what specially was your alternative to matter? — JerseyFlight
That's a nonsense question — Wayfarer
Modern science has tended to want to see 'everything in the universe' as physical, because physical objects are amenable to the precise objectification and quantification that is central to its method. That was part of the conceptual revolution introduced by Galileo, Newton, and Descartes, among others, at the advent of modern science. — Wayfarer
3) and the two are intrinsically linked because, as it happens in all dynamic living systems that we are aware of, you cannot have one without the other and still produce the kinds of behaviours that we expect of a dynamic living system.
But what's most useful from that is that it provides a framework for measuring the effectiveness of a system to produce self-referential conscious-like processing capabilities, and its efficiency. — Malcolm Lett
There's a gap — Malcolm Lett
I see only two rational possibilities:
1. everything is physical
2. everything is metaphysical
Modern science takes #1 as assumed and tries to slowly eat away at the unknown, finding physical explanations, under the assumption that eventually (at the point of infinity) all previously unknown will be explained through the physical. — Malcolm Lett
Alternatively, given the inherent difficulty with the unknown, many assume that there must be some additional non-physical aspect that is necessary to explain everything. But I find this dualistic (or is it trialistic?) theory irrational -- though I'll find it hard to verbalise why. — Malcolm Lett
As I suggested, there is an intrinsic difficulty with attempting to treat the subject - the thinker, the agent who is writing and speaking - as an object of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer
There's a gap - something that we aren't measuring in our computational analysis.
I'm wondering what theories there are that specifically address the question of measuring this gap. — Malcolm Lett
Whereas you're suggesting that nothing is outside its jurisdiction. — Wayfarer
As I suggested, there is an intrinsic difficulty with attempting to treat the subject - the thinker, the agent who is writing and speaking - as an object of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer
However, in this case, the object of analysis is also the subject doing the examining. It's precisely because you can't stand outside or, or 'objectify', the object of analysis that is the cause of both the 'hard problem' and 'the explanatory gap'. This is why it is in principle outside the scope of empirical analysis — Wayfarer
The problem is the assumption that 'understanding' is binary.
A calculator understands maths in much the same way as the room in the Chinese Room analogy understands chinese. It has some non-negligible understanding of the maths that it's programmed to work with. If it had no understanding, then it wouldn't suffice as a culculator.
We take say that humans "understand" a concept because we build detailed models around that concept. We model not just the end result of how to apply a concept, but also layered theories and explanations. We attach all sorts of context to the concept: how we "feel" about that concept, when/when not to apply it.
All of that can be explained using the same underlying computational processes that the calculator uses.
Is there something 'special' about the human understanding vs the calculator understanding that isn't just a matter of degree? Well, I personally think not, but I'll leave that as an open question for now.
What I will suggest though, is that the word "understand" is socially understood to mean a certain thing only because that's our human-centro definition of it. — Malcolm Lett
So this thought experiment proved to you that the room understands rather than that the person outside the room had a false understanding that the room understands.
Go for it! — apokrisis
Like Bitbol's thesis on the importance of taking subjectivity seriously, any theory on the mechanics behind a subjective conscious experience is incomplete until it explains how the objective mechanics produces the subjective. — Malcolm Lett
It's not a matter of placing 'restrictions' on science, but questioning its presuppositions. — Wayfarer
Modern scientific method starts from certain axioms and presuppositions, which may be perfectly suitable within its scope, but science is not all-knowing. — Wayfarer
Why are you still trying so hard to avoid justifying your claim that consciousness is just the brain doing data processing? — apokrisis
I'm quite sure that the content of our conscious experience is a representational model. A 'summary', if you like, of a certain subset of data flowing through the brain. One can argue that this means we cannot introspect anything about the mechanisms behind our subjective experience, because we are confined to this representational model, and we must inherently distrust the accuracy of this model. — Malcolm Lett
As I understand it, action comes before perception. If this is the case consciousness is not merely an image but an inter-working and synthesis of environment... it also means more than this, I cannot draw it all out. But think of this for a moment, there is no such thing as a computer without a long historical material process, the fact that one wants to separate the quality of the computer from this process, gathering of raw materials, creation, assembly, etc., only serves to manifest the limitations and distortions (obliviousness) of the one who artificiates the divisions. We are not talking about the fully developed being of a thing that miraculously popped into existence, we are, whether one likes it or not, talking about a historical process, social activity. Therefore, the mechanisms that account for this process are both historical and material. To say we are confined to representations seems to overlook the very real material process. I am not dogmatic here, but this seems like a gigantic, ignorant gap in the thinking. — JerseyFlight
I'm aware of that viewpoint but I want to free any beholders of that view from their shackles, because we can achieve so much more than that. — Malcolm Lett
I originally mistakenly attributed some comments to MadFool instead of Wayfarer — Malcolm Lett
But it isn't insurmountable, and it can be done, so long as one is aware of the limitations. This is obvious due to the amount we have learned about the brain and our subjective from fRMI and the like. — Malcolm Lett
the subject can learn a lot about their internal workings from their own subjective experience. — Malcolm Lett
What I'd like to know is what you mean by: the problem is the assumption that 'understanding' is binary? — TheMadFool
I do realise this might strike you as annoying, obscurantist, and even 'mystical' as has already been suggested. But I feel strongly that what is at stake here is of fundamental philosophical importance. — Wayfarer
But I feel strongly that what is at stake here is of fundamental philosophical importance. — Wayfarer
So, how could the meaning of a state of being be something that is ever going to be revealed in an fMRI scan? — Wayfarer
A calculator understands maths in much the same way as the room in the Chinese Room analogy understands chinese. — Malcolm Lett
It has some non-negligible understanding of the maths that it's programmed to work with. — Malcolm Lett
If it had no understanding, then it wouldn't suffice as a calculator. — Malcolm Lett
The explanatory gap is what a mechanical conception of nature creates. — apokrisis
Hence why biologists and neuroscientists are arriving at semiotics as an alternative conception of nature. — apokrisis
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