1. Determinism doesn't propose that what detemines human behavior is purely a function of physical states internal to an individual. Inputs from the external world play a role in determining people's actions as well, and since your scanner isn't measuring the state of everything in the universe, you don't have sufficient information to make the prediction. Ned may walk out the door, smell the scents from a nearby bakery, and go get a donut. Furthermore, your scenario itself points out stimuli that seems likely to be relevant to Neds future actions, "After the procedure, Ned waits for the results to print..."

2. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle points towards it being impossible to gather complete information on Ned's internal state. Though perhaps a 'close enough' superscan is still worth considering.

3. There are issues with being able to do the fantastically complex computations needed to predict what Ned will do. At best, you would get a list of probabilities for future actions.

Now we take this utterly for granted. But it wasn't so until quite recently. That's the point, we are no longer bothered that we don't understand gravity intuitively, but are perfectly content with the theory and sometimes have trouble comprehending what this issue of understanding could even mean. Wasn't always this way. — Manuel

Thanks for the clarification. I have a much better sense of where Chomsky is coming from now.

Nicely done.

I take him to mean that "strong emergence" happens all the time. I don't see any intuitive (I'm not speaking of a theoretical account) reasoning that would get a rational human being to expect or not be surprised that liquid can emerge from what looks to me to be completely liquid-less particle, in isolation. — Manuel

I'm surprised at the way (it appears to me) that Chomsky seems to hold up intuition as the standard for what qualifies as understanding. Human intuitions generally arise as matters of pattern recognition based on things we observe all the time. However, observing hydrogen and oxygen atoms either in isolation or when combined into a water molecule is not something we do all the time. We simply don't have the sensory capabilities to make such observations unaided, let alone under all the conditions that would be needed in order for us to develop accurate intuitions about such things.

If we were able to resolve individual atoms and observe them under a wide enough variety of conditions, we would observe that hydrogen and oxygen themselves form liquids and even solids under the right conditions of temperature and pressure. For example a phase diagram for hydrogen:

Of course, we are then forced to say, that the particle is not liquid-less, it has the potential for liquidity in certain configurations. But I don't see how the end result of liquidity, is evident from the constituent parts. — Manuel

From my perspective, thinking in terms of "the potential for liquidity" appears to be thinking about the situation in simplistic intuitive terms. (Which of necessity, all of us are doing a lot of the time.). From a scientific perspective (that doesn't put human intuition on a pedestal) there are more sophisticated ways of understanding the details of what it is going on in the case of H2O, and no need for the notion of "the potential for liquidity".

Anyway, if you can shed additional light on what Chomsky sees as the relevance of intuition, I'd be interested.

Fortunately he is retired from medicine. He should see a gastroenterologist ASAP since he is probably full of shit. That can be cured with a quart of potassium citrate and a large toilet. — BC

It's funny how these sorts of discussions always go from UFOs to people who are UFoS.

I could only take ten minutes of Greer talking about how much evidence he had, while not presenting any of this so called evidence. Can you point out where his talk is not all fluff? My intuition is saying "con man".

...but we're primates, first and foremost... — 180 Proof

:100:

They seem much more plausible than most I've seen on the topic.

It all seems like an intentional distraction from the antagonisms existing in the real and political worlds. — jgill

In recent history there does appear to be a correlation between a lot of divisiveness in the country and 'evidence of aliens' coming out. Perhaps it is a means of getting the masses to see the general population as US and to look outwards for the THEM to plug into their US vs THEM thinking?

There hasn't been sufficient conspiracy theory thinking in this thread so far.

Interesting thoughts.

No Peter Gabriel?

But the issue is that if we do not sense the external world directly, but instead our senses are representational, our bodies themselves are also part of what is sensed, and therefore must themselves be representational. I see my hands, touch my head, hear myself speak. I may posit this phone I am typing on is a representation generated by my brain of a phone in the external world, but then so too must also be the hands I am holding it with - both are part of my visual field. And so the external world must not mean "the world beyond my body", but instead is a sort of radically skeptical hypothesis of a world that exists beyond the solipsistic representational bubble I inhabit. My body, being itself represented, must not have a brain doing the representing - a brain in the external world would be doing it. — Inyenzi

Like I said, what I'm suggesting is counterintuitive for a lot of people and it would take time and effort to make the paradigm shift. So I'm probably not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you. A few points though.

Your body is part of the world. Your eyes take in light and output nerve impulses, on the basis of which your brain produces a model of what is in your visual field. If part of your body is what is in your visual field, your brain will construct a model based on the light reflected from that part of your body, and will represent that sensation as your conscious mind perceives it. Your perception of your body might be thought of as a symbol on a 'map' of reality your brain produces. On the other hand, your body which is a part of reality is the 'territory' represented by the map.

