If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[Neo-Scholastic]

You couldn't have a purely mechanical universe which also had consciousness-- unless the capacity for consciousness is already intrinsic to the framework.

Congrats, bennyboy, there's a trump card if ever I read one.

[The Grand Nudger]

Except that it's just a rehash of the weak anthropic principle. You can't have sphincters in a universe unless the capacity for sphincters is already intrinsic to the universe.

[Whateverist]

I wonder if you can wonder unless the capacity for wondering is intrinsic.

I wonder if you can wonder about things that make no sense whatsoever.

When I try to wonder about some of these things my attention just wanders off to greener pastures.

[bennyboy]

Except that it's just a rehash of the weak anthropic principle. You can't have sphincters in a universe unless the capacity for sphincters is already intrinsic to the universe.

That's true, you can't. The difference is that mind is unlike all the other things we categorize. It is the one absolutely intangible thing that even hardcore physicalists must accept and incorporate. Sphincters are a child of other physical processes: tension in protein chains, fluidity of water, etc. Mind is not really a child of anything-- it's a lone, brute fact, and does therefore deserve special categorization and consideration.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's true, you can't. The difference is that mind is unlike all the other things we categorize.

Spincters are different too, that's why they have their own word, to denote that we are talking about a specific thing, different from other things. - Identity.

It is the one absolutely intangible thing that even hardcore physicalists must accept and incorporate. Sphincters are a child of other physical processes: tension in protein chains, fluidity of water, etc. Mind is not really a child of anything-- it's a lone, brute fact, and does therefore deserve special categorization and consideration.

It's not, whats all that biochemistry about then? Ever encountered a floating "mind"? Ever really dove into the architecture of the brain? I find it fascinating that ultimately, what we are looking at with regards to dendrites and axons (under our current model) are chemical and electrical NAND gates, which we understand to be incredibly powerful from our experience in comp sci. Universal gates, you can build any function out of them-it's just an issue of how many you've got (and we have alot). Now, of course...maybe it's just coincidence that they're set up that way, maybe they don't do anything of the sort - but they do one hell of an impersonation of machine logic- and what we can measure about them forms a fairly simple machine language. It would almost be a waste if they weren't NAND gates. Of course, a more efficient machine could be built with specifically chosen gates- but biology (and especially evolutionary biology) doesn't have a selection of gates to choose from - so we would expect to find redundant "brute force" architecture in any "evolved circuits". The one thing you'd need, with a generalized series of NAND gates that aren't predefined and redundant to the point of being built individually for every single task - would be a set of program NAND, that "chose" which serious of gates to use based upon the task at hand(it takes a different number/arrangement of NAND to emulate other gates). In this context it's easy to see one of the many possible functions of "self awareness" or "mind" and also that it isn't necessarily "other" . This is the reason that we're searching for ai, the ability to monitor ones own system, however flawed or inefficient, yields computational returns - and it doesn't have to be anything more that sufficiently arranged NANDs itself, as we've built self referential machine systems out of NAND already, too many to count.

