Advocate wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:00 pm
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 09, 2023 10:13 am
Objectivity is outside all human or animal conscious awareness.
When you go to sleep at night, the sun, the moon, the earth all still exist.
Objective existence does not require Subjective experience, to exist.
You, your body, your life, your physical identity, still exists while you are in a coma.
So if objectivity is 'outside' consciousness, then how do we (humanity) know about it?
This is what I've been asking Wiz but can't get a straight answer. What is so special about consciousness that it deserves this special status, "subjective" when everything else is "objective"? Everything is outside everything else. Every thing is not some other thing. When it is night on one side of the Earth does that mean the sun, or daytime, does not exist to the dark side of the planet? Does winter in the south mean that summer does not exist? Stars are "outside" planets, chairs are "outside" tables, etc. What exactly do they mean by "outside"? How does one bridge the gap between "inside" and "outside"? This is the core problem of all dualistic ideas (like subjective vs objective). To resolve the problem you have to either include a third as the medium, or the direction I prefer (monism) is narrow them all down to just one and the problem of describing how two opposing things can interact becomes moot.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmBabies are alive inside their mother's womb so the relationship is much deeper and more fundamental than what you are describing. You are a relationship between your parent's genes from the moment you were conceived and your parents have a relationship before you were ever conceived. "Uncaring, dangerous, and deadly are all relations.
What is uncaring, dangerous and deadly to
whom? Life and death are a relation. You have yet to point to anything that IS NOT a relation.
Your reasoning suffers from infinite-regress of "relations all the way down". I think this is why you cannot understand humans as subjects, and humans as objects,
separately. Objectivity to me connotes a type of Finitude, certain limits which totally separate one object from another. Physical and Chemical elements for example, silver is not gold, and gold is not silver. Hydrogen is not a Metal. Human understanding and awareness of these elements/chemicals
is not required for their formal being. Hydrogen
not being a metal is not a necessary relation, except to my subjective understanding.
Therefore it is your 'Subjectivity', and only that, that requires and demands this need for infinitely-regressed "Relations".
My little joke went over your head. When I say, "relations all the way down" I was mocking physicalism's description of the world that appears to have dependencies that never end (organisms, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, protons/electrons, quarks, superstrings, etc.). Not only that but I'm also showing that the objects you are referring to are themselves relations of smaller objects - that you never get to any object at all, rather only relations. Instead, we should think of relations as fundamental and not dependent on anything else.
If you have an issue with the term, "relations" then I am fine with using other terms like "information", "processes", or "energy". I see these terms as having definitions that are interchangeable and overlap. Relations, information, process, or energy is fundamental, not physical matter, or objects.
Science describes matter and energy as interchangeable. I think of energy as fundamental. Matter is the way certain energy fluctuations/frequencies appear in the mind as distinct objects.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmBut how can you speak objectively about anything if you can only speak from your subjective state (being alive)? From what you have said, it seems that you must be dead before you can speak objectively, but that would be absurd.
I think an "Objective mindset" requires imagining the Universe without you (your Subjectivity) within it: "A View from Nowhere".
Or at the very least, a compensation for whichever factors comprise Subjectivity...such as self-identity, emotions, attachment to life.
For example, pretend that you're a rock, pretend that you're in a coma, pretend that you're the planet Mercury. What do these have in common? No consciousness, no sentience, no life. Therefore, if Subjectivity is entirely predicated upon life...and especially upon conscious-sentience, then "Objectivity" must be something Outside/Above/Below/Beyond such sentience. However, when people/thinkers/philosophers speak of Objectivity, they do not mean below-sentience as-if a comatose person is "the most objective thinker of all time". Rather, the implication and context of Objectivity, is
Above the rational and logical ability of humanity's brightest geniuses. Objectivity is implied in concepts like...God, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence.
Objectivity, to me, at least means a sublimation of personal emotions, sentiments, desires/wants/needs, which negatively influence rational processes. Biases and core-values must be self-identified. Yet not many people do this, let alone skilled thinkers who do it well. What is the intention behind or underneath a thought? Would it be "Objective" to pursue knowledge/truth/understanding, for its own sake, for no other purpose or ulterior motive? Is that even possible? Or, as perhaps Nietzsche would interpret, any and all motivations boil down into Will to Power, and Life by extension of the human specie, is yet striving for more Power? Can this be avoided? And is this the most 'objective' interpretation?
But that is the very problem I'm been trying to point out to you is that the Universe exists
with you in it. There isn't a universe without you in it (unless we allow for multiverses, but then I could just resolve it down again to say that there is no reality without you in it, or having existed in it at some point). So trying to imagine a universe without you is just that - an imagining, not reality. I want to talk about reality, not someone's imaginings that do not reflect reality.
