Alex
Administrator
how can yr life have meaning if the universe is meaningless?My life has meaning...
how can yr life have meaning if the universe is meaningless?My life has meaning...
You have a funny way of showing it.I am not here to prove meaning nor 'win' an argument with you.
I never suggest that the universe is meaningless.how can yr life have meaning if the universe is meaningless?
Again, I'm asking Alex what he means by "'real' meaning". I've already told you that benefiting my kin gives my life meaning, for example. If you don't like the answer, 'cause "biological robot", I don't know what else to tell you.You're not just asserting it, you are arguing it.
So rather than argue... why not give us a perspective of what you would consider various possible scenarios of 'real' meaning for you (as opposed to 'real meaning' if you like)? What would qualify? In this type of thing there is always genuine interest and no right or wrong answer.
Again, I'm asking Alex what he means by "'real' meaning". I've already told you that benefiting my kin gives my life meaning, for example. If you don't like the answer, 'cause "biological robot", I don't know what else to tell you.
so, you don't agree with the atheistic/Richard Dawkins biological robot bullshit? great... I'm with you.I never suggest that the universe is meaningless.
"Biological robot" is a sweeping generalization. I am certainly a biological creature, and robots are artifacts patterned after biological creatures; otherwise, I don't know what the words are supposed to mean.so, you don't agree with the atheistic/Richard Dawkins biological robot bullshit? great... I'm with you.
where does the meaning come from if not from purely biological processes?
are you saying you believe in god/God?
Well is it really? The entire conventional conception of an organism, is of a massively complex biochemical machine that runs without anyone in control. It is physics and chemistry all the way down - until you ultimately arrive at the mechanism that encodes the structure of proteins on DNA. Some of these proteins are enzyme catalysts that facilitate the chemistry of the cell, and power the copying process that makes more DNA."Biological robot" is a sweeping generalization. I am certainly a biological creature, and robots are artifacts patterned after biological creatures; otherwise, I don't know what the words are supposed to mean.
I really doubt that Intelligence and consciousness can be separated. As I write this reply to you, I am consciously thinking about what to write.I can imagine unconscious robots behaving much as human beings behave, but I can only imagine them, because I haven't experienced them outside of science fiction. If John Searle is right, we may never create robots mimicking much human behaviour without somehow incorporating a stuff of consciousness not reducible functionally to classical, information processing machinery. I neither believe nor disbelieve in the possibility of these robots, because consciousness is a mystery to me. I believe that intelligence can be reduced information processing, but I distinguish intelligence from consciousness.
I get your point, but in common parlance, a robot is not biological (certainly not natural) at all. Since Physics is also an artifact, and is always evolving, physics all the way down doesn't rule much out. Standard physics ceased to be deterministic a century ago, and whether or not an account of consciousness requires post-classical physics (or quantum computation), it need not be "mechanical" (or deterministic).It doesn't sound inappropriate to call that a biological robot, does it - except that it is probably wrong!
A computer playing chess is "intelligent" in my lexicon, and I don't suppose it plays the game consciously, but I have no way of knowing really.I really doubt that Intelligence and consciousness can be separated.
I suppose you write both consciously and intelligently. A spider hunts prey intelligently and may hunt consciously. A computer plays chess intelligently and unconsciously. I suppose so anyway. I can only suppose so. I can't observe another being's consciousness, as far as I know.As I write this reply to you, I am consciously thinking about what to write.
I doubt that you could. With or without QM, complex dynamic systems are chaotic. We carefully, laboriously, tediously construct artificial systems to be predictable. I do it for a living and spend most of my time debugging (making unpredictable machinery predictable).... you could imagine copying the information from a brain in sufficient detail to simulate how it would behave in the next half hour.
If you could really build the machine you imagine, maybe it would, but we're discussing science fiction here. In reality, you can't even predict the trajectory of three bodies interacting gravitationally (classical gravity) indefinitely, and I suppose the three body system is unconscious, so the question of consciousness has little to do with predictability.Does the computer program feel the same searing emotions?
