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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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If there's no shortage of suns and habitable planets out there, doesn't this increase the possibility that life and the consciousness that emerges from it is an emergent property of the universe?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Hope you took pictures.
I asked the same question to my partner to ensure proof to myself that I still climb.
Today I had the privilege to climb with a nOOb single mom and her two daughters and my daughter. For my daughter and I it was the first time being on a rope in over a year. Somehow for my daughter(8 yro) having her best friend there her tenacity rose to the umpteenth degree! She floated the 5.7 & 5.8. Only needed one help on the 5.9! But what I'm most proud of, the first climb she picked cause the way it looked, she spent a good 40min on, hanging a few times (Silent Scream 10a in Indian Cove). Almost com'in to tears but wouldn't get lowered till she got to the top. Which she did!! I was blown away and almost in tears! Thank You lord
Anyway, back to Biznez.
Edit: foresure it was on TR.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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If there's no shortage of suns and habitable planets out there, doesn't this increase the possibility that life and the consciousness that emerges from it is an emergent property of the universe?
Not at all. or certainly not without a tortured extrapolation to a religious 'first principle'.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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It's not a matter of anyone converting anyone to anything. It's a matter of extrapolation and extrapolations which go too far to the point where it's hard to consider them anything but religious. Conflating life and consciousness relative to emergence does that from my perspective.
Life is obviously an emergent property of the universe - we're here how could it be considered otherwise. Likewise consciousness is obviously an emergent property of life - we have minds so how could it be considered otherwise.
That does not mean you can make the leap to consciousness is an emergent property of the universe other than in such a general sense as to make it an all but meaningless statement relative to the origin of consciousness.
The article is good, but speaks to a thermodynamic basis for the emergence of life. It says nothing about consciousness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Nice Blu . . . great photo!
;>)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Thanks healeyje, I understand your position now. To me it is overly reductionist, but that is an old argument on this thread and denigrating to some scientists. Likewise, Rather than saying extrapolations are religious, I would prefer a statement like extrapolations are humanistic / anthropocentric. Meanwhile I'm thinking more and more that fructose was right long ago when he insisted that we needed a totally new vocabulary for discussing these ideas.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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And yes, nice photos blue! I hope you have a lot of things in common with that single mom - and I hope that's not too much of an extrapolation for you. :)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'd agree on the language. The Korb article is an example where I believe the philosophical examination of consciousness struggles mightily against it's own language. Korb is as amusing as ever though this is the first time I've read a non-AI publication of his.
Similarly language has become a serious obstacle to discussing the ethics and dangers of AI. Drama queens like Kurzweil have now sparked a ridiculous frenzy on the dangers of AI which then has been jumped on even by guys like Musk and Hawking. What's unfortunate language-wise is the characterization of the machines / software in question as far as the media and average person are concerned.
Yes, it's possible to make dangerous machines which execute inappropriate or unintended actions based on inferences and other forms of machine learning. But that's a far, far cry from a conscious machine doing the same. The former is almost a given at this point; the latter is a pipe dream given we don't have the slightest clue how consciousness emerges from life at this point.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I'm thinking more and more that fructose was right long ago when he insisted that we needed a totally new vocabulary for discussing these ideas.
We may already have a good vocabulary but are not very good at using it. I think we often use words that are ill-defined and mean different things to different people. For example: reductionist.
Can you tell us what you mean by reductionist in simpler terms?
My sense is that 'reductionist' is better left out of a conversation. Not many scientists would claim all real-world events can be understood and predicted if we know the basic parts and forces at work. Consider the weather.
However, there is still a sense in which a scientist tries to find what parts and which forces acting on them are most important for understanding and predicting how a system behaves. By reducing a problem to its essentials, scientists may practice a form of reductionism. That does not imply that they believe that all systems can be reduced in that way. It just happens to be a way to make progress on answering some difficult questions.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Experiential is also one of those meaningless words. Everything we do or think is an experience. There are non-rational experiences, like a gymnast performing a routine with no conscious deliberation in action.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Good point Mh2. Also I always feel handicapped on this thread because I use words in a general humanities/social science sense while most of the people on this thread use them in much more specific mathematical and scientific senses.Believe it or not, I have learned to use language more specifically thanks to this thread. Then there are conversations like the one with healeyje where I feel I am speaking English and the other person Swahili or maybe even Martian - or it could be the reverse.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Ed isn't it Grand!
this ping-pong match some call Life..
