Dear Dr. Singh:

Thank you for your careful reading of my essay, and for your extensive comments.

With respect to Fig. 2B, you are correct that this represents many systems evolving in parallel, so that many directions of evolution are possible.

The question of how a conscious mind recognizes self and agency is indeed an important one. Minds are designed to recognize the continuity of objects even if they move or change, and further to identify correlations as causal. For example, if object A moves next to resting object B, which suddenly moves, then object A is an agent that caused (non-agent) object B to move. Neural networks are good at matching patterns like this.

With respect to how a virtual reality construction representing consciousness first evolves, that too is an important question. But consider the need of an animal to partition a visual field into objects of various categories: food, threats, mates, competitors. Some of these identifications may be instinctive, but others may be learned. The ability to make dynamic identifications based on past experiences would be highly adaptive. A dynamic model with active embedded links can start out simple, and become more complex with evolution.

With respect to my comments in the conclusion about illusions, my key point is that our subjective perceptions are NOT the same as the external reality. Instead, they represent a simplified construction, like a dream or a virtual reality, which dynamically tracks external reality and enables rapid adaptive responses. Only by looking past the illusions can we make genuine progress on understanding consciousness.

Alan Kadin

It is interesting that ours are the only two essays that bring in the concept of Corporation Boards into this contest. I rate your essay highly. I also note that you have written (earlier) about avoiding the paradox of quantum entanglement and measurement. I missed this when I first read your essay. You might want to check out Racicot's essay since it too attempts to resolve the same paradox.

Regards, Willy

Dear Alan,

bravo -- clear analysis, well-reasoned and nicely told! Your essay is among the most comprehensive ones, I think you touch upon about every aspect that is relevant to tackle the question. Myself, I focused on why our models of the macroscopic world, which "identify agency, both in ourselves in others" (as you put it) are not at variance with goal-free microscopic laws. Your approach is somewhat broader. I also like your comments about animal consciousness and the possible relevance of dreaming.

Good luck, Stefan

    Dear Stefan,

    Yes, clarity is something that I value in my writing and in that of others. Your essay is also quite clear. Obscure writing can sometimes be a way to hide confused thinking!

    My key point, which is different from most other essays, is that intelligence and consciousness can be modeled without any fundamental new physics, provided that we dismiss our subjective perceptions. I realize that this may be controversial, but it provides a way to avoid the philosophical impasse of mind-body duality.

    I have had a number of lucid dreams over the years, in which I knew I was dreaming, and could analyze dream content real-time and even manipulate the dream environment. Any serious model of consciousness needs to incorporate dreaming as an alternative conscious state.

    Best wishes,

    Alan

    Dear Alan,

    I'm also sympathetic to the idea that "intelligence and consciousness can be modeled without any fundamental new physics" and that this will allow to "avoid the philosophical impasse of mind-body duality."

    By the way, your explanation "that the human mind is preprogrammed to identify agency" and that "[t]hese agents are central to a simplified model of the world, which filters all our perceptions" reminded me of Sofia Magnúsdóttir's essay, which also prominently features such internal "simplified models".

    One more question: Do have a simple example for what you had in mind when you wrote that "macroscopic systems often include complex feedback loops that largely decouple the macroscopic behavior from microscopic degrees of freedom"?

    Cheers, Stefan

    8 days later

    • [deleted]

    • Post #49

    Alan -

    An excellent essay, thank you. You provide a clear and concise defense of the universe as a closed physical system of immense complexity, and a well crafted argument that our notions of consciousness and agency are epiphenomenal illusions.

    Two things puzzle me. The first is whether you have completely closed the door. For example, you say "you choose your breakfast, but the climate of the earth is beyond your control." As to breakfast, where do you make room for the efficacy of consciousness by which one may change the course of history by choosing a breakfast other than the one that appears before you? As to climate change, are you saying that human behavior has no effect on climate - or simply that your individual decisions are so minuscule as to have de minimum influence on the outcome?

    My second question concerns a key theme in my essay The How and The Why of Emergence and Intention. Your arguments are specific to the questions of "How", but what is absent is an explanation of "Why". I suggest that a closed system can have no answer to that question.

    Thank you - George Gantz

      Dear George,

      Thank you for your careful reading of my essay and your comments.

      Cartesian dualism is so embedded in our psyches that overcoming it is extremely difficult.

      Regarding the illusion of control, we all like to believe that we are important as individuals. We can indeed affect things locally in a large way, and globally in a very small way. Regarding climate, I recyle and conserve energy as a way of expressing my solidarity on the issue, but I understand that this is largely symbolism.

      Regarding "why", once you have DNA, natural selection automatically brings about the rest. But I would suggest that the evolution of human-like intelligence may not be inevitable. So I really don't expect to hear from intelligent aliens. Primates are not the most successful animal group, and ancestral humans and pre-humans were almost wiped out several times. It is really only the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago that turned humans from a marginal existence to the dominant form of life on earth.

