Robert Ritner And Joseph Smith

[Chris Smith]

I think we're talking somewhat at cross-purposes, Zeta. You seem to be interested in the question, "Can software that isn't currently being run still be called software?" That question doesn't particularly interest me. It depends completely on subjective definitions and frames of reference. What really interests me is how software works, because that's a question that bears on the mind-body problem. That's why I've been focusing in this discussion on the instantiation of software rather than its definition.

My point in all this has been that software operations are, at bottom, really just hardware operations viewed at a higher level of organization. And I think the same is basically true of the mind and brain.

[Darth_Bill]

As a software engineer, I must add that software can only work on particular hardware. It is hardware dependent. You can abstract hardware out into software, and that is a major push in the industry at present, but it is all eventually dependent upon particular hardware. Software written for x86 will not run on 68K processors.

That's about all I can add to the discussion. You guys are speaking a language I haven't grasped otherwise.

[Zeta-Flux]

I think we're talking somewhat at cross-purposes, Zeta. You seem to be interested in the question, "Can software that isn't currently being run still be called software?" That question doesn't particularly interest me. It depends completely on subjective definitions and frames of reference.

And I would argue that subjective frames of reference are an objective part of the universe, and thus an aspect of how things really "work". (Especially self-referential subjective frames of reference.)

But to your point, I would disagree. My question is not the one you pose--of course software can be called whatever we want to call it. Humans are good at that sort of thing. Rather, my question was what *you* meant in your analogy, and whether your analogy breaks down if you really specify what you mean, which I think it does.

What really interests me is how software works, because that's a question that bears on the mind-body problem. That's why I've been focusing in this discussion on the instantiation of software rather than its definition.

My point in all this has been that software operations are, at bottom, really just hardware operations viewed at a higher level of organization. And I think the same is basically true of the mind and brain.

I think it is a mistake to assume that something is "work"ing only when it is being 'instantiated' in some specific role. The software, in my humble opinion, is working just fine even when it is not being run by the hardware. In other words, I would view your analogy as conflating the soul/mind with the instantiation of some aspects of the soul via the mechanism of the brain. Edited September 7, 2011 by Zeta-Flux

[mfbukowski]

My point in all this has been that software operations are, at bottom, really just hardware operations viewed at a higher level of organization. And I think the same is basically true of the mind and brain.

I think you need to really look at what it means to say "are really just" about anything.

It presumes that some sort of reductionism is possible- in a sense you could be begging the question from the beginning by presuming reductionism ("x really is just y") and then - surprise- find that one thing reduces to the other. Perhaps that is the problem here- I do not believe that any kind of reductionist statement applies to consciousness.

It might apply to software- I honestly don't know, but it doesn't apply to consciousness.

Edited September 7, 2011 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

You're right about our straying from the thread topic. Maybe if we plan to continue, we should move to the focused discussions folder.

Yes, that would be fine with me, if and when you want to do the James discussion- or continue this one- when you are ready PM me or something- I think you said you needed some time- but I will start whenever you want.

I will also be in and out of the board for a while so just PM me if you like.

[Skylla]

Pahoran is banned from the thread for insults.

Skylla

[Chris Smith]

Sigh. Zeta, honestly, this whole discussion is just bizarre to me. Unless you think there's some kind of "software heaven" where my computer games go when I'm not running them, I don't know how we could possibly be in disagreement about this. It makes no sense to say that software is "working" when it isn't working. When it isn't working, it's just a magnetic pattern on a disk. It's only when the magnetic pattern is acted upon by a system capable of reading it that a higher level of complexity becomes observable and manipulable. Are you really trying to posit some kind of substrate-independent existence for this higher level of complexity? (I.e., that software is like an immaterial "soul" that can exist independently of its body?)

Edited September 7, 2011 by Chris Smith

[William Schryver]

I hadn’t really paid any attention to this discussion until this morning, but having now read the past couple pages, I see that it is actually quite interesting, and touches upon things about which I have given considerable thought over the years. I have (probably like many who have experience with the creation of computer software) pondered the analogies that can be made between software/hardware and mind (spirit; soul)/body. I don’t know that I am really interested in entering the discussion at hand, although I will probably continue to follow it as it progresses.