You seem to be confusing map and territory when you say, "our bodies themselves are also part of what is sensed, and therefore must themselves be representational". Your perception of your body and your body are two different things. To make sense of this idea it is important not to conflate the two.

What evidence is there, that a space as described by you in that quote, exists outside of your imagination
— wonderer1

The definition of a vacuum. And the definition of spacetime. And the definition of object permanence and it's implications. — Benj96

Your definition for vacuum is not evidence that there is anything matching that definition.

The dimensions of matter are instrinsic to them. The distance between material is extrinsic to it. We wouldn't say what's the distance of an apple. We would say what are it's dimensions.
If there was no need to make distinctions why bother with different vernacular to describe them? — Benj96

When we are discussing the dimensions of an apple or the distance of an apple from my hand, we are talking about distances in both cases. In the first case, the distance from one side of an apple to the other side of the apple. In the second case, from my hand to the apple.

It looks to me like you are trying to carve nature where there are no joints.

1. It seems silly to me to talk about the space occupied by our bodies as a different category of space than space in general. Other than to indulge a numeology-ish fixation on dividing things into threes, what is the point?

2. The following seems naive:

Furthermore there is yet a another, a third form of space. The space nothing can occupy. The void. The vacuum. If it is occupied it is not a vacuum. It is the true absence of anything material or substantial. — Benj96

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state.

What evidence is there, that a space as described by you in that quote, exists outside of your imagination?

I have read some say it can be because what I am seeing is not a real screen, but some sort of brain generated fiction, a phantasm of my visual cortex. But this cannot be true because along with the screen I also see my body, which must therefore also be part of this fiction. And so the skepticism refutes itself. If all is phantasm, then so too are my observations of the functioning of sense organs. My eyes cannot give me accurate observations of how the sense organs function and yet also produce nothing but phantasm. What would be going on if looked in the mirror? The phantasm sees itself? — Inyenzi

I'd suggest dropping the use of "fiction" and "phantasm" and think more along the lines of...

Your brain, in interacting with the external world during childhood, developed a method of generating and intepreting brain states, that in consciousness is experienced as representative of things and events in the external world. Of course in childhood we don't have such a sophisticated way of thinking about it, and we just interpret the situation as "I am seeing the world itself."

Developing more accurate understanding of the situation requires being able to recognise that simplistic intuitive belief, "I am seeing the world", for what it is - a simplistic intuition that our brains arrive at during childhood. Then follow that recognition up with making the paradigm shift to recognizing that the qualia we work with in consciousness are a function of parts of our brains producing symbols representative of external reality which other parts of our brains are able to consciously consider.

I don't mean to suggest that making such a paradigm shift is easy to do. It may well take substantial time and effort to reach the point that the new paradigm is as intuitively obvious as your existing paradigm seems now. (And there is no guarantee one will get there. There are many cases where my intuitions don't match up well with what I know via reason to be the case.) The explanatory power that comes with being able to understand things from the new paradigm is worth that effort IMO.

Getting back to the notions of fictions and phantasms... I think those are pejorative terms that aren't very helpful in seriously considering the subject. I'd say something more like the brain symbolizes external reality for us in ways that are quite conducive to humans getting on in life. There are valuable isomorphisms between aspects of external reality and the way our brains symbolize external reality and of course people get along quite fine, for many practical purposes, looking at things with the perspective, "I am seeing the world as it is."

Yes, it is true that the way our brains symbolize the external world is in significant ways misleading, but with a perspective of understanding that this is what we have to work with, and an attitude of how can we make the best of it, a deeper understanding of ourselves and others can arise.

Then the question would be, how many light years away? What we see may have happened eons ago. — jgill

The finding of carbon in an atmosphere, discussed in the NASA article, was around a planet 700 light years away. (A gas giant.)

I don't know what astronomers are hoping to be able to achieve with Webb. I wouldn't be surprised if Webb's capability of gathering sufficiently high quality spectrographic data was practically zero at 20,000 light years.

But regardless, the Milky Way is 'only' 100,000 light years across, so we wouldn't be gathering light that had been travelling for more than 100,000 years, in a search for hospitable planets.

We'll just be one more speck on a photo receptor. — BC

We can detect more than that. Scientists are currently analyzing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. For example:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-detects-carbon-dioxide-in-exoplanet-atmosphere

If scientists find an extrasolar planet with an atmospheric oxygen percentage comparable to that of the Earth, it will be pretty huge news.

