Timeline for What is the ontological basis for sentience arising from complexity?
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:42 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Dec 10, 2016 at 3:18 | comment | added | user19423 | @Tanath Yeah, I completely agree with your overall "My point was that...". I was only remarking on your "decompiling" remark. Oh, wait, I see your in-context remark was "doesn't help understanding any more than decompiling". Oops, my bad, don't see how I missed that context earlier. | |
| Dec 9, 2016 at 22:28 | review | Close votes | |||
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| Dec 9, 2016 at 11:51 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 9, 2016 at 6:53 | comment | added | Tanath | What does your comment have to do with what I said? My point was that due to its complexity and our lack of tools the brain is currently too difficult to understand at that level. I'm not aware of anything that implies that sentience is magical or otherwise special in some way that makes it require something other than what we think the brain does and computers could do. | |
| Dec 9, 2016 at 4:21 | comment | added | user19423 | @Tanath Re "decompiling", that's not the relevant issue, since it just translates one language (machine code) into another (any higher-level language you have in mind). The real issue is semantics -- what does the program do, e.g., as a function integers-->integers. And the halting problem shows that even the much simpler question, does or doesn't the program halt, is unanswerable (at least by any other program). So the harder question, what does the program do as a function, is even less answerable. And consciousness would be what our brain does, regardless of language it's written in | |
| Dec 7, 2016 at 21:17 | comment | added | Tanath | Only because you think sentience is somehow special. | |
| Dec 7, 2016 at 21:13 | comment | added | user3017 | @Tanath. In my opinion it doesn't fit at all. | |
| Dec 7, 2016 at 21:11 | comment | added | Tanath | It's what fits with what we know and there's no evidence for it being any other way that I'm aware of. I'm not sure how to provide an answer for your question though. | |
| Dec 7, 2016 at 21:09 | comment | added | user3017 | @Tanath. Post an answer if that's what you believe, but you're right in that what you're saying doesn't explain anything. Parts + complexity = sentience? It sounds like you're just jumping to conclusions. | |
| Dec 7, 2016 at 21:01 | comment | added | Tanath | You seem to be making this needlessly difficult. Sentience doesn't just arise from complexity. It's necessary but not sufficient. Like a computer program requires a degree of complexity before being able to exhibit certain features, so does the brain. There's a lot going on to produce sentience. Ontologically it's reducible to constituent parts but that doesn't necessarily help understanding it any more than decompiling a program and we don't have the tools to do all the reverse engineering we can do with computers yet. | |
| Dec 6, 2016 at 2:44 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/805966122117898240 | ||
| Dec 5, 2016 at 10:13 | comment | added | user19423 | There's a distinction between "sense" and "sensation". A toy robot can be built with a photocell, such that when you shine a flashlight at it, it walks towards the light. So it surely "senses" the light, but I think we can agree it has no qualia-like "sensation" of what it's sensing. And that "robot-sense" isn't (pretty much can't be) conceptual. But the "qualia-like sensation", for which consciousness is prerequisite, is conceptual. Your body, sans consciousness, has "sense" mechanisms, from which your consciousness conceptualizes "sensations". (Or at least, that's how I'd interpret it.) | |
| Dec 5, 2016 at 9:41 | comment | added | user3017 | @JohnForkosh. I edited the question in response to your comment. | |
| Dec 5, 2016 at 9:40 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 5, 2016 at 3:44 | comment | added | user19423 | Yeah, sensations must be conceptual -- if you accept/advocate physicalism/emergence. Otherwise, they're...whatever it is you accept/advocate. But I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I don't even completely accept (and certainly don't advocate) physicalism myself. But I do think it's the most well-grounded. Emergence is pretty well-established for all complex phenomena except consciousness, so Occam's razor suggests it's your best first bet for consciousness, too, unless you come up with good reason otherwise. Contrariwise, e.g., panpsychism is completely ab initio, without evidence | |
| Dec 5, 2016 at 2:54 | comment | added | user3017 | @JohnForkosh. I say "merely" because if it's true, sensation are merely conceptual. If you're happy with that theory, post an answer. You didn't convince me, but maybe you'll convince someone else. | |
| Dec 5, 2016 at 2:29 | comment | added | user19423 | "merely" conceptual -- all emergent phenomena are ontologically conceptual/abstract, but I wouldn't (necessarily) characterize that as "merely", though it's sometimes merely, to wit the circle example I gave. Maybe somewhat less trivial would be -- all thermodynamic variables (P,G,T,A,V,U,S,H -- google, e.g., "thermodynamic square") are emergent/conceptual. A single atom/molecule doesn't possess temperature or pressure, etc, itself. It posseses momentum, from which all that other stuff is emergent when a large number of molecules is considered. | |
| Dec 4, 2016 at 11:00 | comment | added | user3017 | @JohnForkosh. The ontology of the concept of circularity is conceptual or abstract, so emergence in your example is also conceptual or abstract. My question is what is the ontological basis for sentience if it is said to emerge from complexity. Is it merely conceptual or can you claim that there is something more to it? | |
| Dec 4, 2016 at 10:51 | comment | added | user19423 | There's a lot of stuff along these lines, pro and con, discussed at closertotruth.com/topics/consciousness/consciousness (not sure whether or not the discussions are as redundant as the url:) | |
| Dec 4, 2016 at 10:45 | comment | added | user19423 | I think you're wrong about emergence constrained by ontology. Consider the following trivial example (too trivial for brain-->mind, but illustrating the underlying point). An irregularly-shaped rock doesn't posses the property of a circle. But you can take a bunch of such rocks and arrange them in a circle. So the circle property "emerges" from the complex arrangement (trivially complex) of rocks, though none of them ontologically possess it. | |
| Dec 4, 2016 at 10:36 | comment | added | user3017 | @Dave. I use the term in the same sense throughout the post. My comment to PhilipKlöcking provides a definition and explanation. My comment to jobermark explains that any specific definition is secondary to the ontological implications that a given definition will have. What exactly is it that's not clear? | |
| Dec 4, 2016 at 4:25 | comment | added | Dave | I'm unclear as to what the "real" properties referenced in the bullet numbered 2 are. What is the definition? or means of demarcation between real and abstract? examples? | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 20:55 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 20:42 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 20:32 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 20:19 | comment | added | user3017 | @PhilipKlöcking. I edited the question in response to your comment. | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 20:16 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 18:36 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | So your theory basically asks wether sentience could be understood as a primary property in the understanding of Locke as opposed to being a (mind/description/abstraction) dependent property, i.e. secondary? | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 18:35 | answer | added | Alexander S King | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 17:08 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 16:58 | comment | added | user3017 | @jobermark. I edited the question in response to your comment. | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 16:57 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 16:18 | comment | added | user9166 | @PédeLeão By this criterion for 'realness' are temperature and acidity 'real properties', or a 'mere abstract description' of the corresponding molecular configurations. (They are the primary examples of emergent properties. And we measured them both before we realized of what they are or are not really properties. So it is hard to claim they are abstracted away from what we eventually discovered to explain them.) | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 15:33 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 14:16 | comment | added | user3017 | @PhilipKlöcking. I'm not concerned about how such properties are called, but usually when people speak of emergent properties, they are simply descriptions of relations and have no real ontology. You could, for example, speak of a beautiful face as a property, but that's merely a description of how the whole is perceived. | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 14:12 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 14:12 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | So you reject the possibility of it being an emergent property of complex systems? I know that this is a slightly frustrating one, as is basically says 'We cannot explain it, but it happens', but afaik it is the most common. | |
| Dec 3, 2016 at 14:11 | history | edited | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 3, 2016 at 13:53 | history | asked | user3017 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |