The Gap Between Our Ears

reply to post by Wandering Scribe


I meant to mention that Andrew and I had a length correspondence and came to the conclusion that we and several other people that Andrew and I have come to know all came to hold this and few minor variances on the philosophy of "God is Time". All of us labeled it thusly, not "Time is God". We have all been in communication for a year now and we add more and more members all the time.

I do not believe in anything supernatural. I do however believe that we have yet to probe the depths of what is natural. I differ, (I think) from you in that, I believe someday, we will explain the unexplained levels of our consciousness. And I KNOW it will only be possible by investigating our cognition and its hardware.

thanks again, scribe

In Humanity
Daniel

reply to post by Philodemus


Nice to see ya around as well, great op and thoughts.

What means have you used to prove to yourself that it is impossible for an intelligence to create a system, or life forms?

Please realize that proving that stories written in books dont equal reality, does not prove that an intelligence did not create this universe, or an intelligence have something to do with life on earth (i.e. Christianity is wrong, therefore an intelligence didnt create this universe).

You do seem to have great interest in philosophy, I will take a look around that site, and hopefully we can have some interesting discussions sometime.

reply to post by ImaFungi


I do not posit that intelligence could not have created life. I have not said that.

What I have said is that "supernatural" intelligence could not have created life. And in many cases, intelligence is often disembodied seemingly to imply that intelligence alone can create life. Intelligence means consciousness. To be conscious is to be conscious of something. To be conscious of something, something must exist. If things exist that inform consciousness then those things exist independent of consciousness. Therefore, to exist is to have identity. Identity of self is what consciousness uses to differentiate between itself and the objects of its awareness. Consciousness plus objects of consciousness equals existence in total. This is natural, not supernatural. Consciousness does not exist in a void and void of senses.

I would never deny that intelligent life could create life, especially considering how close we are to doing just that. But we are not "gods" and in a few hundred years we will be doing just that, creating life.

Please feel free to chat with me anytime.

Originally posted by Philodemus
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

I do not posit that intelligence could not have created life. I have not said that.

What I have said is that "supernatural" intelligence could not have created life. And in many cases, intelligence is often disembodied seemingly to imply that intelligence alone can create life. Intelligence means consciousness. To be conscious is to be conscious of something. To be conscious of something, something must exist. If things exist that inform consciousness then those things exist independent of consciousness. Therefore, to exist is to have identity. Identity of self is what consciousness uses to differentiate between itself and the objects of its awareness. Consciousness plus objects of consciousness equals existence in total. This is natural, not supernatural. Consciousness does not exist in a void and void of senses.

I would never deny that intelligent life could create life, especially considering how close we are to doing just that. But we are not "gods" and in a few hundred years we will be doing just that, creating life.

Please feel free to chat with me anytime.

I am unsure about intelligence requiring consciousness. What of that supercomputer that won jeopardy, would you not say it has some essence of intelligence?

Also I do not believe in supernatural, we are natural beings, yet if a human from thousands of years ago could see what we are capable they would claim we are supernatural. Only nature exists, so everything is natural, what isnt nature?

If we create life forms, that would not exist if it were not for our intelligent motives and intents, why would we not be their gods, their creators?

reply to post by ImaFungi


Would the intelligence of the computer exist without its intelligence having been programmed into it by a human intelligence? Human intelligence being sourced in consciousness, the computer’s intelligence is therefore sourced in a consciousness, yeah?
As for being the “gods” of life we create, I suppose it depends on how you define “god”.

Originally posted by Philodemus
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Would the intelligence of the computer exist without its intelligence having been programmed into it by a human intelligence? Human intelligence being sourced in consciousness, the computer’s intelligence is therefore sourced in a consciousness, yeah?
As for being the “gods” of life we create, I suppose it depends on how you define “god”.

Does your first sentence negate the fact that the computer has some aspect of intelligence( the entirety of human knowledge stored in its memory)? Would human intelligence exist without the existence of order, patter, sophistication and complexity of nature?

There are 2 definitions of God in my opinion. One is the creator of a system who remains outside the system (I.e. an intelligence creating the universe and not interacting in it. This would be the God or creator of all that exists and arises in the system, this does not mean God just moved my hand right now, but that if God created the universe the universe owes its existence to God). In the same way, once this system exists by God or by nature, if intelligence arises in this system, it to can produce actions and create things which owe their existence to the intelligent choices of the creator. In this sense our parents are gods, as in their choices created us and we would not exist without them. In this sense if we master knowledge of DNA and material and create AI and intelligent beings, they owe their existence to our actions and decisions. That being said, objectively (this is where the lines of life and intelligence and free will are blurry), All that occurs in this system is a work of nature. If you would like to argue that natural physical and chemical processes over time created complex beings governed by complex mechanics, and invented consciousness, then I would see a congruent situation to those complex beings then creating more complex conscious beings, and it would just be a big chain of cause and affect and potentials, all governed by the laws of physics and nature.

I do believe in free will, that all humans tomorrow if they wanted to, would be within their will to sit down and begin to die. But there is a large likelihood that will not happen. There is the urge to continue to live and progress and create and this is a chemical and physical urge.

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Does your first sentence negate the fact that the computer has some aspect of intelligence( the entirety of human knowledge stored in its memory)? Would human intelligence exist without the existence of order, patter, sophistication and complexity of nature?

Human intelligence would not exist without a consciousness able to form concepts and then integrating the information from the objects of its consciousness in to a hierarchy of knowledge. I suppose I should have asked you to define intelligence too. Can you for me? That way I think we will be on the same page. I think we are devolving into a disagreement simply because we are both using words and just assuming the other defines them as we do.

There are 2 definitions of God in my opinion. One is the creator of a system who remains outside the system (I.e. an intelligence creating the universe and not interacting in it. This would be the God or creator of all that exists and arises in the system,

Which is the definition I think you and I both agree is outside our means of awareness.

if intelligence arises in this system, it to can produce actions and create things which owe their existence to the intelligent choices of the creator.

Is "god" really the right word in this case then? Creator is the most accurate, isn't it? I'm not sure I'm getting you yet.

I do believe in free will, that all humans tomorrow if they wanted to, would be within their will to sit down and begin to die.

This is the argument I use against Christian apologist who ask me what obligation we have to "good" "right" "true" if there is no god. They ask me what obligation I have to play by the rules of the game. Simply, I do not have an obligation. Man must act. Man must choose to be rational.

There is the urge to continue to live and progress and create and this is a chemical and physical urge.

I agree. There is an urge, but no obligation. At any point man can choose to lie down and die.

Originally posted by Philodemus

Human intelligence would not exist without a consciousness able to form concepts and then integrating the information from the objects of its consciousness in to a hierarchy of knowledge. I suppose I should have asked you to define intelligence too. Can you for me? That way I think we will be on the same page. I think we are devolving into a disagreement simply because we are both using words and just assuming the other defines them as we do.

Hm, interesting. So are you concepts depend on consciousness to exist? Isnt reality itself full of concepts regardless of consciousness? Doesnt consciousness depend on those concepts, and isnt consciousness made of those concepts? Consciousness is a mysterious thing in its own right, im not quite sure what exactly it is. If it is just some cloud like computing system of information and chemicals constantly being thrown around the brain, pft idk, consciousness is crazy. It must be some kind of 'disc reader, hardrive', there must be some 'seeing' mechanism, and that is what consciousness is. But its weird because its like an infinite regression, a mirror looking at a mirror looking at a mirror looking at a mirror, but I guess time allows both what is seen and what is doing the seeing to change. I dont know Im far from where i wanted to be now but still trying to think of this. Information comes into the brain, and the information is 'seen' and known by the brain, what in the brain does the seeing and knowing, how does it do this, because that mechanism is what is meant by the term 'consciousness'. Intelligence is a tough one too. Intelligence is the amount of data and information that consciousness mechanism sees and knows, and the variety of things, the quality and quantity of things that consciousness can do with the information.

Is "god" really the right word in this case then? Creator is the most accurate, isn't it? I'm not sure I'm getting you yet.

Yes I believe god is the right word. Because if a God created this universe, we cant assume that that God just always existed or is all there is. And we also cant assume that an intelligence arising in a universe, is not capable of creating a universe (unless you can disprove those things). In short what im trying to say, it could be possible that if a god created this universe, that god was an intelligence that was created, could have been created by an intelligence, which could have been created by an intelligence, which could have been created by and intelligence. Which means if we are intelligence, and create an intelligence, in a sense we are gods.

If you posit that it is possible for a universe to arise naturally, without intelligent god designing or creating it, and then it is possible for intelligent beings to arise in that universe. Would it be possible for those intelligent beings to create intelligent beings? Would it be possible for them to create a universe like system? would they then be gods of those beings and universe?

