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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 03:21pm PT
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jogill, my 'summary', from the previous page, is basically this paragraph:
My basic take on 'consciousness' (and "mind") is that genomically encoded [anticipatory] responses eventually became inadequate to the task of keeping up with the continuously escalating and increasingly complex demands of predation. That at some point, 'rote' necessarily gave way to 'reason' and a new escalation began which would eventually lead to 'consciousness' and 'mind'. My further speculation would be that 'mind' initially 'emerged' as a necessary prioritization / 'final arbiter' function over immediate predation options.
So that would be 75 words. And in that, humans are in no way a requisite for either consciousness or "mind".
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MH2
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
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JL:
I asked a simple question - Now WHAT, exactly, are you going to measure per experience ITSELF.
Instead, people go off on objective functioning ONCE AGAIN. It´s gotten rediculous.
It may be your question that needs a little work. You seem to believe that experience, meaning whatever a person is feeling right now this moment, has an existence independent of the brain. I don't see any reason to take that suggestion seriously, and if you do take it seriously, what do you propose to measure? Is your question sincere?
In the super-task experiment I proposed where we measure all the activity in all the brain in real time, and then use that record to recreate the same pattern of activity in the same brain, we guess that the experiences would be nearly identical. If that turns out to be the case, we have no need to reject the hypothesis that all of the experience is contained in the brain activity. There would be no need for an 'extra ingredient.' There would be no case to make for a difference between "objective functioning" and "experience." It would mean that experience is brain activity.
Yes, we depend on the subject being able to recognize and report whether the experiences are the same or not. We would just ask the subject, "Did you feel the same experience in both cases or not?" We ask the subject to describe the original experience not because we expect them to give a complete account of it, but to have that report as a comparison with what they tell us after the reproduced experience. Yes, they might not tell the truth. That is why I put very little faith in studies done on humans. But if we really want to know we can use our Humongous Scientific Thingamabob on our own brain.
As a small example, consider a series of studies done in Europe in the 80s. I forget which country but one where getting approval for human subject studies faced less stringent barriers than it does over here. The investigators got volunteers who agreed to have micro-electrodes poked into a sensory nerve in the forearm. The investigators isolated single-unit responses. The tip of the electrode was placed close enough to an axon so that the action potential recorded from that axon was much bigger than that of nearby axons and noise. Since nerves may not have resting activity, an electric shock was applied at intervals while moving the electrode around. The electric shock stimulated action potentials in all the axons at the same time, which feels, as an experience, rather like banging your elbow on something. The brain is not accustomed to that kind of sensation and does not perceive it as anything usual. However, once an individual axon was isolated, the investigators could look for the modality it was specialized for.
The nerve being used has sensory axons coming from receptors in the skin of the forearm. There are receptors for hot, cold, light touch, firm pressure, and pain, for examples. The experimenters had ways to apply those stimuli to small patches of skin. In this experiment the subject was awake and able to report the sensation resulting from the different stimuli applied. The investigators could gradually narrow down the area needed to get a response in the axon by noting the intensity of the response and looking for the most sensitive spot on the skin. When they thought they were directly over a receptor, they could inject a small amount of local anesthetic and then reapply the stimulus. If both the action potential in the nerve and the reported sensation disappeared together, they could conclude that that single receptor, sending messages to the brain via its axon, was responsible for the sensation. Waiting for the anesthesia to reverse, nerve activity and sensation also returned together.
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MH2
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 04:03pm PT
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jogill
I would be curious to know how many words each of the major enthusiasts for this thread would use were they to be asked to summarize their thoughts on this subject.
I had fun.
Wisps of Mind
Clumps of nerves
These words summarize my thoughts better than my own words but I won't bother to count them. There aren't too many:
http://hootingyard.org/archive/sep05.htm#2005-09-30-1
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 05:24pm PT
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There's no faith.
It's all scientific proof.