I think that is the point, Blue... you can tell if it is "wrong" or if it is "right", and even quantify the "wrongness" and the "rightness" of it...
Forsure Ed. As it would be "right" to say the Sun rises in the East. Very much quantifiable! and an attribute to "Truth" or "truth"? But, What IF the planet all of a sudden switched polarities. And the Sun rose in the West. What would become of all that ancient quantifiable, attributable truth? Would it become silly, unquantifiable, attribute-less fokelore?
i think you answered that question here?
understanding of 100 years ago in the appropriate domain. It wasn't "wrong" in that sense.
So,
what you believe is "The Truth" has no such attribute...
While i am giving Nature its props for being steadfast! i am bowing down to the Creator's written Word that EACH Man is a singularity and deserves to be Quantified within his own attributes!(i hope i wrote that right?) In christian terms; one mans sin is not anothers.. Example; Jesus did NOT condemn the whore for being a whore. He condemned her for bringing the rest of the town down.
You can have your truth... it will make you feel good, and after all, isn't it all about "me"?
NOT AT ALL! my Truth is all about YOU!
It seems that our individual liberties are just a part of what the US is about...
HELL NO!.
Everybody else has, social liberties, political liberties, buisiness liberties, religious liberties, etc. whatever else liberties. AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES!!
"...Individual we shall Stand!"
Just like greenhouse gases is changing the worlds matter
America's individual liberties is changing the worlds Spirit!
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan, maybe it's also just me on the language front, but I can't quite make the leap from 'religious' to 'humanistic' or 'anthropocentric' with regard to extrapolations of the magnitude we're talking about. Not sure what's 'humanistic' about the emergence of life in the universe and while 'anthropocentric' might apply to human consciousness, my personal take on consciousness as behavior leaves me of the opinion 'anthropocentric' doesn't quite begin to cover it, especially in an extra-solar context.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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To me it is overly reductionist, but that is an old argument on this thread and denigrating to some scientists.
and there is an example of non-reductionist (integrationist?) science? if there is, please provide a reference.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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MH2 i almost missed this one,
If you could read memories, could you write them, also?
easily my most skepticism! i often wish/always wish a computer could read my thoughts and write them for me! You might understand me better.
i'd love to see the thoughts of a mind before becoming religious, then after.
i sure love when you talk though
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Meatbird
Social climber
Lindsay, OK
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I follow this thread intermittently so please forgive me if I'm repeating what's already been said. When I clicked in tonight the discussions on the emergent property of consciousness got my attention. I just wanted to add my 2 cents worth.
Emergent property is an interesting linguistic concept that seems to function as a bridge between consciousness and biological processes. For me, however, it is likely nothing more than a turn of phrase that continues to "emerge" from dualistic reasoning. While it serves as a useful tool for those who are predisposed to divide human experience into material and spiritual realities, it falls short of providing any explanation of how a unified self transcends neurons.
For those not so predisposed, it appears to be another poetic attempt to encode magic or some such mysterium into our biological knowledge base. I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful of those who find meaning in this use of language but I do think it is helpful to clarify how the language is being used.
It is entirely plausible that consciousness is nothing more than a pragmatic use of our brains information gathering system which focuses attention on some stimuli at the expense of others. In this theory, consciousness may only be a generated construct (with no substantial properties) that gives a sense of awareness of our biological skill at attending to signals. This material theory of awareness is best explained by Princeton neurologist Michael Graziano.
It is notoriously difficult to shed dualistic language and thinking given our predispositions and cultural traditions. Even with the current trends that have been grinding away for centuries, we still may be many generations away from really creating a language capable of liberating us from our yearning for magical reconciliation.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I would agree 'emergent' and 'emergence' don't explain anything. In the context of my use I use it as a placeholder exactly for that reason - we have no idea how that emergence happens even though here we are, each with a consciousness.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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and there is an example of non-reductionist (integrationist?) science? if there is, please provide a reference.
I could be wrong here, but it sure seems to me that the field of cosmology provides plenty of integrationist if not magical explanations.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130524-is-nature-unnatural/
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Meatbird nicely written.
but ur reasoning sounds to be a default back to our stupidity. For which our time now is worthless or a mere stepping stone for future generations to deem unattributeful. Back to the corner with a pointy hat for you .
but god knows ur forgiven. three hail mary's, and two rubs on the beads.
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