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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2011 - 08:45pm PT
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I would point out that I AM a yokel in many regards. Just ask my daughters. This must remain fun and if I have to roast myself and others in the process, I will.
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Ed said:
here does it (temp) reside, given that matter is composed of atoms... can you point to it?
ED USES THIS AS A CORROLARY TO THE LIBNITZ EXAMPLE THAT IF THE BRAIN WAS MADE THE SIZE OF A PLANT, YOU COULD NEVER FIND 'MIND' IN SAID PLANT. SO FAR SO GOOD.
in fact, can you show, from the collection of atoms, which of them are in the gaseous state, the liquid state or the solid state?
YES, LIKE HE ATOMIC ACIVITY SOME BELIEVE 'PRODUCES' MIND. IN WHAT ATOM? AND WHERE IN THE CAUSAL CHAIN DOES MATTER BECOME SENTIENT?
even a hayseed like you could do that I reckon...
WITH HELP AND A FEW GOOD NUMBERS.
I agree that temperature is physical, I don't agree that it is located in anything,
ALL TRUE.
BUT THE EXAMPLE IS NOT APPLICABLE TO OUR MIND-EXPERIENCE CONVERSTATION BECAUSE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF MATTER ARE OBJECTIVE, AND EXPERIENCE IS SUBJECTIVE AND IS NOT QUANTIFIABLE.
AGAIN I ASK: 1. contrast the difference between matter as matter, physical/quantitative properties of matter (temp, et al), and experience as experience (subjective, NOT objective).
2. Subjective experience alone has limitations in investigating actual, objective functioning (QM, special R, etc.). What do you see as the limitations of objective quantifying per investigating actual subjective experience. Contrast the differences per the limitations of both approaches.
NOT SO SURE A REAL YOKEL CAN ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS, BUT ED CAN GIVE IT A SHOT. I TRIED TO ANSWER HIS WITHOUT RETRAMING OR REFORMULATING THE QUESTION.
Help a brother out there, Ed.
JL
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MH2
climber
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Nov 22, 2011 - 09:09pm PT
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What is "Oops?"
Although we ourselves may not be clumsy, we recognize that there is something it is like to be a klutz.
Don't let your evaluating mind(see solution to previous problem) start trying to quantify what was dropped or how far.
Remember that bumbliness is not a material thing. It is a process. Science and numbers can only loop the loop, for no map can ever be the same as the territory. (See footnotes below)
So a material description of "Oops" or an explanation of the mechanism of butterfingers is not sufficient. We need to get down to the nitty gritty of how a lack of coordination arises from physical matter. Atoms do not drop gear from high up on El Cap.
footnote 1 below
Perhaps you could have a map of a map, though. The kind people at the desk of Yosemite Lodge will copy a few pages if you ask them.
footnote 2 below
Don't expect to copy a territory, though. El Cap wouldn't fit on the machine.
John Searle:
"We are confusing the epistemic objectivity of scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical subject matter in science in disciplines such as physics and chemistry."
Oops, did it again.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Nov 22, 2011 - 10:25pm PT
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John Searle:
"We are confusing the epistemic objectivity of scientific investigation with the ontological objectivity of the typical subject matter in science in disciplines such as physics and chemistry."
In ordinary English for the non philosopher:
We are confusing the justified belief in the objectivity of the scientific method with the metaphysical questions of the nature of being.
And in my opinion, that is why anyone even cares about the question. It deals with our most fundamental assumptions of ourselves and the universe. I personally maintain that these assumptions are all belief systems.
For Ed to maintain that science can't explain consciousness now but he is certain it will someday is a belief. For Largo to maintain that science never will explain it, is a belief.
In the meantime, we have all learned a lot about philosophy and the functioning of the brain, not to mention the personalities of the various participants.
As far as I can tell, the only discipline which attempts to understand both functioning of the brain from a physical sense and also an individual perspective as well as a social one, is psychology. However, I'll bet you won't catch those people maintaining they have all the answers. And if they do, Anthropologists will be quick to note that those answers only apply to certain societies.
So my question is, why are physics and philosophy still searching for definitive answers when social science is not?
