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If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

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Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#51

Post by somehnrdr14726 »

zwkrt wrote: post #20
x86ARMsRace wrote: post #3

From the abstract it sounds like the author here is drawing a false equivalence between consciousness and intelligence. Reading more into the article, it really sounds like this is the case. More specifically, it sounds like the only connection between intelligence and consciousness comes out of some pretty strained definition usage. Digging deeper, the issue I see with this essay is that to accept the end conclusion…

I think it’s even more complicated than you lay out. There are so many ways to exist on this earth and many of those ways approach consciousness or intelligence “but different”. We could say the brain is conscious but what about all the unconscious influences it apparently receives from gut flora? And gut flora are affected by what we eat and our culture. So where do we draw the line? Are you sad today because of bra…

My intuition is that consciousness, as an a priori concept, is not useful. Like the four humours in the medical world, it's a metaphor that captures just enough truth to be a blunt instrument. However it's a local maxima. And a honeypot in the neuroscience domain.

So much effort is spent trying to pin down a definition of consciousness. Ask five people and you'll get five definitions. And yet everyone is so sure they know who has it and who doesn't. Slugs don't have it, dogs don't have it, maybe elephants do? Apparently they can talk to each other and mourn the dead.

One possible motive behind humanity's fascination with consciousness, and our speed at assigning or withholding it, is that it gatekeeps the belief in an anthropocentric universe. The human experience is the one we understand, and if you don't have it you are not conscious. Consciousness then, is a Turing test for how passibly human you are. Slugs could get some of the consciousness table scraps if they'd only mourn their dead.

As we learn more about other species; and coming from the other end too as computers (big data really) reveal new sightlines on human determinism; consciousness as a metaphor is strained and loses adherence.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#52

Post by lostmsu »

asymptosis wrote: post #21
3np wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the idea that consistency is necessary? I certainly think it’s not.

I'm not talking about consciousness adhering to logical consistency (I think it actually requires completeness ). I'm talking about all parts of a given mind needing to agree on what the current focus of attention is. Failure to have such agreement is a hallmark of dreaming, psychosis, or just having two separate brains. How do you explain split-brain phenomena if consistency is not required? https://en.wikipedia.org…

In that article, split-brain looks to be an extreme state of inconsistency, that is somehow still OK. In fact, from the examples there I would deduce, that we are mostly inconsistent.

> He also reported to have grabbed his wife with his left hand and shaken her violently, at which point his right hand came to her aid and grabbed the aggressive left hand. However, such conflicts are very rare. If a conflict arises, one hemisphere usually overrides the other.

It sounds like this person still refers to himself as a single mind. It is not uncommon for people without split brain to begin an action, that is quickly interrupted by opposite decision. I bet you this opposite decision does not always come from the same set of neurons.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#53

Post by sjwright »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #50
mannykannot wrote: post #16

As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.) It's weakness, I think, is in the claim that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings. If you favor some form of panpsychism (especially in the form that, for example, regards build…

If you’re a materialist, there is no reason to have hope, you’re just reacting to stimulus.

Not at all. Hope and love don’t need to have any meaning in the wider universe in order for them to have meaning to me.

Serious question—how does the notion of "hope" become any more concrete in the non-materialist view? Perhaps your immortal soul can "hope" that it hasn't been attached to a physical body with a physical brain tumour pressing upon its physical amygdala.

Personally I cannot see how non-materialism usefully solves any criticism of materialism. All the same problems exist, except you're just pushing them back to a different plane of existence where they can be conveniently disposed of with appeals to mysteriousness.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#54

Post by etrevino »

vga805 wrote: post #33
etrevino wrote: post #26

Am I the only one who thinks that this essay appears to be mocking materialism by making a far fetched argument?

Probably not. But the argument is not in fact a reductio ad absurdum. This is par for the course in contemporary philosophy of mind. This author, as he mentions in the conclusion, has argued that all metaphysics of mind will have bizarre consequences according to our ordinary understanding. He remains uncommitted to whether or not the argument in question shows that the U.S. is conscious, or that materialism is false…

That's fair, and outside of this article I don't have any sort of grasp on the literature around this. So thank you for the comment!

