What is "Mind?"

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High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Feb 24, 2019 - 10:00am PT

re: 8-base DNA

Well that seems pretty cool. Jan, tfpu.

Keywords: (1) Hachimoji (2) evolutionary engineer

That's a great neonym, imo. (eight + letter)

But this seems a stretch, a bit trumpian, as in truthful hyperbole...

"Today, movies, spreadsheets and other digital files are typically stored on silicon chips or magnetic tapes. But those kinds of storage have serious shortcomings. For one thing, they can deteriorate in just years... DNA, by contrast, can remain intact for centuries."

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Feb 24, 2019 - 10:13am PT

As for whether math is inherent in the universe or a human construct, I'm told by another mathematician that most mathameticians are Platonists, believing that math is inherent to the structure.

addressed up thread...

the argument that mathematics is "inherent to the structure" of the universe is a possibility, but I don't believe it has any basis other than a philosophical opinion.

There is a good case to be made that the "inherent structure" of the universe is dynamical, and that the symmetries of that structure determine what logic is at the "classical scale" (if the universe makes it to that scale). Those symmetries determine the mathematics.

So there may be universes which have different mathematics, and that has to do with the physical instantiation of the particular universe.

It is clear that the brain has the ability to do mathematics, and that this ability is exhibited in many brains. The brain has the ability to do physics too. These abilities are likely due to the advantages conveyed in evolution, a knowledge of math and physics being advantageous... but the large advantages, in my opinion, are those that allow for large social grouping, and communication between individuals in groups being even more important.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Feb 24, 2019 - 10:19am PT

as for the stability of DNA,

Schrodinger recognized this in his book before DNA was understood. It is ironic that quantum mechanics has been represented on this thread as a "random element" that lets all sorts of crazy ideas be possible, where its greatest effect on life is to make stable large molecules against random changes to those molecules due to thermal interactions. Because of energy "quanta," these molecules exist in an environment that is essentially at zero temperature.

The information preservation capability of DNA has been recognized for a long time. Efficient DNA writers/readers are only now possible.

WBraun

climber

Feb 24, 2019 - 01:36pm PT

“We can do everything here that is necessary for life,” said Dr. Benner,

No he can't, he's dreaming.

Life doesn't ultimately depend on DNA or what Dr. Benner says since life itself is not material .....

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 25, 2019 - 11:42am PT

Talk is cheap, as they say, and I think that is demonstrated in the volume of popular work as compared to rigorous research (which is difficult).

Well, isn't that enlightening. Maybe someday I can read the big books too. You seem a bit full of yourself on this subject.

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Feb 25, 2019 - 01:55pm PT

Ed said:

I agree with MikeL in general, that the specifics are important and we often frame the questions and answers in terms of what the latest "fad" is... I'm as susceptible as anyone.

For instance, "algorithm" is a concept that is short hand for a particular computational model, initially it was a Von Neumann machine and lately a Turing machine. And while one might prove that some sorts of architectures are reducible to Turing machines, highly parallel real-time architectures exhibit "behaviors" that are difficult (or possibly provably impossible) to predict.

Let me give you some examples of algorithms that are obviously important for life. Let’s start with three particularly fundamental ones.
• Build a protein from a sequence of amino acids created from a sequence of bases in a DNA-based gene
• Build a body from a sequence of body-making steps from a sequence of protein-making steps from a sequence of amino acids created from a sequence of bases in a DNA-based gene
• Copy or copy the negative of a sequence of bases created from a sequence of bases in a DNA-based gene

Now how about:
• Build some neural networks in this developing embryo
• Build a learning module in this developing embryo

Clearly, anything actually built by genes is an algorithm. I would also argue that, even if the answers coming from a processing neural network aren’t predictable (and I’d assume that for all intents and purposes they aren’t), the larger process is still an algorithm playing out that uses a neural network or learning module.

With respect to agency, my interest is in large part sparked by the fact that our feeling of agency as decision-makers is actually an illusion. This contention is based mainly on Michael Gazzaniga’s split brain studies, but there are several other studies that seem to show this. But clearly, we and essentially all animals do somehow make the decision to do this or do that. So where is the decision-making agent? In humans, and one would have to include most animals with nervous systems, it would appear that decisions are made by a confederation rather than a single master entity. It seems to me that the one thing we do know about organisms is that they try to survive and reproduce. That fits the bill for agency in my book.

Finally,

From my thinking, eeyonkee's list compresses the "lower" attributes of behaviors exhibited by life into irrelevance. An interesting exercise would be to list next to each attribute the estimated biomass that exhibits those particular traits.