All of these arguments go out the window if the physical universe (subatomic particles, space), the energy there of, is all that has ever existed and all that ever will. Which means that everything that will ever exist will be formed out of its natural movements. It would just need to be argued then, the possibility of a naturally arising intelligence can create a system like the universe. Well actually it gets tougher, because if reality is energy, subatomic particles, then I would assume the intelligences that arise will only ever be able to use aspects of that energy and universe. There is no leaving the universe then or reality, or creating a system outside of the universe, or inbetween it, or creating something completely original out of an unfathomable material. The only way to escape nature is to use nature in novel ways. the computer for example has a digital world, and can create simulations. So illusion is perhaps the only possible way for an intelligence to create a self consistent system within the all encompassing natural universal system.

I agree. There is an urge, but no obligation. At any point man can choose to lie down and die.

As true as that is, at the same time, you must admit that it would be easy to allow man to live as he will, then to convince all humans of the world to sit down and die. Surely this is because the natural and chemical urge to survive, and not so soon feel the horrors of perishing.

reply to post by ImaFungi


It's going to be a bit before I can answer you. Bare with me and I'll be back later tomorrow night, I hope.

reply to post by Philodemus


I dont think Ats is going anywhere in the next few days...take your time

reply to post by ImaFungi


Alright, sorry about the belatedness of this reply. Things have been hectic around here the past several days and the events were complete with our modem taking a crap. My delay in response has been mostly because I wanted to wait until I had ample time to respond to your post.

Philosophy has become just as much a discipline of linguistics as it is aprobing of metaphysical and esoteric ideas. It was in the interest of clarity and precision that I asked you to define what you meant by some of the words you used. I have seen that things quickly devolve when terms and concepts are not accurately defined. Sometimes we never get as far as those definitions, which is O.K.; frustrating but alright. Often the most we can hope for is consensus rather than accuracy.

Now to the reply.

Yes, in my view concepts depend on consciousness to exist. And no, concepts are not fee floating entities or attributes that exist in space and time outside of any consciousness. If you think they are, I wouldn't mind you giving me an example so that I can understand you better. On my view, concepts are not dependant on any old consciousness, they are dependant on a fallible, non-omniscient, imperfect consciousness. If you go to the blog I directed you to and type in “theory of concepts” a good explanation of my position, as it now stands, is bound to come up. The gist of it is, is that we use conceptualized thinking in order to make an infinite amount of information accessible and manipulable to our non-omniscient minds. If we could not know an intimate basis every cat that was, is and will be regardless of spacial or temporal location then we would not need the concept “cat”. But since this is impossible for our minds we take the few cats (only two are needed) we have perceptual input from and subject the mental images of these cats to a process of abstraction including measurement omission (age, gender, colour, size, tail length, location, era, etc.) and build the categorical concept “cat” in which all other cats that we encounter, regardless of their measurements, can then be subsumed. It is by this process that we do not have to meet every cat that there was, is and will be to “know” very specific things about these cats. It is by these process that I do not need to meet every cat to know that no cats bark like dogs. In other words, the usual definition of god, being a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient being, would render said god unable to think in conceptual form. Concepts are a uniquely human occurrence.

Consciousness in general does not rely on concepts. There are many creatures on this planet that are both conscious and cognitively non-conceptual. Our level of consciousness is conceptual in nature, but I'm leery of saying it “depends” on concepts. That is almost to say that something about our unique consciousness would exist if we suddenly stop conceptualizing. I do not think it depends on conceptualization. I think it IS conceptualization. It's a bit like saying the lumber on my deck depends on “wood” for it's existence when it merely IS wood. Am I making any sense? Lol Probably not, because I'm confusing myself at this point. We could say that the deck relies on the existence of trees for its existence, just as wood does. So, the “trees” or “raw material” in our cognitive process would be our perceptual inputs which would give rise to the constructs of “wood” (abstraction) and “deck” (concepts). Arguing from analogy is best avoided.

Consciousness is simply, the perceptual awareness of ones surroundings. Perception is fed by senses. Now, when man takes that perceptual awareness and turns it into the next level of consciousness, that is interesting but not mysterious. I would expect to see a graduation of this sort of thinking in nature. And I do. Tool making by birds and apes, the grieving of lost family members by dolphins and elephants; all these things speak toward the different levels of consciousness and conceptualization in nature. If we could have studied some of our ancestors or genetic contemporaries such as Erectus, Habilis, or Australopithecus, I am sure we would have seen it in even starker detail.

