From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Sep 20 2004 - 04:22:59 BST
Hello Scott,
We have in this thread, if I am not mistaken
fallen victim to the constraints of the medium
as it requires brevity and editing making long
term accumulation difficult.
If my selective filtering and reply to your points
are similar to yours on mine, then we probably have
dropped much if not most of the meaning from
this thread and it is becoming hollow, static,
and empty, like a colander full of water.
That was the point of Elvis has left. It was looking
as if I were repeating from earlier messages or
maybe earlier threads. Frustrating...
No doubt for you as well.
Oh how wonderful it would be to make these
discussions in the presence of the group so
the formulations could be made in minutes
and stimulate the "magical" energy of personal
exchange. Instead we find the volleys over the
period of weeks and days, as we drift in and out
of threads.
I find this thread now possessed of a dreamlike
surrealism where we are not even in the same
discussion, but pivoting discussions that seem
to drift into other concerns, seemingly unrelated.
We do not even seem to agree on terms or
the arena.
It is not bad, but the departure leaves me
on the other side of a wall that is somehow
clearly limited by the assumption that intellect
is the highest level. It's not. Intellect is merely
the highest level with which we have fluency.
Clarity in intellect is MARVELOUS, but it is
what blooms beyond intellect that interests me.
Thank you for the stimulating exchange...
Good luck.
thanks--mel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Roberts" <jse885@earthlink.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 3:12 PM
Subject: Re: MD A bit of reasoning
> Mel,
>
> > Scott said:
> > > My guess is that the individual animal does not model the physical,
> rather
> > > it is done for them by what we call instinct. So the bigger picture,
for
> > > example as conjectured by Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic forms, is
> > > intellect: the animal perceives a physical picture, and instinct,
using
> > its
> > > model, tells the animal what to do, but how the whole pattern plays
out
> > > will be fed back to instinct to improve its model, for the individual
> > > animal (hence it can learn) and for the species (hence it can evolve).
> >
> > mel:
> > Animals model beyond instinct - predators must learn skills
> > beyond what is innate, which is one reason why many species
> > of predators have such high mortality.
>
> [Scott:] Didn't I mention the individual animal learning? Like us. Once we
> have learned to ride a bicycle, we say our ability is instinctual -- we do
> it without conscious thinking, but that doesn't mean there isn't
> subconscious information processing going on.
mel: A "trained task" is not instinct.
>
> > Scott said:
> > > One has language when one has Peirce's thirdness: a semiotic event
> > involves
> > > three nodes: the manifested sign, that which the sign refers to, and
an
> > > interpretant, as he calls it: that which connects the sign to its
> > referent.
> > > You cannot make a thirdness out of seconds (two things colliding, for
> > > example). Therefore, since there is thirdness, there must have always
> been
> > > thirdness (unless one invokes God to create it out of nothing).
> >
> > mel:
> > Don't mistake the formulation of semiotics as a field
> > of study, specifically of symbols, which is just one type of
> > highly attributional meaning with the far more common and
> > older function of "mapping meaning".
>
> As Peirce used the term, one has a semiotic situation whenever one has
> meaning, also known as value, so he is not just talking about human
> language. It was later, in the 1930's, that the term came to be used as a
> field of study.
mel:
Peirce's term then is too limited, too static to be useful
break it and open the thinking up.
>
> >
> > For most of what passes in consciousness, semiotics
> > is irrelevant, but the perception of meaning and the
> > processing of data into information IS a measure of
> > the continuum of stored effect...
>
> See above: any situation involving meaning, which is any situation
> according to the MOQ, is a third, is semiotic. Otherwise, it would have no
> value.
mel:
You seem to be limiting information potential
which is detrimental to understanding as I
was refering to a point of view that is from an
information universe...
>
> > > > mel previous:
> > > > It's just that runaway intellection is a bit like
> > > > runaway cellphone use or conversational
> > > > chatter, it gets in the way of the movie.
> > > > Philosophy is one brand of cellphone.
> > >
> > Scott said:
> > > On the contrary, philosophy, like science and meditation, is
attempting
> to
> > > control intellect, so that it does not run away. As intellectuals, we
> are
> > > all beginners. The intellectual level is new, only two and a half
> millenia
> > > old. Occasionally we get glimpses of how it is supposed to be, and we
> call
> > > those glimpses genius, but for most of us, there is a lot of
> disciplining
> > > ahead.
> >
> > mel:
> > Not "on the contrary", you've simply pivoted into another
> > direction of discussion.
>
> You said that philosophy is "one brand of cellphone", and cellphone use
> gets in the way of the movie. I say that philosophy is the movie, or one
of
> them. Even if one disagrees with my view that Intellect is all-pervasive,
> in the MOQ, intellect is the fourth and currently highest level of SQ. So
> Quality evolution should be directed at improving and refining intellect,
> that it is the moral thing to do.
mel:
Ah...the point was to move beyond mind
and the modeling which improperly used
gets in the way... think full tea cup.