Life is just a complex arrangement of things that are not alive. You are composed of molecules, atoms, protons, and quarks. Are molecules, atoms, protons, and quarks alive? Are the particular organs that make up your body alive? The boundary between life and non-life is arbitrary and established only in and projected by our minds. Scientists are looking for the missing link between non-life and life in the origin of life. When they find it it will possess both properties of non-life and life. What would your subjective/objective distinction say then?
Everything exists "Outside/Above/Below/Beyond" every thing else. What makes sentience so special that it deserves this special term when there is nothing special about it in this regard?
Regarding your second description of objectivity, it depends on what the present goal in the mind is. Having desires, wants, needs, emotions, etc. must have survival or procreational benefit for it to have evolved in the first place. If mothers didn't care for their offspring the species wouldn't survive very long. Social cooperation and altruism benefit the species as a whole. The acquisition of knowledge can be hindered or skewed by projecting, or imposing one's one assumptions, but patterns exist in reality, so instincts and assumptions can be useful in triggering behaviors in automatic, involuntary ways that reduce reaction time. Thinking about it increases reaction time and it might be to late to act. Both have their pros and cons depending upon the goal we are talking about. So it is useful to talk about humans and their emotions, desires, wants and needs and the real impact these have on our behavior and how those behaviors impact the rest of the world, but (as I mentioned before) we have to be careful and not commit a category mistake in thinking that some emotion or assumption is valid in some other category of thinking (making a category mistake).
Even then, we rely on other's observations to confirm our own, to attain a higher level of objectivity. Even when we believe that we are thinking objectively on our own, we can only every attain it by incorporating other's observations, not just our own. Objectivity isn't really a view from nowhere. It is more like a view from everywhere.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmWhat is agency? All you have done is assert that carbon-based life is alive and silica is not without providing any reasoning or evidence for such a claim. I could say that computers have the motive to produce output from some input. It is instinctive, just as it is for ourselves.
No it's not...how are computers "instinctive"? They're built and programmed from the bottom-up. They're Creations, of mankind. Is mankind then, also a Creation, by your reasoning?
Agency is a high degree of logical analysis by which humans presuppose and attribute Causal actions, governed by our Selves. As such, humans are (morally)
responsible for behaviors, the environment, earthly processes "climate change", whereas all lower animals and lower animal-intelligence...is not, or is "innocent", or are not significantly Causal-agents. In other words, lower/less evolved organisms, cannot effect as much change as the Human specie can—are far less 'powerful' or have potential to change.
If agency is a high degree of logical analysis then most humans do not possess agency, as most of them do not think logically to a high degree most of their lives. All things are causal. Everything is both an effect of prior causes and a cause of subsequent effects. The notion that you can, or could choose a different action in any moment given the information you have in the moment is an illusion. Free-will in this sense is an illusion. You will always make the same decision in the same instance given the information you had in that moment. Later on, if you acquire new information you dwell on how you should have made a different decision, but you didn't have that information at that moment, so it is a moot point. In this sense you are no different than a boulder rolling down a mountain. Only the degree of complexity in the causes that begat some action are different. The relationship between gravity, the the shape of the mountain-side and the shape of the boulder is much less complex than reflected light entering your eye, converted into electrical signals that are sent to your brain and processed and compared with information stored in memory to then produce some action is a far more complex causal process, but not a completely different thing that deserves some special distinction.
Computers are instinctive in that they perform certain actions where reaction time is more important than processing sensory information for more fine-tuned action. Our self-awareness evolved in response to the more complex social relations humans have found themselves in. Instinctive actions that would hurt our social status are filtered through a our social consciousness, which allows us to suppress those instinctive actions. Social status matters to humans' survival and their potential to find mates. Computers that would rely less on instincts would those that are programmed to have a large variety of responses to different stimuli which would then require more time to process sensory information to produce more fined-tune actions in specific instances.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmLife has been programmed by natural selection,
Natural selection is not an Agency. Natural selection is not "God"...is it? So your analogy is mistaken.
So you do suppose that Mankind has a "Creator" then, correct?
You're the one that injected the word, "creation", not me. Just as natural
selection does not imply that some pre-determined goal, or agency as you put it, is
selecting anything, I am not implying that humans are the outcome of some pre-determined goal or the actions of some "god". They are simply the outcome of pre-existing conditions and relations.
Determinism implies that computers are the natural outcome of human actions and human actions are the outcome of millions of years of natural selection. Just as other animals have an impact on their environment, humans can do the same but on a much larger scale. Humans have created new environments in which different types of complex "life" processes can exist and evolve. Computers have the potential to be "alive" in the sense that they are programmed to survive and make copies of themselves.
