Martin Brock
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Everything follows laws of physics, so "computers only follow laws of physics" is empty of meaning.The way you use intend (even for your computer examples) really amounts to "follows the laws of physics" - it is almost empty of meaning.
Above, I say that a train "intends" to haul its load, but I'll correct myself. The robot's "intent" to find a green circle is not simply equivalent to a stone rolling downhill, any more than a germ cell mating with another germ cell to create a new cell with a unique pattern of DNA is simply equivalent to the stone, even if both the stone and the cells follow laws of physics. I'll call the mating "creative", but I wouldn't describe a stone rolling downhill this way.
Complexity matters. "Information processing" doesn't describe any matter in motion. It describes specific matter and specific motions. For that matter, a Turing machine doesn't require particular laws of physics at all. Turing machines can "exist" in a universe with entirely different "laws of physics", a "universe" of cellular automata (as in Conway's Game of Life) for example.
Logic constrains the exploration, but consciousness, rather than intelligence, is the mystery I'm trying to explore here. I'm exploring it by process of elimination rather than deductive logic. A robot "intending" to find a green circle need not be conscious. That's my point. I'm ruling this "intention" out of necessary prerequisites for consciousness. We can distinguish this robot's "intention" to find a green circle from a "conscious intention", but then we're talking about consciousness again. Consciousness is a gap in my understanding. I explore it by mapping the space around it, as astronomers explore dark matter by exploring visible matter that can't account for the structure of galaxies.Right, but sometimes when confronted with real mysteries it is better to explore rather than try to deduce stuff logically.
I agree. Confusing artificial intelligence and the like with a science of consciousness is precisely what I'm trying to avoid here. AI is not a science of consciousness. Even if consciousness can somehow emerge in artificial, information processing machinery, we need more than AI to explain this emergence.I think the science of consciousness is at an equally primitive state.
I'm not pathological. I suppose many people experience the "voices" and "personalities" I'm discussing but prefer to describe the experience otherwise. Since the experience is subjective, it's hard to know. I gave up on psychiatry, chemical and otherwise, decades ago.Good - I have read that many people cope with their voices by themselves without invoking medical help and possibly being fed strong drugs. I hope things continue to go well for you.
I assume that the experience involves neurons rather than some immaterial mind-stuff able to leave the body but nonetheless experience sensations, like sight, ordinarily involving bodily organs, like eyes. The experiences are clearly enough real, but dreams and other experiences I can associate with NDEs are also real, and without some very persuasive evidence, I associate the NDE with the dreams I know rather than the immaterial mind-stuff I can only imagine.... even if you call it an hallucination it must involve the coordinated effort of a lot of neurones.
Well, Shermer's tribe says that it's poorly funded because it hasn't produced much, and I confess that I've read more of their critique than any defense.Er, not exactly, psi research is poorly funded, and electromagnetically shielded rooms and the like don't come cheap.
Why must telepathy not involve known means? Conventional telepathy must not involve artificial means, but must it somehow violate known laws of physics?Again lets not get wrapped up in semantics - the usual aim in telepathy experiments is to rule out communication by any known means.
The measurements are statistical, but I believe relativistic QM only rules out faster than light communication, which isn't much of a constraint. Still, I don't understand how a QM wave, for any number of quanta, entangled or otherwise, can be a mechanism for telepathy, and I reflexively dismiss most "quantum" talk in this context. On the other hand, even the quantum talk I learned in school often seemed like gobbledygook. Electromagnetic waves could certainly be a mechanism for telepathy.... standard QM rules prevent information passing in entanglement experiments - the entanglement is only detected statistically when both sets of results are compared.
Collapse occurs, definitively, when a quantum interacts in one of a number of possible states. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any connection to consciousness.... a wave function whose point of collapse is extremely hard to settle, ...
When I was an undergraduate physics major, I never progressed much beyond calculating the eigenstates (orbitals) and eigenvalues (energy levels) of a single electron in a hydrogen atom, and to this day, most "quantum talk" only confuses me, even from physicists.A chemist tends to think of electrons as waves first, and particles second!
Science is about repeatable, measurable phenomena. Consciousness doesn't fit the mold. Denying consciousness also seems silly to me, but denying a science of consciousness may not be.My feeling is that science tends to push trick problems under the carpet - the simple question, "what is consciousness" is certainly one of them.
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