That said, I would like to make one observation that seems relevant: “software” is merely the organization of logic and commands at a high semantic level. The rules that govern the creation of software are also quite strict. They cannot be ignored, or even bent. They are merciless in that respect. Judgment is swift and certain. The logic and commands must abide the law, or they will be rejected—all to serve the requirements of a mysterious and omnipotent lawmaker/intermediary: the compiler. The compiler is a sort of secondary “software” element that will consider your petition (your program that has been authored according to its laws) and, should it find that you have, without exception, adhered to its laws, will beneficently exalt and purify what it otherwise considers to be your quasi-unintelligible grunts, thereby converting them into a form that is able to actually operate within the holy processor (the “hardware”).

This interface between the creative designer (the “programmer”) and the mechanism (the “hardware”) is the absolutely essential component. Without it, software is meaningless; utterly impotent; mere chicken scratchings in the sands of time. Of course, the hardware can neither conceive of nor author the instruction sets that cause it to act. It has no real intrinsic intelligence. It merely awaits, constantly asking the question “what should I do?” But, for that matter, neither can the programmer directly command the hardware. All software exists on a plane forever separate from the hardware it is intended to cause to act—indeed, it could be said that the software and the hardware never really interact at all. Even the so-called “interpreted” (as opposed to “compiled”) languages (Java) are subject to this reality—they merely require that the “translation” of the high-level commands occur dynamically, and they are considerate enough to display a little hourglass icon to console you while you wait.

Yes, the compiler is the great miracle; the deus ex machina; created by some unknown and unknowable mind in a galaxy of thought far, far away from that presently inhabited by us mere humans.

Now, I may yet articulate some analogies and/or conclusions on the basis of this observation, but for now I merely offer it as something else to be considered within the context of this ongoing discussion.

Edited to add a missing word.

Edited September 7, 2011 by William Schryver

[Chris Smith]

Hi Zeta,

Perhaps what I've been saying in this thread would be more intelligible if you were to read up on some post-structuralist philosophy of language.

Colloquially, we normally think of a text as “having” a meaning. The post-structuralists argue that this is little more than a useful fiction; meaning doesn't actually inhere in a text. Rather, a text's “meaning” is re-invented and reconstituted anew by every reader. There's some overlap between the meaning it evokes for you and the meaning it evokes for me, because you and I share rules of syntax. However, no two people's syntaxes are exactly the same, so no two readings of the text are ever exactly the same, either. This illustrates that there is no single meaning attached to the text, but only the various meanings that are created in the minds of its readers when they act upon it with a syntax in mind.

It's less obvious with computers, because their syntax is more standardized, so for the most part they read the same piece of software the same way. But one could conceivably build several different computer systems that would run the same code very differently. If we think of the disk as “text” and the software as the “meaning”, then I hope you can see that the same post-structuralist model applies. The disk “has a meaning” only in a colloquial, conventional sense; the meaning does not metaphysically inhere in the disk, but rather is recreated anew whenever the system acts upon the disk with a particular syntax.

This isn't just a crazy idea I came up with on my own. This is fairly standard and well-accepted philosophy of language.

Peace,

-Chris

Edited September 7, 2011 by Chris Smith

[Chris Smith]

Interesting post, Will. Thanks.

You wrote, "it could be said that the software and the hardware never really interact at all." Personally, I think it could be argued that the software doesn't really exist at all. It's a sort of self-reflexive hardware behavior.

Edited September 7, 2011 by Chris Smith

[mfbukowski]

Hi Zeta,

Perhaps what I've been saying in this thread would be more intelligible if you were to read up on some post-structuralist philosophy of language.

Colloquially, we normally think of a text as “having” a meaning. The post-structuralists argue that this is little more than a useful fiction; meaning doesn't actually inhere in a text. Rather, a text's “meaning” is re-invented and reconstituted anew by every reader. There's some overlap between the meaning it evokes for you and the meaning it evokes for me, because you and I share rules of syntax. However, no two people's syntaxes are exactly the same, so no two readings of the text are ever exactly the same, either. This illustrates that there is no single meaning attached to the text, but only the various meanings that are created in the minds of its readers when they act upon it with a syntax in mind.

