Philosophy Discussion Forums

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 10:16 pm

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 6:02 pm Are there any emergent properties that can't be fully accounted for in full by the components? It looks to me as if emergent properties are just compounds of component parts and properties.

Note the emergent of human consciousness and self-awareness that is aware of one's own self-awareness.

That's the only good example I can think of, but even there it should be possible for science to pin this down some day. The data system of the brain produces assertions about the experience of feelings, and that data needs to be put together by some process which has access to evidence of the experience of feelings. If we follow this process and see what evidence the claims about feelings is bases on, we will either find that the claims are a fiction or that they are based on something in the brain that actually does experience feelings. If that thing is a composite of multiple parts, we can expect some of the parts to experience the feelings or components of feelings too, and there will have to be a rational model for that which science should in principle be able to find too, at which point we will have identified the "I" in the machine - the sufferer of suffering; also known as the soul. The alternative to that is that we have suffering in a composite thing in which none of the components feel anything at all, in which case the sufferer is the arrangement of parts rather than the parts themselves. I don't see much sense in the idea that a pattern can be tortured and experience pain - this looks like a piece of magic being used to complete the functionality of a model. I think science needs to look for a physical sufferer rather than some magical thing that emerges literally out of nothing.

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 6:02 pm

Greta wrote: ↑May 11th, 2018, 7:07 pm David, I would agree with you, if not for emergent properties.

Are there any emergent properties that can't be fully accounted for in full by the components? It looks to me as if emergent properties are just compounds of component parts and properties.

Yes and no. If you reduce a planet, star or life form to its component molecules, all the same material will be present but the emergent property. The accounting for emergent properties may happen via IIT, but the job has not yet been done.

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 10:12 pm

Namelesss wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 2:18 am It IS a philosophical view!
All sciences inform philosophy!

Science is merely a tool which provides specifically scientific knowledge for philosophy's consumption.
Scientific knowledge are very useful but at best merely 'polished' conjectures - Popper. Whatever QM produces, they are highly conditional 'polished' conjectures.
Note meta-Science is philosophy.
Philosophy as 'meta-' encompasses Science and all other types of knowledge.
This is why we have 'the Philosophy of Science' and never the other way round.

I just said that, sort of... *__-
I think that many scientists would argue that their work is produced "merely ... for philosophy's consumption".
All sciences are feeder branches on the tree of philosophy.
All Reality is 'philosophy's consumption'!

"highly conditional 'polished' conjectures" = 'theories', no?

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 13th, 2018, 4:32 pm

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 12th, 2018, 10:16 pm Note the emergent of human consciousness and self-awareness that is aware of one's own self-awareness.

That's the only good example I can think of, but even there it should be possible for science to pin this down some day.
..

Science??

Scientific knowledge and theories are at best polished conjectures - Popper.

Scientific knowledge cannot be absolutely absolute, i.e. scientific knowledge is grounded on human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

Science may be able to explain human consciousness to some higher degree than the present, but there is no way Science [limited and grounded on the ungrounded] can ultimate ground human consciousness to its absolute point.

Greta wrote: ↑May 13th, 2018, 5:39 pm If you reduce a planet, star or life form to its component molecules, all the same material will be present but the emergent property. The accounting for emergent properties may happen via IIT, but the job has not yet been done.

If an emergent property makes sense when you look for its cause in the components, it isn't something extra that's appearing out of nothing - the whole remains exactly the sum of its parts. Any emergent property that breaks that rule is necessarily an illustration of magic in action, and I'm not aware of science having found any examples of such a thing.

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 13th, 2018, 8:57 pm Scientific knowledge cannot be absolutely absolute, i.e. scientific knowledge is grounded on human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

How will that apply when we have AGI systems doing science for us with no consciousness in them? Are they somehow going to be unable to test nature in the way that people do?

Science may be able to explain human consciousness to some higher degree than the present, but there is no way Science [limited and grounded on the ungrounded] can ultimate ground human consciousness to its absolute point.

Any aspect of consciousness which we can speak about should be possible to trace through science. We have a data system in the brain producing information about it, and the manner in which the data is generated will eventually lead us to the evidence that informs the system that generates the data. There is no bar to science exploring that.

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 14th, 2018, 1:05 pm

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 13th, 2018, 8:57 pm Scientific knowledge cannot be absolutely absolute, i.e. scientific knowledge is grounded on human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

How will that apply when we have AGI systems doing science for us with no consciousness in them? Are they somehow going to be unable to test nature in the way that people do?

The fact is AGI will always be grounded on natural intelligence and human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

Science may be able to explain human consciousness to some higher degree than the present, but there is no way Science [limited and grounded on the ungrounded] can ultimate ground human consciousness to its absolute point.

Any aspect of consciousness which we can speak about should be possible to trace through science. We have a data system in the brain producing information about it, and the manner in which the data is generated will eventually lead us to the evidence that informs the system that generates the data. There is no bar to science exploring that.

Philosophically, there is always a limit to Science regardless of how scientific knowledge is produced.
Note I wrote this earlier;

• "Science is merely a tool which provides specifically scientific knowledge for philosophy's consumption.
  Scientific knowledge are very useful but at best merely 'polished' conjectures - Popper. Whatever QM produces, they are highly conditional 'polished' conjectures.
  Note meta-Science is philosophy.
  Philosophy as 'meta-' encompasses Science and all other types of knowledge.
  This is why we have 'the Philosophy of Science' and never the other way round."

There will always be a GAP between scientific knowledge and 'reality'.

