Reductionism And Materialism Are Not Scientific Givens

[Ouroboros]

How about... Nos scisco sic nos es ?

 

We ask thus we are?

Then "I am" very little. I tend to tell more than ask.

 

 

Am I Satan instead now?

[Antlerman]

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism.

Davka please forgive me if my response seems biting. I think you’re an intelligent guy, but I don’t believe you’ve presented much of an argument for reductionism. Mostly what I see here is that you’ve repeated the same dubious promises we’ve been hearing from some people for at least 60 years, that AI is 20 years away.

 

What does complexity mean to you? Why is a complex natural system complex?

I'd like to be cautious about creating another long discussion about AI, as I think we covered that quite a lot and the agreement seemed to be, at least between us, that to get consciousness out of it where it would be anything on par with nature, is that could only be done by using nature itself, coaxing it to use its soup to do its thing in emergence of mind and subsequent self-awareness through consciousness. In short, nothing we can create "from scratch", not manipulating or sparking existent systems would result in what we see in nature. Right?

 

It just seemed we got a bit mired in that discussion and now we're back on track. I'm enjoying where this is moving focus to. Yes?

[Legion]

It just seemed we got a bit mired in that discussion and now we're back on track. I'm enjoying where this is moving focus to. Yes?

Agreed. I guess I'm a bit perturbed that Davka has brought it back up.

 

What can I say? I'm an emotional being.

[Antlerman]

It just seemed we got a bit mired in that discussion and now we're back on track. I'm enjoying where this is moving focus to. Yes?

Agreed. I guess I'm a bit perturbed that Davka has brought it back up.

 

What can I say? I'm an emotional being.

No problem. I'm really enjoying our conversation in this thread. I agreed with you about focusing on reductionism. I was glad to get to it. Now you asked about alternatives? Did we go anywhere with that far? Want to?

[NotBlinded]

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism.

Davka please forgive me if my response seems biting. I think you’re an intelligent guy, but I don’t believe you’ve presented much of an argument for reductionism. Mostly what I see here is that you’ve repeated the same dubious promises we’ve been hearing from some people for at least 60 years, that AI is 20 years away.

 

What does complexity mean to you? Why is a complex natural system complex?

I'd like to be cautious about creating another long discussion about AI, as I think we covered that quite a lot and the agreement seemed to be, at least between us, that to get consciousness out of it where it would be anything on par with nature, is that could only be done by using nature itself, coaxing it to use its soup to do its thing in emergence of mind and subsequent self-awareness through consciousness. In short, nothing we can create "from scratch", not manipulating or sparking existent systems would result in what we see in nature. Right?

 

It just seemed we got a bit mired in that discussion and now we're back on track. I'm enjoying where this is moving focus to. Yes?

[Legion]

Now you asked about alternatives? Did we go anywhere with that far? Want to?

Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing what is presented as alternatives to reductionism. I have a few ideas that I’ve stolen, and I wonder if they’re close to the ideas you guys have stolen.

[Antlerman]

Point two:

 

Consciousness does appear to be a function of neural complexity. I don't think anyone would claim that a single-celled animal is self-aware, and very few would claim that an insect is self-aware. But dogs? Elephants? Somewhere along the scale from single-cell to complex higher animal, we begin to see evidence of intelligence and self-awareness.

The distinctions of all these have covered in previous posts. I see a conflation of all these words happening in your use that equates consciousness with self-awareness. I don't. Awareness does not mean you have to be able to process it that you are aware you are aware. And yes, an amoeba is aware of its environment. How else would it survive?

 

As to empathy, compassion, "love" - these, too, appear to be a function of complexity. Reptiles don't display empathy. Fish are pretty cold when it comes to compassion.

I'll respond to this to restate in a different way what's been covered. They don't show empathy, compassion, love, etc, because they aren't at that level of consciousness. The higher up you go with the 'mind' you in fact DO see those things in animals before the human level. OM has given examples of this.

 

But the question then comes, if a cat, or a monkey, etc shows it, then it is NOT a cultural development of humans. It's something in common that we share. Something that is non-rational (not arising from Reason). Something more fundamental, showing greater depth at higher levels. What might that be? Do you wish to suggest that love is just a 'freebie' byproduct glitch of brains that is "just there"? Some have suggested that, and it fails to persuade on nearly every level.

