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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 31, 2018 - 04:34pm PT
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I think eeyonkee has a good perspective. There is a difference between trying to say what the brain is versus trying to say what it is doing. Thanks for that, MH2, but from a computer analogy perspective (based on the rest of your post), I would look at it more like this. The creation of mind is what we computer types would call a CRUD event (Create/Update/Delete) on an object. Something that a created object could do, on the other hand, is a method or behavior of the object. Something that a collection of objects could do are methods/behaviors of the collection. The humanities, religion, Zen, money, and empires are all (the result of) methods/behaviors of collections of humans.
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Jer_
Sport climber
Fair Oaks
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Jul 31, 2018 - 04:44pm PT
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What do you philosopher-climbers think about the Münchhausen trilemma?
"In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment used to demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics. If it is asked how any knowledge is known to be true, proof may be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any subsequent proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three options when providing proof in this situation:
The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other.
The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum.
The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts.
The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options."
Can we know "Mind" (or even "mind" for that matter) if we can "Know" nothing?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 31, 2018 - 05:16pm PT
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The creation of mind is what we computer types would call a CRUD event (Create/Update/Delete) on an object. Something that a created object could do,on the other hand, is a method of the object. The humanities, religion, Zen, money, and empires are all methods of the created, human object in concert with other human objects.
Let's look a little deeper into this.
When Eyonkee says "the creation of mind," he and other "computer types" typically are relating "mind" to information and the processing of that information as it occurs in a computer. Then trying to relate that process to mind and consciousness. The problem is that awareness, sentience, or whatever you want to call it, has no conceivable correlate to any computer model whatsoever. No crew better understands this fact then the Information Theory camp, from which this quote is drawn:
"The only definition I have been able to find of awareness in an experimental setting is the capacity to verbally report, or “access to conscious report”. The adjective associated with awareness
is “perceptual”, and perception is taken to be a synonym of awareness. It is an attractive definition in providing a clear-cut observable: either the subject can or cannot say that they experienced a given stimulus. Yet we have the experience of awareness without access to
words, as when rendered speechless by a beautiful sunset, or sitting quietly and simply being aware of our presence.
Such experiences make clear that verbal report of any stimulus is not actually a definition of awareness – it is a proxy for awareness. While this distinction may seem trivial, I believe it is crucial in maintaining a clear conceptual framework for future research."
I would add that a verbal report, or any attempt to quantify awareness, in not a proxy of awareness itself, but of the stimulus. All attempts to equate awareness with a scanning function (which is attention), a receptor, etc. are speculations not drawn from the phenomenon itself, but from looking at a machine and projecting registration functions (also tied to stimulus) to mind.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 31, 2018 - 05:50pm PT
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an invitation to see the holes in any so-called determined chain of causation
Thank you, but not needed. Long ago I found what happens when you keep asking any authority, "But why?"
As a philosopher you seem to be stuck on asking, "But what caused the cause?"
Glad to see your modifier 'so-called' before the, "determined chain of causation."
Do you think physicists espouse a determined chain of causation?
If so, check Feynman's description of what happens when light encounters a mirror.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 31, 2018 - 05:53pm PT
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And thanks to you, Greg.
But I never did feel I understood what "computer types" are talking about. Same here.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 31, 2018 - 06:04pm PT
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Hey, if "computer types" ever goes, like, viral, I want some credit (although it is likely that I stole it and then forgot (alas!)).
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 31, 2018 - 08:05pm PT
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Consider minds of mice here, not the least at timestamp 2:42.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdAHQg4s3Vw
Reflections:
Early bird gets the worm.
Second mouse gets the cheese.
The dead mouse was pretty much a stranger, not his climbing partner.
...
Sheesh, get a load of this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvWD-E-gbkk
427 year old Mascall spring trap.
Pure genius.
Now I better understand 'build a better mousetrap' - it was a thing bitd.
Be sure to check out the botfly and mouse parasitism at the end of the video. Recall Dawkins: What we see in nature is just what we'd expect to see from evolution at work by natural selection. Botfly. Damn.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2018 - 07:47am PT
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Thank you, but not needed. Long ago I found what happens when you keep asking any authority, "But why?"
As a philosopher you seem to be stuck on asking, "But what caused the cause?"
Glad to see your modifier 'so-called' before the, "determined chain of causation."
Do you think physicists espouse a determined chain of causation?
If so, check Feynman's description of what happens when light encounters a mirror.
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MK2, "stuck" on something is different then asking, what are the conotations, wouldn't you say?
It's also not enough to understand that there is no determined causation. You have to see it, and realize it. How you doing on that simple exercise I threw out there?
If there is no determined causation, then the "creation" storyline goes out the window, and so does "why" as it applies to using a computer model to postulate "why" we are conscious. Note how few if any are ready to give up this model, fearing that magic is the only other "explanation," which in fact is simply swapping out one linear causal model (physicalism) for another (God, woo, et al). But there is no "because" except on a superficial level.
What all of these models seek is some fundamental, some basis from which we can explain how (creation story) this phenomenon arose/was caused by that prior fundamental source, stuff, system, construct, object, explosion, scaler field, ether, etc.
And what does this do to the common sense idea of sequential causation - whether bottom up or top down?
Another thing is that asking these questions is not in defense of some woo angle which, as mentioned, is simply another "creation" model, whereby woo gave rise to what should rightfully be attributed to material causes. Rather because the material "explanation" goes nowhere near mind. Not to say there is not causation of some sort all over the place. It's just that none of it is "because" of some determined causal chain. That leaves us to describe what we see, knowing that an strictly objective investigation can never, by definition, disclose mind. This, in my opinion, is why Nagel said that mind is not a causal question. You'll never find it that way, by way of a strictly objective search. Realizing this has led some to propose that fundamentally (back to those pesky fundamentals), mind is "actually" brain, we just don't know it, or it "only seems" to have some independent existence. In fact when you abandon determinism, there is no "independent" stuff or phenomenon.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jstan: Feynman asserts this method has been found equally successful for 96% of all phenomena involving light.
It isn’t nitpicking, imo, to question to what extent one “knows” anything when 96% of outcomes (variances?) are accounted for. Ancient religious myths accounted for the seasons, the movement of celestial bodies, the arising of life in its various forms, etc.—all certainly to a less exacting standard, but predictions that “worked” and served communities and societies. You seem to be trading different levels of accuracy that are all incomplete. Four percent might seem minuscule, but in some arenas, 4% has galactic effects. ANY difference from perfect prediction suggest a metaphorical understanding and heuristic handle on reality.
When R-square is 1.0, then you’ve accounted for all effects. I have yet to see that study anywhere. You?
Eeyonkee,
Bringing the computer metaphor into a conversation about brain (much less mind) is like interring a body from a grave. As an scholarly concept, it’s dead, dead, dead. As a metaphor, it’s surprisingly alive.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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And what does this do to the common sense idea of sequential causation - whether bottom up or top down?
If you can't demonstrate an understanding of a physicalist viewpoint, what goes out the window is your credibility making criticisms of such a viewpoint.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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What is mouse mind vis a vis anthrope mind?
Why can't mouse mind connect the dots, eg., in the presence of these traps (some 400 plus years old), and build for itself a picture of cause n effect (causation)? Like anthrope mind can.
Why can't mouse mind figure it out? Why does mouse mind succumb to such a simple system? of deception? of input and output? cause n effect?
Why can't mouse mind figure out this mouse trap here is a design - a design by another species no less. That being so, why can't mouse mind problem solve and figure out the purpose of this contrivance?
I suffered a little mouse mind yesterday, went to run errands and forgot to bring my wallet. Lost an hour. :(
Watch the video. See for yourself the play action between mouse mind and anthrope mind (e.g., in the context of what's called ecology). Could be insightful on multiple scales.
How cool would it be? if what was captured on video in this Youtube was a mouse clever enough to climb atop the trap, chew through the string there and spring the trap and then procure for himself his prize!