It's less obvious with computers, because their syntax is more standardized, so for the most part they read the same piece of software the same way. But one could conceivably build several different computer systems that would run the same code very differently. If we think of the disk as “text” and the software as the “meaning”, then I hope you can see that the same post-structuralist model applies. The disk “has a meaning” only in a colloquial, conventional sense; the meaning does not metaphysically inhere in the disk, but rather is recreated anew whenever the system acts upon the disk with a particular syntax.

This isn't just a crazy idea I came up with on my own. This is fairly standard and well-accepted philosophy of language.

Agreed. Actually an excellent summary. That is what I was trying to say in my smart- a....... aleck answer to Zeta.

But Wittgenstein in his later philosophy would say that meaning is ultimately an instrument of communication- each "language game's" meaning is dependent on the use and intentions of the users- the social context if you will - of what is said.

That's why I deliberately, earlier in this thread, used the phrase "I know the church is true" as it could be said by someone laying the bricks and mortar for the walls as meaning "I know the structural members of this church building are "true" when measured with a plumb-line and level"

The meaning of that sentence is totally dependent on who is saying it and their intentions in a social context- the meaning IS that social context.

So of course, no social context- a hard drive thrown in a dump- no "meaning". It's only value is to a metal recycler perhaps.

But again, my mantra:

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

You get the idea!

Edited September 7, 2011 by mfbukowski

[Chris Smith]

But again, my mantra:

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

This is an analogy for consciousness which ultimately breaks down....

lol. Well, obviously I don't think it does. Consciousness obviously differs from software (and the brain from hardware) in a lot of ways, but there are also a lot of highly suggestive similarities. Like a computer, the brain consists of electrical impulses playing across a physical substrate, which appears to have components dedicated to particular higher-level functions. Like a computer, the brain rewrites and reconfigures itself. Like a computer, the mind can be altered by changing the brain.

As I told a friend recently in a discussion about the afterlife, "I can change your personality by altering your brain. I can remove a portion of your frontal lobe and make you a killer. I can cut the connections between your two hemispheres and make you literally two different consciousnesses inhabiting the same body. If your personality can't survive the alteration of part of the brain, why should we think it can survive its entire destruction?"

Edited September 7, 2011 by Chris Smith

[mfbukowski]

Here's the difference:

A computer may be (perhaps for purposes of this discussion) the "same" or "analogous to" someone else's mind, but no one, I think could say it is properly analogous to their own mind.

We observe how computers operate, then we observe other's minds operating in what we think might be similar ways, we hypothesize an analogy, precisely because our standpoint is "objective" to those other "minds" and the computer (assuming that a computer has a "mind" for the moment)

But try as we might, we cannot ever observe "what it's like to be a computer" any more than we can observe "what it's like to be a bat" (see my siggy), or really "What it's like to be Bukowski", (for you guys) because those observations are MY subjective observations, not accessible to you, any more than a computer's "observations" would be. They are subjective- not objective observations.

You can't be "in my head" nor can you be a computer or a bat, so you cannot see what those entities see- you cannot look at their consciousness- you can only look at your own.

That's why science cannot "observe" consciousness- it's not what it does. Science is objective and only speaks in language- ie: in a social context of meaning- and therefore CANNOT communicate what is NOT social- what is like to be me, for each of us.

My consciousness is only "observable" to me, and I can only "express" it in language- at which moment whatever I say becomes socially, objectively understandable.

So ultimately that is why we cannot "express what a trumpet sounds like" or the ever-popular "taste of salt" It is taking that subjective experience and attempting to re-create it in a social, linguistic, objective, context.

The mere fact that I cannot describe what a trumpet sounds like, but yet I can "know" that is all the evidence that is necessary to prove the chasm between the subjective and objective.

