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Johannes Kleiner: on 7/3/20 at 11:36am UTC, wrote Abstract: Most recent discussions of consciousness focus on a tiny subset...
RECENT FORUM POSTS
Stefan Weckbach: "Hi Lorraine, in the case of the crashing twin-towers, the term “top-down..." in The Present State of...
Stefan Weckbach: "Hi Steve, take also care Steve, and may the force of the three spheres be..." in The Present State of...
Jim Snowdon: "Since evolving on our rapidly rotating planet, we have used it`s rotational..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Steve Dufourny: "a general universal clock of evolution irreversible correlated for me with..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Georgina Woodward: "If considering existence rather than appearances, the time dimension..." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Georgina Woodward: "That is about the 'anatomy"" of spacetime." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Georgina Woodward: "Thank you. Good luck." in The Nature of Time
Lorraine Ford: "Rob, As you have not replied, I take it that you now concede that the..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
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click titles to read articles
The Quantum Clock-Maker Investigating COVID-19, Causality, and the Trouble with AI
Sally Shrapnel, a quantum physicist and medical practitioner, on her experiments into cause-and-effect that could help us understand time’s arrow—and build better healthcare algorithms.
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September 17, 2021
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TOPIC: Why current AI and neuroscience fail to explain ancient forms of spatial reasoning? by Aaron Sloman [refresh]
TOPIC: Why current AI and neuroscience fail to explain ancient forms of spatial reasoning? by Aaron Sloman [refresh]
Abstract: Most recent discussions of consciousness focus on a tiny subset of loosely characterized examples of human consciousness, ignoring evolutionary origins and transitions, the diversity of human and non-human phenomena, the variety of functions of consciousness, including consciousness of: possibilities for change, constraints on those possibilities, and implications of the possibilities and constraints -- together enabling extraordinary spatial competences in many species (e.g. portia spiders, squirrels, crows, apes) and, in humans, mathematical consciousness of spatial possibilities/impossibilities/necessities, discussed by Immanuel Kant (1781). (James Gibson missed important details.)
These are products of evolution's repeated discovery and use, in evolved construction-kits, of increasingly complex types of mathematical structure with constrained possibilities, used to specify new species with increasingly complex needs and behaviours, using lower-level impossibilities (constraints) to support higher level possibilities and necessities, employing new biological mechanisms that require more sophisticated information-based control. Such transitions produce new layers of control requirements: including acquisition and use of nutrients and other resources, reproductive processes, physical and informational development in individual organisms, and recognition and use of possibilities for action and their consequences by individuals, using layered mixtures of possibilities and constraints in the environment, over varying spatial and temporal scales (e.g. sand-castles to cranes and cathedrals).
I'll try to show how all this relates to aspects of mathematical consciousness noticed by Kant, essential for creative science and engineering as well as everyday actions, and also involved in spatial cognition used in ancient mathematical discoveries. In contrast, mechanisms using statistical evidence to derive probabilities cannot explain these achievements, and modern logic (unavailable to ancient mathematicians, and non-human species) lacks powerful heuristic features of spatial mathematical reasoning. New models of computation may be required, e.g. sub-neural chemistry-based computation with its mixture of discreteness and continuity (see recent work by Seth Grant).
Keywords: #Models of consciousness
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These are products of evolution's repeated discovery and use, in evolved construction-kits, of increasingly complex types of mathematical structure with constrained possibilities, used to specify new species with increasingly complex needs and behaviours, using lower-level impossibilities (constraints) to support higher level possibilities and necessities, employing new biological mechanisms that require more sophisticated information-based control. Such transitions produce new layers of control requirements: including acquisition and use of nutrients and other resources, reproductive processes, physical and informational development in individual organisms, and recognition and use of possibilities for action and their consequences by individuals, using layered mixtures of possibilities and constraints in the environment, over varying spatial and temporal scales (e.g. sand-castles to cranes and cathedrals).
I'll try to show how all this relates to aspects of mathematical consciousness noticed by Kant, essential for creative science and engineering as well as everyday actions, and also involved in spatial cognition used in ancient mathematical discoveries. In contrast, mechanisms using statistical evidence to derive probabilities cannot explain these achievements, and modern logic (unavailable to ancient mathematicians, and non-human species) lacks powerful heuristic features of spatial mathematical reasoning. New models of computation may be required, e.g. sub-neural chemistry-based computation with its mixture of discreteness and continuity (see recent work by Seth Grant).
Keywords: #Models of consciousness
This forum thread is open to the public.
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