Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 09:43am PT
|
Evolutionary theorists mistake clever narratives for evidence.
what's an "evolutionary theorist"? in my mind that means "biologist."
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 09:50am PT
|
Every single piece of knowledge should point back to the original source.
Modern science is still clueless to the original source.
Thus the reason for all their endless mental speculations ........
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 19, 2017 - 10:12am PT
|
It seem you conflate awareness with/as something to make more of it than it is and that is why you stumble on such difficulties describing how it might proceed. Please take a careful look at awareness. It is a shell or script that we make with our minds from our feelings. e.g. An organism senses overeating. Its stomach is tight. The feeling comes from its over stretched muscles seeking relaxation. Golgi apparatus overload? Next, Through Up, now feel relaxed. This brain operation can be done without some primitive organism thinking it needs awareness. Sensing does not need awareness.
The reason I asked you to describe the methods that you used to arrive at your conclusions per awareness is that from a 3rd person perspective, looking strictly at functionality, and welded to a processing model, your conclusions are inevitable.
Are you not using a model of inquiry that seeks to posit brain in an observer independent way? If so, it follows that the "more of it than it is" is in fact what you can never find, seeming that awareness/observing is de facto left out of any and all of your descriptions. IOWs, you won't find what you have decided to ignore in the first instance, and so you come up with logically incoherent statements such as, "Awareness is a script that we make up with our minds."
There is no unpacking such a logjam of misconceptions, common as this line of "reasoning" is.
What is "mind" in your example? Or "we?" If you posit mind as a biological machine, which operates on autopilot, not requiring awareness to "decide" anything, you have a syntactic engine, a machine, beholden to rules and physical laws, with absolutely no inherent knowledge of or access to semantic/conscious phenomenon. How would it? The wonky idea that the brain can fathom and "create" subjectivity drawing strictly from its own objective processing is a whopper of magical thinking. It's this magical thinking that led Michael Graziano to say that brains "attribute awareness to themselves," a howler of the first order, and a model derived strictly from information processing theory.
Again, you and Graziano have conflated information or content with being aware of same. Have you ever had an experience of being aware sans content, or attachment to content, feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc?
What throws you both, apparently, is the fact that consciousness has both a mechanical and a non-mechanical aspect. Awareness is not required for the vast majority of biological functioning, just as awareness is not required for the sensor in my back yard to turn on the light when it senses movement. This should be easy to follow.
My sense of it is you are looking at the machine registration that occurs in that sensor, and trying to call THAT awareness. A common and categorical error. the sensor has no awareness of sensing. It registers in input, and mechanically responds with an output according to it's determined internal machinery. The sensor has to freedom to choose to be different or to start attributing new and novel functions to itself beyond processing data or inputs.
Again, how would you define the difference between you, a human, being aware of movement in your back yard, and the "sensing" that goes on in the motion detector?
If the sensor was sufficiently complex, and could process a billion times more information than the fifty dollar item in my back yard, would it "attribute" awareness to itself, or a script, or a shell. And if so, as a machine, from whence would an objective external object ever draw the inference that there was a phenomenon we know as subjectivity that it should and could start manifesting?
And Ed, my point is per your comment is that, as many fine thinkers in AI have stated, we need an entirely different philosophical approach to use when seeking to know about consciousness. The determined, causal mechanistic model works splendidly for external objects and phenomenon, but goes nowhere in telling us why we are aware unless we start crow-hopping the question and conflating awareness with machine registration, which we all know, intuitively, is snake oil. I understand that the mere idea of looking beyond the determined mechanistic model is a kick in the balls to scientism, and a fundamentalist belief in same, and to many in that school it leaves them only with "magic." It is possible for you to imagine an alternative to our mechanisms and magic as well? That seems to be the challenge.
Thing is, these are the easy marks to shoot down, owing to their logically coherence. The deeper misunderstands have to do with things like your conception of "feelings," which are dynamic emotional tones arising within conscious experience. Emotional experience does not exist in neurologically structures, any more than "red" does. At the level of biological functioning, "feelings" are entirely inchoate. Feeling are not fully realized bit of information residing in the physical brain like so many X's and O's which are served up to a script or a shell which the brain itself fashions. That's like saying a sunset exists without an observer, when in fact all we know that exists "out there" are light waves in a certain frequency.
