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On 15/04/2023 13:00, Brent Allsop wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.396.1681560052.847.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div>Hi Ben,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"Association" will work, but you're missing the point, and
talking about the wrong thing.</div>
<div>If two people (or one person, at a different point in time)
are associating the word Smaug with a different dragon, we are
asking the question, what is the difference between the two
dragons that the two different people are "associating" the word
Smaug with?</div>
<div>I prefer transducing dictionary, over "grounding" or
"association" but everyone here was using grounding, so I
switched to that. Because you have one physical representation
(hole in a paper), that isn't rendess, and the transducing
system interprets it to a different physical representation
(+5volts), and so on. You achieve consciousness, when you
transduce that +5 volts, and render a pixel into someone's
conscious knowledge that has a subjective redness quality.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
I have absolutely no idea what most of this is saying. Anybody?
Anybody see anything but word salad here? Maybe it's just me, but I
can't make head nor tail of it.<br>
<br>
Brent, this is why I normally ignore your posts. To me, they are
literally just noise, with no discernible meaning whatever.<br>
<br>
This:<br>
<div>'"Association" will work, but you're missing the point, and
talking about the wrong thing.</div>
<div>If two people (or one person, at a different point in time) are
associating the word Smaug with a different dragon...'<br>
<br>
at least is a comprehensible sentence, but it's missing my point
(I might say that <i>you're</i> talking about the wrong thing,
but I'd have to know what you are talking about first).<br>
What different dragons? You do realise dragons don't exist?<br>
<br>
There are no dragons! Different people, or the same person at
different times (possibly), associate the word Smaug with a lot of
different things (strictly speaking, different patterns of neural
signals from various parts of the brain, representing memories of
pictures, text, films, conversations, etc., etc. as I said
before). That's all ('all'? isn't that enough?!). "The difference
between the two dragons" doesn't mean anything, there aren't two
dragons, there isn't even one. I'm sure there will be people who
haven't even heard of Smaug, so the word is meaningless to them
(because it has no associations, except maybe to this odd
foreigner making bizarre mouth-noises).<br>
<br>
The differences, in these hypothetical two peoples' minds,
regarding the word 'Smaug', will be many and varied. One person
may have read The Hobbit as a chlld with the idea that dragons
were like cows with wings. Another has been exposed to images of
chinese dragons with beards and elaborate hairdos. Someone else
may have read Anne McCaffrey's books about Pern, or seen "How to
Train your Dragon", And so on. And on, and on. There will be
thousands or even millions, of permutations. So, everyone's Smaug
will be different. Trying to define the exact differences between
one person's 'Smaug' and another's would be like trying to define
the exact differences between two galaxies, in terms of each star,
it's type, trajectory, mass, all the gas clouds etc. Well, maybe
less difficult, but you get the idea (I hope).<br>
<br>
The second part of your post is sheer gobbledigook, to me.<br>
<br>
And please don't tell me that I'm ignoring the essential abstract
inverted physical objective dragonness quality that exists in our
brains as molecules of D-Serine, without which <i>nobody really
knows what a dragon is!!</i><br>
Or I might do myself a mischief.<br>
<br>
Finally, I just want to reiterate, any single token, symbol,
concept, word, whatever you want to call it, in our minds is not
linked to, grounded in, associated with, takes meaning from, etc.,
one single thing, but many many things. We don't 'ground' the idea
of An Apple to a single object (not that we could in any case), we
link it to a very large number of sensory and memory patterns,
inputs, signals, or whatever you want to call the activity going
on in our heads.<br>
<br>
That's why there are no 'elemental qualities' in our minds, and is
why the term 'grounding' makes little sense. There are myriad
linked patterns instead. This is not just my own crackpot theory,
this is my summary of the accepted science, based on two or three
centuries worth of work (on the part of science, not me).<br>
<br>
<b>'Grounded' concept</b><br>
<img src="cid:part1.WykathU3.LnHsGMsV@zaiboc.net" alt=""
width="91" height="102"><br>
(The block is a 'real-world' object. What this actually means, I
have no good idea)<br>
<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>Linked concept (very simplified)</b><br>
<img src="cid:part2.lLfDV9xQ.ZuWZLehI@zaiboc.net" alt=""
width="297" height="182"><br>
(The blue ovals are myriad other concepts, memories, sensory
inputs, tokens, etc.)<br>
Of course, a real diagram of the links would be so dense as to be
unreadable. The other ovals would be linked to each other as well
as to the centra oval, and it would be 3D with links extending
out, as far as the sensory organs, which transduce specific
aspects of the 'real world' such as temperature changes, specific
frequencies of sound, etc.<br>
<br>
Ben<br>
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