You are correct, of course, it's not that I didn't realize this. My point was to focus on the the concepts close to mind and only cursorily include earlier steps -- really, I just wanted to pick up the term biological algorithm.

By the way, I would now leave out intelligence altogether because that word is too loaded. The word learning should be in the list instead, since learning is clearly something that can be built from genes.

Edit: My new hierarchy; The progression to mind.

* Mind
* Consciousness = Awareness
* Learning
* Instinct
* Feeling
------- Big Logical and Evolutionary Break
* Biochemical algorithm
* Life (digital) => Agency
* Algorithm
* Not life (physical)

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Feb 25, 2019 - 04:35pm PT

re: the etymology of algorithm

The word 'algorithm' has its roots in Latinizing the name of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in a first step to algorismus.[11][12] Al-Khwārizmī (Arabic: الخوارزمي‎, Persian: خوارزمی‎, c. 780–850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, whose name means 'the native of Khwarazm', a region that was part of Greater Iran and is now in Uzbekistan.

A tip of the hat to the caring, interested folks at Wiki and elsewhere who research this stuff so the rest of us don't have to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

The entire etymology section here is fascinating, chockful of cool tidbits.

WBraun

climber

Feb 25, 2019 - 05:27pm PT

I would now leave out intelligence altogether because that word is too loaded.
The word learning should be in the list instead,

LOL .....

You can't learn anything period without intelligence first.

When one is clueless you'll always start guessing and rejecting sh!t you are clueless to .....

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Feb 26, 2019 - 08:25am PT

eeyonkee: By the way, I would now leave out intelligence altogether because that word is too loaded. The word learning should be in the list instead, since learning is clearly something that can be built from genes.

Both terms are definitionally unwieldy and problematical.

What’s intelligence? Not, how does one measure it, but what are the characteristics? Is it ratiocination? Is it directed experimentation? Is it imagination? Is it recoding of neural pathways? Is it assuming some heuristic? Is it seeing a new piece of information? Is it the(supposed) implementation of any concept?

I won’t go into all of the different academic conceptualizations of intelligence. It might be best simply to point you to wiki in this regard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence

Well, hey, what about learning? Here’s what a grant recipient on learning from Berkeley says:

“The conditions for inputs to learning are clear, but the process is incomplete without making sense of what outputs constitute learning has taken place. At the core, learning is a process that results in a change in knowledge or behavior as a result of experience.”

Did you note that the researcher reports the process is unclear?

You might have some worthy casual ideas, but the devil is in the details, my friend. Scientifically, which specific conceptualizations are you pointing at, in what contexts, and with what constructs or variables?

Saying what either of these notions (intelligence and learning) are is a risky and almost ungainly proposition. The proposition might be more philosophical than scientific.

Science to me (and I may be an outlier of sorts) is not a gaggle of connected facts in disciplines. I think you’ll find “facts” are not so nearly incontrovertible as most would think.

Science to me is a painstaking practice, maybe even a calling. I’d say one must love the process more than the outcomes. One recognizes the love through the discipline, circumspection, and open conversation with others (within specific domains).

There is the scientific skills of the practice (conceptual content, methods, research construction, etc.), and then there is the specific established content in a discipline—both of which must be known. Unfortunately, being knowledgeable and skilled in both areas usually means a practitioner must establish a narrow focus: they stay in their lane—which is why there are almost NO scientific generalists. (Alas, therein lie topics like “consciousness” and “mind.”) Sure, there are polymaths, but one can probably count those on two hands over history.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Feb 26, 2019 - 09:17am PT

there are almost NO scientific generalists... Sure, there are polymaths, but one can probably count those on two hands over history.

lol

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 26, 2019 - 09:26am PT

* Mind
* Consciousness = Awareness
===

Just some random thoughts here. I have a cold so I might not be lucid - hard enough with this material when I feel top notch.

Tthe notion of a hierarchy or ladder of complexity in unavoidable when looking at mental content. It's also misleading because complexity often works against insight, truth and higher level consciousness.

For example, people's unconscious minds can tie them in knots known as complexes or thought loops that are remarkably dificult to tease apart (try deconstructing a phobia, for example, or an obsessive frame of mind per anything from binging on a poem or math problem to a sex addiction), and which in many cases are unconsciously constructed as avoidance tac tics. Keep the mind occupied and thornier truths remain unaddressed. Common to all of us.

In many cases, the insights come from reducing down to basics. Take introspction. So long as you focus on the level of content (thoughts, feelings, etc), the more rudimetary aspects of mind, the givens, will be lost on you. Various forms of objecectless introspection were arrived at to explore this (Immaterial Jhanas being one). You start with a concept (map), which is just a pointer toward phenomenon like space, consciousness, emptiness, perceiving and not perceiving, and you hang with these till you have a direct experience of same, at the level of inquiry (at the level of space, for example). This direct experience is roughly the difference between reading about an apple and tasting one, or glossing over a topo and climbing the route.

Throughout any day we are continuously toggling up and down this ladder of complexity to negotiate our lives, pausing here to check in with feelings or to think something over, but most of time just charging ahead.

This next bit is tricky, and my words are only working in the direction, but the big challege occurs when we are looking at the level of causation, with its own level of complexity, and we start searching for mechanisms by which some thing or phenoemnon is "created." At higher levels of complexity, it's foolish to deny, for example, that Mars, Incorporated does not create Mars bars out of consituent materials. But when we seek to try and "explain" the creation of life or mind as being the product of complex meta level constituents, we draw a blank (though some, sans portfolio, claim otherwise).

Why? My guess is that void or nothingness is half of the equation to at least the mind question, and possibly with life as well. When we try and create mind at the meta level, we end up with fanstastic processing machines, none of which know they are machines or have an experience of being, as in human being. To "create" mind, as we experience it, we might well have to likewise creat void/field/nothingness or whatever you choose to call it, that which is not created.

More later...

Ward Trotter

Trad climber

Feb 26, 2019 - 10:31am PT

Why? My guess is that void or nothingness is half of the equation to at least the mind question, and possibly with life as well. When we try and create mind at the meta level, we end up with fanstastic processing machines, none of which know they are machines or have an experience of being, as in human being. To "create" mind, as we experience it, we might well have to likewise creat void/field/nothingness or whatever you choos

That would be fine and dandy if humans were in charge of the ground rules of consciousness, which we are not. Those biologic constituents are amply demonstrated by the physical world that constructed us, and not by anyone waking up, falling out of bed, and materializing human awareness from scratch-- all before morning coffee!

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 26, 2019 - 11:08am PT

Those biologic constituents are amply demonstrated by the physical world that constructed us.

Problem is with this, you are basically saying, as my friend pointed out per "creation," that we can, for example, "explain" particles without the field. Go ahead and try.

And when we dump the void and go only with meta level stuff, including biological constituents, we end up with a machine or a zombie every time.

Expexcting matter to simply become alive, or conscious, by randomness, non-linear processes, chaos factors, or a hell of a long time, with meta level stuff building on itself, cha cha cha, is as woo as Dr. Frankenstein or a creater God throwing lightning bolts.

But I can understand why you would hold this belief.

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Feb 26, 2019 - 11:49am PT

Expexcting matter to simply become alive, or conscious, by randomness

But it's not randomness IMO. As entropy goes up complexity also goes up. We are in the goldilocks time in the universe where complexity is very high. It's not just life, this complexity and tendency towards order in some aspects of the universe is also present in the evolution of the celestial bodies. It appears gases became early stars, which went through their life cycle and their remnants formed the more complex solar system we live in. Evolution in a general sense (not the scientific theory) seems to be not just applicable to life but to a lot of things in the universe. If everything was random I don't think the universe would have evolved as it has.

I don't equate scientific hypothesis that can either be refuted or supported through observation and experiment with supernatural, pseudo scientific, emotional, or mythological based beliefs and explanations.

jogill

climber

Colorado

Feb 26, 2019 - 04:24pm PT

JL: " My guess is that void or nothingness is half of the equation to at least the mind question, and possibly with life as well."

Then you've got an equation that is half empty. That part of the equation is a non-productive vacuum, apparently. One can relish the meditative sensation but it seems to lead nowhere, at least in this lengthy thread. Correct me if I am wrong.

"But when we seek to try and "explain" the creation of life or mind as being the product of complex meta level constituents, we draw a blank.

That's why it's called "complex." And once again you imply that the current lack of understanding is proof it can't be so.

WBraun

climber

Feb 26, 2019 - 04:28pm PT

You ARE wrong.

And there's no need to even explain why since you do not want to do the actual work required to understand.

Academia alone will never lead to the truth .....

TomCochrane

Trad climber

Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay

Feb 26, 2019 - 04:59pm PT

Yes it's a half empty equation. This whole discussion is like the old arguments about whether the chicken or the egg comes first. The answer being that the chicken and egg constitute a process.