↪Wayfarer A tendentious "just-so" story if there ever was one! — Janus

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'I think i can safely say that nobody understands quantum physics' ~ Richard Feynman — Wayfarer

You interpret that as Feynman saying that engineering is like casting magic spells?

Engineers can harness it, like magicians who know the words of power, but nobody can finally say why the spell works. — Wayfarer

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Both the conscious and subconscious minds can create a new idea. — MoK

So, since the subconscious mind is not conscious (by definition) consciousness is not required for the creation of ideas?

I'm going to bow out of this discussion now, and leave you to consider the consistency of the way you are thinking about this.

Now you've shifted the goal post, from creating new ideas, to being conscious of new ideas.

Why think consciousness of an idea is necessary for an idea to be created? Consider the experience of having an epiphany, where one becomes conscious of a new idea which developed subconsciously.

You need more than stipulations and bare assertions.

Ideas are mental events that only conscious things can perceive. Ideas, therefore, are not shared by AI. So, AI cannot create ideas. — MoK

I note that you backpeddled away from saying talking about ideas is not possible on physicalism since I think few informed people would claim that ChatGPT is incapable of talking about ideas.

So that leaves creating ideas. Why think that ChatGPT or other modern AIs can't create ideas? Do you have more than the bare assertion that AIs can't create ideas?

Ideas are another anomaly in physicalism. How could they be created by the brain? How could we talk about them? etc. — MoK

How does ChatGPT do it?

One difference is that there is not the slightest reason to take any of those possibilities seriously. They are all fantasies. "Here be dragons". — Ludwig V

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Okay so you're just supporting what I said earlier. How do you know what mistakes are if not by knowing what success is. By knowing the difference. — L'éléphant

One can recognize that events aren't meeting expectations and recognize that beliefs leading to those expectations were somehow mistaken. It's not obvious to me how "knowing what success is" is necessary to knowing what mistakes are.

They are also reluctant to outright contradict the prompter, so peddlers of the most ludicrous conspiracy theories try to claim they now have a legit cite, merely because the AI was too polite to shut down their nonsense. — Mijin

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I grew up in the Baptist tradition which did not accept this doctrine and took issue with it. It also rejected the notion of hell — Tom Storm

It seems Australian Baptists have a very different perspective from USian Baptists. I think many USians Baptists would likely declare the Baptist tradition you describe to be unchristian

As far as subjectivism is concerned, Kant was indeed concerned to avoid the charge of “subjective idealism,” but that’s why the Critique insists that the forms of sensibility and categories of understanding are not personal idiosyncrasies but universal structures of human cognition. — Wayfarer

Of course Kant was wrong about that. We all have unique brains and it is the regularities to the world and language use that allow our idiosyncratic brains to be (somewhat) on the same page.

Come on people. We all know what essence is. — Fire Ologist

This doesn't suggest that you are willing to consider the possibility that you (and a great many others) are misunderstanding things.

What does mind deal in, if not essential form? — Fire Ologist

The mind deals in patterns recognized by neural networks. The recognition you have, of the patterns you recognize is a characteristic of your mind rather than a recognition of something essential to things which your mind recognizes as fitting some pattern.

Of course Plato didn't have the benefit of the neuroscientific understanding that is available to us today. So it is understandable that he foisted the notion of essences on so many philosophers. You, on the other hand, have an opportunity to develop a better informed understanding.

There's a real problem with the naturalist account of human nature, which is that it doesn't or can't acknowledge the sense in which we're essentially different from other animals. — Wayfarer

That's just your strawmanning of naturalism. I could talk of all sorts of ways we are different from other animals. Language use and cultural evolution being two important factors.

have you seen the first Existential Comic?

Then we have bleak future ahead of us then. — Punshhh

To me it seems likely that improved and more widespread knowledge of our natures is the best hope humanity has for avoiding the bleakness that the denial of our natures is leading towards.

I expect we'll all just continue acting like the social primates that we are, despite efforts on the part of many to deny our nature.

But if this structure weren’t there no one would be able to determine who was who and where one person ended and another began. Also we would all know each others thoughts all the time. The whole world would just be a chaotic mess. — Punshhh

Conveniently for physicalism, the fact that we have individual brains that are not neurally interconnected with the brains of other people seems to explain this nicely.

...to say that the special pleading is not special. — Banno

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For example, in our day it is commonly believed that a social reality constituted of persons is reducible to persons. So someone in our day might say that a "family" is a fiction, and all that really exists in a family are the individuals.

On that assumption the Trinity is "illogical" (precisely because it contradicts the metaphysical doctrine of (2)). But a negation of (2) is not implausible. Families are arguably multi-hypostasis realities, and not mere fictions. The "superorganism" of a beehive is another example, where the hive is more than the sum of its parts. The Trinity will be seen as possible so long as we see unities which are more than the sum of their parts as possible. The Trinity is a bit like a beehive where the hypostases are in such elegant concert that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends, and where the bees are nonplussed about this fact. This extreme unification is precisely why Christianity holds that Trinitarian activity ad extra is not differentiable from standard monotheism. — Leontiskos

It seems notable that the analogies you use (family, superorganism) are complex. Those seem like problematic analogies, for a God that is supposedly simple.

