> I take the interesting question to be whether or not 'meaning' is objective, i.e. mind independent in some important sense. Do you agree that two independent investigators coming to the same conclusion entails that the content is objective?

If every independent observer came to the same conclusion, then yes. Given that we can never test that, I would say (safely) that the answer to that question remains undecidable. We can not assert it.

(But we know for a fact that highly intelligent people have disagreed on meaning of various observations through out the ages. Famous recent example is the contention over the meaning and implications of Quantum physics by Einstein and Bohr.)

When independent observers reach the same conclusion they share a 'mindset'. This shared mindset may itself be an altertion due to input of new facts, i.e doesn't necessarily imply a shared starting point. In my mind, there simply needs to be a 'mental pathway' from distinct starting points that arrive at the same conclusion. But more interesting to me is the 'temporal proximity' of sudden paradigm shifts by independent minds. For example, there were no impediments to conception of non-euclidian geometry. And I find it very interesting that 3 different people, centuries after Euclid, all arrived at non-Euclidian concept at approximately the same time. (This to some extent alludes to my views on nature of mind and possibilities for AI.)

>>"the program I wrote to invert a matrix has a bug, its output is not the intended effect"

> But it still has a causal effect, i.e. it still has some output. 'Intent' is in the vicinity of meaning and so its sufficiently distinct from a pure causal description.

Fine, but intent is definitively bounded by the mind of the entity that created the process. The process is causal, restricted as you said to a species of processes, but it still a causal system. I don't see any legitimate reason to ramp up from 'effect' to 'meaning'. (Because while you may be an honest philosophizing agent, inevitably the 'woo-peddlers' will use the use of loaded terminology to assign 'mind' and 'personhood' to "meaningful processes".)

> I'm not too wedded to the particular terms used. The point is mainly that there is some analyzable feature of processes involving mutual information that sits in between causation and mental representations on a spectrum of complexity, and this feature has wide applicability. If you just want to keep 'meaning' in the realm of minds, that's fine. But I wonder how that influences your views on what's possible with AI and machine intelligence.

Well, I don't want to be a woo-peddler :) but my personal views & reflection on this phenomena that defines my existence are not congruent with current orthodoxy. Specifically, I do not accept that we truly understand the nature of materiality (yet). (There are too many red flags with fudge factor constants and 'dark' aspects that remind of earlier efforts of humanity to fit a model to observations.)

What this means, in context, is that I am not convinced that our minds can be reduced to 'boxes' with input and output. That notion is offensive at a fundamental core of my being. (If I ever became convinced that I am merely a twisted hydrocarbon chain in the mercy of winds of entropy I would exit post-haste from this sorry planet, to be quite honest.)

Certainly I reject the notion that complex structure (form) is the basis of consciousness. I reject this as a matter of 'choice' and 'mindset'. (I'm ~with Pascal.) I do however recognize that neither my view nor the prevalent "mind is simply a phenomena of certain complex structures" are provably right or wrong.

In my conception (atm), the entire 'Reality' (with capital R) is a universal mind and consciousness is a field of some sort, a property of 'reality' like gravity and EM. Our brains are transducers in this field but our minds are not bound by the body. The body localizes and establishes the point-of-view of observation in time and space. Can a machine have a mind then in my universe? To the extent that it's physical makeup shares (an unknown set of) characteristics with ours that allows it to 'interface' with the field. Is that wooie enough for you? /g