The mechanistic materialistic camp is all ultimately based on defective instruments and guessing.
The lab coats have ultimately only reached epic fail to understand the truth.
The lab coats only have a rudimentary understanding of the vehicle and no idea about the driver.
The driver of the vehicle they have no clue.
Epic fail ......
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Dec 13, 2011 - 05:40pm PT
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the hills are alive with the sound of music
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 05:54pm PT
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The lab coats have no driver nor do they even know what the driver is.
They think everything happened and happens by chance.
Thus the lab coats are still sitting in the parking lot idling "thinking" where's my mind ....
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Dec 13, 2011 - 06:40pm PT
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the hills are alive with the sound of music
They sure as h*ll aren't alive with the sound of snow. Boo Hoo
Susan
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 06:49pm PT
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"I would be curious to know *how many words* each of the major enthusiasts for this thread would use were they to be asked to summarize their thoughts on this subject." (I should have been able to predict that request for quantification.)
May I point out that no one argues *for* how science is practiced. No one argues that its essence is not analysis or that analysis is not partial, synthetic, artificial, contstuctive, socially defined, parsimonious, or oriented to prediction rather than accuracy or completeness. No one thinks it's an issue.
Remarkable.
Instead, we get ad hominem comments like, "This thread is looking more and more like a religious thread." With all due respect, that's pretty weak and sophmoric.
Be bold. Define 1st-person immediate experience. What is it?
Here's how one would go about it using a scientific point of view.
1.) Come up with some hypotheses that you can test observationally. What do you think subjectivity is, and how do you think it works? You'll want to develop some kind of model of subjectivity. Essentially, this is where you flesh-out a theory. Break the theory down into multiple declarations so they can be pitted against null hypotheses. (You're hoping that at a .05 level of statistical significance, the null hypotheses will be rejected.)
2.) List the parts of subjective experience (variables, lines of causality or process, outputs or results). I mean everything has parts, doesn't it? If the main object of your research doesn't have parts, you can't create a model or theory. (Science doesn't know what to do with anything that doesn't have parts.)
3.) Now conceptually connect the parts dynamically. Viola! Now you have a testable model of subjectivity. (Apply to NIH or NSF for grant.)
4.) You'll want to rush to test your model, but first you'll have to come up with some analytical constructs that can be measured. Spend a lot of time here, as constructs tend to be "problematical" for readers or reviewers. Constructs have been especially known to be highly dependent upon research design. (That is, different research designs tend to stipulate different metrics and constructs; or, a construct that works for one research design won't work for another. Strange, that, huh?)
5.) Gather the data in a systematic and unbiased manner. You might need to come up with some assumptions about the profiles or characteristics of the population of testing sites (people?).
6.) Analyze the data (you can use SPSS and a graduate student here).
7.) Report your findings.
Just, remember: we're interested in subjective, immediate experience. Keep that "research object" tightly in focus.
I suspect that if the research could have been done, brilliant people would have made significant attempts by now scientifically. Alas, other than a bevy of spiritualists in the past and present (using other means), there's really nothing to leverage off of scientifically.
(I wonder why that is?)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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MH2, IMO, and no disrespect intended, I honestly think your are not grocking on what we are really saying here. You're still going back to the breaking a rule of mind that the map (brain) IS the territory, if we only had a good enough map. I can spell this out to you - why this is simply not so - 1,000 different ways, and it still seems to escape you. It's not a matter of believing anything, but rather just looking at your own experience. The notion that at this late date in the discussion you can still think that experience is "what you are feeling at the time," and that subjective experience, your one and only fundamental reality, is "something extra," suggests to me that you haven't been reading closely and must not be looking at your 1st person reality with any discrimination.
The ironic thing is that almsot the exact opposite of what you are saying is also strangely true. While you like to thing that all of experince is ENTIRLEY contained in the brain, it can be said that all of your quantifications are entirely contained in your experience. It is only our 1st person experience that makes numbers, and anything else, real for us.