 

Why love? Why compassion? Why?

 

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism. My skin cells are not aware, and neither are my individual brain cells.

Good god, I would hope they are. Otherwise they'd loose cohesion and fall off your body. And then what?

 

I don't hear any argument for reductionism in this.

[Shyone]

Good Lord, you people talk a lot!

 

Having slogged my way through the past 5 pages of this thread, I find myself wanting to make a few points about AI and the human brain.

 

Point one:

 

Most computers are using between 1GB and 8GB of RAM, which is memory accessible to any running program. Beyond this, they run virtual RAM from the hard drive, which is so slow as to be impractical for any kind of AI application.

 

The human brain, by contrast, has about 100,000GB (100TB) of RAM, assuming each neuron is equivalent to a single on/off bit. So when we try to create AI programs, the best we can hope to achieve might be somewhere on the order of an ant's brain. In fact, one of the most fascinating experiments I've seen is an antlike robot that has rudimentary AI problem-solving capacity - but I digress.

 

Computing power has been doubling every 18 months since the 1950s. Assuming it continues to grow at this speed, we are still about 25 years away from a computer that has enough RAM to mimic the complexity of the human brain.

 

Point two:

 

Consciousness does appear to be a function of neural complexity. I don't think anyone would claim that a single-celled animal is self-aware, and very few would claim that an insect is self-aware. But dogs? Elephants? Somewhere along the scale from single-cell to complex higher animal, we begin to see evidence of intelligence and self-awareness.

 

As to empathy, compassion, "love" - these, too, appear to be a function of complexity. Reptiles don't display empathy. Fish are pretty cold when it comes to compassion. I've never seen an ant that cared about anything beyond food and pheremones. But again, when we get to the more complex animals we start to see behavior such as sharing, grieving, and rescuing fellow creatures.

 

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism. My skin cells are not aware, and neither are my individual brain cells. But collectively, they have enough processing power to host this wetware package I call "me."

 

Whether or not computers will ever become aware is still an open question. But it's one we should have an answer to in the next 20-30 years. If self-awareness is a function of complexity, then we need to wait until computers are sufficiently complex before making any judgement calls on the issue.

So well put, so cogent, so concise. Well done.

 

I've been trying to say that for several pages, but it never comes out just right.

 

I love my computer. In a few years, it will love me back.

[Shyone]

It reminds us that what we do to each other we do to ourselves.

 

All the rest of it is - like my son now says - pure semantics.

I find that there is wisdom in a lot of writing. I would like, sometimes, to collect that wisdom and organize it in such a way that it would be useful to others (and myself), but that doesn't work well. Context is important for some wisdom, and that's where religion is deficient.

 

The curious thing is that I can recognize this wisdom. Me. I can do that. I may not originate wisdom, but I can recognize it, and that is part of our mutual humanity. We should always remain humble enough to see that others may have something important to say.

 

Right at the very top of my list of important things that we should all know and remember is the Golden Rule.

 

And it doesn't matter who really said it first.

[Guest Davka]

Point two:

 

Consciousness does appear to be a function of neural complexity. I don't think anyone would claim that a single-celled animal is self-aware, and very few would claim that an insect is self-aware. But dogs? Elephants? Somewhere along the scale from single-cell to complex higher animal, we begin to see evidence of intelligence and self-awareness.

The distinctions of all these have covered in previous posts. I see a conflation of all these words happening in your use that equates consciousness with self-awareness. I don't. Awareness does not mean you have to be able to process it that you are aware you are aware. And yes, an amoeba is aware of its environment. How else would it survive?

Self-awareness is not the same as awareness. An amoeba does not need to "think" in order to survive - it can get by just fine with reflex and autonomic responses.

 

As to empathy, compassion, "love" - these, too, appear to be a function of complexity. Reptiles don't display empathy. Fish are pretty cold when it comes to compassion.

