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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 10:15:49 GMT
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References: <3br81l$e24@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D0CDwv.AB0@armory.com> <3bvnp1$cum@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D0EqvL.5Eo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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In article <D0EqvL.5Eo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <3bvnp1$cum@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>In other words, you are an epiphenomenalist.  You consider consciousness
>>to be a mere insignificant side effect.
>>
>>If I pour hot water onto ice cream, the ice cream melts.  I want to say
>>that the heat from the hot water melted the ice cream.  You want to insist
>>that the heat did nothing of the kind.  Instead, in your view, the heat
>>does no more than preside at meetings at which it is a non-voting
>>member, and the kinetic energy of the molecules does all the work.
>
>This description of epiphenomenalism is so good it's been worth
>wading though all the junk to get to it.
>
>-- jeff
-------------------
There's nothing wrong with saying that "the heat from the hot water melted
the ice cream". But that's also not related to the phenomenon of awareness
and claiming that there is a "non-physical" entity which "makes choices"
without the choices being made by the entire constellation of causal
circumstances, in other words, determinism. One can speak non-causally as
well, but it still doesn't create a "ghost" in the machine which does other
than what bodily processes will invariably choose in any identical
hypothetical circumstance! To assert that a "self" can have "free will" in
the sense that it could make different decisions in the same original
cicumstance, if it could be exactly replayed, is ludicrous and non-logical.
But that is what the "sense of self" sometimes tries to assert, namely,
that IT is "in control" (reminds me of Gen. Haig!!;) ). It may even appear
that the body does what this "self" insists that it told the body to do,
but it doesn't mean that it can help itself from doing it! The awareness IS
a real process in the body, but only one of many contributors and its job
is to imagine it is all of them united as much as it can, according to
western mores, and it is culturally programmable! This does NOT mean that
it actually is the processes which think out what to do however. That is
simply non-provable! It is, in fact, unlikely that it is more than a small
number of processes in the brain, seen physically, and is not aware of why
it does most things the way it does or whether its assertions are even
correct! It acts often as a mere apologist for the actions of the physical
entity! It is all too easy to get the figment of ego confused with the
process of awareness by westerners due to our blaming/shaming culture. We
wish to believe totally silly things like: "People commit crimes because
they just want to be bad!", when they cannot seem to ask themselves why
THEY do not choose the same path then, if it is so attractive as to explain
another's adherence to it!!! This leads to blame rather than understanding,
and an effort to simply revenge ourselves on others without analysis of
what might reduce that occurence in society, which would undoubtedly be of
more use to us and be a more survival oriented response. Revenge has its
place, but as a total strategy it is mostly pointless. People who do
terrible things are not thinking of the consequences when they do them!
And most or all of them have either been driven to crime by need and no
opportunity, or else they are non-understandable to the rest of us! We lump
the functional person in a disfunctional part of society along with a
totally fragmented and pathological personality which we couldn't fathom if
we tried all our lives! They are like autistics, mumbling to themselves in
a delusional and unknown tongue that simply resembles our language to the
casual observer. There IS an awareness. But for it to be truly AWARE, it
must be cognizant that it is merely one part of the whole personality, and
though it is the part which attempts communication among other of our
social and cooperative species, that it is still just guessing and mostly
just watching the situation go by, and other parts on its periphery really
choose and execute the action that it can only assert that it has put in a
request for! I intend two things in asserting this: One, that people stop
trying to blame each other because they assume that the self is the
"master of the soul". It is not. And two, that we entertain as much more
possible the effort to derive an entirely artificial awareness from an
artificial being which we will create. To assert that an evolutionary
accident is superior to talented goal-oriented engineering is ridiculous.
We may have some catching up to do at designing beings, but at the rate
we're going it won't be long at all till we surpass evolution and undertake
the entirety of even our own evolution by complete design, resulting both
in artificial beings entirely equal to us and later superior, and to a
chance for humans to become beings of nearly infinite longevity, and in
vastly improved bodies and brains, even though the same persons as when we
began, only changed as tomorrow changes yesterday.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