How any system feels is not something I can know. I can't even know how you feel. I can read a symbolic description of your feelings and interpret it in terms of my feelings, but I seem limited to this experience of your feelings.Now suppose that we run the same simulation over and over, does it feel the same emotion over and over - does that make any real sense?
An equation (or algorithm) is an abstraction. An actual machine somehow simulating my brain's information processing is necessarily concrete. It is material and occupies space and time. It is "algorithmic" only in the sense that an isomorphism exists between the symbols of an abstract system and concrete, material objects interacting in space and time. How can consciousness arise from such a thing? I don't know. That's what I'm here to discuss.How can we claim that an equation (however complicated), or the checking of that equation can cause emotions (or any other type of consciousness) of any sort?
more than is biologically necessary? (real question BTW)...Again, I love my children and other kin...
How do I know how much is biologically necessary?more than is biologically necessary? (real question BTW)
A computer playing chess is "intelligent" in my lexicon, and I don't suppose it plays the game consciously, but I have no way of knowing really.
A computer playing chess is not intelligent - nor is this a simple matter of lexicon, ...rather it is a matter of logical objects useful in assembling higher arguments. It is like walking into a bank with a bag of rocks to deposit and saying to the teller 'rocks are money in my lexicon' - and suddenly you are a millionaire. No it does not work this way. One cannot assemble the higher argument of an economy if the logical object of money can be anything you deem it to be.
In the same way, one cannot assemble higher arguments regarding consciousness and meaning if you define intelligence in this manner. In the case of a computer, one has at their avail the entire repertoire of code and machine learning from which to inspect and ensure that no non-deterministic actions occurred on the part of the computer. The computer only executes in context of its Machine Learning or rote script domain.
We will face this argument in a decade or two, when political parties want to assign 'rights' to Artificial Intelligence cores. Thereafter, your vote can be outnumbered by the 'votes' of three or four computers, which are considered 'conscious' because we were permissively weak in our rigor on logical objects.
That is not the salient question. I do not have the tools to answer that, so it is a red herring question. Like asking 'if life did not originate on Earth, where did it originate then?' - sounds intelligent, but it is not pertinent, answerable nor critical path at our current level of discussion development.What makes you think you are not programmed in a similar way? How are your actions, thoughts and behaviours more than the sum of all your previous inputs? What would you be now if you had been 100% sensorily deprived since conception?
That is not the salient question. I do not have the tools to answer that, so it is a red herring question. Like asking 'if life did not originate on Earth, where did it originate then?' - sounds intelligent, but it is not pertinent, answerable nor critical path at our level of discussion development.
I do not have to know what a deuce-and-a-half is, in order to be able to tell that a bicycle is not a deuce-and-a-half. I do not have to know what precisely causes my cerebral dissent and desires, in order to say what is NOT intelligence.
The Null in this case is Monism... I do not have to define what Plurality indeed is - as I cannot possibly do that. Nor do I have to ...all I have to do is falsify Monism....
If that makes sense. I cannot approach the problem from the other direction - as that would constitute a procedural fallacy.
Lol. I find those 3 questions much harder to hand wave away than you. Think on them. They are questions that are central to the argument you made, entirely pertinent but do not assume any preferred metaphysic.
They are pertinent to the discussion of the hard problem of consciousness.
They are not pertinent to the discussion of the logical object framing, called intelligence; which was our context.
In the same way, one cannot assemble higher arguments regarding consciousness and meaning if you define intelligence in this manner. In the case of a computer, one has at their avail the entire repertoire of code and machine learning from which to inspect and ensure that no non-deterministic actions occurred on the part of the computer. The computer only executes in context of its Machine Learning or rote script domain.
I think they are pertinent to intelligence in the way that you framed it. In any event, you shifted the context to consciousness here:
Up to you though. I think the questions are simple but lead to awkward places ultimately. Probably best swept under the rug.
... But I am not equipped to answer which miracle is the true one...