The system is robust through brute force (due to massively redundant NAND), but with just a little bit of "user" interaction it's processing power grows exponentially. Again, it may just be that our brains are only engaging in a clever(?) impersonation of an inefficiently built-but powerful, evolved computational architecture...........but that seems awfully elaborate - for a dumb machine. Now, this is why I wonder whether you've done any "wondering" about this beyond your own "mind". See how non-mysterious this is? People are actually parsing the architecture of the brain at a basic level - that of possible individual logic gates. Experiments are done, observations are taken. The subject "self reports"-which is shaky, because we don't really know whats going on in our own minds anymore than we know what's going on in our pc's (by and large - or anymore than our pc's "know" whats actually on the screen) - but it has some value. Predictions are made, confirmed and disproven. It's all about as mysterious as a traffic light. Perhaps that's all this really boils down to anyway? You and I have different ideas of mystery, different ideas of categorization. It's hard for me to see where the logic ends and "mind" begins. But I'm biased, obviously. I had a childhood job in pcb manufacturing - and it turned into a lifelong obsession. I suppose some might even find the existence and utility of pcb's "mysterious" or "a lone brute fact" deserving special categorization and consideration. Any question you ask along the lines of "why should the brain be able to produce qualia" also applies to PCBs (even if, ultimately, we're totally wrong about the architecture and the brain actually is doing an impersonation of logic gates without actually using them as logic gates-for whatever arcane reason...nobody ever said biology was smart, eh?) . Why should they have the ability to perform logical functions? The answer to that is simple - anything can be used to perform a logical function- the only requirement is that the function is adequetely mapped. It doesn't matter whether you use water, stones, or little woolen blocks covered with a mysterious substance known as "redstone" in a children's fantasy game (virtual logic machines built inside of a program that resides in a machine, wewt). Machine logic is just a way of manipulating the observed behavior of "things" to perform a specific task. That process "creates" things unlike those that go into their construction in your conception, but entirely like them in mine - as the outputs of a system do not have to be similar to the inputs, materially. You can use a water based (permeability, salinity, etc) gate to produce an electric or kinetic signal through displacement or conductivity. That the output appears to differ from the input is inconsequential- it's "logic" that the system is doing, not "water" or "stones" or "little woolen blocks"- the inputs and the outputs are equally logical objects, parts to an overall function. Mind is no less tangible than gravity, when it is viewed as the behavior of a specific class (or sub-class) of otherwise explicable things. Explaining the behavior of those tangibles -is- the explanation of the "intangible".

Simply put, this explains qualia as a service that the machine provides, self referential, and as a modifier for computational power (without such a system machines can't compare apples to oranges, or offer multiple outputs and meta-analysis of those outputs). Perhaps tellingly - this is the sort of behavior we would expect from a machine with this magnitude of processing power....and it's precisely the sort of behavior we see in human beings-both biologically and "intangibly". Again (because I can't stress this enough) it may all be a hellish coincidence - but I, personally, see little reason to weigh down our explanations with that assumption.

[archangle]

If beauty can be explained in terms of evolution, why not morality and ethics? The idea expressed by Christian apologists that morality only makes sense if you can ground it in an objective source for oughts looks lame when applied to beauty. What would we say? That beauty only exists if what we claim to be beautiful is deemed so by an objectively infallible judge of beauty? Psssh.

the assumption here is that god did not evolve. That has less probability of being true than its counter part. but, to play the game of our bullshit is better than theirs ...

Beauty to humans in locked into a frame work. Thus morals may have to be locked into a human frame work. This frame work would be the human brain. I would say that the meaning of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" means to try and think of these things in the frame work in the mind's eye of that individual or group.

Thus this no god of yours would be in your mind's eye. No more or no less true than their stance.

[bennyboy]

It's not, whats all that biochemistry about then? Ever encountered a floating "mind"? Ever really dove into the architecture of the brain?

A little bit in uni while getting a psych degree. But I don't think you're getting the point. Mind is not a category of anything else. A sphincter is a specialized muscle made of specialized proteins, etc.-- it is derived from other things, and is therefore a specific member of a more general category.

I suppose you could say that the human mind is a complex of more fundamental qualia. In that case, you'd want to identify the most basic possible "atomic" qualia, which aren't constructed of any others. But how would you know them for what they were even if you COULD make them?

I find it fascinating that ultimately, what we are looking at with regards to dendrites and axons (under our current model) are chemical and electrical NAND gates, which we understand to be incredibly powerful from our experience in comp sci. Universal gates, you can build any function out of them-it's just an issue of how many you've got (and we have alot).

If that's literally true, and if qualia are a category of brain function, then we should at least in theory have the ability to create an entity which actually experiences qualia, rather than just seeming to.

But how could we know that was the case?

Now, of course...maybe it's just coincidence that they're set up that way, maybe they don't do anything of the sort - but they do one hell of an impersonation of machine logic- and what we can measure about them forms a fairly simple machine language. It would almost be a waste if they weren't NAND gates. Of course, a more efficient machine could be built with specifically chosen gates- but biology (and especially evolutionary biology) doesn't have a selection of gates to choose from - so we would expect to find redundant "brute force" architecture in any "evolved circuits". The one thing you'd need, with a generalized series of NAND gates that aren't predefined and redundant to the point of being built individually for every single task - would be a set of program NAND, that "chose" which serious of gates to use based upon the task at hand(it takes a different number/arrangement of NAND to emulate other gates). In this context it's easy to see one of the many possible functions of "self awareness" or "mind" and also that it isn't necessarily "other" . This is the reason that we're searching for ai, the ability to monitor ones own system, however flawed or inefficient, yields computational returns - and it doesn't have to be anything more that sufficiently arranged NANDs itself, as we've built self referential machine systems out of NAND already, too many to count.

