Nice try, but not being able to define your terms is your personal failing, not ours. You are clearly unable to define what 'conscious-awareness' means or you are leaving it intentionally vague so that you can easily move goalposts to avoid people pinning you down on some point. Someone unable to even define what they are talking about is the person lacking in intellectual rigor.

Basically it works like this: someone asks you to define your terms and you dodge by saying that your terms are obvious or that they are an idiot to even ask that. Then everyone reading knows that you have no clue what you are talking about because you can't even define your terms. Right now you are at the 'no clue what you are talking about' stage in this debate. Both in terms of your inability to define conscious-awareness and in terms of your gross misunderstanding of materialism. I think that some posters here have given up because you befuddle them with your lack of understanding.

As a lighter way of expressing what I think most of us here feel, please enjoy this comic courtesy of cectic.com:

Your argument implies that it is possible, at least in principle, that "robots without consciousness" could be running the world.  That this is patently absurd simply displays the irrationality of the materialistic worldview.

Yes, the probability waves describes what is experimentally observed. If I understand your argument correctly, scientists should just ignore experimental observations. LOL

I defined the term in the OP of this thread. That you are not able to immediately grasp the meaning of the term "conscious-awareness" is your personal failing, not mine.

Caveat: This post brought to you by an intimate evening with friends, and Canadian Club.

The idea that anything "runs the world" is so small-minded that I'm surprised you can even read and write. How many organisms do you figure are involved in your ecosystem, Paisley? How many different species of bacteria are in your body right now? How many chemicals and hormones rule your existence? It's like you live in a cloud, and you can't see any of this. The whole world is out there, Paisley, and you're clinging to ancient philosophy like it's the tails of your mother's dress. The whole, beautiful world spreads itself out in front of you, and all you can do is tell it that it's wrong.

Well, at least we know you've never been a physicist before, because otherwise you would have understood what I said. Probability waves really do describe what is experimentally observed. Good for you, champ! That's why it all makes such good theory. Now, some of the results are hard to interpret. Does that mean that we can throw materialism out the window? Hey, why not? We're only studying the physical world, so why not disregard that, and decide that we're unearthing the Special World of Magic instead? Yeah, that'll be fun!

Your rhetoric sucks. It just flat-out sucks. Someone had to say it, and it's your most patient interlocutor.

I gave you a chance. I really did. I gave you a chance to come up with something more than circular, childish nonsense. I wasn't even giving you rope to hang yourself with, initially. But you seem to have figured that insulting me with trite, rehearsed parroting would be fine. In fact, that it would pass as a reasonable argument in favour of some deity of your choosing. Instead, you've revealed yourself as nothing but a merchant of algorithms, a purveyor of limited and unexpanded "thought". Your alleged mind even stretched itself far enough to step occasionally outside your path of predictable argument.

Then you were back. The Paisley of old: the presumably human writer of incontestably bad arguments against artificial intelligence. Back to the idea that being tricky enough would make the material immaterial. Back to trying everyone's patience with taunting, and nothing constructive.

I won't say "I'm done", or give up on telling you which parts of your pat speeches lack merit. I won't tell you that I'm fed up. The only hope I can have for someone like you is that they become the old dog that learns a new trick.

Throw me a bone: give me something that doesn't look like you're re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Not a big surprise. You couldn't connect two dots with a line.

Metaphysics requires a solid epistemology. What's the most successful epistemology? That's right, the scientific method. Oh, fuck it - this won't even sink in, will it?

I suggest you take your head out of your ass. Let's face it, neither of us is good at taking suggestions right about now.

Since I clearly do not espouse 'eliminative materialism'. and neither does Daniel Dennett, you are simply showing that you either lack basing reading comprehensions or are deliberately misrepresenting what I have clearly stated.

To quote part of Dennett's writing on 'qualia' in "Consciousness Explained"

There is much more, of course, but I want to make it clear that Dennett is addressing a fairly specific subject here, in a manner far more subtle and informed than you, Paisley, could possibly grasp. He is far from simply denying that 'qualia' exist, rather that what is being addressed by the term is something that is much better understood from a very different point of view, using a different model, more consistent with modern understanding of how the mind and the senses 'work' together.

EDIT: Before you jump to simple conclusions about what he is saying here, note the usage of 'seems' which inherently implies perception itself - there are subtleties involved in statements where this word is used when we are dicussing consciousness/awareness itself...

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy, not science.

Your so-called explanation not only presupposed subjective awareness but also free will in its argument.  

You implicitly presupposed free will in order to argue that consciousness is causally-efficacious. If there is no free will, then consciousness has no causal role to play. To date, you have not been able to grasp this simple insight. Either that, or you don't have the intellectual honesty to concede the point.

No, I specifically did not presuppose free will. Here is what I said:

To which you responded:

Which is completely incorrect, as you had previously defined consciousness:

Which sounds pretty much the same as self-awareness to me. Note you did not include in the definition anything about free will, nor did I include anything at all about free will in the paragraph above. I did not presuppose free will. As I said, that is something that you bring to the discussion. You haven't yet rebutted the paragraph above, except by silently changing your definition of "conciousness" to include some sort of "active" free will (whatever the hell that means).

And you still haven't given an answer to this very pertinent question:

In any case, you seem to conflate self-awareness with free will. They are different. To date you have not been able to grasp this simple insight. Either that, or you don't have the intellectual honesty to concede the point.

What is at issue here is whether self-awareness ("conscious-awareness" ) can be selected by evolution. That's the OP. You stubbornly keep changing it into a discussion of free will.

There is no presupposition of free will in any of my posts. A "decision" is a selection between options. The options are there; there is no free will associated with options. They exist. The selection process does not require free will, any more than a computer requires free will to decide whether 2 > 1, or variable1 == variable2. With self-awareness, the evaluation of options includes the knowledge of the effect of the options on the organism. Note this doesn't require free will, whatever free will is. All it means is the decision process involves more information, providing a better decision mechanism among options. Therefore, self-awareness is a selectable trait. It doesn't matter whether it's deterministic or not; the deterministic processes that involve the information about how options affect the organism are still selectable over the deterministic processes that don't include that information.

There is no free will associated with selecting among options. As organisms are always selecting among options at every level of biological complexity, it's self-evident that selecting an option does not presuppose free will. When discussing the differences in selecting among options, the only difference between an ameoba and a human is the amount of information processed when selecting an option.

[EDIT: replaced "selection" with "decision" where appropriate, so as not to confuse the "selection of an option" (decision) with the evolutionary "selection of a trait."]

That a computer can make "decisions" highlights the point that consciousness plays no active role. Question: What aren't you getting?

Two scenarios:

1) "If variable_one > 2 then do blah, blah, blah" <= not conscious

2) "If variable_one > 2 then do blah, blah, blah" <= conscious

What is consciousness doing in the latter version that is not happening in the former? Answer: NOTHING! Whether the information processing system (regardless of the complexity of the system) is conscious or not is irrelevant. Once again, what aren't you getting?

Another scenario using pseudo-code....

"Select a number between 1 and 10" <== "computer no can do" (well, a computer cannot do it in reality unless this is a quantum computer and we acknowledge that quantum events are truly indeterminate...in which case you are arguing against materialism).

This is the difference between an agent and a robot. Would free will confer some survival benefit? I would think so. However, in the deterministic worldview that is scientific materialism, there is no free will. Therefore, consciousness confers no survival benefit because it plays no causal role. To ask the question once more: What aren't you getting?

Which begs the question: Is an ameoba conscious? If not, then why was consciousness naturally selected?

I expect you to answer the following question that goes to the crux of the problem and which you conveniently evaded in your last post:

Is an amoeba conscious? If not, then why not?

If the only difference between an amoeba and a human is the AMOUNT OF INFORMATION that is PROCESSED, then what exactly is the causal role of consciousness?  

What are you talking about? Of course computers can generate numbers on command. I suppose that by 'select' you mean 'generate,' because you need a selection criteria to select a number. That may be just a semantics problem though.

For that matter, even if you really meant 'select' and not 'generate,' that is still wrong as you can give a computer a criteria to use to select numbers and it will start selecting them.

Here it is for C:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
                                                                                               
main(int ac, char **av)
{
  double x;
  unsigned seed;
  
  if (ac > 0) {
    sscanf(av[1],"%u", &seed);
    srand(seed);
  }
  
  x = rand()/(RAND_MAX+1.0);


  printf("%g\n",x);

}

 

And here it is for MATLAB:

x = rand(1)

Every programming language has a way to generate numbers on command. Those are just two examples that I know about.

 

More importantly, why do you keep repeating the lie that quantum events are not materialistic? I took a three quarter course that was partially about quantum mechanics. I'm afraid that it was very narrow in what it taught us (it was focused on statistical mechanics for use by chemists), but I think that I understand a few basic concepts in quantum mechanics. I doubt that you will even try to substantiate your claim that QM is evidence against materialism. Here is my prediction: you will restate that QM means that the universe is not materialistic, and then pretend that is an argument in your favor rather than a naked assertion.

So... Paisley not understanding QM the science somehow grants Paisley an understanding of the philosophical implications of QM the science.

This would be why I can't take your arguments seriously.

Yes, I understand that the term 'random number generator' is factually wrong. It is actually a deterministic number generator. Because, you know, we live in a deterministic universe. Computers can generate strings of numbers, and those numbers are not random. And for that matter, QM does not mean that the universe is non-materialistic.