Lastly, if you wanted to get technical, what is being discussed here is basically ITT, Integrated information theory, a faddish philosophical belief first busted out by Giulio Tononi in 2004. According to IIT, "a system's consciousness is determined by its causal properties and is therefore an intrinsic, fundamental property of any physical system."
"Specifically, IIT moves from phenomenology to mechanism by attempting to identify the essential properties of conscious experience (dubbed "axioms") and, from there, the essential properties of conscious physical systems (dubbed "postulates")."
What gets left of IIT is the fact that we are aware of information. IIT tries to counter by positing awareness AS information.
So again, we have awareness conflated with content, in the case, information.
Searl has eviscerated this position for obvious reasons. To the IIT geek, information can and does exist separate from our consciousness. Problem is, information in it's normal usage is not merely syntactic (raw data), but it also has semantic (meaning) value attached. And meaning does not exist outside of experience.
Per IIT, people who have followed the "consciousness debate" will easily recognize that Information Theory simply followed Chalmers and others' efforts to reify "qalia" much as a botanist might objectify and categorize
flora into distinct types. This notion harks back to Jung's Archetypes, which derives from Palto's "Forms."
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 12:16pm PT
|
To a computer all numbers are rational, which is not a hindrance to most applications.
To state unequivocally that there will not be mechanical consciousness is to favor faith over scientific progress. And to believe that philosophy will be the key to unraveling the mysteries of awareness and consciousness is precisely that.
To stipulate that awareness does not exist in your motion detector runs counter to non-conscious awareness in humans as verified by experiment. But that is more semantics than fact and can be appropriate faculty lounge banter.
This thread has heated up nicely recently.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 12:24pm PT
|
MikeL: And what was the problem that it solved?
Good question. Advanced predation would be my answer.
Are you arguing that it (the evolution of consciousness) is all done now? Would that imply the development of some kind of stable state in consciousness?
Evolution doesn't deal in done-ness or stability.
Would that also imply that the problem is also stable and unchanging?
Our planet and ecology are never stable or unchanging - neither are we or any other species on Earth.
Evolutionary theorists mistake clever narratives for evidence.
Hmm, they don't, so I'm figuring the above is says more about you than them...
You make a pretty big deal about performance, instrumentalism, materialism, and utilitarianism.
Funny, I don't recall making any kind of deal about any of those four things.
Is that all that matters? Are those things the final arbiters of what what constitutes the good, the true, the beautiful?
The question of what is good, true and beautiful is not particularly germane - perhaps in the 'science vs religion' thread. And are you requiring there be arbiters or absolutes for those characterics?
Do they prove how the question of consciousness is no longer worthy of discussion or investigation?
I should think not given we don't know how nature 'does' it - there's always something new to learn...
We should all move on to something else—I suppose about how we can increase performance, instrumentalism, materialism, and utility? I guess the world simply needs more engineers, hmmmm?
Dude, here I would think you missed a wide turn in the road, got in a wreck and are now deliriously wandering about in the woods, but I get it that guys like you and Paul have a hard time believing it's really all about something as simple, 'mindless' and grossly material as kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But for me that's back to a Victorian arrogance that simply can't acknowledge the fact we are animals.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 12:35pm PT
|
Largo: And meaning does not exist outside of experience.
And does experience exist without a brain? Simple question - yes or no?
Look, if you want to proceed with an assertion that consciousness, awareness and experience can exist without a brain then by all means do so - it's just the sort of refreshing clarity the conversation needs now coming up on 16k posts later. If the answer is no, however, then please, by all means, do explain the happy coincidence if the meat isn't the source of the mind...
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 01:25pm PT
|
Ed: It is a trivial to state that the brain IS NOT a computer in the sense that your iPhone IS a computer when you compare the architecture, the possible equivalence is more subtle, as the quote of Gödel demonstrates.
And hence why, however tired, there is still some currency in the IP metaphor even if it's widely recognized as deficient overall in explaining consciousness and how the brain 'works'.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 19, 2017 - 01:48pm PT
|
Healyj says:
Look, if you want to proceed with an assertion that consciousness, awareness and experience can exist without a brain then by all means do so - it's just the sort of refreshing clarity the conversation needs.
