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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2016 - 10:22am PT
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Interesting to be away from this for a week and look at what's being said. One insight that simply has not been grasped - or so it seems to me - is the crucial difference between content and sentience, which is probably something that people will fail to grasp using a 3rd person POV exclusively. If you conflate the two, then Dennett's Folly can be promotd in the way that Ed is doing so - on the basis of content. That is: The objects and stuff of sentience might be vastly different than the fundamental shape or reality of the stuff itself. Or put differently, the mental map that sentience flows into our field of awareness might be quite different than the terrain it so convincingly presents.
Ironically, Dennett's Folly, and Ed's point, square entirely with the subjective adventure's take - from most every tradition - which is roughly framed by the word samsara, explained and described a hundred ways or more but basically, the observable world of stuff and things is all impermanent and in flux and is fundamentally unreal, with no stand-alone, independent, impermanent nature.
Some might argue that the stuff of our perceptions is nevertheless comprised of real "things," while others from the same camp insist "there are no particles, only fields." But for this discussion, it's literally immaterial because IME the issue is not WHAT we are aware of, "real" or otherwise, but rather that we are aware at all. If Dennett and others insist that sentience (as opposed to WHAT we are sentient of) is an illusion, then they have fashioned a true folly indeed. The whole premise breaks down immediately once you dig into it.
They've also delivered this distortion from a 3rd person perspective, which works wonderfully in the perceived world of external objects, but which - as we have seen - falls short with experience since no one can directly observe or prove consciousness or any 1st person phenomenon.
I think Chalmers and others bungled the opening move of the Hard Question by trying to anchor the whole show in content because the whole "what's it like to be Ed" leads to a circular argument about feelings, thoughts, sensations and all the others content Ed experiences in simply being Ed. Investigating what is involved in being AWARE of being Ed is a totally different question that avoids the quagmires involved in trying to unpack content.
As mentioned, this invariably leads to the next discussion - also an exercise in untangling conflation - on the de facto differences between stimulus intake in a human being and signal registration in a machine. The discussion goes there because fanatical adherents of the machine model of mind are forced to look at attention as a function fused to content. It's not, of course, but it takes some heavy lifting to see this clearly and make it intelligible in words. I've never once seen it done to everyone's satisfaction, but that's no reason to never try.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 18, 2016 - 11:22am PT
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the adherents to the machine model of mind are, in the end, interested in what the machine does...
while we are allowed in our leisure to ponder the various philosophies, and our machines are built to serve our purposes (and usually not critical services) an organism faces no such leisure, it literally lives or dies as a consequence of what it does. This is even more evident for complex organisms. Though single cell organisms are actually complex enough.
You can read about "doing" in today's NYTimes
The Great A.I. Awakening
by Gideon Lewis-Kraus
It is educational to look at the Wikipedia page for coma, though it is even more educational to consider that Wiki article realizing its very modern context. From its medical description, we can imagine what would happen to a human who became comatose in a prehistoric era... unable to do those things necessary for their survival, they would die. It doesn't matter what the subjective state of that individual was, though a controversial modern topic.
What a machine, or an organism, does is the important attribute for measuring "mind," if you do not write sonnets, you do not paint abstracts, pen sublime stories, sing exalted arias, write insightful proofs, report astounding observations... we would have no "civilization."
Obviously if we do not live, we don't have it either... these are all something done.
If you want to have an abstract conversation regarding what exists that is not "done", the field is wide open. But apropos your (now edited out) OP, this is not the domain of science.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 18, 2016 - 11:24am PT
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fanatical adherents of the machine model of mind are forced to look at attention as a function fused to content.
What do you think of the salience network?
The salience network is a collection of regions of the brain that select which stimuli are deserving of our attention.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780128045930
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2016 - 12:44pm PT
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A few things to ponder, Ed. First, your basic supposition is that we are machines, based entirely on the vast amount of mechanical and objective functioning going on in our biological processing. I would submit to you the possibility that there are possibilities within each sentient being to not be entirely beholden to the mechanical impulses and instinctual responses that drive the majority of our behavior.
Second, the true measure of mind is by your reckoning ONLY a matter of investigating and describing the mechanical aspects of being human, when in fact your mode of inquiry is itself limited to doing just that.