Paisley's failing to get any education on a subject wrought with nuance and alternative hypotheses does indeed preclude Paisley from having any real understanding of Quantum Mechanics, and thus from having in understanding of the philosophical implications.

JillSwift, on the other hand, has taken a few classes on the subject and understands that quantum indeterminacy is as much a part of the material universe as what results from that indeterminacy (aka, matter & energy).

We shal speak of anyone using the third person, especially when we are not directly addressing the person in question and are making a comment to others involved in the thread. We so decree it. *royal harumph*

I think it best that paisley not make another post until paisley has responded to this problem.  Failure to respond to this problem will confirm that paisley does not know what paisley is talking about when paisley uses QM to justify whatever paisley is currently asserting.

 

a is a constant and I couldn't type 'psi symbol' so I just used 'Y'

 

 

It would appear that you are now changing the terms of your argument. Previously, you argued that "the only difference between an amoeba and a human is the amount of information processed when selecting an option."

The keyword is "amount." On your view, the only difference between insentient information processing and sentient information processing is the amount of processing involved. Now, you are saying that conscious information processing produces more information. Be that as it may, I don't think this really changes anything. Information comes in as input. The information is processed. And information is generated (or produced) as output. Whether the information processing is conscious or not has no bearing on how much information can be processed and how much information can be produced. Obviously, an amoeba is processing and producing information. If an amoeba does not have subjective awareness, then the amoeba qualifies as a less complex "robot without consciousness." Why hasn't nature selected more complex "robots without consciouness?" Or perhaps she has (e.g. I don't know whether you consider earthworms to have conscious experience....perhaps you don't because they don't process and produce enough information?).

I disagree with items six and seven. The bottom line is that an insentient information processing system (or should I say stimulus-response system?) can perform the same foregoing functions. I fail to see how consciousness changes anything. If everything is predetermined by the laws of physics (excluding quantum indeterminism) and chemistry, then there really is nothing left for consciousness to do but to experience life (i.e. electrochemical reactions) as it mechanically unfolds.

Here is my lazy way of doing this using MATLAB:

First I throw everything into MATLAB:

a=1;
syms x;

Y=sqrt(a/sqrt(pi))*exp(-((a^2)*(x^2)/2));

int(Y^2, x, -inf, inf)

 

'syms x;' means that x will be treated as a variable

I set 'a' to one seeing as it is just any arbitrary constant

This: 'int(Y^2, x, -inf, inf)' will take the integral of Y squared with respect to x from negative infinity to positive infinity.

 

Here is what it looks like in MATLAB:

>> a=1;
syms x;
Y=sqrt(a/sqrt(pi))*exp(-((a^2)*(x^2)/2));
int(Y^2, x, -inf, inf)
 
ans =
 
178798816056707020814412389409/316912650057057350374175801344*pi^(1/2)
 
 
>> 178798816056707020814412389409/316912650057057350374175801344*pi^(1/2)

ans =

    1.0000

 

So we see that the integral of the wave function squared with respect to x from -inf to +inf is equal to 1. That means that the wave function has been normalized. Forgive the lazy MATLAB way of doing this. I have largely given up on solving integrals and instead throw everything into the computer. And I do feel just a little embarrassed that I had to get my old physical chemistry textbook in order to verify that I was doing this correctly. If we wanted to make this hard we would need to use a wave function that required spherical coordinates to solve. Putting a triple integral into MATLAB would be a bit harder. But then I suppose that I could replace the other two integrals (the ones for theta and phi in spherical coordinates) by 2 and 2PI in order to take the lazy way out.

Did I pass the quantum mechanics test?

Paisley has already admitted to never having studied QM. So he can not possibly pass any test that we devise for him. He is bullshiting us when he brings up QM.

And as an engineer I will never apologize for using MATLAB. I have seen to many integrals that can't be solved by hand to bother trying any more. MATLAB never fails to solve them, but I don't know how to solve most. Also most integrals can not be solved by hand. So take the certain path to sucessfully solving them and use MATLAB.

So I give myself +50 points for original use of programming to solve this problem and negate your -50 points.

paisley will please acknowledge that paisley has used QM across several of the threads that paisley has started in regard to materialism.  It is time for paisley to actually demonstrate exactly how much paisley knows about what paisley is talking about.  And paisley ought not to accuse me of hijacking paisley's thread, as paisley hijacks paisley's own threads well enough through paisley's incessant dodging, ad hoc arguments, and outright self-contradictions.
 

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/15754

Follow that link and see post #16. I have already been over this on this website. I have known for years now that 'random' number generators are deterministic. Here is what I said on this back in November:

So why don't you stop with the pretentious nonsense.

If you know that random number generators are really deterministic, then why are you taking issue with my previous post? On second thought, forget it. I am not going to engage in a tit for tat game with you. Unless you can address the question I posed in the OP, then don't bother posting. You're just wasting my time.