Alex and Michael DB,

To Alex:  I agree with what you wrote, but with three important qualifications:  (1) Every node in a diagram represents a concept. (2) Every linear notation for mathematics is a special case of some diagram; in some cases, the linearization is a one-to-one mapping; but in other cases, it loses some of the information, or it encodes that information in a more obscure way.  Euclidean geometry is the most obvious example, but other kinds of geometry are even stronger reasons for multi-dimensional diagrams.  (3) The tensors that represent LLMs are special cases of diagrams with special-case operations;  for full generality, they must be supplemented with more general diagrams and operations on them.

And by the way, the title of my first book, Conceptual Structures, emphasizes the point that diagrams represent structures, and every structure can be represented by a diagram.  Linear notations are just one-dimensional diagrams.  Mapping a multi-dimensional structure into a one-dimensional line adds a huge amount of complexity.  As just one example:  direct connections by lines must be replaced by special symbols called names.  And those names create a huge amount of complexity when they are constantly being renamed.

To Micheal:   Since you agree with me, I agree with you.

Re consciousness:  The fact that the cerebellum has over 4 times as many neurons as the much larger cerebral cortex is important.  Even more important is that (1) Those neurons are essential for high-speed mathematical computation and reasoning.  (2) They are aslo essential for all complex methods of performance in music, gymnastics, art architecture, and complex design of machinery of any kind. and (3) Nothing in the cerebellum is conscious.

Just look at the fantastic gymnastics by Simone Biles.  She required years of dedicated *conscious* training to learn those moves, but the details of the high-speed performance are outside of any conscious control.  It would be impossible to think in words about each of those details at the speed at which they were performed.  Each performance was initiated and controlled by conscious decisions, but the speed is too fast for any conscious control.  She was conscious of the performance, but not of every detail computed by her cerebellum.

That is a very important distinction:  the computation in the cerebellum is not conscious.  And no definition of consciousness would  have the slightest value for understanding what and how the cerebellum computes its operations

But since you mention Searle, I'm not surprised at his response about panpsychism.  I remember another story about a dinner party he attended, where the guests were sitting outside while the food was being prepared.  At one point, Searle jumped up and proclaimed in a loud voice that frightened the neighbors, their children, and their dogs, a denunciation of "Derrida and the other inhabitants of Frogistan."

John

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From: "Michael DeBellis" <mdebellissf@gmail.com>
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Re: On the concept of consciousness 

I was going to write a reply to this... actually I did anyway but it's shorter because John Sowa already said what I was going to say. No-one really has a clue and virtually all the discussions I've ever seen on this end up going nowhere. IMO there are some questions that are amenable to scientific analysis and some (given our current knowledge) that aren't and consciousness is one of those that currently aren't. You have extremes such as a paper I saw years ago by some leading neuroscientists that talked in depth about   consciousness and defined it as the opposite of being asleep or in a coma. And on the other extreme people like Kristof Koch who believe in Pansychism, that everything in the universe is conscious. 

Many years ago I sat in on a Philosophy of Mind lecture series led by John Searle at Berkeley. One of my favorite classes was a guest lecture by Koch. Searle started out by lauding him as one of the most brilliant minds ever (which at the start of his talk I could see why, Koch really knows his neuroscience). Then Koch started getting into his Pansychism philosophy and you could just see the color draining from Searle's face and Searle finally said something like "Wait, you are serious?! I thought you were talking about Pansychism as an example of a clearly wrong theory!" And it got more entertaining from there. 

I don't agree with Patricia Churchland much but there is a book called "This Idea Must Die!"  where she talks about the Neural Correlate of  Consciousness (NCC) as an idea that must die. Her reasoning was that there are so many concepts we don't have coherent, falsifiable models of yet such as the Language Faculty and Episodic Memory and that whatever   consciousness is, we probably all agree that it is closely tied to memory and language so until we at least have decent theories on such more basic (but still barely understood) concepts it is pointless to postulate theories about   consciousness. I mean it can be fun but not something I expect to see any serious science on. 

Michael