4. What other collections of switches are conscious? Phones? My desktop computer? — RogueAI

No; not phones. Not computers. They lack certain elements. But other switching mechanisms exist that supposedly developed consciousness. The fox. The elephant. The bee. The mollusk.

3. How could you verify whether such a system is in fact conscious? — RogueAI

By the turing test.

However, that's only verification; not proof. You can't prove that anyone else aside from yourself has a consciousness, either.

1. Why should we assume that consciousness can arise from switches? Why is that not a category error? — RogueAI

Because for wall we know, the brain is the house of consciousness; and it is nothing but a processor with processes and switches. Therefore another processor with switches and processes that emulate it, may or would necessarily become conscious. That's the theory. No empirical evidence yet, but the theory is solid.

I’m sorry to say I don’t think your formalization of the dilemma is coherent. You start off with objective morality as part of your premise and then include the subjective morality of the “center” as part of your problem but if there is objective morality then we could just go by that, no subjective quagmire. — DingoJones

I think I got that covered in my analysis of arriving at my answer. If you care to read my answer.

Out of all peoples input on the planet there has to be someone who has the most workable, justifiable mode by which we should be living to maximise benefit for everyone or minimise harm etc, or whatever parameters true morality would lie on. — Benj96

This is why philosophy is called the slippery rock by Edie Brickell. If morality is malleable, that is, the parameters are what we choose, then the only thing that morality would hinge on would be our collective will of what we call moral.

You expressed it by saying that morality is what the parameters dicate. In this case either we define the parameters, and deduce morality, or find morality, and reverse-engineer it to find the parameters. You leave both options open in the above paragraph, so it's a problem with two unknowns and two degrees of freedom... which leaves the entire thing up in the air, it's anyone's game what they call moral and immoral.

And that's one of the features of morality that I incorporated into my paper, reference here below by links.

In fact, my paper explains that perfectly, inasmuch as it compares consensus morality to unavoidable moral acts; There are two versions of my paper dealing with this on this site.

The long version:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach

The shorter version:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper

I got jeered at and sneered at, but I think it is defensible, I could defend it against criticism, if only anyone would care to look at it.

I wonder if you would do for me the honour of meaningfully reading it, Benj96.

So the only thing we could possibly accept as objective morality is the popular vote of all people. — Benj96

This would not work. Any deviation from one's own moral code in your proposed world would mean to that person that it is bad morality. Since he, the individual (all individuals and every one of them) beleive their own code is the absolute moral, they MUST regard deviation as badness, and similarity as goodness.

since the gradient distribution is even along the spectrum, of goodness and badness, from low to high and from high to low, therefore equally as many people will vote "good" as good, and "bad" as good, and vice versa.

Interesting question. I suppose the question presupposes that people don't know what moral is; they just act according to what they think morality is.

This is a huge step away from reality. People find murder immoral, and theft and cheating, but they still do it. Not because they can't see the immorality in it, but because they decide that they had rather kill, steal and cheat, than be moral.

In this world this is funny, because in your world everyone acts according to their best perceived morality. At least that is what I get from your description.

In this case, there is no way of convincing someone to see the difference between good and bad if it's even just somewhat different from their own measure. In the global society you propose, everyone is the most moral, inasmuch as they stick to their own moral guide. Since they are blind to what constitutes absolute good and absolute bad, they can't decide because:
1. Everyone thinks of himself as the person who is absolutely good, because they all obey their own moral code to the letter.
2. Every deviation from their moral code is judged by them as "bad", as their own is perceived as perfect, so deviations from it must seem as imperfections, which ab ovo heralds an immoral quality in personality.

If you're willing to believe in a conscious system of pipes and water, why not rocks being moved around in a certain way? — RogueAI

Huge difference. In the pipes and water, much like in the human brain, there is a program, and the flow of water from the outside (data for the computer; outside stimuli for the brain) affect the program to react differently. The program is not changing; its response is changing to the changing data. Human reaction is different, too, whether the tongue senses sweetness, or a pin prick.

In the case of stones, there is no program. The only change that occurs is due to the thought processes of the man who puts down the stones. The stones have no communicative power beyond what the man puts down. In a program, and in the brain, there is communicative power imbedded into the program and into the brain.

