Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 - 07:34pm PT
|
Horse feathers, Ed.
I take this comment to based on your decades of experience as a scientific researcher who has a long familiarity of the methods of that research and an introspective examination of all the research you've done in the past.
My main point has been that scientists do not conduct their research informed by philosophies-of-science, it is a nonissue for them, they don't think of "isms" in the pursuit of their research.
They do make progress understanding those phenomena by a number of methods, and they use any number of ways to tease out just what is happening.
If it seems that reductive approaches predominate, it is because those approaches are productive. If "holistic" methods worked as well then you'd see them used more often in science. As for the use of "mechanisms" to describe things, I believe you might be taking this a bit literally, and without using the meaning that a scientist might.
But then again, there are machines and quantum machines too, they work like machines you could put your hands on... note that these are machines because they actually do work as machines would do...
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6341/964.full
Locked synchronous rotor motion in a molecular motor
Peter Štacko, Jos C. M. Kistemaker, Thomas van Leeuwen, Mu-Chieh Chang, Edwin Otten, Ben L. Feringa
Abstract
Biological molecular motors translate their local directional motion into ordered movement of other parts of the system to empower controlled mechanical functions. The design of analogous geared systems that couple motion in a directional manner, which is pivotal for molecular machinery operating at the nanoscale, remains highly challenging. Here, we report a molecular rotary motor that translates light-driven unidirectional rotary motion to controlled movement of a connected biaryl rotor. Achieving coupled motion of the distinct parts of this multicomponent mechanical system required precise control of multiple kinetic barriers for isomerization and synchronous motion, resulting in sliding and rotation during a full rotary cycle, with the motor always facing the same face of the rotor.
such a mechanism seems to me to be what you hold firmly in your mind, but then we have the Higgs Mechanism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism
which isn't a machine at all... but a procedure/process, the second sense of the word.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 - 09:14pm PT
|
philosophies-of-science
What the hell is that?
Science means to do the actual hard experiment.
Not philosophizing.
That is the real sh!t ......
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 12, 2017 - 09:15pm PT
|
MH2, I don't agree that awareness is caused by, sourced by, or is an emergent function of mechanical processing. You do. So it is up to you to demonstrate either how this happens, mechanistically (answer the hard problem), or declare that the brain is inherently aware. Or list a 3rd option.
And Ed, I already listed out my experience doing the scientific method in doing all those anchor books. I had a great teacher in helping me understand the steps and we arrived, after considerable research and testing, at predictive conclusions (if you do THIS, THAT will likely happen and you will die), assisted by excellent models provided by Rich Goldstone and a statistical work up by Callie Rennison, who teaches statistics. While this might pale to your own research, and be qualitatively different, I am confident that I understand the broad strokes from making an observation to replicating. Perhaps our efforts saved a few lives.
Now let's apply your basic philosophical position ("What isn't physical") and methodology (principally the reductive search for physical mechanisms or processes that supply or suggest a predictive and measurable physical output that explains - in part or in whole - the existence and behavior of a given external force, property, object or phenomenon).
Note that when we apply this method to consciousness, we immediately have a challenge: Consciousness itself is not an observable external object, force, phenomenon, etc.
How do most people respond to this most obvious challenge? Honestly and straight up, or do they defalt out and observe the brain, believing that the brain in some way sources not only WHAT we experience, but our awareness of that content as well?
Now where does that inevitably leave us? And what are the incontrovertible implications?
Unless you can describe otherwise, this assumption is driven by the belief that the brain can be demonstrated to be a mechanism that sources conscious content (thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories) and our awareness of same. Some conflate like mad, believing that awareness and processing are selfsame, a belief that is logically incoherent.
That much said, the hard problem simply says: Demonstrate how the brain mechanically sources consciousness.
Few are dialed into this question enough to realize what a sticky wicket this really is.
For starters, we are assuming that in the case of the brain, matter and physical processes can give rise to a phenomenon of a totally different order - subjectivity - which can be demonstrated nowhere else in the known world. People say, But if you only understood the complexity...
