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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 10, 2019 - 12:50pm PT
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we've been around this concept of emergence a lot...
in classical thermodynamics we classify matter in three states: solid, liquid, gas
the atoms are the same, solid water is ice, then water, then steam, but it's all H₂O
however, we do not have to invoke some strange process to explain how H₂O changes state as a function of pressure and temperature.
the states emerge from the interaction over many length scales and many atoms, the atoms don't know anything more or less, they certainly don't know they're in a solid, liquid or gas...
the idea of states of matter is quite utilitarian, and we use thermodynamics as a quantitative theory of how matter will react to changes of temperature and pressure (and other things like the chemical potential etc.) without having to resort to explaining the atom-by-atom interactions that collectively give rise to the state.
that is an example of emergence... it is entirely plausible that similar things happen with large collections of neurons (and other cells for that matter), so that the behavior of the collective can be quite surprising, based on the interactions of the individual agents.
this is what network theory has been about for quite some time now...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 10, 2019 - 03:25pm PT
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You're making one classic mistake in your reasoning: Contrasting examples from the observable physical world with the experiential realm, assuming that physical processing - because they "create" surprising other physical effect - will necessarily create mind. Seeming that mind is unlike any other phenomenon in reality, is not such a process "strange" insofar as it has no other precedent in the known world? Chalmers said believing such a theory is not only strange, but "magic."
Kurzwiel is the guy pushing for network theory as an explanation of mind, with his whole brain awareness and so forth. This is a form of emergence, so the question for the physicalist becomes: What emerges, and is what emerges more than or different from brain? If they are the same, meaning identical, you're right back to all the dead ends of Identity Theory.
"
Read Kurzweil and you'll find comments like: "These (global activation) results provide compelling evidence that awareness is associated with global changes in the brain’s functional connectivity." Few would dispute this. But "associated with" is not the same as "creates." That's the magical leap no one can unpack with physical data.
It's a dead end, like trying to explain the origin of particles by way of particles. All that new stuff about retrocausality should be a heads up that a time bound, linear causal model will never get you to mind.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 10, 2019 - 03:44pm PT
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word salad, Largo...
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capseeboy
Social climber
wandering star
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May 10, 2019 - 03:46pm PT
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Italians have such a great sense of the moods of life. They live in and relish them. As Americans, we seem to believe that moods are faults.
My daughter had an Italian exchange student. I asked her if my daughter and husband's heated arguments bothered her (I felt it embarrassing). She said it was nothing compared to her own parents.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 10, 2019 - 03:53pm PT
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Ok Ed, forget the word salad and answer this:
If awareness "emerges" from the brain's global activation (as Kurzwiel proposes), is the emergent awareness more than, or in any way different from, the measurable activation purported to create said awareness?
It's universally held that physicalism and emergence are incompatible, so I'm curious how you might square the two.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 10, 2019 - 08:29pm PT
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That's not the argument I'm making, Ed. And for the record I'm not and have never argued for point of arguing, only that from my experience, and reasoning this through for ages and with many people, there's no way to square physicalism with emergence, and neither provide the much hoped for linear-causal link to consciousness, where brain is fundamental and consciousness is essentially the output of brain. No one can unpack that because it's not so.
Emergence implies something EXTRA emerges that, in the case of mind, is in every way categorically different than brain/objective processing. This is never the case with physical metaphors or examples where this observable object or force gives rise to that object or force or physical effect off which we can pull a measurement. Physicalism is bottom up, and the top is never more than a sum of the parts. Ergo precluding something extra which "emerges" that is not identical from the imagined or purported physical source. Sticking to this first assumption gives rise to all the blarney about brain and consciousness being identical.
In a wider sense, in terms of "creation" or original emergence, the big bang has to include void and potential. So on a cosmic scale, the all emerged from nothing and non-objects. But that's not the end of the story. On the quantum level, particles continually emerge from a field, which also is a non-object. Subjectively, there's no way to posit awareness as an object or as information or content of any kind. That's why most people who have looked at this issue at depth use terms like field of consciousness and so forth to try and describe the void of awareness in which the content of consciosness arises. My sense of it is that whenever any phenomenon arises, void is a fundamental factor - be it the emergence of matter and so-called space-time, particles, thoughts and feelings and so on. Trying to peg consciousness to the sole output of brain will always perforce leave out the defining charicteristic of mind itself, which is awareness. We can never make the linear-causal link to void from objects because objects don't source void. Stuff is the time-bound impermanent side of void, and void is the timeless, uncreated side of stuff. Reality is the integration of both, of nothing and something, of time and timelessness, and where there is one, there is always the other. Trying to fashion a world based entirely on one or the other will always dead end at some point.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 10, 2019 - 08:44pm PT
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
you aren't taking into account that the thing you identify as something, like a neuron, could be different than the thing which is identified as many neurons...
your argument, it seems to me, says that a collection of things can't have properties beyond the individual things.
the point of emergence, at least as used by physicists, is that the collection of things could have properties that the things themselves do not have.