>
> > Scott said:
> > > No. No matter how complex a set of interconnections, one cannot, from
> that
> > > alone, get awareness. It also requires violating the rules of space
and
> > > time. Unless that happens, there is nothing that can be aware of
> anything
> > > larger than itself, or one blip from something else (in fact, one
cannot
> > > even get that, since the single thing (e.g., an electron) needs a way
to
> > > combine the state of not receiving the blip with the state of
receiving
> > the
> > > blip). So if the brain is considered to be all and only its neurons
and
> > > synapses, and if one limits oneself to their spatio-temporal activity,
> one
> > > cannot get associations, or mappings, or anything. You can get all
sorts
> > of
> > > patterns, but you cannot get awareness of those patterns. Now the
brain
> is
> > > biological, so there could well be some goings-on that allows the
> > violation
> > > of spacetime rules, but once admit that, then there is no reason to
> assume
> > > any emergence doctrine.
>
> > mel:
> > 1)You've let the definition of awareness slip through your
> > fingers from earlier. Elvis has left the building...
>
> Umm, what definition of awareness. I don't have one. And I don't get the
> Elvis bit.
mel:
reactivity to push, the storage of effect...
>
> > 2)The complex of neuronal connection does not cause
> > awareness, but does support an ever more complex capacity
>
> That's what my metronome analogy tried to say. So what does cause
> awareness, or are we in agreement that nothing causes it, that it is
> fundamental? If so, why all this other appeal to emergence?
mel:
That was why I earlier said we were largley in agreement
but you seemed not to see it...
>
> > 3) no rules of "space or time" are violated -- odd comment,
> > why did that pop up?
>
> Naive rules, as used in physics, that time is a continuous succession of
> point-instants. Awareness of a succession cannot occur if this were true.
mel:
Matter moves in space relative to every other bit of matter.
We call that comparison time as we perceive it. But our
perception of time is only that OUR PERCEPTION, artifactual
of out limitations, our structure. Consciousness is not so limited,
but our abstraction of meaning as awareness, brought into
our structure appears time related.
> > 4) Reductionism as above fails in the analysis of the complex.
>
> So say the nonreductive physicalists. I'm not sure if you are one or not,
> but you are certainly sounding like one. My view is why be a physicalist
at
> all, and if you're not it is unnecessary to use any appeal to complexity
at
> all.
mel:
Process occurs in levels of supporting complexity.
I cannot study a network by looking at the switches
and the punchdown blocks or cables for instance,
I need all seven levels and the business rules and
human element etc. The appeal to reduction in
looking at a system is like looking only at level one.
...by analogy.
> > 5) As you allude, all systems operate within a meta-system;
> > to perseive any number of dimensions in an array, for example
> > you must have one more degree or dimension than is to be
> > manipulated.
> > 6) Don't confuse the mind with the brain.
>
> I certainly am not. In fact, my original comment here was precisely to
show
> that the mind cannot be the brain (considered as a spatio-temporal
> thing/process)
mel:
Sorry, I missed it...misread it as an obverse or converse to
what you apparently intended.
That explains a lot of my confusion.
>
> > 7) emergence is simply unanticipated complexity of behavior
> > arising from a comparatively simple rule set. It's not a doctrine
> > of some magical sort. The games of chess and GO are
> > emergent games, checkers and tic-tac-toe are not.
> > (brains are also...big time.)
>
> Spoken like a nonreductive physicalist, unless your "comparatively simple
> rule set" is non-spatio-temporal, is semiotic, has value. Do you think a
> digital computer can be conscious if, say, the spatio-temporal activity of
> each neuron in a human were duplicated in silicon? I argue that that is
> impossible, since every event in such a machine (every on/off switch) is
> separated by space and/or time from every other one. There can be no
> conscious phenomenon, since nothing bigger than an on/off signal can be
> grasped at once.
mel:
Reduction and non-reduction are tchniques to
properly employ. Physical and non-physical are
approaches to use as appropriate. Alliance and
reliance, subscription and dedication are more
limiting than useful in exploration of out universe
of possiblity and existince, of manifest and
manifesting.
It would seem that a digital computer may be
able to mimic a level of consciousness of roughly
that of a virus to its surroundings, yet it may never be
more than physical in our terms. It may be limitedly
detective and algorithmically reactive. It is as compared
to biology little more than abstracted physical modeling.
and surprise, software engineering is the most complex
engineering that humanity has yet achieved.
A.I. someday, who knows?
For all our intellectual prowess, all self-proclaimed,
we really hardly understand the physical, much less
the biological. We have outlines and basic rules at
best...but we have glimpses of the pure dynamic
that seems to transcend the intellect. That flash
is worth chasing.
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