I've done some programming with ANNs. I'd say two things about that-- 1) given a complex enough networked system with a strong feedback mechanism, and I'd say the evolution of useful patterns would be the norm, rather than a big surprise. It's slightly frightening to think what a decent AI programmer with decent hardware could teach a computer to "think" by taking internet activity as sense data. 2) none of this leads me to think any particular physical system could actually experience qualia, or that we could ever had a non-arbitrary test to determine whether it did or not.

People are actually parsing the architecture of the brain at a basic level - that of possible individual logic gates.

Careful, there. Given how neurotransmitters work, this is an artificial (i.e. statistical) oversimplification-- unless you have a link that indicates otherwise?

The answer to that is simple - anything can be used to perform a logical function- the only requirement is that the function is adequetely mapped. It doesn't matter whether you use water, stones, or little woolen blocks covered with a mysterious substance known as "redstone" in a children's fantasy game (virtual logic machines built inside of a program that resides in a machine, wewt). Machine logic is just a way of manipulating the observed behavior of "things" to perform a specific task.

Let me ask you this. Let's say you encoded an .mp3 song on a beach using black and white stones as bits. But the problem is, you are the last person on the beach, and you are so lonely that the act of encoding is your last hurrah-- once done, you commit suicide.

Assuming that no information about the encoding process remains, are those stones still an .mp3 song?

Simply put, this explains qualia as a service that the machine provides, self referential, and as a modifier for computational power (without such a system machines can't compare apples to oranges, or offer multiple outputs and meta-analysis of those outputs).

Conflating self-referential data processing (or any other kind of data processing) with qualia is essentially begging the question-- you are defining qualia in a special way, and your model subsequently seems to make sense. But this conflation is unsatisying philosophically. Given that simple mechanism can explain all the functions of the brain, there's no reason why that mechanism would actually experience in the way that I experience redness or emotions. We can (at least hypothetically) make machines to replicate human function, and with ANNs we can make them self-referential. But there's nothing about supposing such a system to actually experience qualia that will improve our observations or understanding of the system.

[Whateverist]

If beauty can be explained in terms of evolution, why not morality and ethics? The idea expressed by Christian apologists that morality only makes sense if you can ground it in an objective source for oughts looks lame when applied to beauty. What would we say? That beauty only exists if what we claim to be beautiful is deemed so by an objectively infallible judge of beauty? Psssh.

the assumption here is that god did not evolve. That has less probability of being true than its counter part. but, to play the game of our bullshit is better than theirs ...

I have no idea what you're saying here. How does it matter whether god evolves or not? I was merely pointing that we don't require a concept of god to accept standards of beauty so that I could argue the situation is similar for morality.

Beauty to humans in locked into a frame work.

? Are they? What does that mean?

Thus morals may have to be locked into a human frame work. This frame work would be the human brain. I would say that the meaning of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" means to try and think of these things in the frame work in the mind's eye of that individual or group.

On this at least we agree. Morality, like aesthetics, is a human endeavor.

Thus this no god of yours would be in your mind's eye. No more or no less true than their stance.

Is there a point here? "This no god of yours" lets say that refers to my lack of belief in gods. So about this you are saying its being true is no more or less certain than what they think. The situations are not really parallel. I am merely responding to the question "do you harbor any beliefs in gods". I think about it and contemplate my impulses and dreams for a moment and then I answer "no beliefs in gods here". I'm not making any claims about the status of gods in the world. I'm just reporting what is going on in me. Mine is a first person claim. If that is all the theist is saying too, "yeah there is belief in god happening here", then the situation is parallel alright. But the theist is actually saying much more. He is making a claim about transpersonal reality, not just how things stand in his house.

