Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

AB,

No doubt.

No, not mimicked – has. Given an artificially made brain of equivalent complexity to our own, there’s no reason to think that consciousness, self-awareness etc wouldn't emerge for the robot too.

Absolutely wrong.
You cannot build self awareness if you do not know what it is.
Externally mimicked behaviour can never be equated to internal self awareness.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Absolutely wrong.
You cannot build self awareness if you do not know what it is.

I presume you can read, though you show no sign of it here. Why not then try reading what I said to see where you’ve gone wrong again?

You wouldn’t need to “build self-awareness” at all. All you’d need to do would be to build the interacting components from which self-awareness could emerge.

Externally mimicked behaviour can never be equated to internal self awareness.

It can if that artificially created self-awareness is indistinguishable from evolved self-awareness. 

[Alan Burns]

No it wouldn’t. We see properties emerge pretty much everywhere we look without those properties existing in any of the components in the system. It’s the interaction of the components that gives rise to the emergent property, not the individual components themselves. You’ve never understood this, but there it is nonetheless.

Externally observed emergent properties cannot be equated to internal self awareness.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Absolutely wrong.
You cannot build self awareness if you do not know what it is.
Externally mimicked behaviour can never be equated to internal self awareness.

Hi Alan

Any old complexity will not guarantee the same emergent properties.
I'm not sure complexity is synonymous with organisation which is what might give rise to consciousness.

Making a more sophisticated unconscious computer might merely result in only that.
Hillside seems to be predicting an emergent property from a lower organisational level. That in my view is a misunderstanding of what an emergent property is.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Externally observed emergent properties cannot be equated to internal self awareness.

Wrong again. The self-awareness the robot experienced would seem as indistinguishably real to the robot as yours does to you.   

[Stranger]

You cannot build self awareness if you do not know what it is.

How do you know?

More to the point, you seem perfectly comfortable making baseless assertions about what can and can't be self-aware without knowing what it is, and your assertions are self-contradictory.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stranger,

How do you know?

He doesn't, and all you could build in any case would be an interacting system from which self-awareness (or any number of other properties) may or may not emerge. Emergence is unpredictable, which is why I said "could" emerge rather than "would" emerge.

[Stranger]

There are some things in which we have no choice, and there are some things which we have freedom to choose.  It does not take a great deal of intelligence to work out which is which.

It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to see your obvious mistakes with logic.

Once again, you've made the simplistic and nonsensical assumption that there is a "you" that is totally removed from any discussion of how choices get made, apparently without even realising that you've made it.

The point is that the "you" cannot make a choice unless it wants one option more than the other options. It cannot possibly choose which it wants the most, because then it would have to want to want one option more than the others, then it would have to want to want to want one option more than the others, and so on into an infinite regress.

I predict that, once again, you'll totally ignore this as you do any actual reasoning that challenges your simplistic blind faith.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stranger,

It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to see your obvious mistakes with logic.

Just thinking about this. AB seems to me to reverse logical thought by starting the conclusion rather than with the argument. If the conclusion is one he doesn't like, the logic that leads to it must be "flawed"; if the conclusion is one he does like though, the logic that leads to it must be good (even though it's almost invariably terrible). It's all top down rather than bottom up in other words, however ludicrous the holes it forces him to dig for himself.     

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Wrong again. The self-awareness the robot experienced would seem as indistinguishably real to the robot as yours does to you.

Sorry but robots are not self aware.
They do not see.
They do not hear.
They have no thoughts.
They just react to data in accordance with pre programmed instructions.
Mimicked behaviour is programmed to do what it does.  It cannot possibly be equated with internal self awareness.

[Alan Burns]

It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to see your obvious mistakes with logic.

Once again, you've made the simplistic and nonsensical assumption that there is a "you" that is totally removed from any discussion of how choices get made, apparently without even realising that you've made it.

The point is that the "you" cannot make a choice unless it wants one option more than the other options. It cannot possibly choose which it wants the most, because then it would have to want to want one option more than the others, then it would have to want to want to want one option more than the others, and so on into an infinite regress.

I predict that, once again, you'll totally ignore this as you do any actual reasoning that challenges your simplistic blind faith.

But in this very simplistic logic you are presuming that conscious choices are determined in a mechanistic way entirely driven by chains of inevitable cause and effect.  You do not acknowledge that conscious thoughts can be determined by anything other than previous chains of cause and effect.  Reality is not that simple.  Choices are not reactions - they are consciously chosen according to your will.  You are free to make your own choice - not to have it predetermined by past events.

[Alan Burns]

Hi Alan

Any old complexity will not guarantee the same emergent properties.
I'm not sure complexity is synonymous with organisation which is what might give rise to consciousness.

Making a more sophisticated unconscious computer might merely result in only that.
Hillside seems to be predicting an emergent property from a lower organisational level. That in my view is a misunderstanding of what an emergent property is.

I agree.
There is no logical reason to presume that greater physical complexity alone can somehow generate self awareness.   

