What is "Mind?"

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High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Mar 12, 2017 - 10:13am PT

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Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 12, 2017 - 12:26pm PT

Working on a sci-fi project and came across an interesting thought experiment: Take a version of Chalmers zombie, a "smart robot" that can replicate human behavior right down to the wink of an eye, but it is merely what John Searl called a "syntactic engine," dead inside, unaware of itself being a machine with the only thing happening internally being the light speed shuffling of symbols, or a stream of code from the post Fruity just submitted.

Now say the smart robot has visual and sensory capacities so it can intake sights, sounds and external physical stimulus. What manner of "reality" is it that the zombie intakes, and how does the zombie intake process differ from the way a human being processes sense data? And what is the sense data that the zombie and human intake respectively (ie, their differences)?

And secondly, I earlier said that no purely objective investigation of the brain would ever disclose the first thing about experience itself. It is interesting to push this argument a little further and see where it leads.

For starters, a purely objective investigation would have to come from a purely objective machine, like Searls syntactic engines. A machine with no subjective existence whatsoever, so no subjectivity could possibly bleed into the investigation. Make it an ideal machine with virtually unlimited diagnostic powers to investigate the mechanical functioning of the human brain. Call it Albert.

Since Albert has nothing in its programming to suggest the existence of subjective experience itself, and can only investigate sense data (electrochemical stirrings), by what means and methods could Albert ever physically "find" or discover the presence of experience itself through analyzing brain function?

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Mar 12, 2017 - 04:08pm PT

As Plan[c]k said long ago, content postulates consciousness to begin with. Otherwise we only have dancing neurons (JL)

From QUORA:

John Purcell, Author of "Mind, Matter and the Universe"
Written Feb 17, 2016

"Along with many of the founders of quantum mechanics, Planck had spent a lot of time asking himself what we mean by an observation.

A piece of apparatus might register that a quantum-scale event has occurred, but how do we know that the particles composing the apparatus have settled into a particular state? Ultimately we know because we know; because some fact enters our awareness.

These kinds of reflections are not popular among physicists today. Which is a shame, because the majority of philosophers do not understand quantum mechanics at all, and are therefore probably not fully equipped to tackle the question.

Questions involving consciousness also have a peculiar ability to polarise opinions. We now have a number of possible interpretations of quantum mechanics in varying stages of mathematical completeness; many people gravitate strongly to one or the other, and less than 6% of physicists (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069.pdf ) believe that consciousness has anything to do with quantum mechanics."

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 12, 2017 - 05:19pm PT

Duck: This is the most useless statement [that folks cannot think for themselves] always made on a forum in all different threads in general.

Perhaps it is useless. But that’s not my point. My point is that what you see is predicated upon what you believe.

Anyone who is brutally honest, must, IMO, say they don’t know to everything but just one thing: viz., pure unadulterated, unelaborated existence.

“To know” implies a knower, something to know, and a process of acquisition or a connection between the knower and the known. (You can consider seeing, feeling, tasting, etc. as simple processes of knowing.) All of these things are suspect. All research suggests that to us. (That’s what all the scientific arguments revolve around.)

Above I pointed out some reasons why any process of knowing could well be questionable. (We can get into the challenges of accurate perception and the identity of the “little self” that most folks think they are if you really want to.)

The reason for challenging people to think for themselves is that, for the most part, they don’t. They don’t gather their own data, and they don’t look at the raw data they can call their own, closely and systematically.

What we perceive are phenomena, and from that, we build complete multiverses. I appreciate logic and reason, but phenomena implies so very very little. One might as well be in a rowboat in the middle of the North Atlantic. We are largely groundless.

Even though Largo’s message sometimes seems to be a one-note tune, his point is rock-solid in my book. What everyone has is subjectivity . . . lots of it. That’s our data to work with. Objectivity? Well, objectivity is a theoretical construct based upon a a great many assumptions. I mean if objectivity were unassailable, then people would agree about a great many things, specifically and in detail. They don’t.

WBraun

climber

Mar 12, 2017 - 07:21pm PT

“To know” implies a knower

Yes, the knower is GOD!

Unfortunately, the atheists and mayavadi impersonalists remain clueless to that .....

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 12, 2017 - 08:00pm PT

My point is that what you see is predicated upon what you believe.

Where would the belief come from if not from seeing?

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 12, 2017 - 08:33pm PT

^^^^^^

But I believe that it does exist. Even without seeing it.

edit:

When I first clicked on Jim's video there was only a message that said, "This video does not exist."

It seems that my faith brought it into existence.

