Free will
in [Lisp]
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From: Raffael Cavallaro on 24 May 2010 11:01 On 2010-05-24 03:02:49 -0400, RG said: > Whoa. You are confusing two different issues. > > 1. Whether or not subjective experience is necessary to do science. It > isn't. This is a metaphysical statement. You believe we can define science in such a way that it can be conducted by AIs or zombies. Such a definition (apart from being factually unsubstantiated) is a reductio ad absurdum because it is forced to conclude that subjective experience either: a: doesn't really exist at all (e.g., Dennett) b: is non-physical (e.g., Chalmers, and a conclusion you consider possible). But it is axiomatic of science that everything that is, is physical (i.e., has physically measurable aspects), so this pure physicalist metaphysics (i.e., that observation and hence science does not require awareness) contradicts itself if it takes b, and contradicts my direct experience (and everyone else's) if it takes a. I prefer not to exclude my own, subjective awareness from science, so I see science (and existence) as resting on an information-awareness polarity, where both are necessary for observation/measurement. My view has the additional empirical support that we have no evidence of science being conducted by anything other than beings with subjective experience. Any claim that zombies or AIs could conduct science are purely hypothetical. I see two real possibilities as regards hypothetical zombies/AIs: 1. AIs are just elaborate machines, so their results are no different than a reading on a gauge - i.e., not a scientific measurement until a person reads it or otherwise becomes *aware* of it, and integrates it with the rest of science. 2. Any AI sufficiently complex to do science would develop an emergent subjective awareness in more or less the same way that biological systems developed the subjective awareness that we have. It may well be that subjective experience is the result of a kind of metaphysical anthropic principle - that we must arrive at an ontology that includes awareness since we only exist in a universe where such awareness has, in fact, emerged from something else. Or awareness may be an inherent ontological category of reality. I don't think this is knowable by us. What matters is that the actual science we conduct in the actual universe we inhabit must take awareness as axiomatic. > > 2. Whether or not subjective experience can be accounted for by > science. I claim it can't, though this is controversial. I also accept > as an axiom that it exists notwithstanding that it cannot be accounted > for by science. We are agreed here, but I would point out that this is not controversial to philosophers like Chalmers. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Nicolas Neuss on 24 May 2010 11:33 Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> writes: > On 2010-05-24 03:02:49 -0400, RG said: > >> Whoa. You are confusing two different issues. >> >> 1. Whether or not subjective experience is necessary to do science. >> It isn't. > > This is a metaphysical statement. You believe we can define science in > such a way that it can be conducted by AIs or zombies. Such a > definition (apart from being factually unsubstantiated) is a reductio > ad absurdum because it is forced to conclude that subjective > experience either: > > a: doesn't really exist at all (e.g., Dennett) > b: is non-physical (e.g., Chalmers, and a conclusion you consider possible). > > But it is axiomatic of science that everything that is, is physical > (i.e., has physically measurable aspects), so this pure physicalist > metaphysics (i.e., that observation and hence science does not require > awareness) contradicts itself if it takes b, and contradicts my direct > experience (and everyone else's) if it takes a. Strangely, (IIUC) I agree with almost everything you write in this post and would only object to the point you are making in this paragraph. If subjective awareness is really physical, it is a physics which we do not understand. But then I don't see the advantages of calling it "physical" instead of "metaphysical" (or "theological"). Nicolas > I prefer not to exclude my own, subjective awareness from science, so > I see science (and existence) as resting on an information-awareness > polarity, where both are necessary for observation/measurement. My > view has the additional empirical support that we have no evidence of > science being conducted by anything other than beings with subjective > experience. Any claim that zombies or AIs could conduct science are > purely hypothetical. > > I see two real possibilities as regards hypothetical zombies/AIs: > > 1. AIs are just elaborate machines, so their results are no different > than a reading on a gauge - i.e., not a scientific measurement until a > person reads it or otherwise becomes *aware* of it, and integrates it > with the rest of science. > > 2. Any AI sufficiently complex to do science would develop an emergent > subjective awareness in more or less the same way that biological > systems developed the subjective awareness that we have. > > It may well be that subjective experience is the result of a kind of > metaphysical anthropic principle - that we must arrive at an ontology > that includes awareness since we only exist in a universe where such > awareness has, in fact, emerged from something else. Or awareness may > be an inherent ontological category of reality. I don't think this is > knowable by us. What matters is that the actual science we conduct in > the actual universe we inhabit must take awareness as axiomatic. > >> 2. Whether or not subjective experience can be accounted for by >> science. I claim it can't, though this is controversial. I also >> accept as an axiom that it exists notwithstanding that it cannot be >> accounted for by science. > > We are agreed here, but I would point out that this is not > controversial to philosophers like Chalmers. > > warmest regards, > > Ralph
