I have not. Earthsea is my favorite series of books every. (Tied with a few others.) But I haven't read most of her other stuff. Guess I should check it out.Did you ever read the “Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula LeGuin? It’s not exactly what you described but it has a lot in common. Really good book. Pretty good movie. — T Clark
Not for me. I feel many choices as I'm making them. I struggle with them, looking for a reason too give one option a leg up. Yesterday, I had two scoops of salted caramel ice cream, and one chocolate. (Plus toppings, and a brookie at the bottom.) It took some time to decide. I find the notion that I am an automoton, unable to do more than act out the resolution of all the bioelectric signals jumping around in my brain, and the specifics of (in this example) how I go about eating my dessert determined in the same way, to be preposterous.Consider why it seems like we could have: it's entirely in retrospect. — Relativist
I don't know if anyone at all agrees with me, but I say the order of the bases in DNA mean amino acids and proteins.This makes me wonder, what would count as meaning that is independent or external to human thought? — Tom Storm
I do agree. But your wording makes me wonder if we view it differently. There is meaning, and there is order. We find those things.We know there is an impulse in human beings to make meaning and wrest order out of chaos
— Tom Storm
Why is that?
— Patterner
You agree with this? I imagine it’s for facilitating survival and attempting to manage our environment. Making the wrong choice can harm or kill us. But it’s obviously more nuanced than my couple of sentences. — Tom Storm
I hadn't noticed.Good grief, it is hard to be human. — Athena
It would make things easier if only intentional causes were called causes, and the other kind called something else.As a panpsychist I've been been considering whether the distinction between intentional cause and non intentional is sustainable. I think it may be, but the non intentional would be derived from the intentional. The only causes we actually know about are intentional. Other causes are often attributed to laws, which are descriptive and don't need the notion of cause to work, perhaps. Not sure. — bert1
Perhaps. But is it likely that someone who thinks they are perceiving an object is actually viewing an activity?Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that does (edited to correct stupid autocorrect) not have temporal extension?
— Patterner
Any activity I suppose. At each moment it is new and different, therefore there is no temporal extension of any specific thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that does (edited to correct stupid auto correct) not have temporal extension?but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving,
— Metaphysician Undercover
What are the criteria?
— Patterner
I would say that the single most important criterion for "object" is temporal extension. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why is that?We know there is an impulse in human beings to make meaning and wrest order out of chaos — Tom Storm
People in different areas have had to face different circumstances and challenges. Desert nomads know how to live under conditions that would kill people of a fishing village, and vice versa. What challenges can they solve by combining their ways and knowledge?Celebrate diversity as a strength that enriches our deeper collective consciousness. By accepting and embracing our differences, we fuel our collective strengths and struggles.
— RadicalJoe
Can you say how? — Tom Storm
What are the criteria?but if "objects" doesn't fulfill the criteria for what the person is actually perceiving, — Metaphysician Undercover
Yup. Also low self-esteem, since I can't resist quoting Northern Exposure. :grin:Fear is the slave driver of human kind, it has great utility as motivation, but if it's excessive and unreasonable one can easily be destroyed by it, or rendered stupid.
— Nils Loc
Absolutely agree with this. — AmadeusD
The best way is to not be offended. You do that by realizing you're talking to a bunch of anonymous people who, if you learned their names, would be total strangers. It's easy to be hurt by people we care for. Feelings of betrayal. Feelings of loss. They might have even used something personal to hurt you.When we are offended, what is the best way to handle this. — Athena
Oh! I didn't realize. I just thought it was a typo.↪Patterner Old. I am surprised that Apo was reduced to name calling so quickly. — Banno
That's excellent! You should change your name to Banjo!And here is Banjo to join the mean girls with his usual constipated approach to insult. — apokrisis
Good luck with that. :grin:I tried to keep human intention out of the question. — T Clark
I don't know if you failed according to Aristotle, or anyone roast. I'm saying the reason the 8 ball moved is the physical impact of the cue ball, and the reason the cue moved is your decision to move it. Those seem very different to me.What are the two types of causes? I was trying to limit my discussion to efficient cause. Did I fail? — T Clark
I think you are making my point. "If we think of something as simple as a football..." We're thinking. Doesn't thinking involve thoughts? Can we think without thoughts?Do all fall under the umbrella of thoughts?
