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Nick wanted to grant sentience and move on from there. That seems to me to be too much to grant without further discussion. What do you mean by sentience? And how does it differ from John's inner subjective life?
On Aug 15, 2014 9:53 AM, "John Kennison" < [hidden email]> wrote:
Hi Nick,
I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude" --in fact I asked you to tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.
I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these things.
I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with me if you speak for myself (so to speak) --and I imagine you will, perhaps over the previous sentence. I invite and will (I think) welcome your analysis.
--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment
Hi, John,
Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.
Ok. Now that I am standing on the ground ...
First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right? If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday. A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness. So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me." In other words, under your use of "consciousness", it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive. So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is. Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.
On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself. On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment
Nick,
I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.
--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment
So, I looked up David Chalmers . Yeh, I know: I shouldn't have HAD to
look up David Chalmers. Here from Philosophy Index
A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.
This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!" Why exactly is that a problem? What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious. Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment
Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!
On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: (202) 885-3867 fax: (202) 885-1190
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that. Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll" touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268
===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
<a href="tel:505-473-9646" value="+15054739646">505-473-9646<tel:<a href="tel:505-473-9646" value="+15054739646">505-473-9646>
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