is the first mistake ... — Sir2u
    :100:

    And probably, imo, "they" are not even – are no longer – "species" but instead spacefaring AI probes (operationally independent of their long ago left behind biological makers)..
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