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MH2
climber
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Nov 22, 2011 - 10:31pm PT
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Thanks, Jan. Among other stuff I've learned from you. Perhaps social scientists don't get the funding?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Nov 22, 2011 - 10:45pm PT
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Because people want definitive answers even if they're wrong?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2011 - 10:57pm PT
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For Ed to maintain that science can't explain consciousness now but he is certain it will someday is a belief. For Largo to maintain that science never will explain it, is a belief.
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Not exactly. Ed insists that experience is a meta function emergent from neuronal activity, that the brain, through a physical causal chain, "creates" experience, essentially making matter and experience the same thing.
My contention is that measuring is a vital instrument for investigating objective reality (material), but is of no obvious value for investigating subjective experience since the later is not, in it's subjective state, quantifiable. This is a belief, but it's based on the total lack of empirical evidence SHOWING otherwise.
I readily admit that subjective/experiential modes have serious limitations per inquiry. But point to one person from the materialist/reduction camp who will EVER admit that measuring is not the job for EVERY valid investigation.
This quite naturally leads to a kind of inherent insanity in the discussion. To wit: Even Ed admits that like temperature, experience is not found in or suggested by atomic activity. If some folks think otherwise, kindly show Ed, and the rest of us, where. The only way to do so is to mistake objective for subjective, calling your aunt your uncle, and this is absurd.
And yet a materialist (or physicalist) will still insist that experience is created entirely by matter, or is somehow a material phenomenon (how?), though there is no proof this is so and no instance in all of natural science where material "produces" or becomes anything remotely subjective. Temperature and gravity, we can be certain, are not subjective qualities.
In the computational or processing camp, the picture I believe most hold in there head is that the brain is a kind of supercomputer, and through various digital-based recognition processes, a kind of slippery penumbra emerges, by which the machine (us) is stumped, through the most spectacular atomic and computational gymnastics, into believing that "it" actually exists, has an identity, and so forth. Experience is a kind of flickering movie, immaterial as it is illusory, which is projected on the walls of actual shizat - the brain. Nothing is other than the rigid mechanical output of the evolved brain, which is like any other machine, but with fancier gears.
There are of course huge problems with this, starting with how the machine picks what route to climb, what nut to place, and what beer to drink after the route, and how it changes its mind. But the far greater problem is the business of experience. We're just stuck with it as our fundamental reality. If only it would hold still so we could get the micrometer around it then finally, we might understand something.
Just funning, but you must see the absurdity in reductionistic arguments.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 22, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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Because people want definitive answers ....
This proves there's absolute proof and truth.
Everyone knows it's there but can't seem to grasp on to it.
So the intelligent class search.
The yokels just eat sleep and be merry, and what me worry ......
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dogtown
Trad climber
Cheyenne, Wyoming and Marshall Islands atoll.
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Nov 22, 2011 - 11:21pm PT
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Wow, this thread is so far out there for me. What I have gathered, the common theme it seems to me the old story of how the mind works or better yet how sometimes it doesn’t work.
How, about this one John, I wish my thinking to be pure filled with love and hope for all. TRULY!! So, considering that I want the same thing as all, to be loved and respected. (This is how I wish my mind and soul to be.) The hardest thing for me to do is to can my ego. But its hard to do being an A type like the most of us. I have been blessed in my life so large, success has come home every time I have got out of my own way and worked hard.
My goal is to Teach. Just a bit. No, I’m not all knowing. Nor a humble man. (Wish I was) But to share life, places and good deeds.
And with hope by the good of god something will come from it.
That’s what is in this mind. At this bit in time.
Dogtown.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 22, 2011 - 11:51pm PT
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BUT THE EXAMPLE IS NOT APPLICABLE TO OUR MIND-EXPERIENCE CONVERSTATION BECAUSE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF MATTER ARE OBJECTIVE, AND EXPERIENCE IS SUBJECTIVE AND IS NOT QUANTIFIABLE.
how do you know that experience is subjective and is not quantifiable? so far, you have only stated it to be true, but have not supported it in any way, at least none that I have seen. The difficulty in defining experience, or mind, or consciousness, or whatever, is not a proof that it cannot be done, the only thing we know is that it is not done yet.
you still don't get the point of the temperature and material objects, etc... these properties that are so familiar to us gas, liquid, solid have their origin in the interactions of many many atoms, and those interactions have collective behavior that is not an intrinsic property of those constituents. To build up matter from all the atoms that comprise it, and then to define what the state of the mater is, has been a long program of research. The properties of the matter that we experience and are so familiar with do, in fact, come from those assembly of atoms, but the details of how are quite complex.
