If there is no internal world, why don’t you see what other people think? — leo

Why don't I see how their brain shivers are readying them to choose among which symbols to point at which objects? Why would you think that was a likely consequence?

They don’t really think? You’re a solipsist? — leo

Ditto.

Reminds me of the aliens in Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy. Their thoughts are always visible to one another as patterns of lights which are the result of their neural activity. They communicate directly in that sense. — Marchesk

Either (1) their brains are pre-connectionist symbolic computers, literally storing and retrieving symbols, in which case Searle's critique might or might not convince us to doubt whether they have a proper semantical understanding of their discourses; or (2) their neuroscience has advanced to the stage where they can see how each other's brain shivers are readying them to choose among which symbols to point at which objects.

Or (3) or (4) etc., of course.

So, perfection? — Metaphysician Undercover

Hopefully completing stage one. Have started to try and produce a (piano) g4 image in the midst of other music. With the obvious difficulties caused by having cultivated that image with a full musical context (the Ravel).

Maybe it's one of those things, like learning a language, easy when you're a child, but difficult when you're older. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, undoubtedly, that is well established. I gather there is plenty of research into the nature and location of a developmental window. As previously mentioned, I am deferring a proper review of that myself, but any discussion is welcome.



Day 19, 08.10: Slightly flat after last-second flattening.

16.00: Semitone flat.

20.50: Good.

Are the colors we experience out there in the world as such? Or are they generated by our conscious visual system? — Marchesk

Are our orderings of illumination events out there in the world as such?

Are the ducks in a row?

But what makes the visible light special such that it's colored, unlike radio and gamma rays? — Marchesk

I would need to translate that: what makes human visual orderings of illumination events special such that they are discernible by humans, unlike machine or alien or (dunno) insect (?) orderings of the same events?

Still don't see your point.

Yes, so what makes the colors real? — Marchesk

You lost me.

For the entire electromagnetic spectrum? — Marchesk

Not sure what you're getting at.

Do these hues correspond exactly to the three cone combinations in our eyes? — Marchesk

Isn't there a whole science about that, and the huge inexactness?

Do you think photons are actually colored? — Marchesk

I think illumination events are actually colored i.e. ordered into hues.

As physical waves, not experiences of color or sound. — Marchesk

There you go again.

The problem is those sounds and colors don't exist in external objects. It's rather sound waves and photons. — Marchesk

Why "rather"? Sound events and illumination events are clearly external and public.

The sounds and colors we experience are shivered into existence. — Marchesk

Shivered into classes and orders, more like. E.g. pitches and hues.

Ducks into rows, as @unenlightened might or might not be on about.

Okay, but if i'm brain shivering color and pain, that still needs to be explained. — Marchesk

Thought you'd never ask. What you are doing is shivering your brain to make it ready to choose among color symbols and pain symbols, thereby ordering and classifying external illumination events and trauma events. It's hardly surprising, when you shiver about it, that the readying would habitually (and usually harmlessly) infer that features characteristic of the events and the symbols were true of the shivers.

It's just if consciousness can be an illusion, — Marchesk

"Conscious" is what we call certain kinds of thinking, which are real brain shivers. Those kinds of thinking cause us to indulge fictions about an internal world, which are fictional.

Calling a fiction an illusion is an unnecessary conceptual hazard.

Or an external one? That sword can cut either way. — Marchesk

I'm glad you find that obvious. But you digress.

Have we been talking past each other all this time? — Mijin

We'll always have Paris.

No, I don't want to call consciousness an illusion. — Mijin

Are you sure you don't want to call it "the illusion that proves it's not an illusion"? Oh, hang on...

In fact, to me I don't see the point: it's essentially saying that we don't have feelings, we just feel we do. — Mijin

Likewise,

Indeed. Even the illusion is itself being conscious of something. — Marchesk

Thereby getting nowhere, but perpetuating the myth of an internal world.

Ok.

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.