Can Atheism Account For Rationality

[carpedm9587]

Of course the universe exists. I said it so many times. Let's not go into a silly diversion.

It's not just a question of the language that is invented but also its content. All of it is a creation of our mind. Nothing can come out of our mind but concepts/ideas/thoughts. In the gazillion of those concepts/ideas/thoughts that we have created and will continue to create as long as we exist, there is a small subset that represents the objective reality. But those concepts/ideas/thoughts do not crystallize or impose a reality to the universe. It's a model we create in our mind, and by asking the right questions, doing the right inquiries we fine-tune that model.

So far, nothing you have said is in conflict with what I have been saying.

But nothing in that model is real. When people make a claim that such things as laws/principles etc, products of the human mind are real, they are making an unsubstantiated claim. All we can say is that these concepts/ideas/thoughts are useful or not.

And here is where you jump the rails. I am real - I am thinking - what I am thinking is real. I doesn't have existence outside of my thinking it, but it is real. What I am thinking is a symbolic representation of the universe around me. It may be more or less accurate. Indeed, all of science is essentially about making our symbolism concerning the universe as accurate as possible. The principle A = A is a human expression of a universal reality. The reality is objectively real. The representation is necessarily symbolic. The more widely we accept and agree on the meaning of those symbols, the easier it is to communicate. When we do not, discussions like the one between Seer and I result.

Agree 100%.

It's not a question of being outside of the universe - that would qualify as supernatural. The alphabet exists in form as you are attesting but a piece of wood in the shape of an "A" has no meaning except to a human mind.

And no one has suggested otherwise. Likewise, the rock on my desk that is a symbol of my walks with my father is a real rock - and its symbolism is entirely within my mind and the minds of anyone else I share it with.

It brings the point that our creations totally depend on our survival. If the planet is destroyed leaving no traces of our activities then it would be as if we've never existed.

Our symbols depend on our survival - no doubt about it. And I agree that ultimately, there will be no trace of us in this universe (assuming the theory of universal heat death is correct.

[JonathanL]

I DO NOT use 'arguing from ignorance,' Chanus and you are resorting to this fallacy. I DO NOT claim "lack of evidence to the contrary." I address the possibilities and potential of science to achieve new knowledge and goals in the future, and Chawnus, and you are taking the negative skeptical approach as to what science cannot achieve actually without knowledge of the current advancements in science.

Misuse of arguing from ignorance by definition:

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

An argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), or appeal to ignorance ('ignorance' stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It says something is true because it has not yet been proved false. Or, that something is false if it has not yet been proved true.

true
false
unknown
unknowable.[1]

Appeals to ignorance are often used to suggest the other side needs to do the proving. Rules of logic place the burden (responsibility) of proving something on the person making the claim.[2][3]

A logical fallacy is simply a bad argument.[4] Using bad logic does not necessarily mean the argument is false (or true). It is basically a hasty conclusion, one that is arrived at incorrectly.[5] But it still may be convincing to some audiences.[5] This is why it is used in politics and advertising.

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. . . because the skepticism is not grounded in science. Published peer reviewed science does not make the claims Chawnus, also commonly lee_merrill, and you make.

But my argument isn't one based on ignorance. It's based on a fundamental disagreement between my experience of my own sentience and intelligence, and how sentience and intelligence is defined in AI research and neuroscience. If you're going to disprove my argument you're going to have to do better than to misapply "arguing from ignorance".

[carpedm9587]

But my argument isn't one based on ignorance. It's based on a fundamental disagreement between my experience of my own sentience and intelligence, and how sentience and intelligence is defined in AI research and neuroscience. If you're going to disprove my argument you're going to have to do better than to misapply "arguing from ignorance".

OK - this makes me very curious. Can you articulate what it is about your own experience that makes the possibility of machine sentience essentially impossible (assuming I have interpreted your posts correctly). I find nothing in my own experience that leads me to that conclusion, and I presume we are both similarly "sentient" and "rational."

(oh I can hear the riffs on THAT one already... )

[JonathanL]

Actually, I disagree. Declaring such theories "intellectually bankrupt" does not make them so. Indeed, the evidence seems fairly clear to me that mind and brain are inextricably linked, and the latter gives rise to the former. We have no verified evidence of mind without brain, and significant evidence of brain without mind. We have seen that mind can be significantly altered by altering brain. While there is some evidence of the reverse, it largely takes the form of experience in a feedback loop (i.e., creating new neural pathways). I won't unilaterally declare theories of mind as separate from brain to be "intellectually bankrupt," but it is hard to see how someone could sustain such a belief without applying a liberal dose of faith.

Mind and brain being inextricably linked is not the same thing as the mind being reduced (down) to the internal processes of the brain, so you're arguing against something which I haven't even claimed (in the context of this discussion). As for taking things on faith, I would say that the way we "experience" (I'm trying to think of a better word, since the sentience itself doing the "experiencing", so it feels a bit awkward to use the word here) our own sentience is justification enough to believe that whatever relation there is between the brain and the mind the two are still two distinct things. Even if you believe the brain gives rise to the mind because of some sort of interplay between processes in different parts of the brain there's still no good reason to believe anything other than that the mind itself is distinct from the brain and these processes, even if it's dependent on these processes for it's existence.

[carpedm9587]

Mind and brain being inextricably linked is not the same thing as the mind being reduced (down) to the internal processes of the brain, so you're arguing against something which I haven't even claimed (in the context of this discussion).

Fair enough. If I have misunderstood your post, I withdraw the comments.

As for taking things on faith, I would say that the way we "experience" (I'm trying to think of a better word, since the sentience itself doing the "experiencing", so it feels a bit awkward to use the word here) our own sentience is justification enough to believe that whatever relation there is between the brain and the mind the two are still two distinct things. Even if you believe the brain gives rise to the mind because of some sort of interplay between processes in different parts of the brain there's still no good reason to believe anything other than that the mind itself is distinct from the brain and these processes, even if it's dependent on these processes for it's existence.

OK - so I assumed (incorrectly?) that "distinct" = "separate." I made that leap on a presumption: that you believe mind is not only distinct from brain, but could exist without it. Is that not what you believe?

Would you say the "hardware" and "software" analogy is apt here?

[JimL]

Well, you clearly are something other than your brain. Any theory of mind that reduces the mind to simply the internal processes of the brain is clearly intellectually bankrupt

And why exactly is that? Actually it is just the opposite. Any theory of mind that distinguishes it as a thing in its own right, apart from the physical brain, is, on its face, intellectually bankrupt.

and flies in the face of every single experience that we have about what the mind is.

Well, these are simply assertions on your part. What are those experiences you speak of that show you the mind is something other than what goes on in the brain?

Emergentism is one of the few viable theories of mind that a materialist could hold to, and that's ignoring the fact that there is yet not convincing explanation as to how exactly a brain can give rise to a mind/consciousness simply by being complex enough. But under emergentism you (i.e your mind) is clearly not the same thing as your brain, even if your existence is dependent on your brain, because they're still two distinct things.

Emergentism is simply the evolution of the nervous system wherein it produces the functions which we call brain/mind/consciousness. At least that is all that can be gleaned from the available evidence. Not having evidence as to exactly how this happens is not all that surprising, it's not empirically accessable evidence. But simply asserting that the two, the brain and the mind, are two distinct things without a shred of evidence to base it upon, and even more importantly, providing no explanation as to what it is you are actually talking about, i.e. what exactly you think the mind is, or how it itself functions, or interacts with the physical brain, is naught but an assertion of faith.

[JonathanL]

OK - so I assumed (incorrectly?) that "distinct" = "separate." I made that leap on a presumption: that you believe mind is not only distinct from brain, but could exist without it. Is that not what you believe?

Would you say the "hardware" and "software" analogy is apt here?

There's atleast two different issues here. One is what I personally believe, which you have correctly identified as the mind being distinct from, and being able to exist without the brain. Then there is the second issue which is, if you believe that the brain gives rise to the mind, through whatever mechanisms, is it justifiable to believe that the mind can be equated with these mechanisms/processes, or does it still make more sense to say that it sort of "emerges" from, or "hitches a ride" on (and I'm not intending these two expressions to be equated) processes, is dependent on them for it's existence, but is still it's own separate thing?

My claim is that it makes no sense what so ever to believe that the mind can be equated with the neurological processes of the brain, but that it's slightly more justifiable to believe that these processes could give rise to the mind. Although as you can clearly tell from my other comments in this thread I'm highly skeptical of that as well.

[JonathanL]

And why exactly is that? Actually it is just the opposite. Any theory of mind that distinguishes it as a thing in its own right, apart from the physical brain, is, on its face, intellectually bankrupt.



Well, these are simply assertions on your part. What are those experiences you speak of that show you the mind is something other than what goes on in the brain?

Emergentism is simply the evolution of the nervous system wherein it produces the functions which we call brain/mind/consciousness. At least that is all that can be gleaned from the available evidence. Not having evidence as to exactly how this happens is not all that surprising, it's not empirically accessable evidence. But simply asserting that the two, the brain and the mind, are two distinct things without a shred of evidence to base it upon, and even more importantly, providing no explanation as to what it is you are actually talking about, i.e. what exactly you think the mind is, or how it itself functions, or interacts with the physical brain, is naught but an assertion of faith.

