Note how the parrot has not discussed the unsealed indictment...

The parrot forgets to mention that the people making the claims cannot seem to find this informant now...

It's all distraction... designed...

It looks like you’re misinformed. — NOS4A2

What's that mean?

See what I mean? NOSSY doesn't fully understand (non-literal) context...

Squawk!!!... NOSSY want a cracker...

No worries... :wink:

I edited after you read... I'd guess. Originally, it said just that... "Hunter"...

There's a new investigation into Hunter now... the sophisticated electronic parrot plagiarizer is confused...

despite what creativesoul says. — NOS4A2

What's that mean NOSBOT????????

Whatever you parrot, NOSBOT... whatever you parrot...

Toldja so...

What???

I'm just telling you what NOSBOT is going to answer....

Not sure how you arrived at the belief that you're privy to my thoughts about why and/or how Trump lost.

Hunter...

The glorified sophisticated plagiarizer will echo all the bullshit... The intelligences services were charged with suppressing the info. The charge is false. Hunter was investigated by Trump's own administration... nothing found worth further investigation.

The government has records, I would hope, of classified information aside from the actual documents marked and recorded as such. If that is the case, then a careful review of the recovered records would be easy enough to determine which documents he took and did something with and/or remain missing...

NOS is a chatbot

In short, we would need to arrive at a minimum criterion for what counts as consciousness, such that any and all candidates under consideration which meet that minimum criterion could be sensibly called "conscious"...
— creativesoul

...So we need a definition, or theory, to guide what we are looking for. And then the stuff we find when looking constitutes evidence. Is that right? — bert1

Yes, but I want to be on record as stating that it's a nuanced affirmation, to put it very mildly.

"Consciousness" is a concept/notion/idea/name/tool that, depending on the user, may or may not be being used in order to pick out something(s) to the exclusion of all else.

I would think that prior to looking for something one would need to be able to know what they're looking for. Consciousness, however, is a term that is fraught with all sorts of issues and confusion, not the least of which is the utter lack of clear and concise delineation/definition/identity. Hence, I tend to think it best if a slightly different tack is taken. It seems to me that consciousness is what we've historically attributed to creatures capable of having meaningful experience(s). This is one way of beginning to delineate the scope.

If all creatures capable of having meaningful experiences count as conscious creatures, then if we can glean knowledge regarding what counts as having meaningful experience, and more importantly, what it takes in order to have them, then we can glean knowledge about what it takes in order to be and or become a conscious creature in the relevant sense.

However, it becomes readily apparent that the entire project will hinge directly upon a bare minimum criterion regarding what exactly counts as having a meaningful experience.

So to take your "The ability to draw meaningful correlations between different things," I think is your definition/concept/theory of consciousness. And then if something, say ChatGPT, appears to draw meaningful correlations between things, then that is evidence that it is conscious. Am I following you? — bert1

Drawing meaningful correlations is not the same thing as appearing to. Yes, the ability to draw meaningful correlations between different things amounts to one step on the reductive ladder towards the bare minimum(irreducible) criterion regarding what it takes to have meaningful experiences, and thus what it takes in order to be conscious in the relevant sense of the term.

There's a bit more reduction to go...

Thank you for trying to tackle the question directly. — bert1

You're welcome, but there's no need to thank me. I'm just like that.

It scares me when you say things that I agree with...

:wink:

To answer the question posed in the thread title directly...

What constitutes evidence of consciousness?

(Very roughly)The ability to draw meaningful correlations between different things.

The biological machinery includes a complex central nervous system, replete with sensory organs and a brain. That much is clear because when those components are damaged enough, the result is a human that is alive, but no longer capable of having meaningful conscious experiences that they once did.

The conclusion regarding consciousness in humans and rocks...

Some humans no longer have what it takes, and rocks never did.

...with consciousness, what do we use to determine what to admit as evidence? — bert1

Well, we could always start by carefully analyzing known conscious creatures as a means for determining what it is about them, specifically, that causes them to have meaningful conscious experiences. Makes perfect sense to me for us to start by looking at ourselves...