-------
Refreshing clarity? I can guess what you are really driving at, that "brain" can exist minus awareness and consciousness, and that awareness and consciousness are simply blow back or electrochemical artifact of the brain.
However, what is a brain minus a conscious observer. What is "red" minus a conscious observer? It is most assuredly not "red," which is a word for an phenomenon of experience. Red, minus an observer is just light in a certain frequency. Minus a conscious observer, whose consciousness supplies all the qualities of shape and color and all the rest, a brain is merely a swirl of atoms in an even bigger swirl of energy. Take perception and consciousness out of the equation and brain, at best, is a clump of matter, and matter has no agreed upon definition.
I have repeatedly said that the model I follow views human experience as a unified whole comprised of brain and awareness, resulting in consciousness.
My sense here is that you are actually seeking to isolate out brain and declare it as a fundamental, determined mechanism that "sources" awareness and brain. This is the causal/mechanistic metaphor most people on this thread are seeking to validate. Are you not?
The clarity you seek is merely to make things square with your metaphor, where awareness is an output mechanistically "caused" (explain that word as you will) by the brain.
Do I believe this is so. No. Why, for various reasons, one of which is there is no existing evidence whatsoever to suggest that sentience is tied to biomechanics.
And when you reason through the steps (especially concerning emergence), you are either left with Chalmers Hard Problem, or with awareness being a fundamental property. Or if you are entirely daffy, you can deny that you are conscious in the first place, that what we "believe" is consciousness is actually machine registration - the same physical process by which the movement detector in my backyard "senses" movement and flips on a light by way of an internal sensor/mechanism.
That reasoning leads to some sensational whoppers.
Like: If consciousness is an illusion, then what is the difference between human consciousness and machine registration? None, some would say. So we ask, when Strong AI geeks say they are trying to build sentient machines, what will eventually be the difference between the conscious machine and the motion detector?
The sentient machine will have the illusion of being conscious. The motion detector never will.
Is there a mechanical component to consciousness. Absolutely. That's what generates the incoate content of consciousness. But all efforts to posit awareness as mechanistic output end up in logical logjams.
Hell if I know what or how this will all shake out, but my sense of it is the causal/mechaistic metaphor will tell us nothing about mind itself, only about objective functioning.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:53pm PT
|
Well, I guess that's a qualified no. Although, I do find the assertion that the meat is nothing more than a random content generator to be more Victorian arrogance and dismissal. But let's take your proposition at face value...
Assuming awareness is fundamental, then you still have to address the 'happy coincidence', coupling or convergence problem. How does this lowly, incapable meat get in touch with and tap into this fundamental awareness in some reasonable timeframe around birth? Or is it like in It's A Wonderful Life - every time a brain is born some angel of awareness get's their wings? It would seem to me that, on the meat side of things at least, you can't really have it both ways, either the brain itself is capable of awareness or else how would awareness come to 'inhabit' a busy puddle of meat? How do awareness and meat converge to have said relationship?
Personally, faced with the mystery of said convergence or the mystery of how the brain sources awareness, I'm quite frankly just way more inclined to go with the latter than the mystery of the former as I find the convergence thing pretty difficult to wrap any form of logic around.
Edit: and I feel I have to bring up the subconscious again here - how does that relate to awareness and consciousness in a scheme of an independent, foundational awareness? How would you even describe the subconscious? Unawareness? Awareness without subjective experience (hey, that sounds a lot like meditation)? How do you account for the subconscious?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:56pm PT
|
However, what is a brain minus a conscious observer.
Glad to see no question mark there.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 04:48pm PT
|
However, what is a brain minus a conscious observer
It does pretty well holding everything together while we sleep. Purring along in the background like my air conditioner.
The sentient machine will have the illusion of being conscious
You are so confident in your pronouncements. Only one of the ways you deviate from science where judgement calls are more carefully crafted.
But you're holding up well as you enter old age.
;>)
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 04:55pm PT
|
my sense of it is the causal/mecha[n]istic metaphor will tell us nothing about mind itself, only about objective functioning.
What is it that you want to know or be told about mind itself?
