HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 14 Sep 92 15:54:15 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <1992Sep14.003130.26845@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>                                                    The interesting
>questions:
>
>(1) Why and how did consciousness evolve
>(2) what are the stages of development and possible types
>    of consciousness within an individual organism.
>(3) How can we create consciouss entities.

I agree.  And (1) is the place to start.  A while back I suggested that
consciousness evolved primarily as a mechanism to enhance and direct
learning.  I would be interested in further discussion of this.

>To investigate these really interesting questions, one only needs
>the practical---but impresise---idea that consciousness is a sense of self;

But keep in mind that this may be misleading.  That is, perhaps the
sense of self is just an incidental side effect.
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:42:29 GMT
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department

In article <1992Sep14.212232.4200@galois.mit.edu> tycchow@riesz.mit.edu  
(Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
> These are at best the SCIENTIFICALLY interesting questions.  What makes you
> think that nothing except science is interesting?

To be interesting, I'd say a question about the natural world should have an  
answer that is in some way verifiable, testable, checkable, or at the very  
least minimally derived from things that are.

I.e., not just an opinion, based on vague argumentation or
arbitrary hypotheses. If you want such,
talk about ethics or justice.

Of course, philosophers may disagree with this, as they are more interested
in argumentation itself than in understanding the natural world.

Hey, fine. To each their own. But I'd put my money on the scientific
approach to produce really interesting things about intelligence 
and consciousness, not the alternatives. (remember the history 
of the nature of space and time....)

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 06:38:43 GMT

In article <BuG51G.FEv@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu  
(David Chalmers) writes:
> But there doesn't seem to be any analogy with consciousness here.
> Even once all the physical facts are in about how the brain
> works, and introspects, and so on, it seems that it will still
> be a  further fact about why it *feels* like this.> -- 

> Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
> Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
> "It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."

Feels like what? Since i've never 'felt' what its like to be 
anything other than conscious, its hard to say it has a feeling
attached to it. 

Perhaps individuals who have been in degraded states of consciousness
(like brain damage, anathesia, etc) would better appreciate the feeling
of consciousness. All I know is conscious and not.

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 03:42:15 GMT

In article <BuG1nK.DGL@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>                                               Even for cognitive
>concepts like learning, the main facts that need explaining are
>things like how behaviour improves over time in response to environmental
>stimulation, and such facts are obviously entailed by the right kind
>of physical/functional story.  Not so with consciousness: even when
>you've told the whole story about behaviour and its physical causation,
>there still seems to be a vast explanatory gap between that and
>the phenomenon of consciousness itself.

However it is quite possible that you have it backwards.  Experience
has shown true that the problem of  producing mechanized learning is
quite hard.  Once we have the right kind of learning, consciousness may
actually turn out to be much simpler than we think.

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 01:05:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.184735.19327@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
<In article <1992Sep15.164552.12331@galois.mit.edu> tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
<>Superintelligent aliens land on earth and, suppressing snickers,
<Now how can they be considered superintelligent if they suppress snickers?

Because they come from the Milky Way, of course.

<>Humans: Well, if it wasn't just a black box, we'd swear there was a human
<>...
<>                     It certainly passes the Turing test.  We're inclined
<>        to say that it's conscious.
<>Aliens (guffawing): Oh, really?  Well, as a matter of fact, the black box is
<>        just a lookup table!  What do you think of THAT?
<
<See what I mean about the military approach.  Apparently these guys
<didn't even test for secret information channels into the box, such as
<would be needed to constantly update the tables.  Either that, or their
<questioning was so inept as to not discover the inability of the device
<to keep tolerably abreast of current affairs.

I note that you have deleted the section where I outline that the
black box acts as if there is a human being trapped inside, with life
support systems.  We can add a few details: that the simulated human
being is prevented from obtaining input other than through the
typewritten messages, and hence can't learn about current affairs
otherwise.  The aliens then only have to know about issues prior to
the (simulated) kidnapping of the human being.

Really, I don't see what your objections are driving at.  Do you have
the intuition I'm trying to illustrate or don't you?  If you don't, then
let's just forget about this example.

