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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 23, 2014 - 07:24pm PT
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I don't think dog's have a fovea, jgill... no rays...
but perhaps the set of the ears...
or the rooting around for a scent...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 23, 2014 - 08:35pm PT
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broken,
that was a super radiolab episode, thanks for the heads-up.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 23, 2014 - 10:36pm PT
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Mathematical dendrite from my Basic computer program. Julia/Fatou sets from the iteration of a very simple complex function. Standard stuff.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 23, 2014 - 11:51pm PT
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Human 2 dog consciousness schema: My dog is pure love.
Dog 2 human consciousness schema: The cat's not a half bad lay, my human's testicles look really tasty, and I can't get enough of his butt smell.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jul 24, 2014 - 04:10am PT
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"The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'"
 Aaron Copland
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Jul 24, 2014 - 07:39am PT
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If the universe were so small we could see it we would be too big to live in it.
Think again, Port.
Yea, well that's just, like, your opinion man.
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MH2
climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 08:11am PT
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Yes. It's my opinion of your opinion.
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Jul 24, 2014 - 08:30am PT
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Donny, you're out of your element.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 24, 2014 - 12:50pm PT
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Here's one for ya Dingus,
Does ur sperm got consciousness? Are they alive? They might not be able to shave yet, but don't you think they have a mind of their own?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 24, 2014 - 12:51pm PT
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I just got around to reading Ed's last link. Dang!!! That article resonates with me and provides context to and extensions to what I have been wrassling with in thinking about free will and consciousness. The tie-in with evolutionary biology and animals is exactly what has felt more or less obvious to me, although I hadn't the mastery of the subject matter to articulate, other than with my cat metaphors.
I gotta say, this thread has picked up lately. I'm learning a lot.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 24, 2014 - 01:00pm PT
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So's ur the same'ol not questioning the question, but questioning the questioneer.
Have a good day
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 24, 2014 - 01:06pm PT
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"I'm Thuper Dumb!" does get old pretty quickly. It can be hard to resist the urge to kick the puppy into oncoming traffic at times.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 01:54pm PT
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on quantum entanglement, there seems to be a huge misunderstanding of the issue, particularly the conditions under which entanglement occurs.
IN GENERAL, creating, maintaining and detecting quantum entanglement requires that the entangled system remains isolated from any interactions outside of that system. In the lab, these systems are isolated by going to very low temperatures and shielding from electric and magnetic fields... in room temperature situations, usually with light, the environment is setup so that the light doesn't interact with the environment by setting the light packet frequencies to be very narrowly distributed, and eliminating any materials that might have a large likelihood of scattering the light.
In other words, these systems have to be ISOLATED from the environment to maintain coherence as quantum states.
IT IS AN IRREFUTABLE TRUTH THAT THE BRAIN IS TIGHTLY COUPLED TO THE ENVIRONMENT. If for no other reason that it has a finite temperature, which is cooled by interaction with that environment.
Anyone seriously proposing that "mind" is a quantum phenomenon has to reconcile the finite temperature of the brain (supposing it is engine that creates the phenomenon) with the coherence condition requirements of the putative quantum system that creates mind.
It is not something that given some thought, seems particularly likely, the pedigree of some of the idea's proponents not withstanding.
The much less ambitious goal of doing quantum computing at the simplest level is extremely difficult for the same reasons. We aren't quite there yet.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2014 - 02:07pm PT
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If you look closely, what we have in the main are attempts to objectify human existence (including consciousness) sans any subjective influence, much as we would try and objectify any other thing, providing a stand-alone entity that exists separte from and wholly apart from sentience. A genuine "object."
If we look at the reductionistic/mechanical model, we are left with a bio machine that in the most extreme mechanical view, operates entirely on auto pilot mode and is wholly devoid of sentient influence. Put simply, the human is a stimulus response machine, start to finish, with no free will and no agency save for its evolutionary programming.
Now where this gets tricky is in seeing where the loopholes are in this belief system.
First, some time back, MH2 said that the bio machine/human being actually directs "our" attention to this or that and that "we" have no dominion over our actions, or perceptiolns, etc., whatsoever. In fact the bio machine itself, as a stimulus response mechanism, has no self awareness at all. It simply does what it does entirely on mechanical, automatic principals. It exists outside and separate from sentience, which is an impotent, subjective observer entirely beholden to the determined mechanisms of the bio machine.
Put differently, the bio machine functions entirely the same whether we are conscious of our experience or not, seeming that our behavior is entirely determined and mechanical to our evolved, genetic programming as it encounters a chaotic material world. So, the machine itself is not aware of itself, any more than a train is aware of driving down the tracks.
More later . . .
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 02:28pm PT
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...has no self awareness at all
you didn't read the article...
you would have found the definition of awareness: "awareness is a perceptual reconstruction of attentional state"
so awareness is an approximation, one that we use to act on. The interesting issue is one that you've harped on quite a bit, that that perceptual state is not the real thing. Yet we are acting on it (in Graziano's hypothesis). The concept of "free will" and "determinism" gets a bit more complicated, since the action is in response to an unknown, the perceptual approximation of the actual state.
This is certainly a part of the imprecision of our actions, most of the time the approximation is accurate, sometimes it is not. So even if we are responding as if an automaton, the outcome is not determined since the "stimulus" is not the actual physical stimulus, but the perception of that stimulus.
As is shown in the simple experiment (linked up thread) when confronted with a situation that fails the perceptual model, the brain spends more time (and energy) coming up with a resolution. This is entirely mechanistic, the outcome may be statistical and based on the individual's prior memory of experiences (all of these memories also being approximations, memories of, at best, the perception of past experiences).
No free will is required to have varying nuanced responses, not the cartoon Victorian mechanical man picture you paint.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2014 - 02:49pm PT
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I read the article, Ed, but as I have pointed out many times, what the authors are attempting to do is to study objective fuinctioning and then postulate forward what awareness and attention are based on tasking, functioning, and content.
To wit: "In the attention schema theory, the awareness that the brain
attributes to itself is a simplified, sometimes inaccurate model of
something. The item being modeled is attention, a real physical
process, a mechanistic process of signal enhancement as de-
scribed, for example, in the biased competition model."
For starters, raw awareness is not a "model" of any discrete thing. Raw awareness is NOT a thing and cannot be understood or known by way of its content. The "item" being modeled is NOT attention, which is simply the given target of where awareness is placed - be it on the moon or a quark.
What the authors have attempted to do is to equate a perceived, representational world "out there" to awareness - meaning that awareness itself IS this perception (is a thing).
But what happens to awareness when you venture into the space betwen perceptions, thoughts, things, representations?
Again, when we detach from content, the "attention schema theory" crumbles entirely.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:00pm PT
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what is "raw awareness"?
is there even such a thing to be described?
the distinction the authors make is apt, that there is physical attention, and that "awareness" is the perception of that physical attention.
in their model, "awareness" is a perception of that attention. There is real content there, but it is not attention, but the perception of attention...
your "raw awareness" is a perception. Can you show it is not?
as far as "not being a physical thing" it has a physical consequence, which is our action... how does that happen? how does it connect from the non-physical to the physical?
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:09pm PT
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the human is a stimulus response machine, start to finish, with no free
This statement is the beginnning of the end. The philosophy of Wundt as used by Stalin & Hitler to justify euthinasia.
The exact opposite is truth.
And therein lies a paradox: When a human has sunk so low that his own mind has determined that self extinction is the only solution, one has suddenly touched upon a spiritual entity passing judgement on physical existence.
Thus suicide, or suicidal tendancy on the part of an individual or group is clear evidence that the "stimulus response mechanism" theory is utterly false.
NOTE: I don't believe Largo was stating he believes the quoted statement, it was just a part of his context above. It is a common theme.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:15pm PT
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one has suddenly touched upon a spiritual entity passing judgement on physical existence.
Is that how you personally characterize the process that ends in suicide?
------------------------------------------------------------------
But what happens to awareness when you venture into the space betwen perceptions, thoughts, things, representations?
Well, what does happen? If you are enamored of the notion that something non-physical is occurring then you are thereby burdened with explaining how this awareness takes place outside of neurons and neuroanatomical structures. Not to do so implies that you reckon something other than physical structure in the brain is responsible. Constantly reiterating that such awareness cannot be summed by objective reasoning or a search for content is a procedural dodge.
If you concede that this awareness does indeed take place inside the brain you are then faced with explaining how the distinctions you are presenting occur on the level of neurons .
Moreover, since awareness is mediated by neurons , such awareness is by that very fact schematic and inherently representational---even the so-called sense of "no thing" ---which ,unless you contend it has supernatural sources, is just another brain event---in apposition ,and not opposition ,to objectivity and "content" ,and the otherwise default state of consciousness.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jul 24, 2014 - 03:54pm PT
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