      Alan

      Hi dear Kadin

      You have presented one serious and huge meaningful article in this contest (I think really - maybe for this namely your work remains little bit outside of active discussion and evaluation!) I will just tell you that small quantity of people will entered to detailed study the whole volume of your amazing work in limited time that provided to us. But I had try to read your essay and had find many attractive - justice assertions and rational approach that can bring to productively develop, in my hurried view. On a contest question particularly you clearly notices that we no need a new mysterious hypotheses (that is main thing for me!), but you also demonstrate the whole difficulty of such question.

      So, your work seems to me very rich to future thinking that unconditionally deserved to high rating, (that I feel obligated to do!) But only let my drive your attention on my technological remark for your future works.

      Best wishes!

      P.S. Hope you can check - is my essay are readable or not?

        Dear Alan M. Kadin

        I appreciate your essay. You spent a lot of effort to write it. If you believed in the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes, then your essay would be even better. There is not movable a geometric space, and is movable physical space. These are different concepts.

        I inform all the participants that use the online translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to integrate modern physics into a single theory. Let FQXi will be the starting point of this Association.

        Don't let the New Cartesian Physic disappear! Do not ask for himself, but for Descartes.

        New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show potential in this essay I risked give "The way of the materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

        Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. After you give a post in my topic, I shall do the same in your theme

        Sincerely,

        Dizhechko Boris

          Dear Dr. Kirakosyan,

          Thank you for reading my essay and for your insightful comments.

          With regard to your essay, it is readable even if the English is a bit non-standard, and the presentation a bit wandering. If I understand your argument correctly, you question the foundations of both quantum mechanics and relativity based in part on their non-realistic methodology.

          I agree, and I refer in the End Notes of my essay to a recent unpublished manuscript "Proposed experiments to test the foundations of quantum computing". Quantum computing has become a hot research area driven by immense amounts of funding, motivated by dramatic claims of exponentially fast computing. My prediction is that these systems will fail completely, which will bring about a revolution in our understanding of the foundations of quantum mechanics, perhaps within the next 10-20 years. I hope to still be around to see this.

          Alan Kadin

          Dear Dr. Dizhechko,

          I am not sure that I understand your analysis, and the English may be only part of the problem.

          My view, which is mentioned briefly in the Endnotes section of my essay, is that quantum waves provide the fundamental units defining time and space, but that these waves are physically distinct from the time and space in which they move.

          Alan Kadin

          Thank you for kindly words, dear Kadin.

          You have almost rightly characterized the main essence of my approach, and you have offered your article in vixra.org. It look to me as your next serious work that however, I'm just not able to study and say something reasonable within this short and tensioned time that we are now. So, I will do it after this heavy battle. Then we can examine our common points as well as the possible disagreements. Now I can only wish you successes!

          Dear Alan,

          I really liked your ending calling for cooperation... very inspirational.

          2 questions:

          1. Does AI scare you? Why or why not

          2. Do you see neurons like I do? They are eyes of consciousness that pass along information (see or communicate - kind of like humans do).

          * And if you wouldn't mind giving me a critique... I would love to hear your ideas about my paper... A Theory of Everything...

          and check out my latest post... on 4/6... it's a little poem like description about dark matter.

          Good luck in the contest,

          William Walker

            Hello Alan Kadin,

            I very much enjoyed your essay; it's an excellent read. You have an excellent grasp of the field leading up to artificial intelligence and consciousness, and I agree with your many points.

            But, I think that you may have missed the point of the question of "How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?" You jump to the assumption 'that human behavior should be ultimately derivable from particle physics' - human behavior is not reducible to particle physics. How would you explain the rules of Baseball with particle physics? Human behavior is ultimately implemented by particle physics. In a decade or two, we will demonstrate that human behavior can be implemented by computers, in addition to evolutional implementation in biology.

            I think the question should be read as: How can the mindless universe implement aims and intention though human behavior or otherwise?

            I am sure you have to agree that the universe is highly likely to be mindless, yet billions of years of physical processes and natural selection have produced us. The fact of our existence is not controversial - how we got here is.

            How can, and how did, the universe produce us?

            Thanks for the good read.

            Cheers,

            Bruce Amberden.

              Dear Sirs!

              Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use «spam».

              New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

              New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

              Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.

              Sincerely,

              Dizhechko Boris

                Dear Mr. Amberden,

                Thank you for reading my essay, and for your comments.

                You seem to have misread my concluding paragraph. I stated explicitly that human behavior is NOT reducible to particle physics.

                As to how the universe produced humans, the answer is adaptation through natural selection. We are not as special as we think we are.

                Alan Kadin

                Dear Mr. Walker,

                Thank you for reading my essay.

                In response to your questions,

                1) People scare me more than AI.

                2) Neurons are not conscious. They simply propagate ionic distortion signals from one end to the other.

                Regarding your Theory of Everything, you seem to believe that consciousness is a universal field, while I believe that consciousness is an illusion.

                Alan Kadin

                Dear Dr. Dizhechko,

                I already responded to your comment of April 5th - see above.

                Alan Kadin