I would refer you back to the discussion that mind can make no sense without including the fact of qualitative differences in things. If you cannot admit that qualitative factors are inherent in reality, then indeed you are left with only mater and figures. And you've written your very own life right out of the script in the process.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 07:37pm PT
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As a slight aside, when you hear someone speak, where do the words you subjectively exprience in your mind come from...?
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 08:01pm PT
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Lovegas:
Dude, that's thoughtful and compelling writing on the page before. Nicely articulated.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 08:03pm PT
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Yep ^^^^
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 08:36pm PT
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del cross: My bias is that it is some natural property of the universe, but physics cannot get us there, not now anyways. Since it is inherently difficult to measure, even indirectly, I have doubts about our ability to understand it.
I think it's pretty clear this well-describes the one camp even if Largo appears unwilling to succinctly state his case.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 09:02pm PT
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I just do not hold science in the highest regard that so many do, especially given the nature of how drugged out our society is on science. Scientists are trapped in the illusion that our whole society agrees on, that airplanes were invented because of science, that technology comes out of science. This cultural ascendency compounded with science's mismanagement of itself and its inability to reach down into itself to discover any life-enhancing principle to guide its applications makes for interesting cultural times.
It's hard to imagine a more distorted view of 'science' than this. Rewrite most of that with the word 'religion' and you'd be way closer to the mark.
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MH2
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 09:15pm PT
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del cross: Demonstrating that thought, perception, memory, and emotion are contained in the brain isn't the same as demonstrating that subjective experience is contained there.
What is meant here by subjective experience? In what way is it separate from or different than thought, perception, memory, and emotion?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 13, 2011 - 09:23pm PT
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'science'
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 13, 2011 - 09:39pm PT
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lovegasoline,
I just do not hold science in the highest regard that so many do, especially given the nature of how drugged out our society is on science. Scientists are trapped in the illusion that our whole society agrees on, that airplanes were invented because of science, that technology comes out of science. This cultural ascendency compounded with science's mismanagement of itself and its inability to reach down into itself to discover any life-enhancing principle to guide its applications makes for interesting cultural times.
loveandrogen,
I just do not hold woodcraft in the highest regard that so many do, especially given the nature of how drugged out our society is on woodcraft. Woodcrafters are trapped in the illusion that our whole society agrees on, that fine cabinets were invented because of woodcraft, that furniture comes out of woodcraft. This cultural ascendency compounded with woodcraft's mismanagement of itself and its inability to reach down into itself to discover any life-enhancing principle to guide its applications makes for interesting cultural times.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 13, 2011 - 11:27pm PT
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The James Randi $1 million dollar prize
James Randi is an idiot.
You're so deluded along with Randi.
No bonafide soul would ever prostitute themselves like that over stupid worthless money.
Thus you have no clue of real value.
Man you guys are stupid ......
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Dec 14, 2011 - 12:38am PT
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"Getting off topic [with Baudrillard]."
Hardly.
Reflection has a lot to do with mind and awareness.
A few Buddhist traditions refer to the mind as a mirror that reflects anything put in front of it. Mirrors can get dusty, but their inherent ability to reflect do not change. Minds and mirrors are without trace of visibility, presence, or definable characteristics. This metaphor suggests the mind is flawlessly pure. What one sees in the mind is not the mind (the mirror) itself. It is impossible to distinguish between the mirror and its reflections. All any mirror does is reflect light, not objects. The mind is always "empty" of reflections. To know the mind means to see beyond self-objectications and objectivities that we see in reflection.
"Projections" in psychology (especially as they regard archetypes) appear to operate the same way.
If one strips away self-objectications and objectivities, what is left for the mind to reflect?
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MH2
climber
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Dec 14, 2011 - 12:43am PT
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Thanks for that response, del cross.
I'm familiar with that David Chalmer's page on "the hard problem."
