[Fis] Howard Bloom GPT - The potential for science and education

[Karl Javorszky]

We use several different terms for what the Learned Friends call
"consciousness".
M
Komatose, vegetative state, fluctuant attention, disorganized, impaired,
incoherent succession, exhausted, intoxicated, resistant, incapable,
oriented, lucid, etc are but a few of the degrees and types of coordination
between the physiology of the brain and the patterns of electrical
discharges.

If I had a new knee implanted, I'd hope that it has absolutely no own
consciousness at all. Same if we use artificial limbs, ears, eyes, speech
production. We would not want to have the orthopedic ersatz contraption to
come up with variations on how to solve the task. Anything we build to
enhance our life is expected to be doing that what it was designed to do,
nothing more nor less.

The concept of children that objects have their own will and one hopes that
the will of things be pleasant, helpful like a mother, this is called
"magic-mythical thinking" and is a necessary step in the development of the
idea of self.

Beethoven's ideas about rhythm and the other components of music, how the
parts make a whole, is eternal because the underlying idea is expressible
and understandable (for friends of music). The same with Sophokles and
Shakespeare. They draw a Venn diagram and ask you : how would you decide if
you were in position A, B, C ?

Excuse please that I try to express what I think you wish to say:
'consciousness means for me the existence of supporting or restricting
limits for actions that are related to the cause and the effect of the
actions'.

What you wish for (I Insinuate) is a system of dual representations
(descriptions) of one and the same state of the world, in which an extent,
expressed in Representation (language) A is within or +/- outside of limits
in (on) Representation (language) B.

This, if you please, is now at your esteemed disposal. The Sumerians have
counted how much, how many. The Akkadians have counted how usual.

Merging the two ways of counting extends the Wittgenstein delineation of
what can be communicated (theoretically) error-free. Express an extent in
terms of how usual it is, and the usuality of an extent in terms of how
many/much it is (incl where and when), and you have a Tenguely machine that
is built on natural numbers. The maximally cross-referenced truth table of
where when what how usual is an agile grandchild of a+b=c. The rational
part of Nature can be discovered better by using this huge system of
databases and algorithms (aka tautomat), like microscopes are helpful in
describing the world.

We don't discuss whether Nature has a non-rational part or not. Dreams and
phantasies are a reality, just like it is necessary for the child to
discover the self and realize that the self is inside of one’s self and
nowhere else, specifically not in contraptions one has built or is about to
build.
What one needs is a contrast. The Akkadians are a perfect example of a
contrast.

My lawn moving robot needs no AI if my friendly neighborhood Akkadian yells
at it as soon as the robot comes too close. Before I noticed the Akkadian
neighbors, I almost believed that the robot either has or needs
consciousness.

Best wishes
Karl




OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> schrieb am Mo., 7. Apr. 2025, 08:48:

> Dear Plamen, Paul and you Pauvre Materialists,
>
> First Plamen, what is the soul test?  I have never heard of it. Do cats
> pass the soul test? Ants? The problem is that these creatures may have
> their own way of being conscious of the world. Does that mean they have
> souls?
>
> Second, I agree with you Plamen if you are getting at the idea of being in
> the world, being conscious of it. Representing the possibilities in at
> once, as a Kantian whole.
>
> This very experience of the world seems to me NOT reducible to gravity or
> any other combination of physical-chemical things in our 4D world.
>
> Related to this is the question: Is consciousness a functional state as
> people like Mike Levin seem to assume? If so then embodied LLMs could well
> be conscious.  In fact it trivializes consciousness in that almost any
> reactive system could be “functionally” conscious.
>
> But if there are souls that enter and leave bodies then consciousness is
> NOT a functional state. I mean functional state in the sense of Hillary
> Putnam, the philosopher.
>
> If there are souls and they exist and have causal agency when in a body,
> then they would appear to be in a higher dimensional space that encompasses
> and interacts with our world.  By the way our world is not 4-dimensional
> but multidimensional if we are free agents and/or quantum mechanics holds.
>
> Recall our discussion where I questioned the irreality of possibility
> states, that they have real existence and the question was: Do they fit in
> our world?
>
> So intuitively the very notion of possibility spaces seem related to the
> question of consciousness and the existence of souls.
>
> -Eric Werner
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Apr 6, 2025, at 6:38 PM, Paul Suni <paul.p.suni at gmail.com> wrote: Sent
> from my iPad
> Sent from my iPad
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