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Mar 12, 2017 - 09:06pm PT

. . . it is merely what John Searl called a "syntactic engine," (JL)

John Searl's Fantastic Generator

John Searle Philosopher

Incorrect attributes, inaccuracies and spelling mistakes really weaken your arguments, John. Where is Sycorax?

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 12, 2017 - 09:39pm PT

MH2: Where would the belief come from if not from seeing?

Andy, I think you know what I mean here. You’re being clever. I think that’s fun for you. That ends up the extent of the depth of our conversation most of the time. It's fine.

WBraun

climber

Mar 12, 2017 - 09:53pm PT

Andy, I think you know what I mean here. You’re being clever.

It may look like being clever but then again "seeing" is also associated with one's inner eye.

When the soul "sees" its own true self again.

Then comes realization ........

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 13, 2017 - 08:33am PT

Yes. Sure, Werner. I agree with the gist of what you’re saying.

We can’t help but speak in metaphors, about everything IMO. That’s one of the reasons why it might be wise not to take anything (ANYTHING) too seriously or concretely.

Once a person starts seeing this place for the madhouse it is, it’s difficult to stop seeing it that way everywhere and in everyone. Conventional reality doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be life. Liberated people say they don’t know what life is, but “the world” as people believe they know it is not it.

This thing about observation (the watcher, let’s say in meditation) is not truly understood. One needs to be very careful and attentive to wake-up. I’d say one should be shifting from character to actor often, in all situations, so that the shifting happens smoothly and easily (and doesn’t diminish performance). Observation (learning how to watch the mind) encourages a person to dis-identify with the character that he or she is playing. Sure, there is a “you” behind the character projected into the world, but no movement towards waking-up to “what this is” is possible as long as there is a serious or concrete identification with the persona on stage (ala, the Bhagavad-Gita). Instead, one has to deconstruct their character, not simply observe it. (That provides real in-sight.)

Spiritualism itself is part of the problem. As a few people have said in other places, spiritualism is often just another form of delusion. Anyone who has an addiction and is fighting it, is still in the same jail cell. It doesn’t matter if a person is beating his or her addiction or not. He or she is fully engaged in the same processes.

If one wants to be more true, then the way one moves toward that is to become less false. Look at all the madness in the world and in yourself under a strong light, illuminate it, and call it for what it is—stoopid sh*t. Illumination tends to destroy stoopid sh*t (because it wasn’t real to begin with).

Spiritualism is not on the top of the list of stoopid sh*t, but it’s right up there in my book (and I’ve been at it for 35 years). Most of the world’s recognized experts on spiritualism might be great scholars, or great teachers, or great mystics, but they don’t seem liberated from my p-o-v. They don’t seem awake because they seem to be saying to us that mystic union with cosmic consciousness is the same thing as abiding non-dual awareness. It isn’t. Spiritualism seems to be more like a rear guard whose purpose is to get us involved in a delaying action. Spiritualism occupies us with more stoopid sh*t rather providing illumination and understanding of “what this is.” (An easy way to distinguish between those who are awake and those who are not is to note that those who are enlightened don’t attach importance to anything.) Liberation does not require knowing stuff, and it’s not about love or compassion or consciousness. It’s about abiding nondual awareness.

Waking up is the ultimate “inside job.” If we stop weaving our own enchantments, we can start waking up. Look at consciousness and ask this question honestly: “What the hell is going on here?” Question, doubt, look closely, draw a line in the sand, stand up.

Look for yourself, gather your own data, shine a bright light on it, and get rid of stoopid sh*t. What appears concrete and serious will begin to fade, and one will be left with the darnedest thing.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 13, 2017 - 09:28am PT

...because the majority of philosophers do not understand quantum mechanics at all, and are therefore probably not fully equipped to tackle the question.

John, if you want to find out about "syntactic engines," watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26vsJUsk46w

It features Searle talking all about them. And I'm not doing a term paper here, just dashing things off so typos are inevitable. Sorry. the arguments stand.

Per the above, when I use "postulates consciousness," I'm not using the old observer-created" argument per QM, aka the Copenhagen Interpretation, but rather the basic realization that awareness is a priori to any discussion of observation of any thing, from a boson to a jack rabbit.

The fact is, with so many moving parts, no one is "fully equipped" to tackle all aspects of consciousness, which is probably one reason many people try and wrangle the whole topic into terms specific to their field of study. The problems and wonky suppositions begin when people working on a part insist that they are working on the whole. We see this all the time with the conflation of 1st and 3rd person phenomenon. The lasting power of Chalmers Hard Problem was that for the first time, he posited a question that wouldn't let honest investigators off the hook per the 1st person experiential phenomenon that we actually live in, and which people black out drunk on mechanical functioning are apparently "not fully equipped to tackle the question."

