Symphonies: well, they have parts, vocal parts and instrumental parts. The pun obscures matters and I didn’t want to go there.
You bring up the physical ontology of computer programs and whether people are different. Computer programs introduce a new slate of complications because they are typically perceived and discussed in a way as full of imputed intentionality as when someone reads a book. As a physical object, a page of text is just ink on paper in a complicated pattern. The meaning is not intrinsic to the physical object. The same thing goes for computer programs. Physically, a given program is a pattern of magnetizations on a disk, a pattern of charge distributions in an integrated circuit, etc. We have computational devices constructed to be finite-state machines of a particular specification, an elaborate array of cultural props such as programming languages which allow us to think of these states and their components as being about anything and everything, and finally we have media-technology peripherals to enhance the illusion by presenting our senses, and not just our intellects, with simulacra.
Now of course the standard cognitive-neuro view of human beings is that, with the ability to move around autonomously thrown into the definition, this is essentially what we are too: finite-state machines with peripherals, all made out of atoms. If our thoughts manage to be “about” something, it’s because of what caused those inner states and/or because of how everyone else would interpret them (causal and social theories of intentionality, respectively).
According to the quantum-monadic hypothesis, what makes us different to the computers we have is not carbon versus silicon, it’s quantum versus classical computation. Any entity which forms interior entanglements with a high degree of freedom is at least potentially conscious; anything which doesn’t, is not. A conscious monad is still a finite-state machine too, when viewed as a black box causally interacting with the world; but (this is the theory, remember) it contains intrinsic intentionality, whereas an entity which reproduces its causality in a way which has many physically separate parts, does not. You could almost say that a complex monad is made of “qualia and intentionality” (sensations and thought, basically), and that you can simulate the causal dispositions of such a complex monad using a multitude of simple ones, but you will not have thereby materialized actual sensations and thought into being.
I realize I’m making still further ex cathedra statements here, when apparently I still haven’t persuaded anyone of the plausibility of the previous batch, but though I’m engaging a little bit with the criticism, I am at this point mostly just trying to convey a novel way of thinking. I see that even the mere exposition of the viewpoint is going to require a lot of work, to say nothing of its justification.
Symphonies: well, they have parts, vocal parts and instrumental parts. The pun obscures matters and I didn’t want to go there.
Pun? No, that’s a metaphor (combined with a reductio). A pun is when you exploit an ambiguity that hinges on a phonetic similarity.
More importantly, it’s not up to you to decide whether you need to “go there”. You used a chain of reasoning about consciousness. Richard Hollerith pointed out that the very same reasoning can apply to symphonies, thereby showing your reasoning to lead to invalid results. So you need to refine the reasoning, not just dismiss it as a pun, which isn’t even the right label.
I realize I’m making still further ex cathedra statements here
I don’t think it’s the ex cathedra bit that bothers anyone here, but the ex pedora [1]. Your’e not even at the point where you can present a coherent, testable (in the broad sense) viewpoint, and you keep finding distinctions that you “should have made” before—yet you’re sure that there’s a flaw with the exisitng methods used here. This, despite all the time you’ve spent on the issue. If correct, you should be able to communicate the idea a lot better than you have been. If the issue’s as important as you make it out to be, surely a little more effort on your part is justified when you make top-level posts.
[1] “from the foot-mouth”, a term I just made up, which I don’t even think is valid Latin. But it’s closer to being a pun than the symphony thing!
Richard Hollerith pointed out that the very same reasoning can apply to symphonies, thereby showing your reasoning to lead to invalid results.
I see now that I didn’t want to dodge matters because of the “pun”, I just tried to use that as an excuse. I wanted to dodge this question because “symphonic music” is, for the purposes of an ontological discussion, ambiguous in its reference and introduces much unnecessary new complexity however you interpret it.
I made the assertion that conscious experience—what happens in the mind of one individual at one time—is not made up of spatial parts. Richard said, I could say the same of symphonic music, do you think it can’t be reduced to physics either. Well, first of all, what do we mean by symphonic music? Do we mean all the physical performances ever made by the symphonies of the world? Do we mean the experience of the listeners who hear those symphonic performances? Do we mean the abstract specification of a symphony, which those concrete performances attempt to follow? These are all very different things ontologically, their analysis into parts is going to be different, and the analogy/disanalogy with consciousness is also going to be different. It’s one big distraction, I instinctively tried to dodge it, you pinned me down, so there’s what I should have said to Richard to begin with.
you keep finding distinctions that you “should have made” before—yet you’re sure that there’s a flaw with the existing methods used here. This, despite all the time you’ve spent on the issue. If correct, you should be able to communicate the idea a lot better than you have been. If the issue’s as important as you make it out to be, surely a little more effort on your part is justified when you make top-level posts.