My point is that while gas, liquid, solid states are very useful, they are not fundamental, and they emerge as properties of collections of the more fundamental constituents. Those attributes of state, however, do not exist as properties of the constituents. They are not material (how ironic in this case) but are physical. That is the relevance to this discussion.
In this model, the behavior of the large collection of neurons and their interconnection, which we call the brain, could act together in an aggregate that displays behavior that is not evident at the constituent level. Certainly there is nothing that forbids such a thing, and since we see evidence of this sort of phenomena everywhere, it is not unexpected, either. That collective behavior would be physical, but not material. You could say that everything that comes from matter, including the interactions of matter, is "matter" but that is a very strained definition.
The issue with our lack of being able to define consciousness, mind, experience might not be in their unexplainable nature, but because we aren't defining them correctly. I don't know, but my guess is that we attribute much more to these things than they actually have... and in particular, the organization of the brain and the roles of the parts of the brain, the patches, might actually not be aware of all that is happening, but as I have said above, our "experience" might be entirely made up, or if not entirely, large parts of it. It would be difficult to explain the physical origin of something that isn't.
And Jan, what I know is that, independent of my belief, we will apply the scientific method to the question of mind... as for being, I'm afraid that science teaches us from all that we can observe, that we aren't at all special in the universe.
I find this rather weird, actually, all I'm saying is that we'll approach the issue of "what is mind?" from a science point of view no matter what the philosophers have to say on the subject, what they say is irrelevant in the sense that they do not know whether or not such a research program could succeed. Scientists don't know if they can succeed... you can have your own opinion of it, but the science will go on.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 23, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
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how do you know that experience is subjective and is not quantifiable? so far, you have only stated it to be true, but have not supported it in any way, at least none that I have seen.
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Are you really serious, here, Ed? Do you really need a measurement or a machine to convince you that your very life, the Ed you get up with and walk through the day, does not have experience of a subjective existence? And what do you require for "support," if not another set of figures. And if said figures are not forthcoming per experience, it is not "real" (not material). Now you end up with saying that the mere philosophers out there might be going another route other than quantifying, but the true truth seekers will soldier on with their yardsticks - basically doing the same thing and expecting different results.
I have repeatedly asked you to answer a few simple questions and so far you have refused. I'll stay at it. Try these.
A. Without having to back this up with any numerical representation, do you, Dr. Ed, have anything you would call human experience, by whatever definition you choose to use.
B. Do you have any experience of being the subject of thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, fears, and so forth, these various "things" being directly accessible to you, but not to others. I.E., YOU feel your sensations. I don't.
C. If the answer to B is yes, allow us to provisionally call that "subjective" experience.
D. Qualatatively contrast this subjective experience with "objective reality."
E. What do you understand to be the basic differences between objective functioning and subjective experiencing?
F. What do you feel are the the limitations of measuring in investigating subjective experience? And if you don not see any limitations, what part of that experience itself do you propose to measure, in the same sense that one might measure temperature.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 23, 2011 - 02:18pm PT
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cool, I'll answer these tonight...
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MH2
climber
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Nov 23, 2011 - 02:37pm PT
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Perhaps experience is not a material thing produced from molecular interaction. However, experience can be profoundly influenced by molecular interaction. This has been pointed out before in this thread. I would like to take a short look at one of the stranger ways that pharmacology can affect psychology.
Back in 1972 in Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY, I saw the drug ketamine being used during surgery. The patient had their eyes open and sat up when the surgeon asked them to. The patient was having skin removed from the thighs for grafting over burns on the upper body. I asked the anesthesiologist about it and they told me that ketamine was a "dissociative" anesthetic. What he told me was, "You could feel a knife in your guts, but you wouldn't think of them as your guts."
Much later, another MD told me that in the ER he had given ketamine to a woman prior to a painful procedure. Afterwards, he asked her if she had felt pain. Her reply was, "No, I didn't feel pain, but could you please tell me who I am?"