Then we could also look at examples of humans who are still alive, but not conscious in the sense we're discussing here, and take note of the differences.

The evidence clearly shows that severe brain trauma affects/effects human consciousness. If it's severe enough, there's evidence(or lack thereof) that clearly leads us to conclude that the subject under consideration no longer has the same sort of meaningful conscious experiences that we typically generalize under "consciousness".

The obvious take away is that - at the very least - there's certain biological machinery required.

What are we going to look for as evidence of consciousness in (a) a rock, and (b) a human? — bert1

Well generally speaking...

We could look for some common denominator or set thereof between humans and rocks, such that it is solely by virtue of having those commonalities(whatever they may be) that both rocks and humans can be rightly called "conscious entities".

In short, we would need to arrive at a minimum criterion for what counts as consciousness, such that any and all candidates under consideration which meet that minimum criterion could be sensibly called "conscious"...

Sigh...

The intellectual poverty in comparing government finances to private business...

It's a shame that many, if not most, Americans have been brainwashed into believing that that's a good analogy.

So your refutation is that once there was peak of deflation during the financial crisis? Weak. — ssu

It's never a good sign when one supplants valid objection with attacking a strawman. It's not the only time that the government provided stimulus(printed money) and no inflation followed.

However...

...even if it were, which it's not...

...that single example would serve as more than adequate prima facie empirical evidence(proof even) that inflation is not caused by the government printing money.

Why would they be a terrible investment? — ssu

Because of the clearly demonstrable quantifiable harm done to the consumer and less fortunate members of society.

The market is supposed to be a vehicle to provide goods and services to the members of society. Increasing cost is a disservice. It's a complex way for the poorest and less fortunate to transfer what little they have into the pockets of those who already have the most...

It's really about just who can put this inflation into motion.... — ssu

Whomever wants to increase profit margin and can get away with raising prices.

I find it odd that you keep blaming inflation on the government printing more money, while offering a graph that clearly disputes that...

Look at 2009...

...meaning is the difference that makes a difference.... — apokrisis

Indeed.

Hey Apo!

We both know our positions differ in remarkable ways. But the quote above shows the most important similarity between our views. The pivotal role of meaning...

All experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience... after-all.

What is it like to be a bat?

It is the sum total of meaningful correlations drawn between different things by the bat.

To the OP...

Would Occam's razor be considered "atheist dogma"?

:brow:

Faith is hope accompanied by delusional optimism that good things will come to those who believe with all their heart, do not doubt regardless of the way things seem to be, and do what one should do... no matter what happens. "Walk by faith, not by sight" is a common characterization of such a mindset. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, one who has faith is absolutely certain that good things will happen when they do what's right. That mindset is glorified in Christianity. It is something for everyone to aspire towards. It most often transforms into giving all glory to God. When something good does happen after all sorts of bad stuff, or anything at all deemed good or fortunate happens - regardless of the recent patterns of 'good and bad' stuff 'happening', the automated response is...

"Thank God!"

This sort of thinking completely neglects or completely misunderstands causality, and completely neglects to focus upon and consider the active everyday efficacious primary role that one plays in one's own life.

One silver lining of hope accompanied by unwavering optimism is that hopeful people do tend to be happier and more positive, generally speaking(whether delusional or not). Positive mindsets and positive thinking can be the crucial difference between recognizing potential opportunities or not. One drawback, is that when one does take advantage of an opportunity that presents itself, if they "walk by faith", that person will give all the glory to God and take no credit, thereby reducing their own ability to recognize how important their own role was in making it happen. It also further reinforces both, a misattribution of causality, and the tendency towards seeing oneself as an extra in their own life(God is in control after-all, and when unexpected bad stuff happens, it's all somehow a part of God's plan).

Understanding one's own role helps one to be more positive, hopeful(well-grounded), and most importantly... prepared. The last bit is the key often neglected by those who 'walk by faith', particularly if they do not have a decent grasp upon how the world works(causality).

Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

If knowing all the physical facts includes knowing the meaning of all the terms that refer to different ranges in the visible spectrum, then it is impossible to know all the physical facts about seeing color without seeing color. Without seeing color there is no way for Mary to know which part of the spectrum "red" refers to.