— Patterner
It is difficult to answer that question. We would have to define what a thought is. In my view, a thought is a relationship with an idea where the idea is actualised, but the idea is a diffuse problem, so the thought does not represent the idea. If we think of something as simple as a football, the thought extends to consider football as a sport, the players, how a ball is thrown, how it is kicked, a whole context that nevertheless remains virtual, waiting to be actualised as the thought progresses in its determinations. Thought is that mental phenomenon such as an image, a notion, a concept that is constantly being determined. But the important thing is that this is not a representation of something outside the mind. A football does not represent the kick or the throw; both are a virtual objective that happens to the ball and is determined as a concept in our thinking. — JuanZu
I don't know exactly what you have in mind, but consciousness seems outside of the scope of mathematics.I think the discussion would go differently with a better understanding of math. What do you know about using math to discover things or explain how things work? — Athena
It is.Isn't weighing options and choosing among them a mindful activity? — RogueAI
It doesn't. The world is filled with things people chose to make that would not exist if not for our minds. This is why we have always differentiated between natural and man-made objects. We can usually tell the difference at a glance.How does that work on a physical basis alone? — RogueAI
What knowledge does it contradict?So a few things came to mind. The first is obviously that you're attribution of consciousness to fundamental particles contradicts current knowledge — Jack2848
I don't understand what you mean.Namely the definition you use for consciousness and subjective experience for fundamental particles and everything else as a result. No longer requires the usual abilities. Such as a living real-time changing awareness rather than a dead one. — Jack2848
I don't define consciousness as "just existing" at that level. I'm saying that's all there is to subjectively experience at that level. I'll try my vision analogy again. If i look at a ball that's just sitting there, that's all i see. A ball just sitting there. That doesn't mean I define vision as "just sitting there".You even define consciousness at the fundamental level as 'just existing'. Which makes sense because there's not much there at that level. — Jack2848
If that's what you value, knock your socks off! :grin:Can't a sorry old pragmatist like me not have values and meaning without all the claptrap? Just living a productive life and enjoying it? — apokrisis
Sure. But doesn't every action, even inaction, constrain things one way or another? Aaron Judge hitting the ball is a constraint, because he prevented the ball from hitting the catcher's mitt. That wasn't his goal. his goal was to hit the ball. It just so happens that hitting the ball prevents that. Is there a line between something being a constraint and the idea that any course taken means every other course is not taken?I guess that’s my understanding of what a constraint is— something that prevents something else from happening. It reduces the number of possible futures. — T Clark
That's how you broke it down in your OP. I was just replying to the parameters you gave.Sure. I have no problem with that as long as you recognize that that particular way of breaking things up is not the only way of looking at it. It’s a matter of convention. You decided which particular aspects to focus on based on your own judgment, and not on any kind of universal principle. That focus was a matter of human value, not scientific principle. — T Clark
Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt. :grin: No, I didn't mean that. I was trying to distinguish between different types of causes. Cue hitting cue ball, cue ball hitting 8 ball, and 8 ball falling in the pocket are all one type. I don't know what anybody else might call them, but I would probably just call them brute force causes? Thing 1 bangs into Thing 2, and Thing 2 moves.Here's where the break comes. Your muscles and bones moved in those specific ways because you chose to move them in those specific ways, because you intended the cue to hit the cue ball, because you intended the cue ball to hit the 8 ball, because you intended the 8 ball to go into the pocket. (i'm assuming you intended to hit the 8 ball into the pocket.) But that didn't have to happen.