When you bring up the possibility of
"robots, very complicated robots, self-aware but not experiencing, conscious in the sense that their brains are capable of calculations that include their own psychological place in the world, but without any real sense of it."
I wouldn't exactly disagree, but I would bet that such constructions couldn't fool all of the people all of the time.
It is hard for me to picture being self-aware and aware of one's place in the world without "any real sense of it." But without bringing robots into it, there are already many human syndromes, disorders, and brain injuries in which human experience is clearly profoundly different from the typical. For 10 years at our nursing home, I got to see a gentleman diagnosed as autistic. In all the 10 years he was only heard to speak 5 or 6 times, always a simple response to a question, or a request such as, "I need tylenol." The day he asked for tylenol, they sent him to hospital because it was so unusual for him to do such a thing. He participated in activities like painting and woodworking. He could read and write. His facial expression never changed and you couldn't read his feelings from looking in his eyes the way you can with a lot of people.
I probably don't understand the significance of subjective experience in this discussion because it doesn't fit into the narrow background I have in neurobiology. In the line of inquiry I follow, the brain is viewed as a problem-solving organ. You start with a behavior you are interested in and ask, "How does the brain produce that behavior?" You need a behavior you can measure, but what is even more important, if you are prudent, is to choose a behavior you can understand before you try to find out how it is implemented.
Here is a story to illustrate how difficult it can be to try the other way around.
My thesis advisor at Chicago was immensely fond of music. He loved the Chicago Symphony. He called himself a "reed man." His own instrument was the clarinet. Another grad student was a jazz musician and they were muy simpatico.
Around 1960 a researcher at MIT, Nelson Kiang, had done ground-breaking studies of hearing by recording from the auditory nerve (of cats) and showing how sound amplitude and frequency are represented in the nerve firing rates of the axons of the auditory nerve.
My advisor, so he once told us, was keenly interested in why music was pleasing and thought that the answer might lie in the anatomy and physiology of the brain. Starting from the auditory nerve, he believed it might be possible to follow the signal deeper into the brain until, perhaps, the place where harmony had its effect was discovered.
The auditory nerve makes connections with neurons in the brain stem. The input to those neurons was already known from the previous work. My advisor looked at the output from the brainstem neurons which received auditory input to see what kind of signal processing was happening. What he told us was, "I couldn't understand what was happening in the dorsal cochlear nucleus." In other words, the very lowest level of auditory processing by the brain made no sense to him. And if J. Goldberg can't make sense of a thing, there isn't much hope for others.
However, when the question is re-cast, from what happens to Brahms and Beethoven in the brain, to a more accessible question like how we locate sounds, the situation changes for the better. Goldberg did studies on another brainstem nucleus that receives auditory input, the trapezoid body, and showed how it works as a coincidence detector able to do microsecond-level detection of the time difference between a sound reaching the two ears. Then he switched to the vestibular system, which detects angular and linear accelerations of the head and moves the eyes to compensate for head movements so that you can keep your eyes on a target while running. This kind of problem had already been considered by engineers, most notably in WWII when trying to keep naval guns pointed at enemy planes in spite of pitch, roll, and yaw from the ship.
Subjective experience, if it really exists, may not have any such neat job description.
But a pretty reasonable explanation of how self-awareness developed is found in Rodolfo R. Llinás I of the Vortex. It has to do with solving problems of movement and prediction. He further thinks that consciousness arises from small-scale oscillations in the membrane voltages of neurons which synchronize like a chorus of frogs or cicadas on a summer's eve.
It seems quite likely to me that the mental world of human beings contains elements which have no good explanation. Evolution only makes sense in the long view. Human subjective experience may be a short-lived fluke of nature.
Without understanding human subjective experience, I feel unqualified to comment on the possibility of subjective experience in fish. However, it seems okay to borrow from R. H. Heinlein and say that self-awareness is present in the cat but not the oyster.
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