In between, I worked in a lab doing recordings from slices of guinea pig hippocampus. The slice sits in fluid that is made up to be similar to the normal fluid environment in the brain, and drugs can be added to the fluid. One of the drugs my boss wanted to look at was phencyclidine (PCP). PCP had a large effect on electrical activity in the hippocampus and that effect remained for hours after washing out the drug, for as long as the slice showed any activity. Although I knew that brains were modifiable (they could learn and forget) it was sobering to see a drug have a large and probably permanent effect.
A couple of snippets from the Wikipedia entry on ketamine:
Users may experience worlds or dimensions that are ineffable, all the while being completely unaware of their individual identities or the external world.
John C. Lilly, Marcia Moore and D. M. Turner (amongst others) have written extensively about their own spiritual/psychonautic use of ketamine. (Both Moore and Turner died prematurely in a way that has been linked to their ketamine use.)
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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Nov 23, 2011 - 05:35pm PT
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I think that subjective experience is indispensable in understanding the world around us. I don't think we can understand something without some experience of it. The limitations are that we have a limited range of perception and awareness and we have very fallible memories. We use landmarks and measurements to help our memories and we use various tools to expand what we can perceive. We use microscopes to see things normally too small. We use telescopes to see things to far away and too faint. We use time lapse and other records to perceive things too slow for our normal perceptions. We use high speed recordings and video to see things that are normally too fast. We have tools that respond to a wide range of the spectrum so that we can become somewhat aware of events beyond our vision and hearing. All of these tools and broader awareness become parts of our minds, in my opinion.
A big hindrance to understanding subjective experiences or psychology is the tendency to think of experience in terms of addition and subtraction. If I have some ice cream and I feel happy, more ice cream should help me feel more happy. When this does not work out, we throw up our hands and say that experience is not understandable in normal terms.
A little subjective experimentation can demonstrate that we are not aware of absolute properties around us, but we detect changes and thus relationships. Drive in your car. Do you notice speed or the acceleration? Speed is measurable, but so is acceleration. Further, there is an emotional response to the acceleration that is also perceivable and measurable to some extent. If we accelerate a lot, then we sort of get used to it emotionally. We get habituated. We want to accelerate more and more, to get the same emotional feeling, up to our physical limits of course. We climb harder and harder climbs not because harder is better, but because we have become habituated to easier climbs and need the harder stuff to feel the same rush. Then we glorify it in magazines and such as if harder is better, like more beer is better, or a higher heroin tolerance is better. I won't carry the analogy too far since to climb harder our bodies and perceptions have to develop more in generally healthy ways. We learn to perceive smoother transitions of weight and more delicate positions of balance.
Climbing is, for most of us, a subjective experience, yet we can share it to some extent with our peers and our peers greatly influence that experience. The routes we climb influence our experience and we even try to measure and rate that influence, by rating difficulty. Difficulty is a relationship between the rock and ourselves, so it varies from person to person, yet there is general consensus and acceptance of the variances. We even attempt to rate/measure quality of routes which is even more subjective, yet we often agree on this as well.
We can often perceive the emotions of other people and animals. We don't measure it with rulers or beakers but if we do accurately understand some emotion in another person, it seems to me that we somehow measured it and compared it to our own.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 23, 2011 - 07:09pm PT
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I mostly agree with what Paul wrote.
Psychological and mental health testing is all about trying to measure subjective states or "unobserved constructs." But even they generally posit questions from which mood and temperament can be surmised.
Several things make subjective quantifying difficult by normal means. We are subjectively a blend of relative constants and flow. There are many physiological markers that are normed to give us an acceptable latitude by which we define "health." Out temp should be around 98.6, our blood pressure this and that, and a thousand other markers that we can fairly measure. Most of these are about functioning, though we might have subjective experience of them, like a fever, pain, stress and so forth. The more phychological properties are not things, rather processes that are meant to change, sometimes radically, according to internal and external factors. We're not all all supposed to respond to rock fall and church music the same way, and both should generate very different feelings and thoughts and sensations and actions. But the subjective experience of these non-things is the crux of it, is our basic reality, and is ironically very hard to quantify in any fashion.
I have nothing inherently against a model that posits matter as being a component to experience - even a leading component. My problem is that there is no empirical evidence that matter and experience are the very same things, or that one emerges or is "produced" strictly from the other, and that by measuring one, you measure the other.
JL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2011 - 08:43pm PT
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The difficulty here seems to be that:
"WHAT CAN BE ASSERTED WITHOUT PROOF CAN BE DISMISSED WITHOUT PROOF."
