You haven't given any argument to think such a thing though, — Mijin

Such a thing as what? That calling consciousness an illusion brings to the table only the temptation of beliefs as fanciful as unicorns? I haven't yet given an argument for that thing. True. I merely shared my impression of the likely flow of assumptions, in order to explain my initial suggestion that we answer this,

What's the distinction between the illusion of consciousness and consciousness? — Mijin

with this,

The same as the distinction between an illusion of consciousness that (like the Chinese Room) doesn't have a proper semantics, and one that does. — bongo fury

...and thereby return to the important job of distinguishing consciousness (or conscious-illusion-ness if you must) from non-consciousness (or non-conscious-illusion-ness).

Since it appears you now want to gratefully tuck in (now that's it's on the table) to the temptations offered by calling consciousness an illusion, I guess this (my advising against) is what you understood to be the thing I need to back up with argument. In which case let me know if I still should. Or else you didn't get my drift, in which case, my bad signposting.

In either case,

Let's get back to brass tacks: I'm in agonizing pain. Is this pain an illusion, and if so, what's the difference if the illusion is also painful? — Mijin

But for me, the important difference is,

between a self-driving car able through mere syntax to complain of bodily trauma and [on the other hand] an as yet fictional self-driving car able to play the social game of pointing appropriate words at the same trauma. — bongo fury

Thus avoiding unnecessary talk of either internal pain qualia or internal pain-illusion qualia or internal pain qualia-illusions.

But nonetheless distinguishing non-conscious from (according to me) conscious.

No worries then.

The same causes lead to the same effects, and that is the syntax (the rule). The semantics is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

Please clarify, if possible. If not possible, no worries.

Fine, this gels with what I just said. Even if your semantics reduces plausibly to syntax and is thus made automatable, you will doubtless impose a wealth of extraneous meaning. Including, as you say, correlating voltage events with written numerals.

:grin:

Your disagreement isn't a valid argument against anything I've said. — Harry Hindu

Obviously not.

Then semantics/meaning is a fiction?
Wouldn't that mean that syntax is non-fiction? — Harry Hindu

Haha yes, potentially. When implemented as automation. Then the reference of each symbol token becomes a matter of mechanical fact. As when a machine translates a phonetic symbol into a sound. When considered apart from such automation, the syntactic connections may well be made semantically, so that we acknowledge a pretended connection between, say, a written letter and a phoneme, or between one written token of the letter and another.

Most semantics, though, even where plausibly construed as literal and factual, is far too complex and disputable to reduce to syntax. As the Chinese Room reminded us. So, whether or not it is fictional in the important sense that crucial grammatical subjects fail to straight-forwardly refer, any semantics is indeed all fictional in the sense that the alleged referential connections are all pretended.

I don't see the relevance of your point to that discussion. — Mijin

So what exactly is calling it an illusion bringing to the table? — Mijin

The temptation to believe in unicorn-illusions that are no less fanciful than unicorns.

As I alluded, there's no distinction between being in pain and the illusion of pain if both hurt. — Mijin

There's a clear enough (ethical, even) distinction between a self-driving car able through mere syntax to complain of bodily trauma and an as yet fictional self-driving car able to play the social game of pointing appropriate words at the same trauma.

In the case of the Chinese Room (some) conscious humans are under the misconception that a computer is conscious. — Daemon

And the source of the misconception appears to be mistaking mere syntactical proficiency for a proper semantical understanding.

And vice versa was obviously my point.

Meaning exists wherever causes leave effects. — Harry Hindu

So, everywhere. I disagree.

It's not some special thing or process that only exists as a feature of minds. — Harry Hindu

But it's a special fiction indulged by animals capable of playing along.

We could say "whatever is actually happening in our mental process, we'll call that 'consciousness' and work out what properties it has - I think that's the route you're drawn from the sound of it. — Isaac

Or we could say "whatever is actually happening in our conscious process, we'll call that 'mind' and work out what properties it has" etc.

Oh, hang on.

What's the distinction between the illusion of consciousness and consciousness? — Mijin

The same as the distinction between an illusion of consciousness that (like the Chinese Room) doesn't have a proper semantics, and one that does.

A trap-door

in the floor

of the Chinese Room will eject the philosopher into a sea of woo below, immediately upon their confusing the semiotics of intelligence with the semiotics of simulation.

I was just citing Searle's examples. — apokrisis

Fair enough. Dare I say, he wanders perilously close.

Day 12, 07.05: Good.

13.15: Good.

16.15: Semitone sharp.

18.00: Good.

22.05: More than a semitone flat.



Day 13, 10.55: Most of a semitone flat.

15.15: Just noticeably sharp.

16.00: Good.

19.00: Good.

21.00: Goodish, maybe sharp.



Day 14, 07.50: Good.

12.40: Semitone flat.