I'll respond to this to restate in a different way what's been covered. They don't show empathy, compassion, love, etc, because they aren't at that level of consciousness. The higher up you go with the 'mind' you in fact DO see those things in animals before the human level. OM has given examples of this.

 

What do you see as the difference between "higher mind" and "more complex brain"? And - in answer to an earlier question - by "more complex" I mean "having a greater number of neurons and neural connections."

 

 

 

But the question then comes, if a cat, or a monkey, etc shows it, then it is NOT a cultural development of humans. It's something in common that we share. Something that is non-rational (not arising from Reason). Something more fundamental, showing greater depth at higher levels. What might that be? Do you wish to suggest that love is just a 'freebie' byproduct glitch of brains that is "just there"? Some have suggested that, and it fails to persuade on nearly every level.

 

Why love? Why compassion? Why?

 

That is indeed the question. And even more difficult - why appreciation of abstract beauty? Why the ability to be transported by a sunset?

 

I can suggest evolutionary reasons for the development of "love" and "compassion" - both are advantageous to species survival. I have a harder time with beauty, poetry, music, etc.

 

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism. My skin cells are not aware, and neither are my individual brain cells.

Good god, I would hope they are. Otherwise they'd loose cohesion and fall off your body. And then what?

 

Smartass.

 

My bad - I should have written "self-aware."

 

I don't hear any argument for reductionism in this.

 

It's not classic reductionism, I grant you. But it is another way of saying that the whole is no more nor less than the sum of the parts, and that we can study the whole by studying the parts.

 

I don't think we have enough information to really grok self-awareness quite yet.

[Shyone]

That is indeed the question. And even more difficult - why appreciation of abstract beauty? Why the ability to be transported by a sunset?

 

I can suggest evolutionary reasons for the development of "love" and "compassion" - both are advantageous to species survival. I have a harder time with beauty, poetry, music, etc.

 

I don't think we have enough information to really grok self-awareness quite yet.

Dissecting the rationale behind appreciating colors and beauty, both natural and man-made, is so unromantic, but it can be done.

 

Think of it by association. Goodness is peace, badness is violence. Goodness is sunset, badness is thunderstorm on the horizon. Goodness is people sharing or trading (food, stories, music, clothing, etc.). Badness is stealing, killing, violence, disruption of civil order.

 

Watch your dog when you take him/her outside. They smell, look around, close their eyes, and just enjoy that beauty of nature. It beats the bad stuff that scares them.

[Guest Davka]

Just for kicks, I thought I'd move the conversation forward by going backwards. It struck me that this comment of a-man's was never properly addressed:

 

I think the last line is important, that "rationality is not itself operating from the final Archimedian point of all possible worlds." Our types of evidence are within our current stage of understanding, just as logical and rational as theirs was at theirs. We would not have survived if it wasn't. But at each stage, as Mythic overtook Magic, they imagined themselves at the pinnacle of enlightenment. As Wilber says so well of Modernity, that it says "No more myth! No more Ascent" - that is "Ascend to Reason and no further."" Each stage of necessity imagines its worldview the enlightened one. Myth made more sense than Magic. Reason makes more sense than Myth, and so on.

 

What I think I'm hearing here is that you want to move our thinking about self-consciousness beyond the Modern world, with the Ascent of Reason, and into the PostModern, which is more typified by chaos theory and quantum incomprehensibility than by Euclidean geometry or Newtonian physics.

 

I'm interested in hearing more about how you think we might do this. It seems to me that reason (with a small "r") will always be the guiding force which moves us from Magic through Myth, through Reason and beyond. So what do you think a postmodern rationalism will look like?

[Legion]

Davka now I’m really curious. Forget what I think about AI. What does complexity mean to you? Why do you think a complex natural system is complex?

[Legion]

Well, I’ve asked Davka what his idea of complexity is, let me try to offer one also. I have maybe only a vague idea of it, but let me try. I think it may tie some things in with his question to Antlerman about reason.

 

I think a complex natural system has closed loops of causation. They have historically been referred to as paradoxes such as, the chicken and the egg or the self-fulfilling prophesy. I think every living cell is complex. If we partition a eucaryotic cell into nucleus and cytoplasm then we see a ‘paradox’. Without a nucleus, metabolism (the activity of the cytoplasm) has no guide, and without metabolic behavior the nucleus cannot be maintained or repaired.

