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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 5, 2017 - 03:23pm PT
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The mind-brain perceptions I perceive - from my perception generator (iow, my brain) - are my system processing. They take an integral "causal part" in the process. Yes the machine physiology is running on auto mechanistic pilot - yes 100% obedient to the physical chemical biologic rules - yes 100% obedient to system inputs from environment - and not unlike a computer the decision making (the choice points, etc) is integral to all of it.
The limitation here is that your awareness is still fused with content, that is, perceptions, and this inevitably leads to the conflation of content with awareness since no work or attention has been directed to awareness itself. As I intend to show, any model of mind that is tied to content alone will never be remotely complete because it is merely a 3rd person view of a total system that include both 1st and 3rd person data.
A default out of this duo nature of consciousness is to conflate lower level brain states with consciousness in the round.
While Ed makes yet another pitch for "science," my sense is that what he is really driving at is the primacy of 3rd person deductive approaches, which are invaluable in shaking down content and processing processes, but guaranteed to draw a blank (or daffy postulates) on the crux of the whole thing - awareness, the fact that we are aware OF content. Any viable model of mind will have to include both deductive AND inductive modes of inquiry.
Deductive approaches the emphasis is generally about causality, while inductive approaches the aim is focused on exploring new phenomenon from a different perspective. Inductive approaches are generally aimed at qualitative/ontological concerns, while deductive approaches are generally quantitative.
"Grounded theory" pioneered by Strauss, is an inductive approach often referred to in research literature which necessitates the researcher begin the investigation with a completely open mind without any preconceived ideas about what will be found. The aim is to work up a new theory based on the data - in this case, drawn from both 1st and 3rd person empirical research.
There are several categorical mistakes we often see in staunch 3rd person approaches. One, as mentioned, is the belief that all 1st person approaches are attempting to work with no instruments or symbolic interpretive model, like math. The other is that 3rd person inquiries are working directly with awareness itself, when in fact they are working with what I call experiential content, the stuff of experience.
All of this stuff needs to be clarified before anyone can really know what the other is talking about. While Ed disparages philosophy, a majority of philosophy these days is carried out by scientists in an effort to determine the logical and empirical verity of concepts that will eventually be part of a working model of consciousness. I agree that philosophy will not provide that model, nor will quantitative science - at least not alone. But clarification of terms is a critical part of model building, and the work done (starting with Mill on up the present day folks) on supervenience and emergence, as well as computer modeling that has demonstrated the non-reductive and stratified or "layered" nature of information processing, as well as folks like Bohm and others, have all contributed invaluable insights model builders need.
I see philosophy in this regards much like many friends of mine working at JPL and Caltec view pure mathematics, which at their most rarefied heights seem to be working on stuff far removed from the more practical concerns of, say, physics or engineering or space travel. But once it comes times to actually do something in the applied sciences, they often go scrambling to the math folks to help build a model or reckon how proceed, how to plot the descent arc of a moon module or whatever. Likewise, when looking at a complicated process like consciousness, the interplay of forces have themselves been studied, often for centuries, in terms of causation, emergence, and so forth, so it helps in model building to bone up on the basics to avoid a lot of needless backtracking (some or even a lot is inevitable) the the model is under construction.
More later.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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a majority of philosophy these days is carried out by scientists in an effort to determine the logical and empirical verity of concepts
All is not lost as long as The Wizard is with us.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 5, 2017 - 05:38pm PT
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Syncorax, what qualifications would you deem "extensively?" And where did you ever get your information about my academic background? I don't flaunt that here because it seems needless and roostering about grad school seems boorish and vain. But if you have to know, Ed and I both did undergrad work at the Claremont Colleges at the same time. Ed went to Berkely (I believe) for grad school and I went to the School of Theology there in Claremont and studied philosophy (mainly Process Philosophy) under John Cobb and David Griffith. It was an exciting time there in the 1970s, with a revolving cast of guest lecturers including David Bohm, Carl Pribrim, and loads of others. I might have learned a few things.
Wiki is actually a pretty good source for generic information, providing you know the information in the first place. It's not a place to learn things per se, but it can serve as a useful resource if used judiciously. And after writing over 50 books, I believe I know how to research a subject with some faculty.
For particulars, the Stanford Dictionary is also useful. When folks have spent years working up summary statements about specific subjects, it is wise to use them so far as they check out.