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Mar 13, 2017 - 02:32pm PT

I propose that our best path to understanding the mind is to study the brain.

Right but not a human brain. That's like a noob trying to climb El Cap.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 13, 2017 - 03:33pm PT

Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate. The hypothetical concept of qualia, pure mental experience, detached from any information-processing role, will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism

Stanislas Dehaene

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts.
Viking Adult, 2014.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 13, 2017 - 03:41pm PT

Per syntactic engines, I just saw a little clip of a "near sentient" robot they are working on over in Switzerland where my GF lives. It has "130 times the processing power of the human brain," according to the pro mo stuff.

People were allowed to ask "Albert" any question they could and "he" answered instantly and perfectly, with an Aspergers like stiffness and a cloying smile. Till a robotics dude from Dallas asked:

How much dirt in a hole that measures three feet by eleven feet?

77.754 cubic feet or 2.88 cubic yards or 2.202 cubic meters, said Albert, instantly.

Wrong, said the Texan. There is no dirt in a hole.

Albert looked confused, but before it could regain its wits, the Texan asked:

Yankee Doodle rode a pony to town because a perfect square y2 and a perfect cube x3 that are not equal must lie a substantial distance apart, but since Doodle was himself a perfect cube, what distance from town would the Yankees have to go to square dance with a pony?

(No doubt the Texan had prepared this tongue twister beforehand, and it took me a minute to even transcribe it)

Apparently, the Texan had given Albert an input that it could not translate to a lower level, ergo it could not perform the function, though by its programming, it had to try. And since it could only do literal processing, and since the input combined an unsolvable math problem with gibberish, poor Albert, swamped with increasing layers of incomputable requests, apparently went into a kind of fugue state, a version of the tiny circle graphic that keeps circling on your screen till the computer can "clear" and start over.

But with straight data processing Albert was the shizz. It apparently is also totally thrown by humor, puns, and plays on words.

Interesting stuff...

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Mar 13, 2017 - 04:35pm PT

Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate. The hypothetical concept of qualia, pure mental experience, detached from any information-processing role, will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism

This statement resonates for me. Perhaps the nuances of language are responsible for assigning a peculiar kind of "reality" to these "slippery" notions, whereas they don't exist in any tangible way and are similar to things I have seen in advanced abstract mathematics that appear to be "real" in a sense but are anything but.

I suspect the only productive way to proceed in an investigation of mind is to combine the talents of neuroscientists and psychologist and continue to explore the physical brain. As more is revealed in this way philosophers can argue away with ever increasing authority, moving from the inconsequential dialogues at present to more enlightened territory.

When JL attempts to corral the "slippery" stuff he may be delving into a "reality" that has no substance of any kind and is more a product of vocabulary than anything else.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 13, 2017 - 06:31pm PT

MH2, quoting Dehaene, wrote: Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate. The hypothetical concept of qualia, pure mental experience, detached from any information-processing role, will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism.

----

For my money, few people are so successful at conflating the aspects of consciousness as Dehaene. For starters, Dehaene makes the fundamental mistake of conflating content with consciousness, a predictable blunder when 1st person is excised from the investigation.

The notion that a "scientific era" has in any way established the verity of this blunder, or that one can comfortably talk about being conscious only so long as awareness is engaged in a data processing role, is both foolish and ignorant.

Even a brief period of introspection would disclose to Dehaene that there are gaps in the conscious data streaming through his awareness, and should he probe those gaps (commonly called the space between mechanical thoughts), his hypothetical concept that consciousness and information processing are selfsame would indeed, evaporate.

I think this is a case where the valid and at times brilliant work that Dehaene does on objective functioning falls into the shade when he tries to cover consciousness itself by way of data processing. But so it goes with him and all the Global Workspace folks, who are really not talking about consciousness itself at all, but rather the mechanical working of the mind, which generates the stuff of awareness.

Ironically, in his most recent book, Dehaene explains how consciousness was not even mentioned in neuroscientific circles until the late 1980s. Why? Not because consciousness was not there, but rather because no one was even focused on consciousness itself, they were still stumbling out of the Behavioralist model that believed (falsely) humans could be entirely understood through the external examination and evaluation of an external object - namely, our body, and how it behaved. Inputs and outputs.

Dehaene and the Global Workspace boys and simply shifted their external examinations and evaluations to the brain, another external object, but they still cling to the false hope of behavioralism (this time, the behavior of the brain) to "explain" consciousness. And of course his "explanation" hinges on ... you guessed it - measurements. In his case, measuring neural correlates of consciousness using paradigms like minimal contrasts of images, masking (subliminal stimuli), binocular rivalry, and attentional blink.