[archangle]

the assumption here is that god did not evolve. That has less probability of being true than its counter part. but, to play the game of our bullshit is better than theirs ...

I have no idea what you're saying here. How does it matter whether god evolves or not? I was merely pointing that we don't require a concept of god to accept standards of beauty so that I could argue the situation is similar for morality.

Beauty to humans in locked into a frame work.

? Are they? What does that mean?

Thus morals may have to be locked into a human frame work. This frame work would be the human brain. I would say that the meaning of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" means to try and think of these things in the frame work in the mind's eye of that individual or group.

On this at least we agree. Morality, like aesthetics, is a human endeavor.

Thus this no god of yours would be in your mind's eye. No more or no less true than their stance.

Is there a point here? "This no god of yours" lets say that refers to my lack of belief in gods. So about this you are saying its being true is no more or less certain than what they think. The situations are not really parallel. I am merely responding to the question "do you harbor any beliefs in gods". I think about it and contemplate my impulses and dreams for a moment and then I answer "no beliefs in gods here". I'm not making any claims about the status of gods in the world. I'm just reporting what is going on in me. Mine is a first person claim. If that is all the theist is saying too, "yeah there is belief in god happening here", then the situation is parallel alright. But the theist is actually saying much more. He is making a claim about transpersonal reality, not just how things stand in his house.

I am not pointing to your 'lack of belief in their god". I have the same lack of belief. I am pointing to your attempt to throw out this bullshit like it is something else other than bullshit.

I hear some christians saying god used evolution. Your buddy JohnS may even say that. But you mite know that already.

[The Grand Nudger]

A little bit in uni while getting a psych degree. But I don't think you're getting the point. Mind is not a category of anything else. A sphincter is a specialized muscle made of specialized proteins, etc.-- it is derived from other things, and is therefore a specific member of a more general category.

-and under the computational model I;m offering you, qualia is a collection of very physical things, in the same way that what you see on your monitor right now has an actual place, a location on your hardware. It's not attached, not associated, it -is-.

I suppose you could say that the human mind is a complex of more fundamental qualia. In that case, you'd want to identify the most basic possible "atomic" qualia, which aren't constructed of any others. But how would you know them for what they were even if you COULD make them?

A wonderful question. That's the sort of thing we're looking into.

If that's literally true, and if qualia are a category of brain function, then we should at least in theory have the ability to create an entity which actually experiences qualia, rather than just seeming to.

But how could we know that was the case?

We could just ask it. After all, that's all we're going on with regards to ourselves anyway, isn't it? I'd say that we're already at that point with hardware, we simply don;t ascribe the same level of "whateverness" to the phenomena as expressed by relatively simple machines. There's nothing fundamentally different, to my mind, about our own. It's just an issue of scale and preference. You know I'm fond of describing all of the ways that plants exhibit behaviors we ascribe to "consciousness" in ourselves..but - for some reason, call mechanical and chemical interactions in them. But ultimately....why are we assuming that there is some division - in reality- between "seeming to" experience qualia and experiencing qualia? It -is- seeming, isn't it? There's not actually an elephant inside of your mind when you have the subjective experience of viewing an elephant, now is there?

I've done some programming with ANNs. I'd say two things about that-- 1) given a complex enough networked system with a strong feedback mechanism, and I'd say the evolution of useful patterns would be the norm, rather than a big surprise. It's slightly frightening to think what a decent AI programmer with decent hardware could teach a computer to "think" by taking internet activity as sense data. 2) none of this leads me to think any particular physical system could actually experience qualia, or that we could ever had a non-arbitrary test to determine whether it did or not.

But why not? You see how you've already determined that qualia is "just different" - so it's not surprising to see that you reach such a conclusion no matter what angle you look at the problem.

Careful, there. Given how neurotransmitters work, this is an artificial (i.e. statistical) oversimplification-- unless you have a link that indicates otherwise?