It takes about 5 seconds of introspection on your own consciousness to come to the conclusion that the mind and the brain are two separate entities. You do not even have to have a complete, or even working definition of what the mind is to clearly see that whatever it is that your mind is made up of, it's clearly not the same thing as the biological matter that constitutes the brain, or the neurological processes going on in there. Even if you believe that it's these neurological processes that give rise to the brain these processes and the mind that they (supposedly) give rise to are still clearly two distinct phenomena.

[JonathanL]

OK - this makes me very curious. Can you articulate what it is about your own experience that makes the possibility of machine sentience essentially impossible (assuming I have interpreted your posts correctly). I find nothing in my own experience that leads me to that conclusion, and I presume we are both similarly "sentient" and "rational."

(oh I can hear the riffs on THAT one already... )

It's basically an issue about "correlating physical brain activity with mental events" not being the same thing as "adequately explaining how the behavior of neurons can give rise to subjectively felt mental states", as Jeffrey M. Schwarts puts it in his book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force:

Source: Schwartz, Jeffrey M.. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (p. 28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

. . . so, although correlating physical brain activity with mental events is an unquestionable scientific triumph, it has left many students of the brain unsatisfied. For neither neuroscientist nor philosopher has adequately explained how the behavior of neurons can give rise to subjectively felt mental states. Rather, the puzzle of how patterns of neuronal activity become transformed into subjective awareness, the neurobiologist Robert Doty argued in 1998, “remains the cardinal mystery of human existence.” Yet there is no faster way to discomfit a room of neuroscientists than to confront them with this mind-body problem, or mind-matter problem, as it is variously called. To avoid it, cellular neurophysiologists position their blinders so their vision falls on little but the particulars of nerve conduction—ions moving in and out, electrical pulses traveling along an axon, neurotransmitters flowing across a synapse. As the evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin puts it, “One restricts one’s questions to the domain where materialism is unchallenged.”

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As far as I'm aware, Schwartz himself believes that there is no reason what so ever to believe that something like the soul exists, so this is not even someone on the same side of the issue as me (and someone who is clearly more educated than me on these issues), stating that scientists simply because scientists have managed to correlate brain activity with mental events they have still not come one step closer to explaining "subjectively felt mental states" (Of which sentience would be the entire collection of these subjective mental states, or part of them)

Or as he later states in the same chapter:

Source: Schwartz, Jeffrey M.. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (pp. 29-30). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

We needn’t belabor the point that there is a very real difference between understanding the physiological mechanisms of perception and having a conscious perceptual experience. For now, let’s say the latter has something to do with awareness of, and attention to, what is delivered for inspection by the perceptual machinery of the central nervous system. This conscious experience, this mental state called a sense of red, is not coherently described, much less entirely explained, by mapping corresponding neural activity. Neuroscientists have successfully identified the neural correlates of pain, of depression, of anxiety. None of those achievements, either, amounts to a full explanation of the mental experience that neural activity underlies. The explanatory gap has never been bridged. And the inescapable reason is this: a neural state is not a mental state. The mind is not the brain, though it depends on the material brain for its existence (as far as we know). As the philosopher Colin McGinn says, “The problem with materialism is that it tries to construct the mind out of properties that refuse to add up to mentality.” This is not exactly the view you find expressed at the weekly tea of a university neuroscience department. For the most part, the inevitable corollary of materialism known as identity theory—which equates brain with mind and regards the sort of neuron-to-neuron firing pattern leading to the perception of color as a full explanation of our sense of red—has the field by the short hairs. The materialist position has become virtually synonymous with science, and anything nonmaterialist is imbued with a spooky sort of mysticism (cue the Twilight Zone theme). Yet it is a misreading of science and its history to conclude that our insights into nature have reduced everything to the material.

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Italics and bolding mine, in both citations.

[Zara]

Ah yes. Not in the series itself, but it was always something of a disappointment that there was never a story about Pope R Daneel Olivaw.
As a precis of how prophecy works (with a few not quites), Sheldon was a good example.

- read the Foundation series not the hardcore spoilers that follows. These are great books -





He was in the series - he (one of the pre-eternals) choose to stay behind and guide events towards the choice in book 4; he was 'the third foundation' in so far as he guided some events at a galactic scale - he was also in the prequals as one of the archetics behind the Seldon plan along with Seldon himself. While the robots were compelled to protect humanity, they also felt that for Galaxia a choice needed to be made by the essence of humanity rather than one being made for them. That choice if you recall, was not for technological control or psychic control but for Gaia.

[JonathanL]

Someone kindly pointed out to me via PM that Schwartz does seem to believe in the existence of the soul. I had gotten the impression from reading the book I cited from that he was skeptical of it's existence, but it could very well be that I misread him in this regard. I seem to recall him either stating that he does not believe the mind could survive the death of the body, or getting the impression that he was highly critical, and dismissive, of (Cartesian and otherwise) dualism, and one it was probably one or the other that gave me the impression that he believed something like the soul didn't exist.