But more importantly, what, specifically, are you taking issue with in terms of the material I presented? Should you provide more useful or at least pertinent insights per the subjects discussed, kindly speak up. Otherwise, it's just so much trolling with no substance. You're certainly free to do so, but readers will be excused from having to take you seriously.
JL
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J R
climber
bend
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John,
Just flex one of your biceps and his eyes will pop. This is all that is needed....
~JR
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The aim is to work up a new theory based on the data - in this case, drawn from both 1st and 3rd person empirical research
Give some examples of first person empirical data, please. Third person is easily understood and is usually quantified. I don't see how first person data about the mind or consciousness can be trusted since it would arise from states of mind which are notoriously misleading. Once again, it's self-referential inquiry with the danger that entails.
. . . at their most rarefied heights seem to be working on stuff [pure math] far removed from the more practical concerns of, say, physics or engineering or space travel. But once it comes times to actually do something in the applied sciences, they often go scrambling to the math folks to help build a model or reckon how proceed
Mathematics is used as a tool, an instrument to quantify and test a physical theory. I don't see a comparable relevance with philosophy that is not being done by a physical scientist engaged in the inquiry. How can it be a tool in this situation? If you are speaking of a scientist who has become very familiar with an investigation and mulls over possible interpretations of phenomena, that's a different matter. I suppose a traditional philosopher might stumble over an explanation and surprise his scientist colleagues, but it's not likely. I suspect the only philosophical input of any consequence must come from an investigating scientist.
Feel free to inform me of the scope and depth of my error.
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J R
climber
bend
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Have we already proved we can trust the ideas and concepts derived or formed from our thoughts, or what we believe to be one's conscious thought and recollection?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Not even wrong...no matter how many times that bubble wand is waved.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sycorax's father was a reputable academic philosopher. Ignore her at your peril.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I was a high school student at Claremont HS, we hung out at the Claremont colleges and stole computer time, I was 16 years old at the time... I did take Calculus at the local community college (Citrus?)
My undergraduate degree was from UCBerkeley, my MA, MPhil and PhD all from Columbia University. I did research at both places, in experimental particle physics.
I post-doc'd for a couple of years and then taught at UMass/Amherst for about 8 years, then moved to LLNL.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Hi, Jgill:
My mistake, and apology. (Thanks for setting me straight.)
I realized I was wrong on the number of permutations (3!); I meant to get back to my post to correct it, but there was that game last night (and pizza and beer!).
I would have thought that the number would be 4! (if “upside down” constitutes another dimension), but with your post, it now appears to be = 4! X 2. Is that how you thought of it?
Like you I guess, I’m working on / generating expressions of what I’m seeing, although I can’t say what “seeing” is experientially (exactly, that is). It’s where my interests lie these days.
MH2:
I see the light. ;->
Jim:
Thanks! Cool. I like your thought / expression about the image on the black plywood. Ya’ gotta appreciate street art. “Art for art’s sake” seems highly laudable to me—you know, for experience purposes.
I’ve been wanting to start up some kind of discussion group in the area where I live among anyone who considers themselves a practicing artist (e.g., in painting, sculpture, quilt-making, writing, performing arts, woodworking, whatever) to discuss the creative urge, where it occurs, and what arises from it. When I talk to “artists” about their work, what I invariably hear are descriptions of technique. It reminds me of talking with practicing-science folk (including engineers): “Here’s what I did, how I did it, what the findings are.” Instead, IMO, what’s interesting is where visions come from, what vision is, how it expresses itself in us. One can have all the technique in the world, yet express just about nothing.
The experience I’m having making paintings and objects has become increasingly interesting. It seems to be some kind of un-articulable, symbolic dialogue . . . with what I can’t say. I begin with some idea, even a full-on plan, but as soon as I start to build or create what my mind (or heart) has envisioned, a mysterious process starts to show up. It’s a kind of non-verbal dialogue (e.g., a projection, eduction, mutual causality): a created artifact provides sensory data that gives rise to insights which encourage change to the artifact. The creation in turn re-creates the creator: it’s a feedback loop.
Yesterday afternoon we had a neighbor over for a drink before the game who has been running a contemporary art gallery. Broaching the above subject, I got the distinct sense that she sees the art she’s dealing in terms of the monetary value rather than the experience of it: a merchant. What the heck do I know. My favorite literature professor reported that Shakespeare was simply a hardworking playwright, rather than “an artiste.” :-|
I must be idealistic. It's my mind.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 6, 2017 - 09:37am PT
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Ed, I don't remember us trying to share computer time together but I was always trying to mooch time from the computers they had at Harvey Mud (Pomona didn't have much at that time) to do analysis on the EEG and qEEG stuff we were running. Impressive academic achievements. Don't know where I got the idea that you studied at Berkeley, maybe because we only say each other in passing. Too bad, really. We could have had some fun.
