Richard Sansom - Jud Evans and Whit
16th Oct 2005

Jud Evans:

Emboldened by my horoscope, I hazard a reply to Whit's wittiness and Richard's profundity.

October 16th for Jud .

Richard for Jud:

You are blessed with a dynamic creative spirit, and this is the right time for you to put it to use, my dear. If you've been considering putting any plan of yours into action, today you can go for it. Put some of your creative energies into the enjoyment of the finer things of life. Your intense desire to express yourself as an individual is heightened today. You are likely to attend or participate in sporting or outdoor events. Speculative ventures interest you. Your creativity flows. You may feel a strong need to express yourself today, but in a very playful way.

Jud Evans:

Actually I am playing football with the kids soon, but there is sufficient time to tell you how much I really enjoyed reading this and it demonstrates once more how much you and I have moved towards a similar position over the years in which we have been discussing ideas. I have a lot to thank you for. Your exchanges with Whit merit a wider audience as practically all of your stuff does - so I will upload it and give you the page address so that Whit can see it too, for there is much that he says that is of importance.

Whit:

You're entirely misreading me. Dennett wouldn't agree with my stance here at all. It owes something to Chalmers; but he's much more cautious about where he ends up after starting off in a similar direction, so we can't blame him for it either. What I mean by "cognitive functions" are by my definition just such things as computers can do: discrimination, calculation, and resulting behaviour. I take it as unproblematic that we (or the Japanese) will develop robots within the next few decades that behaviourally resemble us in limited circumstances; and that within a few centuries we'll have robots that are really hard to tell from human beings. Barring radical breakthroughs I also take it as unproblematic that these robots won't be even slightly conscious, and will remain completely deterministic, mechanical devices. Many smart people have the opposite intuition; but then they tend to also be people who think that "we" are in truth completely deterministic, mechanical devices.

Jud Evans:

Yes, I agree with what the wise Whit says above too. As long as he doesn't start to believe that because robots become conscious that "awareness" or  "consciousness" exists as well as the mechanical bits and pieces of electrified metal wires and chips, as in some Platonic/Heideggerian ontologically dichotomised world of modern ju-ju.

Richard Sansom: Whit, thanks for your thorough and thoughtful response. I mostly agree with what you say above, especially the last sentence! For me, the most interesting and even the most charming character on Star Trek the Next Generation, was Data. I think many of us have a kind of romantic notion regarding the possibilities of a helpful and benign non-human "human," and you are probably right about these possibilities.

Richard Sansom - previously:

I doubt that evolution "prefers" anything ? and certainly not
"consciousness."

Whit:

Quite clearly, human beings who have something like our normal, full consciousness are much better performers in most circumstances than human beings whose consciousness is variously impaired. The evolutionary process is precisely based on such differences in performance. Thus evolution "prefers" consciousness, in the same way that evolution "prefers" better-functioning eyes, or anything else that gives a clear survival advantage to individuals or a species.

Richard Sansom:

Here you are assuming your own definition of consciousness, which you have not shared with us. Until I know your definition, I cannot fully grasp your statement above. As you use "prefers" I see you are referring to natural selection. However, while evolution has selected our mental and physical morphology, "consciousness" is not like the human eye in terms of a definable functionality that might serve specific purposes in our survival. It is a term we use to define a certain kind of human [or animal] state, and there is scant agreement, as we both understand, as to exactly what is meant by the term. This is why I would like to know your definition.

Jud Evans:

He is also assuming the "existence" of some Platonic or Socratic "form" or "universalism" called "Natural Selection."  "Consciousness" too can NEVER be described, because one cannot describe what doesn't exist. Ask anyone to describe the communicationless twenty-nine and a half-footed gurgle-snooper with the life- span of seven grings which lives alone on the doomed planet Blurglefetter. It too does not exist, and if it DID exist the only way that we would be able to begin to define its existential state would be to observe its behaviour. The human observer who watched and described such an oddity could legitimately be described as a behaviourist too. So although "behaviourism" has a bad philosophical press just now, many behaviourists are still beavering away watching the behaviour of entities, but now we call them "scientists" or "birdwatchers" or "child psychologists, or "boxing fans" or "human beings" for we are all  "behaviourists" in some ways.

Richard Sansom - previously:

As to "evolving machines," are there any such things, save those little mutating graphics that Dawkins presents? Almost by definition [since machines re designed and built by humans] machines cannot evolve, as we understand that term.

Jud Evans: True Richard - at the moment machines do not evolve - computer engineers and programmers develop them. One day machines may reach such a high degree of sophistication that they may start to develop [which in this context simple means "improve"] better and more functional models of themselves, but it will not be "development" doing it - it will be the metal and plastic machines that when they are hit with a hammer go "CLANG!"

