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> I claim that a brain is purely an information processing machine You're not exactly wrong, James, but you don't realise how much you're already assuming what

> I claim that a brain is purely an information processing machine You're not exactly wrong, James, but you don't realise how much you're already assuming what you're trying to argue for. Information isn't merely some object in pure mathematics. In that -log(p(e)), you have already decided what outcomes to see as the same. There's no "pure information", it's always information over the space of events we care to distinguish as different. When you've decided what differences in the universe are worth caring about, what further insight is there to be gained from declaring brains to be information processors? Given a sufficiently odd (and specific) choice of what differences to care about, you could probably truthfully declare damn near anything to be an information processor.

usgroup 4y ago
Yes, this is an essential point, and the great circularity is not at all obvious. You can't start by talking about "inputs" and "outputs". At that stage you're already talking about "the mind" in a reality furnished to you by the mind, and perhaps little to do with what the mind does or how to "carve reality at the joints". At level zero we have no insight at all into what Kant called "the thing in itself" -- our reasoning begins at pre-furnished objects. It is not at all obvious that we have the preconditions necessary to discover "what minds are" or "how they work".
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  >At that stage you're already talking about "the mind" in a reality furnished to you by the mind While we presumably need minds to pick a set of distinctions for our purposes, it is not at all required that a mind picks such a set for the sake of analyzing the behavior of a system that processes such sets. A function, for example, requires an input to provide its output, yet we can analyze a function by abstracting over the input space and analyzing the transformations on an arbitrary input. This picks out the function uniquely without relying on any specifically chosen inputs. The same can be said for an "information processing" function on the space of possible sets of distinctions.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    > The same can be said for an "information processing" function on the space of possible sets of distinctions. No, I don't think it can. "The space of possible sets of distinctions" is one of those nastily large things I'm not even sure is a set. I don't think you will be able to rule out that the drafts in a storm or the swirls in a stream aren't carrying out a computation, if you try to do it over all possible sets of distinctions.
    - hackinthebochs 4y ago
      >is one of those nastily large things I'm not even sure is a set. I don't see that it needs to be. The issue is the nature of the function, not the nature of the entire space of possible input to the function. >I don't think you will be able to rule out that the drafts in a storm or the swirls in a stream aren't carrying out a computation, if you try to do it over all possible sets of distinctions. You can if you consider the fact that computation has the counterfactual property that different inputs result in different meaningful outputs. Sure, given any arbitrary (complex) dynamic and target output, you can find an input that maps to that output. But given some restricted set of dynamics (e.g. what can be classified as a hurricane), it is safe to say there is no meaningful space of inputs/outputs for which the hurricane will provide a semantic mapping between the input/output spaces (not just a single point in that space, but the entire space). The entropy of the process is just too high to support such a mapping.
  - usgroup 4y ago
    It wasn’t the point I was trying to make. The mind furnishes you not just with objects but also the constraints within which objects (abstract or otherwise) can be analysed. You are trying to work out how the mind works in a box provided to you by your mind.
theptip 4y ago
Indeed. The author seems to think he has a knock-down argument with this: > If you disagree, your counter-argument should probably start by outlining some proposed input or output of the brain that it would not be possible to encode numerically Which, even speaking as a Physicalist (though leaning agnostic) I think sounds quite unaware of all the hard thinking that has been done so far on the subject. (AKA the Hard Problem of consciousness.) Here’s one to get started: the qualia of the color red. It’s not established that just encoding information about the world with enough complexity would produce a mind that experiences qualia, and we think those are quite important as humans. If you need a couple thought experiments along this line of reasoning, consider p-zombies, or alternatively, imagine if consciousness is actually some sort of physical field in one of the microscopic string-theory dimensions that we can’t access yet. So it’s fully objectively detectable and requires a specific physical structure to generate. The proposed system of philosophy of mind just ignores these possibilities and asserts that they don’t obtain, without evidence or justification. (Of course I make no claim that this is how things are; I’m just pointing out the valid potential-physics that are being ruled out from an armchair.)
- jstanley 4y ago
  Specifically on the topic of p-zombies: I can't remember where I read it, but a convincing argument against the possibiltiy of p-zombies is along the lines of "why would p-zombies talk about consciousness?". When you or I talk about our internal conscious experience, we're examining our conscious experience and then talking about what we examined. A p-zombie would have to conjure up stories about conscious experience from thin air. For a p-zombie to behave the same as an ordinary person, the p-zombie's words must be uncoupled to the internal experience (because there is none). But since the words are therefore shown to be produced independently of the conscious experience, it would seem to be an unlikely coincidence that in the non-p-zombie population, the words just happen to perfectly reflect the lived internal experience, even though they have been shown to be uncoupled, because the words persist even when the internal experience doesn't. Since unlikely coincidences are unlikely, the more likely explanation is that p-zombies are impossible, because your outward behaviour is (at least partly) caused by your internal experience, and without that internal experience the outward behaviour could not be the same. EDIT: I think it's from here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-generalized-anti-zombie-principle https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-genera...
hackinthebochs 4y ago
>When you've decided what differences in the universe are worth caring about, what further insight is there to be gained from declaring brains to be information processors? Yes we pick our set of relevant differences. The useful thing about information processors is that after undergoing a physical transformation along its entropy gradient, the final state also picks out informative/semantically relevant states from the original space of distinctions. Information processors are informative, they have the ability to tell you something you didn't already know. That is, they manifest new informative states. The space of physical systems that have this property are vanishingly small. Most systems destroy information as it is pulled along its entropy gradient. Computers are perhaps the sole exception.