reply to post by Philodemus



The biggest problem I am encountering with your “creator = god” idea is the general degradation of the term “god”. I do not see how it is remotely accurate to say first, that my wife and I created my children and secondly, that I am anything like a god to them. If it is the case that I am, then we open up ourselves to a line of absurdities that leave us desolate. A god is any creature that is either longer lived, stronger, more cognitively endowed, or generally superior in anyway. This of course means that a genius is a god to a man of average intelligence and that man is a god to a buffoon and that man is a god to someone in a coma, etc. I don't know. I have trouble with any view that stretches the meaning of god to something other than what it has not meant for thousands of years. God is generally viewed as a) a being and b) either transcendent or immediate. If god is instead North America, the earth, the universe, my father, your father, myself we are setting ourselves up to fail in communicating with others and are generally defining a term in such a way to cause confusion and mental discord. Defining god as you have, makes me a theist. Which I am not. I could make almost everyone on the planet an atheist by defining that the word atheist to me means, “an overwhelming consideration to protect one's own existence”. We must have a difference of Kind between god and nature, not just a difference of where you fit in to nature. Unless you want to say “like a god” every time you mention something that is further advanced than an other thing. But your simile would have to be unceasingly consistent.

You asked me, “If you posit that it is possible for a universe to arise naturally, without intelligent god designing or creating it, and then it is possible for intelligent beings to arise in that universe. Would it be possible for those intelligent beings to create intelligent beings?” Anything is possible. But possibility is rarely the point, is it? It is possible that I could do this very thing the next time I make brownies. But is it plausible given what we see around us? Furthermore, do these thought experiments help us figure out what to do about our actual brand of reality?
Then you asked, “Would it be possible for them to create a universe like system? would they then be gods of those beings and universe?” Yes, again it is possible. And again it depends on how you define god. Do the creators exist in the universe with the creation or outside of it?
You hit the nail on the head in your second to last paragraph. Which is why I affirm the axiom, “Existence exists”. No way out and no way in.

“Surely this is because the natural and chemical urge to survive, and not so soon feel the horrors of perishing.” Again, I agree. The animal part of us urges us to continue. But we are a rational animal. Often, we are an irrational one. We are the only an animal that can act towards its own destruction. Rationality (which I define as, a commitment to reason being our only means of knowledge and our only guide to action) is volitional. We choose to get up and keep ourselves from perishing. An animal does not choose. It just does. There are exceptions, and these exceptions speak toward the gradation of conceptual integrating that we see in the animal kingdom; like when a female dolphin attempts to keep her dead calf at the surface and inevitably dies herself. She chose not to take care of herself and instead grieved so heavily for her young that it ended up costing her her life. All of that is still highly controversial and is more often a case by case instance rather than a broad species trait.

Any who, this post is long enough and I am not the most articulate when it comes to explaining Objectivism. You'll have to go to the sources for that. I look forward to hearing from you!

In Humanity,
Daniel

Originally posted by Philodemus


Yes, in my view concepts depend on consciousness to exist. And no, concepts are not fee floating entities or attributes that exist in space and time outside of any consciousness. If you think they are, I wouldn't mind you giving me an example so that I can understand you better.

I am sorry, some how I lost track of this thread and subsequently this response...hopefully better late then never.

Hm lets see, lets jump right into the semantics already. If by the term concept you mean; a creation of and in the mind, then yes, I could never argue that concepts exist outside of the mind by virtue of that tautological definition. But if I say; the sun exists outside our mind, it has its qualities of colors and temperatures and size and composition, and our only means of knowing about the sun and anything, is through the reproduction of what is outside of our minds, on the inside of our minds, then cant I say; the existence of all things are concepts, they are exact things, and the activity of the mind conceptualizing these things, is the mind creating within the mind what already exists outside the mind. So concepts = things like the sun, a floating entity that exists in space and time outside consciousness. like wise we have the concept of a circle; when I look at bubbles and see that their circumferences appear to be circular, is that the existence of a concept existing outside my mind, the concept of the circle?

On my view, concepts are not dependant on any old consciousness, they are dependant on a fallible, non-omniscient, imperfect consciousness. If you go to the blog I directed you to and type in “theory of concepts” a good explanation of my position, as it now stands, is bound to come up. The gist of it is, is that we use conceptualized thinking in order to make an infinite amount of information accessible and manipulable to our non-omniscient minds. If we could not know an intimate basis every cat that was, is and will be regardless of spacial or temporal location then we would not need the concept “cat”. But since this is impossible for our minds we take the few cats (only two are needed) we have perceptual input from and subject the mental images of these cats to a process of abstraction including measurement omission (age, gender, colour, size, tail length, location, era, etc.) and build the categorical concept “cat” in which all other cats that we encounter, regardless of their measurements, can then be subsumed. It is by this process that we do not have to meet every cat that there was, is and will be to “know” very specific things about these cats. It is by these process that I do not need to meet every cat to know that no cats bark like dogs. In other words, the usual definition of god, being a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient being, would render said god unable to think in conceptual form. Concepts are a uniquely human occurrence.