This experiment in the desert being stuck there for eternity, or for a long time, would only produce a computer with stones if there were 1. A moving mechanism to move the stones 2. switches that responded to conditions 3. data 4. a way of making sure that the data affected the behaviour of some of the switches.

IN the comic there is no such thing. It is just stones lain down in a two-dimensional grid. That will produce no consciousness. But a machine that processes rocks, as described in the italics, does have a capacity to develop consciousness.

Why doesn't the creation of new mental states violate entropy?
4 hours ago — RogueAI

Youuuu... got it right, my friend. That IS correct.

:lol:

Each of these answers can be true but what defines an answer to be good enough for the question? — Tiberiusmoon

An answer that is true, and delineates the answer for the listener from every other truth that are answers to different questions from the asked one.

This does not mean that a good answer is unique or it can't have alternatives.

I would give up everything** and find my path to enlightenment.

(**) Everything except the 2,000,000 or so gorgeous women of at least of age of majority who are at my beck and call in the world in which I have everything. (Hey, everyone has to have some impossible dreams, don't dey.)

I have encountered many materialists who agree wholeheartedly with the conclusion in that comic. — RogueAI

Can you name them?

I am only asking because I heard many preachers say, "I've met many such and such that said such and such". I think it's a rhetoric and I am having a hard time believing it any more. If you met many materialists who said this or that, some names must have stuck in your mind.

I am fully aware that you can say, "Joe Montague, Harry Griffin, Michele Adieu, Robert Frankovic, Debbi Gaal, and Rosemary Thimble." I ask you to be honest. Did you actually met MANY materialists who said what you claim they all said?

Because of entropy.
It’s a lot easier for a person to produce energy from matter than it is to produce matter from energy. — Benj96

This is a good answer. On our level, yes, it works. But on a creationist's level, one can say that yes, there had been X amount of energy available to produce the Y amount of matter that makes up our KNOWN universe. Just because it's a large number, a scary-shit large number, it's not impossible for it to exist.

My beef is a bit different; it's got nothing to do with the amount of energy available. It has to do with the fact that energy in and by itself can't exist. It is CARRIED by matter. Some say some wave forms carry it, too, but the waveforms may need matter to propagate. There is a raging battle of minds over that; the old idea of ether filling the empty space in the universe is thought of as a form of matter. It's wholly different what Edgar Wells thought ether was, but the idea of some pervasive matter-like thing in otherwise any empty space is gaining momentum.

Anyway. Matter is the only source of energy inasmuch as energy is sapped from it. Slow down a speeding cannonball, put a resistor in a current, put a dam in a flowing river. Without some sort of energy conversion, energy rests in matter's existence. So to get the energy to create matter, without losing matter, is hugely inefficient (creating matter from heat energy, or kinetic energy); but if you use energy conversion in the maximum way, that is, converting matter into energy getting MCC energy out of it, defeats the purpose, since you need precisely as much matter to produce energy as much matter you get out of it.

So the purest energy conversion to make matter presupposes the same matter mass as you create; and every other source of energy assumes MORE mass than what gets created. In the upshot, non-matter or energy or consciousness can't create matter without using up as much matter or more as it creates.

I am replying to your original topic.

I think you have just right now invented a new area or branch of philosophy, "the philosophy of interest in philosophy".

I don't think philosophy will go extinct. Even with the knowledge attained.

There will always be differences in opinion, even if not in the philosophical questions we struggle with. There might be a debate whether Mary used too much red in her painting of the sunset, or else Peter put too much green in the grass. These differences are not philosophical, but to decide what the answer is, you need to use tools of philosophy, that is, argumentation.

I think philosophy branched out of religion. Man suspected there has to be a rational explanation to everything. If the explanation was not biting him in the leg, that is, if it wasn't in his face, he invented explanations without much evidence. Thunder? God's angry reindeer thumping wiht their hoofs. Lightning? God's wrath, express'd.

Religion was first and foremost a survival tool: to explain the unexplained, and to use its predictive value. Rain dance, blessing of the troops, prayers, sacrifices. When those did not work out, it was easy to explain that the gods were not sufficiently pleased.