16.05: Good.

17.30: Good.

22.20: Maybe sharp.

Sorely tempted to detect that a quickening vividness of the piano g4 is correlating with an unexpected vividness of tactile imagery of fingering the piano note. It's not that the tactile imagery were ever difficult to produce, although it's a couple of years since I touched a keyboard. More that the connections to 'neighbouring' images (e.g. of the neighbouring F# or A) seem to promise absolute rather than relative information. So possibly an intimation of a forthcoming expansion and consolidation of the skill out and about from g4. Haha. Obviously it's much more likely to be just embellishment of an already dubious inference.



Day 15, 12.45: Most of a semitone flat.

19.20: Good.

20.05:Good.

21.55: Good.



Day 16, oops, 23.05: Lot of doubt... but good.



Day 17, 09.55: Good.

14.45: Good.

18.10: Sharp.

19.50: Tiny sharp.

22.35: Good.



Day 18, 10.20: Tiny sharp.

16.05: Good.

22.50: Semitone flat.

Day 11, 11.15: Noticeably flat.

15.35: Typical uncertainty after possibly completely spurious adjustments within a semitone. Let's see... Phew! Not necessarily spurious.

19.35: True.

Day 10, 10.00: Half a semitone sharp.

12.40: Whole semitone sharp. Resolution: no more reprospective accounts.

16.05: First image very vivid, so test... Yeah good.

17.15: Barely noticeably sharp.

20.35 No idea. Let's try this one... Good.

21.35: Quick one, was whole tone sharp.

Day 9, 09.50: Was worried it might be too hurried, but hoping the play-feel-move-play cycle is speeding up. True or lucky.

15.20: Took more trouble... effective or lucky.

16.35: Thought I was reaching certainty, then found myself "playing" up about a semitone and preferring that, rather refuting the feels just felt to be certain. Anyway the repositioning turned out valid.

17.11: Couldn't get sure. Just noticeably flat.

19.55: Probably fanciful, but... maybe the increasingly fluent repositionings are delivering a sense of the recent past, in that way you get when you notice a generally present but hitherto unnoticed smell? Ew. Anyway, on target.

22.55: A tad sharp.

So to the degree that you are only concerned with linguistic semiosis, you are not engaging with my biosemiosis. — apokrisis

No, indeed. Fair cop. I am resistant to allowing semantic notions into the analysis of automatic processes - even complex, biological ones. It seems fundamentally confused. Still, inter-faith dialogue, and all that.

Day 8, 10.35: Difficult - to get intimations of too-low and -high - but got there, and pretty dead on.

15.45: Nearly a semitone too sharp.

17.20: Cool.

19.05: Cool, tested first image, too. Not sure any interference since 17.20, though.

19.25: D'oh, tried same, semitone down.

20.30: Tried imaging a sustained (e.g. synth) note instead of several restarts of the piano tone with its definite focus on one momentary event. Wondering if this might be more conducive to microtonal repositionings. At the expense of reference to specifically the target image, probably. With its musical context. Various issues getting confused here quite probably. Anyway, just noticeably flat.

23.15: Semitone flat. A bit hurried.

Like the weather or a carburettor, the neural collective is actually pushing and shoving against the real world.

That then is the semantics that breathes life into the syntax. And that is also the semantics that is missing if a brain, a carburettor or the weather is reduced to a mere syntactical simulation. — apokrisis

Not stalking you @apokrisis, just interested in semiotics. (But normally purchase non-bio!)

I doubt that a carburettor will function as a referring symbol merely by functioning as an actual carburettor. It would need to perform a semantic, referential function, by being pointed at things.

But there just is no fact of the matter whether a word or picture is pointed at one thing or another. No physical bolt of energy flows from pointer to pointee(s). So the whole social game is one of pretence. Albeit of course a hugely powerful one.
— bongo fury

Can it both be a pretence (in physical terms) and yet also a hugely powerful one? — apokrisis

Why ever not? We're talking about the power of social conventions here. Please explain the difficulty?

But of course, as I said, the power of any code is that it is not tied to the physics of its world. — apokrisis

But of course, it could be said that some codes do and some don't derive their power from being tied to physics. Those that do we can usefully class as syntax, and implement as automation. For example, nature implements a DNA/protein correlation automatically. The rest is semantics, and requires a degree of social agreement as to what symbols are (to be pretended are) pointed at what objects.

It is powerful because it could refer to anything. — apokrisis

Yes, if we either use physics to automate it or we agree to pretend.

That means when it is not used that [just any] way, but instead pointed rather precisely, that is what makes it meaningful - signal rather than noise. — apokrisis

Yes, meaning is agreement to pretend this pointing rather than that.

