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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 22, 2017 - 09:09pm PT
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This absence is not some thing you can be wrong about
Why not?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2017 - 09:11pm PT
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Note now how Largo's arranged his forum droppings such that he's practically sitting with drop-knee right on top of the mind-brain science model of cognition, consciousness, sentience, awareness, etc...
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I've always had a mind-brain science model per the stuff of consciousness. This is where you and many others have misinterpreted me - perhaps because I have always kept focus on what is NOT circuitry, artifact, cha cha cha.
Whatever explanation you can give for awareness that is mechanically based is perforce commentary about mechanical functioning, NOT the fact that we are aware of same. And whatever mechanical or processing or information-based theory of awareness you posit can be contrasted to literally millions of other instances of processing and information and data crunching modalities not a single one of which has ever exhibited the slightest hint of being aware.
In virtually every case the mechanical belief system per awareness needs to recruit a magical process by which material "creates" experience. In the glaring lack of evidence that this ever occurs, figurative models are then recruited - emergence, supervenience, etc. but in every case what emerges is an observable external phenomenon. In no case can you provide even a metaphor for material "causing" anything remotely like 1st person experience.
Rather then simply deal with what is dead obvious people keep grapping for work-arounds to keep clutching this belief that material "causes" sentience. Extreme examples range from denials that we actually are conscious, to hare-brained stuff like Gracian claiming that awareness is information that the brain self-describes or attributes to itself, to Pappy Dennett insisting that consciousness is an illusion - a transparent piece of jive that anyone can reason throught - the problem with insisting that consciousness is an illusion is that the ability to experience an illusion can only be attributed to being conscious in the first place.
The obsession with finding a way to posit brain-based awareness is so rampant that many readers simply miss the truly provocative things mentioned here, like what Hendricks said about the ludicrous claims of Hard AI folks, who have never thoroughly thought through the impossibility of their beliefs. Says Hendricks:
"Whatever our subjective sense of self is, let’s assume it arises from the operation of the physical matter of the brain. We might tentatively conclude that awareness itself is substrate-neutral: if brains can be conscious, a computer program that does everything a brain does should be conscious, too.
Granted there is no observable brain process to suggest that this is or is not the case; but if one is also willing to imagine arbitrarily complex technology, then we can also think about simulating a brain down to the synaptic or molecular or (why not?) atomic or quantum level.
But what is this replica? Is it subjectively “you” or is it a new, separate being? And what if we download "you" while you were still healthy and alive? The idea that you can be conscious in two places at the same time defies our intuition. Parsimony suggests that replication will result in two different conscious entities. Simulation, if it were to occur, would result in a new person who is like you but whose conscious experience you don’t have access to. And if it indeed were "you," kindly tell us what you mean."
It doesn't mean anything. Nothing at all. It's truly magical thinking.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 22, 2017 - 09:26pm PT
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Emptiness’s presence is . . . it is the vacuum of nothingness
I'm going to run this by Foxy Loxy and see if she can make sense of it.
"Sean Carroll, how would you explain Hilbert space to a lay person?"
Huh. I'm curious about that also. If I were more conversant with functional analysis I might give it a try. Too bad some of the better mathematicians on ST don't take part on this thread.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 22, 2017 - 09:33pm PT
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"my own bet is that it is NOT complexity, NOT some unknown re atoms and molecules, NOT biochemistry but... circuitry. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of different kinds of circuitry (from differentiators and integrators to clocks and oscillators and resonators to memory elements and filtering mechanisms, etc etc etc... and out of this font (or Cookbook) Mother Nature derives by way of our kind of perceiving and talking what we call consciousness. Evolution by natural selection constructs in a manner categorically different and even inconceivably different from how human engineers construct. Therein lies the mental block we experience in figuring out the so-called Hard Problem"
Bears repeating. Nicely stated.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:04am PT
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DMT:
What, to your way of thinking, has been predicted about the future to some extent of accuracy and clearly? (I’m all ears on this end.)
eeyonkee:
Good for you. Cheers. I guess I AM a skeptic regarding just about everything since I have found it difficult to be sure about almost everything. You get that, don’t you? I mean you can at least see that position, can’t you?
I’m for *playing around* with data and ideas and feelings. I can understand how this might infuriate some people because I might seem to lack seriousness about topics. Indeed, I find it difficult to even watch the local news. I’m somewhat this way because I know enough about analysis and reporting processes, and I’ve gotten tired of the overly dramatic nature of life--all of which is seemingly manufactured to my way of thinking. Like you, probably, I’m here because I enjoy the company and the conversations. No one (to include you or me) has to agree with anything written here. We're just talking.