If objective language cannot express what a trumpet sounds like- how could one expect an observation of an electro-chemical brainstate in another person fully express what a trumpet sounds like?

Impossible! Physical brain states will never represent or reproduce consciousness.

[Chris Smith]

I understand the principle that one can't observe another person's subjective experience (or, for that matter, anything in-itself). But I would say that to follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion is a little too Cartesian for me. I think the practical thing to do is to assume that my experience of consciousness is something like yours, and that you can generally be trusted to describe your experience. That may not permit me to really know your experience in-itself, but it's enough to serve as a basis for some generalizations about the relation of your experience to your brain.

That's all we can ever do, really. Generalize, given certain basic assumptions, about the relations between things that are ultimately metaphysically inaccessible to us.

Edited September 7, 2011 by Chris Smith

[Zeta-Flux]

Sigh. Zeta, honestly, this whole discussion is just bizarre to me. Unless you think there's some kind of "software heaven" where my computer games go when I'm not running them, I don't know how we could possibly be in disagreement about this. It makes no sense to say that software is "working" when it isn't working.

It does if there is more than one way in which software works. It might not be working at giving instructions to the hardware, but it could be working just fine at another task (such as waiting).

When it isn't working, it's just a magnetic pattern on a disk.

There is that unjustified "just" again. Further, at least from a pragmatic viewpoint, it isn't just magnetic patterns on a disk. They are magnetic patterns which can be useful later for specific functions. So to say they are "just" something seems to even run counter to everyday experience.

It's only when the magnetic pattern is acted upon by a system capable of reading it that a higher level of complexity becomes observable and manipulable.

But that doesn't mean it didn't exist in the interim. Something does not need to be observable to exist (as evidenced by modern physics).

Are you really trying to posit some kind of substrate-independent existence for this higher level of complexity? (I.e., that software is like an immaterial "soul" that can exist independently of its body?)

No. (Besides which, I don't believe in an immaterial soul.) I'm saying that just because one function of the soul is to interact with the brain, that doesn't mean when we don't observe the soul acting on the brain [such as if the brain is destroyed or injured] that doesn't mean the soul doesn't exist.

Similarly, if the hardware of a computer is damaged, the software may remain intact. After fixing the computer the software can continue to implement its instructions via calls from the compiler.

---------

Perhaps what I've been saying in this thread would be more intelligible if you were to read up on some post-structuralist philosophy of language.

Colloquially, we normally think of a text as “having” a meaning. The post-structuralists argue that this is little more than a useful fiction; meaning doesn't actually inhere in a text. Rather, a text's “meaning” is re-invented and reconstituted anew by every reader. There's some overlap between the meaning it evokes for you and the meaning it evokes for me, because you and I share rules of syntax. However, no two people's syntaxes are exactly the same, so no two readings of the text are ever exactly the same, either. This illustrates that there is no single meaning attached to the text, but only the various meanings that are created in the minds of its readers when they act upon it with a syntax in mind.

Apparently you didn't quite grasp that I'm fine with this. (Although I would add the statement that it may be possible to share the same syntax on certain activities. For example, I think this is done in mathematics all the time.) I thought I said as much when I talked about syntax and semantics. Even in the rare cases we have the same syntax, our semantics still might not match (and we may not even be able to ever come to the same semantics).

It's less obvious with computers, because their syntax is more standardized, so for the most part they read the same piece of software the same way. But one could conceivably build several different computer systems that would run the same code very differently. If we think of the disk as “text” and the software as the “meaning”, then I hope you can see that the same post-structuralist model applies. The disk “has a meaning” only in a colloquial, conventional sense; the meaning does not metaphysically inhere in the disk, but rather is recreated anew whenever the system acts upon the disk with a particular syntax.

This isn't just a crazy idea I came up with on my own. This is fairly standard and well-accepted philosophy of language.