Or I could just have mixed him up with another person. That possibility also exists.

[Tassman]

Correct, computers are programmed by people who care about logic and reason and right conclusions. Not so with natural forces.

It's just the same. People are programmed by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. There is no reason why non-organic organisms such as AI will not be able replicate and surpass human intelligence. It’s the same principle. We are merely an assemblage of evolved organic algorithms just as AI computers are a non-organic assemblage of similar algorithms. Both achieve the same end result.

[seer]

Maybe. See below.

So first, we have a case of multiple definitions with important nuances between them from different sources. Isn't language wonderful!

I agree that the Merriam Webster's definition you cited would preclude a chicken from being considered rational. Indeed, even the definition I cited would preclude that. I note that you omitted the second definition from Merriam Webster, which is 1b to the 1a of the one you cited. Merriam does that when two definitions are considered essentially of equal use. That one says, "relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason."

Look - here's the rub. The chicken cannot be considered "rational" as a being because it lacks the ability to reason. However, I can train a chicken to push four bits of corn into a pile every time I clap twice, and then clap twice again. It's a neat trick, and amazes people cause the chicken is providing a rational answer to a mathematical question. The ANSWER conforms to reason and is rational. The process by which it was derived is not rational and the chicken is not rational.

The point is Carp, according to some definitions of rational I am correct, according to others you are correct.

[seer]

It's just the same. People are programmed by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. There is no reason why non-organic organisms such as AI will not be able replicate and surpass human intelligence. It’s the same principle. We are merely an assemblage of evolved organic algorithms just as AI computers are a non-organic assemblage of similar algorithms. Both achieve the same end result.

No it is not the same result, with AI you have the rational (us) designing and creating the rational (AI). We us you have the non-rational (laws of nature) creating the rational (us). Completely different.

[Zara]

It's just the same. People are programmed by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. There is no reason why non-organic organisms such as AI will not be able replicate and surpass human intelligence. It’s the same principle. We are merely an assemblage of evolved organic algorithms just as AI computers are a non-organic assemblage of similar algorithms. Both achieve the same end result.

This is by no means true or even relevant. People are not 'programmed' by natural selection - AI is not an 'organism'. It also depends on what you mean by intelligence, a calculator can already surpass a human's ability to calculate.

There is actually a strong argument why it is not 'just the same':

John Searle has produced a more formal version of the argument of which the Chinese Room forms a part. He presented the first version in 1984. The version given below is from 1990.The only part of the argument which should be controversial is A3 and it is this point which the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove.

He begins with three axioms:

(A1) "Programs are formal (syntactic)."

A program uses syntax to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics of the symbols. It knows where to put the symbols and how to move them around, but it doesn't know what they stand for or what they mean. For the program, the symbols are just physical objects like any others.

(A2) "Minds have mental contents (semantics)."

Unlike the symbols used by a program, our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.

(A3) "Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantics."

This is what the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove: the Chinese room has syntax (because there is a man in there moving symbols around). The Chinese room has no semantics (because, according to Searle, there is no one or nothing in the room that understands what the symbols mean). Therefore, having syntax is not enough to generate semantics.

Searle posits that these lead directly to this conclusion:

(C1) Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds.

This should follow without controversy from the first three: Programs don't have semantics. Programs have only syntax, and syntax is insufficient for semantics. Every mind has semantics. Therefore no programs are minds.

This much of the argument is intended to show that artificial intelligence can never produce a machine with a mind by writing programs that manipulate symbols. The remainder of the argument addresses a different issue. Is the human brain running a program? In other words, is the computational theory of mind correct?[g] He begins with an axiom that is intended to express the basic modern scientific consensus about brains and minds:

(A4) Brains cause minds.

Searle claims that we can derive "immediately" and "trivially"[36] that:

(C2) Any other system capable of causing minds would have to have causal powers (at least) equivalent to those of brains.

Brains must have something that causes a mind to exist. Science has yet to determine exactly what it is, but it must exist, because minds exist. Searle calls it "causal powers". "Causal powers" is whatever the brain uses to create a mind. If anything else can cause a mind to exist, it must have "equivalent causal powers". "Equivalent causal powers" is whatever else that could be used to make a mind.

And from this he derives the further conclusions:

(C3) Any artifact that produced mental phenomena, any artificial brain, would have to be able to duplicate the specific causal powers of brains, and it could not do that just by running a formal program.

This follows from C1 and C2: Since no program can produce a mind, and "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, it follows that programs do not have "equivalent causal powers."

(C4) The way that human brains actually produce mental phenomena cannot be solely by virtue of running a computer program.

Since programs do not have "equivalent causal powers", "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, and brains produce minds, it follows that brains do not use programs to produce minds.