Not surprisingly, Dehaene said, "...at least in principle, I see no reason why they would not lead to an artificial consciousness." Like so many others from the data processing camp, Dehaene has dreams of Frankenstein, and at some level, is likely blackout drunk on man's biggest delusion: The promise of immortality.

Of course Dehaene has not answered Chalmers Hard problem whatsoever. He's just another processing investigator who has looked at the tails side of the coin and declared to the world that heads, so to speak, does not REALLY exist, that the whole shebang is nothing more than tails (processing).

Harvard prof. Ned Block, for one, was not fooled, stating that phenomenal consciousness (Block's term) can exist without access consciousness. But even Block did not go far enough, because his phenomenal consciousness is still anchored to sense data. He needed to go the distance, all the way to awareness, where even sense content "evaporates," to use Dehaene's words.

For anyone interested in Block, who in my opinion is much further down the road than all those in the Info Camp, check out:

Http://protoscience.wikia.com/wiki/Phenomenal_and_Access_Conciousness

For those unfamiliar with Block, he is widely known for his "Blockhead" argument which runs:

Blockhead is the name of a theoretical computer system invented as part of a thought experiment by Harvard professor, Ned Block, which appeared in a paper titled Psychologism and Behaviorism. In this paper, Block argues that the internal mechanism of a system is important in determining whether that system is intelligent, and also shows that a non-intelligent system could pass the Turing test.

Block asks us to imagine a conversation. He states that, given the nature of language, there are a finite number of syntactically and grammatically correct sentences that can be used to start a conversation. From this follows the point that there is a limit to how many "sensible" responses can be made to this first sentence, and then again to the second sentence, and so on until the conversation ends.

Block then asks us to imagine a computer which had been programmed with all these sentences—in theory if not in practice. From this, Block argues that such a machine could continue a conversation with a person on any topic, because the computer would be programmed with every sentence that it was possible to use. On this basis, the computer would be able to pass the Turing test despite the fact that it was not intelligent.

Block says that this does not show that there is only one correct internal structure for generating intelligence, but simply that some internal structures do not generate intelligence.

John wrote: When JL attempts to corral the "slippery" stuff he may be delving into a "reality" that has no substance of any kind and is more a product of vocabulary than anything else.

I look at this in the same way that I look at MH2's statement that "subjective and objective are just words."

When we look at this in terms of logic, "just words" implies that subjectivity, in this case, is merely a word (John's "vocabulary") that is attached to nothing real whatsoever. Pushed further, you will find, without fail, that "real" to such people will always mean, an external object or phenomenon that we can measure. So to a staunch materialist, even though they live their entire lives in a subjective bubble, they nevertheless believe the lives they actually lead are fundamentally unreal, while the external objects of their experience are, strangely, real.

But that's where logic leaves us. The real world does this belief, and this dumbed down definition of "real," to death, every time.

Consider the couple that is struggling with their marriage and goes to counseling, as an increasing amount of couples are forced to do in this hectic world. The personal conflict and tension between the two has swelled into a palpable tension that haunts their very house, the space they live in, every room, every look, every personal exchange - all of it choked with the toxic energy of a couple at psychological and spiritual war. Most of us know this first hand.

Now what if the counselor were to say that he considered that palpable tension, and their very conflict, to be merely a word, more a product of vocabulary than anything else, and that if they would be so kind as to show him something real he could actually see, then maybe he could help. Otherwise the best course of action would be to conduct MRIs to find some possible neurological disorder that created their unreal problem, which they only believe exists.

I could supply an endless list of other examples that would demonstrate that our experiential lives are in many way more real then our physical bodies. Quite naturally, Type A materialists will simply say the behavior and experience is "created' by the brain in order to drag, at all costs and by whatever means, the conversation back into the 3rd person arena.

Chalmers Hard Problem says, "Not so fast."

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 13, 2017 - 06:59pm PT

Funny stories you guys. Very clever.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 13, 2017 - 07:57pm PT

Now what if the counselor were to say that he considered that palpable tension, and their very conflict, to be merely a word, more a product of vocabulary than anything else, and that if they would be so kind as to show him something real he could actually see, then maybe he could help. Otherwise the best course of action would be to conduct MRIs to find some possible neurological disorder that created their unreal problem, which they only believe exists.

Does this example show that there is no objective basis for emotions?

MRI is still only a crude look at mental function, but it can help to understand and direct treatment toward some mental disorders.

You seem to think that, because a physical basis for human mental experience is assumed, we should be able jump from thousands of years of dealing with our problems in traditional ways to a perfect solution.

Not so fast.