Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Gary Childress
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Skepdick wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:04 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:35 pm I know what consciousness is though, so it's not the same as "rumfless." It's not a non-sensical question.
You do? Great! I don't.

Tell me what it is. Because it's a non-sensical question to me.
If you are conscious, then you know what it is. Otherwise, it's not something any conscious being can describe to a non-conscious one. It would be like someone with eyes trying to describe what it's like to see blue to someone who was born without vision. It can't be done. But it's still there and it's still real. Wouldn't you agree? Or no?
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Or maybe you could tell me what blue looks like, Skeptic? I presume you see blue and not wavelengths and frequencies, etc. If you see blue or whatever other colors on a computer screen in front of you, then you are probably conscious.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm If you are conscious, then you know what it is.
Well, that's circular. Am I conscious?

That doesn't mean that I am not conscious.
It doesn't mean that I am conscious either.

It means that I don't know. So I am asking.
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm Otherwise, it's not something any conscious being can describe to a non-conscious one.
So you are conscious? How did you find out that you are conscious?

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm It would be like someone with eyes trying to describe what it's like to see blue to someone who was born without vision. It can't be done. But it's still there and it's still real. Wouldn't you agree? Or no?
I neither agree nor disagree!

I don't know what consciousness is.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Skepdick wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:18 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm If you are conscious, then you know what it is.
Well, that's circular. Am I conscious?

That doesn't mean that I am not conscious.
It doesn't mean that I am conscious either.

It means that I don't know. So I am asking.
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm Otherwise, it's not something any conscious being can describe to a non-conscious one.
So you are conscious? How did you find out that you are conscious?

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:08 pm It would be like someone with eyes trying to describe what it's like to see blue to someone who was born without vision. It can't be done. But it's still there and it's still real. Wouldn't you agree? Or no?
I neither agree nor disagree!

I don't know what consciousness is.
I'm sorry about that. I know what I mean by conscious. Putting it into words or trying to "define" it in a simple sentence or even a paragraph is extremely difficult, though. Consciousness is purely subjective. It can only be experienced. I'm sure you have your own idea about what consciousness is. If so, I'd like to hear it.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:12 pm It depends upon what is meant by "physical." Is the color blue as perceived by a human being physical? Theoretically what we encounter is matter in motion which doesn't have the qualia of "blue." It has frequency, wavelength, etc. But our minds presumably perceive blue. Does "physical" include mental concepts? Does it include that which cannot be measured or quantified but only experienced subjectively by a conscious mind? If not, then there must be non-physical aspects to the world that we are capable of talking about.
Making the notion of nonphysical existents coherent requires giving some account of what nonphysical existents would be--not what they wouldn't be--so that it makes some sense ontologically and so that one isn't describing ontological features of physical existents instead. Listing properties that nonphysicals wouldn't have doesn't cut it.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:00 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:12 pm It depends upon what is meant by "physical." Is the color blue as perceived by a human being physical? Theoretically what we encounter is matter in motion which doesn't have the qualia of "blue." It has frequency, wavelength, etc. But our minds presumably perceive blue. Does "physical" include mental concepts? Does it include that which cannot be measured or quantified but only experienced subjectively by a conscious mind? If not, then there must be non-physical aspects to the world that we are capable of talking about.
Making the notion of nonphysical existents coherent requires giving some account of what nonphysical existents would be--not what they wouldn't be--so that it makes some sense ontologically and so that one isn't describing ontological features of physical existents instead. Listing properties that nonphysicals wouldn't have doesn't cut it.
If something exists and cannot (even in possibility) be measured or observed through objective means, then what should we call it? Should we still call it "physical"?
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:32 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:00 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:12 pm It depends upon what is meant by "physical." Is the color blue as perceived by a human being physical? Theoretically what we encounter is matter in motion which doesn't have the qualia of "blue." It has frequency, wavelength, etc. But our minds presumably perceive blue. Does "physical" include mental concepts? Does it include that which cannot be measured or quantified but only experienced subjectively by a conscious mind? If not, then there must be non-physical aspects to the world that we are capable of talking about.
Making the notion of nonphysical existents coherent requires giving some account of what nonphysical existents would be--not what they wouldn't be--so that it makes some sense ontologically and so that one isn't describing ontological features of physical existents instead. Listing properties that nonphysicals wouldn't have doesn't cut it.
If something exists and cannot (even in possibility) be measured or observed through objective means, then what should we call it? Should we still call it "physical"?
Well, first we'd have to straighten out why "physical" would refer to, or at least hinge on, observation and measurement--that is, why it would be defined by human activity, and basically epistemic activity at that--rather than being defined ontologically.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:48 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:32 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:00 pm