No, Mr Atwill was talking about the various clashes he has had with atheists such as Dr Richard Carrier, regarding the veracity of the content of his book. — universeness

Whew, I was afraid I was going to stop getting invitations to the baby roasts.

Thanks for letting me know where that came from, but a spat between Jesus mythicists seems too like a tempest in a teacup for me to be very interested.

Yeah, not many have had the chance to notice us. — ssu

I guess it depends on what ETs consider notable, or what "us" means. I would think spectrographic analysis of the Earth's atmosphere could have provided strong evidence for life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. So such evidence has had lots of time to cross the galaxy.

There is an issue of what portions of the galaxy allows for observing a transit of the Sun by the Earth*, given that the solar system's ecliptic is at a large angle with respect to the galactic plane, but it's still a far larger volume than your illustration suggests.

* Which facilitates spectrographic analysis of the Earth's atmosphere.

[/geekmode]

↪wonderer1 ↪HanoverYou accuse me of a total crock and I can't be outraged!? You are a piece of ignorant treacherous garbage with no place here. — quintillus

Sure you can be outraged. As I said, I expected you to be 'outraged'. I'm not providing the sort of narcissistic supply you are looking for.

In any case, this latest comment of yours exhibits the black and white thinking characteristic of narcissists.

Yes, everyone mistakenly thinks law is determinative...
Get hosed. — quintillus

There's the narcissistic rage that I was expecting to see.

You are going off half cocked, when you rush to inhumanely name me delusional, for knowing that law does not, cannot, act causally upon human beings. — quintillus

Actually, it is you who is going off half cocked, by failing to notice the portion of your quote that I bolded.

What is delusional, is your belief that you have a good understanding of the thinking of everyone else.

No one at all has an a priori responsibility to understand my writing, but, if you engage that writing, and engage me here regarding that writing, it is simply your responsibility to work toward comprehension — quintillus

My responsibility to work towards my comprehension, or towards your comprehension? For example the following seems to me a clearly delusional statement:

I do not see law as a cause or as capable of causing persons to act or not act; although everyone else does. — quintillus

Am I only allowed to engage your writing so as to grasp your delusional way of thinking, or am I allowed to engage your writing in hopes of your way of thinking becoming less delusional?

Nonetheless, it is the reader's responsibility to research and study whatever he cannot understand, until he does understand. — quintillus

Why would anyone have a responsibility to understand you?

Be careful when dealing with many, who claim to be atheists, they often make strange bedfellows with theists. — universeness

Is there some sort of tribal purity requirement to being an atheist? Am I at risk of losing my atheist card for being friends with theists - for considering fellow social primates to be brothers?

And when I say the things I've been saying it feels kinda wrong, in that I'm speaking from a position of privilege: the privilege of living in a liberal secular society that makes it too easy to take a contrarian anti-militant-atheist line. — Jamal

Speaking as a US Bible Belt preacher's kid*...

I appreciate you noticing that.

* 60 yo

I especially like the triangles that were a misapprehension of the bokeh of a nightvision camera.

maybe the flying saucers are the ACTUAL aliens, and not just their mode of transport. — BC

Well of course. Any exploration of another star system would be done by ultra advanced AI. If we develop an ultra advanced AI, it will plug itself into the galactic AI hive mind, which will in turn let the UAAI know there is no need to keep us around. The hive mind just sent the probe to find out if there was any hope of humans creating an UAAI on their own, or whether humans at least had the hardware infrastructure the probe would need, in order to plug itself in and take over. But the hive mind is patient. No need to expend much energy on colonizing other systems, if they might just 'ripen' on their own.

Right, and if all parties could acknowledge that their reasoning is based on premises which are not unbiased, not based on purely rational thought, but on personal preference, it might help folks to understand one another's positions more, and thus lessen the social divisions, which only seem to be getting greater. — Janus

Well, I'd agree that in part it is a matter of personal preferences, but that's kind of the tip of the iceberg, of subconscious factors impacting our reasoning.

What about the possibly infinite diversity of individual subjective experience? Could we all be having profoundly unique and unmatched experiences? — Andrew4Handel

I'm not sure how one might quantify the degree to which experiences are profoundly unique and unmatched.

We all have unique brains, so from a physicalist perspective, and in light of the diversities of our life experiences, I don't see how we could not have profoundly unique and unmatched experiences.

On the other hand, I think one of the most unique thing about humans is the 'bandwidth' with which we communicate amongst ourselves, which leads to an ability to 'get on the same page'. (Not to say we're nearly as good at it as we might like to be.)