The result is an extremely difficult kind of mostly subjective argument.
It's interesting though!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Nov 23, 2011 - 09:04pm PT
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Interesting how the thread's turned to focus on "experience" almost exclusively.
Experience like consciousness are composites. They are a build-up of feelings (sentience) and memory and other mental faculties (e.g. agent intention, futuration).
At bottom is how brain produces feeling, perception or sentience - whatever your preferred term. Until future "analytical bio-engineers" specializing in neuroscience solve (reverse engineer) this mystery... i.e., how nervous systems generate basic feelings... e.g., the smell of almonds or the lust for a female... they certainly won't get around to figuring out certain higher order features (e.g., the experience of planning or living a big wall excursion).
Modern understanding esp via neuroscience couldn't be more clear. No brain, no feelings. No brain, no thinking. No brain no memory. No brain, no body control. The basic, extremely exciting mystery - perhaps not ever solvable by our finite intelligence - is how the brain harnesses its 100 T cells and interconnections into circuitry with multifunctionality to pull off these feats of mechanistic wonder.
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Beta: Don't let the naysayers (e.g., paranormalists) frame the conversation in their terms. Unless the goal is just amateur posting, stick to the sciences, what they have to say, and their expertise.
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About the best lecture on the relationship between "determinism" and "free will" and mind-brain science there is on the internet is from Dennett, Edinburgh U. 2007. It's crystal clear to those with the trained eye. And thought provoking indeed and points the way to a lot of future growth areas re: evolution of avoidance systems in "agents", brains evolved as mental futurators for purpose of prediction, growth of can-do power (and various freedoms) over time notwithstanding our fully deterministic (or fully mechanistic) world, etc..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLAbWFCh1E
Dennett's point regarding "real magic" applies to "consciousness" and "free will" for a lot of folks incl many on this thread it seems. In other words, "If it's not a free will that's magical or a consciousness that's magical, then forget it, I'm not interested." -Bad attitude, imo.
I say take Dennett's advice: Go for the "cheap substitute." ;)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 23, 2011 - 10:24pm PT
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ok, home, snacks, beer and time....
now to answer the Largo cross examination (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!):
A. Without having to back this up with any numerical representation, do you, Dr. Ed, have anything you would call human experience, by whatever definition you choose to use.
By "human experience" you mean, of course, what we are taught or learn about what other humans experience. This is a hugely complex question, with a lot of inferences involved and the association of various stimuli and stimuli-response to a set of "things" we are taught go along with them, though some of it is obviously "nature" much more of it is "nurture."
If I talk to most of you, I'd say we have a set of common experiences based on common situations, and the similarity of the descriptions. As far as I can tell, many of our experiences are similar, thus, yes I have had what is referred to as "human experiences." There are other humans that I have interacted with that I would say share few experiences with me, though we try to find common ground. Because of these dissimilarities I would not conclude, however, that the other person is not human or is not conscious, or has no mind.
B. Do you have any experience of being the subject of thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, fears, and so forth, these various "things" being directly accessible to you, but not to others. I.E., YOU feel your sensations. I don't.
Similar to the answer of question (A.) above, I have been taught to respond to a variety of stimuli which I associate with coming from my own body. However, there are a number of experiences which suggest that those same responses can be induced by sensing what happens to someone else, that is, I have an empathetic response which is nearly identical to the response of a thing happening to me. Also, I might dissociate from an event happening to me, and have no response to a stimuli even though it would seem that I should.
Given that much of my articulated response seems to be learned, there is a sense that the actual response might not be accessible even to "me." That the part of mind that induces the response is independent of the origin of the stimuli, as when I have a response to something happening to another, or fail to have a response when it is happening to me.
C. If the answer to B is yes, allow us to provisionally call that "subjective" experience.
this is a statement, not a question.
D. Qualatatively contrast this subjective experience with "objective reality."
I think I have. A set of stimuli provoke a response. The response can occur at many different levels. Our interpretation of the response, a mostly learned behavior, is what we consider to be "subjective." This narrative of the events happening around us is a part of our "perception" of what is going on. There can be many elements involved in this "perception," only part of it becomes narrative, and that narrative is based on a set of inferences, which may not be correct.
