The cat thinks materialism is more bizarre than the paranormal

The second half of this Sheldrake interview is rather relevant to this discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-GaMlbRcKw

We associate consciousness with life, yes. We don't
have counter examples. If we had a conscious machine,
we would never be able to truly know it was one.

My feeling is that I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a machine did what I think the brain does - somehow invite a spirit into it to control it.

What I think is impossible, is to just have real consciousness/intelligence just emerging from a complicated program of some sort - hundreds of thousands of lines of code that people wrote line by line to achieve specific tasks.

I would argue that we would probably realise we had a conscious machine - just as we come to the conclusion that cats are conscious, and even more lowly creatures.

The Turing test is not up to the job I think - certainly if the machine was connected to the internet. If we had a candidate machine a lot of thought would have to go into how to test it.

The thing is, who could get a grant to study ways to invite a spirit into a machine!

David

My feeling is that I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a machine did what I think the brain does - somehow invite a spirit into it to control it.

What I think is impossible, is to just have real consciousness/intelligence just emerging from a complicated program of some sort - hundreds of thousands of lines of code that people wrote line by line to achieve specific tasks.

I would argue that we would probably realise we had a conscious machine - just as we come to the conclusion that cats are conscious, and even more lowly creatures.

The Turing test is not up to  the job I think - certainly if the machine was connected to the internet. If we had a candidate machine a lot of thought would have to go into how to test it.

The thing is, who could get a grant to study ways to invite a spirit into a machine!

David

When I hypothesize that another human or a cat is conscious, what evidenced do
I use to come to my conclusion?

I think, I combine the axiom against arrogance with several heuristics. That is, I assume
partially that I am not the center of my universe, that I am not
inherently unique.

One heuristic I employ is to study their behavior. This
black box approach is effectively a variant of the Turing
test.

If I believe brain activity is involved, I may scan the brain
activity, detect waves and so on.

What else can I test? And which of these can I apply to a machine?

When I hypothesize that another human or a cat is conscious, what evidenced do
I use to come to my conclusion?

I think, I combine the axiom against arrogance with several heuristics. That is, I assume
partially that I am not the center of my universe, that I am not
inherently unique.

OK - but note that that isn't exactly science based! You could really be living in a solipsistic universe, and you would reach enlightenment by succeeding it recognising that fact!

One heuristic I employ is to study their behavior. This
black box approach is effectively a variant of the Turing
test.

That sounds a bit like B.F. Skinner's approach to studying organisms, which never got anywhere (thank goodness)!

If I believe brain activity is involved, I may scan the brain
activity, detect waves and so on.

But surely brain waves are only useful after a correlation between them and consciousness has been established. I don't think you could use them to deduce that a strange entity - such as a machine mind - was conscious.

What else can I test? And which of these can I apply to a machine?

I think that is perhaps another Hard Problem. I think a lot of AI looks more conscious than it really is because it has been designed to look that way - designed to deceive, if you like.

Now imagine if you wanted to produce a mechanical cat following the same process of deception. Well, you could make it look and move like a cat, be furry and warm, and maybe make it seek additional warmth so it would sit on people's knees and make a purring sound! You could also add a random component to its behaviour.

I think there is no doubt that this might fool some people, and I can imagine a market for this product, but most cats seem to prefer one half of a couple over the other, so that might be a clue, until robo-cats came equipped with face recognition sensors.......

The point is that none of that would mean anything philosophically, and it wouldn't represent a single step along the way to create a genuinely conscious machine.

There is a book that explores a little known philosophical fascination with clockwork machines in previous centuries:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+restles...nb_sb_noss

Even people like Liebnitz showed interest in the notion that such machines were conscious.

I came here after reading a book by Alex T. I went to the Skeptiko forums which seems
to tread in fear to the reality that people have opinions both well articulated and non-articulated.

The fundamental concept of Alex's writing centers around the horrible idea that we may be biological computers and the Christian paradox that we should therefore become serial killers because the universe is somehow "meaningless" because we are not immortal and because there doesn't seem to be a way for us to know why we are here.

So, I'm hear to address the false dichotomies of the meaningless universe which is in fact all we know.

Materialism is seen as a horrible thing but what is the viable alternative?

Many questions arise.

The universe as you know it now could not exist without meaning.

Meaning implies a symbol connected to achievement of a goal. Without a goal, there is no way to choose boundaries. Without boundaries there is no structure. Without structure there is an infinite see of unrealized possibility. A goal enables selection and therefore creation by subtraction of irrelevancies to distill an answer - achievement of the goal.

So it is not turtles all the way down, but goals within goals within goals all the way down. You exist both to achieve your own goals and as a result of another meta entity (your soul) trying to achieve some goals. Your efforts to achieve a goal result in perception which is an expression of will to assign boundaries which in turn leaves behind structure which frustrates by limiting choice which produces still more goals. The only way to get off this wheel of karma is to stop desiring... cease goal making... and then you and all creation ceases and dissolves as all the boundaries dissolve which were arbitrarily assigned in attempt to be useful to some agent. 

And since your life is an expression of an effort to achieve a goal it is then by definition meaningful... unless you choose to die/live forever and give up on all goals and perception and dissolve back into the formless Void... the Oneness/Nothingness.

I'm reminded of something I read, I think in one of the channelled accounts, on the subject of purpose. I paraphrase because my memory is not 100% but it went something like: the goal of All That Is is perfection in the full knowledge that perfection is impossible.

testing

The universe as you know it now could not exist without meaning.

Meaning implies a symbol connected to achievement of a goal. Without a goal, there is no way to choose boundaries. Without boundaries there is no structure. Without structure there is an infinite see of unrealized possibility. A goal enables selection and therefore creation by subtraction of irrelevancies to distill an answer - achievement of the goal.

So it is not turtles all the way down, but goals within goals within goals all the way down.

really good stuff!

Without structure there is an infinite see of unrealized possibility.

Do you mean in the sense of the many worlds interpretation of QM?

Do you mean in the sense of the many worlds interpretation of QM?

Possibly…