Then came the famous Greek guy, whose name I forgot, and he gave explanations to those things, that had been neglected by religion. He said the wind is created by the leaves' trembling on trees; and he made a whole bunch of other EXPLANATIONS that today make laughably no sense, but the damage was done: this guy picked up the slack left by religion.

Then there was not stop to this. Superstitions, sciences, religions, theories, social theories, and legal theories were starting to be based on philosophy. The Christian church declared Plato's writing had the seed of Christian wisdom in the mysticism; scientists questioned the religious teachings; people had a surer way of satisfying their greed with the help of science destroying philosophical empirical truths, that's one of the impeti that empowered Columbus to sail west to find the east.

Karl Marx said that human beings need an ideology to perform a sweeping change in social structure or in other endeavours of society. In personal affairs it's called "rationalizing the cognitive discord (or cognitive dissonance)". In social movements, the rationalization is replaced by ideology, and the cognitive discord or dissonance is replaced by facing the changing of societally accepted values. Marx recognized this event, and that this is a social law. We need to defend Christianity, was the motto for the Crusades, which aimed to gain an access route to India's wealth of spices and gold and jewels. We need to fight for freedom, for liberty, and for justice, was the slavekeepers' motto for ridding themselves of the king's rule in America, and the proletariat-oppressing, internationally expanding imperialism of the bourgeoise in France. We must bind up the broken, the ill, the lonely, the poor, we must eradicate slavery, was the Christian motto for establishing a hegemony of absolute power in Europe in the middle ages.

Once social stability is achieved, we won't need ideology, either.

In all, philosophy was an excellent tool to pave the way to secular thinking, which paved the way of man detaching himself from the rigors of the unbending dogma of faith. It was also an excellent outlet for man's curious nature, and for his obsession to find solutions to problems, theoretical or practical, same difference.

But like you pointed out, Jack Cummings, will philosophy survive if it loses its survival value?

As a study of something that has historical value, no. It won't lose its stance. But as a tool of secular detachment from religion, it will use its usefulness. Things that are no longer useful get sidetracked, and their only way to survive is through their value of novelty, curiosity. The "strange and curious" survive no matter what. And as such things go, philosophy is sure one of them.

:grin:

physics is theoretical ... and metaphysics is speculative — 180 Proof

Yes, that's one difference all right.

There are other differences, too, but this is one of them.

Here's a quote from a Christian scientist:

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), the founder of a now well-established religion known as Christian Science, in her seminal work Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures. She asserted that Jesus' miracles were in accord with the, ``Science of God's unchangeable law.'' She also proclaimed that matter is a derivative of consciousness.

And here's the quote from Max Planck:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Erwin Schrödinger, on the same topic:
Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

Notice please that Planck 'regards', and not proclaims, his belief. He says it as a matter of science: something that is up for revision should the need arise to refine the theory. Mary Baker Eddy and Erwin Schrödinger disagrees with Planck: they figure consciousness is primary.

I think this is a debate that at this point is undecided. You can be an advocate of this, or that, but you can't claim that your theory is the only one and the only possibly good one.

We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.

I don't agree with this, and I can't prove it it's false. But the proponents of this sort of thinking can't prove that it's true. It is purely up to the individual's own intuitive inner world whether he accepts the above and the likes of it as true. It is futile to argue whether it is true that 'We are correct if we assume'.

But that we "must assume" is absolutely incorrect. It is equally possible without the assumption. So we "can assume", or "we are at liberty to assume", but we don't necessarily have to assume.

Hence I declare that the quote is false and misleading.

Science is mum on metaphysics. — RogueAI

And rightly so. Physics is science. Metaphysics concerns itself with things science can't explain. Hence the word, "meta-", which means, after. It's not a temporal "after", but just a conceptual dumper or back-hoe, that pushes all the elements of human knowledge and comprehension concerns that do not fit in the sciences from the area of sciences into the area we call metaphysics.

There's no reason for any of our actions. So why hold people accountable? Why blame them for anything they do? — Marchesk

You raised some excellent points.
1. Impossible vs something never occurring. A thing that never occurs is not a matter of interest. Whether because it's impossible, or just highly improbable.
3. The third issue is already spoken for -- if I understand it clearly -- which is coincidentiality. If a wave form or whatever occurs, it does, not becuase it is caused, either by determinism, or indeterminism. It is of no concern to the Humean world view.
2. Your second point is the most interesting one. I quoted it in the beginning of my post here. The accountability for actions is not there, but it's equally not there in a causational world. A person who commits a crime or other unwanted action, is determined to do so by the causing effects of past events. It is not fair therefore to punish them. Much like in Hume's world. You can't blame anyone for wrongdoing in the causational world, either.

