Consciousness, again

@Razzleg,

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Skeletons evolved through a variety of stages as beings adapted over millennia (via repeated mutation, reproductive selection, etc.) to changing environmental conditions.

Yes. And beings with skeletons that exist today are only the ones that were successful and managed to survive. But if there were no gravity, there would be no need for creatures to develop rigid frames to support their bodies.
This is the principle I was referring to. Nothing just happens. Fur, legs, opposing thumbs, teeth.... Everything has evolved through trial and error. If it worked, the animal lived to reproduce.

I am familiar with the concept of a category mistake, but you will have to explain how that applies here. Fur evolved because there was a need to keep warm, legs because there was movement, opposing thumbs because grabbing objects seemed to be such a huge advantage of survival, and teeth because it lets animals eat a wider variety of foods.
It all sounds good. Evolution is awesome business.
But how did minds evolve? If there were no thoughts, what could have been the evolutionary triggers for 'mind'?

Quote:

Are you saying that Gecko thoughts are the same as Homo Sapiens thoughts, adjusted to Gecko needs?

No. I am suggesting that we think of thoughts as parcels of information. They are as available to geckos as humans, though the gecko might have less ability to perceive them.

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@Razzleg,

Sorry about the spam of replies. I think I'm suffering from an episode of whatever you had earlier, and can't seem to make things work properly. Smile

Quote:

But if two rocks smashing into one another is an example of a thought, then why are eyes necessary?

I don't know that they are necessary. Eyes are sensors that feed us information brought by light. Obviously, having eyesight is such a huge evolutionary advantage that most creatures alive today have them.

Quote:

What "information" is there to interpret if our thought is enough to comprise the event, "two rocks smash" needs no interpretation if the event is only or already a product of thought.

I do not mean that "our thought" comprises the event. I suggested that the event itself is 'information happening', or 'thoughts'. This is what is available for our senses to detect. When we do detect it, we add a whole range of interpretations to it, but the original thought didn't happen in the mind, it was perceived by it.

I know I haven't used the word 'thought' to describe these events before in this thread. The whole thing does indeed need fleshing out, and your input is helpful in that regard. As it is now, I am sure there are contradictions and logical errors in plenty. Maybe we need some axioms.. Wink

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

The idea of exchange of information as I and most use it, requires a receptor an interacting party, that which you may specifically intend to qualify as an "observer" but not necessarily a human observer, not even a biological entity, less alone the idea of a mind as its natural medium..."awareness" here is used as coinage for interacting, communicating systems, from where a relational function arises being processed, or transformed out of this data interchange, more, the very word "systems" is loosely used in this context as for instance a rock with a given shape and mass is presented as a system with a given potential for reacting and processing data as it "responds" to the forces who affect it depending on its specific parameters...Consciousness for all that I care may well be a refined development of this "physical" property of our world which is the ability to communicate, that is, the idea of interchange of data being possible among things as the very concept of a world depends on it in the first place...

Hmmmmm...i'm about to make a lot of statements that require a lot of qualifications; certainly, more qualifications than i am prepared to make in a single post. And, i fear, some of them are going to come off as anti-AI, which i dislike. i am a big AI proponent, both on its own merits and for what it can potentially reveal regarding human consciousness. Nonetheless, i feel that a critical approach is sometimes useful.

What you seem to regard as "information exchange" seems more to me like "code interception". In other words, just because a body is "open" to a "code" does not mean that "code" reveals information. Acceptance of code is a sign of translation potential, but not necessarily a sign of interpretation.

When a cell accepts a viral "code", it changes, but that is not to say that it "interprets" the code. It merely reacts to a foreign input.

Likewise, when AI recognizes a "code" to which it is subject, it does not "interpret" that code -- it merely translates it. That is why AI is subject to "computer viruses" in a way that its programmers are not. Those programmers "interpret" the code and disarm it. Even the most sophisticated, current AI program would seems to require (external) programmers to troubleshoot program corruption.

On the other hand, the biological acceptance of a code is subject to a system-wide set of "checks and balances"regarding incoming "code" and regarding its appropriate response. Those biological "checks and balances" are sophisticated enough that AI has yet to duplicate it.

Either way, a "receptor" only seems to imply the reception of code, as complicated as that operation might be. But code requires further "interpretation" to regard it as compatible "information". "Information" implies an observer, distinguishable from "a" receptor.