Whit:

You should look at the literature on "neural net" computing. Computer programs can precisely evolve capabilities which were not there in the original programming. Self-replicating machines are also quite possible. If nature could have stumble on "us" (which I believe she has), nature could as well have stumbled on unconscious machines which perform quite like us and which are subject to evolution. [I'm not a Dawkins fan either, btw, except when he attack religion. "Meme" is the lamest trendy idea of the last several decades.]

Jud Evans:

Whit goes "over the top here" for not only does he reify "Nature" in the fashion of Jeremiah Plato's "Grand Ole Ontological Opry," which was originally known as the "Sam Socrates Barn Dance for Beings," but he actually goes the whole groundhog and personifies "Nature" into some anthropomorphic anthropocentric female. His one concession to "reality" appears to be his reluctance to maternalise "her" into the "motherhood of "Mother Nature" in the fashion that the religio-trannies usually do. I realise that Whit probably doesn't believe in the nature goddess at all, and that he will excuse me having a little bit of nominalistic fun at his expense [no offence meant Whit ;-) ]

Richard Sansom:

I was quite involved, before retiring, in the early stages of AI and witnessed both the pro and con arguments regarding the promise of "neural nets," as well as other varieties of AI I am sure that that brand of computing will prove to be quite powerful, especially now that nano-computing technology is taking off. It is easy to construct an algorithm or computing process that does things that were not designed - it happens all the time, unintentionally! As for "memes" I thought the idea bunk when I first read about them. Besides, I usually dislike neologisms.

Jud Evans:

Yes I agree Richard. "memes" like "metaphysics" is "megabunk."

Richard Sansom - previously:

One might also opine that freedom serves consciousness! i. e. one abstraction serving another, or visa versa.

Jud Evans:

Bravo Richard! An excellent observation! One abstraction serving another, or visa versa - I love it. At the risk of committing the offence of personification - I didn't realise that abstractions were so helpful to each other, that they had so much altruistic feelings towards their fellow abstractions or members of their family of reificational relations. All the best cognitive abstractions must be Jewish - for they certainly deserve to be admired for their vast intellectual contribution to mankind and the way they stick together and help preserve their admirable heritage and help each other. So different from the unglued goys, who seem to lack any metaphysical mucilage or communal commonsense and who are always at each others theological throats [see the Heidegger list for copious examples.]

Richard Sansom:

As for freedom being an essential aspect of our world, to say this, one must first define what "freedom" means, and the context in which it is being used. I do not see freedom as an essential aspect of our world; I see "freedom" as an invention of the human mind. Could we not also claim that our world is an essential aspect of freedom? As a thorough nominalist, I do not accept the "existence of consciousness" though I would accept the term as descriptive of a certain state of behaviour.

Whit:

As a fan of ecological systems, I'll accept that service often goes in more than one direction. That's more often the case than not. Your nominalism I'm curious about. Your last statement, however, sounds like behaviourism - which is at least thoroughly out of style, and hopefully isn't entailed by nominalism - although I await your explanation of that.

Richard Sansom:

Nominalism generally rejects the existence of universals and considers only those entities with tangibly provable existence do exist. Abstractions do not exist. As for behaviorism, I was not alluding to that passé discipline, but rather to the fact that how one acts might be an indicator of the level of their consciousness. When one is knocked out, from whatever cause, we assume that they are not conscious. We make this determination based on what they are doing and not doing.

Richard Sansom - previously:

If we believe that "freedom" is some kind of tangible reality, along with "consciousness," then we are doomed to see these as kinds of Platonic realities that float around our environments and may or may not capture us in their fold.

Whit:

I'm also not fond of Plato or his ideals. [Aristotle is entirely another matter; but the way his "Ethics" informs my idea of freedom is several steps removed, too complex to go into here.] What must be reconciled (if we believe in such reconciliations) is that our "subjective" (problematic term) reality is one which, faced clearly (Sartre?) is free. On the other hand, our "objective" reality - everything shown by "science" so far - is decidedly deterministic. Our neurology, understood by science as a physical system, should be entirely deterministic (perhaps with some true randomness thrown in, but nothing like the free "choice" we see ourselves subjectively to have). And our minds do seem to be in some serious sense identical with our brains. So it seems to come down to: Either we have peculiarly conscious abilities which amount to true freedom, which qualify as magical (no scare quotes, literally so) under our best current scientific understanding; or else conscious freedom is some sort of illusion, whether useful (and how would it really be useful if there's no freedom of mind for it to influence anyhow?) or a confusion better done without.

