Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I voted today. As with the last several elections, it was via early voting. My schedule was relatively light today, lighter than it's going to be next week, and probably lighter than election day. Getting it out of the way seemed like a good idea. This time I avoided the mistake I made last time, … Continue reading Voting 2024
Spurred by a couple of recent conversations, I've been thinking about computation in the brain. It was accelerated this week by the news that the connectome of the fly brain is complete, a mapping of its 140,000 neurons and 55 million synapses. It's a big improvement over the 302 neurons of the C. Elegans worm, … Continue reading Classic and connectionist computationalism
What does the knowledge argument actually demonstrate? The argument, which shows up in various forms in numerous philosophical papers and thought experiments, is that we can have a complete physical understanding of a conscious being, but still not know how it feels to be that being. We can know everything about a bat's nervous system, … Continue reading The problem with the knowledge argument
Is studying conscious experience different from studying behavior? In a number of recent conversations I've had, the distinction between experience and behavior has come up. There's a strong sentiment that we can study behavior scientifically, including all the intermediate mental states that enable it. But experience is seen as something distinct from that, something that … Continue reading Experience and behavior
In the last thread, someone asked what exactly is it about consciousness that illusionists say is illusory? One quick answer is that for illusionists, the properties people see in experience that incline us to think that consciousness is a metaphysically hard problem, are what's illusory. In weak illusionism, the properties aren't what they seem. In … Continue reading Illusionism and functionalism
Can we in principle ever deduce the mental from the physical? Christopher Devlin Brown and David Papineau have a new paper out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies titled: Illusionism and A Posteriori Physicalism; No Fact of the Matter. (Note: the link is to a free version.) As the title makes clear, the overall gist … Continue reading Illusionism and types of physicalism
The Mercy of Gods is the first book in James S. A. Corey's new space opera series: The Captive's War. James S. A. Corey is the pen name for the writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the authors of The Expanse book series. This new series appears to be either in a brand new … Continue reading The Mercy of Gods
What is the relationship between information, causation, and entropy? The other day, I was reading a post from Corey S. Powell on how we are all ripples of information. I found it interesting because it resonated with my own understanding of information (i.e. it flattered my biases). We both seem to see information as something … Continue reading Entropy transformers
Last week I watched Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. I've mentioned before that I'm a long term fan of the Planet of the Apes franchise. The reboot film series and its updated imagining of the overall premise have revived the franchise in an impressive manner. The new movies in many ways are very … Continue reading Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and other TV notes
Can the possibility of AI consciousness be ruled out? Anil Seth has a new preprint on the question of AI consciousness. Seth is skeptical about AI consciousness, although he admits that he can't rule it out completely. He spends some time attacking computational functionalism, the view that mental states are functional in nature, that they … Continue reading AI intelligence, consciousness, and sentience
SelfAwarePatterns 