X-Message-Number: 5443
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 20:23:07 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Conscious Diphelezation And Meaning
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In #5439 Peter Merel <> On Mon, 18 Dec 1995 Wrote:
>How do I know I'm conscious?
You can't prove you are conscious because you are not, nobody is conscious
except ME. What you think of as "conscious" is a small pitiful thing bearing
no relation to the great, noble and glorious state that only I of all men on
earth have ever attained. You are no closer to being conscious than a rock is.
I AM ALL, I AM ...
Sorry, I'm back on my medication and feel much better now.
When I observe my own behavior I notice that some objects, called "rocks" and
"trees", behave very differently from me, and some other objects called
"people" behave in a way similar to me. A perfectly logical question to ask
is "am I the only conscious object in the universe?". The Turing Test, one of
my axioms of existence, states that there is a relationship between behavior
and consciousness, so the answer to the question is "no, I am not the only
conscious object in the universe.
I believe intelligence without consciousness is impossible, otherwise genetic
drift would have eliminated all consciousness long ago and I am certain that
at least one instance of it still exists. That's why the Turing test works.
>I don't even know what you mean by "conscious".
Sorry, but I don't buy that at all. I think you and I probably know exactly
what conscious means, even though neither of us can prove it or express it in
words. I find it impossible to believe that when you are not talking
philosophy on the internet you do not take the consciousness of your fellow
human beings as a given. Why? Because they pass the Turing test, and
EVERYBODY believes in the Turing test, even if they don't know it.
The Turing Test was not really invented by Turing, it is very old and is used
by all of us constantly, I am sure you are using it at this moment and I am
sure I am the subject of the test. It is the only way we have (or should have)
of judging people, by their actions. That's why I never had any patience with
the anti AI crowd when they tried to find flaws in the test, it may not be
perfect but its worked very well for a long time and its all we have.
It's true that the Turing Test has faults, first of all it's language is
rather vague, at least by mathematical standards, and second it has not been
proved. However in spite of it's faults, it's the only thing we have to
work with.
If I reject the Turing Test then I would have absolutely no reason for
believing that my fellow human beings were conscious, logically I would be
forced to take solipsism very seriously indeed. Emotionally I am not able to
embrace solipsism, so I accept the Turing Test (like Induction ) as one of
the axioms of existence. Like all axioms they have not been proven and will
never be proven, but I am unable to function without them.
>Anyway, one judge would still represent the irony I referred to.
If you are the judge I fear the irony is lost on me. Do you believe I am
conscious? If so why? We live 12,000 miles apart and have never met.
The only thing you know for sure about me is that I produced a particular
sequence of bits, everything else is conjecture. Your computer interpreted
those bits as ASCII characters. You interpreted those characters as words.
You used the rules of grammar and found some meaning in those words.
If something else had produced the same sequence of bits there is no way you
could tell the difference, I'm a black box to you. I could be an AI.
I could me a monkey who just got lucky on the keyboard. If you don't believe
in the Turing Test I could be a zombie with no consciousness.
>Unless you can tell me what you mean by "conscious", how can
>I answer you?
I am certain we understand each other on this point, because explicit
definitions of anything are seldom used and the reason they are seldom used
is that they are seldom needed.
You must know that neither I nor anybody else can unambiguously
TELL YOU WITH WORDS and from first principles what it feels like to be
conscious. I am also certain that the word "conscious" has meaning for you,
a meaning not too different from my own.
>So far all you've said is that consciousness is that thing
>that the TT evaluates, and that the TT is that thing that
>evaluates consciousness.
I've said that consciousness is a thing that we see in ourselves.
Everybody on earth, including you, uses the Turing Test to evaluate
that same quality in other people, even though it has not been proven
and will never be proven to work. It is our lot in life to live with
uncertainty, but it seldom gives me sleepless nights.
>>I smell an infinite regress. To answer the question
>>"what is the meaning of meaning?" you must first
>>know the answer to " what is the meaning of "what
>>is the meaning of meaning""
> By that argument, you couldn't know the meaning of anything.
EXACTLY, and that tells you something about definitions if you push them too
far. They are after all, only made of words that have their own definitions,
also made of words and there is a FINITE number of words in a language.
In 1930 Godel proved that even the best formal systems have statements in
them that can not be proved or disproved in that system. 5 years later Turing
proved that you can't even determine which statements are unprovable and
which ones are not.
I might add that English is very far from the best formal system,
two statements in English can have impeccable grammar yet contradict
each other, that is they can say that A is true and untrue.
>You could say, to answer the question, "what is the meaning of X?"
>you must first know the answer to "what is the meaning of "what is
>the meaning of X"".
Suppose I run across a word I am unfamiliar with, let's call it
"diphelezation". Unless I already have a pretty good understanding
of the word from it's context I'm not going to ask you what the
diphelezation of "diphelezation" is. The very question would be
incompressible to me, so your words of reply, regardless of what
they are, would not help me one bit. It's silly to ask for the
meaning of meaning, if you already know then it's a waste of time,
and if you don't then the question is gibberish.
>And yet we are perfectly capable of gleaning a meaning from
>some statements.
EXACTLY. Definitions are nothing, usage is where you will find meaning.
>I don't ask, "what does this mean?" - I ask "what do you
>mean by this?".
A step in the right direction, but you still ask too much if you expect a
self contained, non circular definition of anything that is made up only of
words. It can't be done and I won't even try.
>This is why "what is the meaning of life" seems so silly
>to me.
So what else is new? The only use I made of the phrase "meaning of life"
is to make fun of it.
>I am curious about whether those similarities [to CoS] are
>also apparent to you.
They are not.
>>[with regard to humans superceding DNA:] Then I
>>would say that the big brain, long life strategy
>>was a huge success, that is, that it was a universal
>>maximum.
>Succcessful at what and a maxiumum of what?
Successful at duplicating the information content of the genes (or memes, at
that point there would be no difference) to the maximum extent possible.
John K Clark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.i
iQCzAgUBMNY6bH03wfSpid95AQG5uwTw5ZKshRb4KGyQ1wh6Bt9Eo6VNLBVOLnGE
hTEdhcd6RJkexUjGpgm8CFChsIu6WP5AQBXk5MdBctMwN3F8DH/5RqWz5Zq2woub
i76//eo85DgVRAk0S1Z1dmZ+WfCu58NmbWXEcMPBbrDb8j93qWgAPD0+B+fJajJN
UJdiEe5wO5TX1JsEMizLlMsJn0JZlQAkDZFH5YGvbNC7FZ+xRgc=
=iy0Z
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5443