The last few days I’ve started into a book entitled, “Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art” by Galenson. I’m only 80 pages into it, and it’s amusing for so many reasons. (1) It’s based upon a structural economic analysis, arguing that once fuller market forces took hold in the art market (foreclosing the influence of gatekeepers {Salons} in France), innovation, revolution, and change increased dramatically in art. (2) The data come from counting the number of illustrations of artists’ works presented in art-history textbooks. I think this amounts to consensus among so-called experts--which is a bit at-odds with revolutionary movements. (3) Two different kinds of artistic revolutions are teased out from the data: there are “conceptual revolutionary artists” who come forward with breakthroughs fully-formed, and there are “experimental revolutionary artists” who are oriented to a motif / style that gets reworked over and over to perfection. In other words, one group of artists would seem to be conceptually content-oriented, while the other revolutionaries are more process-oriented.
I see many problems with the research design and analyses, and yet I appreciate the information and interpretations. I both like and dislike the process and the content of the work. I understand the interpretations, I have evaluations of them, I have feelings that arise while reading the book (amusement and others), and I self-reflect my evaluations and feelings. At that point, I am just around the corner from dropping all my interpretations, evaluations, and feelings for simply the experience of raw experience itself (this cannot be described).
This seems to be my current omega point. It is a space / place of openness, unity, spontaneity, and absence of substantiality. I cannot be there unless “things” are taken lightly.
. . . Mother Nature derives. . . . Evolution by natural selection constructs . . .
If you intend to be scientifically oriented, then anthropomorphisms hardly seem appropriate. “What’s *doing* what” suggests animate entities that supposedly don’t exist. Obviously this impinges on the free will / determinism issue.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:25am PT
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Don't forget that there is a total solar eclipse coming. August 21st. You Cali guys will have to go to Oregon to see it. I'll have to drive to Nebraska. 8 hour drive.
No way am I going to miss this. One hasn't come this close to me since 1970.
Path shown here:
http://www.supertopo.com/inc/postreply.php?topic_id=1593650&tn=14140
There are other sites with high resolution maps, showing exactly where to be to observe it fully. A total eclipse of the sun is supposedly one of the more wonderful sites in nature.
Carry on.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:28am PT
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Whatever explanation you can give for awareness that is mechanically based is perforce commentary about mechanical functioning, NOT the fact that we are aware of same. And whatever mechanical or processing or information-based theory of awareness you posit can be contrasted to literally millions of other instances of processing and information and data crunching modalities not a single one of which has ever exhibited the slightest hint of being aware.
I am impressed by the comprehensiveness, but not the comprehension.
This is not much of an insight:
Whatever explanation you can give for awareness that is mechanically based is perforce commentary about mechanical functioning,
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 23, 2017 - 09:27am PT
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This is pretty good...
"Particle physics simply doesn't inspire as much interest as say, ghosts. At least four in ten Americans believe in ghosts, and it's likely that even fewer people are aware of the LHC."
http://www.livescience.com/57973-has-large-hadron-collider-disproved-existence-of-ghosts.html
Coincidentally ties right in, I think, with last night's references to ghosts and Universal Consciousness (ala Chopra or Largo) as possible medium of, or contributor to, some (truly meaningful) personage.
I am a big fan of Brian Cox. Did I ever mention this? He makes no apologies about pushing (dmt: "preaching" lol) science as agenda, ideologically, politically. Good on him!
....
in last night's posts re circuitry, I could've/should've been clearer, stating instead... NOT complexity per se (in itself)... because brain circuitry is obviously VERY VERY COMPLEX (as shown by the science and the evidence... also as shown by the models!).
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 23, 2017 - 09:52am PT
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^^^. I assumed as much. Clearly you weren't eliminating complexity, but placing it in context.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 23, 2017 - 09:54am PT
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Ghosts are very real and are living entities in their subtle material bodies.
The mind itself is subtle material.
They've lost their gross material bodies and are in limbo.
When people commit suicide they generally become ghosts because they destroyed their gross physical body which they are NOT the real owners.
Suicide is against the cosmic law.
Living entities who are overly attached to their gross physical material bodies can remain as ghosts (subtle material body) after leaving their gross material bodies (death).
Puffed up (know it all) mechanical robots like HFCS can never understand the variegated dynamics of life itself due to their over egotistical material academic consciousness......