From: RG on 24 May 2010 11:38 In article <6faa7082-ae7f-4740-9779-18b0c9735762(a)q13g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > On 23 May, 18:03, RG <rNOSPA...(a)flownet.com> wrote: > > In article <htbh72$vk...(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > > Raffael Cavallaro > > <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > > > On 2010-05-22 12:20:24 -0400, RG said: > > > > > >> This may be a somewhat subtle point. When someone claims (as I do not) > > > >> that we are zombies they are claiming that our subjective experience is > > > >> not real. I am not denying that our subjective experience is real. > > > > > > That is ironic, because all the scientific evidence indicates that it is > > > > in fact not real. > > > > > On the contrary, science can have nothing whatsoever to say on the > > > existence or non-existence of subjective experience, since science > > > rests logically on subjective experience, on awareness. Science is > > > built up from observation and logic, and observation *is* subjective > > > experience, awareness. > > > > Ah. Now I understand why you've been consistently ignoring the point I > > keep making about objective reality being fundamentally quantum in > > nature. It's because you really don't understand this point. > > Observation is not subjective experience, it is entanglement. See: > > > > http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf > > > > Or David Deutsch's book "The Fabric of Reality" for a more complete > > treatment. > > > > > What we call objective data are nothing more > > > than subjective experiences that correlate well between individuals - > > > i.e., subjective observations that can be replicated are objective > > > data. So far from being unreal, subjective awareness is a fundamental > > > ontological category of existence. No matter how complex the apparatus > > > of a scientific experiment, there is no observation until a person or > > > persons become aware of the output or result of that apparatus.[1] > > ... > > > [1] yes, this also includes thought-experiment robots capable of > > > recapitulating all of science from scratch. Their results are not > > > results until you or I or some other person is aware of these results. > > > > No, you are simply flat-out wrong about this, > > I'm glad to hear it, it always sounded like rubbish. So is the > Copenhagen interpretation dead or did it just never say what some > people claimed it did? I could never understand how human conciousness > could have some sort of magic effect on the world around us. And > wonder of wonders all those dodgy books linking QM with eastern > mysticism were (as i suspected all along), bollocks. Copenhagen was never really alive. See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/ section 5. BTW, despite the fact that an all-or-nothing "collapse" of the wave function is untenable, the links between QM and eastern religions are not all bollocks. They are mostly bollocks, but not all. The fact of the matter is that the theory that there exists a single classical universe is in fact scientifically untenable. There are either an infinite number (the current mainstream view, a.k.a. the "many-world" interpretation) or zero (the quantum-information-theoretical view, which I personally subscribe to). > > at least from the point of > > view of contemporary science. It's ironic that you, who stand so > > strongly on scientific principle, should be advancing a point of view > > that has been so thoroughly discredited by science. The idea that > > humans have some sort of privileged status in the scheme of things, even > > in the quantum mechanical scheme of things, has been discredited every > > bit as thoroughly as creationism. > > how? I mean I'm glad to hear it but it always seemed a bit like "if a > tree falls in a forsts and no one hears it, does it actually fall?". > "does the wave form collapse if no one is observing it?". How do you > *prove* this is nonsense? Or is that this position simply has no > observable consequences. Are we in EPR and Bell territory now? It's actually very easy to prove that it's nonsense. See: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf for a QIT take on it, or Deuetsch's book for a many-worlds take. > Wasn't Penrose "the emporer's new mind" arguing relativly recently > that there *was* something special about human conciousness? Yes, but he was almost certainly wrong. > > > This is why your argument about the spatiotemporal asymmetry of > > > subjective experience being at odds with other physical laws is > > > unnecessary - we never get science started without taking awareness as > > > axiomatic; we have QM because it is built on the logical foundation of > > > subjective experience. Since you don't need to/can't prove an axiom of > > > a logical system, you don't need to/can't prove awareness exists. Nor, > > > having assumed it does exist to get things rolling, can you disprove > > > it. At most you can show that the whole system is logically > > > inconsistent, but this would bring all of science down, not subjective > > > awareness. > > > > No, no, and no. All you need to do science is classically correlated > > measurements, which includes the states of computing machines and > > reports of subjective experience by humans. And classically correlated > > measurements arise as a nearly exact approximation to quantum theory > > when dealing with large systems of mutually entangled particles. There > > is no need to get metaphysical to do science, just as there is no need > > to get metaphysical to advance you political agenda. > > But you at least have to accept there's a universe out there to > observe. A pretty reasonable assumption in my view and descriptions of > the physical universe then follow on from that. Yeah, you'd think that would be a reasonable assumption. But it turns out to be demonstrably untrue. There is in fact not *a* (classical) universe out there. There are either infinitely many, or zero. Oh, the speed of light is constant in all reference frames too. :-) rg
