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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Do you see the problem here?
probably not the the same one you do...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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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.
Fruity? Hmmm, pretty good coming from a guy who can't seem to resolve or even entertain the possibility of brain / mind being analogous to a particle / wave (if you are buying into the complete stretch of consciousness / quantum mechanics).
So far it's pretty hard to ascertain that you hold any particular view at all other than 'meat can't be mind', but then proffer little beyond that beyond endless recitation of 'bottom up causality'. Weak at best from my perspective.
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.
Here you seem to have a naive understanding of what forms [biological] 'processing' can take and it's potential (somewhat amazing given you're breathing); seems an uninformed and dismissive mindset at best. And given an fMRI can distinguish between quales and the focus of 'awareness' I'd say your idea that sentience is 'emergent' or apart from the meat is in serious need of rethinking.
Another take on your approach would be you're like Dorothy who has forsaken the Kansas of the meat for the Oz of the mind but who, unlike Dorothy, has no interest in going home having decided it was never all that real to begin with whereas Oz is definitely the shizzle.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 8, 2011 - 04:33am PT
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This is my last word on the subject.
Time for new explorations.
The dismissive quips are curious, and putting ideas in my mouth is silly. Just know that people often mistake function for sentience and data processing for consciousness. They also gift the most fantastic experiential properties to matter, though there is nothing in matter suggesting anything beyond miraculous capacities for information processing. This is overcome through the ludicrous notions, in one for or another, that experience IS a function mechanically produced, or at any rate, 1st person subjectivity is meat brain produced somewhat as a trumpet "produces" Taps. Of course this is leaping back to the long ago routed argument that the map IS the territory. Sure, if you drive a steam roller over the trumped - no more Taps. So what.
At least we can agree on one point: That subject, first person experience, and qual (stuff) that enters our subjective orbit, is all we humans can ever know as real. So long as you have a beating heart, that one is incontrovertible. The rest is open for debate.
But as I said about cold fusion being a decade off for a century, if you truly expect a programmer to "create" a machine with subjective, first-person sentience and self determination, I have real estate for you on Mars. Cheap, too.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Your notion of 'programming' here is appropriate in that I don't think AI or any form of programming will ever produce 'sentience' or a 'conscious' machine. And offhand, while I think Ray Kurzweil is an interesting guy, ala folks like Dean Kamen, I believe he is so far off the mark relative to AI and neural nets as to be laughable.
The micro architecture of nerves isn't remotely the same as the [functionally differential] macro architecture of brain - we understand the former and barely have a clue about the latter. In particular we don't have much of any idea around how the brain self-organizes and dynamically re-organizes to satisfy various functional needs.
Ray's assertion that by 2019...
The summed computational powers of all computers is comparable to the total brainpower of the human race.
...is likewise ridiculously off the mark and hopelessly misguided from the perspective that ops/sec or ops/watt are somewhat pointless metrics if it takes a million machine watts of processing to accomplish the same task as .0001 watts of brainpower. It's not the 'raw' power that counts, it's how it's functionally organized and optimized for results.
But again, all that meat business aside, that an fMRI can in fact differentiate between and identify subjective quale should tell you that meat and mind are different aspects of the same thing and utterly inseparable. There is no consciousness without meat, not the other way around, and the 'reality' of a spectrum of observable behavior from bacteria to humans supports that assertion. You can philosophize an 'emerged', independent, or universal consciousness all you want - but in the end I suspect we'll give up the notion that our 'experience', 'mind', or 'awareness' is anything but self-aware processing.
Like your trumpet and notes - the note isn't the trumpet and the trumpet isn't the note - the note is the processing of air being blown through the trumpet. No blowing, no note. In your conjecture, laudable as it is, an fMRI wouldn't be able to detect and identify conscious thought or quale.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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good place for last thoughts on this thread...
sorry to Largo if he took offense at perceived quips.
From my point of view there are a number or vast difficulties confronting the understanding of "mind," and while I have been painted with the brush of closed-mindedness with regards to this "puzzle" let me just restate some of those difficulties.
Largo's central argument is that the subjective experience common to all humans cannot be explained in objective terms.
From there the argument expands to require the inclusion of subjectivity as a major aspect of the human description of the universe. Further, that that subjectivity creates the "universe."
Because of relatively common subjective experiences, the "mind" is not a local phenomena, but is pervasive. This non-locality suggests that the seat of mind is not in the body.
Given the reality of "mind" this set of ideas suggests we need to expand our description of the "universe" to include such phenomena.
The major difficulty with this line of reasoning is the appeal to our common perception of mind and consciousness and eschewing any attempt to define what those things are. My major frustration in my own thinking of this is the issue of unfolding the subjective and the objective parts of the description.
What evidence is there that an objective description is possible? First there are equally common experiences of loss of consciousness associated with the brain. The effects of various chemicals in inducing changes in consciousness that act in physiologically well described manner in the brain. And the evolution of humans, which is a physical process which does not require a subjective explanation.
Evolution is a powerful constraint on various subjective explanations of mind and consciousness. Largo avoided discussing it though I tried to bring it up multiple times. It is the fundamental unifying theory of biology and it has much to say about the development of behavior, of which language, mind, consciousness, etc. must all be a part of, whether or not we have a detailed objective explanation.
The objective approach to explaining mind will be difficult, but separating the important aspects from the unimportant detail is a task that is still in progress. Many will protest that this process will relegate what they perceive to be the most important aspects to the status of irrelevant, and thus miss the point, or at best fail to explain what our mind is all about.
In particular, the objective inquiry may make a thing that seems very special not so special. A common criticism of a scientific outlook by those who value the subjective aspects of our lives, perhaps the most.
Certainly one has to thank Largo for the overly ambitious attempt to discuss this ancient puzzle on the forum.
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MH2
climber
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From Largo's last words on the subject:
That subject, first person experience, and qual (stuff) that enters our subjective orbit, is all we humans can ever know as real.
Of course this is leaping back to the long ago routed argument that the map IS the territory.
The conventional view in neurobiology is that the brain creates maps of the real world. The maps might be visual, auditory, or olfactory maps of the external world, or kinesthetic (or sensorimotor) maps of how brain activity causes the muscles and limbs to move.
These maps can be demonstrated by recording from or stimulating central neurons and observing the responses.
IF your contention is that all we ever know is real is what enters our subjective orbit, then you are saying that these maps ARE the territory. Your personal territory, that is. I don't see any problem there, but I do wonder whether Largo sees what he himself is saying.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Ed, overall, that's much better said than I can state the case, particularly the emotional response to re-framing the exceptional as common.
Certainly one has to thank Largo for the overly ambitious attempt to discuss this ancient puzzle on the forum.
I agree, but in the end, what he was unwilling to discuss was as telling as the direction he steadfastly attempted to steer the conversation. To try and restrict the discussion to a philosophical context of the subjective / objective debate and exclude topics of the evolution and spectrum of behavior, impact of insults to the brain, and the real potential of bio-'processing' seems both one-sided and counterproductive to a rounded understanding of question itself.
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GBrown
Trad climber
Los Angeles, California
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Sep 10, 2011 - 01:20am PT
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Gawd! It may have been a year since I've checked into the SuperTopo forum. I reviewed the 1st page and the last page of this thread. What I get is: NO MOTION. NO CHANGE. A BOGUS STATIC OF OPPOSING FORCES. A vehicle missing on 5 out of 6 cylinders. Choke! Hasta la vista.
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GBrown
Trad climber
Los Angeles, California
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Sep 10, 2011 - 01:57am PT
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Ha! John, hi!!! I would never suspect you of contributing to silliness, philosophic or non-. How are you? The planet is engulfed in "interesting times" -- in the sense of the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times" -- where unlike the usual fare of onerous survival with a hoe against the elements, the Mongol hoards descend like locusts and disturb the monotony -- and friends are like islands of sanity!
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MH2
climber
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Sep 11, 2011 - 12:11am PT
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Gary Brown!?
Used to drive from Cleveland to the Gunks?
Can silliness oppose a static force?
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jstan
climber
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Sep 11, 2011 - 12:19am PT
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MH2:
It was Gary Molzan and Pete Ramins who drove out from Cleveland. It would have been not a whole lot further had they driven to Yosemite instead.
Edit:
When you mention a short stay at Vassar Bros. something clicks up there, but I don't pull up anything more. I don't think either Gary or Pete ever fell.
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MH2
climber
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Sep 11, 2011 - 12:25am PT
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Thanks.
It helps to know when your memory has a glitch.
I think the Cleveland Browns may be the intermediary.
edit:
Did one of those 2 spend a short time in Vassar Bros Hospital in Poughkeepsie?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 11, 2011 - 02:00pm PT
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I'm not sure that that is a correct analysis, Riley, though I'd have to work on it a bit more...
let's talk about the situation now, without considering the past or the future. As I've posted above (though now lost in the wonderful bit-sphere) the universe works wonderfully as a physical system we can describe based on our observations, theories, etc, with no need for "supernatural" i.e. unphysical, phenomena.
However our minds think up all sorts of crazy stuff, stuff that is not physical. As long as it stays that way, as thoughts, we're good to go with the separation of the physical universe and the unphysical universe... that is, perhaps we could contemplate a more complex place where the mind bridges the two.
The question I've always wondered about is why this is not sufficient for those who believe in those places, that is, why do they need the empirical validation that the "other side of the bridge" is anything more than what we think. But they do...
The problem with the "reality" of that place is that it depends on the mind. The mind is the product of an evolutionary process, which is physical in all respects, and extended through time at a scale as to be unrecognized by mind. There is a time when there was no mind, and that time will come again with the extinction of our species (and like species). The evolution of mind is but one set of adaptations that do not negatively effect (on a statistical level) the existence of our species.
So whether or not that place exists which our "mind" bridges to, it is a place that depends on mind to exist.
Now one could say that the entirety of existence is actually constructed to appear as if it is scientifically and philosophically self consistent, but is different than what we perceive it to be. That our current understanding might prohibit that sort of construction is based on the construction, and so misleads us from understanding "the truth." Then we have nothing but our "belief" to guide us. But even that is subject to manipulation in the construction.
If the scientific viewpoint is nihilistic, this "constructionist" viewpoint could be viewed as simply cruel... if not that, than it has a tinge of immoralism.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 11, 2011 - 02:45pm PT
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Ed pretty well sums it up.
However our minds think up all sorts of crazy stuff, stuff that is not physical. As long as it stays that way, as thoughts, we're good to go with the separation of the physical universe and the unphysical universe... that is, perhaps we could contemplate a more complex place where the mind bridges the two.
The question I've always wondered about is why this is not sufficient for those who believe in those places, that is, why do they need the empirical validation that the "other side of the bridge" is anything more than what we think. But they do...
The chemical processes going on in the brain are quite real. But are they accurate? Entirely apart from this discussion, each of us does real experiments each day to make sure our brains are accurately interpreting our sensory signals. When in doubt we reach out and touch to get a confirming signal.
We can't do that with some brain outputs. Under question are the brain outputs that are created by other brain outputs. Brain activity not associated with the sensory organs.
We live in fear that our brains are not working. So on ST we look for some way to confirm the unconfirmable, using an organ we don't basically trust to begin with.
I mean really. How supportable is that proposition?
Many pages back I offered an answer to this problem. We are a pack animal and we back stop each other. We say:
"Tell me. Do you think I am crazy to do "...... whatever?
In order to avoid accepting we are a pack animal, we dream up other brain efforts in hopes they can confirm the unconfirmable, using a brain we fear is gone haywire.
Sorry. This whole thread is haywire.
Several people have presented this same objection and it has been ignored.
Maybe this resistance to looking at the obvious is the needed data.
Proving we really do have some malfunction.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 11, 2011 - 03:08pm PT
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Why or really how would evolutionary processes develop sensory apparatus for the purpose of self deception?
Where is the "I" between two thoughts?
We find ourselves alive in this strange existence confronted with love and hate, beauty and horror, sorrow and happiness, and always near to us the anxiety of anticipation and the dread of our own inevitable annihilation.
As well, we find ourselves compelled by curiosity as to what we are, how we got here and what our lives mean, if anything.
We are overwhelmed by the sublime nature of the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” and so demand, through a host of anthropomorphic deities, a reconciliation to our existential dilemma.
The very structure of our minds both forms and reflects our understanding and curiosity with regard to the natural world.
Reason is a product of the construction of our minds; our minds like our senses are the products of natural forces and an evolution that favors us as the survivors of a long struggle for viability. How is it that evolution would favor sensory perception that deceives us? Survival itself dictates the accuracy of our senses! Can’t we say the same for reason?
Reason, not unlike our sensory perception, is a natural mechanism that favors our success as inhabitants of this world. Why would we abandon it except as a path to reconcile ourselves to what we think we simply cannot abide?
And more to the point, why would a god give us a “reason” that so favors our success and yet so often stands vehemently against the faith many say he demands?
Nobody can, and nobody wants to, argue against a god that can be anything; certainly all possibilities are possible. What god might be or when and how god might function beyond being is a fascinating question but perhaps that fascination may elicit too easily the abandonment of reason for the pleasure, fascination and reconciliation allowed by faith.
Unfortunately the sleep of reason too often produces monsters.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 11, 2011 - 03:42pm PT
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Five inch Siberian salamanders can remain frozen solid at temps down to -35c for years and then regain consciousness and walk away when thawed. Where is their consciousness stored while frozen solid and how does it know the meat has been thawed?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 11, 2011 - 03:57pm PT
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Mr. Smith tells them...
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 11, 2011 - 04:07pm PT
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All possibilities are possible, but some possibilities are extremely low probability while others are extremely high probability.
The believers act as if high and low probability did not exist.
"There are angels" are spoken of as if "there are angels" is of the same probability as "there are no angels". "Thoughts and feelings are nonphysical phenomenons" are seen as having the same probability as "thoughts and feelings are of a physical nature". The first formulation is seen as just as clear and of the same "weight" as the second. Language is seducing us. If we every time a new hypothesis were expressed had to take probability into consideration the discussion would be clearer, at least every time we are talking about a very low probability hypothesis. The discussion should be about the probability of and the ways to test the hypothesis. And testing is never spoken of because the belivers are only searching for confirmation and anything that confirms the belief is good enough and anything that falsifies the belief is ignored.
When we can use our heads on hypothesis that can be tested empirically, why use our heads on very very low probability hypothesis that cannot be tested, only believed or not believed?
healyje: You make a lot of sense. I guess that is why Largo seldom answers your questions. It seems like he prefers to answer the more speculative posts that are at his own level of abstraction.
Neither has he given a 10 sec experience example yet.
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