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#55

Post by mannykannot »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #50
mannykannot wrote: post #16

As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.) It's weakness, I think, is in the claim that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings. If you favor some form of panpsychism (especially in the form that, for example, regards build…

If you’re a materialist, there is no reason to have hope, you’re just reacting to stimulus.

I doubt that reality adapts to conform to one's beliefs, even if one of those beliefs is that it does.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#56

Post by aimor »

coldtea wrote: post #43
aimor wrote: post #24

I am not familiar with this topic, so of course there is something I don't understand: I don't understand how the United States is reasonably bounded for this example. I'm bounded by my body, which travels together. I can communicate with others, temporarily, but then we separate and I am again alone to some degree. The United States is always in communication with other countries, it is never alone, so what are its…

> I don't understand how the United States is reasonably bounded for this example. I'm bounded by my body, which travels together. You are also comprised of billions of living cells (not to mention trillions (?) of other organisms like gut bacteria). And you're in constant interaction with your environment (e.g. inhaling more bacteria, oxygen, proteins, and so on). Cells also drop off you all the time. Plus, doesn't…

But I am distinct from my dropped cells, and from other people, and from environments when I cease interacting with those things.

America has a physical border, but people within that border are constantly interacting with people outside of it.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#57

Post by smitty1e »

coldtea wrote: post #41
smitty1e wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess whoever controls the definition can do the required gymnastics. However, even if we define "memory" in terms of artifacts like buildings and books, the place where these United States as such actually make decisions is unclear. Jokes about Congress aside, those chambers are comprised of 535 arguably sentient individuals, not a single hive mind driving the country.

> Jokes about Congress aside, those chambers are comprised of 535 arguably sentient individuals, not a single hive mind driving the country. So? Sentient individuals could just as well play the role of neurons (or similar) in a larger groupping - where their own sentiousness (sic?) doesn't matter at that level, it's their collective output that matters...

Roughly to the extent that plush toy proteins in one of Alton Brown's zanier food chemistry scenes from "Good Eats" are actual protein.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#58

Post by babygoat »

asymptosis wrote: post #22
rmdashrfstar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consciousness requires both consistency and high-availability, thus it can't arise in situations of partitioned networks. [Citation needed]

You'll figure it out eventually.

You can do better than that.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#59

Post by 3np »

asymptosis wrote: post #21
3np wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the idea that consistency is necessary? I certainly think it’s not.

I'm not talking about consciousness adhering to logical consistency (I think it actually requires completeness ). I'm talking about all parts of a given mind needing to agree on what the current focus of attention is. Failure to have such agreement is a hallmark of dreaming, psychosis, or just having two separate brains. How do you explain split-brain phenomena if consistency is not required? https://en.wikipedia.org…

I think all of us have these kinds of inconsistencies way, way more than most people imagine. It's just you don't necessarily perceive them. We might be eventually consistent, though, which still sacrifices the C in CAP.

Split-brain is just a more severe, permanent and larger-scale inconsistency. The difference between, say a database inconsistency or brief partitioning versus two subnets becoming physically disjoint.

Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)

#60

Post by tooltower »

sudosysgen wrote: post #12
tooltower wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't actually know how much the neurons in a given brain pay attention to each other. The part of me that learnt to ride a bicycle probably just sits there idle while I type this comment here. Logically, they might as well have been partitioned. Your example of switching between tasks is another great example of how parts of our brain don't really need high-availability. In fact, many psychological studies from t…

Even when you switch tasks you still use most of your brain. You never really turn off any part of your brain, they're pretty much all always active, just at different levels. This seems consistent with high-availability.

Switching off is not the only way for something to be unavailable, at least in the context of the CAP theorem. When a web server is unavailable, it is often because of connectivity problems rather than the server being switched off.

In the original example, the neighbors and parents don't turn off either when they are out of sight. They are still part of the collective society, just harder for a specific person to reach.

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