The point is, it addresses your question of 'what is not grounded in the physical'. It's a question that doesn't have an easy answer, but then, you did ask! — Wayfarer

Few matters have easy answers. Try getting hold of a plumber over Easter.

Wouldn't it be odd if a consensus emerges around IIT, and it's agreed that harming/deactivating systems with X amount of information integration is a crime, and then we discover such systems were never conscious? Of course, for practical reasons, we're going to carve out protections for advanced AI's. I think.

Thanks. I've been following his work since his Francis Crick days and more recently with both Guilio Tononi & The Allen Institute For Brain Science.

Wouldn't it be odd if a consensus emerges around IIT, and it's agreed that harming/deactivating systems with X amount of information integration is a crime, and then we discover such systems were never conscious? — RogueAI

Like human beings. (Metzinger) Prohibitions against murder would either have to be based on something other than "killing of defenseless persons" since we would not be persons after all or we would have to radically update / redefine our folk psychological definition in the law of a "natural person".

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Like human beings. (Metzinger) Prohibitions against murder would either have to be based on something other than "defenseless killing of persons" since we would not be persons after all or we would have to radically update / redefine our folk psychological definition in the law of a "nature person"

I think when these Alexas and Siris can start passing the Turing Test and become companions to a lot of people there will be a sea change in what constitutes a "person". There's a story of a Colonel come to watch a mine-clearing robot at work. It gamely goes from mine to mine, losing pieces of itself until the Colonel can't stand to watch anymore. I think we're naturally sympathetic creatures, and that will extend to machines.

I've a sneaking suspicion (bordering on paranoia) that some machines have passed the Turing Test already, maybe decades ago, and that they're smart enough not to tell "the primates". :eyes:

Few matters have easy answers. Try getting hold of a plumber over Easter. — Tom Storm

I can't find a tradie to fix a leaking downpipe for love nor money. :meh:

I stumbled across Talbot's book by chance in one of the few shops that were selling books during lockdown. However, I had read Bohm's, 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' previously. When reading that, I had thought more about the implicate order as, perhaps, being like Plato's forms. It seemed to me that what is apparent in the explicate order stems from a non tangible basis.

I've always associated Bohm's implicate order with Spinoza's natura naturans (substance) once I'd thoroughly studied the Ethics.

I think when these Alexas and Siris can start passing the Turing Test and become companions to a lot of people there will be a sea change in what constitutes a "person". — RogueAI

:point:

You've probably seen Her and some of the other sci-fi. We can already make it so believable, so yeah.

I know that you seem to question the idea of a holographic perspective, but do you think that the idea of an implicate order makes sense at all? I do believe that neuroscience is important but it does seem to end up becoming completely reductive.

Yes, Bohm's work makes sense. And no neuroscience isn't by definition or entirely reductive; but even if it is, the proof of the pudding is in the eating – it's still very early days yet as far as bridging "the explanatory gap" goes.

Yeah, that was a good movie. Shades of things to come.

The problem is that the word "physicalism" tends to imply something like physicSalism. This need not follow. Mind is a physical phenomena and so is qualia. Unless someone can give a good reason as to why mind cannot be physical.

But if someone is uncomfortable with physicalism, they can use "neutral monism". If that's also problematic, one could use Peirce's "objective idealism": matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.

All else failing, you can just use "monism", if you are one.

My own understanding of the ideas of Bohm and Talbot is that these writers are trying to overcome dualism and reductionist determinism. That is by seeing consciousness as being related or 'enfolded' in matter.

Substance dualism or property dualism? I can understand not wanting substance dualism.

I personally don't see how one can get around property dualism, unless one is an eliminativist of sorts.

I wonder if it is possible to go beyond the labels because they may be only approximations and, may be inadequate.

As applied to the world? That's undoubtedly the case.

However, the issue of there being two properties as opposed one seems substantive.

So are you advocating for a dualistic model?

Dual-aspect monism. There's only physical stuff with mental and non-mental components.

I'd like to get to one property, for the sake of parsimony. But I'm unable to do it.

I have read some of your thread on ontology. I can see that you are trying to understand consciousness. It is a complex problem. I ponder it and I think that many on the site do so. I don't think that there are any easy answers, even with the help of neuroscience.

One writer who I think is relevant is Fritjof Capra, who tries to see beyond the Cartesian model, and he draws upon the cybernetic theory of Gregory Bateson. Capra suggests that:
'According to the theory of living systems, mind is not a thing but a process_ the very process of life. In other words, the organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism_ plant, animal, or human_ with its environment are cognitive, or mental interactions. Thus life and cognition become inseparably connected. Mind_ or, more accurately, mental process is imminent in matter at all levels of life.'

I am not saying that this solves the problem, but I find what he is saying to be helpful.

Dual-aspect monism. There's only physical stuff with mental and non-mental components. — Manuel

:up: Like a photon that can be described as either a wave or a particle, thus conceived of as 'wave-particle (implicate-explicate?) physicalism'. I prefer this to "neutral monism" because it commits to a specific ontological-type of monism e.g. the physical.

I don't think that there are any easy answers, even with the help of neuroscience. — Jack Cummins

I very much agree. It would be boring if it were easy!

According to the theory of living systems, mind is not a thing but a process_ the very process of life. In other words, the organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism_ plant, animal, or human_ with its environment are cognitive, or mental interactions. Thus life and cognition become inseparably connected. Mind_ or, more accurately, mental process is imminent in matter at all levels of life.'

I am not saying that this solves the problem, but I find what he is saying to be helpful. — Jack Cummins

That's sensible and likely on track. Not only based on the word he uses "process", but it reminds me of Whitehead to an extent. Based on what you quote there, that still leaves room for non-mental being. If life "plant, animal, or human" are mental activity, what do we do with rocks and rivers? We still have non-mental being.

But I hadn't heard of Capra before, I'll have to check him out. Thanks for the recommendation. :)

That's one way to think about it. It's curious that even if we want a single property, we can't escape having to postulate two.

I see it as one coin, two faces .. like a diamond with many facets or a terrain with many paths / maps ... (re: Complementarity, plurality, irreality – "the many" aspects of "the one")

I wonder if it is possible to go beyond the labels because they may be only approximations and, may be inadequate. — Jack Cummins

No. The map =/= the territory; that's why maps are useful (inadequate yet indispensable) as maps – because they are abstractions from the terrain – that approximate, thereby are fallibilistic and revisable.

It is probably a paradox. You can't have mind without body and vice versa, but probably as Sartre suggested, 'Existence precedes essence.'

↪Manuel I see it as one coin with two faces .. a diamond with many facets ... a terrain with many paths / maps ... (re: Complementarity, plurality, irreality – "the many" aspects of "the one") — 180 Proof

That's my type of language. :cool:

:up:

Almost all of what there is is 'bodies-without-minds' (though no minds-without-bodies) in so far as we're talking about individuals, but you're right, IMO, about categories, or the ways reality can be described (i.e. conceived of).

Btw, I don't see how Sartre's existential mantra is relevant here ... what am I missing?

I just logged into this thread, which fizzled out about a week ago and saw the reference to Koch's book, which looks fascinating. I actually started this thread at the same time as the one on mysteries, but that has brought me back to thinking about the interrelationship between body and mind. I don't know why I brought the Sartre quote in, but I think that I had just been reading him that morning. I definitely agree that it is problematic to speak of minds without bodies. I may have spoken in such ways a few times, and I definitely think that some dualism has drifted in that direction.

We still have non-mental being. — Manuel

I'm not convinced.