I don't know why meaning would even need to metaphysically inhere in the disk. However, I think I adequately addressed my issues with your "only in a colloquial" statement by what I said above. Edited September 7, 2011 by Zeta-Flux

[Chris Smith]

Zeta,

Apparently the only thing we disagree on is whether it's fair for me to deny the colloquial axiom that a disk "contains" software. I agree that this colloquialism is true enough for everyday purposes, but I deny that it 's true in a metaphysical sense. And as far as I'm concerned, the metaphysical sense is all that matters for the purposes of the current discussion, which is about metaphysics. In any event, let the record show that Zeta-Flux objects to my terminology. And now, I hope, back to your regular programming.

Peace,

-Chris

[wenglund]

I am willing to meet Chris half way and grant that to some extent a fundamentalist mind, with its literalistic cognition and unbendable rules (as Will pointed out), is like a computer/software. However, the more capable the mind is to think figuratively and flexibly, the less the analogy applies.

And, in some respects, this may tie this tangent back into the topic of the OP. Is it possible that Ritner has given us a literal meaning of Figure #3, whereas Joseph, and perhaps Iamblichus and Uzadavinys’s, has given us a figurative meaning?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited September 7, 2011 by wenglund

[Chris Smith]

I am willing to meet Chris half way and grant that to some extent a fundamentalist mind, with its literalistic cognition and unbendable rules (as Will pointed out), is like a computer/software. However, the more capable the mind is to think figuratively and flexibly, the less the analogy applies.

lol. Well, actually you raise an interesting difference between computer hardware and the human brain, which is that the latter is made of more "plastic"-- changeable-- stuff, and is capable of rewiring itself in a much more radical way than computer hardware is. And as for people's different levels of mental flexibility, scientists have also found that brain plasticity differs from person to person. The brains of the young, for example, are more plastic than the brains of the elderly, which is presumably why it's easier for young dogs to learn new tricks (and to change their fundamental religious beliefs).

Before AI can be fully realized, it will probably be necessary for computer hardware to move to a more plastic medium.

Peace,

-Chris

[mfbukowski]

I understand the principle that one can't observe another person's subjective experience (or, for that matter, anything in-itself). But I would say that to follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion is a little too Cartesian for me. I think the practical thing to do is to assume that my experience of consciousness is something like yours, and that you can generally be trusted to describe your experience. That may not permit me to really know your experience in-itself, but it's enough to serve as a basis for some generalizations about the relation of your experience to your brain.

That's all we can ever do, really. Generalize, given certain basic assumptions, about the relations between things that are ultimately metaphysically inaccessible to us.

Agreed, but I would avoid even thinking of something "in itself". I am not sure how that is Cartesian- I don't expect you to be able to know my subjective experiences. I would go so far as to say that there ARE no "things metaphysically accessible to us" precisely because, since "they" are postulated to be "inaccessible" there is no reason to even think they "exist".

Yet subjective experiences do in fact exist, and I think we can in some cases have "knowledge" concerning them.

Pragmatists often deal more with the concept of "warranted assertability" than with "truth".

[mfbukowski]

I am willing to meet Chris half way and grant that to some extent a fundamentalist mind, with its literalistic cognition and unbendable rules (as Will pointed out), is like a computer/software. However, the more capable the mind is to think figuratively and flexibly, the less the analogy applies.

And, in some respects, this may tie this tangent back into the topic of the OP. Is it possible that Ritner has given us a literal meaning of Figure #3, whereas Joseph, and perhaps Iamblichus and Uzadavinys’s, has given us a figurative meaning?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Back to the OP? You trying to cause trouble or something?

[Zeta-Flux]

Apparently the only thing we disagree on is whether it's fair for me to deny the colloquial axiom that a disk "contains" software. I agree that this colloquialism is true enough for everyday purposes, but I deny that it 's true in a metaphysical sense.

That's an interesting way of putting it.

Given that the logician Tarski proved that one cannot define truth within any complex language (but must pass to a metalanguage), and given that the universe is pretty complex, I don't know how anything can be "true" except in a metaphysical sense. ;-)

Edited September 8, 2011 by Zeta-Flux

[Chris Smith]

I would go so far as to say that there ARE no "things metaphysically inaccessible to us" precisely because, since "they" are postulated to be "inaccessible" there is no reason to even think they "exist".