Jud Evans:

Funnily enough I am studying the two-headed duck-billed Platopus myself at the moment. Plato is a wonderful stylist and an extraordinary raconteur but ontologically he is a fully paid up member of The Athenian Society of Ontological Head-Bangers. Strangely I mentioned to Jon Neivens years ago that the main reason that those outstanding old Greek blokes got their ontology wrong was that they misunderstood the meaning of ousia, ["property"] in that they confused the actual meaning - [the sense of goods and chattels and appurtenances] and the chief headbanger used the misunderstood notion to attribute [without understanding the BE-word - the einai-mechanism] the "properties" of red-headedness, and strength and beauty to folk as if their was some magical proprioceptive and proprietorial relationship between the "whole" person and the purple hammer-toe on his left foot etc.

If "triangularity" - a "property" which if visited upon some disparate kind of three-sided entity, ensures that its shape is triangular, then why not "piety" as a device to encompass all kinds of disparate religious beliefs, including the "new" version of which he is accused and subsequently executed by hemlock? No thought is given to the location of the reificational repository where these universal ideas or forms are mothballed until required; they are left to hover around in the ether somewhere, obnubilated in some secret esoteric echolocation.

Socrates' ontological confusion - a confusion which added to by Plato in the Sophist, opened up a serious Semantico-ontological Andreas-fault which has bedevilled western philosophy ever since, and is the origin of the philosophical tradition's lack of understanding between what we now classify as a "verb" [as a pure action word] and what we classify as a "verbal noun" or "gerund," and all the relentless reificational rubbish that has caused so much confusion amongst otherwise intelligent men for the last two and half millennia.

I have recently been playing Plato's ontological games and considering the Socratic questioning of whether acts of piety or virtuous acts are manifestations of "piety" expected and welcomed by the gods because they are antecedently intrinsically correct behaviour, or are they on the other hand correct simply because they have been commanded by the gods?

Last night, during my reading of Prof. A. E Taylor's [late of Edinburgh university] "Plato - The Man and his Work, " I found this [below ] where he has been addressing the question of why Socrates [aka Plato] seeks to elevate or promote idea of "piety" into a universal idea situated in some unspecified manner outside of the usual ken of humanity, whereby his religious idiosyncrasies can be glossed as falling under the umbrella of a greater definition of a universalist "piety"

Jud Evans:

What Prof. Taylor is referring to her is the difference between such examples as:

The active voice in which the subject performs the action expressed by the verb: "The student wrote a song." And the passive voice in which the subject receives the action expressed by the verb: "A song was written by the student."

He continues:

Jud again:

Having no grammar must have been a tremendous cognitive handicap for the Greeks - and not being able to differentiate a noun from a verb [particularly if it was further disguised as a verbal noun [a gerund] is obviously the reason why they didn't know their ontological ass from the ontological elbow. I wonder if the Heideggerians would be so profligate in abandoning serious and sensible grammar if they realised how hard come-by it was to develop? They remind me of wilful and ungrateful kids throwing away perfectly functioning and expensive presents in their selfish and senseless acquisition of traditional tawdry textual toys. The problem was also a prominent one in the age of Scholasticism and it remains so in its modern-day vacuous version - Heideggerianism.

Whit:

I'm betting on magical.

Richard Sansom:

I assume you are being humorous here? Why must the choices boil down to the two you mention?

Whit:

An abstraction? No. Freedom is directly present whenever we recognize ourselves at a crossroads. It stands there like the Devil, like Hecate, like Bridget, like ourselves really, when we're looking fairly ahead down two or more directions, as yet undetermined, and free to choose.

Richard Sansom:

That's not an abstract state at all. That's when things are most real. It's as concrete as the world ever gets; the very crux of conscious reality. Richard Sansom: Why do I call "freedom" an abstraction? For the same reason I call fear, love, hate, etc. abstractions. They are names we have invented to deal with states of mind and feeling, but have no existence. I have nothing against the use of such abstractions [we really cannot do without them] but they must be seen for what they are. One person's freedom may be another persons dilemma, or depression. Further more, in fact we may never be FREE in the sense that we can think and act exactly as think we can choose - I believe the mind to be far too complex to make that assertion. I also do not believe the concept of freedom is the very crux of conscious reality - that's three too many abstractions to digest. What IS conscious reality? Is it different from reality? Is it different from subjective reality, or from objective reality? I think it is possible to see Hamlet as one who is trapped by his "freedom." Of course he can kill his uncle - it is up to him. He wants to; why does he not? Perhaps in truth, he was never "free".