What can I say … I have refrained for years from talking about this stuff at any length, because I didn’t have it all figured out, and I still don’t, and simply pointing out the flaws of physicalist orthodoxy changes nothing. On this occasion I have tried the more affirmative approach of introducing a concrete alternative, and I am being induced to bring out extra details as the discussion proceeds. I did not know in advance where the focus would be.
Symphonies: well, they have parts, vocal parts and instrumental parts. The pun obscures matters and I didn’t want to go there.
You bring up the physical ontology of computer programs and whether people are different. Computer programs introduce a new slate of complications because they are typically perceived and discussed in a way as full of imputed intentionality as when someone reads a book. As a physical object, a page of text is just ink on paper in a complicated pattern. The meaning is not intrinsic to the physical object. The same thing goes for computer programs. Physically, a given program is a pattern of magnetizations on a disk, a pattern of charge distributions in an integrated circuit, etc. We have computational devices constructed to be finite-state machines of a particular specification, an elaborate array of cultural props such as programming languages which allow us to think of these states and their components as being about anything and everything, and finally we have media-technology peripherals to enhance the illusion by presenting our senses, and not just our intellects, with simulacra.
Now of course the standard cognitive-neuro view of human beings is that, with the ability to move around autonomously thrown into the definition, this is essentially what we are too: finite-state machines with peripherals, all made out of atoms. If our thoughts manage to be “about” something, it’s because of what caused those inner states and/or because of how everyone else would interpret them (causal and social theories of intentionality, respectively).
According to the quantum-monadic hypothesis, what makes us different to the computers we have is not carbon versus silicon, it’s quantum versus classical computation. Any entity which forms interior entanglements with a high degree of freedom is at least potentially conscious; anything which doesn’t, is not. A conscious monad is still a finite-state machine too, when viewed as a black box causally interacting with the world; but (this is the theory, remember) it contains intrinsic intentionality, whereas an entity which reproduces its causality in a way which has many physically separate parts, does not. You could almost say that a complex monad is made of “qualia and intentionality” (sensations and thought, basically), and that you can simulate the causal dispositions of such a complex monad using a multitude of simple ones, but you will not have thereby materialized actual sensations and thought into being.
I realize I’m making still further ex cathedra statements here, when apparently I still haven’t persuaded anyone of the plausibility of the previous batch, but though I’m engaging a little bit with the criticism, I am at this point mostly just trying to convey a novel way of thinking. I see that even the mere exposition of the viewpoint is going to require a lot of work, to say nothing of its justification.
Pun? No, that’s a metaphor (combined with a reductio). A pun is when you exploit an ambiguity that hinges on a phonetic similarity.
More importantly, it’s not up to you to decide whether you need to “go there”. You used a chain of reasoning about consciousness. Richard Hollerith pointed out that the very same reasoning can apply to symphonies, thereby showing your reasoning to lead to invalid results. So you need to refine the reasoning, not just dismiss it as a pun, which isn’t even the right label.
I don’t think it’s the ex cathedra bit that bothers anyone here, but the ex pedora [1]. Your’e not even at the point where you can present a coherent, testable (in the broad sense) viewpoint, and you keep finding distinctions that you “should have made” before—yet you’re sure that there’s a flaw with the exisitng methods used here. This, despite all the time you’ve spent on the issue. If correct, you should be able to communicate the idea a lot better than you have been. If the issue’s as important as you make it out to be, surely a little more effort on your part is justified when you make top-level posts.
[1] “from the foot-mouth”, a term I just made up, which I don’t even think is valid Latin. But it’s closer to being a pun than the symphony thing!
I see now that I didn’t want to dodge matters because of the “pun”, I just tried to use that as an excuse. I wanted to dodge this question because “symphonic music” is, for the purposes of an ontological discussion, ambiguous in its reference and introduces much unnecessary new complexity however you interpret it.
I made the assertion that conscious experience—what happens in the mind of one individual at one time—is not made up of spatial parts. Richard said, I could say the same of symphonic music, do you think it can’t be reduced to physics either. Well, first of all, what do we mean by symphonic music? Do we mean all the physical performances ever made by the symphonies of the world? Do we mean the experience of the listeners who hear those symphonic performances? Do we mean the abstract specification of a symphony, which those concrete performances attempt to follow? These are all very different things ontologically, their analysis into parts is going to be different, and the analogy/disanalogy with consciousness is also going to be different. It’s one big distraction, I instinctively tried to dodge it, you pinned me down, so there’s what I should have said to Richard to begin with.
What can I say … I have refrained for years from talking about this stuff at any length, because I didn’t have it all figured out, and I still don’t, and simply pointing out the flaws of physicalist orthodoxy changes nothing. On this occasion I have tried the more affirmative approach of introducing a concrete alternative, and I am being induced to bring out extra details as the discussion proceeds. I did not know in advance where the focus would be.