However, that narrative can be shared, and in so doing, compared with what others are perceiving. From that sharing the parts of the narrative that are based on incorrect inference can be identified, and the bits that support the inference are strengthened. In this sense, an "objective" narrative can be built out of consensus.
E. What do you understand to be the basic differences between objective functioning and subjective experiencing?
In general, we take objective functioning to be something that can be established beyond our individual experience, which is generally subjective. However, our experience can change by learning. For example, when we first start to climb, we experience a route in a very different way then we would after 40 years of experience. We think of the route completely differently, we might actually be able to climb the route without analyzing it, consciously, letting our training do the climbing. Our subjective experience is different than it was when we first started.
So our subjective experience can incorporate objective functioning to alter our responses, our perceptions change, even if we are looking at the same thing, doing the same route, 40 years later. The route didn't change, physically.
F. What do you feel are the the limitations of measuring in investigating subjective experience? And if you don not see any limitations, what part of that experience itself do you propose to measure, in the same sense that one might measure temperature.
The act of measurement isn't random, measurements are planned based on a set of assumptions and hypotheses with the aim of verifying a particular theory, or accomplishing some goal. Take, for instance, the creation of advertisements, the aim is to provide a stimulus to an audience with the intention of getting that audience, on the basis of its subjective experience of the advertisement to purchase the product being advertised. The act of measurement here is to use focus groups built out of the products potential demographic, to create a display (usually an image) which attracts that demographic's attention and positively pre-disposes it to consider the product. The advertisement line is launched and the sales measured to see if there is a positive correlation between the advertisement and product sales.
All this is a way of "measuring" an individual's "subjective experience" by stimulus and response... One can then start to do the "reductionists thing" and piece apart the response, the behavior, etc, based on a model of the behavior. This might side step the "hard problem" at first, but as you slowly divulge the workings of the behavior based on the individual (or demographic) "subjective experience" you converge on an answer...
What do you "subjectively experience" when you see this? and how many Petzl harnesses do you own?
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 24, 2011 - 12:17pm PT
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A few quibbles.
Whitehead once said that he wished people would quit using the term "logic" because so few people knew what it was or how to use it. I'll say the same thing about "science." I think very few people really understand science or how scientific research gets conducted.
Ed, you can't have science without its philosophical underpinnings. Without them, all you have is method, no truth.
No. Temperature is not material, unless people are equivocating on the word. (Again: it's a construct.)
The scientific method does not verify any theory; what it does is reject poorer ones when compared to others.
All words represent understandings. Words by the very nature are ambiguous and imprecise; some say they refer to nothing but themselves. (Numbers are supposed to solve that problem in science, but doesn't really.)
If everyone were to say the same thing, it would constitute a scientific experiment. Measurements can be social responses by using likert scales, and they are as artificial as any other measurement. Just a measurement.
Are you really that doubtful of your own subjective experiences, Ed?
As Jan said, science, not-science, non-science, not non-science are all belief systems. Pick your poison.
And, Ed, . . . we're not all that special in the universe? Comparisons? Data?
Welcome back HFCS. I guess you're all better now.
Jan asked why anyone cared about the questions of subjectivity. I don't suppose it would be because people are so invested in their answers, would it?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Nov 24, 2011 - 01:13pm PT
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Observation: Even in a fully mechanistic (fully deterministic) world, some have freedoms others don't. Be they amphibians or reptiles, even alpha male polygamists in Utah or Canada. ;)
Point: Freedoms exist even in a mechanistic nature.
Just depends on what kind of freedom the speaker or thinker has in mind. But any "ghost freedom" that is not obedient to physics or chemistry or causal laws is the "magical freedom" of fantasies.
Yes, fantasies too have their place.
Draw the separation in mind between the different kinds of "freedom" that people conceive and have conceived over their history and any contradiction or paradox resolves itself.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Nov 24, 2011 - 01:41pm PT
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re: Michio Kaku
re: "Why Quantum Physics Ends the Free Will Debate"
re: distinction between causal determinism and predictional determinism
I used to be something of a fan of this guy till I watched this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLR5vNKiSw
What a shallow, sloppy, if not idiotic, piece. Either (a) he should be ashamed of himself (for caving to pc or ideology or whatever) or (b) he should invest more time in the relevant subjects.
Signs and wonders.
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