[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:22:10 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> Now note, as well, that I don't reference "magical internal
> processing" so your response concerning it seems to miss (or
> mischaracterize) some of what I've said. I am, rather, talking
> about perfectly ordinary processes, the kinds we can observe and
> track in brains using the right instrumentation.
Arthur C. Clarke supposedly said "Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws> ." I was using
"magic" in that sense. No mischaracterization intended.
>> Rather, it is a way of interacting with the world.
> But what is doing this interacting and what does the interacting
> consist of? After all, the claim that qualia (understood as
> subjective experience) are part of consciousness is not just about
> interacting because there is the phenomenon of being a subject,
> having awareness, intentionality, etc., etc. This implies an actor
> to hold up one end of the relation that is otherwise known as
> interacting with the world.
> Now I will agree that we can and probably should understand
> interaction at some level in physical terms as Josh would certainly
> have it but what we know as "physical" is already a construct
> of experience as, perhaps, some of our dualist friends will
> contend. That is, physical phenomena can be understood, in a sense,
> as a way of interpreting, of putting relations on raw sensation.
> So there is still this problem of subjectness that, perhaps, speaking
> of interaction with the world is not quite sufficient to address.
>> Unfortunately, you don't seem to be receptive to a discussion of
>> that way of interacting.
It seems to me that you have just done it again. I try to introduce a
discussion of interaction. It is hard to see your response as anything
other than giving it the brush off.
You seem to be saying there "Well, okay, maybe interaction is
important. But it is boring humdrum stuff. So lets postpone any
discussion for now, and instead get right the heart of consciousness."
However, my whole point is that interaction is at the heart of
consciousness, and that consciousness cannot be understood except in
relation to our interaction with the world.
> Maybe it's just me Neil. I really don't follow this well
> enough. Normally when we speak of decisions being made we already
> have a conscious entity making decisions in mind. Machines don't
> make decisions though we can use computers to make pre-programmed
> choices and, thus, decisions in a sense.
Perhaps you missed the literature on free will, wherein it is often
argued that we don't make decisions either. Even Searle is troubled by
this, as he indicates in his youtube video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCyKNtocdZE> . If decisions are based
on truth, then you aren't really making a decision, for the truth
dictates the decision to you. So you are left with dictated decisions
and totally random decisions.
It seems to me that the only real decisions we make are those that are
pragmatic. And it seems to me that pragmatic decisions require some
sort of purpose, though they need not require consciousness.
> This means it needs to be able to know and understand its choices
> and to come to the point of selection in a way that is at least
> roughly analogous with how and what we do what we do.
A pragmatic decision requires some sort of weighing of choices to see
how they fit the driving purposes. But I think such weighing requires
a lot less than a full human consciousness.
> And, assuming that you just mean the kind of things thermostats do,
> what are the thermostat-like behaviors that become the features we
> recognize as part of what it means to be conscious?
I should clarify that. An ordinary thermostat isn't really acting on
any purpose other than ours. But I do have somewhere a thought
experiment on a modified thermostat design where it would be acting on
its own purposes. This modified thermostat (or "intentional
thermostat" as I called it), would not actually be something you would
want in your house. You want the thermostat to act on your purposes,
and not to act as if it had a mind of its own.
> Is this picture really all that different from Dennett's proposal
> that brains run processes in the way computers run algorithms?
Yes, very different. I'll think about posting a comparison in the next
day or two.
Regards,
Neil
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