Better monkey mind than mouse mind, I say.
...
This was pretty good, I thought...
Science Salon #29, Michael Shermer
Colin McGinn — Mysterianism, Consciousness, Free Will, and God
9 July, 2018
https://www.skeptic.com/science-salon/mysterianism-consciousness-free-will-god/
Podcasts are changing our culture, also our education and literacy, one listen at a time. Thank goodness, too, because we need forces such as this to counterpoint all the decadence in social media that is also going on.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2018 - 01:59pm PT
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Nice links, Fruity. Very lucid. And the written attachments were well wrought, especially like the one about Nagle.
And HH2 - you wrote: If you can't demonstrate an understanding of a physicalist viewpoint, what goes out the window is your credibility making criticisms of such a viewpoint.
Damn, hombre. What if I can't demonstrate walking on water. Would that tank my "credibility" per doubting water walkers?
Fact is, no matter how many work arounds we cook up, we can't objectively demonstrate mind sans a conscious mind doing the demonstration. Seems like the hardest simple truth here to accept is that a theoretically "pure objective" inquiry of mind will never find it. It will find a brain, but all a purely objective analysis can discover therein is objective functioning. We can CALL that mind, if we go sideways, but we'll never objectively demonstrate it sans the conscious demonstrator.
This seems so glaringly obvious one wonders what the hang up is. Must be cherished first assumptions.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What if I can't demonstrate walking on water. Would that tank my "credibility" per doubting water walkers?
It depends on who you are talking to.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Water striders, whirligig beetles, and some spiders manage to leg it on water.
edit:
And your example of walking on water, if referring to people, gets you a little closer to being a physicalist. Good. You are using objective evidence while apparently denying its application to mind. You are a closet physicalist. Try to limit resorting to metaphysics where it doesn't apply.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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MikeL wrote
Bringing the computer metaphor into a conversation about brain (much less mind) is like interring a body from a grave. As an scholarly concept, it’s dead, dead, dead. As a metaphor, it’s surprisingly alive.
You're kidding, right? Sheesh, you are hopeless! And I would say that your posts here are boring, boring, boring!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2018 - 03:45pm PT
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MH2, give the world one piece of strictly physical evidence for mind, unmediated BY a mind.
What does that tell you? That future experiments will disclose "secret data?"
And Eyonkeee, I might say, Not so fast. Remember, virtually all computer analogies to mind concern WHAT we are aware of, not that we are conscious in the first instance. And there is no example nor yet a metaphor from computers re sentience that is not tied to content, to code. This has led many to believe that awareness IS code, though none of these dreamers derived this belief from observing mind, rather from looking AT code and processing and outputs.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I'm so glad I chose Geology and not Philosophy.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Wow.
"If you're super far advanced, the end game is you realize that life is not that interesting. You're like, Why am I here? What am I doing with all this?" -Sean Carroll
https://youtu.be/ZtxzMb9CpTM
time stamp: 46.00
I've thought along these lines several times in the last few years. May be the answer to the Fermi paradox?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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MH2, give the world one piece of strictly physical evidence for mind, unmediated BY a mind.
JL, give the world one piece of strictly physical evidence of peanut butter, unmediated by a mind.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Eeyonkee,
Pull up Google Scholar and see what you find when you put search on "computer metaphor of the mind."
I don't think you'll find much in the last decade. Moreover, what you do find will probably have relatively few citations from other articles. Last, the preponderance of assessments are negative. On the other hand, you would find a lot more activity (and positively) on grounded or embodied cognition. Would you accept Google Scholar as a substantive compilation of references to relevant research activity?
I suppose, being a computer jockey, that a computer metaphor on mind makes perfect sense, but it doesn't so very much to academics in the relevant fields of study.
Be well.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 2, 2018 - 09:48am PT
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MH2, give the world one piece of strictly physical evidence for mind, unmediated BY a mind.
JL, give the world one piece of strictly physical evidence of peanut butter, unmediated by a mind.
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You're nothing if not predictable. "Answering" a question with another question.
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