If I interpret correctly what you mean here, it is to say that we can create novel orientations of information in our minds which dont externally exist in reality and this is the basis for what a concept is, and that is why concepts dont exist in reality outside of the mind?

And you would say in nature, outside of consciousness there are no such things as concepts, there is only potential being fulfilled.

So lets say we have a lab with 1,000 cats, 500 male 500 female (we also have 10 more labs just like this)(and you know each male cat has how ever many sperms it has and each female has a quantity of eggs). The overarching specie of a cat exists (even though there is no primary, cookie cutter mold, archetypical, pure concept of 'cat'( could it be the first cat or first time a cat was ever created?) ). When we think in our minds of a cat we are using qualities from other cats we have seen, just as when those cats mate, the cats that are created are using qualities from other cats that have been.

Of course there is uniqueness in the offspring, a unique pattern of fur, of course a brand new identity, but a cat is still conceptually a cat.

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Originally posted by Philodemus

Consciousness in general does not rely on concepts. There are many creatures on this planet that are both conscious and cognitively non-conceptual. Our level of consciousness is conceptual in nature, but I'm leery of saying it “depends” on concepts. That is almost to say that something about our unique consciousness would exist if we suddenly stop conceptualizing. I do not think it depends on conceptualization. I think it IS conceptualization. It's a bit like saying the lumber on my deck depends on “wood” for it's existence when it merely IS wood. Am I making any sense? Lol Probably not, because I'm confusing myself at this point. We could say that the deck relies on the existence of trees for its existence, just as wood does. So, the “trees” or “raw material” in our cognitive process would be our perceptual inputs which would give rise to the constructs of “wood” (abstraction) and “deck” (concepts). Arguing from analogy is best avoided.

I understand what your saying I think. At least what I get from what you wrote here; Our mechanisms for sensing and perceiving the external world and our inner world potentially, is unavoidably, inherently an act of conception. Because when I look at the sun and store a memory in my head, the actual sun is not in my head, the actual memory is not in my head, or is not me I do not experience it directly as it is, there may be no objective way to experience it, even if I do objectively comprehend it, it may still be so filtered and distorted,and I will never be able to grasp it exactly as it is, so there fore it must be a concept.

But im not to sure of this view. Because I think it is possible to exactly understand what goes on. If scientists exactly know how the whether works or meanings of geological orientations or an inventor knows exactly all the parts to a machine he built and knows how and why it works, isnt it known beyond conceptions? isnt truth known, cant there be congruence in the mind and reality? Cant conceptions be equivalent to that which they are conceiving?

Consciousness is simply, the perceptual awareness of ones surroundings. Perception is fed by senses. Now, when man takes that perceptual awareness and turns it into the next level of consciousness, that is interesting but not mysterious. I would expect to see a graduation of this sort of thinking in nature. And I do. Tool making by birds and apes, the grieving of lost family members by dolphins and elephants; all these things speak toward the different levels of consciousness and conceptualization in nature. If we could have studied some of our ancestors or genetic contemporaries such as Erectus, Habilis, or Australopithecus, I am sure we would have seen it in even starker detail.

I agree for the most part. Sorry I took so long to reply, im real tired now, so ill reply to the next post tomorrow. I think mans is totally different from other animals and I dont think they will evolve in the same way, unless we vastly contribute. I think it mainly had to do with our bodies won out, of course the mixture of body and mind, proved itself to be most useful, functional, efficient. Its evolution, think of old style electronics and computers, or telephones, cars, planes. The newer manifestations of those things have won out, there is no way to better the older things, without making them comparable to what is new and better, which would basically involve just making them very similar to what is new. So animals that headed down their specific paths were destined to not be able to do the things man can do. We now are aware of the things man can do, so we compare the things man can do to what the animals are like and what they can and cant do. In order for animals to do the things man can do, "something/s" about them would have to be made more like man. For example, want a monkey or elephant to do tricks, incorporate some type of language, in 200 years maybe want a monkey to speak, and do other things, incorporate a man like micro chip or human brain in its head...just kidding, like i said Im tired.