[Stranger]

Exactly as predicted, Alan, you have totally ignored the two points I made in the post you are supposedly replying to and even made exactly the same nonsensical assumption I pointed out.

The nonsensical assumption was that there is a "you" that is automatically separate from any discussion about how it makes its choices. I also pointed out that being able to choose our wants leads to an infinite regress. I guess you'll just go on ignoring both points.

But in this very simplistic logic you are presuming that conscious choices are determined in a mechanistic way entirely driven by chains of inevitable cause and effect.  You do not acknowledge that conscious thoughts can be determined by anything other than previous chains of cause and effect

This actually has nothing to do with either of the points I made. However, I have not (in past posts) presumed it, I've argued it - an argument you have never been able to fault - you seem too afraid to even try.

If a choice is not entirely determined by the events that led to it (including the nature of the person making the choice), then, to some extent, it is not due to the events that led up to it. In other words, some part of the choice was unrelated to the events that led it - including the nature of the person making the choice.

Please explain how some aspect of a choice being totally unrelated to either the choice maker, or any of the circumstances of the choice, can possibly make said choice maker more "free". How can it be anything other than random? I guess you'll just go on ignoring that too.

Reality is not that simple.  Choices are not reactions - they are consciously chosen according to your will.  You are free to make your own choice - not to have it predetermined by past events.

There's the nonsensical and simplistic assumption again. The subject of the discussion is how "you" make a choice, how your "will" is arrived at. Simply saying that it's those things that make the choice is just avoiding the question, not answering it, or even thinking about answering it.

Are you really incapable of even framing the question in your mind - because it rather looks like that? It looks like you have just decided that asking questions about how you (your soul, your conscious awareness, your human will, etc.) make a choice is totally off limits - you dare not even think about it, let alone subject it to logical thought...

[Alan Burns]

Are you really incapable of even framing the question in your mind - because it rather looks like that? It looks like you have just decided that asking questions about how you (your soul, your conscious awareness, your human will, etc.) make a choice is totally off limits - you dare not even think about it, let alone subject it to logical thought...

I do not know the means of how consciously driven choices get invoked, because I am not the God who gives us this power.  All I know is that they do get invoked.   We all have the freedom to choose.  This has been evident throughout the history of human civilization

[torridon]

I do not know the means of how consciously driven choices get invoked, because I am not the God who gives us this power.  All I know is that they do get invoked.   We all have the freedom to choose.  This has been evident throughout the history of human civilization

That admission nicely illustrates the contrast going on here, it is not that we have rival explanations for the mechanics of choice, the contrast is between an explanation and an absence of an explanation.  We explain the logic underlying choice, you insist, despite having it explained to you in detail hundreds of time, that you still don't understand it therefore, god.  It's a position of ignorance, and ignorance always does harm in the end.  Why did that man commit a robbery, we don't know, therefore there must be evil in the world.  Ignorance gives rise to superstition, to facile magic beliefs that we should have all grown out of long ago.  I think we need to wake up and smell the coffee, look at life with open eyes and give honest account of ourselves.

[Gordon]

I do not know the means of how consciously driven choices get invoked, because I am not the God who gives us this power.  All I know is that they do get invoked.   We all have the freedom to choose.  This has been evident throughout the history of human civilization

You move seamlessly between fallacies, Alan, as here, and using very few words too: and that should worry you, since it devalues your every attempt at presenting your position.

Whereas Campbell's do a good line in condensed soups you, Alan, do a good line in condensed fallacies.

[Stranger]

I do not know the means of how consciously driven choices get invoked, because I am not the God who gives us this power.  All I know is that they do get invoked.

But you are very insistent about how they don't get invoked and your insistence is logically self-contradictory. You want to believe that this soul of yours is a magic black box choice-maker but that doesn't stop us applying logic to it based on what it does. If we do that, we get right back to choices being deterministic ("predetermined") or involving randomness.

You can't escape that conclusion unless you claim that logic does not apply to the soul, in which case, you cannot possibly have a logical reason for believing it.

We all have the freedom to choose.  This has been evident throughout the history of human civilization

Yes, but that is the experience of being able to do what we want, which is fully compatible with deterministic ("predetermined") minds.

[Alan Burns]

That admission nicely illustrates the contrast going on here, it is not that we have rival explanations for the mechanics of choice, the contrast is between an explanation and an absence of an explanation.  We explain the logic underlying choice, you insist, despite having it explained to you in detail hundreds of time, that you still don't understand it therefore, god.  It's a position of ignorance, and ignorance always does harm in the end.  Why did that man commit a robbery, we don't know, therefore there must be evil in the world.  Ignorance gives rise to superstition, to facile magic beliefs that we should have all grown out of long ago.  I think we need to wake up and smell the coffee, look at life with open eyes and give honest account of ourselves.

Just because we do not know how something works does not infer that it does not happen.
My freedom to choose is a fundamental reality of my existence.
And I am fully aware that my freedom to choose can have no physically defined explanation, because any such explanation would deny such freedom.
Therefore I have to conclude that my freedom to choose has a non physical source which emanates from my conscious awareness (which is me).

