Wednesday, October 26, 2011

So many words, so little intelligence

My responses are in bold type.


10.2.1
gpuccio
October 25, 2011 at 3:30 pm

DrBot: Your model requires an extra entity – the immaterial I. Which one is less parsimonious in not positing an unmeasurable and unobserved entity?

No. My model requires only an observed entity: the subjective I. Please note that I have not said “immaterial”. And my model describes its observed relations with perceived objects, through an interface that all of us can observe (the interaction between subjective states and objects, in both directions, as perceptions and actions).

Gobbledegook.

Your model assumes, without any reason or empirical support, that the subjective I (an observed entity) is explained by other completely different entities (objects and their relations). That is not parsimonious: it is simply arbitrary.

Sounds to me like you arbitrarily choose the hallucinogenic drugs you take.

(DrBot): There is no empirical evidence I know of where a consciousness persists or returns after the death of the brain and body. I’m making an inference based on observation

You must be kidding. That would be an observation?

YES, that would be an observation. All one has to do is OBSERVE that there is NO EVIDENCE of "a consciousness" persisting or returning after death. Of course one also has to be sane. I'm afraid that leaves you out.

Let’s see. We have a consciousness expressing itself through a body. OK.

Then we observe the body stop and die (disintegrate, degenerate, whatever you want to call it).

We obviously don’t see anymore the consciouness expressing through that body. How could it? The body is no more there.

Are you claiming to be able to "see" the consciousness (in the form of your definition of consciousness) in another person's body? Can you also see it after the person is dead and it leaves their body? Where does their consciousness go and what does it do there? How long does it "persist". Why and when does it "return", where does it return to, and what does it do after it returns?

And you say that this is “observing” that the cosnciousness does not persist? Or “return”?

Do you believe that chocolate chip cookies are conscious beings, and that when they're materially destroyed by being being chewed up and swallowed, their consciousness persists and returns? If not, why not? After all, neither you nor anyone else can absolutely prove that that doesn't happen, can you?

What are you observing of the consciousness? Only the dying conscious being can observe its consciousness. Not you.

Well then, what can YOU observe of "the consciousness"? Are you dying?

And all the evidence from NDEs tells us that consciousness does survive, even in states of absent brain function.

Aha, the NDE bullshit gets trotted out. What a surprise, NOT. Bullshit is bullshit, not "evidence". Your brain function is totally absent.

You are strangely ready to consider “observation” whatever imagination suits your ideas.

Look who's talking! And speaking of strange, your delusions are a stranger to sanity.

(DrBot): ?? was that relevant in any way ??

Sure. Strong AI is the foolish idea that some form of objective organization of matter can generate a conscious I. And that’s exactly the basis of your argumentations. It’s strong AI that pretends that the hard problem of consciousness has been solved by modern science, one of the biggest lies in human thought.

Unless you want to dogmatically impose your personal views, you cannot ask that others share your subjective ideology. Sound familiar?

(DrBot): all observed acts of design are traceable to a physical entity. The claim you are making is that those entities require some non physical attributes to function.

No. You don’t understand my position at all. I have not made discussions of “physical” or “material”. Indeed, many times I have refused to use those terms, and when I do it’s only because my interlocutor uses them.

Liar. You "discussions" totally rely on physical/material vs. immaterial/supernatural, and you do use terms like "material", "material body", "outer material support", "material process", "non material character", "matter", etc. Tell me, gpukio, is "the consciousness" material or immaterial? Is it matter, anti-matter, non-matter, dark matter, a combination, none of the above, or what?

What I claim is empirical. Subjective representations are a basic part of my map of reality. Consciosuness and the subjective I are a basic part of it. Why? Because they exist, and are perceived in the personal experience of each of us.

No, what you claim is your 'subjective, dogmatic, personal view' which is based on delusional religious belief in fairy tales. You don't have a clue about reality.

