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Epiphileon |
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Advanced Member |
| School Bus Driver |
| Nature, function, utilization, and potential development of consciousness |
| Male |
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Sunday, March 22, 2009 |
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Saturday, November 17, 2018 2:49:57 PM |
4,074
[0.45% of all post / 1.15 posts per day] |
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I think it is pretty funny how the title of this post is truncated on the front page,
Reality Exists and Quantum Physics Does Not
There's a mind bender for you.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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Y111 wrote:Isn't reality defined as that which exists?
Yes, broadly speaking it is, although it seems to me, we usually are not referring to all possible universes when we use the word.
Y111 wrote:The observer is not a part of reality? Unreal?
Yes, observers exist and are part of this reality; however, the existence of reality is not dependent on them.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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This almost went in the science section; however, I believe it is actually a philosophical point. Some of my friends who know me as a monist and naturalist will send me things they come across that they think challenge some of the basic tenets of my position, for example this article, "Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It".
I think this is misleading and actually completely false. Reality exists independent of the observer: however, observations at the quantum level may indicate that it is affected by the observer, or may just indicate that we have no idea how to explain what we are seeing.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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Yep,
Robot drive through.
Actually though robots currently can only do what they are programmed to do, so any prank played by a robot would really be originated by its programmer.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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thar wrote:
Now, people recognise that the language spoken by native speakers is inherently 'correct'. English speakers say the singular they, and 'you and me' and they end sentences with prepositions. 'Correcting' these so-called 'mistakes' does not produce good, flowing and natural language. It is hypercorrection - over-correction.
LOL okay this makes sense. The fact that it does though points out one of the reasons that pure logic systems will never be able to emulate human reasoning.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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hypercorrection (ˌhaɪpəkəˈrɛkʃən)
n
(Linguistics) a mistaken correction to text or speech made through a desire to avoid nonstandard pronunciation or grammar: 'between you and I' is a hypercorrection of 'between you and me'.
In my opinion, this is a rather bizarre word, its self an example of its own definition. It also seems like a literal oxymoron.
'between you and I', is just wrong, besides how can something be more than correct?
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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I tend to avoid the political forum. I have very strong views about the current situation in the United States; however, the polarization and accompanying emotional vehemence behind the opposing sides no longer seems to leave a lot of room for objective examination of the issues. I recently saw a video on Facebook though that I thought unequivocally points out the danger of the current administration's dangerous tactics.
The man interviewed in this video is a Republican and although I tend to disagree with most of the current Republican platform and most of what I see as their underlying philosophy, I was impressed by this man's clear and rational evaluation of the tactics being employed currently by this administration.
Interview with John Kasich
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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High Hope, Sorry I missed this when you posted it and I am very glad I happened to notice it today.
So far my favorite statement he has made is, "An analyst should at least know something about the brain."
That is exactly how I went from an experimental psychology to a behavioral neuroscience, major.
I enjoyed this video very much and hope to get back to some of the points he raised.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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Hope wrote:Since their focus is on Primary Consciousness, they equate mental images with neurobiologically unique subjective feelings associated with certain brain states. Therefore there must be a nervous and brain system that is complex enough to have a reward system, as in operant conditioning.
High Hope, this is an interesting notion, I have never thought specifically about the role of conditioning in the development of consciousness; however, offhand I do not see the argument for it in the development of primary consciousness. I do see it easily being a necessary condition for the development of secondary consciousness though, that is the I of mind.
Quote:They say it has to be in an animal. But what if a machine were to be so efficient as to be like a human brain - would that state then be considered consciousness?
Ah, the 64 million dollar question! And the answer, in my opinion, is definitely yes. Consciousness is a physical phenomenon if you replicate all the necessary conditions for its existence, then it will exist.
Quote:The big question would be - does the machine feel anything? Are feelings the only basis of consciousness?
I'm going to have to give this more consideration, but I think their use of "feeling" was unfortunate. "What it feels like to be" has a very specific connotation, on the other hand, "feelings" is ambiguous and is to easily confused with emotional states. I would say that anything that has qualia is conscious.
Quote:As for the epistemic aspect - I for one am absolutely grateful that my brain does not have a feedback system telling me how it is working, and secondly that it is not connected to the brain of any other living creature!
I am in emphatic agreement with the first point. I would think it would be an evolutionary impossibility in fact, as there would be no possibility of interacting with the environment.
On your second point, I'm not so sure, mind to mind communication would be incredible, although I would want to have control over what was communicated. This could be a cultural bias though, as in human culture if we had evolved with a form of telepathy that allowed for no secrets, complete transparency that is, the resultant society would certainly be different. I think I have seen this theme a few times in speculative fiction but I do not recall the specific stories.
Question authority. How do you know, that you know, what you know?
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