A few remarks that don’t add up to either agreement or disagreement with any point here:
Considering rivers conscious hasn’t been a difficulty for humans, as animism is a baseline impulse that develops even in absence of theism, and it takes effort, at either the individual or cultural levels, for people to learn not to anthropomorphize the world. As such, I’d suggest a thought experiment that allows for the possibility of a conscious river, even if composed of atomic moments of consciousness arising from strange flows through an extremely complex network of pipes, taps back, into that underlying animistic impulse, and so will only seem weird to those who’ve previously managed to supress it either via effort or nurture.
Conversely, as one can learn to suppress their animistic impulse towards the world, one can also suppress their animistic impulse towards themselves. Buddhism is the paradigmatic example of that effort. Most Buddhist schools of thought deny the reality of any kind of permanent self, asserting the perception of an “I” emerges from atomistic moments as an effect of those interactions, not as their cause or as a parallel process to them. From this perspective we may have a “non-conscious in itself” river whose pipe flows, interrupted or otherwise, cause the emergence of consciousness, exactly the same and in no way differently from what human minds do.
But even those Buddhist schools that do admit of a “something extra” at the root of the experience of consciousness, consider it as a form of matter that binds to ordinary matter to, operating as a single organic mixture, give rise to those moments of consciousness. This might correspond, or be an analogous on some level, to Searle’s symbols, at least going from the summarized view presented in this post. Now, irrespective of such symbols being or not reducible to ordinary matter, if they can “attach” to human brain’s matter to form, er, “carbon-based neuro-symbolic aggregates”, nothing in principle (that I can imagine, at least) prevents them from attaching to any other substrate, such a water pipes, at which point we’d have “water-based pipe-symbolic” ones. Such an aggregate might develop a mind of its own, and even a human-like mind, complete with a self-delusion that similarly believes that emergent self as essential.
As such, it’d seem to me that, without a fully developed “physics of symbols”, such speculations may go either way and don’t really help solve the issue. A full treatment of the topic would need to expand on all such possibilities, and then analyse them from perspectives such as the ones above, before properly contrasting them.
thanks, the consideration about the river is interesting. The reason i picked it is because i am trying to provide a non computer medium to explain implications of computers being conscious, in particular the fact that the whole mechanism can be laid down in a single direction in space. I could have picked a set of marbles running down pipes instead, but that would be less intuitive to those that have never seen a computer implemented with marbles. I am not sure which alternative would be best.
then just a clarification on symbols. symbols would not be the source of moment of consciousness. symbols would just be a syntactical constructs independent from consciousness, which can be manipulated both by some conscious beings such as humans and by computers. For example, a sheep is very clearly conscious, but if it does uses symbols, they are very simple symbols to keep track of geography, other sheep and stuff that is important for its survival, it is not a turing complete machine. in that view it is not a issue that symbols attach to any substrate, because they are unrelated to consciousness and simply muddle the water by introducing the ability of self referencing. The substrate independence of symbols does not extend to consciousness, because in that view it is the conscious mind that generates symbols not the other way around.
I lack the knowledge to express the following idea with the right words so forgive the ugly way of saying this: it is my understanding that to some degree one could even claim that the objective of buddhism (or at least zen buddhism) is to break the self referencing loop arising from symbols, since symbols are a prerequisite for self awareness and thus negative emotions. Without symbols one would be conscious and unable to worry about itself.
A few remarks that don’t add up to either agreement or disagreement with any point here:
Considering rivers conscious hasn’t been a difficulty for humans, as animism is a baseline impulse that develops even in absence of theism, and it takes effort, at either the individual or cultural levels, for people to learn not to anthropomorphize the world. As such, I’d suggest a thought experiment that allows for the possibility of a conscious river, even if composed of atomic moments of consciousness arising from strange flows through an extremely complex network of pipes, taps back, into that underlying animistic impulse, and so will only seem weird to those who’ve previously managed to supress it either via effort or nurture.
Conversely, as one can learn to suppress their animistic impulse towards the world, one can also suppress their animistic impulse towards themselves. Buddhism is the paradigmatic example of that effort. Most Buddhist schools of thought deny the reality of any kind of permanent self, asserting the perception of an “I” emerges from atomistic moments as an effect of those interactions, not as their cause or as a parallel process to them. From this perspective we may have a “non-conscious in itself” river whose pipe flows, interrupted or otherwise, cause the emergence of consciousness, exactly the same and in no way differently from what human minds do.
But even those Buddhist schools that do admit of a “something extra” at the root of the experience of consciousness, consider it as a form of matter that binds to ordinary matter to, operating as a single organic mixture, give rise to those moments of consciousness. This might correspond, or be an analogous on some level, to Searle’s symbols, at least going from the summarized view presented in this post. Now, irrespective of such symbols being or not reducible to ordinary matter, if they can “attach” to human brain’s matter to form, er, “carbon-based neuro-symbolic aggregates”, nothing in principle (that I can imagine, at least) prevents them from attaching to any other substrate, such a water pipes, at which point we’d have “water-based pipe-symbolic” ones. Such an aggregate might develop a mind of its own, and even a human-like mind, complete with a self-delusion that similarly believes that emergent self as essential.
As such, it’d seem to me that, without a fully developed “physics of symbols”, such speculations may go either way and don’t really help solve the issue. A full treatment of the topic would need to expand on all such possibilities, and then analyse them from perspectives such as the ones above, before properly contrasting them.
thanks, the consideration about the river is interesting. The reason i picked it is because i am trying to provide a non computer medium to explain implications of computers being conscious, in particular the fact that the whole mechanism can be laid down in a single direction in space. I could have picked a set of marbles running down pipes instead, but that would be less intuitive to those that have never seen a computer implemented with marbles. I am not sure which alternative would be best.
then just a clarification on symbols. symbols would not be the source of moment of consciousness. symbols would just be a syntactical constructs independent from consciousness, which can be manipulated both by some conscious beings such as humans and by computers. For example, a sheep is very clearly conscious, but if it does uses symbols, they are very simple symbols to keep track of geography, other sheep and stuff that is important for its survival, it is not a turing complete machine. in that view it is not a issue that symbols attach to any substrate, because they are unrelated to consciousness and simply muddle the water by introducing the ability of self referencing. The substrate independence of symbols does not extend to consciousness, because in that view it is the conscious mind that generates symbols not the other way around.
I lack the knowledge to express the following idea with the right words so forgive the ugly way of saying this: it is my understanding that to some degree one could even claim that the objective of buddhism (or at least zen buddhism) is to break the self referencing loop arising from symbols, since symbols are a prerequisite for self awareness and thus negative emotions. Without symbols one would be conscious and unable to worry about itself.