I'm not sure about that, it seems that if one accepts that the problem of induction also applies to psychology, Hume has no right to say things like these: — Amalac

Hume's world of coincidences, and the world viewed as a series of causations, are both valid, but mutually exclusive. — god must be atheist

I think you can work it out from here.

Are there things hidden in plain sight? — TheMadFool

Yes, quite a few. Your brain. Your cell chemistry. Your gallbladder, kidneys and liver. etc.

We expect that we will expect apples to taste how they usually taste, because we are habituated to think — Amalac

our expectation has nothing to do with laws. Our laws are based on fulfilled expectations, but our expectation in and by itself does not a law make.

Hume would also probably say that our expectations are coincidental, too. Tomorrow you may wake up and expect apples to taste like watermelons.

Also, regardless of how one views Hume's definition of an impression, it is clear that the law of habit is a causal law, — Amalac

This is not true, I don't think so. The law of habit is not a law of causation. It is simply a recurring occurrence, much like every other law has recurring occurrences that support that particular law. The fact that people see laws where there are no laws, can be due to a recurring coincidence or people seeing laws where there are none. There is no self-contradiction there.

I know the consensus is there, but in my humble opinion, the consensus is wrong.

Hume's opinion is not a refutation of the universe of causation and determinism; it is a parallel explanation to it. You don't need to believe it, but you have to accept, that it's a valid way of looking at things.

Hume's world of coincidences, and the world viewed as a series of causations, are both valid, but mutually exclusive.

They enforce, or enforced the rule (not clear if they still do this) with mandatory contraception and sterilization. It's the difference between authoritarianism and liberty; collectivism and individuality; coercion and choice. — fishfry

That's what they told the rest of the world.

I they did that, there would still be 500 million Chinese, or fewer. Now everyone who reads this thread knows that. But no, you can't accept it, because you cited precisely a great number of FreeWorld Jourals that said the same thing that you bought, hook, line, and sinker. Whereas those who think for five minutes, will see that those who believe the FreeWorld journals are gullible, non-thinking, and incapable of allowing logical conclusions to enter their minds, once they have made it up.

This is the difference between brain-washed American individualism and shrewd Chinese external affairs propaganda.

But if a woman and man replicate themselves with two kids who grow and each have two kids (grandkids) and they grow and each have two grand kids before the original mom and dad die, haven't we had exponential growth? — James Riley

When the two kids get born, then the two great-grand parents die. When the two kids have two kids, their grandparents die. When the two kids who had two kids have two kids, then the parents die. (Keeping the generations consistent.)

There is no exponential growth. Generations replace each other.

Your theory, James, would only work in a country of Vampires, where nobody ever dies.

If that's how you feel, — Philosopher19

This is not a feeling, my only true friend. My remark was a reasoned opinion. There are no feelings involved in there at all.

For there to be two omnipresent being, non-existence would have to separate them. In order for non-existence to separate them, non-existence would have to exist. Non-existence existing in contradictory. Hence why existence is infinite and omnipresent. This is why an infinite number of hypothetical possibilities or semantics are in existence. A finite existence cannot accommodate an infinite number of semantics. — Philosopher19

I shan't even try to add anything. This is perfect as it is.

I especially love this sentence:
A finite existence cannot accommodate an infinite number of semantics.

Mww, you must use more care with the quote function. Your way of using it attributes to me YOUR utterances. That is not only sloppy, it is misleading and unfair. Please clean that up.

God cannot create an omnipotent being. — Philosopher19

Why not? You come out with these cockamamie declarations that 1. don't make sense 2. don't have any reference and 3. don't have any proof.

If we followed your argument style, we could say that god is not omnipotent, not just, not anything.

Well, you can't argue, because you expect us to take and accept your haphazardly constructed baseless claims, so in turn you must accept OUR haphazardly constructed, baseless claims. Fair is fair, my only true friend.