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 04:59pm PT
|
Again, the whole derogatory 'mere mechanism' dismissal of the meat is an epic mistake in my opinion.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 05:08pm PT
|
Actually, the thread has progressed admirably from JL's earlier fascination with Hilbert spaces.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 05:21pm PT
|
Have to agree with you there; at least we have a clear statement of what he believes now, though I have to say I don't quite get how it is he thinks the agency of an independent awareness is any less of a stretch or logically more palatable than the meat just doing it for itself.
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 05:33pm PT
|
I continue to be very interested in the subject. However, I have no interest in participating in this thread any longer. I feel somehow liberated. The liberation comes from not feeling any need to convince anybody of my world view. I've already stated it, many times over. Nothing that I have read on this thread presents any cognitive dissonance with my world view. Of all of the contributors on this thread, I would have to go with healyje as most compatible with my world view; MikeL (and Largo in a close second) with the antithesis of it.
It really does go back to perhaps the biggest divide in philosophy;
1) That there really is a world out there independent of you as an experiencing organism (empiricism), or
2) The only reality is the experienced reality of an organism capable of experiencing reality (rationalism).
Science is squarely in the empiricism camp. I'm with this team but I have no animosity towards the dopes who believe in rationalism.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 06:22pm PT
|
Very good, eeyonkee. And I will refrain from making any judgement about those who choose to climb wide cracks. It goes outside my province.
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 07:06pm PT
|
JL's earlier fascination with Hilbert spaces. I missed this part. Too bad! Maybe I should turn Largo onto Penrose's stuff, to give him something to really blow his mind.
Largo, check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_consciousness
Be aware: it's controversial and far from consensual.
It makes Hilbert spaces look like a piece of cake. After all, on the categorical level Hilbert spaces are completely determined by the cardinality of a maximal orthonormal set, although in practice, producing an interesting and useful maximal orthonormal set and studying other relationships it may have to general elements in the space (e.g think Fourier series, the Fourier transform and the pointwise convergence problem) can be an important problem for applications.
It interesting to me that scientists are so dependent on this stuff that mathematicians just dreamed up in their heads!
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 08:47pm PT
|
And Ed, my point is per your comment is that, as many fine thinkers in AI have stated, we need an entirely different philosophical approach to use when seeking to know about consciousness. The determined, causal mechanistic model works splendidly for external objects and phenomenon, but goes nowhere in telling us why we are aware unless we start crow-hopping the question and conflating awareness with machine registration, which we all know, intuitively, is snake oil. I understand that the mere idea of looking beyond the determined mechanistic model is a kick in the balls to scientism, and a fundamentalist belief in same, and to many in that school it leaves them only with "magic." It is possible for you to imagine an alternative to our mechanisms and magic as well? That seems to be the challenge.
I believe there are many fine thinkers in AI that continue to work on consciousness.
Your intuition is different from mine, and I trust neither.
There are good reasons to associate mind with the brain and make the assumption of a physical origin for mind, consciousness and all that. I don't see how more "thinking" is going to add any more to all the thinking that has gone on. If you read the Gödel footnote it provides an outline for making progress, to wit:
13) For example, it is conceivable... that brain physiology would advance so far that it would be known with empirical certainty
1. that the brain suffices for the explanation of all mental phenomenon and is a machine in the sense of Turing;
2. that such and such is the precise anatomical structure and physiological functioning of the part of the brain which performs mathematical thinking.
interesting, if you look at this article Origins of the brain networks for advanced mathematics in expert mathematicians you find half the answer to 2.) above, "the precise anatomical structure... of the part of the brain which performs mathematical thinking"
I believe that you stumble trying to understand the phrase "the brain... is a machine in the sense of Turing."
Finally, the measurements are not conflating "content" with "understanding," rather "understanding" is correlated with the increased activity as evidenced by increased blood flow of fMRI as expected in the putative physical model of the brain as generator of thought. The machine needs energy to run, when it is run, it uses energy. This is a relatively simple test, but compelling
Of course, you can invoke something else to explain it, and you should.
Please refrain from your usual dismissive tone of this particular model, and instead propose some other model, you can copy from your favorite author (or just put a link in).
What do you have that is not a refutation of this "mechanistic" model, but a competing "holistic" model?
I think you don't have anything (as you have said many times) but humorous put downs of serious scientific work. Surely after all this time you must have something.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!