<>1. Well, who cares if it's a lookup table?  It passes the Turing test, so
<>   for all intents and purposes it's conscious.
<
<Anybody jumping so quickly to this conclusion could probably be fooled
<today by a stage magician equipped with suitable radio transceivers to
<install in the black box and a cadre of remote assistants to actually
<participate in the TT dialogue.

The interrogators think of this, and after conducting some experiments on
the box discover that the surface of the black box either absorbs or reflects
all forms of incident EM radiation.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
From: amiga@phobos.unm.edu (carlos a.f  senaenterr)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Dualism
Date: 10 Sep 92 01:45:44 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque


	This is the best argument for dualism that I have come across:

1) What I can imagine is possible.
2) I can imagine being disembodied.
3) Therefore, I could be disembodied.
Note: The form of this argument is Modus Ponens, a valid syllogism.

The question of dualism necessarily involves the question "Is mind as basic as the body?"  That is to say, "Is mind as basic a substance as body?"

The mind-body problem also reminds one of Descartes' explication and solution to the problem, especially in Meditations 2 and 6.  But I contend that Descartes merely establishes the difference between mind and body using Leibniz's law for the substitution of identity.
The formal and in-depth explication and delineation of the argument set forth above and the mind-body problem as it relates to dualism in general is found in a book called The Engines of the Soul, by W.D. Hart, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

I would like someone to argue against the premisses of the argument set forth above.  But remember that the mind-body question is a modal one, i.e., it involves the notions of possibility and necessity in the philosophical and logical sense.  So it does not argue that I am in fact disembodied, but that it is possible that I could be disembodied.   I will try to respond to any replies as I see fit.  I am writing a paper on the subject, and I would greatly appreciate any comments involving this argument. 

My proposed argument against the above premisses involves denying possibility all together, but this is too radical a solution.  And I do agree with the author when he states that "Dualism is the intuitive answer to the mind-body problem." 



Thank You, 
Carlos A.F. Sena
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 17:35:20 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.232531.3921@sco.com> evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt) writes:

>One cannot measure consciousness in a system (or in a person) save by
>evaluation of the system's (or person's) behavior.  Your replica seems
>just as conscious as you; can you suggest any further test I might
>subject it to that would prove it nonsentient?

No, none at all.  Behaviour and internal function can provide plausible
evidence one way or the other, but they can't *prove*.  That's one of
the things that makes the problem of consciousness so hard.  But this
doesn't mean that one should *define* consciousness in terms of behaviour,
unless one is some kind of verificationist.  The question of whether
such a system possess or lacks consciousness seems entirely meaningful,
independent of one's knowledge of its behaviour.

>It can indeed be logically argued that "being conscious" and "acting
>conscious" are separate, but unless "being conscious" is independently
>measureable, the assertion can never be proven.

Not at all.  Measurement of consciousness could tell us that being
conscious and acting conscious are *empirically* separate; but even
if they empirically go together, so that every system that acts
conscious in fact is conscious, that wouldn't change the fact that
the existence of consciousness is a further fact over and above the
behaviour.  It would simply mean that there was some kind of lawful
correlation between the behaviour and consciousness.  Compare:
whenever you hold an apple up, it will fall down: but that doesn't
mean that being held up and falling down are the same thing.  They're
just empirically connected.

The separateness of the notions of "being conscious" and "acting
conscious" is demonstrated simply the fact that the notion of
a system of one without the other is coherent.  Take the good ol'
giant lookup-table (although any system might do): now, whether
or not it in fact possesses consciousness, it is meaningful
to speculate that it doesn't, and the answer to that question is
a contingent matter.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 00:31:30 GMT

As so often occurs, you folks are falling into the philosophical 
trap of trying to produces a precise definition of consciousness,
that passes the standard philosophical tests of 'reasonableness'
(namely, 'does it sound reasonable to me?'):

to wit: considerations of giant look up tables, exact physical 
replicas of people, Turing tests, talk of 'redness', etc, etc.