 

I think even some formal languages of mathematics support complexity. Here they are sometimes known as impredicativities. And I think only recently have some mathematicians begun to sort out which of these ‘make sense’ (are rational) and which ‘don’t make sense’ (are irrational and genuine paradoxes).

[Antlerman]

Before I get to my response, I'll supply this map I found that is a good reference you might enjoy.

 

But before I forget my thoughts to where I want to go... I think its important to understand that no one way of thinking about something is the definitive explanation of all. Defining consciousness narrowly as 'self-awareness', will in fact place limits around how we can perceive or conceive of the universe (this ties to what I always talk about with language). That is always the difficulty with creating categories to talk about things within, such as measurements of IQ, for instance which may be designed for one purpose, but become extended as some absolute defining rule of the way things are.

 

Anyway, the map: (obviously click on it to enlarge. It may be good to save it out to enlarge it further with a viewing program)

 

 

[Legion]

Thanks for the diagram Antlerman. I think it does hint at the difficulty of the terrain.

 

But it loses a great deal of credibility for me since it doesn’t mention Robert Rosen. He did after all cite many of these others here, Bertallanfy and Ross Ashby for instance. And Stuart Kauffman has cited Rosen.

[Antlerman]

Thanks for the diagram Antlerman. I think it does hint at the difficulty of the terrain.

 

But it loses a great deal of credibility for me since it doesn’t mention Robert Rosen. He did after all cite many of these others here, Bertallanfy and Ross Ashby for instance. And Stuart Kauffman has cited Rosen.

I wouldn't be concerned about that. He does state in the last paragraph of his explanation of the diagram, "This list is not exhaustive; but it is representative, based on number of citations, general recognition, and importance in the historical development in the area of research." It's not a list of 'founders', but the more published, etc, even if they base their works of other others in the field. It's a 'representative' list.

[Antlerman]

Thanks for the diagram Antlerman. I think it does hint at the difficulty of the terrain.

 

But it loses a great deal of credibility for me since it doesn’t mention Robert Rosen. He did after all cite many of these others here, Bertallanfy and Ross Ashby for instance. And Stuart Kauffman has cited Rosen.

I wouldn't be concerned about that. He does state in the last paragraph of his explanation of the diagram, "This list is not exhaustive; but it is representative, based on number of citations, general recognition, and importance in the historical development in the area of research." It's not a list of 'founders', but the more published, etc, even if they base their works of other others in the field.

 

It's a 'representative' list, and in that sense it's accurate, even if it is a subjective, limited selection of notable names. Someone else may cite other names, and it still be representative.

[Legion]

Thanks for the diagram Antlerman. I think it does hint at the difficulty of the terrain.

 

But it loses a great deal of credibility for me since it doesn’t mention Robert Rosen. He did after all cite many of these others here, Bertallanfy and Ross Ashby for instance. And Stuart Kauffman has cited Rosen.

I wouldn't be concerned about that. He does state in the last paragraph of his explanation of the diagram, "This list is not exhaustive; but it is representative, based on number of citations, general recognition, and importance in the historical development in the area of research." It's not a list of 'founders', but the more published, etc, even if they base their works of other others in the field. It's a 'representative' list.

Alright, but I still think there ought to be a bubble there labeled “relational biology” with Robert Rosen’s name pointing to it. I think his contributions to the field and his historical importance has yet to be fully realized.

 

And I want my blanket!

[Antlerman]

Alright, but I still think there ought to be a bubble there labeled “relational biology” with Robert Rosen’s name pointing to it. I think his contributions to the field and his historical importance has yet to be fully realized.

 

And I want my blanket!

There, there... we all know he's brilliant.

[Legion]

Seriously though Antlerman, I think many of the people mentioned here on the cybernetic side of things are reductionists, despite being depicted as being researchers of complexity. I think Von Neuman, Wolfram, and Coway believe that Turing machines can simulate any natural system.

[Guest Davka]

Davka now I’m really curious. Forget what I think about AI. What does complexity mean to you? Why do you think a complex natural system is complex?

