James of Seattle

Um … is there another link to “here”?

This seems compatible w/ consciousness as pattern recognition, but how do you determine a “subject” has emerged?

Panprotopsychism, on the other hand …

I haven’t disabled them, but I don’t answer them. I’ve only had one so far that actually left voicemail. I think they may be learning.

Frontiers | An Attempt at a Unified Theory of the Neocortical Microcircuit in Sensory Cortex The neocortex performs a wide range of functions, including working memory, sensory perception, and motor planning. Despite this diversity in function, evide...

[asking as a non-neuroscience amateur philosopher of mind …]
This paper from Max Bennett (www.frontiersin.org/journals/neu...) suggests there are (at least) 2 functional sub-populations in Layer 5: L5a-RS and L5b-IB. Do we know if the “express lane” goes to one, the other, or both?

I see people talking about “using children as political leverage”. The word that came to my mind is … hostages.

There with ya …

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[except I’m ok with it …]

Is pseudonymous the same as anonymous? My real name would actually be more anonymous.

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[Smith]

An output that has substantial (as opposed to negligible) mutual information with respect to antimatter.

I guess to complete the point, some abstract functions (what you probably call computations) are multi-realizable. Some aren’t.

So to answer your question, a computation which you require to be implemented on an anti-matter computer could not be implemented on a normal matter computer.

This will take a long discussion on “information processing”. The short version: the output of a physical interaction shares mutual info w/ the input as well as the mechanism (efficient cause). But usually, you don’t care about that 2nd part when performing a “computation”, so you abstract it away.

I’d say it does have its own world model, and it’s possible that the CR has a world model like Searle’s, but it’s more likely that it has a world model like ChatGPT’s (derived from language only, as opp. to unitrackers) because that would be significantly easier to make and fulfill the purpose.

Canada's NICE agent greeting Americans disembarking cruise ships is how we mock Trump's dystopianism while making you all feel welcome.

The 2nd thing is that computation is not multirealizable. Any given physical substrate performs a computation at the lowest level which is different from any other substrate. Two computers can run Word, but at bottom, their computations differ. Multirealizability is a higher level abstraction.

On re-reading this I realized 2 things:
— the Chinese Room is an LLM, and as such, understands Chinese only to the extent that ChatGPT understands English. It does not understand Chinese the way Searle understands English because Searle has a lot of extra stuff (a world model) attached to his LLM.

And I’m using it like this: A given “mind” is the set of mental things a physically delineated system can perform. A mental “state” is a dynamic state of one or mental things being performed repeatedly. So my question to you is: is Searle’s English mind a subset of Searle’s mind?

YouTube video by Big Think Why 2025 is the single most pivotal year in our lifetime | Peter Leyden

I’ve mentioned that we are *in* the singularity. This is what I’m talking about. (H/T @adamfrank4.bsky.social )
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5k7...

Hmm … I don’t think we’re using “mind” in the same way. Gonna re-read the paper and see if I can restate the problem. Stay tuned.

Yes. Presumably there is some set of neurons required for generating the Chinese word for “dog” which you could change back to how they were before the memorizing. The English mind wouldn’t change, but the Chinese mind would. Alt., you could change them all back.

There will be some physical change that you can make which will alter one of the minds without altering the other. I can’t prove this, but I would be shocked (i.e., need some reason to believe) if this is not the case.

But then he’s no longer just memorizing the rules from the notebook, but instead is learning Chinese. But still, you can partition part of the brain and say English mind, and another (overlapping) part the Chinese mind, and those will be physically different.

1/2

YouTube video by Jack Roycroft-Sherry The Hidden Realm of Patterns Animating Life & The Universe | Dr. Michael Levin

For anyone interested in the idea that pattern recognition is the basis of consciousness [Psychule Theory!], this video w/ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social will be a useful discussion of the role of patterns in nature and intelligence:
youtu.be/imTnPhE20YQ?...

Based on my understanding of how learning in the brain works, similar to learning in neural nets, the act of ”memorizing” is going to physically change some neurons, but not all of them. I’m assuming some subsequent physical changes will alter the “Chinese” mind but not the “English”. Think not?

[didn’t mean to *claim* the trademark on MUM … that’s @wanjawiese.bsky.social ’s, I think]

Read this twice. Happy to report that I’m a dyed in the wool Physicalist, Computational Functionalist, and apparently a Homunctionalist. Woot! I don’t think Searle’s memorizing the rules defeats functionalism as the english and Chinese understanding parts of his brain are physically different.

Shhhh!!!!

Cool. Then I think pattern recognition is going to supply @keithfrankish.com ’s microfunctionalism as a Minimal Unifying Model (TM). Stay tuned.

Would pattern recognition count as a specific computation or a higher level functional relation?

sure, if you enjoy the horrifying limits of human perception