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messnerrocks
Mountain climber
Bozeman
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Feb 23, 2017 - 10:34am PT
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"variegated dynamics of life itself due to their over egotistical material academic consciousness......"
dynamics of life? like ghosts and other foo foo bs? c'mon. it's good stuff for horror movies, but that's about it.
academic consciousness? it's called education. the more you learn, the less you believe in things like ghosts.
I tend to agree with what HFCS says. You know, facts that can be proven. As long as your bar for believing in something is anything made up in your head and could never be proven, reason adn logic will suffer.
I've come to the conclusion this whole thread is just a way for a few people to bloviate about a bunch of philosophical bs. Let's argue about definitions for words philosophers made up to describe concepts they made up. Pointless.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 23, 2017 - 10:39am PT
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it is interesting that a rational, science minded individual can declare the absolute impossibility of "ghosts" while advocating for the idea of a thinking, experiencing, sentient mechanical machine. Sounds like they're putting a ghost in that machine.
Perhaps if you're fooled into believing ghosts exist then they actually do.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 23, 2017 - 11:51am PT
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Has a ghost defense ever been used in a court of law? Maybe scientists are not the only ones who try to use evidence to come to conclusions?
Australian lawyer here, I did a search of Australian legal databases for cases involving ghosts, swamp creatures and evil robots. Nothing involving swamp creatures or evil robots sadly, but there are few very old cases that sort of involve ghosts.
The oldest is R v Worrell from 1827 aka the Fisher ghost trial. It is claimed that the ghost of Fisher, a murder victim, appeared to an old man (who had been drinking but was not drunk) which lead to the discovery of the body. I found a newspaper article from 1892 that has a copy of the judgement which shows the body was found by an Aboriginal tracker (by finding bits of the decomposing body floating down a creek) and makes no reference to any ghosts. The article concludes that the ghost story is something that was made up after the trial.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k060b/was_claiming_demonic_possession_a_viable_legal/
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 23, 2017 - 04:32pm PT
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Dear Friend (DMT):
When I look at any of those “things,” I see immense differences specifically. No sunrise is the same, and “the sun rises” is the grossest of declarations. That leads me to propose that your “things” are generalities, categorizations, resemblances.
I suppose a “marriage” is like any other, hmmm. (Am I hitting a chord?)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 23, 2017 - 05:31pm PT
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Interesting how the conversation is coming back around to ectoplasm. Next up: Ed can present the ongoing investigation of the aether.
;>)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2017 - 06:15pm PT
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This absence is not some thing you can be wrong about
Why not?
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These are fun thought experiments to try and elucidate.
Owing to the absence of any thing or phenomenon to which you could possibly be mistaken. In the lack of content that you can evaluate, judge, measure, etc. what, exactly, is there to be wrong about?
On might say, You are wrong about there being no thing there. Meaning in reality there IS something there, for which you are unaware.
Next, question: What do you mean by "there?"
There is an answer to this, several, really, but be aware of the temptation to use a computer as a figurative model, as opposed to sticking with the phenomenon in questing: Awareness.
And John, if by ectoplasm you mean "a substance or spiritual energy exteriorized by physical mediums," I'm afraid you have lost me on that one.
But I think the best thought experiment so far is the one posited by the MIT neuroscientist about the notion of downloading various drafts of yourself into say half a dozen machines while you were still alive and
what would happen from there. Since each respective consciousness would of course be private and not directly accessible even to the original host dude, what would be the difference between the seven "folk," and what would "identical" mean in this regards?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:12pm PT
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But I think the best thought experiment so far is the one posited by the MIT neuroscientist about the notion of downloading various drafts of yourself into say half a dozen machines while you were still alive and
what would happen from there. Since each respective consciousness would of course be private and not directly accessible even to the original host dude, what would be the difference between the seven "folk," and what would "identical" mean in this regards?
The same as the difference between twins who began from the same fertilized egg. Unless you are similar to Tatiana and Krista Hogan and your consciousness is directly accessible to an other.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:13pm PT
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Owing to the absence of any thing or phenomenon to which you could possibly be mistaken. In the lack of content that you can evaluate, judge, measure, etc. what, exactly, is there to be wrong about?
That works for me. You can't be wrong or right in this case.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 23, 2017 - 08:28pm PT
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Owing to the absence of any thing or phenomenon to which you could possibly be mistaken
The mind is a trickster. And it attempts to produce that for which you form an intent. In your case, empty awareness. Instead of philosophical musings one should investigate the neurological corridors through which the trickster commutes. To prolong an inquiry into the empty stage state seems futile.
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