 

I'm going to give an extremely simple answer to this, partly because I think it's helpful for communication, but mostly because I cannot resist the irony of trying to simplify complexity.

 

Complexity occurs when a large number of components are interconnected with a large number of connections.

 

These components can be individual cells, organelles within a cell, individuals in a society, individual bits of information, individual computers in a network, individual words in a language, and so on. I cannot give an answer as to exactly when any system reaches the tipping point between a simple system and a complex system - I tend to believe that it's a graduated scale rather than a specific tipping point, but that's just my opinion.

 

As to why a complex natural system is complex, I'm out of my depth here. I know that biologists and ecologists speak of simple and complex systems, but I don't have the background to do more than hazard a guess.

 

When I'm speaking of complexity in the brain, my simple definition is "a brain with lots of neurons and lots of neural pathways." I suppose I should add "lots of folds" as well.

 

I know that the less intelligent the animal, the smaller the brain and the fewer folds it has. Again, I have no idea where the tipping point between pure instinct and true consciousness is, in terms of brain complexity. But I think it's safe to assume that, if we want to create true AI, we would have to have a computer with an analogous number of available RAM bits, ROM chips making connections between those available bits, and processor(s) capable of routing as many simultaneous operations as the brain of an intelligent animal. IOW, we would need the machine equivalent of, say, a dog's brain in order to get the kind of results we can get from experiments in canine intelligence.

 

Dammit, I went and got more complicated after all.

[Shyone]

 

I know that the less intelligent the animal, the smaller the brain and the fewer folds it has. Again, I have no idea where the tipping point between pure instinct and true consciousness is, in terms of brain complexity. But I think it's safe to assume that, if we want to create true AI, we would have to have a computer with an analogous number of available RAM bits, ROM chips making connections between those available bits, and processor(s) capable of routing as many simultaneous operations as the brain of an intelligent animal. IOW, we would need the machine equivalent of, say, a dog's brain in order to get the kind of results we can get from experiments in canine intelligence.

 

Dammit, I went and got more complicated after all.

Sorry to butt in, but this fascinates me.

 

I wonder (contrary to everything we think we know) if humans can design and build a computer that is smarter in every way one can measure intelligence that the human brain.

 

We know the capacity and computing speed of the brain. If that is the limit, I think we can do better.

 

Nature took millions (actually billions) of years of work on the nervous system. I think that, (ironically) with the help of computers we can build a computer that will blow human intelligence out of the water.

 

And it will love, and fear, and ponder, and feel empathy (if only for other computers...), and all that we take such pride in feeling.

 

And colonizing another planet will be a lot simpler with AI.

[Guest Davka]

I wonder (contrary to everything we think we know) if humans can design and build a computer that is smarter in every way one can measure intelligence that the human brain.

 

We know the capacity and computing speed of the brain. If that is the limit, I think we can do better.

 

It's not only possible, anyone in IT will tell you that it's inevitable. We will eventually be building computers which are analogous in complexity and processing speed to the human brain, and we will go beyond this limit.

 

Whether or not we will ever see true AI is another question entirely. I think we'll have to wait until we have approximated a chimp's brain at the very least before we can do any serious experimentation. If the reductionist view is correct, we should see AI develop spontaneously at some point.

 

I tend to think that it will require us to build computers which in turn use AI-simulation to design AI computers. If we can simulate a survival of the fittest scenario with a bias towards future planning, self-reliance, and even self-preservation, we should be able to stand back, let the program run, and eventually see machines which say "i process, therefore i am."

[Legion]

Complexity occurs when a large number of components are interconnected with a large number of connections.

I think we may be bumping up against some limits of our language Davka. To my mind, what you’re describing is a degree of complication. I have no doubt that computers even as they are constructed today, are complicated. But “complex” means something different to me. We may have to agree to disagree I guess.

 

As to why a complex natural system is complex, I'm out of my depth here. I know that biologists and ecologists speak of simple and complex systems, but I don't have the background to do more than hazard a guess.

That seems honest enough to me. I think though that those who wish to claim the creation of complex artifacts would do well to know why they are complex.

 

What did you think of my idea of complexity above?