As if it is axiomatic or even logically coherent that complexity, processing power, etc. should be associated with awareness and experience. In what other instance has science ever shown this to be true.
And if you stick to the credo that all reality is physical, you are up against an even greater hurdle - that is, contending that consciousness itself IS physical leaves you with matter BEING conscious. Not sourcing consciousness, but BEING conscious. That is the only logical conclusion that follows from believing consciousness itself IS physical.
Again, if you believe consciousness emerges from brain, you have a phenomenon that is not identical to brain, that which emerges. And if you say they are the same, identical, then your are left with an inherent quality.
What's more, the notion that subjectivity could possibly "emerge" from objectivity, mechanically or otherwise, seems to require magical thinking (or defalting into processing/complexity babble - "If you only understood the ... fill in the blanks). Some time ago people were latching onto "mirror neurons" in the hope that processing and sentience might be grounded in an object, not knowing that this also led to either emergence or inherent quality.
Now the curious thing here is that all that is listed above it really entry level material. The stuff that doesn't require heavy study or contemplation to grasp.
The work starts to get more nuanced once you start wrangling with (for example) issues like: is a sensation real before it reaches awareness, in the way a chair is "there" if we see it or not? In what sense would a sensation be real minus a sentient subject?
And if you believe that the brain itself is aware of the sensation, and we only think we are, then once again you are back to either back to inherent property or emergence, and in the latter case (emergence), you are really up against it per "explaining" what you actually mean.
Of course you can deny consciousness altogether but awareness itself is nigh impossible to explain away.
So there are challenges.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 - 09:58pm PT
|
I am confident that I understand the broad strokes from making an observation to replicating.
My meditation experience is not sufficient, according to you, to comment on meditation, but your brief collaboration with Callie and Richard are sufficient for you to understand scientific research.
You are far from understanding even the "broad strokes" and you are drawing conclusions that are incorrect because of that misunderstanding.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 - 10:03pm PT
|
Demonstrate how the brain mechanically sources consciousness.
I think that is in process, (when you generalize your particular meaning of "mechanically"), and I've posted links to work I think is relevant to this question.
For your part, you haven't shown a demonstration that proves that consciousness is NOT a physical process which takes place within our physical bodies.
(I'll include more than the brain, though it plays an important, probably dominant role.)
And you cannot provide such a demonstration. You might ask your car pool, Callie and Richard for help on this.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jun 12, 2017 - 10:21pm PT
|
Now where does that inevitably leave us? And what are the incontrovertible implications?
That after nearly 16,000 posts we have made no progress. We can't even define consciousness or acknowledge the difference between that and awareness.
In what sense would a sensation be real minus a sentient subject?
Here you go again, attempting to isolate something that cannot be isolated. Do you really believe this or is it just a literary fan dance? This proves that philosophical speculations can be far more bizarre than anything in abstract mathematics. Why, there must be sensations and feelings floating around us in the aether all the time waiting for us to trap them in our psyches!
Original thinking for sure.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 02:40am PT
|
For all the reasons enumerated above by Gill and Hartouni, some three or four years ago I posted that this thread
"is a waste of time."
It and its precursor thread of 20,000 or more posts both made a habit of using words with no attention given to what we mean by them.
Word Slathering.
Humans are beginning to make progress in our effort to understand the brain better.
But it ain't here, Babe.
As you were..........
Edit:
In the above I was remiss in not including Andy (MH2) as a member of the skeptics club. He also is unique in that he possesses professional expertise in the subject matter.
Werner:
I attribute our overall impression in this country of stupidity, as due to the destruction of the standards we used to have in our secondary education system. How good the system used to be can be seen from the fact Comey and one senator were able to quote Henry second. Even our system of governance itself has been made vulnerable by this failure.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 07:19am PT
|
Humans are beginning to make progress in our effort to understand the brain better.
If that were true then why is the world more stoopid then ever .......
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 09:54am PT
|
The work starts to get more nuanced once you start wrangling with (for example) issues like: is a sensation real before it reaches awareness, in the way a chair is "there" if we see it or not? In what sense would a sensation be real minus a sentient subject?
Alas, jstan was and is right about this thread, overall, but there have been good times, too.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 11:15am PT
|
DMT: Has anyone 'changed' my mind?
This question invites so many comments. It would be like wading into the Mississippi delta.
:-D
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 12:12pm PT
|
We are not here to change any minds.
We are here to post just about the mind and how stoopid we really are although masquerading as smart ..... :-)
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 01:15pm PT
|
We are here to post just about the mind and how stoopid we really are although masquerading as smart ..... :-)
Ah did nae dae it.
It wisnae me.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 03:55pm PT
|
In what sense would a sensation be real minus a sentient subject?
Werner once suggested that Largo is motivated to post on this thread out of compassion for poor benighted souls who don't "get it."
I will try to return the proposed favor.
In order for there to be a sensation, there must be a thing which senses.
The work starts to get more nuanced once you start wrangling with (for example) issues like: is a sensation real before it reaches awareness, in the way a chair is "there" if we see it or not?
Only a suggestion:
Suppose a chair is placed in an otherwise empty room at a randomly chosen location. You enter the room in total darkness and walk around for a while and then sit down.
Do the work.
Let reason search into external things at the instigation of the senses, and, while it derives from them its first knowledge - for it has no other base from which it may operate, or begin its assault upon the truth - yet let it fall back upon itself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 1 BCE – CE 65
(a) accept only what is so clear in one's own mind as to exclude any doubt
(b) split large difficulties into smaller ones
(c) argue from the simple to the complex
(d) check when one is done
René Descartes 1596-1650
You didn't exactly miss, but you did miss the balloon.
Winnie the Pooh
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 04:46pm PT
|
In what sense would a sensation be real minus a sentient subject?
Sorry, I can't resist the temptation to post this again. Priceless commentary on philosophy.
|
|
cintune
climber
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 06:19pm PT
|
Mind is McGuffin.
Mind is the Ringer.
I'm here for the banter.
Shallow maybe,
But deeply entertained.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 09:43pm PT
|
MH2
Ah did nae dae it.
It wisnae me.
In the latter half of the 50's the P/M of the RCAF band in Winnipeg was named Cairns.
Any relation?
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 13, 2017 - 10:07pm PT
|
Thanks one and all for participating in this scintillating exploration of the unknowable. It has been a most remarkable journey and descent into the far reaches of nothing I can remember (when in my right mind). And given the true depths and enormity of the nothingness we achieved, and may possibly never recover from, I hereby declare this thread simultaneously both mindless and braindead. Have a nice day and please be careful during your struggle to return to consciousness (wherever that may find you - oh, and stop feeding that god damn duck).
You can only stare into the abyss for so long...
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Jun 14, 2017 - 04:41am PT
|
Largo,
In a nut shell?
there is a good reason for there being no scientific explanation or mechanism to explain consciousness. Consciousness is an illusion we create and some never see the bigger picture of what is going on with the consciousness awareness experience. Some have told me you have to have enough consciousness to see the bigger picture.
Babies need none of the Largo awareness but their brain and nerve systems monitors their somatic condition of which they later learn to report on. The illusive consciousness arises out of the social needs to tell others of our condition and always have an answer ready. We are trained or prone to go over and over and over this condition assessment and the memory of it. Each time of asking "What is my condition?" the brain sends/receives signals that are the feelings of muscle tension and other somatic conditions from the body. And so some dwell on this repeating manner of assessment and that process becomes the false entity of consciousness to the unwary.
And Chalmer's richness of red is created by dwelling on the condition of all our memories of red in repetitive/recursive fashion. We can break this cycle of dwelling and loose our cherished awareness.
If you have trouble seeing this idea, your mind is cluttered.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!