One can’t be definitely pretending anything unless that is a clear contrast to the “other” of now making clear and meaningful reference to something understood to have a genuine social reality. Something that is of material consequence. — apokrisis

Oh dang, I thought you had got my drift. My bad. I'm arguing that human reference is quite generally a matter of pretence, no less when asserting unpretended truths than otherwise.

I'm not really following Bongo. — Daemon

Is there perhaps a missing comma, or is that a general announcement?

Hopefully exactly like that :smile:


Day 7, 08.50: Nice one. Was tempted to test whether the vividness of a current earworm, whose proper location I happened to recall, indicated that it was in that proper location. But a quick test of the target image pitched according to that hypothesis delivered a too-low feel. So I went up a semitone then down very slightly, the feels subsequently vindicated.

21.05: Cool.

22.55: Most of a semitone too high.

As in, "no", or "to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere"? — Banno

Both, as in, I think I see how "sensations" (like also images and experiences and representations) is seen as a euphemism for "qualia".

Goodman — Banno

Don't get me started, but I love how you could (I probably did) read Languages of Art without forming the vaguest suspicion that the philosophy behind it was in the least bit austere.

DNA codes for proteins. — apokrisis

Yes, which looks like a semantic correlation. My point (inadequately specified) was that the correlation reduces to a syntactic one, as we would tend to expect of an automatic process.

Semantics is a social game of pretend.

I think the context is important here — Mijin

Sure. And accessible to the interested reader via the quotation link. As with quotations within a thread. If you wish not to be quoted across threads, no problem. :ok:

how there can be this "physics of symbols". — apokrisis

But there probably isn't. Semantics could easily be a game of pretend. Syntax, just automation. Confusing the two, woo.

So ... anyone else, do you have a clear understanding of his distinction between qualia and experiences? — Daemon

Speaking for myself, no:

to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere. — bongo fury

Same with,

just sensations — Banno

And

the brain constructing images. — Mijin

Every time a neuroscientist says "neural representation" without clarifying it as readiness to play a social game of agreeing actual representations, a dualist gets more confused.

My inner world is soggy meat, and I live in the outer world which I call 'the world'. — unenlightened

:100:

Haha, too right :up:


Day 6, 11.05: Most of a semitone sharp.

14.50: Ouch, semitone down. Quick one, too confident.

17.20: Just noticeably sharp.

18.30: More like it.

And the observation of brain shivers is the same thing - a poetical description of another's thoughts. — Harry Hindu

Not necessarily.

"Shivering" is a term that only an entity with visual experiences could use in the appropriate way. — Harry Hindu

Surely, anyone with sufficient flair for metaphor who had experienced shivering, e.g. with cold, could apply the term appropriately to sound events just as well as to illumination events?

:smile: Test and report your progress. :up:

:smile: Test and report :up:



Day 5, 08.30: Just noticeably flat.

12.50: Dang, at least a semitone sharp. Sad to relate, I was allowing myself to think that the images I was starting were interestingly non-specific pending a seconds-later specification of pitch. That reminds me, a potential flaw in the whole method is that all of the too-high and too-low feelings are illusory, and all the just-right trials are resulting purely from some overall matching of image to reality, potentially insensitive to the transposition in pitch.

14.55: Quick one... bad idea, semitone down.

16.20: Fairly quick. Case of, is this good enough? Or, this, up a semitone? Half way between... dead on.

20.30: Same.

20.40: Attempted similar after random intermediate YouTube tracks... down 2 semitones :yikes:

Music is classes of sound events.

Colour is classes of illumination events.

Pain is classes of trauma events.

I thank you.

(not saying they do now...) — Olivier5

Heaven forbid.

Thoughts are "poetry" you say? — Olivier5

No, "the subjective experience of thinking" is a poetical description of the thoughts, I say. You won't be able to clarify it in concrete terms, saying "here's some", and "here's some more", "that thing isn't some" etc.

Day 4, 16.05: Phew! Lot of struggling, not sure I wasn't blind-guessing the intimations of up or down. But made several relatively fine adjustments, and was dead on.

21.40: Similar session. Restarting the image less than a semitone higher or lower is harder than moving it up or down by all of the step. For reasons that relative and absolute pitchers can probably agree. Reasons of the target being a large pattern of related tones rather than a single tone. Glad the effort paid off both times today. Mustn't assume...

"Neuronal activity" is perfectly fine and clear, if you are talking about objectively observable neuronal activity — Olivier5

Including that crowning achievement of animal life, thinking in symbols: neuro-muscular activity which is preparing to select among symbols to identify the

shivering colors and shapes and sounds, etc — Harry Hindu

"Thoughts" is a perfectly fine word too, about the subjective experience of thinking... — Olivier5

Sure - pending literal clarification of the poetry. If you are going to then apply logic to it, anyway. Poetry has different (no less exacting) standards.

the wrong link — Marchesk

Grateful for the reference I needed here:

What term do you suggest?