And John, I'm not sure where you got the idea that modern philosophy is some far out den of pipe smokers waxing large about vague and distant thoughts having little to do with the real world. Most of modern philosophy is applied, tending to hard core logic, or very proscribed discussions per specific topics that is rigorously vetted by peers. My analogy to math was not my own, or that philosophy is doing quantifications, considerd by many to be more "real" or authentic (by quantifiers) than other modes of inquiry - it was only to underscore that the fact that both fields offer material that is vital to strictly practical concerns. Systematic logic, a major branch of philosophy, had been instrumental in the development of many fields.
I mentioned earlier that any model of mind based on experiential content, the stuff that mind presents to awareness will always fail. That's why informational theory will never provide an overall theory that is comprehensive.
The categorical error most people make in appraising the 1st person studies is to think the work is about content. Some of it is, but the more crucial work is not, that is, no one is trying to do science without instruments. The study is about awareness itself, which is not a state. States arise WITHIN awareness, but that is not disclosed from a 3rd person vantage. But this is a big topic and it takes a lot of unpacking. For now, remember what IS empirical about the 1st person: it is private. No one can directly access either the experiential content of the awareness of same in another subject. Only the subject can. And so in one sense our interior lives exist behind closed doors. An Identity Materialist can rant about brain states being identical with experiential states, but few believe this - we can easily see why.
The mode of inquiry used in 1st person is not strictly deductive, and that's the rub. But as mentioned:
With deductive approaches the emphasis is generally about causality, while inductive approaches the aim is focused on exploring new phenomenon from a different perspective. Inductive approaches are generally aimed at qualitative concerns, while deductive approaches are generally quantitative. "Grounded theory" pioneered by Strauss, is an inductive approach often referred to in research literature which necessitates the researcher begin the investigation with a completely open mind without any preconceived ideas about what will be found. The aim is to work up a new theory based on the data.
An empirical ("based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic") find of the highest order, which changed modern psychology, and which was and could only be discovered through directly exploring 1st person material, would be Freud's discovery of the sub and unconscious mind.
It has been argued that this could have been postulated from brain states, but only by sentient beings who were aware. A pure 3rd person approach could in theory be carried out by a machine, and a machine sans awareness would have no reference point to mind or consciousness and would therefore never "find" anything in brain function to suggest anything but mechanical functioning. But because Freud's process was in large part inductive, a huge sample group was required and the concepts were worked up slowly, requiring massive peer review that continues today. Such is the nature of 1st person inquiries. They are not simple.
That's only one of countless examples. But no, 1st person inquiries are not suited to examine mechanical functioning. The fact that some believe that this is ALL that is going on does not make it so, though from a 3rd person vantage, that's what you are left with.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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re: "academic philos"
Hey let's not forget I was the among the first here (c: 2010) to "speak truth to power" show some courage (all right, balls) and "denigrate" "post-enlightenment" "academic philosophy" at this site for its "bouffant" otherwise puffery and bs, fecklessness and irresponsibility. (Much to the frustration of Mdboltr1, lol)
Fun case in point: The Omphalos Hypothesis
Anyone here want to deny that the Omphalos Hypothesis was once considered to be advanced philosophical theology. lol
We've come a long way, baby! Can't say it enough: Academic theist philos, imo, deserves all the criticism and ridicule it gets.
Here, let me include a Wiki link to the matter...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis
...to further wind up? lol... the crude, vulgar and pompous one (along w her fellow traveler or two) who, to say it again, really needs to start her own threads (to harbor her embarrassing nonsensical, anti-science, anti-men? posts) rather than soil this one.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Circular indeed. Will check back in another thou or so given nothing has changed
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Anyone here want to deny that the Omphalos Hypothesis was once considered to be advanced philosophical theology. lol
Yes. and at one time reading the bumps on a persons head was considered advanced scientific theory. LOLEH!
Neither of those statements is much of an argument.
The real fallacy here goes back to the assumption that intelligence is simply information processing.