The only way to close the above GAP further, not fully, is to rely on Philosophy-proper which is also a useful tool to reconcile the extremities of paradoxes.

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 14th, 2018, 10:13 pm The fact is AGI will always be grounded on natural intelligence and human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

Why do you call that a fact? I'm building an AGI system which will not have any consciousness whatsoever. (It will be grounded on natural intelligence though in that it's applying rules of reasoning identified by humans.

Philosophically, there is always a limit to Science regardless of how scientific knowledge is produced.

Doubtless there are limits to it, but when it comes to tracing cause-and-effect interactions in the brain and energy transfers, there's nothing there in principle that can't be traced back the whole way through the process from a signal coming down a nerve caused by damage through the brain where the pain is felt and on to the production of the data which says "ouch".

There will always be a GAP between scientific knowledge and 'reality'.

Indeed there will, and it's possible to deny every single discovery of science and write it off as virtual tricks which hide reality from us and make sure we can never access it. However, if we work on the basis that things are the way they appear to be (and accept that the might be wrong), we can continue to build our scientific model of (apparent) reality and extend it into the exploration of consciousness. There is no indication of any barrier to us doing so.

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 15th, 2018, 8:08 pm

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 14th, 2018, 10:13 pm The fact is AGI will always be grounded on natural intelligence and human consciousness which itself is emergent and ungrounded.

Why do you call that a fact? I'm building an AGI system which will not have any consciousness whatsoever. (It will be grounded on natural intelligence though in that it's applying rules of reasoning identified by humans.

It is not an empirical fact but rather a philosophical 'fact' via reason.

Philosophically, there is always a limit to Science regardless of how scientific knowledge is produced.

Doubtless there are limits to it, but when it comes to tracing cause-and-effect interactions in the brain and energy transfers, there's nothing there in principle that can't be traced back the whole way through the process from a signal coming down a nerve caused by damage through the brain where the pain is felt and on to the production of the data which says "ouch".

There will always be a GAP between scientific knowledge and 'reality'.

Indeed there will, and it's possible to deny every single discovery of science and write it off as virtual tricks which hide reality from us and make sure we can never access it. However, if we work on the basis that things are the way they appear to be (and accept that the might be wrong), we can continue to build our scientific model of (apparent) reality and extend it into the exploration of consciousness. There is no indication of any barrier to us doing so.

I am not implying we write off scientific knowledge.
Point is we will use scientific knowledge positively within moral grounds optimally.

Thus whatever knowledge we have of human consciousness and use it positively we need to be aware of the limitations of scientific knowledge at all times to avoid tending toward Scientism.

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 16th, 2018, 12:40 amIt is not an empirical fact but rather a philosophical 'fact' via reason.

We will certainly be able to show that AGI can work without consciousness as soon as we have AGI running on conventional hardware, because every step of every computation can be run on a Chinese Room processor where we can see clearly that there is no place for feelings to have any causal impact on the data generated.

I am not implying we write off scientific knowledge.
Point is we will use scientific knowledge positively within moral grounds optimally.

Thus whatever knowledge we have of human consciousness and use it positively we need to be aware of the limitations of scientific knowledge at all times to avoid tending toward Scientism.

Philosophism has the same limits. All philosophy is is applied reasoning, and science is applied reasoning too. All we're doing is testing reality with rules, and the rules come from reality because they're rejected if they don't comply with it. We're simply trying to build a model of reality that doesn't contain or generate contradictions.

David Cooper wrote: ↑May 16th, 2018, 4:30 pm

Spectrum wrote: ↑May 16th, 2018, 12:40 amIt is not an empirical fact but rather a philosophical 'fact' via reason.

We will certainly be able to show that AGI can work without consciousness as soon as we have AGI running on conventional hardware, because every step of every computation can be run on a Chinese Room processor where we can see clearly that there is no place for feelings to have any causal impact on the data generated.

I agree and is very optimistic there will be super advances with AGI and AGI-consciousness in the future but its ultimate is merely 'AGI-consciousness' conditionally to its specific Framework and System and cannot be conflated with natural human consciousness.

Along with the super advances there is a need to be very mindful of its limitation.

I am not implying we write off scientific knowledge.
Point is we will use scientific knowledge positively within moral grounds optimally.

Thus whatever knowledge we have of human consciousness and use it positively we need to be aware of the limitations of scientific knowledge at all times to avoid tending toward Scientism.

Philosophism has the same limits. All philosophy is is applied reasoning, and science is applied reasoning too. All we're doing is testing reality with rules, and the rules come from reality because they're rejected if they don't comply with it. We're simply trying to build a model of reality that doesn't contain or generate contradictions.

I agree 'philosophism' and any other ideologies taken to the extreme is dangerous. The hijacking and extremism of 'philosophy' had already happened and is on going with the current bastardized 'incestuous' academic philosophy.

However I believe that human impulse originally intuited and labelled as positive-philosophy-proper will always prevail and be practiced regardless of how people attempt to box it into some labels.

Positive philosophy proper will have characteristics that is net-positive to humanity and one of such among others is the following;

Bertrand Russell wrote:Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation;

There are other characteristics of philosophy-proper which are by nature fool proof.

Many of those paradoxes are based on semantics or approach, which is the reason they fail to remain paradoxical.

When I hear the word "paradox", the scenario go back in time and prevent your parents' meeting, so you are never born; but how can you prevent their meeting if you are not born? comes to my mind. It has surreal elements in it and maybe can be explained with the impossibility of time travel, but otherwise it remains very paradoxical.

But something else I must write: as much as I saw, the situations in wikipedia are all plausible to happen and lack any surreal elements.