usgroup 4y ago

Yes, this is an essential point, and the great circularity is not at all obvious. You can't start by talking about "inputs" and "outputs". At that stage you're already talking about "the mind" in a reality furnished to you by the mind, and perhaps little to do with what the mind does or how to "carve reality at the joints". At level zero we have no insight at all into what Kant called "the thing in itself" -- our reasoning begins at pre-furnished objects. It is not at all obvious that we have the preconditions necessary to discover "what minds are" or "how they work".

hackinthebochs 4y ago
>At that stage you're already talking about "the mind" in a reality furnished to you by the mind While we presumably need minds to pick a set of distinctions for our purposes, it is not at all required that a mind picks such a set for the sake of analyzing the behavior of a system that processes such sets. A function, for example, requires an input to provide its output, yet we can analyze a function by abstracting over the input space and analyzing the transformations on an arbitrary input. This picks out the function uniquely without relying on any specifically chosen inputs. The same can be said for an "information processing" function on the space of possible sets of distinctions.
- vintermann 4y ago
  > The same can be said for an "information processing" function on the space of possible sets of distinctions. No, I don't think it can. "The space of possible sets of distinctions" is one of those nastily large things I'm not even sure is a set. I don't think you will be able to rule out that the drafts in a storm or the swirls in a stream aren't carrying out a computation, if you try to do it over all possible sets of distinctions.
  - hackinthebochs 4y ago
    >is one of those nastily large things I'm not even sure is a set. I don't see that it needs to be. The issue is the nature of the function, not the nature of the entire space of possible input to the function. >I don't think you will be able to rule out that the drafts in a storm or the swirls in a stream aren't carrying out a computation, if you try to do it over all possible sets of distinctions. You can if you consider the fact that computation has the counterfactual property that different inputs result in different meaningful outputs. Sure, given any arbitrary (complex) dynamic and target output, you can find an input that maps to that output. But given some restricted set of dynamics (e.g. what can be classified as a hurricane), it is safe to say there is no meaningful space of inputs/outputs for which the hurricane will provide a semantic mapping between the input/output spaces (not just a single point in that space, but the entire space). The entropy of the process is just too high to support such a mapping.
- usgroup 4y ago
  It wasn’t the point I was trying to make. The mind furnishes you not just with objects but also the constraints within which objects (abstract or otherwise) can be analysed. You are trying to work out how the mind works in a box provided to you by your mind.

theptip 4y ago

Indeed. The author seems to think he has a knock-down argument with this: > If you disagree, your counter-argument should probably start by outlining some proposed input or output of the brain that it would not be possible to encode numerically Which, even speaking as a Physicalist (though leaning agnostic) I think sounds quite unaware of all the hard thinking that has been done so far on the subject. (AKA the Hard Problem of consciousness.) Here’s one to get started: the qualia of the color red. It’s not established that just encoding information about the world with enough complexity would produce a mind that experiences qualia, and we think those are quite important as humans. If you need a couple thought experiments along this line of reasoning, consider p-zombies, or alternatively, imagine if consciousness is actually some sort of physical field in one of the microscopic string-theory dimensions that we can’t access yet. So it’s fully objectively detectable and requires a specific physical structure to generate. The proposed system of philosophy of mind just ignores these possibilities and asserts that they don’t obtain, without evidence or justification. (Of course I make no claim that this is how things are; I’m just pointing out the valid potential-physics that are being ruled out from an armchair.)

jstanley 4y ago
Specifically on the topic of p-zombies: I can't remember where I read it, but a convincing argument against the possibiltiy of p-zombies is along the lines of "why would p-zombies talk about consciousness?". When you or I talk about our internal conscious experience, we're examining our conscious experience and then talking about what we examined. A p-zombie would have to conjure up stories about conscious experience from thin air. For a p-zombie to behave the same as an ordinary person, the p-zombie's words must be uncoupled to the internal experience (because there is none). But since the words are therefore shown to be produced independently of the conscious experience, it would seem to be an unlikely coincidence that in the non-p-zombie population, the words just happen to perfectly reflect the lived internal experience, even though they have been shown to be uncoupled, because the words persist even when the internal experience doesn't. Since unlikely coincidences are unlikely, the more likely explanation is that p-zombies are impossible, because your outward behaviour is (at least partly) caused by your internal experience, and without that internal experience the outward behaviour could not be the same. EDIT: I think it's from here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-generalized-anti-zombie-principle https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-genera...

hackinthebochs 4y ago

>When you've decided what differences in the universe are worth caring about, what further insight is there to be gained from declaring brains to be information processors? Yes we pick our set of relevant differences. The useful thing about information processors is that after undergoing a physical transformation along its entropy gradient, the final state also picks out informative/semantically relevant states from the original space of distinctions. Information processors are informative, they have the ability to tell you something you didn't already know. That is, they manifest new informative states. The space of physical systems that have this property are vanishingly small. Most systems destroy information as it is pulled along its entropy gradient. Computers are perhaps the sole exception.