On naturalism and consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

Well there you go; the arrangement of particles only expresses a "belief" about spoons merely because an already conscious being is superimposing their *own* beliefs on what those particles represent.

No consciousness is required, only input. In our case, that input is sensory (and particularly so with regards to whether or not there are spoons, and whether or not the object "spoon" is curved) - and there are plenty of "non-conscious" analogues to that sensory input. "Spoons are curved" could, for example, be an output of a mechanical system. It's not difficult to describe a spoon or a curve in binary, or that spoons are curved.

My point was that when you break it down to the elementary parts of this "belief", there is actually nothing there to tell you about this "belief". You're taking for granted the fact that the set of electricity/pixels that you see have to be given meaning by you, the already conscious being.

I'm most definitely not, you've decided that the variable p has that meaning -and you are a conscious agent, sure. That doesn't mean that's the only way to arrive at such a definition of p.

Strawman. I said the electricity/pixels are entirely meaningless, not the proposition we defined at the beginning, which obviously by human convention actually means something.

The electricity/pixels could be "about" whatever we wanted them to be, sure. They could also be "about" spoons being curved - and we simply aren't required to make that so. In our case we are involved, obviously.

I do not think any computer is conscious, which is precisely the point. And therefore, how can we say a computer could even hold a *belief*, if there is no conscious entity to be found?

We can say it because you defined a belief as the statement p that equals spoons are curved. Computers can and do hold and handle such variables. It's exactly what they are built to do.

I think we need to be more critical in our thinking here. Computing isn't "about something". Computing is metal, plastic, and possibly more complex materials coming together in such a way, that certain causal relations are able to grab electrons, make them zip through copper strips, and produce an array of pixels on the screen, of which *we* interpret however we like, according to our needs. But a computer never knew "about something". It never held the "belief" that e.g. calculation #12 meant the mining project was at risk of a collapse. All it ever was and did, was simply act as a mega-advanced system of pulleys and levers, crunching out simple logic at speeds conveniently faster than what we can do it at. Nevermind consciousness!

You're telling me that we need to be more critical whilst you draw a line in the sand that may not exist at all, and definitely does not exist -as you expressed it-. Perhaps there are better ways to communicate what it is you mean? Computing -is- metal and plastic (but it can be rocks or string, or it can be nuerons). We do interpret them however we like but that's because we're directing the flow of work. We needn't direct that work (or even be able to interpret it), and the machine will still be able to handle data. That data will still refer to something, it will still be "about" something. Consider the following.

If I attach a pv cell and a scale to a single Nand gate, that binary output will be "about" whether or not there is light hitting the cell -while- a weight is on the scale. 1, (in the case of nand) is the proposition "there is either no light, or no weight, or both" 0 is the proposition that there is both light and weight. I don't have to be there to read the data. The assembly could have been in a black box manufactured by another. When I see that binary input change, it will be "about" something even if I am unaware of the specifics.

How is this in any way different from "spoons are curved"? Spoons are curved, in the simplest machine language possible, could be expressed as the binary output of a single gate in the same way that my example above determines whether or not it's inputs describe something that has both light, and weight. Now, I'm not trying to tell you that this is how -we- do it (but the argument can be made)...I'm just trying to express to you that it -can be- done this way. Perhaps particles and atoms don;t account for whatever it is you are referring to in your own thoughts, and the process you use to reach them, but they most definitely -can be- "about" something - and this can't be made any more plain than in machine language - wherein there is no requirement that we (or any conscious agent) be present. The inputs, the data handling, and the outputs, are a function of the machine - literally built into it's architecture (and the architecture determines the language, different architecture- different language...think about what that means for "meaning".....btw). We give those things the meanings that we find useful when we write programs, but the programs aren't actually required to do that sort of work (and, in the case of computers, the programs wouldn't run without the underlying mechanical architecture and machine language). Case in point, a computer actuall has to translate our programs, our language - into it's own, then do the work, then retranslate it back into -our- (higher level) language. It takes our "meaning", translates it into it;s own "meaning" performs the operation, and then translates it back into our "meaning" so that the data is useful to us (but even if it didn't translate it back, the data would still be there, a function will stiull have been performed on the operation - are spoons curved; yes, 0 or 1 depending on the gate). In the barest possible sense, if you simply can't accept that machine language can be about some object "x" it is -at least- "about" logical operations. No matter how you slice it, particles and atoms are capable of being "about" -something-. They have the ability to describe their meaning (even if you don't think that it means the same thing that you mean, or that it's somehow different from how you arrive at meaning, or how you describe meaning...and why wouldn't it be..different architecture, different language, eh?)- and without this ability we couldn't compute at all.

The simplest way to explain this is that an output of 1 on an and gate "means" that both inputs are 1. It doesn't matter what those inputs are, it doesn't matter where they come from, it doesn't matter what we do with that output- and it doesn't matter what the gate is made out of.