Since none of these considerations are _ever_ going to be implemented
and tested, and a satisfactory precise definition itself seems quite 
elusive and non-canonical, I suggest this is not a fruitful line
of inquiry.

Allow me to suggest:

A precise definition of consciousness, or the ability to 
easily distinguish  the non-conscious from the conscious, is
_not_ the interesting question about consciousness. The interesting
questions:

(1) Why and how did consciousness evolve
(2) what are the stages of development and possible types
    of consciousness within an individual organism.
(3) How can we create consciouss entities.


To investigate these really interesting questions, one only needs
the practical---but impresise---idea that consciousness is a sense of self;
an ability of an entity to distinguish itself from its surroundings. 
Or, perhaps a very precise but limited aspect of consciousness for
investigations in (2) (Like 'when do children start using 'I' and 'me' 
correctly?)

Perhaps (probably) in the course of investigating (1)---(3) we will come to 
a clearer understanding of consciousness. Perhaps not. But in either
case, (1)---(3) are scientifically interesting and important questions
_related_ to consciousness.

The search for a 'definition' of consciousness that passes all philosophical
tests is not. (And probably doesn't exist, or it would have been found
after ~1000 years of searching.)

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)


Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Proof of God's Existence
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 06:30:30 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.184953.8865@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu 
(Barry Merriman) writes:

   >To be fair to the author, we can hope the paper is a tad facetious.

  It's not a matter of "hope", but of reading ability. Have another look
at the abstract:

         Building on a suggestion communicated in conversation
         by Hilary Putnam, this article provides a definite answer
         to a previously disputed question of philosophy by establishing
         the existence of God. In outline the argument (which the
         reader may find somewhat familiar) goes as follows: Everything has
         a cause; therefore there is a First Cause, namely God.
         Objections to the effect that the argument is refuted because
         causal sequences can descend forever are themselves refuted by
         a timely appeal to Zorn's Lemma.

  >This brings me to yet another thing that annoys me about philosophers:
  >the prefer a deft turn of phrase to a simple presentation, and seem
  >to prefer the clever argument over really getting to the bottom of things.

  Another fine example of the scientific revulsion for empirical
investigations! Your statement is as valid as the following observation:

  People who call themselves "scientists" are usually not concerned with
getting to the bottom of anything, but rather with rehashing standard
prejudices, or amassing boring observations.



Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 01:14:18 GMT

In article <1992Sep16.010539.15839@galois.mit.edu> I wrote:
<The interrogators think of this, and after conducting some experiments on
<the box discover that the surface of the black box either absorbs or reflects
<all forms of incident EM radiation.

Or alternatively, the interrogators set up radio jammers around the black box
twenty-four hours a day.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 06:58:06 GMT
Organization: Self

In article <1992Sep12.022236.11107@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>                                                  We simply ignore
>>this evidence, either because of a faith that the universe is lawful
>>in spite of appearances, or because we are forced to assume lawfulness
>>in order to do science.
>
>This does not appear to make sense.  If lawfulness were merely an
>assumption to allow us to do science, we would quickly discover that
>science didn't work.  It is the demonstrated effectiveness of science
>which encourages us to believe in causality.
>

However, there are some examples of behavior in the physical world
where science has not so far worked.  E.g., economists of this century
have quickly discovered that 'science' doesn't work.  Once you have
recorded every transaction involving a scarce resource, you have a
complete record of what the behavior of the economy is; there are no
further facts of the matter.  And yet, the only causal explanations
for the behavior of the economy which have a hope of being reasonable
and useful are in terms of the intentions of persons, including
beliefs many of which are false.  It is still a matter of faith that
the deterministic laws of the physical microworld are relevant and
might eventually be seen to provide for the underlying causal chains.

