"As John Stuart Mill explained, when a doctrine has been accepted so widely that the people have generally inherited, rather than adopted it, it begins an inevitable decline. Converts bring with them a zeal, but also an intimate understanding of the merits and pitfalls of both the ideology they left behind and that which they have adopted. Their beliefs were formed actively, by wrestling with objections and rebuttals. Those who have inherited the values that shape their lives may never have done this work, and thus may be far more susceptible to the simplest persuasion and emotional appeals."

On Consciousness

I found the following link on Complexity Theory particularly interesting and enlightening :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71n4GSM1jhw&list=PLsJWgOB5mIMDRt8-DBLLVfh-XeKs2YAcg

One of the statements in the series of lectures is that Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity which, in our case, I take to be the biological complexity of our brains.

In spite of our inability to agree on a definition of consciousness; not to mention our lack of trust in others' answers, it still seems that we know that we are individually conscious.  We may suspect that others are also conscious given that we can ask them whether they are but what we don't know is whether we experience this as an individual or if we are all partaking in a collective consciousness (dualism) which exists independently of our physical form. Furthermore when looking at other species we don't have the luxury of being able to ask them so we try to infer from their behavior whether they are conscious or not.

Thinking of consciousness as being an emergent property of complexity takes it one step away from us as individuals and enables us to think in terms of different species having different levels of consciousness.  So consciousness may not be the binary question that I have thought it to be and by, theoretically at least, being able to measure the biological complexity of a brain, we may be able to determine how conscious a particular species is when full grown.

Not only do we have this problem inter-species but even within a species; as the organism develops from inception to adult at which point does the organism become conscious?  Maybe it is something like a gradual development from not having consciousness at all at inception to knowing that one is conscious when an adult.  Could this be different for different species where some species never attain the complexity required to be conscious whereas others are dimly conscious while others, ourselves included, attain self-awareness that we are conscious?

Does emergence hint at some kind of dualism in that, although dependent on the physical, consciousness exists in a sense independent of the physical?  I would argue that, no, the concept of emergence shows that it is possible for properties that are immaterial to arise from the material and this makes the rationale for dualism difficult to support.

If it turns out that consciousness is an emergent property of material complexity then it would seem that the immaterial would not be capable of being considered to be consciousness in the same way that we consider ourselves to be. (PK)

Lastly, and again, if consciousness is an emergent property of complexity then in the world of AI it would seem that it would be plausible for something inorganic to attain consciousness.  Not only would it be conscious in a way that is fundamentally different to us, we would be able to determine the level of consciousness beyond simply having to ask the AI entity whether it is conscious or not and simply having to believe the answer.

Thanks to Pauk Kotschy for his comments on my article and for sharing the following Scientific American article on much the same topic.

 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-universal/

Propositional Relationships

I have been doing some thinking about how we know and what we know especially given my last post regarding "Roland's Flock" and the ongoing debate about "Show me the evidence" in various groups I am in.

Firstly, I would like to view the belief/knowledge divide as a relationship that individuals have with a proposition rather than a property of the proposition itself. Further I would also like to define knowledge as "Justified belief" just so that it can be distinguished from belief without getting into what counts as justification and finally, I would also like to leave the True/False debate alone for a little bit because I think that it is property of the proposition rather then part of the relationship that an individual has with that proposition.

Taking the following statements representing peoples' positions on a proposition which in this case is "Odin exists" : 

• Person A has a belief that "Odin exists"
• Person B has no belief that "Odin exists"
• Person C has knowledge that "Odin exists"
• Person D has no knowledge that "Odin exists"

Justification, to my mind, may take many forms. It may be evidence, revelation, intuition, reason, logic or anything else that may be regarded as persuasive to the individual noting that what may be persuasive to one individual may not be to another.

Working through some use cases involving the relationship of an individual to a proposition : 

• Some justification of a proposition is presented to an individual and the individual, after assessing the justification, decides that, for her, the justification is not persuasive so her relationship to the proposition can be categorized as D above. Having decided that it isn't persuasive there is a second step that she undertakes which is to decide whether in the absence of persuasive justification she is going to take the position of person A or that of person B above as her position relative to the proposition. She may choose A in which case she has a belief in the proposition even while acknowledging that the justification that she has isn't persuasive, even to her. Alternatively she may choose to take Person B's position and since the justification available has been found unpersuasive, she simply has no belief in the proposition. 
• Some justification of a proposition is presented to an individual and the individual, after assessing the justification, decides that, for her, the justification is persuasive so her relationship to the proposition can be categorized as C above. Having decided that it is persuasive there is no second step; by finding the justification persuasive she automatically takes on the stance of Person A in addition to keeping the stance of Person C given that knowledge is defined as "Justified belief".
• A proposition is presented to an individual without any justification of that proposition. In this case, since there is no justification (evidence, revelation, intuition, reason, logic or anything else), she may choose from Person A's or Person B's position and given the absence of any justification it is simply a choice that she makes as an individual.

Working through some positions and their relationships.

• Position A is mutually exclusive with Position B; one can't hold both A & B at the same time.
• Position C is mutually exclusive with Position D; one can't hold both C & D at the same time.
• Position A may be held at the same time as Position C, Position D or neither Position C nor D.
• Position B may be held at the same time as Position D or without Position D.
• Position C implies holding Position A as well.
• Position D implies holding either Position A or Position B.

When is it valid to challenge anothers' perspective : 

• Asking an individual holding Position A to justify their belief only makes sense if the individual holds Position C as well. If the individual doesn't hold Position C but holds either Position D or neither Position C nor Position D, the question seems a little moot.
• Asking an individual holding Position B to justify their no belief only makes sense if the individual holds Position D as well. If the individual doesn't hold Position D as well, the question seems a little moot.
• Asking an individual holding Position C to justify their belief is a reasonable question to ask.
• Asking an individual holding Position D to justify their no belief is a reasonable question to ask.

Some might point out that my definition of knowledge as "Justified belief" reduces knowledge to personal interpretation i.e. that knowledge is relative to the person holding that knowledge.  This is indeed the case but I draw a distinction between knowledge as held by an individual with a single perspective and Knowledge as seen from an infinity of perspectives.  Knowledge (absolute) with respect to a proposition can be identical to knowledge (personal) but because an infinity of perspectives isn't available to us; we have no way of knowing if one's own knowledge is in reality Knowledge.  This leads directly to the seemingly obvious position that knowledge (personal) can be incorrect.