I am not saying what consciousness is. I don’t pretend to have solved the hard problem of cosnciousness. But I call things with their names. The I is the I. It is not explained by anu objective theory. So it remains the I, for me.

Oh, so you don't know what consciousness is but you know that it came from your chosen god, that humans are the only organisms that have it, and you can see it in yourself and others even after death, eh? And you know for sure that it does persist and return after death, right? Uh, you wouldn't happen to have any proof of that would you? And no, religious fairy tales and bullshit renditions of so-called NDE's don't count.

Please, read again more carefully my previous statement:

“All empirically observed acts of intelligence are traceable to conscious representations in human cosnciousness. Again, that humans are “made of physical matter” is an unwarranted assumption. Their body certainly is.”

It is simply true. All empirically observed acts of intelligence are traceable to conscious representations in human consciousness. Can you deny it?

You need to talk to joe-boi. He claims that termites are intelligent agents. Are termites conscious and intelligent? Do they intelligently design? If you believe that termites are not conscious or intelligent, how do you know that and what evidence do you have?

I am not saying that cosnciousness is not material. Obviously, I am not saying that ity is material. I am saying two very specific things:

What you're saying makes no sense.

1) All acts of intelligence are traceable to conscious representations in human consciousness. A simple empirical fact.

Do you have objective proof of that? Can you prove that no other organisms, besides humans, on Earth or throughout the universe, are conscious or intelligent?

2) That humans are “made of physical matter” is an unwarranted assumption. Their body certainly is. A simple judgment about one of your gratuitous statements.

Make up your feeble mind. Without our "physical matter" body we aren't humans.

This is what I have said.

In rersponse, you give an amazing series of false statements:

a) “All observed acts of design are traceable to a physical entity”.

Not true.

Yes true. Prove me wrong by showing me a non-physical entity that designs. Where's a ghost or god when you need one? LOL

They are traceable to the conscious representations of an agent, expressed through a physical brain and body.

In other words, they (observed acts of design) are "traceable to a physical entity", just as DrBot said.

Please note that I am not saying if those representations are “physical”. I don’t want to impose my ideas about the hard problem of consciousness to anyone.

Too late, you have already imposed your ideas (subjective, dogmatic, personal views) about a lot of things and I'm sure that you want to impose them on EVERYone.

But it is certainly correct to call conscious rfepresentations “a separate entity”.

No, that is not "certainly correct". Let's see you separate your "conscious rfepresentations" (sic) from your physical body and then have them design something. Blow yourself up with dynamite like I suggested in my other post and then get your non-destroyable consciousness busy on designing me a new house.

They are perceived as a different part of reality, with specific properties which are different from the properties of so called objective entities.

Perceived by whom, you and anyone who happens to agree with you? Would that mostly or only be people who don't want to believe that when they die they will just die and that their consciousness (souls, in your religious jargon) will die too?

b) “The claim you are making is that those entities require some non physical attributes to function”.

Simply not true. I have not made that claim. I have denied that consciousness can be explained by purely objective models. And I don’t like the ambiguous concepts of “physical” or “material”.

Actually, you have made that claim, and your diatribe is so confused and contradictory that it's impossible to tell for sure just what you claim from one statement to the next.

c) ” That humans are made of physical matter is not an assumption – it is a direct observation.”

Not true. That human bodies are made of physical matter is, perhaps, an observation.

Wow, you're really in denial of reality.

But humans are also a cosnciousness, with subjective experiences. Stating that consciousness is “made of physical matter” is the silly and unwarranted assumption of stron AI. Nobody in his mind should accept such a nonsense blindly.

Well, if consciousness means being alive, while we're alive, then yeah, we're a combination of a physical body and the life within it. A dead human though, is obviously pretty devoid of consciousness (life). Hmm, silly, unwarranted, blindly accepted nonsense. Now let me see, where have I encountered that before? I know! In all the non-scientific, non-realistic crap you IDiots spew!