I do take issue with your contention that A) any other inquiry by any means is abstract and removed from the important aspects of physical living, or the crucial aspects of mind, b) that said crucial aspects are limited to what we DO, and c), anything but straight up measuring is useless in knowing the fundamental reality of mind itself, that a quantitative analysis exhausts the real knowledge to be had about mind, everything else being "philosophy." How, I ask, do you KNOW that?
What you are doing is guaranteed to generative a picture of sentience that ONLY admits mechanical processes, believing that what differentiates us from everything else is the complexity of our doing machines. The very thing that allows us to write the sonnets and do the equations and so forth is more than just the machine DOING stuff better than the monkey, and it's not some elan vital (Bergson) or ether or woo.
There's a way to make this clear, but I'm still working on it...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 18, 2016 - 12:51pm PT
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I am merely stating an empirical position as a starting point and going from their...
I don't have any idea what the answer is, but so far, everything we know about consciousness stems from brain function, this initially takes the form of behavior, and in our modern era is enhanced by the ability to see what the brain is doing internally.
From a computational standpoint, the ability to assemble a complex enough system with sufficiently rich input stream has only recently become possible, thus the advances, modest as they are, in machine intelligence.
It is very natural to take the micro-anatomical structures of the brain along with the knowledge of neurons and abstract physical structures to test such theories... they are predictive.
Interestingly, every time this, machine intelligence, succeeds, we push the particular task from "innate intelligence" to "mere mechanical functioning."
My observation is that we will continue to do that until there is nothing left to ponder, everything will be "mere mechanical functioning"... but that is a speculation.
That there might be a "physical explanation" also, in my opinion, does not diminish the accomplishments of our civilization nor absolve it of responsibility.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 18, 2016 - 01:02pm PT
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also, and I cannot let this slide,
The very thing that allows us to write the sonnets and do the equations and so forth is more than just the machine DOING stuff better than the monkey...
go out into the African forest and survive, naked... go with a band of your friends even...
you might find the monkeys doing very well indeed, I would guess much better than I could.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Dec 18, 2016 - 01:55pm PT
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Couple of good book reviews in the Sunday NYT on the "Undoing Project" and "A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women." Interesting stuff.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 18, 2016 - 03:11pm PT
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re: "Dennett's Folly"
Shame, expressing yourself so. What's the difference really between a "Dennett's Folly" and a "Hillary's Pizzagate"?
Google "Dennett's Folly" as I pointed out a few weeks back. What is returned? Shame, to make it sound in your early post that anyone else but you is using this rhetoric.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Dennett%27s+Folly%22&filter=0&biw=1280&bih=555
When he (Largo) caricatures leading brain science so, moreover its leading investigators, how can anyone here take him seriously?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 18, 2016 - 03:19pm PT
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For the serious 21st century student / fan of mind, brain, evolutionary psychology, morality, meaning and purpose, advancing AI (human level AI, etc); and their issues; and their interplay in culture and ramifications for the future, nothing this month, imo, beats...
Paul Bloom (psychologist, Against Empathy) in Waking Up with Sam Harris. Best episode, imo, of 2016...
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/abusing-dolores
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 18, 2016 - 05:29pm PT
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I suspect "Dennett's Folly" is an expression frequently used in the mysterious MetaMind Project. As such, it is intentionally concealed from public discourse to protect the integrity of the project, which itself is unrevealed through Google search. Understandable.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 18, 2016 - 07:09pm PT
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I think Largo has conceding... actually...
Ironically, Dennett's Folly, and Ed's point, square entirely with the subjective adventure's take - from most every tradition - which is roughly framed by the word samsara, explained and described a hundred ways or more but basically, the observable world of stuff and things is all impermanent and in flux and is fundamentally unreal, with no stand-alone, independent, impermanent nature.
here we are talking about the "subjective adventure's take" which I'm happy to cede expertise to Largo... while we all have our "subjective adventures" we cannot share them by definition they are ours alone.
Game-set-match, at least as regards "the hard problem,' as I have said, you can always define a harder problem than you can solve, the hard problem there is defining a problem that is actually relevant. In my opinion (and apparently Largo's?) Chalmers et al. have failed to.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 18, 2016 - 07:57pm PT
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it's all too Trumpian for me. Sorry Largo.
...
Meanwhile, the andromeda galaxy looked pretty stellar w a pair of binoculars tonight. Conditions: 7500' elev and far removed from any lights of civilization.
