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Giovanni, it looks as if you think that Brent wrote this. He didn't,
I did.<br>
<br>
But fair enough, if I'm not making my point very well, I'll expand
on it later. Got to go now, Oil be Bach.<br>
<br>
Ben<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 29/04/2023 10:19, Giovanni
Santostasi wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr"><b>A brick doesn't produce a housing estate, a
xylem cell doesn't produce a<br>
tree, am I getting my point across yet?<br>
</b>No, you don't really. <br>
It seems I have to explain things on both directions yours and
mine. Can you write full sentences that go through the details
of what you are trying to convey without using "poetic"
language? Even your inverter examples, your pictures of the
strawberries are not precise, they don't go to the core of
mechanisms. I'm not sure how to explain this to you. <br>
<br>
Let me try with the sentences above.<br>
I need first of all "translate" or guess what you mean with
produce. Do you mean a bunch of bricks in the field do not
spontaneously come together and form a house (also why use
housing estate when a house would be enough, simplify to make
things easier). For sure the bricks make up the house as
components, do we agree on that?<br>
If you are saying the bricks do not come together to form a
house I agree but we know how to put together bricks to form a
house and one could explain the process step by step. That would
be a scientific explanation of how to "produce" a house. As I
explained many times it is not just the component but the
process, the interactions, the mechanisms. This is why we insist
on function. The process of building the house is the
explanation. The materials are not important, I could use other
materials besides bricks. <br>
When we say the firing of the neurons are where consciousness is
we mean of course that this firing transfers information from
neuron to neuron, the neuron process, add, subtract, and
interprets the information. These processes together are the
"production" of the house. Do we know the details of this
"production"? No, but we know that it is what matters. I never
saw a house come together but I know the real house was built by
a process and its components are not what matters. To me your
position seems the opposite of this, you emphasize the
components, not the processes, it is the functionalists that
do. <br>
<br>
In addition, consciousness is actually more similar to the tree
process than the house process. In fact, the house needs an
external agent to come together but the tree doesn't. It
achieves the goal by cell multiplication and following the
blueprint of the DNA. The reason why I don't think consciousness
(and even more qualia) are not this big deal is that we already
know of a very self-referential, emergent process and we call it
LIFE. <br>
LIFE and consciousness are probably very similar in terms of
being more than the sum of the parts, emergent,
self-referential, apparently mysterious, and mostly made of code
and transfer of information. Yes, the particular type of life we
have on earth depends on specific materials and even elements
like carbon, water, and amino-acids but while it is important to
understand the role of these components to understand
terrestrial life, it is not what the essence of life is. It is
what life does that is important and it is all about information
encoding, processing, and transferring. The materials can be
substituted by others and in fact, we are already successful in
making artificial life that doesn't require these materials and
we can also simulate life processes pretty closely and
completely digitally. <br>
<br>
So in all your example, the function, the interaction between
the parts, the connection, the information is the essential
ingredient. It is us that is insisting on this but not it seems
from your last email is you that says it is what is important. <br>
If not go ahead and explain. <br>
I would like to see an explanation regarding these mundane
examples because I think we can understand better than talking
about something as complex as consciousness. <br>
Please go ahead and tell me the answers from your point of view
of the riddles about the house, tree, and Eiffel Tower. I told
you what is my answer. <br>
<br>
Giovanni <br>
<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at
1:37 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
On 29/04/2023 07:49, Brent Allsop wrote:<br>
> All spike trails or trains, or whatever, begin and end
with <br>
> neurotransmitters being dumped into a synapse, right?
Seems to me <br>
> that someone who predicts someone's [experience of red]
is more likely <br>
> to be spike trains, than [...] a chemical in a synapse,
like Giovani, <br>
> has no ability to understand or model [experiences]. How
the heck <br>
> could a train of spikes produce a redness experience?<br>
<br>
How the heck could a pixel on a screen produce a picture of a
field of <br>
flowers?<br>
How the heck could a digital number produce a word processor
document?<br>
How the heck could a single note on an oboe produce a
symphony?<br>
<br>
If i wanted to show that pixels can't give rise to pictures,
numbers <br>
can't give rise to novels, or single notes can't give rise to
<br>
symphonies, these are the kind of questions I'd ask, in order
to direct <br>
the reader's attention to the wrong thing.<br>
<br>
This also applies to molecules of neurotransmitter in a
synapse <br>
producing an experience.<br>
<br>
A brick doesn't produce a housing estate, a xylem cell doesn't
produce a <br>
tree, am I getting my point across yet?<br>
<br>
You have a warehouse full of steel girders and you want to
build the <br>
eiffel tower. What's the missing essential ingredient? (no,
it's not <br>
rivets).<br>
<br>
Ben<br>
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