I don't recall that DrBot said that "consciousness" is "made of physical matter". It appears to me that what he's saying is that supernatural, immaterial, non-physical entities (gods, in religious jargon) cannot be shown to exist or to have designed even a single thing, let alone all the things that you IDiots claim that your imaginary god designed.


Your statement that “humans are made of physical matter” implies the truth of the strong AI assumption. Far from being a direct observation, it is indeed a gross attempt to present a silly theory as a fact.

Humans are made of physical matter, and it is a direct observation, at least by sane people. Have you seen any humans lately that are not made of physical matter? If so, I would recommend a major modification to your medications, or shock therapy.

d) What is not observed is anything (yet) that operates outside the laws of the known universe.

Obviously not true. Scientism at its lowest levels.

Get mental help, immediately. You need it. You're suffering from insanity, at its highest level.

What are you saying? That we know all the laws of the known universe? What about dark energy? What about consciousness? What about the many uncertain and contradicting intepretations of many aspects of quantum mechanics?

What about them? Are you saying that there's a law that we haven't discovered that will verify that your religious delusions are true? What if there's a law that verifies that the flying spaghetti monster is true?

DrBot said "What is not observed...." and he's right in saying that nothing is observed "that operates outside the laws of the known universe". Everything that has been or "is" observed operates within the laws of the known universe, and whatever the "laws" are that govern what happens in this universe, whether humans know about all of the laws or not, they are still the laws that govern what happens in this universe and they have been and will be legitimately discovered, studied, and described by legitimate scientists, not religious nutcases who just make shit up to suit their fearful, arrogant insanity.


What about the many unsolved observations in astrophysics? What about NDEs?

And so on, and so on…

So-called NDE's are delusions or at least illusions and prove absolutely nothing about any god, and many "unsolved observations in astrophysics" are not going to affect the understanding of "laws", and so on, and so on. The bottom line is that you don't have any evidence whatsoever to support your ID/religious claims. Unless you can come up with some, you're just spewing your personal, dogmatic, subjective view.

Notice that I am not actually denying the idea of some, as yet unmeasured, entity lying at the root of consciousness

Fine for me.

Actually, you're denying anything that doesn't fit your retarded religious beliefs. Sucks to be you.

(DrBot): I am just making an inference from observation

False, as shown above.

The only thing you've shown above is that you're a pompous, bloviating fool.

(DrBot): I’m not imposing my views, just giving my opinion

You can give your opinion, and still recognize that the hard problem of consciousness is not solved. To state that it is solved scientifically is imposing a subjective view in the form of a scientific achievement (another way to define scientism).

Well la dee freakin' da, ain't you the shit. The "hard problem" that isn't solved is whether IDiots like you can even wipe your own ass or flip a light switch without detailed instructions every time. How should YOUR subjective view be defined?

(DrBot): are you imposing your personal views about what is called by all “the hard problem of consciousness”?

Not at all. I fully agree that it is not scientifically solved. And I have definite opinions about it, that I can freely share.

So, when it's other people it's imposing false, dogmatic, subjective, personal views and ideology but when it's you it's just an opinion that you can freely share, even though it's obvious that you won't tolerate any opinion, theory, evidence, or fact that you simply don't like because it doesn't suit your religious beliefs.

(DrBot): and I agree that it is a hard problem and not understood – I have friends who work directly in the field) My own attitude is ‘we don’t know’ and from that I look to the little that we do know

That looks like a healthy attitude :)

Like you'd know what a healthy attitude is.

But are you practicing what you preach?

Are YOU?

(DrBot): Exactly – you summarized the problems many people have with ID

Similar feelings, but very different cognitive choices, it seems :)

You're giving yourself far too much credit. To make cognitive choices you first have to have a brain. By the way, you left out your words that DrBot was responding to a few sentences above, so here they are:

"And you cannot base a “best explanation” on an unwarranted assumption, based on a subjective ideology."

You IDiots really should heed those words and "practice what you preach".