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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...
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RECENT FORUM POSTS
Dr Narayan Bhadra : "For the explanation of Gravitational forces we need to go beyond the..." in The Noise of Gravitons
Dr Narayan Bhadra : "STRUCTURE FORMATION OF BIO-ELEMENTS Dr. Narayan Kumar Bhadra Lakshmipur..." in The Noise of Gravitons
Ulla Mattfolk: "In a statement posted on its website on 27 June, SNRIU said that "due to..." in Global Collaboration
Ulla Mattfolk: "Cont. Of the nuclear countries Sweden and Germany has said no thanks, they..." in Global Collaboration
Steve Dufourny: "Jonathan Dickau ,hope you are well, always cool to have your points of vue,..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
Steve Dufourny: "This platform is about theoretical physics, it is irritating to have these..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
Steve Dufourny: "I recommand this you tube of Professor Ellis about mind, intelligence,..." in George Ellis - How can...
Steve Dufourny: "irritating these posts, they shall disappear simply because under review..." in George Ellis - How can...
RECENT ARTICLES
click titles to read articles
The Math of Consciousness: Q&A with Kobi Kremnitzer
A meditating mathematician is developing a theory of conscious experience to help understand the boundary between the quantum and classical world.
Can We Feel What It’s Like to Be Quantum?
Underground experiments in the heart of the Italian mountains are testing the links between consciousness and collapse theories of quantum physics.
The Thermodynamic Limits of Intelligence: Q&A with David Wolpert
Calculating the energy needed to acquire and compute information could help explain the (in)efficiency of human brains and guide the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Gambling Against the Second Law
Using precision thermometry to make mini heat engines, that might, momentarily, bust through the thermodynamic limit.
Mind and Machine: What Does It Mean to Be Sentient?
Using neural networks to test definitions of 'autonomy.'
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June 30, 2022
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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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