Such an idea is anemic in the face of any real epistemological understanding. The real question is what is knowing, or what is realization and then what is it that is doing that realizing? The idea, or problem being the antecedent nature of consciousness and its very mysterious nature. It's fascinating to see some in science, so confounded be the problem, as to declare consciousness as a realization of the self, simply an illusion... wonder what we'll think of that idea in a decade or two?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 6, 2017 - 11:13am PT
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Fruity, you need your own reality show. A kind of curmudgeon wind bag full of hayseed biases cherry picking the most egregious full in a field and painting the entire milieu with that brush. As though everyone calling themselves religious has a head full of silly myths and is a terrorist out to bugger your livestock or blow up Manhattan. We don't writ off all AI because of a few cranks claiming we will have a conscious, feeling machine by 2030. Nor can we diss all of philosophy by dint of dogma driven theologians. If, for example, you look at credible philosophical papers on subjects key to mind, such as emergence, supervenience, epistemic and ontological discussions, you will find excellent scholarly treaties involving historical oversight and cutting edge theories, logically presented. Not sure what you are reading but it sounds like pop fluff, and there's no virtue in trashing that. Like kicking a dead dog.
To put this whole discussion in a nut shell - no sober student of mind could doubt that objective processing is at the heart of the whole mind discussion, and plays a central role in the fact that we are conscious. The crux boils down to one phenomenon: awareness. Not WHAT we are aware of, rather the fact that we are aware at all. And how and why and all the rest. That's the linchpin of the whole thing. Any discussion tangential to this is not dealing with the central issue. Fact is, we KNOW awareness is a 1st person phenomenon. Efforts to try and find how it is also a 3rd person phenomenon should not be discouraged, but rather encouraged. But saying we shouldn't investigate both modes concurrently is to work directly against what we do know. Go ahead. Stick to the 3rd person investigation of external objects if you choose. No one is stopping you. But the train might leave without you...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Excuse me, Largo...
Just to be clear, Paul and I are often on the same page, we just often like to pick at the differences. For eg, Paul posted...
There are remarkable numbers of stars and planets and potentials and we are clearly not the center of all existence but so what?
We have the fortune of a remarkable consciousness and resulting intelligence through which we can realize a conceivable phronesis and the resulting eudemonia. Neither of which can survive if conceived as perfectly relative.
Nobody is scorning science except those at the limits of reason. However, scientism, which I would describe as the misapplication of scientific method to those things outside its (science’s) realm, is problematic.
There is a kind of nobility in human existence. To be confronted by an inevitable annihilation and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that are as equally inevitable, to face those and make something decent out of it, to be ultimately an infinitesimal bit in an inconceivable space, how easy to become brutish and mean all in the name of evolutionary victory.
Our smallness in the face of the universe is all the more reason to pat ourselves on the back for our victory over circumstance.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Hey this thread's worthy. Sure it's got its circularities but it's got more than that too. Above Paul (quote) reminds us (sometimes needed for reinforcement sake) that a phronesis (practical wisdom) and eudaimonia (welfare or wellbeing) are not (necessarily) out of reach.
Food for thought: bio-phronesis (or biophronesis)... practical life wisdom
...
Well, Paul, imo, one doesn't get any "real epistemological understanding" - otherwise modern, valid and accurate - without a few years study and immersion in information science, control theory and computers.
The real question is what is knowing, or what is realization and then what is it that is doing that realizing? The idea, or problem being the antecedent nature of consciousness and its very mysterious nature. It's fascinating to see some in science, so confounded be the problem, as to declare consciousness as a realization of the self, simply an illusion... wonder what we'll think of that idea in a decade or two?
Per you post, you seem like the ideal candidate for Dennett's latest book... From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of MInds.
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WBraun
climber
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The phenomena of consciousness and complex form stand as insurmountable
obstacles blocking any attempt to capture the world by a quantitative theory.
To find a successful approach to understanding reality, we must
therefore depart from the mechanistic framework of modern science.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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(My edit's not working so I post anew.)
Per you post, you seem like the ideal candidate for Dennett's latest book... From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of MInds.
Essential points:
(1) Competence (of systems) without comprehension
(2) Comprehension: a function of cultural evolution (a result of a build-up of a gazillion memes over literally millions of years)
Beta: Want epiphany or insight? Internalize points 1 and 2 till they sink in and stay put and don't flee.
A gazillion memes over millions of years is not something to dis. Their effects are something to wonder at and to be absolutely astonished by.
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