As always, and as ever. None of our explanations can be said to be perfect images of reality. They are simply ways for us to conceptualize the issue and explain the observed behavior. Obvioously, dendrites and axons -aren't- logic gates in the strictest sense. That they could operate as such, and that such operation could lead to observed and recognizable functions - even if they aren't using that system is what fascinates me. I'd be positively dumbfounded if dendrites and axons worked exactly like logic gates - mostly because logic gates have been designed, top down. But I'm also dumbfounded as to why someone would feel that we needed to invoke any other explanation given what we do know about logic gates and our biology. There are limits to any framework, and clearly there are limits to this one, but so what? Until we've met that limit, we work with what we have.

Let me ask you this. Let's say you encoded an .mp3 song on a beach using black and white stones as bits. But the problem is, you are the last person on the beach, and you are so lonely that the act of encoding is your last hurrah-- once done, you commit suicide.

Assuming that no information about the encoding process remains, are those stones still an .mp3 song?

They are still information, in the same way that my old 8tracks still have "songs on them" even though I no longer possess the equipment to translate that information into a usable form, yes. But, in the sense of meaning, well - without a language or without a method to decipher that information - it would appear to be noise, static, meaningless. In the same way we could suppose that without our little system of consciousness, whatever that may ultimately be, the universe around us would be noise, if anything at all- from our pov, whatever that was (tons of modifiers we could use to describe this - is light "not light" if you are blind, for example?). In the context of our "qualia" if we didn't have a common language to describe them,and the equipment to use that language- then we couldn't say that they existed at all, in any form, like pebbles on that beach...even if they were there, as in the mp3 in stone. Thankfully, we aren't in such a position, eh?

Conflating self-referential data processing (or any other kind of data processing) with qualia is essentially begging the question-- you are defining qualia in a special way, and your model subsequently seems to make sense.

I'm concluding that qualia doesn't appear to be any different, based upon observational data, and that certain aspects of qualia are entirely recognizable in another class of things we don't see as having the "whateverness" we assume to possess ourselves. I don;t know what that "whatevrness" is supposed to be, but it doesn;t look so unique from this perspective. I'm attempting to explain the unknown by reference to the known. I've given repeated tips of the hat to the fact that, ultimately, it may be dead wrong, but I see no reason to make extraneous assumptions about something that doesn't seem to require them as of yet.

But this conflation is unsatisying philosophically.

Does the universe owe you philosophical satisfaction? I can think of a great many things that are "philosophically unsatisfying" -but so what?

Given that simple mechanism can explain all the functions of the brain, there's no reason why that mechanism would actually experience in the way that I experience redness or emotions.

You keep repeating this, so I know that you aren't actually absorbing this data. Your experience -is- a "simple mechanism". There are all sorts of biological reasons that your subjective experience is, what it is. Your experience of seeing out of your own eyes, for example, needs no special sauce to be explained. You aren't jacked into my eyes. Go down the list checking things off like that and when you're done, talk to me about what reasons are left unanswered? You seem to have a thing against what you perceive to be simple, as in "it;s too simple, that can;t be qualia"...but step onto the af minecraft server to get an idea of how "simple" machine logic can be - and that's in a freindly environment. Biology isn;t always so friendly. These "simple" things like logic gates are easily as complex, when fully contemplated, as your contemplation of qualia itself. As I mention, any question like this applies equally to why logic gates "can logic". There are reasons, those reasons are philosophically unsatisfying to you - but they do exist.

We can (at least hypothetically) make machines to replicate human function, and with ANNs we can make them self-referential. But there's nothing about supposing such a system to actually experience qualia that will improve our observations or understanding of the system.

Oh I beg to differ - perhaps people will spend the time they previously spent searching for the special sauce...actually looking into the clockwork of consciousness - all of this being a given, of course. It suggests a very good place to look....and thats where we're looking, and we're learning much more since looking at it this way than we ever did when we conceived of it as a soul, or any other wholly independent, immaterial, and mysterious "something". In fact, we (and by we I mean you, specifically, in this conversation) seem to be entirely hung up on what amounts to neural folklore, brain based phlogiston- the strange shit we thought up before we even had any idea what it was that we were considering. I'd say that getting people to at least consider that the "special sauce" hypothesis is bankrupt (thus explaining the utter lack of data in that regard) just might be(and I'm suggesting this largely because it already -has- been) useful.