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Sorry but robots are not self aware.
They do not see.
They do not hear.
They have no thoughts.
They just react to data in accordance with pre programmed instructions.
Mimicked behaviour is programmed to do what it does.  It cannot possibly be equated with internal self awareness.

FFS! It’s as though you cannot comprehend a single word that’s said here, and your inability to think beyond the level of nuance that would fox a six-year-old is just astonishing.

And depressing.

No-one said that a robot can do any of these things. It was a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

Try now. Really, really, really try to grasp a simple idea. IF a robot was created with equivalent complexity to our own SUCH THAT self-awareness did emerge, THEN the experience of self-awareness to that robot would be indistinguishable from the experience of self-awareness to people.

Capiche?

Something?

Anything?     

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I agree.
There is no logical reason to presume that greater physical complexity alone can somehow generate self awareness.   

Then don't - he was fundamentally misrepresenting what I said. That's what he does.

There is every "logical reason" to think that interacting "physical complexity" could produce self-awareness because there's nothing special about self-awareness that would exempt it from the generalised phenomenon of emergence.

If you think that there is some magical aspect of self-awareness that would exempt it from being an emergent properly then – finally – try at least to demonstrate it rather than just assert it to be so. 
 

[Stranger]

My freedom to choose is a fundamental reality of my existence.
And I am fully aware that my freedom to choose can have no physically defined explanation, because any such explanation would deny such freedom.
Therefore I have to conclude that my freedom to choose has a non physical source which emanates from my conscious awareness (which is me).

Just for a minute I thought you might have grasped some small part of the problem, but no...

YET AGAIN:

The freedom we experience (being able to do as we wish) is fully compatible with determinism ("predetermined" choices) and hence a physical system.

The freedom you keep on describing is impossible (even for a non-physical soul) because it is self-contradictory.

The reasons and arguments have been put to you time and time again and you just ignore them and continue to trot out this utter nonsense about how you cannot be physical because physical means (pre)determined choices, ignoring the fact that logical consistency alone means (pre)determined choices (ignoring randomness).

A physical system would make (pre)determined choices because the physical world is logically self-consistent, not because it's physical.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

FFS! It’s as though you cannot comprehend a single word that’s said here, and your inability to think beyond the level of nuance that would fox a six-year-old is just astonishing.

And depressing.

No-one said that a robot can do any of these things. It was a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

Try now. Really, really, really try to grasp a simple idea.  a robot was created with equivalent complexity to our own SUCH THAT self-awareness did emerge, THEN the experience of self-awareness to that robot would be indistinguishable from the experience of self-awareness to people.
   

Sorry, but such a thought experiment is meaningless because self awareness is a spiritual property which can't be generated from physical material elements.

[Alan Burns]

Just for a minute I thought you might have grasped some small part of the problem, but no...

YET AGAIN:

The freedom we experience (being able to do as we wish) is fully compatible with determinism ("predetermined" choices) and hence a physical system.

The freedom you keep on describing is impossible (even for a non-physical soul) because it is self-contradictory.

The reasons and arguments have been put to you time and time again and you just ignore them and continue to trot out this utter nonsense about how you cannot be physical because physical means (pre)determined choices, ignoring the fact that logical consistency alone means (pre)determined choices (ignoring randomness).

A physical system would make (pre)determined choices because the physical world is logically self-consistent, not because it's physical.

Your concept of determinism may well apply to animals who's behaviour is demonstrably predetermined by nature, nurture and learnt experience.  But the human capacity for exercising their freedom to choose goes way beyond anything which can be derived entirely from the past.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Just because we do not know how something works does not infer that it does not happen.

Like consciousness as an emergent property you mean? Such a pity that you have no idea what "irony" means.

My freedom to choose is a fundamental reality of my existence.

Mine too. So long as I'm not daft enough to think that my experience of freedom also provides the explanation for it (and that it must therefore be free of all logical constraints) that's fine.   

And I am fully aware that my freedom to choose can have no physically defined explanation, because any such explanation would deny such freedom.

You're not "aware" of that at all. You believe it to be true because it satisfies some faith beliefs you hold to be inviolable, and in any case the materialistic explanation wouldn't "deny such freedom" in the slightest. 

Therefore I have to conclude that my freedom to choose has a non physical source which emanates from my conscious awareness (which is me).

Yes you do have to conclude that, but only if you rely on the broken reasoning that's led you to that conclusion. More robust reasoning though would lead you to a different conclusion entirely.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Sorry, but such a thought experiment is meaningless because self awareness is a spiritual property which can't be generated from physical material elements.

And once again the fallacy of circular reasoning makes an ever welcome return. You try to use logic to produce the outcome "spiritual", and then when the hopelessness of the logic you attempt is explained to you you resort to "but it's spiritual in the first place". And round and round you go – the premise proves the conclusion/the conclusion proves the premise/the premise proves the conclusion/the conclusion proves...etc and (wearily) etc.

If ever you feel like trying to break out of the death spiral of logical circularity you've given yourself by all means let us know won't you.