What is solid about a water molecule? what is liquid about it, what is gaseous about it? nothing, but when they interact together in large numbers, that collection is readily identified as ice, water, steam.
And that is not a "magical" process, it is a physical process having to do with the things and their interactions.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 10, 2019 - 08:58pm PT
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JL: "and neither provide the much hoped for linear-causal link to consciousness, where brain is fundamental and consciousness is essentially the output of brain. No one can unpack that because it's not so."
Prove that it is not so. You seem so certain about these things. Admirable up to a point.
Emergence:
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WBraun
climber
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May 10, 2019 - 09:34pm PT
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No ...
The onus is completely on YOU.
You, gross materialists, are the ones making all the claims and always masquerading as authorities of knowledge with your so called modern science ......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 10, 2019 - 09:49pm PT
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For those few who have an interest in theoretical time, here's part of a note I wrote a couple of years ago. Nothing serious.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 10, 2019 - 10:57pm PT
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"People talking" implies a conversation, with semantic content,
So what? I was using an analogy to compare EEG recording of populations of neurons to recording the activity of individual neurons. In my analogy "talking" is just sounds that people make. No more.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 10, 2019 - 11:09pm PT
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Very nice, John Gill.
If there were no such thing as time, would that change the emphasis on prediction in testing the merit of physical theory? Could there be prediction without time?
A couple of photos. Taken with my feet on the same patch of ground. But movement seems to have occurred.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 11, 2019 - 07:22am PT
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Ed: . . . it is entirely plausible that similar things happen [emergent properties emerge] with large collections of neurons (and other cells for that matter), so that the behavior of the collective can be quite surprising, based on the interactions of the individual agents.
In business studies, there were two important levels of analyses that we could not bring together very well: economics, and individual decision making. The two fields stayed separate. Scholars tried to bring them together by inventing notions of "utility," but that never bridged the gap very well.
Herbert Simon won a nobel prize in economics for his theory on satisfycing. He said that individual decision makers could not be assumed to be perfectly rational about the economic decisions that they make because they would never have access to perfect information, and their abilities to calculate utilities (the perceived benefits of one choice over another) were limited by their processing power (bounded rationality). It was a great surprise to economics that Simon abandoned economics for cognitive science, where he made important contributions in distinguishing what constituted different levels of knowledge (experts, novices, and naive subjects) among other things cognitive.
Describing what happens in large numbers glosses over (or ignores) individual or specific behaviors and dynamics. In some fields, perhaps, it's arguable that isn't very important. In other fields of investigation and questioning, the differences and distinctions would seem to present altogether different realities conceptually. Saying, for example, what planets are, how they arise, conditions and causes, and what their life cycles seem to be may say nothing whatsoever important about this or that individual planet. Ditto for people, their minds, and their individual behaviors.
Once again, the incommensurability among different areas of research often leads us to make completely contradictory claims that apparently cannot be resolved. Hence, one can imagine that conundrums will always be evident to us.
In cognitive science, there was a time not too long ago when folks thought we could teach people to learn globally or generally--and that was what educational systems were supposed to be oriented to. Teach people how to learn. Unfortunately, research over time on this issue showed us that would not work because what allowed people to learn was site- or domain-specific. One needed to learn the basics in one field to learn more advanced ideas in that same field. Learning to learn was a nice idea that made many educators warm and fuzzy, but it was a grand pipe dream. (Our great love for information, the internet, science,d and experts assume that people can learn anything quick and easilly.) Instead, people need to focus and specialize in an area of study, and that tends to limit greatly their abilities to learn and understand other areas of knowledge and interest (polymaths supposedly withstanding).
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formerclimber
Boulder climber
CA
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May 11, 2019 - 10:31am PT
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So far, seems like the only benefits of human getting the gift of "mind" was the destruction of the planet, brutal wars and reduced level of enjoyment of life/more anguish and depression. An average wild animal is happier and living much fuller life than average human. So much to "mind". Mind is a plague. Gods of Nature will take this gift away, eventually... humankind will have the fate of Prometheus.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 11, 2019 - 10:56am PT
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"If there were no such thing as time, would that change the emphasis on prediction in testing the merit of physical theory? Could there be prediction without time?"
The word "prediction" itself incorporates a notion of time. I find it impossible to think of reality without the passage of time. But I am simplistic and feel that "time" is an abstraction of "change", which is fundamental, although the perception of time can differ dramatically. How does a bumblebee perceive time's passage? An elephant?
Is there really change? Meditators might have some insight here.
"Time is the separation between distinct events that happen in the same place"
???
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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May 11, 2019 - 01:01pm PT
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I just heard a saying on a Ted talk that it a new mantra of mine.
"Reality is only a small portion of our consciousness".
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