Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: What makes up consciousness?
References: <departedD3vKy5.M3B@netcom.com> <792697161snz@chatham.demon.co.uk> <departedD3zp0E.Es9@netcom.com> <792836796snz@chatham.demon.co.uk> <departedD44618.48o@netcom.com>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 15:06:05 +0000
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In article <departedD44618.48o@netcom.com>
           departed@netcom.com "just passing through" writes:

 > Heh heh, so if you were able to drop a plumb line down from the apparent
 > center of the A/B/C system (ABC), you would hit nothing until the floor of
 > physical reality, and hence you would be tempted to say that this
 > um, consciousness is absolutely distinct from physical reality.  

Nah, nah: I never, I never. All I am suggesting is that the framework that you 
will need to capture what is going on at the high level in a system is distinct 
from the framework which you need to describe the properties of the support 
structure; and that the high level (outer/ abstract/ other end of system) 
level is occasionally more complex than the other pole. One can and does, 
however, link together levels with patches of generality: shrubberies to shrub 
to leaf to cell to organelle to gene to this particular protein molecule 
boppin' as it goes about its daily business. One gets collisions, however, 
when the "protein-sufficient" model runs into the "hungry elk" model to the 
detriment of the former and microscopic satisfaction of the latter. One has to 
pop up to the shrubbery model - elks eat shrubs - in order to make sense of 
what's going on. 

None of that matters very much except to knowledge representation folk (and 
elks) except for one little thing. That thing is that models interact in ways 
which go beyond the conveniences of explanation. Data are bits of noise which 
make a difference to systems, doing so in a way which it is easy to note but 
hard to characterise. Data are further transformed into information by the 
presence of an interpretive structure on and in which they act. In biological 
systems, the two issues are often conflated by the presence of receptors, into 
which data bearing molecules plug themselves, thus beginning a voting process 
which tips a cell or organism into on of a number of modes of response. In 
doing so, they modify their environment: homeostasis or something more complex 
results. 

Transforming A with the use of C, B with results drawn from A and C from the 
outcome of B creates a system which can have a number of oscillatory, latched 
and phase-linked states. |One can only understand this repertoire if one 
understands the ABC system; but one can only understand the ABC system by 
looking to see what it does and systematising this. One cannot - usually - 
predict these properties using only the behaviour of the A, B and C 
contributory chains *unless* one has already seen something of the sort before 
and can generalise; in which case on is using a transcendant model.

 > A couple of niggles: This isn't entirely levitating, it's just resting
 > on three pillars.  And, why couldn't AB levitate, or why couldn't A
 > self-levitate?  Are you saying that A (just feeding into itself) couldn't
 > 'levitate' because it isn't engaging in a different kind of information
 > flow altogether, the information flow still belongs to the hierarchy in
 > some sense?

I hope is not answered, at least as happy as an elk with a leaf to play with.

 > Thought question: ABC, to be considered really independent and displaying
 > an emergent property all of its own, should have created its own information
 > space.  How is this going to happen?  ----crunch ---
 > Basically, what's ABC going to look like?

This usegroup does not deign to deal in practical questions. I refuse to
answer on the grounds that I might further incriminate myself.
 
 > And of course choco-space could become strung along some axis as part of 
 > food-space ... "mmm, dessert? chocolate? <journey across a compressed
 > fuzzy choco-space> no, I think I'll have the cake."

The good thing about this Usegroup is that people can talk quite unblushingly
about a journey across compressed fuzzy choco-space, which in Real Life 
would earn /concerned glances/ when brought into the open. But Yes, I agree:
but think what one needs in order to be able to offer a more than 
phenomenological description of what is going on!

 > I just don't think that cross-linking hierarchies is much more
 > mysterious than cross-linking lines to form a shape.

Shapes only do things in systems which are predisposed to take note of
them: pattern recognisers of one sort or another. Cross-linked thingamabobs 
do stuff without there being a specialist set of machinery the task of which 
is to note their presence and react. I send a data packet to your computer and 
activate the mail bomb which I sent to you last week: splat. Easy to understand 
what has happened. A pheromone makes a male wasp mate with an orchid. The 
chemical explodes a bomb in the wasp's head (I imagine) such that it emits 
stereotyped behaviour. But *how all of this comes to be* can be understood only 
in terms of the orchid's needs and evolutionary path and - considered 
seperately -that of the wasp. The wasp-orchid co-evolutionary system generates
fantastic orchids (and pissed wasps), the tails on peacocks and the horns of 
the great elk, which went extinct because its antlers were too large to lug 
around. If ephermeral grammars can make you extinct, they are worth a thought 
or two.

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
