One tiny sentence…three earth-shattering claims:
- You are claiming you know what consciousness is.
- You are claiming you know where it came from.
- You are claiming that, evolutionarily speaking, it is accidental.
There's nothing unusual about these claims. I couldn't make any progress when I analyzed cognition from the point of view of philosophy, computational theory, or neural networks. I made progress mostly when I looked at it from the point of view of evolutionary theory. What I'm saying is that a system that originated for one purpose was adapted to another. That happens quite often in evolution. My assertion is that the same system still exists in humans and is used for two different functions--but not both at the same time. That is one of the reasons why I get amused when new-agers make claims of untapped potential.
…and there is this claim. Wow! This claim must be predicated on an empirical representation of ‘cognition’ as well as the capacity to explicitly and definitively adjudicate the condition in other 'creatures'!
This system is obviously more complex in humans than in other animals but it is still the same system that probably evolved in non-schooling fish half a billion years ago. I assume you are referring mainly to the last adaptation that separates humans from chimpanzees and Neanderthals. That's a different adaptation that is usually harmful rather than helpful.
...just curious...but I note in the OP you seem to suggest that you have not finalized your work on the formalization of knowledge theory. Would not an explicit representation of cognition require such a resolution? Meaning...no definitive knowledge theory...no empirical understanding of cognition.
Not exactly. I came up with the conscious cycle last year and it seemed to fit with existing evidence. It has continued to match the evidence. However, people like Russ have been highly critical because it lacked an explanatory theory that would let you compare it to things like computational theory. That's a reasonable criticism. If you can't formalize it then how would you know that it was different from computational theory and not just some specialized subset? However, I couldn't fit it with existing theory, so I created knowledge theory. Adding knowledge theory has expanded to a more robust General Cognitive Systems theory and shown where the gaps are.
If you have, in fact, achieved any one of these epistemological milestones then you are certainly deserving of respect. But this is a skeptics forum…so don’t be surprised if you are inundated with demands for evidence.
I'm not sure that I would describe it as epistemology since that is a branch of philosophy and I'm working on formal theory. I might describe knowledge theory as in between information theory and the philosophical concept of truth. I have no idea what you are trying to say about respect. If you mean demonstrated success (evidence) then that is pretty much irrelevant to this forum. Or, if you mean predicting the future (confidence) based on demonstrated success then that too is irrelevant. Demands for evidence are also irrelevant. When I am finished I'll publish it. It would be silly to try to prove it here.
I don’t think anyone has any issues with discussing whatever theories you may wish to discuss (personally I find all this stuff to be quite fascinating). I think what folks have issues with is that you keep tossing in these rather exorbitant claims (and they are exorbitant…by any standards [last time I checked nobody even knew what consciousness was let alone where it came from])…and then kind of not backing them up.
All right, let's say that the claims are exorbitant. So, let's run through the possible motives that I could have:
1.) I am delusional.
This would not be that unlikely given that people with schizophrenia often develop obsessions with particular subjects and draw unwarranted conclusions based on unrelated data. For example, one man whom I talked to who was schizophrenic thought that it was significant if two words began with the same letter. As far as I can tell, I'm not delusional in this sense. For example, I managed to take the Ford temperature control unit apart on my mother's car and replace the O-rings. If you take this to a dealer, it's an $800 repair because a new unit costs $500 by itself. The O-rings cost me 90 cents apiece. I also replaced the heat control actuator on my minivan. This is a $600 repair. Instead, a new actuator cost me about $30. The old one had stripped teeth so it would only click instead of opening or closing the duct that lets more or less air pass through the heater core. I also replaced the venture gasket on the water softener and the bypass tube on my engine that was leaking antifreeze. The bypass tube is under the intake manifold. These types of valuations concerning money and the practicality of repair are generally beyond the ability of someone with schizophrenia.
2.) I'm attention seeking.
This again would not be that unlikely. There is the famous case of
Stephen Glass who invented about half of the stories he wrote for the New Republic. People have fabricated being relatives of famous people such as
Clark Rockefeller, have fabricated illnesses, fabricated histories, fabricated abilities, and have certainly fabricated technologies. Except, the profile doesn't seem to fit. If I were fabricating the idea that I could make a thinking machine then the most likely route would be to fake some kind of Turing Test where I demonstrated that an AI could seemingly answer complex questions. In other words, I should be big on demonstration and the theory should match what people already expect. So, if I wanted it to sound plausible I suppose I would claim that I had come up with a breakthrough procedure in deep learning rather than saying that I didn't think that general AI was possible. And why would I talk about knowledge theory when no one has any idea what that involves? Also, if I really wanted attention then where is my website, facebook page, or youtube channel promoting me?
3.) It's a case of Dunning Kruger.
This is also not that unlikely. There's no doubt that Sam Harris believes what he said about free will. I'm certain that Susan Blackmore believes what she says about parapsychology and dualism. I'm certain that Tononi and Barrett believed what they said about Integrated Information Theory. I'm certain that Penrose and Hameroff believed what they said about orchestrated objective reduction. I'm certain that Baars believes what he said about Global Workspace Theory and I'm certain that Dennett believes what he said about Multiple Drafts. These are all examples of making an intuitive conclusion rather than working through the details. I suppose if these people were neural nets then we would say that they found a local minimum rather than a global minimum. There are some differences though. When people make an intuitive conclusion it tends to be fairly simple, something that is easy to explain. GCS is more than I could fit in an entire journal, much less one article. Dunning Kruger also works by information avoidance. People cling to what appears to be a simple solution rather than seeking additional information or opposing ideas. However, if you don't seek additional information then you have no idea what fits and what doesn't, so it becomes impossible to evaluate the quality of your theory based on the evidence. And, if you don't look at opposing ideas then how would you have any idea what the scope of the problem was? Minimizing scope is a good way to arrive at a local minimum. To the best of my knowledge, I'm not avoiding either new information or opposing ideas.
4.) I'm on the right track.
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