What is "Mind?"

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Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jul 18, 2016 - 12:01am PT

...simply settle into the direct experience of being conscious, you are not interpreting any thing...

which is probably not possible... the "non-interpreting" part...

The Day That Went Missing

a bout of transient global amnesia renders you unable to remember... even for short periods of time...

in a true sense, you are living completely in the moment... since you are unaware of the past, even the recent past...

while you cannot remember anything, or make new memories, you are still functioning, apparently conscious.

just sit back and "enjoy" it, I guess.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jul 18, 2016 - 07:27am PT

there are plenty of very specific interpretations of sentience in the literature but since they are not measurements (quantifications), they are ignored here.

I'd be interested in seeing one of those very specific interpretations.

Here is an interpretation from the literature which involves no measurements but nevertheless I do not ignore it:

The ability to feel or perceive

the idea that other animals have some semblance of awareness is no reason to stop the investigation of what awareness is

Oddly put. If you were as curious about mind and sentience and awareness as a recent post of yours suggested, you would take more interest in other possible examples beyond the human case.

Perhaps even more magical is the philosophical belief that there is no more involved THAN the neurons - sort of like saying there is no more to music than a brass horn.

Not at all. But if you want to put it that way, put a musician and a brass horn in a room and ask the musician to play the horn. You hear music. Now take away the horn. Do you hear the same music?

If not, do you conclude that there is no more to music than a brass horn?

WBraun

climber

Jul 18, 2016 - 07:52am PT

Absolutes are not the standard of so called modern science.

You people continually show that by constantly making absolutes that the Absolute exists all while constantly you deny.

There's NO escape for your constant defects.

That is paradox and disease of the gross materialists .......

(constantly) :-)

jstan

climber

Jul 18, 2016 - 08:50am PT

The ability to make inferences from same and different

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/science/ducklings-intelligence.html?_r=0

It pervades our thinking processes, from situations as simple as choosing which socks to wear in
the morning to more nuanced scenarios like knowing to laugh during a wedding toast but not at a
funeral.

The ability to make inferences from same and different, once thought to be unique to humans, is
viewed as a cornerstone of abstract intelligent thought. A new study, however, has shown that what
psychologists call same-different discrimination is present in creatures generally seen as
unintelligent: newborn ducklings.

The study, published Thursday in Science, challenges our idea of what it means to have a birdbrain,
said Edward Wasserman, an experimental psychologist at the University of Iowa who wrote an
independent review of the study in the same issue.

“In fact, birds are extremely intelligent and our problem pretty much lies in figuring out how to get
them to ‘talk’ to us, or tell us how smart they really are,” he said.
Antone Martinho III and Alex Kacelnik, zoologists at the University of Oxford and co-authors of the
new paper, devised a clever experiment to better test bird intelligence.

First, they took 1-day-old ducklings and exposed them to a pair of moving objects. The two objects
were either the same or different in shape or color. Then they exposed each duckling to two entirely
new pairs of moving objects.
Photo

Having imprinted on two green spheres, a duckling in the “same color” group prefers two blue
spheres to one orange and one violet.
Credit
Antone Martinho

The researchers found that about 70 percent of the ducklings they studied preferred to move
toward the pair of objects that had the same shape or color relationship as the first objects they
saw. A duckling that was first shown two green spheres, in other words, was more likely to move
toward a pair of blue spheres than a mismatched pair of orange and violet spheres.

Ducklings go through a rapid learning process called imprinting shortly after birth — it’s what allows
them to identify and follow their mothers.

These findings suggest that ducklings use abstract relationships between sensory inputs like color,
shape, sounds and odor to recognize their mothers, said Dr. Kacelnik.

By studying imprinting, the authors of this study have shown for the first time that a nonhuman
animal can learn relationships between concepts without training, said Jeffrey Katz, an experimental
psychologist at Auburn University in Alabama who was not involved in the study.

Previous studies have suggested that other animals, including pigeons, dolphins, honeybees and
some primates, can discern same from different, but only after extensive training.
Adding ducklings to the list — particularly untrained newborn ducklings — suggests that the ability
to compare abstract concepts “is far more necessary to a wider variety of animals’ survival than we
previously thought,” Dr. Martinho said. He believes the ability is so crucial because it helps animals
consider context when identifying objects in their environment.

It’s clear from this study and others like it that “animals process and appreciate far more of the
intricacies in their world than we’ve ever understood,” Dr. Wasserman said. “We are in a
revolutionary phase in terms of our ability to understand the minds of other animals.”

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jul 18, 2016 - 09:02am PT

on sentience... Wiki is not bad...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

and as always (if one has the time) the SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

"Sentience. It may be conscious in the generic sense of simply being a sentient creature, one capable of sensing and responding to its world (Armstrong 1981). Being conscious in this sense may admit of degrees, and just what sort of sensory capacities are sufficient may not be sharply defined. Are fish conscious in the relevant respect? And what of shrimp or bees?"

this was an interesting quote... I've added emphasis

"Since the demise of vitalism, we do not think of life per se as something distinct from living things. There are living things including organisms, states, properties and parts of organisms, communities and evolutionary lineages of organisms, but life is not itself a further thing, an additional component of reality, some vital force that gets added into living things. We apply the adjectives “living” and “alive” correctly to many things, and in doing so we might be said to be attributing life to them but with no meaning or reality other than that involved in their being living things.

Electromagnetic fields by contrast are regarded as real and independent parts of our physical world. Even though one may sometimes be able to specify the values of such a field by appeal to the behavior of particles in it, the fields themselves are regarded as concrete constituents of reality and not merely as abstractions or sets of relations among particles.