Humans are programmed by the selective pressures that exist in their environment. Learning is a type of re-programming in changing the information you possess and how you apply it. The analogy is not mistaken unless you're also saying that natural
selection is a type of
selection that necessarily implies some agency or pre-determined goal. In this sense, natural selection is equivalent to natural programming. Just as humans select better programs for a computer, nature has selected better programs for the way we process sensory information and act on that information. Humans have developed a lot of general-purpose programming where computers and many animals have specific programming that allow them to exist in their particular environmental niches.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmfiltering out traits, and promoting others that provide benefits to survival and procreation. As environments change, species are re-programmed (adapt) to the new environments. All one has to do is program a robot to use it's sensory input to acquire and process sensory information to prolong it's existence and to make copies of itself. Silicate life could be the next step in the evolutionary process and humans are the ones that have created an environment for them to come into existence and evolve. In this sense, Humans are simply just another part of the environment and are part of the naturally selective processes of reality.
Until Computers/AI gain agency and sentience, I believe they will remain mere
tools of humanity...or slaves.
As I've been saying computers/AI already have a small degree of sentience, or consciousness as they possess a working memory where information resides for a period of time and is processed. How that information exists in the computer is no different than how the information exists in someone's brain from your perspective. You see a material, physical object and need to reconcile how minds can exist in physical brains, or computers. This is just confusing the map with the territory. Reality is not physical. It is more like the mind, but I am not suggesting panpsychism. I prefer to say that information, not mind, is fundamental. Mind, or consciousness is a complex arrangement of information, not the fundamental aspect of reality. So please do not think that I am implying anything supernatural or religious. I am an atheist so I am speaking without any implying anything religious.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmRight - which, as I said, requires you to use your senses. What form does your imaginings take if not the form your senses have provided - shapes, colors, smells, sounds, feelings, etc. What are you comparing if not different shapes, colors, smells, sounds, feelings, etc.? How do you know when you've succeeded if not by using your senses to observe the effects of your actions that are based on your conclusions, updating your conclusions and trying again? The act of Learning is a biological-environmental feedback loop (a relation).
My argument was based on the logic and rationalization however; so you're skipping-over the point.
Of course it's obvious that we use our senses. My point was about the logical rationalization alone, though.
It is you that is skipping over the point. You cannot logically rationalize about nothing. Logically rationalizing requires you to picture something in your mind and that picture is composed of sensory data. This is the result of another type of dualistic thinking that Empiricism and Rationalism are distinct. They are not. They are both sides of the same coin of cognition.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Most people don't see the need, nor have the desire, to rationalize their emotions. They usually feel insulted and attacked when pressed to justify them. So the logical motivation is more important than the emotional need/compulsion. You're ignoring the types of motivations that go into Learning...learning what, and why, and how? In this debate, the goal is to learn & understand Objectivity.
Survival is an amazing motivator for seeking an objective truth about yourself and the environment you find yourself in. Even when we do not have the senses to detect some of the properties of reality we have been able to create devices that can detect those properties and convert it into information that we can see with our senses (telescopes, microscopes, Geiger counters, etc).
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmBut you are not disagreeing with me if you are now admitting that objectivity can be relational and that humans can be treated as both subjects and objects, thereby dissolving the distinction between objective and subjective. Humans are subjective objects, but then so is everything else as everything else has specific properties that allow them to interact with other things in certain ways. In this sense, everything is subjective and objective. A boulder and a pebble will roll down a hill in different ways based on their shape, no different than how humans and trees interact with their environments based on their different properties.
But rocks, pebbles, hills, air, most objects
are not subjects! So why conflate them?
As I have shown, they possess the properties you have described as being subjects, just to a smaller degree.
You keep talking about imagining while I am trying to talk about reality. You keep imagining a reality without you in it when that isn't the reality. You keep trying to make a special case for everything being "outside" of your conscious awareness, when all things are "outside" all other things so your consciousness awareness is nothing special in this regard and your distinction between objectivity and subjectivity does not exist outside your own mind.
Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:32 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:26 pmIf a computer was programmed by someone to recognize the fingerprint or retina structure to identify the user to then allow access to the computer, how is that any different than how you recognize someone you know and allow them inside your home? The way you think and process sensory information is no less algorithmic or free of programming than a computer - only the degree of complexity is different, as well as the goals that are programmed into the system. One system is programmed to allow access to a computer, while another is programmed to survive and procreate. All that would be required is re-programming a computer to share the same goals we have.
How do you program a computer to program "its own" goals?
Create a computer that is capable of writing it's own programs. ChatGPT can already write programs but it cannot apply them to itself, or update itself with them.