Making the notion of nonphysical existents coherent requires giving some account of what nonphysical existents would be--not what they wouldn't be--so that it makes some sense ontologically and so that one isn't describing ontological features of physical existents instead. Listing properties that nonphysicals wouldn't have doesn't cut it.
If something exists and cannot (even in possibility) be measured or observed through objective means, then what should we call it? Should we still call it "physical"?
Well, first we'd have to straighten out why "physical" would refer to, or at least hinge on, observation and measurement--that is, why it would be defined by human activity, and basically epistemic activity at that--rather than being defined ontologically.
How would you define "physical" ontologically, then?
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Or how would you define "physical" in a way that would include conscious experience?
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:54 pm Or how would you define "physical" in a way that would include conscious experience?
The physical world consists of matter, relations of matter and processes (dynamic relations) of matter. All of those things amount to properties as well, and none of them obtain without the others. Conscious experience is the properties of dynamic relations of matter (brain structures and functions specifically), from the spatiotemporal reference point of being the dynamic relations of matter in question.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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I would venture to say that the physical has extension, position and/or mass. As far as I am aware those properties don't apply to consciousness.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:57 pm I would venture to say that the physical has extension, position and/or mass. As far as I am aware those properties don't apply to consciousness.
Which properties have by virtue of being what dynamic relations of matter are "like"--they're the qualitative characteristics of dynamic relations of matter, and they're inseparable from particular dynamic relations of matter (you can't have a particular dynamic relation of matter without it having the qualitative characteristics it has).

Consciousness is a set of brain structure/process properties (again, from the spatiotemporal perspective that's identical to the brain in question). Brains obviously have extension, position, mass, etc.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:19 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:57 pm I would venture to say that the physical has extension, position and/or mass. As far as I am aware those properties don't apply to consciousness.
Which properties have by virtue of being what dynamic relations of matter are "like"--they're the qualitative characteristics of dynamic relations of matter, and they're inseparable from particular dynamic relations of matter (you can't have a particular dynamic relation of matter without it having the qualitative characteristics it has).

Consciousness is a set of brain structure/process properties (again, from the spatiotemporal perspective that's identical to the brain in question). Brains obviously have extension, position, mass, etc.
Brains have extension, position, mass, however, if you crack open someone's brain, where would you find their experience of say, the color "blue"? For one thing, no matter where you look among the neurons and grey matter, I doubt anything there would remotely appear blue in the way it is perceived by the brain. So how do you know where the experience of "blue" is? It isn't a particle. It isn't a single neuron. Presumably, it's something occurring somewhere among a nebulous of neurons firing. Does that experience of blue have a definite position?
Last edited by Gary Childress on Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:25 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:19 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:57 pm I would venture to say that the physical has extension, position and/or mass. As far as I am aware those properties don't apply to consciousness.
Which properties have by virtue of being what dynamic relations of matter are "like"--they're the qualitative characteristics of dynamic relations of matter, and they're inseparable from particular dynamic relations of matter (you can't have a particular dynamic relation of matter without it having the qualitative characteristics it has).

Consciousness is a set of brain structure/process properties (again, from the spatiotemporal perspective that's identical to the brain in question). Brains obviously have extension, position, mass, etc.
Brains have extension, position, mass, however, if you crack open someone's brain, where would you find their experience of say, the color "blue"? For one thing, no matter where you look among the neurons and grey matter, I doubt anything there would remotely appear blue in the way it is perceived by the brain? So how do you know where the experience of "blue" is? It isn't a particle. It isn't a single neuron. Presumably, it's something occurring somewhere among a nebulous of neurons firing. Does that experience of blue have a definite position?
Are you seriously completely unfamiliar with imaging mental content? We've been doing it for a long time now.
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Re: Computers Are Incapable Of Creatively Writing Music

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Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:29 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:25 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:19 pm
Which properties have by virtue of being what dynamic relations of matter are "like"--they're the qualitative characteristics of dynamic relations of matter, and they're inseparable from particular dynamic relations of matter (you can't have a particular dynamic relation of matter without it having the qualitative characteristics it has).

Consciousness is a set of brain structure/process properties (again, from the spatiotemporal perspective that's identical to the brain in question). Brains obviously have extension, position, mass, etc.
Brains have extension, position, mass, however, if you crack open someone's brain, where would you find their experience of say, the color "blue"? For one thing, no matter where you look among the neurons and grey matter, I doubt anything there would remotely appear blue in the way it is perceived by the brain? So how do you know where the experience of "blue" is? It isn't a particle. It isn't a single neuron. Presumably, it's something occurring somewhere among a nebulous of neurons firing. Does that experience of blue have a definite position?
Are you seriously completely unfamiliar with imaging mental content? We've been doing it for a long time now.
OK. Show me a picture of blue in a brain? Where is it?
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