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okay, whatever
climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 11:39am PT
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Thanks, John Gill, and I certainly defer to your better understanding of mathematical logic! I'm just an amateur/recreational mathematician at best, who spent his working life first as a geologist, and then as a software developer.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 02:03pm PT
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Knuth_wise
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 16, 2018 - 02:08pm PT
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The difference between experiments and observations is precisely that we perform experiments with intention. Experimentation is a human process, and it is not only natural to talk about it as "causing" something, it is the intention.
However, conflating this with nature being about "causes" and "effects" is wrong. You could wonder how the universe is "caused" but no one is proposing that the universe is constructed as an experiment that was intentionally executed in some manner.
So while scientists plan out experiments, perhaps characterized by don Largo's "linear causality," that is not how they view reality.
This is not a "classical" vs. "quantum" physics thing, "causes" are not fundamentally a part of the physical description of the universe.
Now HFCS provides examples of technologies, which are created intentionally, I think it is natural to describe "causes" and "effects," all of them have to do with human civilization. Technologies are created to be useful to humans.
This has nothing to do with a description of the physical universe. It is a description of how humans interact with the physical universe.
_
I've been waiting for ages for Ed to say this. I took a back seat till he did. Ed is smart. There's no where to go but where he did - and that's the crucial step ahead IMO.
Intention, used here by Ed, can be called intentional conscious input. Models and technology never happen without it. It can also lead us to conflate a causal model based on man-made technology with what happens in the natural, non-engineered world.
"Causality" as is commonly used, is in my experience a logical, albeit man-made construct that derives partly from language and partly from our innate yin to "explain" why reality is just so. When used in this way, it is almost always a matter of positing a linear progression in "causal" terms. While Ed can fill us in on the fine points, it is still the case in mainstream physics that "causality is the relationship between causes and effects," and that the cause always precedes the effect.
When people talk about consciousness being emergent, they imagine a brain, that comes first, and consciousness (effect) emerging FROM brain (ie, a linear progression). When people talk about consciousness having a physical substrate, they imagine that whatever arises FROM the physical does so in a linear sequence, that is the physical comes first, and the whatever comes AFTER. In this model there is no room for the reverse to happen.
But in my experience, this is just the surface of the thing. The deeper issue concerns our inability to explain reality by way of causation, as opposed to describing it. Just because we can make accurate predictions does not mean that the causation evident while observing the process "explains" WHY A or B always behaves this way (instead of that) under certain circumstances. The fact that the same effect can arise from different conditions and aggregates makes this even more interesting.
But again, these are just broad, loose strokes on the tip of the iceberg.
Though I don't agree with this paper on the fine points, the author takes up Ed's intentionality in some depth:
https://bioperipatetic.com/consciousness-and-causality/
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 16, 2018 - 03:31pm PT
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Back to Jan and magisterium. I actually love the word! I mean, what's there not to like? I'm just a lowly software developer, but the word, in principle, is particularly important to software developing. I would say that it equates more or less with "system" or "assembly" in software-speak.
In software, system or assembly would refer to all of the relevant players (objects of concern or agents) and all of the rules, which include constraints on some of the methods/actions of the players as well as the playing field.
Here's how I would use the word, magisterium. First of all, it refers to layers within an hierarchy. You shouldn't call layers at the same level, different magisterium. Magisterium should refer to different hierarchical levels. Examples of hierarchical levels would include the following:
 Mathematics and (possibly) other non-material constructs such as software patterns (Example Level 1)
Physics (Example Level 2)
Chemistry (Example Level 3)
Biology (Example Level 4)
Human Biology (Example Level 5)
Human Mind (Example Level 6)
How Human Minds Experience Pleasure (Example Level 7)
...
The idea of hierarchy is one of dependency. Physics is "dependent on" mathematics. Chemistry is dependent on physics. Biology is dependent on chemistry. A good software architecture is one in which the layer's code/logic only depends on the next-higher level. This is exactly how evolution works. As a software developer, I often strive to be like Mother Nature because I know that it is a winning strategy.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 16, 2018 - 07:32pm PT
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I think you greatly misunderstand a point I've been making all along, the last sentence of that overly long article you linked:
But any scientific attempt to discover and explain the nature of consciousness, at any level of human (or animal) functioning, presupposes as axiomatic, consciousness and the causal power of the mind.
makes the point, which is, we don't know. And we do not presuppose anything, it is a matter to be investigated, and no doubt we'll have lots of speculations, which will generate more investigation.
As I have said again and again, we do not know, nor can we know, what the out come of the empirical process will be as far as "explaining" mind. In some ways it could just be an accumulating process.
While Largo claims that computers are not a good model for mind, most of you are unaware that 100 years ago people were the computers, every number added to another, every numerical operation, was performed by a person, Bob Cratchit like, sitting on a stool wielding a pen and mentally performing a series of arithmetic operations.
Anyone wondering about the impact on productivity that our modern day computers have made can look at the number of calculations per day that can be accomplished now, and what that does to affect modern life. It is not inconsequential.
That is a part of our brain that no longer has to labor (not that many ever had the facility). And the algorithms used are derived from human mathematical behavior.
As these human tasks are taken over by machines the demarkation between what is "human" and what "machine" becomes rather hazy. And all of that without meeting Largo's demands on what a theory of consciousness is... oddly, it might not be important in the end.
But the outcome is not something that will be decided by some philosophical argument.
There is nothing that Largo has presented, nor anyone else, which demonstrates that a scientific understanding of "mind/consciousness/whatever" is impossible, nor can there be.
Since Largo apparently knows everything about my argument, I'll let him post for me in the future.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 16, 2018 - 08:20pm PT
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I've been waiting for ages for Ed to say this.
I knew you would say that. It was predictable.
However, to back up your a-ssertion please send the next thing you are waiting for Ed to say to an impartial referee. I once suggested John Gill for that role and I believe that he would be an honest judge of how closely your prediction matched Ed's post.
After-the-fact crowing as in the quote above carries no weight.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 16, 2018 - 08:20pm PT
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Ed,
You’re picking on what I wrote for citing a Nobel prize?!
When we talk here in this thread, I don’t expect that folks are looking to dig into the fine detail of scientific research. I think we’re just talking about what we think we know. My experience, your experience, DMT’s experience all fit under that title.
I have come to think that you, HFCS, and a few others resent that I occasionally talk against a mythology of science when I have some legitimacy in training and work.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 08:50pm PT
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Doesn't the originator of a thread get to determine the validity of it's contents.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 16, 2018 - 08:58pm PT
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Prof. Feynman: "The next reason you might think you do not understand what I am telling you is, while I am describing to you how nature works, you won't understand why nature works that way. But you see, nobody understands that. I can't explain why nature works in this peculiar way."
JL: "just because we can make accurate predictions does not mean that the causation evident while observing the process "explains" WHY A or B always behaves this way (instead of that) under certain circumstances."
It's good these two investigators see eye to eye on this issue.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jul 16, 2018 - 09:06pm PT
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Thanks eeyonke. This quote of yours caught my eye because it seems to fit academia so well.
"In software, system or assembly would refer to all of the relevant players (objects of concern or agents) and all of the rules, which include constraints on some of the methods/actions of the players as well as the playing field.
Here's how I would use the word, magisterium. First of all, it refers to layers within an hierarchy. You shouldn't call layers at the same level, different magisterium. Magisterium should refer to different hierarchical levels".
Everybody talks about interdisciplinarity in academia but try to put it into practice and you will soon encounter the hierarchy of magisteria or what defenders of their own levels take that hierarchy to be.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jul 16, 2018 - 09:18pm PT
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Remember when programs were going to write all the programs and possibly even the proofs of the programs, leaving only the mundane testing to actual humans on telephone hookups inPakistan?
Would the code actually be conscious of the Frankensteins it had created?
Shut the damn door on you way out HAL
Https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UgkyrW2NiwM/maxresdefault.jpg
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 16, 2018 - 09:27pm PT
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Jan: "Everybody talks about interdisciplinarity in academia . . ."
"Writing across the college curriculum" was a challenge for math teachers where I worked. I found that my attempts were much more successful in the senior level math courses than where it was actually needed: freshman college algebra. I called it quits after a short time. It was enough of a problem dealing with math mistakes, even when "grading" writing holistically.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 16, 2018 - 09:49pm PT
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There is nothing that Largo has presented, nor anyone else, which demonstrates that a scientific understanding of "mind/consciousness/whatever" is impossible, nor can there be.
That "anything else" presumes that you've red the bulk of mind material, which I doubt.
When you say "scientific understanding" of mind, while at the same time raising questions about most scientist's fixation on linear causation, one wonders what your "wait for the new data" approach will present now that cause and effect thinking has been challenged.
And since there's no hope of using scientific language (quantifications) to directly chart experience itself (which is not observable for direct measurement), and conflating experience with brain states dead ends in identity Theory, we're correct to wonder where you are heading?
It would seem that any folk plea to physical material (such as the brain) as substrate, or as fundamental in some way, would require a linear timeline, such as this physical stuff precedes that phenomenon (subjective content), or an emergent angle, or some creation (effect) theory about how consciousness was the output or consequence of this or that physical stuff, but how that might be seems ... let's say, a little tentative, regardless of future physical experiments using a method that by definition precludes subjectivity.
There's also the issue per the difference between mental content and awareness - no small issue.
Like I said, these prelim issues only scratch the surface.
Also, you raised the valid point that consciously engineered systems are categorically different than consciousness, so beyond the processing of content, one wonders how you might approach awareness, which clearly is quite another issue from machine registration.
Lastly, what on the earth do you really believe you can "explain?" Physically describe, for sure. But explain is, in my view, a fictional theory.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 17, 2018 - 01:49am PT
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Lastly, what on the earth do you really believe you can "explain?"
That complex behavior evolved in complete lockstep with brains. No brains, no behavior, no minds.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 17, 2018 - 07:02am PT
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^^^^^
But "awareness" and "machine registration" could just be different names for the same thing. Why could a machine not register awareness of itself? Could a brain do it but a machine could not?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 17, 2018 - 07:06am PT
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Largo: There's also the issue per the difference between mental content and awareness - no small issue.
Like I said, these prelim issues only scratch the surface.
The issue isn't between content and awareness, that is a trivial and obvious distinction almost not worth discussing. The issue is between subconscious production and consciousness. And I don't mean the subconscious production of content, but rather the subconscious underpinnings of awareness. When you have a subjective experience, that's like the top square meter of a twenty square mile iceberg - the staging and contextualization work being done on myriad fronts so you have any form of subjective experience is staggering. And make no mistake, subjective experience without [subconscious] contextualization would be indistinguishable from no-thingness.
The subconscious is the prelim issue that this thread has only scratched the surface of in 20k+ posts.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 17, 2018 - 07:09am PT
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healyje: No brains, no behavior, no minds.
You might want to consider a host of other elements and organisms in that all too brief reduction.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 17, 2018 - 07:22am PT
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You might want to consider a host of other elements and organisms in that all too brief reduction.
Last I checked elements aren't alive and thus exhibit no behavior. All life exhibits behavior and most, like the slime molds I posted about previously, have no neurons or brains which was the reason I specifically referenced "complex behaviors" in the post you quote.
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