From: RG on 24 May 2010 11:56 In article <hte4c1$b5m$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-24 03:02:49 -0400, RG said: > > > Whoa. You are confusing two different issues. > > > > 1. Whether or not subjective experience is necessary to do science. It > > isn't. > > This is a metaphysical statement. No, it's not. Science is the process of formulating explanatory models of phenomena. That's a computational process, and it can be accounted for by purely physical means. Read Deutsch's book. > You believe we can define science in > such a way that it can be conducted by AIs or zombies. Such a > definition (apart from being factually unsubstantiated) is a reductio > ad absurdum because it is forced to conclude that subjective experience > either: > > a: doesn't really exist at all (e.g., Dennett) > b: is non-physical (e.g., Chalmers, and a conclusion you consider possible). Dennett does not say that subjective experience doesn't exist, he just says that its true character is different from what we perceive it to be. (Interestingly, Dennett is correct, and once you become aware of this you can actually perceive (something closer to) the true nature of your own self-awareness through appropriate mental exercises, just as you can perceive your own visual blind spot. It's an interesting experience.) > But it is axiomatic of science that everything that is, is physical > (i.e., has physically measurable aspects), so this pure physicalist > metaphysics (i.e., that observation and hence science does not require > awareness) contradicts itself if it takes b, and contradicts my direct > experience (and everyone else's) if it takes a. > > I prefer not to exclude my own, subjective awareness from science I'm sorry, but you have no choice. Unless you have solved the age-old philosophical problem of how to distinguish a zombie from a person, your subjective awareness is accessible only to you and hence is not amenable to scientific inquiry. You can insist that you have subjective awareness all day long, but unless you can come up with a way for me to measure it (and PET scans correlating with your reports of subjective awareness do not count) I cannot rule out the possibility that you might be a zombie. And vice versa. > so I > see science (and existence) as resting on an information-awareness > polarity, where both are necessary for observation/measurement. You may see it that way, but science doesn't. (You do realize that "information-awareness polarity" makes you sound like a new-age kook, right?) > My view > has the additional empirical support that we have no evidence of > science being conducted by anything other than beings with subjective > experience. Any claim that zombies or AIs could conduct science are > purely hypothetical. First of all, that's simply not true. Computers are playing more and more of a role in science all the time. There is no empirical reason to believe that they could not one day conduct the entire process end-to-end. But even if it were true, even if we were having this discussion in 1900, it would be akin to saying that powered human flight is impossible because it has never been done. > I see two real possibilities as regards hypothetical zombies/AIs: > > 1. AIs are just elaborate machines, so their results are no different > than a reading on a gauge - i.e., not a scientific measurement until a > person reads it or otherwise becomes *aware* of it, and integrates it > with the rest of science. > > 2. Any AI sufficiently complex to do science would develop an emergent > subjective awareness in more or less the same way that biological > systems developed the subjective awareness that we have. or: 3. The AI would carry on the process of science, which is to say, the process of formulating explanatory and predictive models of experimental data, in a purely mechanical way without ever becoming self aware. Both 2 and 3 a real possibilities. > It may well be that subjective experience is the result of a kind of > metaphysical anthropic principle - that we must arrive at an ontology > that includes awareness since we only exist in a universe where such > awareness has, in fact, emerged from something else. Or awareness may > be an inherent ontological category of reality. I don't think this is > knowable by us. What matters is that the actual science we conduct in > the actual universe we inhabit must take awareness as axiomatic. Until you have read Deutsch's book you are arguing ad ignorantum. rg
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 24 May 2010 16:00
On 2010-05-24 11:56:59 -0400, RG said: > Science is the process of formulating explanatory models > of phenomena. That's a computational process, and it can be accounted > for by purely physical means. But what is the definition of phenomena? It is precisely that which correlates with subjective experience. While an AI scientist remains purely hypothetical, subjective experience is not merely real, it is the very definition of what it means for something to be a real phenomenon - to correlate systematically with subjective experience. I think we're going around in circles at this point. I'll look at Deutsch, though I'm deeply suspicious of many worlds on Occam's Razor grounds, though you say that particular formulation is not necessary, so... warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro |