Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2017 - 07:39am PT
|
Dingus: . . . the argument framing is done by Largo & Chalmers . . . some uninformed ideas & constraints to pose the dilemma from which they ask, *How could it be?*
I can put some meat on the bones of that concern. I’ve referred to it as a transduction problem.
Neurobiologists say they understand / have modeled how neurons, electricity, and chemistry connect dynamically. That’s one system.
Cognitive scientists have a number of workable ideas that stipulate how knowledge is formed, held, and dynamically manipulated (“knowledge representation” and mental models”). That’s a second system.
The transduction problem concerns how one system (the chemistry, electricity, and biology) gets translated into symbols (which is the way that knowledge is currently modeled).
Each of the systems are incomplete and have gaps, but people think that they can make their systems work functionally. We can model knowledge, and we can manipulate knowledge in AI and computer systems within an internal environment. Neurobiology has interesting ideas about how the brain connects to muscles and organs within an external environment. Each system is very different—qualitatively different—from the other.
It’s fair to ask, “how could it be?”
If someone were to need to form tangible connections between highly disparate systems (let’s say, between what is material and what is immaterial), one (and many here) could ask, “how could it be?”
How does one form equivalencies / translations between systems when those systems pose different values, metrics, qualities, objectives, intentions, gestalts, weltanschauungs, from one another?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2017 - 08:40am PT
|
The transduction problem concerns how one system (the chemistry, electricity, and biology) gets translated into symbols (which is the way that knowledge is currently modeled).
these seems to be rather anthropocentric, symbols are used to communicate knowledge, and "knowledge" itself seems to be rather specifically human.
If there are many disparate "systems" that describe the same thing, I'd make the conjecture that each of those "systems" are able to explain some aspect that thing. This isn't at all unusual.
The act of sifting through those systems and eventually understanding just what it is they seem to "explain" is a process which will continue to unfold. We'll see where it all leads.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2017 - 09:48am PT
|
Each system is very different—qualitatively different—from the other.
It’s fair to ask, “how could it be?”
Different tools are used for different jobs?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2017 - 08:55pm PT
|
If someone were to need to form tangible connections between highly disparate systems (let’s say, between what is material and what is immaterial), one (and many here) could ask, “how could it be?”
Well, thanks for reminding us to stay on track after 17,000+ posts.
;>)
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Sep 19, 2017 - 11:36pm PT
|
these seems to be rather anthropocentric, symbols are used to communicate knowledge, and "knowledge" itself seems to be rather specifically human.
Of course here is the real problem: what is knowledge, knowing? How is, or better yet is the knowing that humanity experiences the same as we might expect in AI? Seems to me that what separates machine knowing from human knowing is the independent entity that realizes it is knowing, that observes the process of knowing, that finds satisfaction in the experience of knowing. What is that satisfaction and how can it exist without an observing entity that stands apart from the process or activity of knowing itself?
|
|
TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 12:36am PT
|
Our minds can not directly perceive the physical universe, but depend upon our senses.
And our senses are not nearly good enough to build the internal visual world that we perceive as reality (i.e. The Matrix).
Our senses transfer electromagnetic signals along nerve bundles into our brain. These EM signals are transformed within the brain to guide the creation of our holographic world of thought that we relate to as reality.
Thus is a complex pattern of light waves conveyed electro-magnetically into our brains by our senses and translated into holographic realities within our minds. We relate to these holograms as if they are real ... which they are to us.
Reality is all about vibration and frequency, as pointed out by Nicola Tesla with implications and techniques long kept secret.
(Einstein was supported and promoted by the Rothschilds to obscure some of the core issues from the general scientific community.)
Light behaves as waves in 'empty' space, until bent by magnetic fields.
When the light waves are bent by magnetic fields, the interference between the bent light waves produces interference fringes between the conflicting wave patterns.
So that the nodes between interfering wave forms become what we understand to be particles of physical matter.
It seems what we perceive as the physical universe is constructed of frozen light ... analogous to a hologram.
So there is no solid physical reality out there. There is light and magnetism and our perception of it as hologram patterns within our minds.
The calmer the internal mind, the more sensitive our awareness.
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 04:46am PT
|
MikeL,
It’s fair to ask, “how could it be?”
What is it?
It seems rather pretentious say such and such specifically is the hard problem when several problem looms. It also is rather pretentious to invoke cosmic consciousness when no trace has been proven/found/verifiable. Or was Chalmers giving a religious talk? Third how much does the speaker know of brain research?
I suspect those documenting the science of mind history will decide what had been the hard problem.
Philosopher Metzinger does not fall for the Chalmers a priori judgements.
Okay you call module cross talk the transduction problem and I call it simply communicating.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 07:10am PT
|
Ed: . . . these seems to be rather anthropocentric . . . .
Could you please give an example of any sort that would not be? You seem to be a human being, and you conceptualize. How can you *not* anthropomorphize? I think this is also being pointed to by Paul. What is knowing / knowledge, and how can it not be anthropomorphic?
MH2: Different tools are used for different jobs?
Are you ever expecting different views to come together? I mean, we’re trying to talk about “mind” and reality here.
It presents a kind of conundrum IMO if views don’t come together. It would be that there is mind (independent, unrelated to reality), and then there is reality (objective, I suppose). We have physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. . . . and then we have this experience(s) we call consciousness. But in all the ways we parse either in narrow disciplines, we don’t seem to end up with 1:1 equivalencies. Each knowledge discipline / area tends to have its own theories, variables, constructs, metrics, and background training. The disciplines tend to be incommensurate. It seems to me that we gloss over the disparities and pretend that they somehow do come together.
For 35 years I taught strategic management in business, and it meant to bring together all functional disciplines (accounting, marketing, finance, HRM, production, economics, industry analysis, etc.). Each of those disciplines had their own values, their own objectives, their own metrics of success, their own theories, etc. I’ve seen first-hand how disciplinary perspectives lead to narrow understanding and poor performance.
The most (far-fetched?) unified views of *What This Is* seem to be reasonable. (Sort of like what Tom is pointing to.)
Dingus,
I didn’t create the term transduction or its usage regarding this problem between the brain’s material operations and the mind’s immaterial ones. Most everything I write here is stolen from someone else. The term comes from folks in brain and behavioral science and cognitive science.
I’d say when a terms repeatedly continues to be used by folks in the field, it tends to point at an issue that looms repeatedly. If you don’t see it, you don’t see it.
“It” refers to disparity.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 08:10am PT
|
TomCochrane distilled it all down correctly while the blind gross materialists keep their wandering minds going around and around in circles
saying nothing and masquerading it all as some kind of knowledge equal to a dogs ........
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 08:14am PT
|
Are you ever expecting different views to come together?
Like building a house. You must step back from the tools to see it.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 08:26am PT
|
zBrown on 14 Sept 2017
So what I 'm wondering is, if consciousness is (or for that matter is not) any of these why is it important to write about it
and I ask meself the same question
For year after year more old men disappear
Soon there'll be no one to march here at all
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?''
edit: after Eric Bogle
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 08:53am PT
|
The dog knows when its dinner time.
One example where my dog's knowledge excells. There is a 50 meter driveway that comes down from the road to my house and a neighbor's house. Maybe 20 or so cars come down that driveway each day. My dogs "know" most of the cars that come in and out. They recognize them (from the sound, I guess) and act accordingly even before the car is visible at the entrance to the driveway. I can actually anticipate who's coming if I see how they react when they're sitting at the front gate. Otherwise I wouldn't even be aware that anyone is coming until later on.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 09:22am PT
|
Thus is a complex pattern of light waves conveyed electro-magnetically into our brains by our senses and translated into holographic realities within our minds. We relate to these holograms as if they are real ... which they are to us.
The holograms are suitable reiterations of the external world and are faithful reconstructions of the identical constituents constructing the ravenous lion racing towards you. They are as real as the lion. Much like a live television image (the eye itself works photoelectrically) This so-called holographic system is quite adequate to the task -- as evolution has demonstrated.
The problem sometimes arises when humans internalize systems of thought and behavior that can override the secondary rudiments of this holographic process-- instead of carrying out the survival program of evading the lion: a reaction is construed as more or less optional resulting in the individual sacrificing himself for cultural programs such as politics or religion and therefore gets munched. A sort of narrative, or chain of narratives, superimposes itself upon our originating hologram . With humans this is an unavoidable outcome.
These narratives are quite strong are they not? And perhaps very unique to creatures like us. It leads many people to abandon their normally reliable senses. Everything to them is a narrative. Consciousness itself is merely a narrative. The reigning narrative as friend one moment and enemy the next. Sound familiar ?
The entire story of civilization at times appears an unlikely series of interlocking paradigms and once discarded and then reanimated narratives punctuated by truly novel ones .
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 10:32am PT
|
Consciousness itself is merely a narrative.
No it isn't.
Consciousness is pure reality in of itself.
Once the gross materialists if ever come to the realization of what consciousness really is then they will see that.
Until then they remain clueless because they keep thinking in their material minds that consciousness is material ......
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 10:45am PT
|
Independent of what, specifically? The machines are in the same universe as us, mate. Their possibility of existence was preordained in the structure of reality, right? Same as us?
Independent of any sensory activity, that is independent of sensory input. Knowing, the satisfaction of knowing, realization or to realize something implies an entity doing the realizing, standing apart and not simply reacting and acting to some sensory input, but discerning that input. What is it to realize something, to understand, to know, to discern? I see the definition of these terms as living experience and that experience is not shared with a non living entity. A book may be filled with knowledge but that book doesn't know anything.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 11:45am PT
|
It depends I suppose on how you define sensory input. There are people here who have spent time in sensory deprivation tanks and yet managed to have vivid internal impressions (the more so they claim, because they were not receiving sensory input from the external world). It would be interesting to ask them if those vivid images were from past sensory input or just seemed to arise spontaneously from the hardware of the brain?
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 12:05pm PT
|
Seems to me that what separates machine knowing from human knowing is the independent entity that realizes it is knowing, that observes the process of knowing, that finds satisfaction in the experience of knowing
OK, I think I get it. And (if so) I agree. Self-awareness is a real thing. It can be observed in the development of a child and much has written about it. A few other animals also seem to have a certain level of self-awareness (they pass empirical tests for self-awareness). The fact we are aware of ourselves as beings who understand (or don't understand) something about the world, who want to learn (or refuse to learn) and can take satisfaction in our awareness of who we are is something that seems to distinguish human beings from computers and some other animals. I seriously doubt an AI car is aware of itself as a being that knows how to drive and takes satisfaction in that.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 03:34pm PT
|
Personally I don't see how any person could have 'images' to mull over if they never had sensory input to begin with
Good point. Images arising in my experiences with lucid dreaming seemed original, but perhaps the brain was simply reassembling material tucked away in my subconscious.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Sep 20, 2017 - 03:45pm PT
|
The images come from God as localized (Paramatma) who is also within the material body alongside the soul (atma).
The gross materialists always remain bewildered and then speculate.
The gross materialists never read or listen to the manual which was given by sound vibration billions of years ago.
Even TomCochrane has it completely correct when he said
"Reality is all about vibration and frequency, as pointed out by Nicola Tesla with implications and techniques long kept secret."
It's not even a secret as it is completely open source.
Except for the foolish gross materialists who always say there is NO NEED because "NO ONE KNOWS".
Everything is in that manual that the foolish gross materialists say there is no need for.
They got knowledge of how to split the atom from that manual too.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!