Omnipotence = being able to do all that is doable (completely perfect/absolute power/freedom). — Philosopher19

But an omnipotent being can make a non-doable into a doable. Otherwise he or she is not omnipotent. An omnipotent can do a round square, easily.

You grossly underestimate the quality of omnipotence, my dear friend.

You cannot have more than one perfect being because you cannot have more than one omnipresent being. — Philosopher19

Since when? This you declare categorically, without any proof or attempt at it.

I was just thinking something similar to that but let it wander out of my head. — James Riley

I never let sex wander out of my head. If it goes out, I make it promise to be home by six.

What you described in the OP, Vicomte, is interesting in several aspects:
1. god rises from its own ashes like the Phoenix.
2. God feels he has nothing more to offer to himself, the world, the universe. So he has to reinvent himself.
3. Reinventing himself consciously is impossible, since he is omnipotent.
4. Having lived an eternity, he knows that eternity bears boredom, unbelievably stupefying and painful boredom. So he gets rid of his mind by eating himself.
5. Getting reintroduced, dust particle-by-dust particle, provides him with growing pleasures.
6. But basically he is doing it to get laid just once more again. After all, we have no evidence of sex in his life after he lost his virginity.

This is paralleled by a section in Scott Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe", where he talks about a planet that is surrounded by the dusty space particles of a blown-up supercomputer. The supercomputer is incapable of doing anything, but thinking; and it telepathically induced the population of the planet it surrounds to develop space travel readiness in ten years, and a weapon that will blow up the entire universe. The space dust had been miffed off about something, he probably was nasty to begin with, got nastier, and he was blown up before his nast got really out of hand. Thus he became dust, but his genius lingered on.

Then the story develops from here.

Point me to the post you are referring to and I'll be happy to comment on it. — Janus

there are some... have fun. Philosophy should be named Funosophy, because we don't do it for the love of it, but for the fun of it. Socrates very much being a pioneer in this movement.

To me, if you reworded the question, the only proof would be personal. — god must be atheist

this starts with a pedantic analysis of the wording of the OP. If this post of mine was read and taken seriously, the thread would be stopped dead in its tracks. But that's no fun.

I think you are using an equivocation. — god must be atheist

Debunking a skeptic -- this is a bit more meaningful

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know. — god must be atheist

my epistemological manifesto

So if I asked you “since when have infinitely many years passed?”, I expect you to answer “since year X”.
So what's the value of X? — Amalac

If you go back, I did point it out to you that this is the wrong question. Much like asking "how manieth infinitely small point is the end point in a straight line segment consisting of an infinite number of infinitely small points?"

Isn't an infinite number of years an infinite amount of time? I don't see how that distinction is important. — Amalac

Exactly. You are absolutely right. But to get the point, as it may be, across to you over the hurdle of pedanteria, you had better accept that the two are equivalent.

I am losing patience, which cost me once my professorial career. (I kept on screaming at my students.)

But I can't say: infinitely many years have elapsed since ??? happened to today. — Amalac

You're right. And this is why I paraphrased it. And I assure you I did not use it differently from you. You can live with that definition, as long as you are able to comprehend my paraphrasing the concept.

Watch this carefully:

I use the same term in the same way and in the same meaning as you in this:

In simplest terms, elapsed time is how much time goes by from one time (say 3:35pm) to another (6:20pm).

I will NOT change the meaning or the usage, but you must follow me carefully.


Can a year pass after a year ends? Yes or no. If you answered yes, you were right.

Can you name the end of a year a point? Yes or no? If you answered yes, you were right.

Can you imagine three years in a row, with two occurrances of one year ending, and another beginning at one point in time in the three-year period? If you can imagine that, please continue.

Can you imagine a thousand years in a row, with a thousand minus one occurrences of one year ending, and another beginning at one point in time in the thousand-year period? If you can imagine that, please continue.

Now... take a deep breath... if there are an infinite number of such one points, that each of them are between two consecutive years.... is that hard to imagine? Yes, or no? If no, then forget it, I can't show it to you.

Now... a passing of a year is between two points. Each of the years in the above series passed between two points... and there is an infinite number of them.

Does this make sense to your pedantic insistence on the proper use of "pass", "year", "infinite" and "and" and "you" ... etc. etc.