It seems to me that the question of whether the mental aspect of
reality is a causally invisible epiphenomenon has not been settled.
Am I wrong?  This may explain the startled reaction to the claim that
the physical world is causally closed.  We may have no evidence to
doubt that it is, but that's not justification for saying there
couldn't be.
-- 
Kevin McCarty (kmc@netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Proof of the impossibility of god.
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 12:49:47 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


In article <1992Sep8.004839.704@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>, chisnall@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (The Technicolour Throw-up) writes:
|> From article <1992Sep7.135438.689@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>, by wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor):
|> > So; I'm sure there must be many posters who'd like to send in their own
|> > "Proof of the impossibility of god".

Not me -- I think the problem of evil provides enough of a stumbling
block.  But has anyone seen Montague's "The Paradox of the Stone
in Intensional Logic" ?  I do not believe that this was ever
published, but it is a very precise formalization of the old "Can
God make a stone so heavy he can't lift it?" puzzle within one or
another of Monatgue's systems of intensional logic or pragmatics.
It thereby addresses the issue of omnipotence rather than omniscience.
It also pretty nicely exposes the questionable nature of at least
one of the premises.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: Proof of God's Existence
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 92 01:40:18 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.040504.3673@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>Finally, I seriously doubt the need of Zorns lemma to establish 
>a first cause. It looks to me like either the guy like to pound
>nails with a sledge hammer, or he's a philosopher trying to 
>impress people with his mathematical (lack of, in fact) prowess.

Well, it's pretty obvious how the proof goes.  Call a nonempty partially
ordered set S _causal_ if

1. Every totally ordered subset has a lower bound; and
2. For any x and y in S, there exists z in S such that z<x and z<y.

Theorem.  Every causal set has a unique minimal element.
Proof. Nonempty + property 1 + Zorn's lemma => minimal element exists;
property 2 => uniqueness.

It's pretty clear that Zorn's lemma is needed for this theorem.  Then if we
interpret x<y to mean that x is causally antecedent to y, we can interpret
this theorem as establishing a first cause.

There's nothing dubious about this proof.  What is extremely dubious is the
idea that causal sets as defined above have anything to do with causality in
the physical world.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt)
Subject: Re: nano-replicator assumptions
Organization: Stan's Chosen Ones
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 23:00:05 GMT


Don't blame me, I voted for tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow).
>How do we know that in principle we can build a working, physical machine
>that can replicate itself? [...]
>The only good argument is to claim that we know enough about how
>living organisms replicate to be able to build, in principle, an
>analogous self-replicating machine.  But there is still so
>much that is not understood about how cells replicate that a cautious
>thinker might well be justified in waiting until we actually have a working
>self-replicating machine before claiming that one can be built.

We know that we can in principle build a self-replicator because self-
replicators exist in nature.  It's not necessary that we thoroughly
understand how cells work to do the job; we know, through observation
of physical events, that it has been accomplished and therefore, that
it can be accomplished again.

I don't understand why we would need to know all about the workings of
a cell to artificially duplicate one of its properties, that of self-
replication.  We don't know everything about how the human brain works,
but we can build machines that do arithmetic, when formerly that was the
sole province of the brain.  We didn't have to learn how birds work to
duplicate their ability to fly.  We built fusion bombs before we
understood the inner workings of the sun, and we still have a lot to
learn.  There's nothing more magical about self-replication than there is
about any of the above, and no reason I can imagine why it should be any
more difficult to imitate through human artifice.

-- 
"This coffee is my blood, this breakfast burrito is my flesh.  And
 it cost me 89 cents, so get your goddamned own." - Jeff Lester, "Saint 11"
From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 14 Sep 92 21:22:32 GMT
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.

In article <1992Sep14.003130.26845@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>As so often occurs, you folks are falling into the philosophical 
>trap of trying to produces a precise definition of consciousness,

As so often occurs, you are way off the mark.  Only someone who has barely
looked at the articles in this thread would think that they have been
concerned chiefly with establishing a precise definition of consciousness.

>The interesting questions:
>(1) Why and how did consciousness evolve
>(2) what are the stages of development and possible types
>    of consciousness within an individual organism.
>(3) How can we create consciouss entities.

These are at best the SCIENTIFICALLY interesting questions.  What makes you
think that nothing except science is interesting?
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech