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jstan
climber
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It may be time to heed the sage who advised:
"insanity consists of doing the same thing many times in hopes of getting a different result."
Based upon historical data we will have a complete understanding of neurological processing and of human behavior long before this thread will achieve a result.
When that understanding becomes available to all, those preferring the discussion to the result will publish gospels.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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what are you attracted by, thread?
convergence is not guaranteed (and even seems unlikely)...
a little mapping by Banach
while contracting has its points
but neither complete nor metric panache
have you demonstrated in this joint
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think the problem of qualia which Largo alludes to has to do with how familiar they are, yet how difficult it is to describe them out of more fundamental stuff, like the physical act of seeing, etc...
...qualia in many cases have an immediate familiarity to each of us, yet they are all slightly different, and impossible to describe in a linear fashion, their attributes derive from what appears to be more than just a set of sensations.
Given they are so familiar and seemingly necessary to be able to communicate appropriately, it would seem they are important elements of consciousness, yet they are notoriously difficult to corral.
Are they important or are they unimportant?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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a little mapping by Banach
while contracting has its points
but neither complete nor metric panache
have you demonstrated in this joint
A metric that defines this site
Must common be
And very slight
So trivial it must imply
A Cauchy sequence
end and die
What metric fits the words above
I ask you,Ed . . . ?
From Thread, with love!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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if the distance between us be nill
would not that metric fit the bill?
though not a very interesting space,
it's starting to look a lot like this place.
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jstan
climber
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Amazing things to be discussed
But no, the thread leaves one nonplussed
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MH2
climber
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Thread, please quiet your evaluating mind and tell us of the quale in your field.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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a mind is the void,
a master of anti-dream,
all would-be fantasy
is chased clear by logic
and reason.
a shadow of the real beauty,
mind is the fall out
from love's implosion.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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I haven't read this whole thread and I'm a lot dumber than many here, but I'll throw in my 2 cents and say I'd guess you would need the heart (emotions, and maybe some soul) and mind (reason) to make up the "mind". The interplay of emotions and reason seems to start off with a few simple dualities (good/bad & true/false) and expand to an unlimited number of possibilities, thoughts, feelings, etc.
Can science quantify emotions? Should it try to? Is the heart plugged into the physicality of being so something like Love wouldn't fully make sense without the experience of Love?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2011 - 09:52pm PT
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I think the problem of qualia which Largo alludes to has to do with how familiar they are, yet how difficult it is to describe them out of more fundamental stuff, like the physical act of seeing, etc...
...qualia in many cases have an immediate familiarity to each of us, yet they are all slightly different, and impossible to describe in a linear fashion, their attributes derive from what appears to be more than just a set of sensations.
Given they are so familiar and seemingly necessary to be able to communicate appropriately, it would seem they are important elements of consciousness, yet they are notoriously difficult to corral.
Are they important or are they unimportant?
-
"Thinking" and the processes of the evaluating mind are also qual, but when you are identified with evaluating, thinking and consciousness can be felt to be the same things. Until you have experiences of being able to watch your mind grind on something, I doubt there is any way to know otherwise. The notion that I am "thinking too hard," or are identified with perceptions is not accurate. The question is to b e able to directly understand how we perceive, the process of perception, 1st person.
To say qual is unimportant is to say that the elements of our experience, basically the lives that we lead, are unimportant.
The insanity John S. mentioned of repeating something endlessly and hoping for different results, is at play (IMO) in terms of believing matter entirely creates experience. Someday we might have a digital model for some processing functions, but replicating self awareness with self determination and intentionality (will) will be a little like cold fusion - it will remain "ten years off" for the next century (but self determination will remain ungraspable).
I'm reminded of a lecture I heard on how classical physics was fine for the macro world but the atomic world needed a new vision and QM was born. Human experience is so radically different from matter - far more so than the macro and the atomic - that I suspect that a new approach, perhaps as novel as QM was B ITD, needs to be cooked up to account for where mere processing models leave off - namely, at the threshold of 1st person experience, which is the only way any of us ever live our lives.
Boehm believed that a standard mechanistic model of consciousness would not wash, but he never gave up hope that some mechanical model could "explain" mind using the regular tools of engagement. Someone, at some time will come along with ideas that are neither strictly materialist or "supernatural." Then worlds will shatter.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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If only there was a quale of the thread's intent with which one might attempt to sense the locus of its points.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 7, 2011 - 08:09pm PT
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It was fun while it lasted, but we're circling the drain.
Perhaps next should be a look at causation, and those thorny transitions where one thing becomes another - like a how an impulse becomes a desire which becomes an action which becomes a memory.
Or how we can get almost nowhere in any investigation without a preverbal understanding of nothing at all, of zero. That's a fascinating one for sure.
JL
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jstan
climber
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we're circling the drain.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Perhaps next should be a look at causation, and those thorny transitions where one thing becomes another - like a how an impulse becomes a desire which becomes an action which becomes a memory.
What would be the point when you seem to dismiss, ignore, or deny a biological basis for 'causation' and also hold a similarly dismissive ('digital') view of what 'processing' the brain may be capable of.
And take the 'causation' of how desire becomes addiction and vice-versa, no biology involved there either?
Both threads seem like an exercise in rummaging around in the attic all the while denying the house rests on a foundation.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 7, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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What would be the point when you seem to dismiss, ignore, or deny a biological basis for 'causation' and also hold a similarly dismissive ('digital') view of what 'processing' the brain may be capable of.
Never did, Fruity. It's just that you have a staunch physicalist, bottom up belief in causality that you hold "all or nothing." I don't hold that view,.
As I said, once folks started looking at the atomic world, they had to devise new methods. Once we start looking past mere processing and into sentience itself, as we live it, not as we model it, I suspect new approaches will be needed to get past the blueprint stage.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Largo wrote: Boehm believed that a standard mechanistic model of consciousness would not wash, but he never gave up hope that some mechanical model could "explain" mind using the regular tools of engagement.
but I think you didn't read that part of Bohm's Quantum Theory when he was discussing the big picture. In section 26, page 167 he writes:
"26. The Need for a Nonmechanical Description. The fact that quantum systems cannot be regarded as made up of separate parts working together according to causal laws means that we are now led to a fundamental change in our general methods of description of nature. Only in the classical limit, where the effects of individual quanta are negligible and where their combined effects can be approximated by a causal description, is it possible to separate the world into distinct parts. Even in the classical limit, we recognize the separation between object and environment is an abstraction. But because each part interacts with the others according to causal laws, we can still give a correct description in this way. In a system whose behavior depends critically on the transfer of a few quanta, however, the separation of the world into parts is a non-permissible abstraction because the very nature of the parts (for instance, wave or particle) depends on factors that cannot be ascribed uniquely to either part, and are not even subject to complete control or prediction.
Thus, by investigating the applicability of the usual classical criteria for analyzing a system into distinct parts, we have been led to the same conclusion as that obtained directly in Chap. 6, Sec. 13: The entire universe must, on some very accurate level, be regarded as a single indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as idealizations permissible only on a classical level of accuracy and description. This means that the view of the world as being analogous to a huge machine, the predominant view from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, is now shown to be only approximately correct. The underlying structure of matter, however, is not mechanical.*"
* This means that the term "quantum mechanics" is very much a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called "quantum nonmechanics."
But Bohm goes on to write down a theoretical realization of this universe, and he does not resort to anything outside of physics, theoretical or experimental, to do it... while a tremendous reach in terms of physical theory, he does not see the need to go beyond in order to describe something which is quite at odds with our "common sense." I don't think his way quite accomplishes what he set out to do, but we can discuss that in more detail... the point is, he views the universe as non-mechanical, but still physical.
I'm surprised that Largo missed that...
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FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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It seems there are a couple of approaches to the original "What is Mind" question.
We can think and consider how much we are like computers or digital systems, we can look at what philosophers say, we can maybe get pretty smart doing this.
Or we can consider taking a look at what our mind (or our self) actually is.
The first is like aid climbing, it takes a lot of skills and judgement and such. The second is more like free soloing, you need to be really fit and trained mentally as well as physically.
People have suggested looking directly at our own mind. This suggestion is present in some eastern traditions. It is usually reserved for the "fittest" people.
On another topic, I found myself wanting to respond to Jogill's becoming the thread with my own realization that I was the thread. But after consideration I find that I believe that Jogill has actually become the thread!
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WBraun
climber
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There's your answer.
Just let go and and fall down the drain.
One who holds on too long will never learn .......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 8, 2011 - 01:05am PT
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the point is, he views the universe as non-mechanical, but still physical.
I'm surprised that Largo missed that...
I didn't miss that, Ed, it's just that Boehm faded from the scene before the next wave came along with "the map is not the territory," arguments that routed pure physicalism as viable to the people who actually got hold of what this meant beyond what the father of general semantics, Alford Korzybski, first had in mind when he used it. The whole qualia/experiential thing changed everything.
Most people can understand the "map" concept at the level of a topo of The Nose not being the Nose itself, or a thought about Paris being different than the capitol in France. But without a deeper understanding of how we only know anything through 1st person experience, people cook up silly mottos like "consciousness IS meat," or the meat brain DOES consciousness, whereby the map IS the terrritory and 1st person experience - which is all we ever have - IS quantifiable material. And when that doesn't fly, the fall back position is that the experience was at any rate entirely "created" by bottom up causation, and lastly, if you don't avow as much you are a hidden proponent of "God."
These, are of course, all circular arguments, but one thing remains certain: you will never know anything other than through your direct, 1st person subject experience, and the inward registering of that experience will always be the most real thing for us.
People argue that there is no such thing as "running," meaning "running" is not a real (physical/measurable) thing, but merely describes the action of a physical body moving through time and space. We could say the same thing about gravity - what's real being bodies with mass in motion, gravity being a by product. Likewise they argue that subjective experience/qualia is not real (physical/measurable) in any primary way, that it is simply what the meat brain "does."
In these cases, qualia and "running" are posited as semantic abstractions or representations of real things - a meat brain and a physical body in motion. No more.
Do you see the problem here?
JL
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