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I think we can only be agnostic as to the actual existence of "things". What we call "things" certainly seem to constrain our experience in important ways, even though we don't really know what they are or why these constraints exist.

Pragmatists often deal more with the concept of "warranted assertability" than with "truth".

As I think I've mentioned to you before, I feel entirely comfortable using the language of "critical realism" for most purposes, because I see no real pragmatic difference between critical realism and pragmatism. (And because equivocal language is so unwiedly as to be-- well-- unpragmatic.)

[mfbukowski]

lol. Well, obviously I don't think it does. Consciousness obviously differs from software (and the brain from hardware) in a lot of ways, but there are also a lot of highly suggestive similarities. Like a computer, the brain consists of electrical impulses playing across a physical substrate, which appears to have components dedicated to particular higher-level functions. Like a computer, the brain rewrites and reconfigures itself. Like a computer, the mind can be altered by changing the brain.

As I told a friend recently in a discussion about the afterlife, "I can change your personality by altering your brain. I can remove a portion of your frontal lobe and make you a killer. I can cut the connections between your two hemispheres and make you literally two different consciousnesses inhabiting the same body. If your personality can't survive the alteration of part of the brain, why should we think it can survive its entire destruction?"

Well I think it is undeniable that brain damage causes personality changes, but frankly, I am having a little trouble seeing what that has to do with the problem at hand.

I don't think that "personality"= "spirit" for one thing since as you point out, so much of our personality is formed by experiences. You don't have to give someone brain damage to adjust their personality, just stick them in a closet for a few months and you are guaranteed to get some changes

Arguably, one could have so many personality changes from experiences or organic damage that one might say that one is "not the same person" as she was, but that doesn't alter the fact that that person still has subjective experiences and beliefs some of which work better than others.

Clearly if you do enough damage, I am certainly willing to concede that that person may not be able to "feel the spirit".

Again- the "reality" of the spirit, for me and I think for William James is not based on any objective observation- it is based on a subjective feeling that there is a part of oneself which is non-contingent to use philosophical terminology- one who is the "experiencer" no matter how degraded the cognitive level might be. I think that even one-celled organisms perhaps can be be seen that way- in the sense of a distinction between the organism and the environment. When one dies, one becomes part of the environment and is no longer an "actor" distinguished from it.

But remember the "reality" of everything linguistic, including science, I think is metaphor, from the objective point of view but that has nothing to do with the subjective point of view. So for me, subjective experience is just as "real" as objective experience, and in some ways more so, since it is here that we all make decisions, find meaning, find love and ultimately organize our own worlds out of subjective experience- the atheist, the theist, the Muslim and Christian ultimately organize their own world from their subjective experiences, mirroring God seen as a man, now "through a glass darkly".

That to me is ultimately the genius of Mormonism, the metaphor of all metaphors.

And please no one say "What it's just a metaphor"? It is just as "real" a metaphor as the earth going around the sun is a metaphor. Notice that those are words, and can be nothing else than metaphorical.

Edited September 8, 2011 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

When one dies, one becomes part of the environment and is no longer an "actor" distinguished from it.

Let me head off one obvious objection to this sentence before someone makes it.

The point is of course that I believe the spirit goes on after that- the spirit is not the personality. No one has any objective evidence of the spirit, it is true. but my subjective experience and my belief is that it exists and will continue after my body is no longer an "actor". And because I find this subjective belief and experience to be so important in my life, I act on it, and it is as real a belief to me, as any belief I use in planning my life.

It gives my life meaning and purpose, and so I find this belief to be justified by the effects it has in my life. I find it has great utility to me.

[mfbukowski]

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I think we can only be agnostic as to the actual existence of "things". What we call "things" certainly seem to constrain our experience in important ways, even though we don't really know what they are or why these constraints exist.

But it seems that would bring in "correspondence"? How do these invisible "things" "constrain" our experience of them?

We may be getting to the core of our differences here. I put all experience on an equal footing- you seem to favor the objective, which to me is not warranted.

Edited September 8, 2011 by mfbukowski