Similarly one could regard “consciousness” as referring to a component or aspect of reality that manifests itself in conscious states and creatures but is more than merely the abstract nominalization of the adjective “conscious” we apply to them. Though such strongly realist views are not very common at present, they should be included within the logical space of options.

There are thus many concepts of consciousness, and both “conscious” and “consciousness” are used in a wide range of ways with no privileged or canonical meaning. However, this may be less of an embarrassment than an embarrassment of riches. Consciousness is a complex feature of the world, and understanding it will require a diversity of conceptual tools for dealing with its many differing aspects. Conceptual plurality is thus just what one would hope for. As long as one avoids confusion by being clear about one's meanings, there is great value in having a variety of concepts by which we can access and grasp consciousness in all its rich complexity. However, one should not assume that conceptual plurality implies referential divergence. Our multiple concepts of consciousness may in fact pick out varying aspects of a single unified underlying mental phenomenon. Whether and to what extent they do so remains an open question."

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 18, 2016 - 10:48am PT

What's missing in the above, I assume condensed, definition is experience. Consciousness must be tied to experience or how can it be consciousness?

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jul 18, 2016 - 07:51pm PT

The ability to make inferences from same and different

Hurrah for ducklings.

Can anyone point me to a computer equivalent? A so-called AI or artificial neural network or some such that can perform as well as the ducklings?

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Jul 18, 2016 - 10:25pm PT

Field of Consciousness has a familiar ring. A vector field, perhaps.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 18, 2016 - 11:33pm PT

Hurrah for ducklings.

Yes, and why aren't ducklings studying humans? Why aren't animals of any kind practicing science? I don't think there's much merit to the idea that human and animal intelligence are somehow equal.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jul 19, 2016 - 07:02am PT

Jstan: This is opinion masquerading as assertion.

You apparently are not aware of the literature in organizational behavior and reward systems. It’s now an old saw that extrinsic rewards drive out intrinsic rewards.

(Do you understand what’s being said? The more that extrinsic rewards are increased, the more that the inherent satisfaction a person had doing a job diminishes.)

I have been a part of research studies about competition in selected sectors in educational institutions, and I’ve been on more than one committee dealing with organizational strategies for various educational institutions. (I get that because of the area I teach.)

Much of what I wrote comes out of a field called “Industrial Organization,” which has long threads about price, quantity, barriers to entry, the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, substitutes, and the intensity of rivalry—and those things that increase or diminish competition and affect price and quality. This is pretty old stuff.

I think the claims in my post struck an emotional nerve in you. I’m sorry if the arguments and findings offend you. I assure you I have no ax to grind in academia. I’m a part of it, they pay me, and I know many wonderful people in my profession.

I’m no Pollyanna about academia anymore than any other industrial field, work, or set of enterprise behaviors. I see all industry dynamics through many theoretical lenses that are relevant to those of us who work in the field—e.g., performance, competition, ethics, behaviors, quality, etc. None of it is either good or bad to me. Things are the way they are because of causes and conditions.

I admit I see no field of study or endeavor as intrinsically noble or inherently egregious. It doesn’t matter whether it is one of the religious ministries, arms manufacturing, prostitution, illicit drug peddling, politics, education, nursing, health care, or nuclear power generation . All industries can be analyzed using somewhat tried and true metrics and established theories conventionally. It’s just work to me.

This is one of my areas of expertise, for what it’s worth. What that means is that I’m well-read in it. It of course doesn’t mean that any of it is right.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jul 19, 2016 - 07:07am PT

I don't think there's much merit to the idea that human and animal intelligence are somehow equal.

That is your idea of who's idea?

If you agree that there is such a thing as animal intelligence, and that intelligence may have something to do with the mind, it follows that something might be learned from studying the neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and behavior of animals.

If you find a public agency funding a scientist who proposes to show that human and animal intelligence are equal, please let me know.

More likely investigations would be looking for similarities and differences among animal and human, like the ducklings are said to be able to find, and which could be a relatively low hurdle for an AI system to get over.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jul 19, 2016 - 07:08am PT

Ed: in a true sense, you are living completely in the moment...

What does this mean? What is a moment? Where are *you living?*

Where / what is “here and now?”

Mind.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 19, 2016 - 08:24am PT

That is your idea of who's idea?

The idea that some animals, dolphins and whales in particular, shared a superior intelligence, so superior, in fact, that the mundane processes of writing and civilization and such were unnecessary to their lives, beneath them so to speak... anyway, this idea was posited earlier on in this thread or perhaps it was the science/religion thread. Of course animals appear to be intelligent and be conscious and I think that's one reason we call them animals: they are animated with consciousness. Yes, we should study them as a help in understanding ourselves.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jul 19, 2016 - 08:27am PT

ah yes, Paul, by all means...

no animal painted this...
oh, I'm mistaken...

an·i·mal

noun
1. a living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 19, 2016 - 08:35am PT

Dali's depiction of Narcissus from Ovid, including a visual metaphor... what can it possibly mean? Yes, we are animals but we're the only ones that make paintings, why?

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 19, 2016 - 09:32am PT

Elephants don't make paintings without human intervention... if you see an elephant on its own at the art store purchasing supplies you might have something.

jstan

climber

Jul 19, 2016 - 09:43am PT

You won't find an elephant by itself in an arts store.

1. Elephants don't travel alone.
2. They are too big to get through the door.
3. They don't live in North America. We killed them all many millennia ago.

Attenborough's series "Life" has a description of elephant behavior well worth experiencing.

paul roehl

Boulder climber

california

Jul 19, 2016 - 09:49am PT

1. Elephants don't travel alone.
2. They are too big to get through the door.
3. They don't live in North America. We killed them all many millennia ago.

!. They're welcome to travel together to the store.
2. They're able to fit through the door at Costco
3. There are plenty of stores in Africa and Asia

Keep a close lookout.