The smart money says it really truly exists out there, just like our Moon, independent of any human mind or observation.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 18, 2016 - 09:24pm PT
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Maybe a homeomorphism with Seward's Folly?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Dec 18, 2016 - 10:29pm PT
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while we all have our "subjective adventures" we cannot share them by definition they are ours alone.
All adventures are subjective whether in the realm of science or the humanities, all realizations are the intimate knowledge of the individual perceiver. Repeatability through the scientific method is only realized in the subjective mind of the individual. As in science, adventures can be, and are, shared through first hand accounts. All knowledge is, in the ultimate sense, intimately, ours individually, alone.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2016 - 12:49am PT
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"Repeatability through the scientific method is only realized in the subjective mind of the individual."
hmm.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 19, 2016 - 07:54am PT
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Ed: while we are allowed in our leisure to ponder the various philosophies, and our machines are built to serve our purposes (and usually not critical services) an organism faces no such leisure, it literally lives or dies as a consequence of what it does.
Not nearly so much anymore as a mere animal. Even homeless people have public services that largely ensure they will not suffer demise simply because they are without personal resources (which can include skills).
One can speculate that what was once physically necessary in an evolutionary sense is now more socially and psychically necessary. Human life still seems well described by evolution, but not with the same dire consequences as is typically argued here (alone, in the tall grass, while a hungry tiger searches one out). Writing sonnets could easily be more critical to a munificent survival than escaping from tigers.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2016 - 07:56am PT
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I don't have any idea what the answer is, but so far, everything we know about consciousness stems from brain function.
----
Bollocks. What you mean to say is that everything that we have gleaned from 3rd person perspectives per consciousness derives from brain function. Where else would it come from since 3rd person investigations are hidebound to material investigations.
You've simply reverted back to scienticism, implying that the 3rd person perspective is the whole shooting match per the "real deal." I basically had fed you a description that makes clear the difference between content and awareness and you have still failed to see the ramifications. That, in my opinion, is a fanatical fusion to content - a fanatic being someone who can't change the subject (content) and can't change their minds.
But even you have to admit that arguing back and forth like this has not expanded your knowledge of mind at all. You're simply digging in.
Time to look carefully into Dennett's Folly, Hard AI and see where the chips fall.
And when you say, for the 100th time, that the hard problem is irrelevant, what exactly do you mean by this. I have stated that I believe Chalmers and others flubbed positing the hard problem by anchoring it in content, which can be theoretically explained away by way of mechanical functioning. After all, neroscience has come along way in describing the way data is processed in the brain, but has made no headway whatsoever in providing a mechanical explanation of why matter is conscious.
Subtler thinkers realized ages ago that seeking a 3rd person explanation was irrelevant to the adventure. I disagree. But again, only by looking at Hard AI, Dennett's Folly, and other subjects does the picture start to come into focus.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 19, 2016 - 08:18am PT
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All knowledge is, in the ultimate sense, intimately, ours individually, alone.
Thank you for sharing yours.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 19, 2016 - 09:54am PT
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After all, neroscience has come along way in describing the way data is processed in the brain, but has made no headway whatsoever in providing a mechanical explanation of why matter is conscious.
you are so impatient...
anyway, the "hard problem" is irrelevant because it does not address the actual thing we are interested in: "consciousness."
The "hard problem" addresses the perception we have of "consciousness" which is a functional approximation, largely focused on mediating our social interactions.
You could ask me how to explain the physics of "hyperspace" in Star Wars, which I could not do, and then claim I had failed to answer this "hard problem." Of course, the problem addresses a fiction, so even if I could answer it:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace
it wouldn't have anything to do with physics, which is to say, it could not predict any observable phenomenon, and would be in direct contradiction with many other observations. The "consciousness" referred to in the "hard problem" is a literary device* (at best).
This is what I mean when I say the "hard problem" is irrelevant.
You, Largo, have mostly used it as a rhetorical device without getting into the substance of the argument.
*Hyperspace is a venerable literary artifice, deus ex machina, which brings the universe down to a manageable scale in which to recreate, apparently endlessly, those inspiring WWII Hollywood productions we (at least Largo and Ed) grew up with. It's a buzz-kill to say it, but it is not really going to ever happen...
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