— Patterner
Are you saying that the appropriate place to make a break is based on human intention? So that causality only is significant when there’s people around. I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, so I think I must be misunderstanding. — T Clark
I don't think the asteroid and Hitler were constraints. The asteroid prevented the continued evolution of dinosaurs by wiping them out. Or, iirc, it wiped out land animals above a certain size. Hitler prevented a lot of potential futures by murdering millions who would have had children. If a constraint is "a limitation or restriction", then I don't think it applies to these two cases?When I go back to what I wrote about the chain of causality, one thing that jumps out to me is that constraints—events that prevent future events—have a bigger effect on what happens in the world then causes—events that result in future events. The asteroid didn’t cause humans to evolve, it prevented dinosaurs and other organisms from continuing to evolve. Hitler didn’t cause me to be born, he prevented other potential futures from taking place. — T Clark
It is complicated. Photon hits retina, it's converted, a signal is sent to the brain, where it's represented in a certain way. Assuming no malfunction in the pathway, that will happen. Information about light will be in the brain, in non-light form. But that information might never be acted upon at all. It's possibe that acting upon it is impossible, like if I have locked-in syndrome, even if I interpret it.So, I would rephrase to say, when information of a system is not being actively processed, its form or state is Potential instead of Actual. For example, there is lots of information in your brain, that you are not currently aware of or thinking of. But it's available to activate, when needed. — Gnomon
Doesn't the fact that people have sequenced Neanderthal DNA, among other groups, say it is still information?Information in a dead organism has been transformed into Entropy (dissipated Energy). — Gnomon
They then beginning discussing the simplest minds - molecule minds:A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.
There's always consciousness, since it is fundamental. There is not always a mind.If something is an object or process and has subjective experience then it has consciousness or a mind. — Jack2848
There's always subjective experience, since it is fundamental. I say a mind exists only if there's activity of certain kinds taking place. And, again, our consciousness - our subjective experience - of that mind is another matter. I suspect the abstract thinking is only possible when sufficient information processing systems, feedback loops, and consciousness are all present. Consciousness is always present. But we are the only things we are aware of that have sufficient information processing systems and feedback loops. Archaea's subjective experience of its mind, if we're willing to call it a mind for the sake of argument, is nothing like ours, and it doesn't not have abstract possibilities.But a mind exists only if there's subjective experience (which you deem to be consciousness). — Jack2848
If my position or right, it does. Everything does. At least the particles do. And there is probably information processing taking place, so it may be subjectively experiencing as a unit. And I think we can probably give AI the "solid footing" that interacting with the physical world gave naturally-occurring thinking, just as we gave it information processing. But we need to give it a lot more, and feedback loops.Chat gpt is an object or process but doesn't have subjective experience. — Jack2848
What is the form of there information in the DNA of a dead organism? What is the form of there information in a book that is sitting in a box in the basement?Yes, it's always Information, but it comes in different Forms. — Gnomon
I don't understand what you're saying. Particularly "the verbal Information". I don't know if you're answering my question. Is the order of the bases in the DNA of a dead body, or written in a book that is sitting in a box in the basement, information?DNA is chemistry, and it is inert until it is read & implemented by a biological system. The information is encoded in the patterns of interrelationships.
Yes, it's like a tree falling in a forest : it doesn't make a protein unless there's RNA to read it, and ATP to power the change, and amino acids as raw material. So, the verbal Information (EnFormAction) of DNA is not static chemicals, but the active process of reading & implementing the code. :smile: — Gnomon
I meant someone hacked your account and is posing as you, but gave thself away by not doing the footnotes.Ha! I'm not that clever with computer technology, but I can copy & paste. :nerd: — Gnomon
I think I disagree. I believe DNA is information. The codons mean amino acids, and strings of codons mean proteins. (I know not everyone agrees with that, so you might consider my point incorrect already.) Processing that information is a verb. In its natural form, the information is processed.True. Information is a verb, not a noun, a process, not an object. It's what I like to call EnFormAction : the power to transform from Potential to Actual. Shannon's abstract Data has potential, but no actual meaning, until it is interpreted by a Mind. :smile: — Gnomon