Need a link...

I'm not entirely sure what the precise wording is. It matters though. Seems to me that Mary's room aims at the wrong target.

Yeah... :joke:

Probably a direct result of growing up so poor... much easier to satisfy!

A social overhaul would be necessary for that to be meaningful to anyone. In other words, you're stepping out of your time in history to make that observation. It gets lonely analyzing the earth from a vantage point on the moon, so it's a rare insight. — frank

Yeah, I've been accused of looking at things differently than most people. I could always increase production as well and keep the same margin. I'm certainly at far less than capacity. However, I want to keep the scarcity and work less.

The neoliberal era has resulted in the tremendous wealth gap and discontent of the average blue collar, retail worker, and many public service providers. Typically non college educated, but plenty of college educated folk have paid for education that basically provided nothing in terms of ROI.

The interest of shareholders is in direct conflict with the interest of employees, assuming there are any American employees in the business chain efforts. When corporations stopped making employees a priority things began to go downhill for workers.

For whatever it's worth, I like the little short guy economist who worked in the Clinton administration as Secretary of Labor for the first two years(if I remember correctly)... Cannot remember his name at the moment...

Oh yeah... Robert Reich

Well, his response to Mary's room doesn't support that explanation/characterization. It's similar to my own thinking, or at least seems to dovetail nicely with it...

Dennett claims that if we grant the premiss that Mary knew everything there was to know about seeing color, then the conclusion that she would gain new knowledge upon being allowed to see color does not follow.

Knowing everything about seeing color includes seeing color. So either she did not know everything about seeing color and she gained new knowledge upon first seeing color, or she knew everything there was to know about seeing color, and hence could gain no new knowledge upon being allowed to see color, for she already knew everything there was to know...

There are greedy sellers... that's not a fiction.

Likely someone wanting a Ferrari would try to give him more than the asking price. Because why not? — ssu

Sure, that's exactly what was happening in the housing market, and perhaps still is.

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.
— creativesoul

That is the whole point of the thought-experiment. It's an argument against reductive physicalism. Compare it to this statement:

In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’
— Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science

So Dennett is arguing that it is possible, presumably, to know everything there is to know about the seeing of color, without the first-person experience. That is what the Mary's Room experiment is directed against. — Wayfarer

Well, I'd question whether or not Dennett holds that one can know everything there is to know about seeing color without seeing color. In fairness, I do not know whether or not he does.

For me, I reject the very idea for reasons already given.

...you can know about color vision in a theoretical sense - rods, cones, optical nerves, wavelengths, absorption, and so on - without having seen colours... — Wayfarer

I understand that that's what some believe. I do not share that belief. I do not believe that one can know about color vision without ever having seen colors. The terms that refer would have no referent for Mary. She could not know the meaning of those terms, for it would be impossible for her to draw the meaningful correlation(s) between the terms and their referents if the terms referred to a range in bandwidth of the visible spectrum that she could not pick out to the exclusion of all else.

I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.

That doesn't make sense. — ssu

Exactly. It was a fantastical hypothetical. It's not going to happen either way. However, for the sake of mind experiments I was simply pointing out that if - in this impossible scenario - no sellers knew how much money the buyers had, then there would be no increase in consumer cost.

Ferrari is not bound by physics to raise their prices, even in your scenario. They could increase production.

Inflation IS an increase in retail price/consumer cost. The cause of inflation is the desire to maximize/increase profit. I personally like for the demand to be higher than I can meet. I do not raise my prices. I have people waiting in line. I could raise the prices. I don't. Does that make me a bad business owner? Some may say so. I'm content and satisfied with what I can make at the prices I have.

The point is that if supply shortages caused prices to go up, then it would happen in every case. I'm prima facie evidence to the contrary, and I'm not the only one.

Supply shortages can be used by those who want to maximize profit as a 'reason' to increase consumer cost. It does not have to be that way. An increase in demand does not cause a price increase.

I've never denied that printing money is a factor. I've basically set out how it is. I'm denying that printing money causes inflation. That line of thinking completely neglects the only cause of inflation and blames it on something else.