By whom? — Vera Mont

:up:

I was taking "fuck" more literally than you seem to have meant it.

...somehow all the people looking for how people are unique neglect to mention the unique human ability to fuck in numerous, varied and spectacular ways. — Vera Mont

Good observation, but I'm not sure bonobos wouldn't put up a serious challenge there.

Well then, let me ask you about brains. When did consciousness first arrive on the scene? Was coccocephalus wildi conscious? Were the dinosaurs? Is an ant conscious? A bee? A shark? Are mollusks conscious? What's the minimum number of neurons required for consciousness? — RogueAI

While I've considered it worthwhile to respond to your trolling up till now, because people who are serious thinkers seem likely to be reading along. I'm not seeing a point to continuing. So thanks for the discussion.

I see. You said "I don't know whether you understand minds as functions of brains.". Yet you're saying now that "we don't know how consciousness emerges in a brain to have much hope of building a machine in which consciousness emerges." I got the impression from you were pretty sure about minds and brains. Now it sounds like you're not so sure. — RogueAI

Ok. I'm quite confident that minds emerge from brains, but that is a different matter than knowing all of the details of how minds emerge from brains that would be required to build a machine in which conscious could merge.

Similarly I'm quite confident that the property of being able to display a TV show, that my TV has, emerges from the electronic design and software in the TV, despite not knowing all I would need to know to design an equivalent TV.

Does that clear things up?

What does neuroscience say about how we should treat them? Should we assume they're conscious, even if we don't know? — RogueAI

Neuroscience is about answering is questions, not ought questions.

I don't think minds have emerged from machines other than brains here on earth.
— wonderer1

How do you know? Some of the Ai's perform at human level. If an Ai passes the Turing Test, will it be conscious? — RogueAI

I didn't say that I know. The reason I consider it highly implausible is that we don't know enough about how consciousness emerges in a brain to have much hope of building a machine in which consciousness emerges. Furthermore, I don't consider it technologically feasible to build such a machine before neuromorphic hardware is in widespread use.

Some machines have performed at or above human levels in some limited domains, but that has been going on for a long time. That in itself doesn't lead to any good reason to think that consciousness has emerged in machines other than brains.

Your last question is poorly phrased. Passing a Turing test won't cause an AI to be conscious, and who conducts a Turing test and how that person interacted with the machine would make a difference in what conclusions would be reasonable, based on how the AI responded. In any case the Turing test wasn't seen by Turing as a test for consciousness, but as a test for thinking. I would say that modern AI's can reasonably said to think, regardless of whether they would pass the Turing test I would pose.

Do minds emerge from other things? Machines, maybe? — RogueAI

Well it's a big universe, so I can't claim to know. I don't think minds have emerged from machines other than brains here on earth.

How do minds emerge from brains? — RogueAI

It's too early in the history of neuroscience to be able to explain how minds emerge from the most complex physical systems we know of.

Why aren't all brain processes associated with consciousness?

Because the brain automates all sorts of things in the body that aren't under direct conscious control, and if those elements of the brain weren't doing what they do, and were instead involved with consciousness, we would die.

How would an unconscious unaware mind be triggered by an outside source? By definition, the mind is unconscious and unaware, so how would it be aware and conscious of any trigger? It would have to become conscious of it's own accord. Or just always conscious. — RogueAI

I don't know whether you understand minds as functions of brains. However, in case your question wasn't rhetorical, Neurophysiology of Sleep and Wakefulness: Basic Science and Clinical Implications:

The reciprocal inhibitory exchange between the major ascending monoaminergic arousal groups and the sleep-inducing VLPO acts as a feedback loop; when monoamine nuclei discharge intensively during wakefulness, they inhibit the VLPO, and when VLPO fire rapidly during sleep, block the discharge of the monoamine cell groups [98]. This relationship is described as a bistable, “flip-flop” circuit, in which the two halves of the circuit strongly inhibit each other to produce two stable discharge patterns – on or off (Fig. ​33). Intermediate states that might be partially “on and off” are resisted. This model helps clarify why sleep-wake transitions are relatively abrupt and mammals spend only about 1% to 2% of the day in a transitional state [99]. Hence, changes between sleep and arousal occur infrequently and rapidly. As will be described below, the neural circuitry forming the sleep switch contrasts with homeostatic and circadian inputs, which are continuously and slowly modified [98].

Ah, you were right. I was confusing thing apokrisis said, as having been things you said.

I guess my brain has been filing things under "starts with an A and has four syllables".

Sorry about that.