The brain might be a kind of interface or transceiver, not the sole producer of consciousness. — Sam26

It seems to me that a serious problem for such a notion is that our conscious minds have no conscious knowledge of how to work such an interface.

Do you consciously consider which motor neurons in your brain to activate and in in what sequence, in order to type a response to this post? I'm confident that the answer is, "No.", just as you aren't aware of which sensory neurons were stimulated in what sequence in the process of reading this post.

There is a lot of automated stuff going on subconsciously, underlying our conscious interactions with the world. Where do you locate these automated processes? In the physical brain, or in a nonphysical consciousness which is treating tne brain as a transciever?

Why think consciousness can occur without such subconscious automation?

I don't think the transciever hypothesis stands up to any serious scrutiny.

Understanding that pattern recognition, arising from neural nets taking inputs from senses, can result in recognition of relations (e.g. mathematical relationships) seems like it might clear up some incompatibility issues for some.

That's interesting, but can you tell me specifically what else is needed apart from the brain in order to think or have thoughts? — punos

Well, to have a normal modern human's capacity for thinking thoughts, a lot of brains over the course of history have been needed.

Lois Lane believing Clark Kent can or cannot fly is not a property of Clark Kent. It's not a property at all. — T Clark

Not a property at all, or a property of Lois rather than a property of Clark?

The best, though most unfortunate, explanation is simply that there's never really continuity. It's an illusion. — Mijin

Why unfortunate?

Some here may find the history of investigation of the Voynich Manuscript interesting.

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese.[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, but currently scholars lack the translation(s) and context needed to either properly entertain or eliminate any of the possibilities. Hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work (i.e. folkloric index or compendium), glossolalia[19] or work of fiction (e.g. science fantasy or mythopoeia, metafiction, speculative fiction).

Your biological body replaces its cells periodically. Over a period of seven to eight years, almost all the cells in your body have been replaced, yet you still perceive yourself as the same person you were eight years ago. — punos

This is not an accurate description in the case of neurons, many of which persist from birth:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-life-and-death-neuron

So neurons use 20% of bodily energy to pulsate in stroboscopic fashion, in order to taste up i.e. sense the state of neural centers & give rise to the aware consciousness when in range of 7-80 Hz. Cerebellum activity can never be sensed (made aware) in qualia, as it pulsates at ca 350 Hz, so the thalamus-entrained consciousness can only influence and receive within its frequency range - another proof that it is all field-based & works as an active antenna. — Ulthien

I'm not an RF engineer, but the wavelength of an 80Hz oscillation is ~3700 km (with the wavelength of lower frequency brainwave components being even longer).

What are you proposing to serve as an active antenna for such long wavelengths? (Particularly in the electrically noisy environment of a brain.)

What we know is clear: There is a world independent of our own minds.
That is a fantastic example of a belief. Plenty of self-consistent views deny this. — noAxioms

Self consistent, and oftentimes with low correspondence to reality. Perhaps, something to watch out for.

well, dear colleague, have a go at TIQM seminal paper (in hope you are not too young to have had quantum mechanics curriculum on study years): it opens the eyes directly :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M6tTbR_rt0sWjlrlKEXAcg0xzZK2QRSb/view?usp=drive_link — Ulthien

It seems I can't access the file without giving out identifying information I don't want to give out.

As an EE myself, I have to say that sounds to me like pseudoscience.

Welcome to the forum.

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. — Hanover

This seems like a surprising conclusion to me, as I would say that both humans and LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use. Would you elaborate on your reasoning? Also, is a distinction between conscious states and subconscious states of relevance, and if so how?

?? How nuh? You have to really want to disagree with me to find these disagree. — Fire Ologist

Perhaps it would be worth considering the twin paradox.

The two twins do not see the same thing, yet the observations of each twin occurs in accordance with Special Relativity.

I thought that might be the response. But AI is an instrument which has been created by human engineers and scientists, to fulfil their purposes. It's not a naturally-occuring object. — Wayfarer

Why think that there are any unnaturally occurring objects?

Well, name one. — Wayfarer

This AI-powered lab runs itself—and discovers new materials 10x faster

Easy enough guess in the case of Mww, but one can also quote and Google "The usual test, whether that which any one maintains is merely his persuasion, or his subjective conviction at least, that is, his firm belief, is a bet."

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We believe that's very unlikely, but how do we know? — RogueAI

We don't know, but so what?

At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. — Tom Storm

As an electrical engineer (who routinely makes use of my understanding of the regularities of nature to design things that I wouldn't have any reason to expect to work if such regularities were illusory) I find your perspective a bit mystifying. Knowing somewhat, about the zillions of clockwork like operations in physical systems that enable us to interact with people all around the world on TPF, it seems particularly ironic to me, to have such skepticism towards orderly behavior in nature.

Of course, I can't expect someone without my background knowledge to see things the same way, but I still find it somewhat baffling that you hold such a perspective.

These frameworks are always provisional or tentative, useful for communicating, and predicting, but not revealing some deep, necessary structure of the universe. — Tom Storm

I don't have anything to say about a "deep necessary structure of the universe", but do you have any explanation for why scientific frameworks would be useful for predicting if there were no reliable regularities to how things occur in nature which are described by such frameworks?

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