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

I strongly disagree with your observations on this matter...what you call "interpretation" I call a function arising from the code interacting arch between two agents which is based on the potential of each agent given its specificity and levels of complexity, say for instance mass, shape, chemical signature, and in the case of bio-entitys also its "software operating system"...obviously information is the outcome of code interception and FUNCTIONAL useful decoding and not the code itself which otherwise would be transcendent, in fact that as been my point all along when I try to deconstruct subjectivity to objective grounds...by functional I am referring to those bits of code that are not perceived as noise or disregarded at all...that is, there are useful compatible strings of code that may be decoded and carry value for the receiving agent...such value, information itself, is highly dependent on the interacting compatible potential of both parts, being highly specific, that which sometimes is viewed as subjectivity or interpretation of data, but that nonetheless is build on objective ground...I particularly don't see this "interpretation" as discretionary being left upon the will of agents, in the more complex case of bio entitys, but strongly believe it has a deterministic mathematical algorithmic and necessary exact behaviour...rather it is the complexity of context and the almost uniqueness of the subjects that brings about the variations in those functional algorithms of the process of decoding data with specific interpreted points of view...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

I particularly don't see this "interpretation" as discretionary being left upon the will of agents..

I agree. I take it further too, and say that this kind of interpretation is the cause of agents.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I strongly disagree with your observations on this matter...what you call "interpretation" I call a function arising from the code interacting arch between two agents which is based on the potential of each agent given its specificity and levels of complexity, say for instance mass, shape, chemical signature, and in the case of bio-entitys also its "software operating system"...obviously information is the outcome of code interception and FUNCTIONAL useful decoding and not the code itself which otherwise would be transcendent, in fact that as been my point all along when I try to deconstruct subjectivity to objective grounds...by functional I am referring to those bits of code that are not perceived as noise or disregarded at all...that is, there are useful compatible strings of code that may be decoded and carry value for the receiving agent...such value, information itself, is highly dependent on the interacting compatible potential of both parts, being highly specific, that which sometimes is viewed as subjectivity or interpretation of data, but that nonetheless is build on objective ground...I particularly don't see this "interpretation" as discretionary being left upon the will of agents, in the more complex case of bio entitys, but strongly believe it has a deterministic mathematical algorithmic and necessary exact behaviour...rather it is the complexity of context and the almost uniqueness of the subjects that brings about the variations in those functional algorithms of the process of decoding data with specific interpreted points of view...

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
I particularly don't see this "interpretation" as discretionary being left upon the will of agents..

I agree. I take it further too, and say that this kind of interpretation is the cause of agents.

Well, i'm kind of glad just to have brought you two together. Doesn't always happen.

Fil, i hear you, but (predictably) disagree. The reception of code is not the same as "decoding". What proceeds from code interception seems to me to be a process of collation that seeks to integrate the new-found code into the existing frame-work. But that integration is important, in that those bits of cod that can't be integrated are rejected. But the reaction prompted by the code and fed by the code's source in some circumstances, may reject that systemic rejection and overwhelm the system's capacity to maintain certain processes -- especially (in terms of viruses), and corrupt their functions.

This collation of data, as the basis of integration, seems to me to be the principal form of "decoding", not "reception". If the code/data interrupts this collation, then the data does not qualify as "new information" -- it is merely poison.

AFXBFYCFMFZ...are letters you recognize well enough to receive them. My sending them is not random, but i challenge you to interpret them on the basis of your reception, alone.

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

...wait just a minute right there...I didn't said reception is enough, although reception establishes primary order functions without which any code is useless...decoding follows it on the basis of usefulness regarding constantly negotiated perceived potential as context progresses...what I am saying is that such potential is natural and not a "build"an invention from the subject...at most the subject is an "editor" tumbling and trumping upon contextual objective circumstances either internal or external...I am not sure at all I and Cyr are on the same page I doubt that frankly speaking...but I can empathise why he believes what he believes...time and again I have said certain positions people have are not that far apart, is just a matter of what "language" carry s along perceptively for each one of us...my notion of "mind" is very much mathematical and deterministic although complex and unpredictable...the differentiating nuance is there but visibly the outcome seams similar...

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Razzleg, what a well written post. I take great pleasure in reading something that is well written, regardless of whether I agree or not with what's being said.
are speaking of the same world.

Indeed. With only so - so understanding, I'm enjoying the entire thread, and this is not a forum I normally pay attention to.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...just another small detail Razz...if you did care to notice since my earlier posts I always used the term PROCESS, which in info language intends as computing, thus data is necessarily transformed at several layers and levels of complexity resulting in information with a charge of value...precisely what you were mentioning as the integration of the code into the existing frame, the said Jean Piaget's adaptation process referred by "assimilation"...since always I am trying to emphasize that those algorithms arising from the interacting relation between agents become themselves specific objects with a given objective and actual shape, that as been my contention to stand for a "Reality"...they are the NECESSARY Phenomena justified in an ineffable ontological ground, that which "appears", which shows off, or shows up...or again, that which people around normally coin as the "subjective angle" by which they perceive a given object as meaningful manifestation...for instance the order of functions in a system which is being perceived may change for the perceiving entity, as what is or is not primary arises from the relation and not from the thing itself...on a deeper level is not just the order of primary and secondary strings of information arising from the processed code that are transformed and remixed phenomenally, but the very apparent geometric nature on how they assemble into a meaningful system...what they are being is perceptually transformed !

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Consciousness, again

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